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Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to
frown,

Perhaps your poem may have pleased the town:
If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man-

May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise!
While his lost songs no more shall steep and
stink,

The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,

But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be-sold!
Should some rich bard (but such a monster now,
In modern physics, we can scarce allow),
Should some pretending scribbler of the court,
Some rhyming peer-there's plenty of the sort*
All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his chaplain's yawn !)
Condemn the unlucky curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.
Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
(The Lord forgive him!) Bravo! grand!
divine!'

Hoarse with those praises (which, by flatt'ry fed,
Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye,
As when the dying vicar will not die!
Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart; —
But all dissemblers overact their part.

Ye, who aspire to 'build the lofty rhyme,'
Believe not all who laud your false sublime;'
But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
'Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,'
And, after fruitless efforts, you return
Without amendment, and he answers, 'Burn!'

• Here will Mr Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the ultimus Romanorum,' the last of the Cruscanti-Edwin' the profound,' by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of 'well said Baviad the Correct. I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate.

That instant throw your paper in the fire,
Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
But if (true bard!) you scorn to condescend,
And will not alter what you can't defend,
If you will breed this bastard of your brains,"
We'll have no words-I've only lost my pains.

Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought,
As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
No matter, throw your ornaments aside,-
Better let him than all the world deride.

Give light to passages too much in shade,
Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;
Your friend's a 'Johnson,' not to leave one word,
However trifling, which may seem absurd;
Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
And furnish food for critics, or their quills.t

As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune,
Or the sad influence of the angry moon,
All men avoid bad writers' ready tongues,
As yawning waiters fly + Fitzscribble's lungs :
Yet on he mouths-ten minutes-tedious each
As prelate's homily, or placeman's speech;
Long as the last years of a lingering lease,
When riot pauses until rents increase.
While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays
O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented

ways,

If by some chance he walks into a well,
And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,

A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!'
Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
For there his carcass he might freely fling,
From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.
Though this has happen'd to more bards than
one;

I'll tell you Budgell's story,-and have done.

Budgell, a rogue and rhymester, for no good, (Unless his case be much misunderstood,)

When teased with creditors' continual claims,
'To die like Cato,' leapt into the Thames ! §
And therefore be it lawful through the town
For any bard to poison, hang, or drown.
Who saves the intended suicide receives
Small thanks from him who loathes the life he
leaves;

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose

CHRONICLE.

'What reams of paper, floods of ink,'
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'll say of me,

In which your readers may agree.

Still I write on, and tell you why;
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain
Without the risk of giving pain, &c., &c.

ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMERS.
In tracing of the human mind

Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
It knows not its resources:

And men through life assume a part
For which no talents they possess,

Yet wonder that, with all their art,

They meet no better with success, &c. &c.

The glory of that death they freely choose.

Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, &c. &c.

A crust for the critics.'-Bayes, in the 'Rehearsal And the waiters are the only fortunate people who can 'fly from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the 'Literary Fund,' being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a hope of exclaiming, Sic' (that is, ty choking Fitz, with bad wine, or worse poetry) 'me servavit Apollo!'

On his table were found these words: What Cato di and Addison approved, cannot be wrong. But Addison@d not approve; and if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his daughter on the same water party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of Atticus, and the enemy of Pope.

Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse Prick not the poet's conscience as a curse; Dosed with vile drams on Sunday he was found, Or got a child on consecrated ground! And hence is haunted with a rhyming rageFear'd like a bear just bursting from his cage.

If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to simpleton or wit:
But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,—him
He flays with recitation limb by limb; [breach,
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his
And gorges like a lawyer-or a leech.

THE CURSE OF MINERVA.†

- Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas

Immolat, et pœnam scelerato ex sanguine sumit.'

Eneid, lib. xii.

ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, March 17, 1811.
SLOW sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows:
On old Ægina's rock and Hydra's isle

The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquer'd Salamis !
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing
glance,

And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course and own the hues of heaven,

Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.

On such an eve his palest beam he cast,
When, Athens! here thy wisest look'd his last.
How watch'd thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murder'd sage's latest day;
Not yet-not yet-Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes;
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seem'd to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frown'd before;
But ere he sunk below Citharon's head,
The cup of woe was quaff d-the spirit fled;

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The soul of him that scorn'd to fear or fly, Who lived and died as none can live or die.

But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The queen of night asserts her silent reign:
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams
play,

There the white column greets her grateful ray ;
And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret :
The groves of olive scatter'd dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,+
And sad and sombre 'mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane, yon solitary palm:
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that pass'd them heedless by.

Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war:
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown, where gentler ocean deigns to
smile.

I mark'd the beauties of the land and main,
As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane,+
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poet's lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turn'd to scan,
Sacred to gods, but not secure from man,
The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!

country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own duration.

The kiosk is a Turkish summer-house; the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. at all. Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream

The Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva,

Hours roll'd along, and Dian's orb on high Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky; And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god; But chiefly, Pallas! thine; when Hecate's glare, Check'd by thy columns, fell more sadly fair O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead. Long had I mused, and treasured every trace The wreck of Greece recorded of her race, When, lo! a giant form before me strode And Pallas hail'd me in her own abode !

Yes, 'twas Minerva's self; but, ah! how changed

Since o'er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appear'd from Phidias' plastic hand :
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance

Seem'd weak and shaftless e'en to mortal glance;
The olive branch, which still she deign'd to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch, and wither'd in her grasp;
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimm'd her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourn'd his mistress with a shriek of woe!

'Mortal!'-'twas thus she spake-'that blush

of shame

Proclaims the Briton, once a noble name:
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honour'd less by all, and least by me:
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seek'st thou the cause of loathing?-look

around.

Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive tyrannies expire.
'Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane ;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain :
These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adorn'd,*
That Adrian rear'd when drooping Science

mourn'd.

What more I owe, let gratitude attest-
Know Alaric and Elgin did the rest.

That all may learn from whence the plunderer

came,

The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,
Below, his name-above, behold his deeds!
Be ever hail'd with equal honour here
The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won.
So when the lion quits his fell repast,
Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last:

This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in particular. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian; sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautiful marble and architecture.

Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their

own,

The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.
Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are cross'd:
See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Another name with his pollutes my shrine :
Behold where Dian's beams disdain to shine!
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half avenged Minerva's shame.'*

She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,
To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:
Daughter of Jove! in Britain's injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not:
Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.
Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyle's

towers

Survey Boeotia ;-Caledonia's ours.

And well I know within that bastard landt
Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command;
A barren soil, where Nature's germs, confined
To stern sterility, can stint the mind;
Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist ;
A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.
Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till, burst at length, each watery head o'erflows,
Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows
Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her scheming children far and wide:
Some east, some west, some everywhere but
north,

In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.
And thus-accursed be the day and year!-
She sent a Pict to play the felon here.
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,
As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth.

So may her few, the letter'd and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,
Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand;
As once of yore in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched
race.'

'Mortal!' the blue-eyed maid resumed, 'once

more

Bear back my mandate to thy native shore.
Though fallen, alas, this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest;
Hear and believe, for Time will tell the rest.

'First on the head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light,-on him and all his seed ;
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire;

His Lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon; above, a part not far distant, are the torn remnants of the basso-relievon, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them.

+ Irish bastards,' according to Sir Callaghan O'Bralaghan

If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,
Believe him bastard of a brighter race:
Sall with his hireling artists let him prate,
And Folly's praise repay for Wisdom's hate;
Long of their patron's gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest, native gusto is-to sell:
To sell, and make-may Shame record the
The state receiver of his pilfer'd prey. [day!
Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,
Europe's worst dauber, and poor Britain's best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o'er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.*
Be all the bruisers cull'd from all St Giles',
That art and nature may compare their styles;
While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his Lordship's 'stone shop

there.t

Round the throng'd gates shall sauntering coxcombs creep,

To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;
While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,
On giant statues casts the curious eye; [skim,
The room with transient glance appears to
Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;
Mourns o'er the difference of now and then;
Exclaims, These Greeks indeed were proper
men!'

Draws slight comparisons of these with those,
And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.

[these? When shall a modern maid have swains like Alas, Sir Harry is no Hercules !

And last of all amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,
la silent indignation mix'd with grief,
Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.
Oh, loath'd in life, nor pardon'd in the dust,
May hate pursue his sacrilegious lust !
Link'd with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,
And Eratostratos + and Elgin shine,

In many a branding page and burning line;
Alike reserved for aye to stand accursed,
Perchance the second blacker than the first.

'So let him stand through ages yet unborn, Fix'd statue on the pedestal of Scorn; Though not for him alone revenge shall wait, But fits thy country for her coming fate. Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son To do what oft Britannia's self had done. Look to the Baltic-blazing from afar, Your old ally yet mourns perfidious war. Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid, Or break the compact which herself had made: Far from such councils, from the faithless field She fled-but left behind her Gorgon shield;

*Mr West, on seeing the 'Elgin Collection' (I suppose we shal bear of the Abershaw and Jack Sheppard' collection), declared himself 'a mere tyro' in art.

Par Cribb was sadly puzzled when the marbles were first tel at Elgin House; he asked if it was not 'astone shop?' -He was right; it is a shop.

Entstratos, who, in order to make his name remembered, ae. Sre to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.

A fatal gift that turned your friends to stone, And left lost Albion hated and alone.

'Look to the East, where Ganges' swarthy

race

Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;
Lo! there Rebellion rears her ghastly head,
And glares the Nemesis of native dead;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish !-Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.

'Look on your Spain !--she clasps the hand she hates,

But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,
Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh, glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,

The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat

Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?

[fell.

'Look last at home-you love not to look there,

On the grim smile of comfortless despair :
Your city saddens : loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft ;

No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit,'* who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck'd each premier by the ear,
Who gods and men alike disdain'd to hear;
But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state,
Then raves for *
On Pallas calls,-but calls, alas! too late :
*; to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So, once of yore, each reasonable frog
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign 'log.'
Thus hail'd your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a god.

'Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour; Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish'd power; Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme; Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.

Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind,
And pirates barter all that's left behind.†
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war;
The idle merchant on the useless quay
Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away ;
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumber'd shores :

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The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him 'gainst the coming
doom.

Then in the senate of your sinking state
Show me the man whose counsels may have
weight.
[mand;
Vain is each voice where tones could once com-
E'en factions cease to charm a factious land:
Yet jarring sects convulse a sister isle, [pile.
And light with maddening hands the mutual
'Tis done, 'tis past, since Pallas warns in
The Furies seize her abdicated reign: [vain;
Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling
brands,

And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,
And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains.
The banner'd pomp of war, the glittering files,
O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country's call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,

Swell the young heart with visionary charms,
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought :
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight.
But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drench'd with gore, his woes are but
begun :

His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name ;
The slaughter'd peasant and the ravish'd dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reap'd field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion ! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most.
The law of heaven and earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife.'

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SIR, -I am a country gentleman of a midland county. I might have been a Parliament man for a certain borough; having had the offer of as many votes as General T. at the general election in 1812.* But I was all for domestic happiness; as, fifteen years ago, on a visit to London, I married a middle-aged maid of honour. We lived happily at Hornem Hall till last season, when my wife and I were invited by the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of my spouse) to pass the winter in town. Thinking no harm, and our girls being come to a marriageable (or, as they call it, marketable) age, and having besides a Chancery suit inveterately entailed upon the family estate, we came up in our old chariot; of which, by the by, my wife grew so much ashamed in less than a week, that I was obliged to buy a second-hand barouche, of which I might mount the box, Mrs H. says, if I could drive, but never see the inside-that place being reserved for the Honourable Augustus Tiptoe, her partner-general and opera-knight. Hearing great praises of Mrs H.'s dancing (she was famous for birthnight minuets in the latter end of the last century), I unbooted, and went to a ball at the Countess's, expecting to see a country dance, or, at most, cotillons, reels, and all the old paces to the newest tunes. But judge of my

State of the poll (last day), 5.

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