But o'er rank swamps on tainted vapours borne,

The buzzing insect winds his peevish horn.
Along the wharf, with languid loit'ring pace,
Strolls an enervate, worthless, sun-bak'd race; 1535
To virtue's livelier emanations dead,

And sodden as the soil on which they tread:
No balmy gales, or varying clouds they know,
But brazen skies above, and burning sands below.
Yet, what the withering vault of heaven denies,
Redundant Nile from his moist lap supplies; 1541
Sweeping thro' seven broad mouths the flood comes
down,

His secret source oft sought, and long unknown:
Ammon's great son the spring in vain explor'd,
In vain Cambyses, and the Memphian lord;3 1545
Yet one brave Briton's happier toil has won

9

What baffled Eastern kings, and Ammon's son.

Sesostris, Cambyses, and Alexander, endeavoured in vain to discover the source of the Nile.

9 Mr. Bruce. See his Travels.

Unlike all deluges his tide he leads;
Plenty, not ruin, the o'erflow succeeds;
As a kind monarch who his subjects loves,

1550

Not wasting, but enriching, where he moves.
O'er the drench'd soil his wat'ry pinions spread,
He broods abundance, then forsakes his bed.
This wonder ancient ages saw or heard,
Profoundly reason'd, and profoundly err'd.
But most the wise in Nature's laws admire
His punctual times to visit and retire:

1555

High swells the surge when sultry Syrius burns,
And Libra poises o'er his shrinking urns.

Here the swarth husbandman's promiscuous

grain

1560

Is sown on lazy mud, and reap'd again;

And while no toil the willing harvest needs,
Unearn'd he sees it rise, and thankless feeds;
Sol's glowing beams mature the bursting ear,
And toads and asps 'midst waving corn appear."

The

The land's fertility with plagues is curs'd;'

1566

But of all plagues, her treacherous sons the worst.

One sullen skiff alone is seen to attend ;
They beckon to the hero to descend.

With sighs suppress'd, and sad presaging heart
Cornelia sees the slender pomp depart.

1571

High on the lonely deck the matron stands,'
Eyes the small boat, and lifts to heaven her

hands;3

Then deeper darkness seem'd to obsure the pole, Nor diftant thunder, muttering ceas'd to roll. 1575

2

'Fertilis in mortes,-. LUCAN, 1. ix. 619.

• -primâ pendet tamen anxia puppe. LUCAN, 1. viii. 590.

There cannot perhaps be imagined a finer subject for a painter than Pompey's passage from his ship, in the small boat, to the shore of Egypt. The dejected composure and resolution in the countenance of the hero himself, the tenderness and anxiety of Cornelia, and the sullen, yet exulting confidence displayed in the visages of the assassins, might surely produce the most interesting effects in a picture. I would prefer this view to the moment of his murder.

Scarce

Scarce did his foot the treacherous margin find,

When stabb'd, he falls, by ruffians' swords behind ;*
Yet mindful ever of a hero's pride,

Great to the last, without a groan he died."
Cornelia's piercing shrieks distract the air,

1580

While life prolong'd but lengthens her despair;

With all her sails outspread, and every oar,

The hurrying vessel flies the hated shore.—
Proud of their shame, th' inglorious court they seek,
And bear his head fresh sever'd from the neck:
Athwart a bench the body rudely thrown,"
That head august was hackled through the bone;
While, base Septimius, vile Egyptians see,
Hang o'er the tedious bungling butchery.

1586

-ut denique in Pelusiaco littore, imperio vilissimi regis, consiliis spadonum, et ne quid malis desit, Septimii desertoris sui gladio trucidatus, sub oculis uxoris suæ liberorumque moreretur.

5 -nullo gemitu consensit ad ictum.

6

FLOR. 1. iv. c. 2.

• Collaque in obliquo ponit languentia transtro.

Tunc nervos, venasque secat, nodosaque frangit

LUCAN. 1. viii. 619.

O sad

O sad reverse of false-deluding chance!

O mournful lesson for man's arrogance!

1590

A little earth, scrap'd by his freedman's nails,
Preserves the sacred trunk from tainting gales;
One oozy plank, dragg'd from the stagnant Nile,
Is all the honours of his funeral pile.
You humbly born! consign'd to fates obscure,
And kindly destin'd to be safe and poor,"

Survey the headless ruin as it lies,

1595

And for your fortune thank th' indulgent skies.*

Κρείσσω δίδωσι της τυραννίδος χαριν. ΕURIP. Hippol.

Felix media quisquis turbæ

Sorte quietus. SEN. Agam.