pleasure and instruction. With due precautions authors may learn to grace their style with elegance, harmony, and precision; they may be taught to think with vigour and perspicuity; and, to crown the whole, by a diligent attention to these books all advance in virtue.

may

VOL. I.

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POEM S.

LONDON: a POEM:

IN IMITATION OF THE

THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
Written in 1738.

-Quis ineptæ

Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se ? Juv.

'THO' grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
When injur'd THALES * bids the town farewel,
Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend,
I praise the hermit, but regret the friend,
Resolv'd at length, from vice and LONDON far
To breathe in distant fields a purer air,

And,

JUV. SAT. III.

'Quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici; Laudo, tamen, vacuis quod sedem figere Cumis. Destinet, atque unum civem donare Sibyllæ.

* Sir John Hawkins says, that by Thales we are here to understand Savage: Mr. Boswell asserts that this is entirely groundless, and adds, "I have been assured that Dr. Johnson said, he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote his LONDON." This, added to the circumstance of the date (for Savage did not set out for Wales till July 1739) might be decisive, if unfor. tunately for Mr. Boswell he had not a few pages after, given us some highly complimentary lines, which, "he was assured were written by Dr. Johnson." Ad Ricardam Savage, in April 1738, about a month before LONDON was published. This surely implies previous acquaintance with Savage, for Dr. Johnson would not have praised a stranger in such terms, and gives a very strong probability to Sir John Hawkins's conjecture. That Savage did not set out for Wales until the following year, is a matter of little consequence, as the intention of such a journey would justify the lines alluding to it. Sce Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. i. p. 100 and p. 139. 8vo. edit. 1804.

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