But do you thus my favourite hopes fulfil?
Is France at last the standard of your skill?
Alas for you! that so betray a mind
Of art unconscious and to beauty blind. 60
Say, does her language your ambition raise,
Her barren, trivial, unharmonious phrase,
Which fetters eloquence to scantiest bounds,
And maims the cadence of poetic sounds?
Say, does your humble admiration choose
The gentle prattle of her Comic Muse,
While wits, plain-dealers, fops, and fools appear,
Charged to say nought but what the king may hear?
Or rather melt your sympathising hearts
Won by her tragic scene's romantic arts, 70
Where old and young declaim on soft desire,
And heroes never, but for love, expire?
No. Though the charms of novelty, a while,
Perhaps too fondly win your thoughtless smile,
Yet not for you design'd indulgent fate
The modes or manners of the Bourbon state.
And ill your minds my partial judgment reads,
And many an augury my hope misleads,
If the fair maids of yonder blooming train
To their light courtship would an audience deign, 80
Or those chaste matrons a Parisian wife
Choose for the model of domestic life;
Or if one youth of all that generous band,
The strength and splendour of their native land,
Would yield his portion of his country's fame,
And quit old freedom's patrimonial claim,
With lying smiles oppression's pomp to see,
And judge of glory by a king's decree.
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