Than straight she sees the country all around,
Where fatal Neptune rul'd erewhile,

Scatter'd with flow'ry vales, with fruitful gardens crown'd,

And many a pleasant wood! As if the universal Nile

Had rather water'd it than drown'd:
It seems some floating piece of Paradise,
Preserv'd by wonder from the flood,
Long wandering through the deep, as we are told
Fam'd Delos did of old;

And the transported Muse imagin'd it
To be a fitter birth-place for the God of wit,
Or the much-talk'd oracular grove;
When, with amazing joy, she hears
An unknown music all around,

Charming her greedy ears,

With many a heavenly song,

Of nature and of art, of deep philosophy and love; While angels tune the voice, and God inspires the tongue.

In vain she catches at the empty sound,

In vain pursues the music with her longing eye,
And courts the wanton echoes as they fly.

III.

Pardon, ye great unknown, and far-exalted men, * The wild excursions of a youthful pen;

* I cannot help inserting one question put to these “great unknown and far-exalted men," with their sapient response. What Swift would have thought of their dulness at a future period of his life it is vain to inquire.

"Query. Since in your advertisement you make it known, that a chirurgeon is taken into your society, I have thought fit to propound the following question, withal assuring you the

Forgive a young and (almost) virgin Muse,
Whom blind and eager curiosity

(Yet curiosity, they say,

Is in her sex a crime needs no excuse)

Has forced to grope her uncouth way,
After a mighty light that leads her wandering eye:
No wonder then she quits the narrow path of sense
For a dear ramble through impertinence;
Impertinence! the scurvy of mankind.

And all we fools, who are the greater part of it,
Though we be of two different factions still,
Both the good-natur'd and the ill,

Yet wheresoe'er you look, you'll always find

matter of fact is true. A sailor on board the fleet, by an unlucky accident broke his leg, being in drink, and refusing the assistance of the surgeon of the ship, called for a piece of new tarpaulin that lay on the deck, which he rolled some turns about his leg, tying up all close with a few hoopsticks, and was able immediately to walk round the ship, never keeping his bed one day. I would know whether the cure is not to be attributed to the emplastic nature of the tarred cloth bound on strait with the hoopsticks, &c. or rather, whether it may not be solved according to the Cartesian philosophy ?

"Answer. Des Cartes has less to do with this question than Copernicus, who, in a drunken fit, by the course of his brain, found out the great secret of the world's turning round; and so might our drunken sailor be inspired with this novel way of curing himself. But to the question, If the lesser focil was only broken, he might not be decumbent one day; the greater (his head being pretty light) being able to support his body; but if both the bones were broken, he could not stand, unless the splinters that were tied round his leg came below his heel, and rested upon his ham, which would take away that weight the leg would otherwise bear. Besides, the tarpaulin is a good categmatic, which, with a sober and a regular diet, might succeed, though it is no rule to walk by."-Athenian Oracle, Vol. II. p. 349.

It is hardly necessary to point out to the reader, unless quali fied by nature to join the Athenian Society, that the fracture must have befallen a wooden leg.

We join, like flies and wasps, in buzzing about wit.
In me, who am of the first sect of these,
All merit, that transcends the humble rules
Of my own dazzled scanty sense,
Begets a kinder folly and impertinence
Of admiration and of praise.

And our good brethren of the surly sect,

Must e'en all herd us with their kindred fools: For though possess'd of present vogue, they've made

Railing, a rule of wit, and obloquy, a trade;
Yet the same want of brains produces each effect.
And you,
whom Pluto's helm does wisely shroud
From us, the blind and thoughtless crowd,
Like the fam'd hero in his mother's cloud,
Who both our follies and impertinences see,
Do laugh perhaps at theirs, and pity mine and me.

IV.

But censure's to be understood

Th' authentic mark of the elect,

Th' public stamp Heaven sets on all that's great and

good,

Our shallow search and judgment to direct.
The war methinks, has made,

Our wit and learning narrow as our trade;
Instead of boldly sailing far, to buy
A stock of wisdom and philosophy,
We fondly stay at home, in fear
Of every censuring privateer;

Forcing a wretched trade by beating down the sale,
And selling basely by retail.

The wits, I mean the atheists of the age, Who fain would rule the pulpit, as they do the stage, Wond'rous refiners of philosophy,

Of morals and divinity,

By the new modish system of reducing all to sense,
Against all logic, and concluding laws,
Do own th' effects of Providence,
And yet deny the cause.

V.

This hopeful sect, now it begins to see
How little, very little, do prevail

Their first and chiefest force
To censure, to cry down and rail,
Not knowing what, or where, or who you be,
Will quickly take another course:
And, by their never-failing ways

Of solving all appearances they please,
We soon shall see them to their ancient methods fall,
And straight deny you to be men, or any thing at all.
I laugh at the grave answer they will make,
Which they have always ready, general, and cheap:
'Tis but to say, that what we daily meet,

And by a fond mistake

Perhaps imagine to be wond'rous wit,
And think, alas! to be by mortals writ,
Is but a crowd of atoms justling in a heap:
Which from eternal seeds begun,

Justling some thousand years, till ripen'd by the sun:
They're now, just now, as naturally born,
As from the womb of earth a field of corn.

VI.

But as for poor contented me,

Who must my weakness and my ignorance confess,
That I believe in much I ne'er can hope to see;
Methinks I'm satisfy'd to guess,

That this new, noble, and delightful scene,
Is wonderfully mov'd by some exalted men,
Who have well studied in the world's disease,

(That epidemic error and depravity,
Or in our judgment or our eye)
That what surprises us can only please.

We often search contentedly the whole world round,
To make some great discovery,

And scorn it when 'tis found.

Just so the mighty Nile has suffer'd in its fame,
Because 'tis said (and perhaps only said)
We've found a little inconsiderable head,

That feeds the huge unequal stream.
Consider human folly, and you'll quickly own,
That all the praises it can give,

By which some fondly boast they shall forever live, Won't pay th' impertinence of being known : Else why should the fam'd Lydian king,

Whom all the charms of an usurped wife and state, With all that power unfelt, courts mankind to be great,

Did with new unexperienc'd glories wait) Still wear, still doat on his invisible ring?

VII.

Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
Which is, perhaps, as hard t' imagine right,
As to paint Echo to the sight,

I would not draw th' idea from an empty name;
Because, alas! when we all die,
Careless and ignorant posterity,

Although they praise the learning and the wit,
And though the title seems to shew

The name and man by whom the book was writ, Yet how shall they be brought to know, Whether that very name was he, or you, or I? Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise, And water-colours of these days: