The natural powers of our author here again burst forth with such renovated energy, that, like the swan, his music seems to increase as his veins become drained.
Alluding to an event too recent to require elucidation, after describing the virtues of the most amiable personage in the kingdom, and more particularly applauding her charity, which he says is so unbounded, that it
———Surmounts dull Nature’s ties,
Nor even to WINCHELSEA a smile denies.
He proceeds
And thou too, LENOX! worthy of thy name!
Thou heir to RICHMOND, and to RICHMOND’s fame!
On equal terms, when BRUNSWICK deign’d to grace
The spurious offspring of the STUART race;
When thy rash arm design’d her favorite dead,
The christian triumph’d, and the mother fled:
No rage indignant shook her pious frame,
No partial doating swayed the saint-like dame;
But spurn’d and scorn’d where Honor’s sons resort,
Her friendship sooth’d thee, in thy monarch’s court.
How much does this meek resignation, in respect to COLONEL LENOX, appear superior to the pagan rage of MEZENTIUS towards ÆNEAS, on somewhat of a similar occasion, when, instead of desiring him to dance a minuet at the Etrurian court, he savagely, and of malice prepense, hurls his spear at the foe of his son, madly exclaiming
—Jam venio moriturus et hæc tibi porto
Dona prius.
But our author excels Virgil, as much as the amiable qualities of the great personage described, exceed those of MEZENTIUS: that august character instead of dying, did not so much as faint; and so far from hurling a spear at Mr. LENOX, she did not cast at him even an angry glance.
The christian triumph’d, &c.
We are happy in noticing this line, and indeed the whole of the passage, on another account, as it establishes the orthodoxy of the drummer upon so firm a basis, that DR. HORSLEY himself could scarcely object to his obtaining a seat in parliament.