The Poet And The Advocate

    Glory and gain thus mixed distract the thought,
    We owe to honour all, to fortune nought;
    The poet, like the soldier, scorns for pay
    Peruvian gold, but seeks the wreath of bay.
    How is the advocate the poet's peer?
    The poet's glory is complete and clear;
    He far outlives the advocate's renown,
    Patru is e'en by Scarron's name weighed down.
    The bar of Greece and Rome you point me out,
    A bar that trained great men, I do not doubt,
    For then chicane with language void of sense
    Had not deformed the law and eloquence.
    Purge the tribune of all this monstrous growth,
    I mount it, and my soul will sink, though loth,
    Will yield to fortune and will speak in prose.
    But since reform in this so slowly grows,
    Leave me my tastes, for I aspire to be
    By verse ennobled to posterity,
    To hold first place in arts above the law,
    More grave and noble than it ever saw.
    Fraud in this age of ours unpunished can
    Tread down the equity so dear to man.
    Can you for spirits just and generous find
    A fairer cause to plead before mankind?
    Mother or stepmother let Fortune be,
    The theatre and not the bar for me;
    For client virtue, truth for counsel's wage;
    For judge the present and the coming age.

                                                                Piron, La Métromanie, Act iii. Sc. 7.

James Williams

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James Williams

To Rome

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Lawn Tennis in the Temple Gardens

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Roman Law

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Cases - Willis V. The Bishop Of Oxford

James Williams, Simple Poetry

English

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Fragment Inscribed To The Right Hon. C.J. Fox.

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Satires And Epistles Of Horace Imitated. - Satire I. To Mr Fortescue.[121]

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. -


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Translations - Greek Anthology

X. 48

    Woe to the house whose mistress was a slave!
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    Woe to the court whose judge once spake for fees,
    Though he were readier than Isocrates!
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                                                                Palladas.


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    This Olympicus of old
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James Williams