Consider what it is to bear
The powder'd courtier's witty sneer;
To see th' important man of dress
Scoffing my college awkwardness;
To be the strutting cornet's sport,
To run the gauntlet of the court,
Winning my way by slow approaches,
Through crowds of coxcombs and of coaches,
From the first fierce cockaded sentry,
Quite through the tribe of waiting gentry;
To pass so many crowded stages,
And stand the staring of your pages:
And after all, to crown my spleen,
Be told--'You are not to be seen:'
Or, if you are, be forced to bear
The awe of your majestic air.
And can I then be faulty found,
In dreading this vexatious round?
Can it be strange, if I eschew
A scene so glorious and so new?
Or is he criminal that flies
The living lustre of your eyes?"
[Footnote 1: The gentleman who brought the message.--_Scott._]
THE BIRTH OF MANLY VIRTUE
INSCRIBED TO LORD CARTERET[1]
1724
Gratior et pulcro veniens in corpore virtus.--VIRG., _Aen._, v, 344.
Once on a time, a righteous sage,
Grieved with the vices of the age,
Applied to Jove with fervent prayer--
"O Jove, if Virtue be so fair
As it was deem'd in former days,
By Plato and by Socrates,
Whose beauties mortal eyes escape,
Only for want of outward shape;
Make then its real excellence,
For once the theme of human sense;
So shall the eye, by form confined,
Direct and fix the wandering mind,
And long-deluded mortals see,
With rapture, what they used to flee!"
Jove grants the prayer, gives Virtue birth,
And bids him bless and mend the earth.
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