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Updated: May 8, 2025
In 1767 he wrote a short Elegy on the Death of the Marquis of Tavistock; and the Patriot, a Pindaric Epistle, intended to bring into discredit the practice of prize-fighting. Not long after he was called to serve the office of high-sheriff for the county of Cambridge. In 1770 he quitted his seat there for a house which he purchased in Bath.
The poets were all employed in praising him; and Lebrun, with but little of the Pindaric fire in his soul, composed the following distich, which certainly is not worth much: "Heros, cher a la paix, aux arts, a la victoire Il conquit en deux ans mille siecles de gloire." The two councils were not disposed to be behind the Directory in the manifestation of joy.
I declare that this bold metaphor is admirable, and that the natural history of the theatre, on a day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in the least startled by a dolphin who is the son of a lion. It is precisely these rare and Pindaric mixtures which prove the poet's enthusiasm.
Yet so capricious is fame a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said, Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit; Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art, But still I love the language of his heart. As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration, Cleveland stood in the same rank during the civil war.
It was in 1747 that his first poem, the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, appeared, and it was followed between 1750 and 1757 by his Pindaric Odes, including The Progress of Poesy, and The Bard, which were, however, somewhat coldly received.
In a short time I was honestly and truly ashamed of being a Christian, when I thought of the variegated world of fiction, of the ambiguous Grecian mythology, of those feasts and spectacles, lofty statues, and noble temples: Where then were the deliverer on the ignominious cross, and his impoverished disciples? how this faith of poverty and misfortune dwindled into nothing compared with those sacrifices and public parade, and the jubilee of the Pindaric hymns? neither did I reckon myself among the community, and the dullest day of my young, life, was that on which I was received into the church of our sect with the customary ceremonies.
But after publishing “A True Estimate of Human Life,” with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the “most shining representatives” of God on earth, and a sermon, entitled “An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government,” preached before the House of Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, and he matched his former ode by another, called “Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyric; written in imitation of Pindar’s spirit, occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace.” Since he afterward suppressed this second ode, we must suppose that it was rather worse than the first.
And yet the odes were in no sense more thoroughly Pindaric than in the circumstance of their flatteries being bought and paid for at a stated market value. The triumphal lyrics of Pindar himself were very far from being those spontaneous and enthusiastic tributes to the prowess of his heroes, which the vulgar receive them for. Hear the painful truth, as revealed by the Scholiast.
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