And representative of all the race,

Although 't is true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last, - yours has lately been a common case —
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye

Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;

II.

"Which pye being open'd they began to sing
(This old song and new simile holds good),
"A dainty dish to set before the King,"

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with bis hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation
I wish he would explain his Explanation.2

10

-

1 [This "Dedication" was suppressed, in 1819, with Lord Byron's reluctant consent; but, shortly after his death, its existence became notorious, in consequence of an article in the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John Hobhouse; and, for several years, the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside. It could, therefore, serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion.]

2 [Coleridge's " Biographia Literaria" appeared in 1817.]

III.

You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,

And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so,

And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!

IV..

And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),
Has given a sample from the vasty version
Of his new system 1 to perplex the sages;
'Tis poetry-
- at least by his assertion,

And may appear so when the dog-star rages
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

1["When, some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and conductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick, he was circumstantially informed by what series of accidents it had happened, that Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and I had become neighbours; and how utterly groundless was the supposition, that we considered ourselves as belonging to any common school, but that of good sense, confirmed by the long-established models of the best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey (for, as to myself, I have published so little, and that little of so little importance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name at all) could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had been published, not only previously to any acquaintance between them, but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustained; when, too, the slightest examination will make it evident, that between those and the afterwritings of Mr. Southey there exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree of excellence, from progressive developement of power, and progressive facility from habit and increase of

1

You - Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,

That Poesy has wreaths for you alone :
There is a narrowness in such a notion,

[ocean.

Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for

VI.

I would not imitate the petty thought,

Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,

For all the glory your conversion brought,

Since gold alone should not have been its price. You have your salary: was't for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise. 2 You're shabby fellows — true — but poets still, And duly seated on the immortal hill.

experience. Yet, among the first articles which this man wrote after his return from Keswick, we were characterised as the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes."" COLERIDGE.]

1 [Mr. Southey is the only poet of the day that ever resided at Keswick. Mr. Wordsworth, who lived at one time on Grasmere, has for many years past occupied Mount Rydal, near Ambleside: Professor Wilson possesses an elegant villa on Windermere: Coleridge, Lambe, Lloyd, and others classed by the Edinburgh Review in the Lake School, never, we believe, had any connection with that part of the country.]

2 Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs-it is, I think, in that or the Excise - besides another at Lord Lonsdale's table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.

VII.

Your bays may hide the boldness of your brows
Perhaps some virtuous blushes; - let them go
neither fruit nor boughs-
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows

To you

envy

Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow:

Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try 'Gainst you the question with posterity.

VIII.

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And recollect a poet nothing loses,

In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.

IX.

He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injured by his own assertion;

And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,

The major part of such appellants go

Το God knows where

X.

for no one else can know

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,

Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time,

If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,

And makes the word " Miltonic" mean "sublime,"

He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more

The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
Or be alive again - again ali hoar

With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,

And heartless daughters -worn- - and pale 1 — and Would he adore a sultan? he obey

The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh ? 2

XII.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore,

[poor;

"Pale, but not cadaverous: Milton's two elder daughters are said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in the economy of his house, &c. &c. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, Life of Milton, by W. Hayley (or Hailey, as spelt in the edition before me).

2 Or,

"Would he subside into a nackney Laureate

A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorn'd Iscariot ?"

I doubt if" Laureate" and "Iscariot "be good rhymes, but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with

1, John Sylvester,
Lay with your sister."

Jonson answered,-"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylrester answered," That is not rhyme."-"No," said Pea Jonson ; "but it is ue."