The poet, with his usual philanthropy, proceeds to give a piece of good advice to a person, with whom he does not appear at first sight to have any natural connexion. He contrives, however, even to make his seeming digression contribute to his purpose. He addresses Colonel Debbeige in the following goodnatured, sublime and parental apostrophe—
Learn, thoughtless Debbeige, now no more a youth,
The woes unnumber’d that encompass truth.
Nor of experience, nor of knowledge vain,
Mock the chimæras of a sea-sick brain:
Oh, learn on happier terms with him to live,
Who ne’er knew twice, the weakness to forgive!
Then should his grace some vast expedient find,
To govern tempests, and controul the wind;
Should he, like great Canute, forbid the wave,
T’approach his presence, or his foot to lave;
Construct some bastion, or contrive some mound,
The world’s wide limits to encompass round;
Rear a redoubt, that to the stars should rise,
And lift himself, like Typhon, to the skies;
Or should the mightier scheme engage his soul,
To raise a platform on the northern pole,
With foss, with rampart, stick, and stone, and clay,
To build a breast-work on the milky-way,
Or to protect his sovereign’s blest abode,
Bid numerous batteries guard the turnpike road;
Lest foul Invasion in disguise approach,
Or Treason lurk within the Dover coach.
Oh, let the wiser duty then be thine,
Thy skill, thy science, judgment to resign!
With patient ear, the high-wrapt tale attend,
Nor snarl at fancies which no skill can mend.
So shall thy comforts with thy days increase,
And all thy last, unlike thy first, be peace;
No rude courts martial shall thy fame decry,
But half-pay plenty all thy wants supply.
It is difficult to determine which part of the above passage possesses the superior claim to our admiration, whether its science, its resemblance, its benevolence, or its sublimity.—Each has its turn, and each is distinguished by some of our author’s happiest touches. The climax from the pole oft the heavens to the pole of a coach, and from the milky-way to a turnpike road, is conceived and exprest with admirable fancy and ability. The absurd story of the wooden horse in Virgil, is indeed remotely parodied in the line,
Or Treason lurk within the Dover coach,
but with what accession of beauty, nature, and probability, we leave judicious critics to determine. Indeed there is no other defence for the passage alluded to in Virgil, but to suppose that the past commentators upon it have been egregiously mistaken, and that this famous equus ligneus, of which he speaks, was neither more nor less than the stage coach of antiquity. What, under any other supposition, can be the meaning of the passage
Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi?
Besides this, the term machina we know is almost constantly used by Virgil himself as a synonyme for this horse, as in the line
Scandit fatalis machina muros, &c.
And do we not see that those authentic records of modern literature, the newspapers, are continually and daily announcing to us—“This day sets off from the Blue-boar Inn, precisely at half past five, the Bath and Bristol machine!” meaning thereby merely the stage coaches to Bath and to Bristol. Again, immediately after the line last quoted (to wit, scandit fatalis machina muros) come these words,
Fæta armis, i.e. filled with arms.