And unobserved, the glaring orb declines. 
  Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray
  Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
  She who can love a sister’s charms, or hear
  Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
  She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,
  Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
  Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
  Yet has her humour most when she obeys;
  Let fops or fortune fly which way they will,
  Disdains all loss of tickets or Codille;[146]
  Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,
  And mistress of herself though china fall.... 
  Be this a woman’s fame; with this unblest,
  Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest. 
  This Phoebus promised (I forget the year)
  When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere;
  Ascendant Phoebus watched that hour with care,
  Averted half your parents’ simple prayer;
  And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf
  That buys your sex a tyrant o’er itself. 
  The generous God who wit and gold refines,
  And ripens spirits as he ripens mines,
  Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall know it,
  To you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet.

[Footnote 142:  A reference to Addison’s tragedy of Cato.] [Footnote 143:  Young lawyers resident in the temple.  See Spenser’s Prothalamion.] [Footnote 144:  Martha Blount, a dear friend of the poet’s.] [Footnote 145:  The fashionable promenade in Hyde Park.] [Footnote 146:  The “pool” in the game of ombre.]

* * * * *

JOSEPH ADDISON.

SIGNOR NICOLINI AND THE LION.

[From the Spectator.]

There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini’s combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain....But before I communicate my discoveries I must acquaint the reader that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking on something else, I accidentally jostled against a monstrous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant.  The lion, seeing me very much surprised, told me in a gentle voice that I might come by him if I pleased; “for,” says he, “I do not intend to hurt any body.”  I thanked him very kindly and passed by him, and in a little time after saw him leap upon the stage and act his part with very great applause.  It has been observed by several that the lion has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first appearance, which will not seem strange when I acquaint the reader that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several times.