"Let him, who power or honours would attain,
On the high court's steep precipice remain.
I wish for peace, that solitude bestows,
Secluse to enjoy the blessings of repose.
To pass my life in silence be my fate,
Unnoticed by the noble, or the great:
That when my age, without vain noise or show,
Has reach'd the bounds allotted us below,
Though a plebeian only to pass by,
Perhaps I yet an aged man may die.
And this I do believe, no death of all
Than his more cruel can a man befall,
Who dying, by the world too truly known,
Is of himself most ignorant alone."
A Bear, with whom a Piedmontese
A wandering living made,
A dance he had not learn'd with ease,
On his two feet essay'd:
- ↑ The Fables translated are numbered respectively III., VIII., XI., LIII. and LIV., in the original collection. The two first, III. and VIII., having been given by Bouterwek as specimens of Iriarte's style, without any translation, I took them for my first essays, and had already versified them, before finding Roscoe had done the same also in his translation of Sismondi, and it was subsequently to that I became aware of other similar versions. Having, however, made those translations, I have, notwithstanding the others, allowed them to remain in this work. The fable of the Two Rabbits has been selected as particularly noticed by Martinez de la Rosa, and the others almost without cause of peculiar preference. The last one contains an old but good lesson, which cannot be too frequently and earnestly repeated:—
Ego nec studium sine divite venâ
Nec rude quid prosit video ingenium, alterius sic
Altera poscit opem res et conjurat amicè.
