Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/50

 Sick gluttons of a next-door funeral hear, And learn self-mastery in the school of fear: And so a neighbour's scandal many a time Has kept young minds from running into crime.
 * Thus I grew up, unstained by serious ill,

Though venial faults, I grant you, haunt me still: Yet items I could name retrenched e'en there By time, plain speaking, individual care; For, when I chance to stroll or lounge alone, I'm not without a Mentor of my own: "This course were better: that might help to mend My daily life, improve me as a friend: There some one showed ill-breeding: can I say I might not fall into the like one day?" So with closed lips I ruminate, and then In leisure moments play with ink and pen: For that's an instance, I must needs avow, Of those small faults I hinted at just now: Grant it your prompt indulgence, or a throng Of poets shall come up, some hundred strong, And by mere numbers, in your own despite, Force you, like Jews, to be our proselyte.