[77] It should be remembered, that this was said twenty-five or thirty years ago, [written in 1799,] when lace was very generally worn.  MALONE.  ‘Greek and Latin,’ said Porson, ‘are only luxuries.’  Rogers’s Table Talk, p. 325.

[78] See ante, iii. 8.

[79] Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, says, that these are ’the only English verses which Bentley is known to have written.’  I shall here insert them, and hope my readers will apply them.

     ‘Who strives to mount Parnassus’ hill,
        And thence poetick laurels bring,
      Must first acquire due force and skill,
        Must fly with swan’s or eagle’s wing.

      Who Nature’s treasures would explore,
        Her mysteries and arcana know;
      Must high as lofty Newton soar,
        Must stoop as delving Woodward low.

      Who studies ancient laws and rites,
        Tongues, arts, and arms, and history;
      Must drudge, like Selden, days and nights,
        And in the endless labour die.

      Who travels in religious jars,
        (Truth mixt with errour, shades with rays;)
      Like Whiston, wanting pyx or stars,
        In ocean wide or sinks or strays.

      But grant our hero’s hope, long toil
        And comprehensive genius crown,
      All sciences, all arts his spoil,
        Yet what reward, or what renown?

      Envy, innate in vulgar souls,
        Envy steps in and stops his rise,
      Envy with poison’d tarnish fouls
        His lustre, and his worth decries.

      He lives inglorious or in want,
        To college and old books confin’d;
      Instead of learn’d he’s call’d pedant,
        Dunces advanc’d, he’s left behind: 
      Yet left content a genuine Stoick he,
      Great without patron, rich without South Sea.’  BOSWELL.

In Mr. Croker’s octavo editions, arts in the fifth stanza is changed into hearts.  J. Boswell, jun., gives the following reading of the first four lines of the last stanza, not from Dodsley’s Collection, but from an earlier one, called The Grove.

     ’Inglorious or by wants inthralled,
        To college and old books confined,
      A pedant from his learning called,
        Dunces advanced, he’s left behind.’

[80] Bentley, in the preface to his edition of Paradise Lost, says:—­

     ’Sunt et mihi carmina; me quoque dicunt
      Vatem pastores:  sed non ego credulus illis.’