"Look on your Spain !-she clasps the hand she hates,
But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,

Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat
Retrieved three long olympiads of defeat?

"Look last at home-ye love not to look there;
On the grim smile of comfortless despair :
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft ;
No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit;" who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck'd each premier by the ear,
Who gods and men alike disdain'd to hear;
But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls,-but calls, alas! too late:
Then raves for**; to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So, once of yore, each reasonable frog,
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign 'log.'
Thus hail'd your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a god.

"Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish'd power;
Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme;
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.
Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind.

♦ Blest paper ery lit last and best supply,

That lends Corruption i 21 ter wings to fly."---Por

And pirates barter all that's left behind."
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.
The idle merchant on the useless quay

Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away;
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumber'd shores:
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming doom.
Then in the senate of your sinking state
Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.
Vain is each voice where tones could once command;
E'en factions cease to charm a factious land:
Yet jarring sects convulse a sister isle,

And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

""Tis done, 'tis past, since Pallas warns in vain; The Furies seize her abdicated reign:

Wide o'er the realin they wave their kindling brands,
And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,

And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains.
The banner'd pomp of war, the glittering files,
O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country's call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,
Swell the young heart with visionary charms,
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought:
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight.

But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drench'd with gore, his woes are but begun :
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughter'd peasant and the ravish'd dame,

5 The Deal and Dover traffickers in specie.

The rifled mansion and the foe-reap'd field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down.
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most.
The law of heaven and earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife."

HINTS FROM HORACE:

BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE "AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICA," AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO "ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS."

"Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."

HOR. De Arte Poet.

"Rhymes are difficult things-they are stubborn things, sir."

FIELDING'S Amelia.

INTRODUCTION TO HINTS FROM HORACE.

To translate Horace has hitherto proved an impracticable task. It is comparatively easy to transfer the majestic declamations of Juvenal; but the Horatian satire is cast in a mould of such exquisite delicacy-uniting perfect ease with perfect elegance-that no version has at all preserved the lively graces of the original. Notwithstanding some brilliant passages in Pope's and Swift's Imitations, there was little temptation to repeat even that less difficult experiment. A happy adaptation of a modern example to the ancient text could only be fully appreciated by the scholar, and was dearly purchased by the many forced and feeble parallels with which it was conjoined. Lord Byron, who ran a free race with such majestic bounds, moved with a halting gait when he attempted to tread in the footsteps of a precursor. His own opinion was the other way; for estimating the merit by the difficulty of the performance, he rated the "Hints from Horace" extravagantly high. That he forebore to publish them after the success of Childe Harold was from no mistrust of their value, but from feeling, as he states, that he should be "heaping coals of fire upon his head" if he were to put forth a sequel to his juvenile lampoon. He could no longer lift his hand against men who had grasped it in friendship, nor retain in an hour of triumph that literary bitterness which had been mainly excited by the mortification of failure. Nine years afterwards he resolved to print the work with some omissions, and gravely maintained that it excelled the productions of his mature genius. "As far," he said, "as versification goes it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times." The opinion of Mr. Hobhouse that the "Hints" would require "a good deal of slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, again led Lord Byron to suspend the publication, and the satire first saw the light in 1831, seven years after the author's death. No part of the poem is much above mediocrity, and not a little is below it. The versification, which Lord Byron singles out for praise, has no distinguishing excellence, and was surpassed by his later iambics in every metrical quality,-in majesty, in melody, in freedom, and in spirit. Authors are frequently as bad judges of their own works as men in general are, proverbially, in their own cause, and of all the literary hallucinations upon record there are none which exceed the mistaken preferences of Lord Byron. Shortly after the appearance of "The Corsair" he fancied that "English Bards" was still his masterpiece; when all his greatest works had been produced, he contended that his translation from Pulei was his "grand performance, — the best thing he ever did in his life;" and throughout the whole of his literary career he regarded these "Hints from Horace" with the fondness which parents are said to feel for their least favoured offspring.