So might I hope applauding crowds to hear,
Catch the quick smile, and HIS attentive ear.
But ah! for what has thou reserv'd my age?
Say, how can I expect the approving stage;
Fled is the bloom of youth -- the manly air --
The vigorous mind that spurn'd at toil and care;
Gone is the voice, whose clear and silver tone
The enraptur'd theatre would love to own.
As clasping ivy chokes the encumber'd tree,
So age with foul embrace has ruined me.
Thou, and the tomb, Laberius, art the same,
Empty within, what hast thou but a name?
Macrobius, it may be remembered, was the author, with a quotation from
whom Johnson, after a long silence, electrified the company upon his
first arrival at Pembroke College, thus giving (says Boswell) 'the first
impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged
himself' (Birkbeck Hill's 'Boswell', 1887, i. 59). If the study of
Macrobius is to be regarded as a test of 'more extensive reading' that
praise must therefore be accorded to Goldsmith, who cites him in his
first book.
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