XV,

The portion of this world which I at present
Have taken up to fill the following sermon,
Is one of which there's no description recent:
The reason why, is easy to determine:
Although it seems both prominent and pleasant,
There is a sameness in its gems and ermine,
A dull and family likeness through all ages,
Of no great promise for poetic pages.

XVI.

With much to excite, there's little to exalt;
Nothing that speaks to all men and all times;
A sort of varnish over every fault;

A kind of common-place, even in their crimes; Factitious passions, wit without much salt,

A want of that true nature which sublimes Whate'er it shows with truth; a smooth monotony Of character, in those at least who have got any.

XVII.

Sometimes, indeed, like soldiers off parade,
They break their ranks and gladly leave the dril!;
But then the roll-call draws them back afraid,

And they must be or seem what they were: still Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade;

But when of the first sight you have had your fill, It palls—at least it did so upon me, This paradise of pleasure and ennui.

XVIII.

When we have made our love, and gamed our gaming, Drest, voted, shone, and, may be, something more; With dandies dined; heard senators declaiming; Seen beauties brought to market by the score, Sad rakes to sadder husbands chastely taming; There's little left but to be bored or bore. Witness those "ci-devant jeunes hommes" who stem The stream, nor leave the world which leaveth them.

XIX.

'Tis said indeed a general complaint — That no one has succeeded in describing The monde, exactly as they ought to paint:

Some say, that authors only snatch, by bribing The porter, some slight scandals strange and quaint, To furnish matter for their moral gibing; And that their books have but one style in common My lady's prattle, filter'd through her woman.

XX.

But this can't well be true, just now; for writers Are grown of the beau monde a part potential: I've seen them balance even the scale with fighters, Especially when young, for that's essential.

Why do their sketches fail them as inditers

Of what they deem themselves most consequential,

The real portrait of the highest tribe?

'Tis that, in fact, there's little to describe.

XXI.

"Haud ignara loquor;" these are Nuga,“ quarum Pars parva fui," but still art and part.

Now I could much more easily sketch a harem,
A battle, wreck, or history of the heart,

Than these things; and besides, I wish to spare 'em,
For reasons which I choose to keep apart.
"Vetabo Cereris sacrum qui vulgarit” —(')
Which means, that vulgar people must not share it.

XXII.

And therefore what I throw off is ideal –

Lower'd, leaven'd, like a history of freemasons; Which bears the same relation to the real, As Captain Parry's voyage may do to Jason's. The grand arcanum's not for men to see all; My music has some mystic diapasons;

And there is much which could not be appreciated In any manner by the uninitiated.

XXIII.

Alas! worlds fall—and woman, since she fell❜d
The world (as, since that history, less polite
Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held)
Has not yet given up the practice quite.
Poor thing of usages! coerced, compell'd,
Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,
Condemn'd to child-bed, as men for their sins
Have shaving too entail'd upon their chins,-

(1) [Hor. Carm. 1. iii. od. 2.]

XXIV.

A daily plague, which in the aggregate
May average on the whole with parturition.
But as to women, who can penetrate

The real sufferings of their she condition?
Man's very sympathy with their estate

Has much of selfishness, and more suspicion.
Their love, their virtue, beauty, education,
But form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.

XXV.

All this were very well, and can't be better;
But even this is difficult, Heaven knows,
So many troubles from her birth beset her,
Such small distinction between friends and foes,
The gilding wears so soon from off her fetter,
That- -but ask any woman if she'd choose
(Take her at thirty, that is) to have been
Female or male? a schoolboy or a queen?

XXVI.

"Petticoat influence" is a great reproach, Which even those who obey would fain be thought

To fly from, as from hungry pikes a roach;

But since beneath it upon earth we are brought,
By various joltings of life's hackney coach,
I for one venerate a petticoat-

A garment of a mystical sublimity,
No matter whether russet, silk, or dimity.

XXVII.

Much I respect, and much I have adored,

In my young days, that chaste and goodly veil, Which holds a treasure, like a miser's hoard, And more attracts by all it doth concealA golden scabbard on a Damasque sword, A loving letter with a mystic seal, A cure for grief-for what can ever rankle Before a petticoat and peeping ankle?

XXVIII.

And when upon a silent, sullen day,
With a sirocco, for example, blowing,
When even the sea looks dim with all its spray,
And sulkily the river's ripple's flowing,
And the sky shows that very ancient gray,
The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,-
'Tis pleasant, if then any thing is pleasant,
To catch a glimpse even of a pretty peasant.

XXIX.

We left our heroes and our heroines

In that fair clime which don't depend on climate, Quite independent of the Zodiac's signs

Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at, Because the sun, and stars, and aught that shines, Mountains, and all we can be most sublime at, Are there oft dull and dreary as a dunWhether a sky's or tradesman's is all one.