��these verses, which he said he had made at the oratorio, and he bid me translate them.
IN THEATRO.
Tertii verso quater orbe lustri Quid theatrales tibi Crispe pompa ! Quam decet canos male literates
Sera voluptas ! Tene mulceri fidibus canoris? Tene cantorum modulis stupere? Tene per pictas oculo elegante
Currere formas ? Inter cequales sine fe lie liber, Codices veri studiosus inter Rectius vives ; sua quisque carpat
Gaudia gratus. Lusibus gaudet puer otiosis, Luxus oblectat juvenem theatri, At sent fluxo sapient er uti
Tempora [Tempore] res tat.
I gave him the following lines in imitation, which he liked well enough, I think :
When threescore years have chill'd thee quite,
Still can theatric scenes delight ?
Ill suits this place with learned wight,
May Bates 1 or Coulson cry.
The scholar's pride can Brent 2 disarm ? His heart can soft Guadagni 3 warm ? Or scenes with sweet delusion charm
The climacteric 4 eye?
1 Bates was perhaps Joah Bates, 3 Guadagni, in 1771, was engaged a musician, in whose orchestra to sing in an unlicensed opera in Herschel the astronomer played first Soho Square. Horace Walpole wrote violin. See Diet. Nat. Biog. under on Feb. 22 (Letters, v. 283) : 'Gua- Bates. I do not know who Coulson dagni, who governed so haughtily at was. It is possible that he was Vienna that, to pique some man of Johnson's friend, the Rev. John Coul- quality there, he named a minister son, Fellow of University College, to Venice, is not only fined, but was Oxford (Letters, i. 323), and that threatened to be sent to Bridewell, Bates was another scholar. which chilled the blood of all the
2 Charlotte Brent (d. 1802), after- Caesars and Alexanders he had ever wards Mrs. Pinto, 'was a favourite represented.'
pupil of Dr. Arne, and for her he 4 Johnson did not reach his grand composed much of his later and climacteric till the next year when he more florid music.' Diet. Nat. Biog. was sixty-three years old.
The
�� �
