For me, alas! who well compos'd the song
When lovely Peggy[2] liv'd, and I was young;
By age impair'd, my piping days are done,
My memory fails, and ev'n my voice is gone.
My feeble notes I yet must strive to raise;
Bœotian Muses! aid my feeble lays:
A little louder, and yet louder still,
Aid me to raise my failing voice at will;
Aid me as loud as Hercules did bawl,
For Hylas lost, lost Nyky back to call;
While London town, and all its suburbs round
In echoes, Nyky, Nyky, back resound.
IMITATIONS.
—— —— Sæpe ego longos
Cantando puerum memini me condere soles
Nunc oblita mihi tot carmina: vox quoque Mœrim
Jam fugit ipsa——
Omnia fert ætas, animum quoque.
—— Musæ paulò majora canamus.
—— Hylan nautæ quo fonte relictum
Clamassent; ut littus Hyla, Hyla, omne sonaret.
NOTES.

[2] Peggy Woffington, on whom our Roscius, then her inamorato, made a famous song, beginning with the following stanza:
Once more I'll tune the vocal shell,
To hills and dales my passion tell,
A flame which time can never quell,
That burns for thee, my Peggy.

Whom fliest thou, frantic youth, and whence thy fear?
Blest had there never been a grenadier!
Unhappy Nyky, by what frenzy seiz'd,
Couldst thou with such a monstrous thing be pleas'd?
What, tho' thyself a loving horse-marine,[3]
A common foot-soldier's a thing obscene.
Not fabled Nymphs, by spleen turn'd into cows,
Bellow'd to nasty bulls their amorous vows;
Tho' turn'd their loving horns upon each other,
Butting in play, as brother might with brother.
Unhappy Nyky, whither dost thou stray,
Lost to thy friends, o'er hills and far away?
IMITATIONS.
Quem fugis? Ah demens!——
Et fortunatam, si nunquam armenta fuissent,
Pasiphaën nivei solatur amore juvenci.
Oh, virgo infelix, quæ te dementia cepit?
Prœtides implêrunt falsis mugitibus agros:
At non tum turpes pecudum tamen ulla secuta est
Concubitus: quamvis collo timuisset aratrum,
Et sæpe in levi quæsisset cornua fronte.
Ah, virgo infelix, tu nunc in montibus erras!
NOTES.

Time, however, effects strange things, as the poet says, and many have been the passions which have since agitated, and have been also quelled in the bosom of Roscius.

[3] Nyky is a half-pay officer of marines. A horse-marine is a kind of meretricious Hobby-horse, modò vir modò fæmina.