Thy matchless hand, of every region free,
Adopts our climate, not our climate thee.

Great Rome and Venice* early did impart
To thee the examples of their wondrous art.
Those masters, then but seen, not understood,
With generous emulation fired thy blood;
For what in nature's dawn the child admired,
The youth endeavoured, and the man acquired.
If yet thou hast not reached their high de-
gree,

"Tis only wanting to this age, not thee.
Thy genius, bounded by the times, like mine,
Drudges on petty draughts, nor dare design
A more exalted work, and more divine.
For what a song, or senseless opera,
Is to the living labour of a play;

Or what a play to Virgil's work would be,
Such is a single piece to history.

But we, who life bestow, ourselves must live;
Kings cannot reign, unless their subjects give;
And they, who pay the taxes, bear the rule:
Thus thou, sometimes, art forced to draw a
fool;t

But so his follies in thy posture sink,
The senseless idiot seems at last to think.

*He travelled very young into Italy.-D.

† Mr. Walpole says, that "where Sir Godfrey offered one picture to fame, he sacrificed twenty to lucre; and he met with customers of so little judgment, that they were fond of being painted by a man who would gladly have disowned his works the moment they were paid for." The same author gives us Sir Godfrey's apology for preferring the lucrative, though less honourable, line of portrait painting. "Painters of history," said he, "make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live."-LORD ORFORD's Lives of the Painters. See his Works, vol. iii. p. 359. Dryden seems to allude to this expression in the above lines.

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Good heaven! that sots and knaves should be

so vain,

To wish their vile resemblance may remain,
And stand recorded, at their own request,
To future days, a libel or a jest! *

Else should we see your noble pencil trace
Our unities of action, time, and place;

A whole composed of parts, and those the best,
With every various character exprest;
Heroes at large, and at a nearer view;
Less, and at distance, an ignoble crew;
While all the figures in one action join,
As tending to complete the main design.

More cannot be by mortal art exprest,
But venerable age shall add the rest:
For time shall with his ready pencil stand,
Retouch your figures with his ripening hand,
Mellow your colours, and imbrown the teint,
Add every grace, which time alone can grant;
To future ages shall your fame convey,
And give more beauties than he takes away.

[Here follows in Miscellany :

Meantime, whilst just encouragement you want,
You only paint to live, not live to paint.

Christie considers that these passages were omitted in the
folio by Tonson without authority. I do not see any reason
for such omission, and am disposed to believe that Dryden
had revised the poem.-ED.]

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ELEGIES AND EPITAPHS.