PREFACE. Point out the green lane rough with fern and flowers; And the white front through mingling elms reveal'd. EVERY reader turns with pleasure to those pas- Here hid by shrub-wood, there by glimpses seen; And the brown pathway, that, with careless flow, Sinks, and is lost among the trees below. Still must it trace (the flattering tints forgive) Each fleeting charm that bids the landscape live. His English Imitator thought and felt, perhaps, more Oft o'er the mead, at pleasing distance, pass (1) correctly on the subject; and embellished his garden Browsing the hedge by fits the pannier'd ass; and grotto with great industry and success. But to The idling shepherd-boy, with rude delight, these alone he solicits our notice. On the ornaments Whistling his dog to mark the pebble's flight; of his house he is silent; and he appears to have re- And in her kerchief blue the cottage-maid, served all the minuter touches of his pencil for the With brimming pitcher from the shadowy glade. library, the chapel, and the banqueting-room of Far to the south a mountain-vale retires, Timon. "Le savoir de notre siècle," says Rousseau, "tend beaucoup plus à détruire qu'à édifier. On censure d'un ton de maitre; pour proposer, il en faut prendre un autre." Rich in its groves, and glens, and village-spires: It is the design of this Epistle to illustrate the virtue of True Taste; and to show how little she requires to When April-verdure springs in Grosvenor-square, secure, not only the comforts, but even the elegancies And the furr'd Beauty comes to winter there, of life. True Taste is an excellent Economist. She She bids old Nature mar the plan no more; confines her choice to few objects, and delights in Yet still the seasons circle as before. producing great effects by small means: while False Taste is for ever sighing after the new and the rare; and reminds us, in her works, of the Scholar of Apelles, who, not being able to paint his Helen beautiful, determined to make her fine. ARGUMENT. Ah, still as soon the young Aurora plays, There let her strike with momentary ray, An invitation-The approach to a Villa described-Its The ready smile and bidden blush employ WHEN, with a Reaumur's skill, thy curious mind Fan with affected ease the essenced air, Here no state-chambers in long line unfold, Small change of scene, small space his home re- When from his classic dreams the student steals, ' quires, (3) Who leads a life of satisfied desires. What though no marble breathes, no canvas glows, Soon as the morning-dream my pillow flies, At Guido's call, (5) their round of glory run! But could thine erring friend so long forget Selected shelves shall claim thy studious hours; There shall thy ranging mind be fed on flowers!' There, while the shaded lamp's mild lustre streams, Read ancient books, or dream inspiring dreams; (7) And, when a sage's bust arrests thee there, (8) Pause, and his features with his thoughts compare. -Ah, most that Art my grateful rapture calls, Which breathes a soul into the silent walls; 2 Which gathers round the Wise of every Tongue, (9) All on whose words departed nations hung; Still prompt to charm with many a converse sweet; Guides in the world, companions in retreat! Though my thatch'd bath no rich Mosaic knows, A limpid spring with unfelt current flows. Emblem of Life! which, still as we survey, Seems motionless, yet ever glides away! The shadowy walls record, with Attic art, The strength and beauty that its waves impart. Here Thetis, bending, with a mother's fears Dips her dear boy, whose pride restrains his tears. There, Venus, rising, shrinks with sweet surprise, As her fair self reflected seems to rise! Far from the joyless glare, the maddening strife, And all the dull impertinence of life, These eye-lids open to the rising ray, And close, when nature bids, at close of day. Here, at the dawn, the kindling landscapo glows; There noon-day levees call from faint repose. Here the flush'd wave flings back the parting light; There glimmering lamps anticipate the night. Grata carpentis thyma Hor. 2 Postes verò quàm Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis ædibus.-Cic. Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, A very stranger in his native land! Like those blest Youths, (10) forgive the fabling page, O come, and, rich in intellectual wealth, No tuneful echoes, ambush'd at my gate, Catch the blest accents of the wise and great. (11) Vain of its various page, no Album breathes The sigh that Friendship or the Muse bequeaths. Yet some good Genii o'er my hearth preside, Oft the far friend, with secret spell, to guide; And there I trace, when the grey evening lours, A silent chronicle of happier hours! When Christmas revels in a world of snow, And bids her berries blush, her carols flow; His spangling shower when Frost the wizard flings; Or, borne in ether blue, on viewless wings, O'er the white pane his silvery foliage weaves, And gems with icicles the sheltering eves; -Thy muffled friend his nectarine-wall pursues, What time the sun the yellow crocus wooes, Screened from the arrowy North; and duly hies * To meet the morning-rumor as it flies; To range the murmuring market-place, and view The motley groups that faithful Teniers drew. When Spring bursts forth in blossoms through the vale, And her wild music triumphs on the gale, To hail our coming. Not a step profane Thus, in this calm recess, so richly fraught Rise, ere the watch-relieving clarions play, Caught through St. James's groves a blush of day; (15) Ere its full voice the choral anthem flings Through trophied tombs of heroes and of kings. Haste to the tranquil shade of learned ease,2 Though skill'd alike to dazzle and to please; agros." Distant views contain the greatest variety both in themselves and in their accidental variations. Note 3, page 21, col. 1. Small change of scene, small space his home requires. Many a great man, in passing through the apart ments of his palace, has made the melancholy reflection of the venerable Cosmo: "Questa è troppo gran casa à si poco famiglia."-MACH. Ist. Fior. lib. vii. "Parva, sed apta mihi," was Ariosto's inscription over his door in Ferrara; and who can wish to say more? "I confess," says Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast."-Essay vi. When Socrates was asked why he had built for himself so small a house, "Small as it is," he replied, "I wish I could fill it with friends."-PHADRUS, L iii, 9. These indeed are all that a wise man would desire to assemble; "for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love." Note 4, page 21, col. 1. From every point a ray of genius flows! By this means, when all nature wears a louring countenance, I withdraw myself into the visionary Though each gay scene be search'd with anxious eye, worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes, Nor thy shut door be pass'd without a sigh. If, when this roof shall know thy friend no more, Some, form'd like thee, should once, like thee, explore; Invoke the lares of this loved retreat, And his lone walks imprint with pilgrim-feet; Then be it said, (as, vain of better days, Some grey domestic prompts the partial praise) "Unknown he lived, unenvied, not unblest; Reason his guide, and Happiness his guest. In the clear mirror of his moral page, We trace the manners of a purer age. His soul, with thirst of genuine glory fraught, Scorn'd the false lustre of licentious thought. -One fair asylum from the world he knew, One chosen seat, that charms with various view! Who boasts of more (believe the serious strain) Sighs for a home, and sighs, alas! in vain. Through each he roves, the tenant of a day, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, etc. ADDISON. It is remarkable that Antony, in his adversity, passed some time in a small but splendid retreat, which he called his Timonium, and from which might originate the idea of the Parisian Boudoir, that favorite apartment, où l'on se retire pour être seul, mais où l'on ne boude point.-STRABO, 1. xvii. PLUT. in Vit. Anton. Note 5, page 21, col. 1. At Guido's call, etc. Alluding to his celebrated fresco in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. Note 6, page 21, col. 1. And still the Few best loved and most revered. The dining-room is dedicated to Conviviality; or, as Cicero somewhere expresses it, Communitati vitæ And, with the swallow, wings the year away!" (16) atque victus." There we wish most for the society NOTES. Note 1, page 20, col. 2. Oft o'er the mead, at pleasing distance, pass. Cosmo of Medicis took most pleasure in his Apennine villa, because all that he commanded from its windows was exclusively his own. How unlike the wise Athenian, who, when he had a farm to sell, directed the crier to proclaim, as its best recommendation, that it had a good neighborhood.-PLUT. in Vit. Themist. Note 2, page 20, col. 2. And through the various year, the various day. of our friends; and, perhaps, in their absence, most require their portraits. The moral advantages of this furniture may be illustrated by the pretty story of an Athenian cour tesan, "who, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye on the portrait of a philosopher, that hung opposite to her seat: the happy character of temperance and virtue struck her that she instantly quitted the room; and, retiring with so lively an image of her own unworthiness, home, became ever after an example of temperance, as she had been before of debauchery." Note 7, page 21, col. 1. Read ancient books, or dream inspiring dreams. Horace commends the house, "longos quæ prospicit his library. 1-dapes inemptas.-Hor. 2 Innocuas amo delicias doctamque quietem. Note 8, page 21, col. 1. And, when a sage's bust arrests thee there. Siquidem non solum ex auro argentove, aut certe ex Ere in bibliothecis dicantur illi, quorum immortales Hence every artist requires a broad and high anime in iisdem locis ibi loquuntur: quinimo etiam light. Hence also, in a banquet-scene, the most que non sunt, finguntur, pariuntque desideria non picturesque of all poets has thrown his light from traditi vultus, sicut in Homero evenit. Quo majus the ceiling.-Æn. i, 726. (ut equidem arbitror) nullum est felicitatis specimen, quam semper omnes scire cupere, qualis fuerit aliqus-PLIN. Nat. Hist. Cicero speaks with pleasure of a little seat under Aristotle in the library of Atticus. "Literis sustentor et recreor; maloque in illa tua sedecula, quam habes sub imagine Aristotelis, sedere quàm in istorum sella erali-Ep. ad Att. iv, 10. Nor should we forget that Dryden drew inspiration from the "majestic face" of Shakspeare; and that a portrait of Newton was the only ornament of the closet of Buffon.—Ep. to Kneller. Voyage à Montbart. In the chamber of a man of genius we Why, such and such. Note 9, page 21, col. 1. Which gathers round the Wise of every Tongue. Quis tantis non gaudeat et glorietur hospitibus, erelaims Petrarch.-Spectare, etsi nihil aliud, certè javat.-Homerus apud me mutus, imò verò ego apud ilum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel aspectû solo, et sæpe illum amplexus ac suspirens dico: O magne vir, etc.-Epist. Var. lib. 20. Note 10, page 21, col. 2. Like those blest Youths. See the Legend of the Seven Sleepers.-GIBBON, c. 33. Note 11, page 21, col. 2. Catch the blest accents of the wise and great. And hence the "starry lamps" of Milton, that from the arched roof Pendent by subtle magic, -yielded light As from a sky. Note 13, page 22, col. 1. Beyond the triumphs of a Loriot's art. duced those admirable pieces of mechanism, afterAt the petits soupers of Choisy were first introwards carried to perfection by Loriot, the Confidente and the Servante; a table and a side-board, which descended and rose again covered with viands and wines. And thus the most luxurious Court in Europe, after all its boasted refinements, was glad to return at last, by this singular contrivance, to the quiet and privacy of humble life.- Vie privée de Louis XV, tom. ii, p. 43. Between 1. 10, and 1. 11, col. 1, were these lines, since omitted: Hail, sweet Society! in crowds unknown, Though the vain world would claim thee for its own. Note 14, page 22, col. 1. Mr. Pope delights in enumerating his illustrious They were written in 1796. guests. Nor is this an exclusive privilege of the poet. The Medici Palace at Florence exhibits a long and imposing catalogue. "Semper hi parietes columnæque eruditis vocibus resonuerunt." Another is also preserved at Chanteloup, the seat of the Duke of Choiseul. Note 12, page 21, col. 2. Sheds, like an evening-star, its ray serene. At a Roman supper, statues were sometimes employed to hold the lamps. -Aurea sunt juvenum simulacra per ædeis, A fashion as old as Homer!-Odyss. vii, 100. So through the vales of Loire the bee-hives glide. An allusion to the floating bee-house, or barge laden with bee-hives, which is seen in some parts of France and Piedmont. Note 15, page 22, col. 1. Caught through St. James's groves at blush of day. Groves that Belinda's star illumines still, Note 16, page 22, col. 1. And, with the swallow, wings the year away! It was the boast of Lucullus that he changed his climate with the birds of passage.—PLUT. in Vit. Lucull. How often must he have felt the truth here inculcated, that the master of many houses has no home! 31 Jacqueline. I. "T WAS Autumn; through Provence had ceased And from the convent's neighboring tower She starts, and what has caught her eye? Up rose St. Pierre, when morning shone; By Turenne, when the Rhine ran blood; Aloft in Notre Dame to wave; Nor did thy Cross, St. Louis, rest Upon a purer, nobler breast. And, as she pass'd her father's door, Oh! she was good as she was fair; And, as she grew, her modest grace, Her down-cast look 't was heaven to trace, Her voice, whate'er she said, enchanted; Soon as the sun the glittering pane She, who would lead him where he went, At eve light up the chimney-nook, Which, when a tale is long, dispenses In her who mourn'd not, when they miss'd her With Frederic blowing bubbles in the sun; |