Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/166

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
146
LIFE OF EDMOND MALONE.
“Hush’d be each ruder breath and clam'rous tongue,Apollo listens to the Mantuan’s song.Yon chief who feels bright Inspiration’s flame,With mighty Homer’s palm divide his claim;Fav'rite with me of all the tuneful choir,A boy, I felt him, and a man, admire.When grief or pain my anxious mind engage,Secure of ease, I search great Maro’s page;For deep and rankling sure must be the painThat finds no balm in his mellifluous strain:As Jesse’s son Saul’s phrenzy could compose,The madness sinking as the musick rose;The oil, diffused by philosophic skill,At once the agitated waves can still;This gentle magick o’er my senses glides,The charm prevails and all my rage subsides.From Tityrus, stretch’d the beechen shade beneath,To Turnus, shrinking from the uplifted death—Some careful Muse presides o’er every line,And all is sense and harmony divine.”

I have committed no robbery, I assure you, for the Poet gave me free leave to take as much of his work as I could carry off with me. Never was town so empty as Dublin is now, since Mark Anthony was left alone in the market-place with the air which was uncivilly tempted also to forsake him.

The Count of Narbonne, however, brought all the country round into the play-house, and will be acted to another crowded theatre, I dare say, again on Saturday. The ragamuffishness of the players, and the filthy meanness of everything behind the scenes (I don’t know how I can say scenes, when there are none) of the New Theatre Royal surprises even me, who lived two years at Smock Alley, in what I thought very reasonably good idleness, drunkenness, and dirt.

The city itself is, in every particular which my observation can reach, incredibly improved. The lights are as regularly sustained by night as they are in London. They affect to be oppressed in various shapes by the institution of the police, but I know they keep the streets ten thousand times more orderly and quiet than the old watchmen ever did. They do permit some frail beauties to walk their charms along the wood pavement of Dame Street, but then they are
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.