Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/151

 BEN JONSON 135 He prays you would vouchsafe, for your own sake, To hear him this once more, but sit awake. And though he now present you with such wool, As from mere English flocks his Muse can pull. He hopes when it is made up into cloth. Not the most curious head here will be loth To wear a hood of it, it being a fleece To match or those of Sicily or Greece. " These smooth-flowing Hnes are a further sample of the " jagged mis-shapen distiches " of my Lord Mac- aulay ! The last, it need scarcely be said, alludes to the pastoral poems of Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion. It is pleasant to observe the friendly tone in which the poet addresses his audience, the grateful recogni- tion of his well-earned popularity; though his self- esteem asserts itself in the characteristic interjections, "for your own sake," and "but sit awake." It remains to speak of the Miscellaneous Poems and of the prose " Discoveries." The Epigrams, as will have been gathered from the quotations I have given, are seldom epigrams in our modern sense of the word : they are simply " short poems, chiefly re- stricted to one idea, and equally adapted to the delineation and expression of every passion incident to human life." They comprise eulogies, satires, epitaphs. I give two of the briefest, which are among the most epigrammatic as we now commonly under- stand the word : — "ON THE UNION " When was there contract better driven by Fate, Or celebrated with more truth of state ? The world the temple was, the priest a king. The spousM pair two realms, the sea the ring."