And butting all he meets, with awkward pains, F. Forbear, forbear; "ON MR. GIFFORD'S MOTTO. "The following SPIRITED CHASTISEMENT of the vulgar ignorance and malignity in question was sent on Thursday night-but by an accidental error in one of our clerks, or in the servant delivering the copy at the office, it was unfortunately mislaid!" Why this is as it should be ;- the gods take care of Cato! Who sees not that they interfered, and by conveying the copy out of the compositor's way, procured the author of the Mæviad two comfortable nights! But to the spirited chastisement.' 'Nor wool the pig, nor milk the bull produces.' Nor wool the pig, nor milk the bull produces, For from that hour scarcely a week, or indeed a day, has Well and wisely singeth the poet, non unus mentes agital furor: yet while I give an involuntary smile to the oddity of Mr. Parsons' disease, I cannot but lament that his friends, (and a gentleman who is said to belong to more clubs than Sir Watkin Lewes must need have friends,) I cannot, I say, but lament, that on the first appearance of these knobs, these 'excrescences,' as I call them, his friends did not have him cut for the simples! LO, DELLA CRUSCA! 'O thou, to whom superior worth's allied, Thy country's honour, and the muses' pride-' So says Laura Maria Et solem quis dicere falsum Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, The BARDSteps forth, in birth-day splendour drest, A roll inscribed "THE WREATH OF LIBERTY." And now 'tis silence all. "GENIUS OR MUSE" Recumbent eve rock the reposing tide. A web-work of despair, a mass of woes. And o'er my lids the scalding tumour roll." "TUMOUR, a morbid swelling."-Johnson. An excellent thing to roll over an eye, especially if it happen, as in the present case, to be "scalding." "Summer tints begemm'd the scene, And silky ocean slept in glossy green." "While air's nocturnal ghost, in paly shroud, Glances with grisly glare from cloud to cloud," "And gauzy zephyrs, fluttering o'er the plain, On twilight's bosom drop their filmy rain." Unus instar omnium! This couplet staggered me. I should be loath to be found correcting a madman; and yet mere folly seems unequal to the production of such exquisite nonsense. "The explosion came And burst the o'ercharged culverin of shame." Their perish'd, proudest pageantry unfold." But the bare boast of barren heraldry." Showers her shafts of silver o'er the scene. To these add," moody monarchs, turgid tyrant, pampered popes, radiant rivers, cooling cataracts, lazy Loires, (of which, by-the-by, there are none,) gay Garonnes, gloomy glass, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered lightnings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, blissful blessings, rich reasonings, meliorating mercies, vicious venalities, sublunary suns, dewy vapours damp, that sweep the silent swamp;" and a world of others, to be Indeed she says a great deal more; but as I do not found in the compass of half a dozen pages. understand it, I forbear to lengthen my quotation. Innumerable odes, sonnets, &c. published from time to time in the daily papers, have justly procured this gentleman the reputation of the first poet of the age: but the performance which called forth the high-sounding panegyric above-mentioned is a philosophical rhapsody in praise of the French revolution, called the "Wreath of Liberty." Of this poem no reader (provided he can read) is at this time ignorant; but as there are various opinions concern. ing it, and as I do not choose, perhaps, to dispute with a lady of Mrs. Robinson's critical abilities, I shall select a few passages from it, and leave the world to judge how truly its author is said to be -"Gifted with the sacred lyre, Whose sounds can more than mortal thoughts inspire." This supernatural effort of genius, then, is chiefly distinguished by three very prominent features.-Downright nonsense. Downright frigidity. Downright doggrel.Of each of these as the instances occur. "Hang o'er his eye the gossamery tear. Wreathe round her airy harp the timorous joy. "In phosphor blaze of genealogic line." N.B. Written to "the turning of a brazen candlestick." "O better were it ever to be lost In blank negation's sea, than reach the coast." "Should the zeal of Parliament be empty words." "Doom for a breath A hundred reasoning hecatombs to death." A hecatomb is a sacrifice of a hundred head of oxen. Where did this gentleman hear of their reasoning? "A while I'll ruminate on time and fate; And the most probable event of things" EUGE, MAGNE POETA! Well may Laura Maria say, "That Genius glows in every classic line, And Nature dictates-every thing that's thine." "Genius or Muse, whoe'er thou art, whose thrill Exalts the fancy, and inflames the will, Bids o'er the heart sublime sensation roll, And wakes ecstatic fervour in the soul." See the commencement of the Wreath of Liberty, where our great poet, with a dexterity peculiar to himself, has contrived to fill several quarto pages without a single idea. A wild delirium round th' assembly flies; O wretched man! And dost thou toil to please, And broke thy rest for THIS, for THIS alone? F. And is it nothing, then, to hear our name The sober verdict found by taste and sense: The audience hiccup, and exclaim, "Damn'd fine!" *At this late hour-I learn from Della Crusca's lamentations, that he is declined into the vale of years; that the women say to him, as they formerly said to Anacreon, yepwv εt, and that Love, about two years since, "Tore his name from his bright page, And gave it to approaching age." And are not now the author's ashes blest? Is praise an evil? Is there to be found P. With 'Squire Jerningham descend With random gleams of wit has graced my lays, Thou know'st too well how I have relish'd praise. Not mine the soul which pants not after fame :-- I haunt the sacred fount, athirst, to prove And yet, my friend-though still, at praise bestow'd, Mine eye has glisten'd, and my check has glow'd, Yet, when I prostitute the lyre to gain And tear the strings indignant from my hand! *Thou know'st, when chance, &c.-To see how a Cruscan can blunder! Mr. Parsons thus politely con ments on this unfortunate hemistich: "Thou lowest of the imitating race, Thou imp of satire, and thou foul disgrace; Who callest each coarse phrase a lucky hit," &c. Alas! no: But this is of a piece with his qui-pro-quo on the preface of the Mæviad-where, on my saying that I had laid the poem aside for two years, he exultingly exclaims, "Soh! it was two years in hand, then!" Mr. Parsons is highly celebrated, I am told, for his skill in driving a bargain: it is to be presumed that he does it with his spectacles on.-But, indeed, he began with a blunder:-if he had read my motto carefully, he must have seen that I never taxed him with keeping a bull for his own milking: no; it was the infatuated man who looked for sense in Mr. Parsons' skull that was charged with this solecism in economics. And yet the bare belief deplore. + Recounts the wayward fate, &c.-In the INTERVIEW, of it produced the metamorphosis which I have already see the British Album, the lover, finding his mistress in-noticed, and which his friends have not yet ceased to exorable, comforts himself, and justifies her, by boasting how well he can play the fool. And never did Don Quixote exhibit half so many extravagant tricks in the Sierra Morena, for the beaux yeux of his dulcinea, as our dis tracted amoreso threatens to perform for the no less beautiful ones of Anna Matilda. "Yes, I will prove that I deserve my fate, Was born for anguish, and was formed for hate; With such transcendent wo will breathe my sigh, That envying fiends shall think it ecstacy," &c. + Morton's catchword. WONDERFUL is the profundity of the bathos! I thought that O'Keefe had reached the bottom of it; but, as uncle Bowling says, I thought a d-n'd lie; for Holcroft, Reynolds, and Morton have sunk beneath him. They have happily found In the lowest deep a lower still, and persevere in exploring it with an emulation which does them honour. And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant,* and Merry's Moor- That e'en the guilty at their sufferings smile, fields whine ?t Skill'd in one useful science, at the least, The great man comes and spreads a sumptuous Then, when his guests behold the prize at stake. But you, ye St. Johns, cursed with one poor head, "If comedy be yours, the searching strain Blends such sweet pleasure with corrective pain, * And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant. This is a poor stupid wretch, to whom infidelity and disloyalty have given a momentary notoriety, which has imposed upon the oscitancy of the managers, and opened the theatre to two or three of his grovelling and senseless productions. And bless the lancet, though they bleed the while. If tragedy, th' impassion'd numbers flow, With such a liquid lapse, that they betray essays Sunk in acrostics, riddles, roundelays, Happy the soil, where bards like mushrooms rise, And ask no culture but what Byshe supplies! Some love the verse that like Maria's flows, * E'en Bertie, &c.-For Bertie, (Greathead, I think they call him,) see the Mæviad. † Where airy lays, &c. "Was it the shuttle of the morn That hung upon the cobweb'd thorn Will future ages believe that this facetious triumvirate should think nothing more to be necessary to the construction of a play, than an eternal repetition of some contemptible vulgarity, such as "That's your sort!" "Hey, damme!""What's to pay ?" "Keep moving !" &c. They will; for they will have blockheads of their own, who will found their claims to celebrity on similar follies. What, however, they will never credit is, that these dri--Album, vol. ii. vellings of idiotism, these catchwords, should actually preserve their respective authors from being hooted off the stage. No, they will not believe that an English audience could be so besotted, so brutified, as to receive such senseless exclamations with bursts of laughter, with peals of applause. I cannot believe it myself, though I have witnessed it. Haud credo-if I may reverse the good father's position-haud credo, quia possibile est. + Merry's Moorfields whine.-In a most wretched rhapsody of incomprehensible nonsense, addressed by this gentleman to Mrs. Robinson, which she, in her valuable poems, (page 100,) calls a charming composition, abounding in lines of exquisite beauty, is the following rant: Conjure up demons from the main, Till the Creator blush to see MIT YENDA.-This is Mr. Tim, alias Mr. Timothy Adney, a most pertinacious gentleman, who makes a conspicuous figure in the daily papers under the ingenious signature above cited; it being, as the reader already sees, his own name read backward. "Gentle dulness ever loves a joke!" Of his prodigious labours I have nothing by me but the following stanza, taken from what he calls his Poor Man: Reward the bounty of your generous hand, Your head each night in comfort shall be laid, And plenty smile throughout your fertile land, While I do hasten to the silent grave." "Good morrow, my worthy masters and mistresses all, and a merry Christmas to you!" I have been guilty of a misnomer. Mr. Adney has politely informed me, since the above was written, that his Christian name is not Timothy, but Thomas. The anagram in question, therefore, must be MOT YENDA, omit ting the H, euphonia gratia. I am happy in an opportu nity of doing justice to so correct a gentleman, and I pray him to continue his valuable lucubrations. § TONY PASQUIN.-I have too much respect for my reader, to affront him with any specimens of this man's poetry, at once licentious and dull beyond example: at the same time I cannot resist the temptation of presenting him with the following stanzas, written by a friend of mine, and sufficiently illustrative of the character in question: Others, like Kemble, on black-letter pore, Has bless'd them with The Boke of gode Advice," There Fezzan's thrum-capp'd tribes, Turks, Chris- Accommodate, ye gods! their feet with shoes; And can we, when such mope-eyed dolts are And call for Mandeville, to ease my head. By thoughtless fashion on the throne of taste- * Lo! Beaufoy tells of Afric's barren sand, In all the flowery phrase of fairy land: TO ANTHONY PASQUIN, ESQ. 66 Why dost thou tack, most simple Anthony, The name of Pasquin to thy ribald strains? Is it a fetch of wit, to let us see, Thou, like that statue, art devoid of brains? O for the good old times! WHEN all was new, "But thou mistakest: for know, though Pasquin's head Is not THIS sad? Many a keen gibe, and many a sportive line. It has been represented to me, that I should do well to avoid all mention of this man, from a consideration, that one so lost to every sense of decency and shame was a fitter object for the beadle than the muse. This has induced me to lay aside a second castigation which I had prepared for him, though I do not think it expedient to omit what I had formerly written. Here on the rack of satire let him lie, F. ""Tis pitiful, heaven knows "Tis wondrous pitiful." E'en take the prose; But for the poetry-O, that, my friend, I still aspire-nay, smile not-to defend. You praise our sires, but, though they wrote with Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse ; P. Pshaw; I have it here. P. Now 'tis plain you sneer, of water, to the long ascent of the broad rock of Gerdobah, (p. 289,) from whose inflexible barrenness little is to be got from this scene, I say, of gladsome contrast to the One word more. I am told that there are men so weak For Weston'st self could find no semblance here: as to deprecate this miserable object's abuse, and so vain, so despicably vain, as to tolerate his praise-for such I have nothing but pity;-though the fate of Hastings, see the "Pin-basket to the Children of Thespis," holds out a dreadful lesson to the latter:-but should there be a man or a woman, however high in rank, base enough to pur-inveterate mountains of Gegogib, &c. chase the venal pen of this miscreant for the sake of traducing innocence and virtue, then-I was about to threaten, but 'tis not necessary: the profligate cowards who employ Anthony can know no severer punishment than the support of a man whose acquaintance is infamy, and whose touch is poison. * Lo! Beaufoy, &c.-" The feet are accommodated with shoes,' and the head is protected by a-woollen night-cap." -AFRICAN ASSOCIATION, p. 139. "From this scene of gladsome contrast, i. e. from the mountain of Zilau, (p. 288,) whose rugged sides are marked with scanty spots of brushwood, and enriched with stores 1 Shoes. By your leave, master critic, here is a small oversight in your quotation. The gentleman does not say their feet are accommodated with shoes, but with slippers. For the rest, accommodate, as I learn, is a scholar-like word, and a word of exceeding great propriety. "Accommo date! it comes from accommodo: that is, when a man's feet are, as they say, accommodated, or when they are--being-whereby they may be thought to be accommodated: which is an excellent thing!"-Printer's Devil. "In the long course of a seven days' passage, the traveller is scarcely sensible that a few spots of thin and meager brushwood slightly interrupt the vast expanse of sterility, and diminish the amplitude of desolation!!!" *Hasten, &c.-This and the following quotation are taken from the "Laurel of Liberty," a work on which the great author most justly rests his claim to immortality. See p. 167. Weston. This indefatigable gentleman has been long employed in attacking the moral character of Pope Gildon, all the impudence of Smedley, and all the ignoin the Gentleman's Magazine, with all the virulence of rance of Curl and his associates. What the views of the bland Sylvanus may be, in standing cap in hand, and complacently holding open the door of the temple, for nearly two years, to this "execrable" 1 Such is the epithet applied to Pope by the "virtuous indignation" of this "amiable" traducer of worth and genius! Weston, who slunk from truth's imperious light, Heavens! if our ancient vigour were not fled, F. So let it be; and yet, methinks, my friend, Enough. But where, (for these, you seem to say, Your fate already I foresee. My lord, Where are the soft, the tender strains, which call Lo! here- Canst thou, Matilda, urge my fate, With cold respect, will freeze you from his board; P. Enough. Thank heaven! my error now I see, *Of the talents of this spes altera Roma, this second hope of the age, the following stanzas will afford a sufficient specimen. They are taken from a ballad which And with my mind's thick gloom obscure the Mr. Bell, an admirable judge of these matters, calls a sun." Erostratus, I know not. He cannot surely be weak enough to suppose that an obscure scribbler like this has any charges to bring against our great poet, which escaped the vigilant malevolence of the Westons of the Dunciad. Or if ever, from the "natural goodness of his heart," he cherished so laudable a supposition, he ought (whatever it may cost him) to forego it: when, after twenty months' preparation, nothing is produced but an exploded accusation taken from the most common edition of the Dunciad! "very mellifluous one; easy, artless, and unaffected." Softly steals the bird of night, Ruthless winds deny thee rest: Shelter'd from th' inclement sky." The story of this poor owl, who was at one and the same time at sea and on land, silent and noisy, sheltered and It has been suggested to me, that this nightman of literature designs to reprint as much as can be collected of the heroes of the Dunciad.-If it be so, the dirty work of traducing Pope may be previously necessary; and pre-exposed, is continued through a few more of these "mellijudice itself must own, that he has shown uncommon penetration in the selection of the blind and outrageous mercenary now so laboriously employed in it. Whatever be the design, the proceedings are by no means inconsistent with the plan of a work which may not unaptly be styled the charnel-house of reputation, and which, from the days of Lauder to the present, has delighted to asperse every thing venerable among uswhich accused Swift of lust, and Addison of drunkenness! which insulted the ashes of Toup while they were yet warm, and gibbeted poor Henderson alive: which affected to idolize the great and good Howard, while idolatry was painful to him: and the moment he fell, gloriously fell, in the exercise of the most sublime virtue, attempted to stigmatize him as a brute and a monster! * Canst thou, Matilda, &c. vide Album, vol. ii.-Matilda! "Nay then, I'll never trust a madman again." It was but a few minutes since, that Mr. Merry died for the love of Laura Maria; and now is he about to do the same thing for the love of Anna Matilda ? What the ladies may say to such a swain, I know not; but certainly he is too prone to run wild, die, &c. &c. Such, indeed, is the combustible nature of this gentleman, that he takes fire at every female signature in the papers; and I remember, that when Olaudo Equiano, who, for a black, is not ill-featured, tried his hand at a soft sonnet, and by mistake subscribed it Olauda, Mr. Merry fell so desperately in love with him, and "yelled out such syllables of dolour" in consequence of it, that the pitiful-hearted negro was frightened at the mischief he had done, and transmitted in all haste the following correction to the editor-For OlaudA, please to read Olaud0, the black -MAN." fluous" stanzas, which the reader, I doubt not, will readily forgive me for omitting; more especially if he reads the ORACLE, a paper honoured-as the grateful editor very properly has it-by the effusions of this "artless" gentleman above all others. N.B. On looking again, I find the owl to be a nightingale!-N'importe. It was said of Theophilus Cibber, (I think by Goldsmith,) that as he grew older, he grew never the better. Much of the Baviad. After an interval of two years, I find the the same (mutatis mutandis) may be said of the gentlemen "mellifluous" ARNO celebrating Mrs. Robinson's novel in strains like these. "For the Oracle. SONNET TO MRS. ROBINSON, Upon reading her VANCENZA. "What never-ceasing music! From the throne To every murmuring breeze of passing wind! |