THE ADVICE.

ADDRESSED TO MISS MR

OF BRISTOL.

REVOLVING in their destin'd sphere,

The hours begin another year
As rapidly to fly ;

Ah! think, Maria, (e'er in grey
Those auburn tresses fade away ;)
So youth and beauty die.

Tho' now the captivated throng
Adore with flattery and song,

And all before you bow :

Whilst unattentive to the strain,

You hear the humble muse complain,
Or wreathe your frowning brow.

Tho' poor Pitholeon's feeble line,

In opposition to the nine,

Still violates your name:

Tho' tales of passion meanly told,

As dull as Cumberland, as cold,
Strive to confess a flame.

Yet, when that bloom and dancing fire,
In silver'd rev'rence shall expire,

Aged, wrinkled, and defaced :

To keep one lover's flame alive,
Requires the genius of a Clive,

With Walpole's mental taste.*

Tho' rapture wantons in your air,
Tho' beyond simile you're fair,
Free, affable, serene :

Yet still one attribute divine

Should in your composition shine-
Sincerity, I mean.

Tho' num'rous swains before you fall,

'Tis empty admiration all,

'Tis all that you require:

How momentary are their chains!

Like you, how unsincere the strains
Of those who but admire!

Accept, for once, advice from me,
And let the eye of censure see
Maria can be true:

No more for fools or empty beaux,
Heav'n's representatives disclose,

Or butterflies pursue.

This stanza has been brought forward by the friends of Walpole, as a proof that Chatterton altered his opinion with respect to Walpole's treatment of him. Most probably it is only satire in disguise.DIX's Life of Chatterton.

Fly to your worthiest lover's arms,
To him resign your swelling charms,

And meet his gen'rous breast:

Or if Pitholeon suits your taste,
His muse with tatter'd fraginents graced,
Shall read your cares to rest.*

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.

THE SUN revolving on his axis turns,
And with creative fire intensely burns;
Impell'd the forcive air, our earth supreme
Rolls with the planets round the solar gleam.
First Mercury completes his transient year,
Glowing, refulgent, with reflected glare;

• The inequality of Chatterton's various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and undeveloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perserverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which Nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso (in the verses which he sent to his mother when he was nine years old) alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age.-CAMPBELL.

Bright Venus occupies a wider way,
The early harbinger of night and day;
More distant still our globe terraqueous turns,
Nor chills intense, nor fiercely heated burns;
Around her rolls the lunar orb of light,
Trailing her silver glories through the night.
On the earth's orbit see the various signs,
Mark where the sun, our year completing, shines;
First the bright Ram his languid ray improves :
Next glaring wat'ry thro' the Bull he moves;
The am'rous Twins admit his genial ray;
Now burning, thro' the Crab he takes his way;
The Lion flaming, bears the solar power;
The Virgin faints beneath the sultry shower.

Now the just Balance weighs his equal force,
The slimy Serpent swelters in his course;
The sabled Archer clouds his languid face:
The Goat, with tempests, urges on his race;
Now in the water his faint beams appear,
And the cold Fishes end the circling year.
Beyond our globe the sanguine Mars displays
A strong reflection of primæval rays;
Next belted Jupiter far distant gleams,
Scarcely enlighten'd with the solar beams :
With four unfix'd receptacles of light,
He tow'rs majestic thro' the spacious height:
But farther yet the tardy Saturn lags,
And five attendant luminaries drags ;

Investing with a double ring his pace,
He circles through immensity of space.

These are thy wondrous works, first Source of good! Now more admir'd in being understood.*

THE CONSULIAD.†

AN HEROIC POEM.

Or warring senators, and battles dire,
Of quails uneaten, Muse, awake the lyre,
Where Campbell's chimnies overlook the square,
And Newton's future prospects hang in air;
Where counsellors dispute, and cockers match,
And Caledonian earls in concert scratch;

Mr. Corser, of Totterdown, has favoured me with the following anecdote of Chatterton. Mr. C. was intimately acquainted with him, and well remembers that he once met him on a Sunday morning, at the gate of Temple church, when the bells were chiming for service: there being yet some time to spare before the prayers commenced, Chatterton proposed their taking a walk together, in the church-yard, which was then open to the public, and laid out like a garden. "Come," said he, "I want to read to you something I have just written;" and when arrived at a secluded spot, he read to Mr. Corser a treatise on Astronomy, and stated that he had not yet finished it, but that he intended to make it the subject of a poem. Not long afterwards there appeared the above poem in the Town and Country Magazine.-Dix's Life of Chatterton.

+ The Consuliad, a political piece, written at Bristol, is in the highest strain of party scurrility.-DR. GREGORY.

[The first draught of this Poem is preserved in the British Museum. It is there called the "Constabiliad," and commences

Of roaring constables, and battles dire,

'Of geese uneaten,' &c.

There are frequent variations from the printed copy throughout the whole of the Poem.-ED.]