Take not away the life you cannot give :
For all things have an equal right to live.
Kill noxious creatures, where 'tis fin to save;
This only juft prerogative we have:
But nourish life with vegetable food,
And fhun the facrilegious taste of blood.

Thefe precepts by the Samian fage were taught,
Which godlike Numa to the Sabines brought,
And thence transferr'd to Rome, by gift his own:
A willing people, and an offer'd throne.
O happy monarch, fent by heaven to bless
A favage nation with soft arts of peace,
To teach religion, rapine to restrain,
Give laws to luft, and facrifice ordain :
Himself a faint, a Goddess was his bride,
And all the Mufes o'er his acts prefide.

TRAN

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

JUVENA L

RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES

Earl of DORSET and MIDDLESEX,

Lord Chamberlain of his Majefty's Houfhold, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, &c.

My LORD,

T

HE wishes and defires of all good men, which have attended your lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplished in your obtaining thofe honours and dignities, which you have fo long deferved. There are no factions, though irreconcileable to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay you. They are equally pleafed in your profperity, and would be equally concerned in your affliction. Titus Vefpafian was not more the delight of human kind. The univerfal empire made him only more known, and more powerful, but could not make him more beloved. He had greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it, is not lefs: and though you could not extend your beneficence to fo many perfons, yet you have loft as few days as that excellent emperor, and never had his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the fun had fhone upon you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving fome unhappy man. This, my

Lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there are perfons who have the honour to be known to you: mere acquaintance you have none; you have VOL. IV. drawn

I

drawn them all into a nearer line: and they who have conversed with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth fo generally acknowledged, that it needs no proof: it is of the nature of a first principle, which is received as foon as it is propofed; and needs not the reformation which Defcartes ufed to his: for we doubt not, neither can we properly fay, we think we admire and love you, above all other men: there is a certainty in the propofition, and we know it. With the fame affurance can I fay, you neither have enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never heard of you, can neither love or hate you; and they who have, can have no other notion of you, than that which they receive from the public, that you are the beft of men. After this, my teftimony can be of no farther ufe, than to declare it to be day-light at high-noon: and all who have the benefit of fight, can look up as well, and fee the fun.

It is true, I have one privilege which is almoft particular to myself, that I faw you in the east at your first rifing above the hemifphere: I was as foon fenfible as any man of that light, when it was but juft shooting out, and beginning to travel upward to the meridian. I made my early addreffes to your lordship, in my effay of Dramatic Poetry; and therein bespoke you to the world, wherein I have the right of a first discoverer. When I was myself, in the ru diments of my Poetry, without name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of a writer, than the skill; when I was drawing the out-lines of an art, without any living mafter to inftru&t me in it; an art which had been better praised than ftudied here in England, wherein Shakespeare, who created the stage among us, had rather written happily, than knowingly and juftly; and Johnfon, who by ftudying Horace, had been acquainted with the rules, yet feemed to envy pofterity that knowledge, and like an inventor of fome useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning when thus, as I may fay, before the ufe

of