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• While yet the Sun, in cloudless lustre, shines: [320]
• And draw their humid train o’er half the isle.
• Unhappy he! who journeys then from home,
• No shade to screen him. His untimely fate
• His wife, his babes, his friends, will soon deplore;
• Unless hot wines, dry cloaths, and friction’s aid, [325]
• His fleeting spirits stay. Yet not even these,
• Nor all Apollo’s arts,¹ will always bribe
• The insidious tyrant death, thrice tyrant here:
• Else good Amyntor,² him the graces lov’d,
• Wisdom caress’d, and Themis³ call’d her own, [330]
• Had liv’d by all admir’d, had now perus’d

• “These lines, with all the malice of a friend.”⁴

• YET future rains the careful may foretell:
• Mosquitos, sand-flies, seek the shelter’d roof,

VER. 334. Mosquitos,] This is a Spanish word, signifying a Gnat, or Fly. The are very troublesome, especially to strangers, whom they bite unmercifully, causing a yellow coloured tumour, attended with excessive itching. Ugly ulcers have often been occasioned by scratching those swellings, in persons of a bad habit of body. Though natives of the West-Indies, they are not less common in the coldest regions; for Mr. Maupertuis⁵ takes notice how troublesome they were to him and his attendants on the snowy summit of certain mountains within the arctic circle. They, however, chiefly love shady, moist, and warm places. Accordingly they are commonest to be met with in the corners of rooms, towards evening, and before rain. They are so light, as not to be felt when they pitch on the skin; and, as soon as they have darted in their proboscis, fly off, so that the first intimation one has of being bit by them, is the itching tumour. Warm lime-juice is its remedy. The Mosquito makes a humming noise, especially in the night-time.

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