"That fatal day, had I resign'd my breath, 66 My woes forgotten in the sleep of death, "Thy hands belov'd had clos'd my glazing eyes, "For thou all other proofs of love hast shown, 66 My joy, my boast, condemn'd afar to roam, "For whom, both first and last, my zone I loos'd, "Since grudging Juno other births refus'd. "Wretch that I am! not e'en did dreams foreshow, "From Phryxus' flight, such bitterness of woe." While plain'd Alcimede with many a groan, Th' attendant females answer'd to her moan, But Jason strove to dry his parent's tears And pour'd these words of comfort in her ears; "Mother, this agony of grief restrain, "Nor thus of parting aggravate the pain, "For tears are impotent to stay the course "Of fated evils, but augment their force. "Unthought-of miseries the gods assign; "Though griev'd, endure without complaining thine. "Nor in despair reject all hopes of aid, "But look for succour to the blue-ey'd maid; "Think on the oracles from Phoebus' fane, "Think on the valour of our youthful train. "And now, lov'd parent, to thy chamber go, My comrades will attend me to the bay” He said, and thro' the portal strode in haste away. Majestic thus, from his odorous shrine, Delphi, or Claros, or where Xanthus laves The meads of Lycia with transparent waves. But when the bright-ey'd morn her radiance shed, prepare. Or where Ismenus' lucid waters glance,- Whose dark-blue billows boil'd to snowy white, D THE BATH MAN. WHAT a world of contempt is conveyed in that little word * Minerva gave her assistance in the building of Argo. Yorkshireman, who would steal a horse; the Wiltshireman, who rakes for the moon in a pond; or the Somersetshireman, who does something equally wise (I forget what); the Irishman, who knocks down his friend; the Scotchman, who sold his king; the Welshman, who eats toasted cheese,—are all bearable, nay, desirable appellations, in comparison with the slight and opprobrium which is attached to the name of Bath Man. I am a Bath man, and I shall have reason all my life to curse the place in which I was born. I have for some time ceased to live there; but the stain of the place is yet on me, and I cannot wash it out. I am for ever meeting with some kind of attributable to no other cause. annoyance, In vain have I tried to get a footing in some of the literary circles of London. Alas! the question of "where does he come from?" is soon answered, and immediately followed up by "Can any good come out of Bath?" It is immediately found out that I look like a Bath man, and speak like a Bath man; and a Blue trembles for the credit of a party at which an animal of my description has been admitted and listened to. This might be borne, if the same cause did not exclude me from circles I am much more ambitious of joining. I mean those of fashion. Knowing the holy horror with which every man and woman of fashion in town regards a Bath man, I have, of course, been most anxious to conceal the fatal truth; but, some how or other, have too frequently been detected and exposed. Some pert peculiarity of manner has carried Bath upon the very face of it; some half-awkward, half-impudent speech betrays the elegant city, or some ultra compliment or extravagant flattery has drawn forth the contemptuous observations of "how Bathish." For the life of me I cannot help these things. I try to keep them down, and sometimes succeed; but really it has happened, that even when I do not say a word I am found out. One would think I actually smelt of the rooms, and-carried Milsom-street written on my forehead. But in order that it may be seen, whether the contempt of the London world towards a Bath man is justifiable or not, that it may be discovered what a Bath man is exactly, I will relate somewhat of my own history, which may, perhaps, elucidate the subject. If the reader has ever been at Bath, he will remember the Circus. The right hand corner house, as you enter it from the perpendicular street of Gay, was where I first saw the light. My father had bought the house about a year before that time, and had come to live entirely at Bath for the same reason that most people do→ because they cannot afford to live in London or the country. He was a man of very tolerable fortune, and used to live in good style at a very pretty place of his own in Norfolk; but the dear times during the war, and the consideration of a large family, induced him, being a prudent man, to quit his house in the country together with its extensive, consequently expensive, neighbourhood; discharge several servants, sell his horses and carriage, and come to live in a place where provisions were comparatively cheap, where fewer servants were necessary than any where else, and where his wife and daughters could go about in chairs. Alas! I wish he had lost three parts of his fortune, and gone to live cheap upon the other in some cottage at the Land's End, rather than have settled with all his comforts at that fatal place. When I say that I was the only boy among a parcel of girls, that I was the last child, and, moreover, a sort of patriarchal production, being born when both parents were rather stricken in years, I need not add thereto, that |