he close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose;
I still had hopes--for pride attends us still--
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue.
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew--
I still had hopes--my long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last.

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline!
Retreats from care that never must be mine--
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches born to work and weep
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state
To spurn imploring famine from his gate:
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend;
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
Whilst resignation gently slopes the way;
And all his prospects brightening at the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching
truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison--as indeed in hundreds more
pages of the writings of this honest soul--the whole character of the man
is told--his humble confession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little
vanity, and desire that his village should admire him; his simple scheme
of good in which everybody was to be happy--no beggar was to be refused his
dinner--nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of
the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again,
and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes(185) which had hung
fire in London; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club--of
my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent--sure he knew them
intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town--and
he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, from Cork, and of Sir Joshua
who had painted him--and he would have told wonderful sly stories of
Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame Cornelys'; and he
would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride--the lovely Mary
Horneck.

The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the pr