The body, moulded by the clime, endures
The equator heats or hyperborean frost:
Except by habits foreign to its turn,
Unwise, you counteract its forming power.
Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less
By long acquaintance: study then your sky,
Form to its manners your obsequious frame,
And learn to suffer what you cannot shun.
Against the rigors of a damp cold heav'n
To fortify their bodies some frequent

The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids
I praise their dauntless heart: a frame so steeled
Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts
That breathe the tertian or fell rheumatism.
The nerves so tempered never quit their tone,
No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts.
But all things have their bounds: and he who makes
By daily use the kindest regimen

Essential to his health, should never mix
With human kind, nor art, nor trade pursue.

He not the safe vicissitudes of life
Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he
To want the known, or bear unusual things.
Besides, the powerful remedies of pain

(Since pain in spite of all our care will come)
Should never with your prosperous days of health
Grow too familiar: for by frequent use

The strongest medicines lose their healing power
And even the surest poisons theirs to kill.

BOOK IV.

How to live happiest? how avoid the pains,
The disappointments, and disgusts of those
Who would in pleasure all their hours employ,

The precepts here of a divine old man
I could recite. Tho' old, he still retained
His manly sense, and energy of mind.
Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe;
He still remembered that he once was young;
His easy presence checked no decent joy.
Him even the dissolute admired; for he
A graceful looseness when he pleased put on,
And laughing could instruct. Much had he read,
Much more had seen: he studied from the life,
And in th' original perused mankind.

Versed in the woes and vanities of life

He pitied man: and much he pitied those
Whom falsely-smiling fate has cursed with means
To dissipate their days in quest of joy.
'Our aim is happiness; 'tis yours, 'tis mine,'
He said, 'tis the pursuit of all that live:
Yet few attain it, if 'twas e'er attained.
But they the widest wander from the mark,
Who thro' the flowery paths of sauntering joy
Seek this coy goddess: that from stage to stage
Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue.
For, not to name the pains that pleasure brings
To counterpoise itself, relentless fate

Forbids that we thro' gay voluptuous wilds
Should ever roam and were the fates more kind
Our narrow luxuries would soon grow stale :
Were these exhaustless, nature would grow sick,
And, cloyed with pleasure, squeamishly complain
That all is vanity, and life a dream.
Let nature rest: be busy for yourself,
And for your friend; be busy even in vain
Rather than tease her sated appetites.
Who never fasts no banquet e'er enjoys;
Who never toils or watches, never sleeps.
Let nature rest and when the taste of joy
Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety.
'Tis not for mortals always to be blest,

But him the least the dull or painful hours

Of life oppress, whom sober sense conducts,
And virtue, thro' this labyrinth we tread.
Virtue and sense I mean not to disjoin ;

Virtue and sense are one: and trust me, still
A faithless heart betrays the head unsound.
Virtue (for mere good-nature is a fool)

Is sense and spirit with humanity :

'Tis sometimes angry and its frown confounds; 'Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just.

Knaves fain would laugh at it: some great ones dare

But at his heart the most undaunted son

Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.

To noblest uses this determines wealth;
This is the solid pomp of prosperous days;

The peace and shelter of adversity.

And if you pant for glory, build your fame
On this foundation, which the secret shock
Defies of envy and all-sapping time.
The gaudy gloss of fortune only strikes
The vulgar eye; the suffrage of the wise,
The praise that's worth ambition, is attained
By sense alone and dignity of mind.

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul,
Is the best gift of Heaven: a happiness
That even above the smiles and frowns of fate
Exalts great Nature's favourites; a wealth
That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd.

FROM TASTE, AN EPISTLE TO A YOUNG Critic'

Read boldly, and unprejudiced peruse
Each fav'rite modern, e'en each ancient Muse.
With all the comic salt and tragic rage,
The great stupendous genius of our stage,
Boast of our island, pride of humankind,
Had faults to which the boxes are not blind;
His frailties are to every gossip known,
Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town.

Ne'er be the dupe of names however high,
For some outlive good parts, some misapply.
Each elegant Spectator you admire,

But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire?
Masks for the court, and oft a clumsy jest,
Disgraced the muse that wrought the Alchemist.
'But to the ancients.'-Faith! I am not clear,
For all the smooth round type of Elzevir,
That ev'ry work which lasts in prose or song
Two thousand years deserves to last so long:
For-not to mention some eternal blades
Known only now in academic shades,

(Those sacred groves where raptured spirits stray,
And in word-hunting waste the livelong day)
Ancients whom none but curious critics scan,-
Do read Messala's praises if you can.
Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smart
While soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?
With him the loves and muses melt in tears,
But not a word of some hexameters !
'You grow so squeamish and so devilish dry
You'll call Lucretius vapid next.' Not I:
Some find him tedious, others think him lame,
But if he lags his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads thro' barren wilds he tried.
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride;
Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright,
He streams athwart the philosophic night.
Find you in Horace no insipid odes?—
He dared to tell us Homer sometimes nods;
And but for such a critic's hardy skill
Homer might slumber unsuspected still.

WILLIAM SOMERVILLE.

[WILLIAM SOMERVILLE was born in Warwickshire in 1677. He was educated at Winchester, and became a Fellow of New College, Oxford. In 1704 he inherited the seat of his ancestors, Edston, where he spent the remainder of his life as a country gentleman. Late in life he began to write, and published The Two Springs, 1725; Occasional Poems, 1727; The Chase, 1734; and Hobbinol. He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley in Arden.]

Somerville was a handsome noisy squire, a strapping fellow six feet high, a hard rider, a crack shot. No more characteristic specimen of the sporting country gentleman, pure and simple, could be imagined, or one less likely to develope into a poet. It was, in fact, not until fast living had begun to break down his constitution that he took to literature as a consolation. One of his earliest exercises was an epistle addressed to Addison, who had bought a property in Warwickshire, and so had become Somerville's neighbour. This poem is neatly and enthusiastically versified, and contains the well-known compliment which pleased Dr. Johnson so much :

'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,

You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid.'

Somerville was the disciple of Addison, but he enjoyed at the same time the friendship of Pope. A lyric correspondence with Allan Ramsay tells us more about his person than we should otherwise have known, and an epistle to James Thomson displays the respect with which he learned to contemplate his own literary judgment. A friendship with the boyish Shenstone was the last event of a career that ended very plaintively, in pain, financial ruin, and drunkenness. His life is a singular variant of the pagan ideal