With curious art the brain, too finely wrought, UNITED yet divided, twain at once. So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.* Book i. The Sofa. Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. Ibid. The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged. Ibid. *Two Kings of Brentford, from Buckingham's play of the Rehearsal. God made the country, and man made the town.* Book i. The Sofa. O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Might never reach me more.† Book ii. The Timepiece. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else, I would not have a slave to till my ground, Ibid. Ibid. Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs England, with all thy faults I love thee still, Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men.— Jeremiah ix. 2. Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.-BODINUS. Liber i. c. 5. § Be England what she will, With all her faults she is my country still. CHURCHILL. The Farewell. To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Book ii. The Timepiece. Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue. Ibid. There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know. Ibid. Reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, Ibid. Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that hast survived the fall! Ibid. Book iii. The Garden. Ibid. Great contest follows, and much learned dust. From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.* * Ibid. 'He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.' -Memoirs of Sydney Smith. How various his employments whom the world Esteems that busy world an idler too! Book iii. Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too. The Garden. I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free, Ibid. Book iv. Winter Evening. Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, And Katerfelto, with his hair on end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread. Ibid. To peep at such a world; to see the stir Ibid. While fancy, like the finger of a clock, Ibid. O Winter, ruler of the inverted year. With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ibid. Ibid. * [Tar-water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.-BISHOP BERKELEY. Siris, par. 217. Sidney, warbler of poetic prose. Book iv. Winter Evening. The Frenchman's darling.* But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at. The beggarly last doit. Ibid. Book v. Winter Morning Walk. With filial confidence inspired, Ibid. Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, Ibid. As dreadful as the Manichean god, Adored through fear, strong only to destroy. Ibid. He is the freeman whom the truth makes free. There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; Ibid. *'T was Cowper who gave this now common name to the Mignonette. |