To de cheiron, ollymestha
Dia touton oi philountes.] ANACREON. [Greek: ODLI Ms.] 5.
Vain the noblest birth would prove,
Nor worth or wit avail in love;
'Tis gold alone succeeds--by gold
The venal sex is bought and sold.
Accurs'd be he who first of yore
Discover'd the pernicious ore!
This sets a brother's heart on fire,
And arms the son against the sire;
And what, alas! is worse than all,
To this the lover owes his fall. F. LEWIS.
TO THE RAMBLER.
SIR,
I am the son of a gentleman, whose ancestors, for many ages, held the
first rank in the country; till at last one of them, too desirous of
popularity, set his house open, kept a table covered with continual
profusion, and distributed his beef and ale to such as chose rather to
live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such
thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate
mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity
by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any
participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another
mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the
reflection, that his son would have the hereditary estate without the
diminution of an acre.
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