NOTE b.

O’er his dead son the gallant ORMOND sigh’d.  Ormond bore the loss with patience and dignity:  though he ever retained a pleasing, however melancholy, sense of the signal merit of Ossory.  “I would not exchange my dead son,” said he, “for any living son in Christendom.”  HUME, vi. 340.  The same sentiment is inscribed on Miss Dolman’s urn at the Leasowes.

Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse!

NOTE c.

High on exulting wing the heath-cock rose.

This bird is remarkable for his exultation during the spring. 
Brit, Zoology, 266.

NOTE d.

Derwent’s clear mirror

Keswick Lake in Cumberland.

NOTE e.

Down by St Herbert’s consecrated grove.

A small island covered with trees, among which were formerly the ruins of a religious house.

NOTE f.

When lo! a sudden blast the vessel blew.

In a lake surrounded with mountains, the agitations are often violent and momentary.  The winds blow in gusts and eddies; and the water no sooner swells, than it subsides.  See BOURN’S Hist, of Westmorland.

NOTE g.

To what pure beings, in a nobler sphere,

The several degrees of angels may probably have larger views, and some of them he endowed with capacities able to retain together, and constantly set before them, as in one picture, all their past knowledge at once.  LOCKE on Human Understanding, b. ii, c. x. g.

AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.

Villula,..........et pauper agelle,
Me tibi, et hos una mecum, et quos semper amavi,
Commendo.

PREFACE.

Every reader turns with pleasure to those passages of Horace, and Pope, and Boileau, which describe how they lived and where they dwelt; and which, being interspersed among their satirical writings, derive a secret and irresistible grace from the contrast, and are admirable examples of what in Painting is termed repose.

We have admittance to Horace at all hours.  We enjoy the company and conversation at his table; and his suppers, like Plato’s, ’non solum in praesentia, sed etiam postero die jucundae sunt.’  But when we look round as we sit there, we find ourselves in a Sabine farm, and not in a Roman villa.  His windows have every charm of prospect; but his furniture might have descended from Cincin-natus; and gems, and pictures, and old marbles, are mentioned by him more than once with a seeming indifference.

His English Imitator thought and felt, perhaps, more correctly on the subject; and embellished his garden and grotto with great industry and success.  But to these alone he solicits our notice.  On the ornaments of his house he is silent; and he appears to have reserved all the minuter touches of his pencil for the library, the chapel, and the banquetting-room of Timon.  ‘Le savoir de notre siecle,’ says Rousseau, ’tend beaucoup plus a detruire qu’a edifier.  On censure d’un ton de maitre; pour proposer, il en faut prendre un autre.’