confess, when I have seen Charles Frankair rise up with a commanding mien, and torrent of handsome words, talk a mile off the purpose, and drive down twenty bashful boobies of ten times his sense, who at the same time were envying his impudence and despising his understanding, it has been matter of great mirth to me; but it soon ended in a secret lamentation, that the fountains of everything praiseworthy in these realms, the universities, should be so mudded with a false sense of this virtue, as to produce men 2. capable of being so abused. I will be bold to say, that it is a ridiculous education which does not qualify a man to make his best appearance before the greatest man, and the finest woman, to whom he can address himself. Were this judiciously corrected in the nurseries of learning, pert concombs would know their distance but we must bear with this false modesty in our young nobility and gentry, till they cease at Oxford and Cambridge to grow dumb in the study of eloquence. ODE TO SIMPLICITY O thou, by nature taught, To breathe her genuine thought, Sir R. STEELE. In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong: Who first on mountains wild, In Fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe and Pleasure's, nurs'd the powers of song! Thou, who with hermit heart Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and training pall : But com'st a decent maid, In Attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful nymph, to thee I call! By all the honey'd store On Hybla's thymy shore, By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, By her, whose love-lorn woe, In evening musings slow, Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: By old Cephisus deep, Who spread his wavy sweep In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat, On whose enamell'd side, When holy freedom died, No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet. O sister meek of truth To my admiring youth, Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues. Though taste, though genius bless To some divine excess, Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply, May court, may charm our eye, Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul! |