TO THE READER.

IF you are satisfied with my EMBLEMS, I here set before you a second service. It is an Egyptian dish, dressed on the English fashion. They, at their feasts, used to present a death's-head at their second course: this will serve for both. You need not fear a surfeit: here is but little, and that light of digestion: if it but please your palate, I question not your stomach. Fall to, and much good may it do you.

Convivio addit Minerval. E.B.

Rem, Regem, Regimen, Regionem, Reli

gionem,

Exornat, celebrat, laudat, honorat, amat.

PSALM

Sine Lumine inane.

How canst thou thus be useful to the Sight? What is the Taper not indu'd with Light?

PSALM li. 5.

Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

MA

AN is man's A. B. C. There's none that can
Read God aright, unless he first spell man:
Man is the stairs, whereby his knowledge climbs
To his Creator, though it oftentimes
Stumbles for want of light, and sometimes trips
For want of careful heed; and sometimes slips
Through unadvised haste; and when at length
His weary steps have reach'd the top, his strength
Oft fails to stand; his giddy brains turn round,
And Phaton-like, falls headlong to the ground:,
These stairs are often dark, and full of danger
To him, whom want of practice makes a stranger
To this blind way: the lamp of nature lends
But a false light, and lights to her own ends.
These be the ways to heav'n, these paths require
A light that springs from that diviner fire,
Whose human-soul-enlight'ning sun-beams dart
Thro' the bright cranies* of th' immortal part.
And here thou great original of light,
Whose error-chasing beams do unbenightt
The very soul of darkness, and untwist
The clouds of ignorance; do thou assist
My feeble quill: reflect thy sacred rays
Upon these lines, that they may light the ways
That lead to thee: so guide my heart, my hand,
That I may do what others understand.
Let my heart practise what my hand shall write ;
Till then, I am as a taper wanting light.

Cranies: i. e. little cracks.

gloom, or make day.

Q 2

+ Unbenight; i. e. remove the

This

This golden precept, "Know thyself," came down
From heav'n's high court: it was an art unknown
To flesh and blood. The men of nature took
Great journies in it; their dim eyes did look
But thro' the mist; like pilgrims, they did spend
Their idle steps, but knew no journey's end.
The way to know thyself, is first to cast*
Thy frail beginning, progress, and thy last :
This is the sum of man; but now return,
And view this taper standing in this urn.
Behold her substance sordid and impure,
Useless and vain, (wanting light) obsure:
'Tis but a span at longest, nor can last
Beyond that span; ordain'd and made to waste
Ev'n such was man (before his soul gave light
To this vile substance) a mere child of night;
Ere he had life, estated † in his urn,

i

And mark'd for death; by nature born to burn:
Thus lifeless, lightless, worthless, first began
That glorious, that presuntptuous thing, call'd man.

* Cast; i. e. contemplate the urn or candlestick, the body.

† Estased ; i. e. fixed or placed in

S. AU