Doodle. Sure such a [1]day as this was never seen!
The sun himself, on this auspicious day,
Shines like a beau in a new birth-day suit:
This down the seams embroidered, that the beams.
All nature wears one universal grin.
[Footnote 1: Corneille recommends some very remarkable day wherein to fix the action of a tragedy. This the best of our tragical writers have understood to mean a day remarkable for the serenity of the sky, or what we generally call a fine summer's day; so that, according to this their exposition, the same months are proper for tragedy which are proper for pastoral. Most of our celebrated English tragedies, as Cato, Mariamne, Tamerlane, &c., begin with their observations on the morning. Lee seems to have come the nearest to this beautiful description of our author's:
The morning dawns with an unwonted crimson,
The flowers all odorous seem, the garden birds
Sing louder, and the laughing sun ascends
The gaudy earth with an unusual brightness;
All nature smiles.—Caes. Borg.
Massinissa, in the New Sophonisba, is also a favourite of the sun:
———The sun too seems
As conscious of my joy, with broader eye
To look abroad the world, and all things smile
Like Sophonisba.
Memnon, in the Persian Princess, makes the sun decline rising, that he may not peep on objects which would profane his brightness:
——The morning rises slow,
And all those ruddy streaks that used to paint
The day's approach are lost in clouds, as if
The horrors of the night had sent 'em back,
To warn the sun he should not leave the sea,
To peep, &c.
]
Nood. This day, O Mr Doodle, is a day
Indeed!—A day, [1] we never saw before.
The mighty [2] Thomas Thumb victorious comes;
Millions of giants crowd his chariot wheels,
[3] Giants! to whom the giants in Guildhall
Are infant dwarfs. They frown, and foam, and roar,
While Thumb, regardless of their noise, rides on.
So some cock-sparrow in a farmer's yard,
Hops at the head of an huge flock of turkeys.
[Footnote 1: This line is highly conformable to the beautiful simplicity of the antients. It hath been copied by almost every modern.
Not to be is not to be in woe.—State of Innocence.