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to labour and immortality . A story is told of his losing a finger in parting two combatants ; upon which , instead of complaining , he fell to making an extempore couplet on the accident . There are some more
verses on the subject in his miscellaneous poems , in which lie pleasantly hopes to ( t shake lands" with his finger again " in heaven . " These miscellaneous poems are worth little ,
compared with his plays . His best known production is the Muses Looking Glass , an allegorical play , in which there is an admirably ludicrous caricature of the passion of fear , worthy to put by the side of John Paul Richter ' s famous
mrgomaster ; butthe "delicatest : > it" in all his works we take to > e the following scene to which > ur curiosity was first excited ) V a passage from it in Mr Keightley ' s Fairy Mythology .
It is a set of young rogues pretending to be fairies , and robbing the orchard of a foolish fellow , whose servant is not so credulous . The extravagance of the jargon which he is made to utter so gravely , is as good Eas Moliere ; and the Latin rhyming choruses would have
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obtained the applause of Walter de Mapes . We add translations of them ( one of which has been before published ) . The play from which this scene is taken , is a semi-comic
pastoral , founded on the sacrificial plot which the Italians took from the Greeks , and is callediimy / itas , or the Impossible Dowry . There is much delicate poetry here and there in the play , throughout , in the style of the
Sad Shepherds and Faithful Shepherdesses of those days ; but the wit is the predominant quality , and this scene its crowning specimen . Never was stolen apple better relished ; nor chaunted with more
scholarly grace . Randolph , who was Fellow of Trinity College , Cambridge , had been at Westminster School ; and probably assisted at a like visitation to
some gardeners in the neighbourhood;—or perhaps at Cambridge , for Loth neighbourhoods were rustic then , and scholars
went to the University much younger . Not however ( as an Irishman would say ) that they would wait for that . Many an orchard has been robbed " at years of indiscretion . "
Dorylas , with a bevy of Fairies . Dor . How like you my grace ? Is not my countenance Royal and full of majesty ? Walk I not Xike the young Prince of Pygmies ? Ha , my knaves ! We'll fill our pockets . Look , look yonder , elves : Would not yon apples tempt a better conscience , That any we have , to rob an orchard ? Ha ? Fairies , like nymphs with child , must have the things They long for . You sing here a fairy catch In that strange tongue I taught you , while myself ! Do climb the trees . { Be climbs *) Thus pnucely Oberon Ascends his throne of state .
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M& Retrospective Reviev ) .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 212, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/68/
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