ua 316 MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. sible and his rational powers ? Could one have imagined, I say, that such' a glaring falsehood, that shocks at once our intellectual and our animal faculties, should be lodged and fostered in the bosom and heart of the sons of Adam ? But experience here exceeds imagination. What a shameful reproach and scandal it is to human nature, that a faith with so much nonsense in it, should overspread whole nations, and triumph over the largest part of the knowing and refined world ! But every dawning day -light is a witness of these national idolatries, these scandals to mankind and all their intellectual glory. Every sun that sets or rises in some part or other of the earth, beholds multi- tudes: of fools and philosophers, ploughmen and princes, ac- kpowledging the breaden God, bending the knee to the wafer- cake, and bowing totvards the sacred repository of the kneaded idol. It was the first ambition and iniquity of man to affect a for- bidden likeness to God; there is insolence added 'to the ambition, when we bring down God to our level, and make him a man, like ourselves : But when we sink the Deity beneath our own nature, when we make a more animal or vegetable of him, and turn him into a bit of senseless paste, the madness of this impiety must for ever want a name. ÍU. To DORIO. The First Lyric Hour. TI -IERE is a line or two that seem to carry in them I know not what softness and beauty, in the beginning of that ode of Casimire, where he describes his first attempts on the harp, and his commencing a lyric poem. " Albis dormiit in rosis, " Liliisque jacens & violis dies, " Primes cui potui vigil " Somnum Pieria rumpere barbito, " Carte dam vacuus puer " Formosi legerem littora Narriw. " Ex illo mild posteri " Florent sole dies, &c." I have tried to imitate these lines, but I cannot form their' into English lyric's : I have released myself from the fetters óf rhyme, yet I cannot gain my own approbation. I have given my thoughts a further loose, and spread the sense abroad, but I fear there is something of the spirit evaporates ; and though the elegant idea perhaps does not entirely escape, yet I could wish for a happier expression of it. Such as it is, receive it Dario, with your usual candour, correct the deficiencies, and restore the elegance of the Polish poet, to these six or seven lines wherein I have attempted an imitation. ùlt.
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