E'en now, what once-loved minstrels scarce may
The transient mention of a dubious name !frug When fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest
Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last
And glory, like the Phoenix 'midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires. 940
Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons, .fi
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the muse? ah no! she flies,
And even spurns the great Seatonian prize,
Though printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme by HOARE, and epic blank by HOYLE:
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list.
Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass; 950
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam.
There CLARKE, still striving piteously to please,'
Forgetting doggrel, leads not to degrees,
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon.
Condemned to drudge the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine, ma
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.'t
The games of Hoyle,' well known to the votaries of whist, chess, &c. are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the 'plagues of Egypt.'
This person, who has lately betrayed the most rapid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poem denominated the art of pleasing,' as lucus a non lucendo, containing little pleasantry, and less poetry. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the Satirist." If this unfor tunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathe
Oh dark asylum of a Vandal race!*
At once the boast of learning, and disgrace;
So sunk in dulness, and so lost in shame,
That SMYTHE and HODGSON† scarce redeem thy
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.+ 970
For me, who thus unasked have dared to tell
My country, what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of ideots that infest her age.
No just applause her honoured 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 appeared in her meridian hour,
"Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been
Earth's chief dictatress, ocean's mighty queen :
But Rome decayed, and Athens strew'd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shattered in the main;
Like these thy strength may sink, in ruin hurled,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
matics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university,
it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present sa-
lary.
Into Cambridgeshire the Emperor Probus transported a
considerable body of Vandals.'-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, p.
83. vol. ii. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this asser-
tion; the breed is still in high perfection.
+ This gentleman's name requires no praise; the man who in translation displays unquestionable genius, may well be expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon see a splendid specimen.
The Aboriginal Britons,' an excellent poem, by Richards.
But let me cease, and dread CASSANDRA's fate,
With warning ever scoffed at, till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy Bards to gain a name like thine.990
Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the 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'st 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 crowned with snows sublime.
But should I back return, no lettered rage
Shall drag my common-place book on the stage:
Let vain VALENTIA¶ rival luckless CARR,
And equal him whose work he sought to mar:
Let ABERDEEN and ELGIN** still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of Vertu;
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 for Gibraltar.
↑ Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople.
§ Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants. Mount Caucasus.
Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical, typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of the Stranger in Ireland.'-Oh fie, my lord! has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist ? but two of a trade,' they say, &c.
** Lord Elgin would fain persuade us that all the figures, with and without noses, in his stone-shop, are the work of Phidias; 'Credat Judæus!'
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Mis-shapen monuments, and maimed antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart 1011
For all the mutilated blocks of art;
Of Dardan tours let 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, steeled 'gainst selfish fear;
This thing of rhyme I ne'er disdained to own-
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown;1020
My voice was heard again, though not so loud,
My page, though nameless, never disavowed;
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. [fall
The time hath been, when no harsh sound would
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall;
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
'The meanest thing that crawled beneath my eyes:
But now so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I've learned to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learned to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
* 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 display.
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,,104
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, armed in proof, the gauntlet cast at once) 10
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce. i 1
Thus much I've dared to do; how far my lay..
Hath wronged these righteous times, let others say?
This, let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.
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