114 flora’s album. 
Venus’s Looking Glass. 
FLATTERY, 
Nor think this flattery! I ’ve been taught 
One maxim ■worth receiving, 
Which every passing day has brought 
Fresh motive for believing; 
That flattery no excuse can find! 
’T is loathed as soon as tasted, 
When offered to a well-taught mind; 
And on a fool’t is wasted. B. Barton. 
The love of praise, howe’er concealed by art. 
Reigns, more or less, and glows in every heart; 
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure; 
The modest shun it but to make it sure. 
O’er globes and sceptres, now on thrones it swells. 
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells. 
’T is Tory, \Vhig! it plots, prays, preaches, pleads; 
Harangues in senates, s(iueaks in masquerades ; 
Here, to S-e’s humor makes a bold pretence ; 
There, bolder aims at Pult’ney’s eloquence. 
It aids the dancer’s heel, the writer’s head. 
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead. 
Nor ends with life ; but nods in sable plumes. 
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs. 
TOUNO. 
