Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/156

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
136
LIFE OF EDMOND MALONE.
If no fond breast the splendid blessings share,And each day’s bustling pageantry once past,There—only there—his bliss is found at last. For woes fictitious oft your tears have flowed,Your cheek for wrongs imaginary glowed.To-night our Poet means not to assailYour throbbing bosom with a fancied tale.Scarce sixty years their annual course have rolled,Since all was real that our scenes unfold;To touch your hearts with no unpleasing pain,The Muse’s magic makes it live again.Bids mingled characters, as once in life,Resume their functions, and renew their strife;While pride, revenge, and jealousy’s wild rage,Rouse all the Genius of the impassioned stage.

Literary and antiquarian correspondence diversified his own peculiar pursuits. Thomas Warton amused him with references to the poems of H. Constable of Elizabeth’s time; and on the changes of proprietors of Tichfield monastery, which came afterwards into the hands of Lord Southampton. Lord Charlemont writes no less than four letters. He taxes him with silence, yet sympathizes with an allusion from his heart-stricken friend, who had not yet escaped from the tyranny of Cupid, as we may presume by his own axiom in the preceding prologue,—

“One tyrant passion all mankind must prove,The balm or poison of our lives—is love.”

“But the best hearts are the weakest,” adds his lordship, “and their weakness is but too apt to prevail over the strength of the most vigorous understanding. Experto crede Roberto. Yet one remedy there is which has not yet, as I believe, been tried. Vacuity is probably the source of the disorder. Why is not the void filled up? When

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.