What harm? In spite of every critic elf,
Sir T. may read his stanzas to himself;
Miles Andrews still his strength in couplets try,
And live in prologues, though his dramas die.
Lords too are bards, such things at times befall,
And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all.
Yet, did or taste or reason sway the times,
Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes?
Roscommon! Sheffield with your spirits fled,
No future laurels deck a noble head;
No muse will cheer with renovating smile,

The paralytic puling of Carlisle.

The puny schoolboy and his early lay

Men pardon, if his follies pass away;

But who forgives the senior's ceaseless verse,

Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse?
What heterogeneous honours deck the peer!
Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer!*
So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age,
His scenes alone had damn'd our sinking stage;
But managers for once cried, 'Hold, enough!'
Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff.
Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh,
And case his volumes in congenial calf;
Yes! doff that covering, where morocco shines,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines.t

With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead,
Who daily scribble for your daily bread;
With you I war not: Gifford's heavy hand

Has crush'd, without remorse, your numerous band.
On all the talents' vent your venal spleen;
Want is your plea, let pity be your screen.
Let monodies on Fox regale your crew,
And Melville's Mantle prove a blanket too?
One common Lethe waits each hapless bard,
And, peace be with you! 'tis your best reward.
Such damning fame as Dunciads only give
Could bid your lines beyond a morning live;
But now at once your fleeting labours close,
With names of greater note in blest repose.
Far be 't from me unkindly to upbraid
The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade,
Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind,
Leave wondering comprehension far behind.
Though Bell has lost his nightingales and owls,
Matilda snivels still, and Hafiz howls;
And Crusca's spirit, rising from the dead,
Revives in Laura, Quiz, and X.Y.Z. §

The Earl of Carlisle has lately published an eighteenpenny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his plan for building a new theatre: it is to be hoped his Lordship will be permitted to bring forward anything for the stage-except his own tragedies.

+Doff that lion's hide, And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."SHAKSPEARE, King John. Lord C.'s works, most resplendently bound, form a conspicuous ornament to his book-shelves:

When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall, Employs a pen less pointed than his awl, Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes, St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse Heavens how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud !

How ladies read, and literati laud!

If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest,
'Tis sheer ill-nature-don't the world know best?
Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme,
And Capel Lofft declares 'tis quite sublime.
Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade
Swains, quit the plough, resign the useless spade!
Lo, Burns and Bloomfield, nay, a greater far,
Gifford was born beneath an adverse star,
Forsook the labours of a servile state,

Stemm'd the rude storm, and triumph'd over fate:
Then why no more? if Phoebus smiled on you,
Bloomfield, why not on brother Nathan too?
Him too the mania, not the muse, has seized;
Not inspiration, but a mind diseased:
And now no boor can seek his last abode,
No common be enclosed, without an ode.†
Oh! since increased refinement deigns to smile
On Britain's sons, and bless our genial isle,
Let Poesy go forth, pervade the whole,
Alike the rustic and mechanic soul.
Ye tuneful cobblers! still your notes prolong,
Compose at once a slipper and a song;

So shall the fair your handiwork peruse,

Your sonnets sure shall please, perhaps your shoes.
May moorland weavers boast Pindaric skill,‡
And tailors' lays be longer than their bill!
While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes.
And pay for poems-when they pay for coats.

To the famed throng now paid the tribute due,
Neglected genius! let me turn to you.
Come forth, O Campbell1 give thy talents scope;
Who dares aspire if thou must cease to hope?
And thou, melodious Rogers! rise at last,
Recall the pleasing memory of the past;
Arise! let blest remembrance still inspire,
And strike to wonted tones thy hallow'd lyre;
Restore Apollo to his vacant throne,
Assert thy country's honour and thine own.
What I must deserted Poesy still weep
Where her last hopes with pious Cowper sleep?
Unless, perchance, from his cold bier she turns
To deck the turf that wraps her minstrel, Burns

*

Capel Lofft, Esq., the Maecenas of shoemakers, and preface-writer-general to distressed versemen: a kind of gratis accoucheur to those who wish to be delivered of rhyme, but do not know how to bring forth.

† See Nathaniel Bloomfield's ode, elegy, or whatever he or any one else chooses to call it, on the enclosure of Honington Green.

Vide Recollections of a Weaver in the Moorlands of Staffordshire.

The race who rhyme from folly, or for food, Yet still some genuine sons 'tis hers to boast, Who, least affecting, still affect the most; Feel as they write, and write but as they feel: Bear witness Gifford, Sotheby, Macneil.*

Why slumbers Gifford? once was ask'd in vain !† Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again. Are there no follies for his pen to purge?

Are there no fools whose backs demand the
Scourge ?

Are there no sins for satire's bard to greet?
Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street?
Shall peers or princes tread pollution's path,
And 'scape alike the law's and muse's wrath?
Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time,
Eternal beacons of consummate crime?
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim'd,
Make bad men better, or at least ashamed.

Unhappy White! while life was in its spring,
And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing,
The spoiler caine; and all thy promise fair
Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.
Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science' self destroy'd her favourite son!
Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit ;
She sow'd the seeds, but death has reap'd the fruit.
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low.
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart:
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel,
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

There be, who say, in these enlighten'd days,
That splendid lies are all the poet's praise;
That strain'd invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern bard to sing.

'Tis true that all who rhyme-nay, all who write-
Shrink from that fatal word to genius-trite;
Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:

Gifford, author of the Baviad and Mæviad, the first satires of the day, and translator of Juvenal. Sotheby, translator of Wieland's Oberon and Virgil's Georgies, and author of Saul, an epic poem.

Macneil, whose poems are deservedly popular, particularly Scotland's Scaith; or, The Waes of War, of which ten thousand copies were sold in one month. + Mr. Gifford promised publicly that the Baviad and Maviad should not be his last original works. Let him remember 'Mox in reluctantes dracones.'

Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best.

And here let Shee and genius find a place, Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace: To guide whose hand the sister arts combine, And trace the poet's or the painter's line; Whose magic touch can bid the canvas glow, Or pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow; While honours, doubly merited, attend The poet's rival, but the painter's friend.

Blest is the man who dares approach the bower
Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour:
Whose steps have press'd, whose eye has mark 1
afar,

The cline that nursed the sons of song and war,
The scenes which glory still must hover o'er,
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore.
But doubly blest is he whose heart expands
With hallow'd feelings for those classic lands;
Who rends the veil of ages long gone by,
And views their remnants with a poet's eye.
Wright! 'twas thy happy lot at once to view
Those shores of glory, and to sing them too:
And sure no common muse inspired thy pen
To hail the land of gods and godlike men.

And you, associate bards! who snatch'd to light 1
Those genis too long withheld from modern sight;
Whose mingling taste combined to cull the wreath
Where Attic flowers Aonian odours breathe,
And all their renovated fragrance flung,
To grace the beauties of your native tongue;
Now let those minds, that nobly could transfuse
The glorious spirit of the Grecian muse,
Though soft the echo, scorn a borrow'd tone:
Resign Achaia's lyre, and strike your own.

Let these, or such as these, with just applause
Restore the muse's violated laws;
But not in flimsy Darwin's pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme;
Whose gilded symbols, more adorn'd than clear,
The eye delighted, but fatigued the ear;
In show the simple lyre could once surpass,
But now, worn down, appear in native brass;
While all his train of hovering sylphs around
Evaporate in similes and sound:

Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die:
False glare attracts, but more offends the eye.

Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,

Mr. Shee, author of Rhymes on Art, and Ele ments of Art.

So sunk in dulness, and so lost to shame,

Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue

fame!

But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath is wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove;
Where Richards wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons justly praise their sires.*

For me, who, thus unask'd, have dared to tell
My country what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age:
No just applause her honour'd name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the muse.
Oh! would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appear'd in her meridian hour,
'Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been-
Earth's chief dictatress, ocean's mighty queen :
But Rome decay'd and Athens strew'd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main :
Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurl'd,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate, t
With warning ever scoff'd at, till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.

Then, hapless Britain, be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, thy people's jest,
Still hear thy motley orators dispense
The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
While Canning's colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame Portland fills the place of Pitt.

Yet once again, adieu! ere this the sail
That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale;
And Afric's coast, and Calpe's adverse height,
And Stamboul's minarets, must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray through beauty's native clime,
Where Kaff** is clad in rocks, and crown'd with

snows sublime.

But should I back return, no letter'd rage
Shall drag my common-place book on the stage.
Let vain Valentiatt rival luckless Carr,
And equal him whose work he sought to miar:

Decline and Fall, page 83, vol. ii, There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion; the breed is still in high perfection.

Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques;

And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the multilated blocks of art.

Of Dardan tours iet dilettanti tell,

I leave topography to classic Gell ;†
And, quite content, no more shall interpose
To stun mankind with poesy or prose.

Thus far I've held my undisturb'd career, Prepared for rancour, steel'd 'gainst selfish fear;

This thing of rhyme, I ne'er disdain'd to own-
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown:
My voice was heard again, though not so loud;
My page, though nameless, never disavow'd;
And now at once I tear the veil away :-
Cheer on the pack ! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of Melbourne House,
By Lambe's resentment, or by Holland's spouse,
By Jeffrey's harmless pistol, Hallam's rage,
Edina's brawny sons and brimstone page.
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are penetrable stuff:'
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe.
The time hath been, when no harsh sound would
fall

From lips that now may seem imbued with gall;
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise

The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my

eyes;

But now, so callous grown, so changed since youth,

I've learn'd to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learn'd to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss:
Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;

And, arm'd in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared to do; how far my lay
Hath wrong'd these righteous times, let others
say:

This let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.

Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. Apollo bestowed on her the gift of prophecy; but added to it the curse that no one should believe her predictions.

A friend of mine being asked why his Grace of P. was likened to an old woman, replied, he supposed it was because he was past bearing."

Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar.
Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople.
Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabi-

tants.

* Mount Caucasus.

Lord Elgin would fain persuade us that all the figures, with and without noses, in his stone-shop, are he work of Phidias! Credat Judæus !'

+ Mr. Gell's Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr. G. conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the respective works