Virtus sola manet.] These Alcaics look like a college exercise, in which kind there have been worse. The third lines, as usual, are the weakest parts. But the English is perhaps better. The decasyllabic quatrain, though practised by Davies, by Davenant, and recently and best of all by Dryden, in Annus Mirabilis, has qualities which it remained for Gray to bring out fully, but which Flatman has not quite missed here. I wonder if Gray knew the piece, especially Stanza III?
Translated.
I.
I never thirsted for the Golden Flood,
Which o'er Pactolus' wealthy sands does roll,
From whence the covetous mind receives no good,
But rather swells the dropsy of his soul.
II.
On palaces why should I set my mind,