Mightiest of all Dunedin's beasts of chase! Shall never blunt its edge on meaner men; A muse and heart by choice so wholly thine? My hate, untravell'd, fondly turn'd to thee. Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego, Ut gratas inter mensas symphonia discors, Et crassum unguentum, et Sardo cum melle papaver was to accrue, provided one or both were knocked on the head. Having survived two years and a half those Elegies which they were kindly preparing to review, I have no peculiar gusto to give them "so joyful a trouble," except, indeed, "upon compulsion, Hal;" but if, as David says in the Rivals, it should come to "bloody sword and gun fighting," we "won't run, will we, Sir Lucius?" I do not know what I had done to these Eclectic gentlemen: my works are their lawful perquisite, to be bewn in piece like Agag, if it seem meet unto them: but why they should be in such a hurry to kill off their author, I am ignorant. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong:" and now, as these Christians have" smote me on one cheek, "I hold them up the other; and, in return for their good wishes, give them an opportunity of repeating them. Had any other set of men expressed such sentiments, I should have smiled, and left them to the "recording angel;" but from the pharisees of Christianity decency might be expected. I can assure these brethren, that, publican and sinner as I am, I would not have treated "mine enemy's dog thus." To show them the superiority of my brotherly love, if ever the Reverend Messrs. Simeon or Ramsden should be engaged in such a conflict as that in which they requested me to fall, I hope they As oil in lieu of butter men decry, Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun : Will he who swims not to the river run? And men unpractised in exchanging knocks Must go to Jackson (4) ere they dare to box. Whate'er the weapon, cudgel, fist, or foil, None reach expertness without years of toil; But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease, Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please. Why not?-shall I, thus qualified to sit For rotten boroughs, never show my wit? Shall 1, whose fathers with the quorum sate, And lived in freedom on a fair estate; Who left me heir, with stables, kennels, packs, To all their income, and to-twice its tax; Whose form and pedigree have scarce a fault, Shall I, I say, suppress my Attic salt? Thus think "the mob of gentlemen ;" but you, 1 trust, will spare us for at least nine years. Qui nescit, versus tamen audet fingere!-"Quid ni? Id tibi judicium est, ea mens. Si quid tamen olim may escape with being "winged" only, and that Heaviside may "If the noble lord and the learned advocate have the courage requisite to sustain their mutual insults, we shall probably soon hear the explosions of another kind of paper-war, after the fashion of the ever-memorable duel which the latter is said to have fought, or seemed to fight, with 'Little Moore.' We confess there is sufficient provocation, if not in the critique, at least in the satire, to urge a man of honour' to defy his assailant to mortal combat. Of this we shall no doubt hear more in due time.”—E.] (1) "Alas!1 cannot strike at wretched kernes." Macbeth.-E. (2) See the memorable critique of the Edinburgh Review, on Hours of Idleness.-E. (3) "Invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin.” (4) Lord Byron's taste for boxing brought him acquainted, at an early period, with this distinguished, and, it is not too much to say, respected professor of the art; for whom, throughout life, he continued to entertain a sincere regard. In a note to the eleventh canto of Don Juan, he calls him "his old friend, and corporeal pastor and master.”—E. (5) Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in Though Madoc, with Pucelle, (1) instead of punk, Orpheus, we learn from Ovid and Lempricre, Next, rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince, Quod non edideris. Nescit vox missa reverti. | And old Tyrtæus, when the Spartans warr'd, The Muse, like mortal females, may be woo'd; If verse be studied with some show of art, Sic honor et nomen divinis vatibus atque unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, is the "Lepidus" of Such things 'we know, are neither rich nor rare, The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid: the Curse of Kehama, maugre the neglect of Madoc, etc., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. A literary friend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of "one in jeopardy:" he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on butter-milk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel-spear, and a landing-net, and at last (horresco referens!) pulled out-his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its "alacrity of sinking" was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of "Felo de bibliopola" against a "quarto unknown;" and circumstantial evidence being since strong against the Curse of Kehama (of which the above words (1) Voltaire's Pucelle is not quite so immaculate as Mr. Southey's are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers next sessions, "Joan of Arc," and yet I am afraid the Frenchman has both more in Grub-street.-Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Cœur-de-truth and poetry too on his side-(they rarely go together)—than Lion, Exodus, Exodia, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve jurors. The judges are Pye, Bowles, and the bellman of St. Sepulchre's. The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. The public anxiously await the result, and all live publishers will be subpoenaed as wit nesses. But Mr. Southey has published the Curse of Kehama,-an inviting title to quibblers. By the by, it is a good deal beneath Scott and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the The reader of Mr. Moore's Life will appreciate the feeling which, booby Ballantyne to entitle them, in the Edinburgh Annual Re gister (of which, by the by, Southey is editor)" the grand poetical triumvirate of the day." But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the one-eyed leaders of the blind, though they-might as well keep to themselves "Scott's thirty thousand copies sold," which must sadly discomfit poor Southey's our patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change of the first letter. (2) Like Sir Bland Burgess's Richard; the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyres, 19, Cockspur-street. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from. (3) Lord Byron had originally written "As lame as I am, but a better bard." This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of Edinburgh. Ballantyne said it meant the "Bridge of Berwick," but Southey he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses over it. claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the "Brig o' Stirling; At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more nor less than the “counter of Archy Constable's shop." Yet art and nature join'd will win the prize, The youth who trains to ride, or run a racé, Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme. Nec rude quid prosit video ingenium : alterius sic Altera poscit opem res, et conjurat amice. Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam, Multa tulit fecitque, puer; sudavit et alsit; Abstinuit Venere et vino. Qui Pythia cantat no doubt, influenced Lord Byron's alteration of the manuscript line.-E. (1) The Red Hand of Ulster, introduced generally in a canton, marks the shield of a baronet of the United Kingdom.-E. (2) "Pollio."-In the original MS. "Rogers."-E. (3) "Tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum, Gurgite cum medio portans Æagrius Hebrus Volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua; Ab, miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente vocabat; Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripa." Georgic. iv. 525. (4) I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of panta--psha!-of cantos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country customers. Merry's "Moorfields whine" was nothing to all this. The "Della Cruscans" were people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians (“Arcades ambo"-bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes nd smallclothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up elegies on Enclosures and pæans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shopboard, they describe fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an "Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet." "And own that nine such poets made a Tate" Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords, Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale, Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale! Hark to those notes, narcotically soft! The cobbler-laureats (4) sing to Capel Lofft! (5) Till lo! that modern Midas, as he hears, Adds an ell's growth to his egregious ears! There lives one druid, who prepares in time 'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme; Racks his dull memory, and his duller muse, To publish faults which friendship should excuse: If friendship's nothing, self-regard might teach More polish'd usage of his parts of speech. But what is shame, or what is aught to him? He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim. Some fancied slight has roused his lurking bate, Some folly cross'd, some jest, or some debate; Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon The gather'd gall is voided in lampoon. Perhaps at some perts peech you've dared to frown, Perhaps your poem may have pleased the town: If so, alas! 't is nature in the manMay 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, Tibicen, didicit prius, extimuitque magistrum. Nunc satis est dixisse: "Ego mira poemata pango; Occupet extremum scabies; mihi turpe relinqui est, Et, quod non didici, sanè nescire fateri." shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of Remains utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well: but the "tragedies" are as rickety as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done; for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of Remains come under the statute against “resur- ¦ rection men." What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better 10 gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in an octavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of éclat, is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and be made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughingstock of Purgatory, The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now, might not some of this "Sutor ultra crepidam's" friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveig Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and, if he did, why not ling Praft into biography? And then his inscription, split into I take it as his motto? so many-modicums!-"To the Duchess of So-much, the Right Hon. (5) This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are, All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn, Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line, Si carmina condes, Nunquam te fallant animi sub vulpe latentes. etc. etc."-why, this is doling out the "soft milk of dedication" in gills, there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six fa milies of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child; a book, and a dedication; send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the devil.-[See antè, p. 61.-E.] (1) In the original MS. "Some rhyming peer-Carlisle or Carisfort." To which is subjoined this note:-" Of John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morea. Being a rhymer bimself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his foolscap crown octavos.'"-[John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems he published two pamphlets, to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.-E.] (2) 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. A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE. What reams of paper, floods of ink, The name of Camden I insert, Who novels read, and oft maintain'd He here and there some knowledge gain'd: Then why not I indulge my pen, He strides and stamps along with creaking boot, "Burn!" Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme," (3) Bis terque expertum frustra; delere jubebat, Though I no fame or profit gain, Some humours of the passing day. ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS. In tracing of the human mind Through all its various courses, And men through life assume a part They meet no better with success. Where some deserve the applause they meet; Reform 's the order of the day, I hear, For if you but reform a few, And others leave to their full bent, I fear you will but little do, And find your time and pains misspent. Let each man to his post assign'd By Nature, take his part to act, Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought, And furnish food for critics, (1) or their quills. Vir borus et prudens versus reprehendet inertes, Culpabit duros, incomtis allinet atrum Transverso calamo signum; anbitiosa recidet Ornamenta: parum claris lucem dare coget: Arguet ambigue dictum: mutanda notabit; Fiet Aristarchus: nec dicet, "Cur ego amicum Offendam in nugis."-llæ nugæ sería ducent In mala derisum semel exceptumque sinistre. Ut mala quem scabies, aut morbus regius urget, Aut fanaticus error, et iracunda Diana; Vesanum tetigisse timent fugiuntque poetam, Qui sapiunt; agitant pueri, incautique sequuntur. Hic dum sublimes versus ructatur, et errat, Si veluti merulis intentus decidit auceps In puteum foveamve; licet "Succurrite," longum Clamet," Io cives!" non sit qui tollere curet, Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, etc. etc. etc. (1) "A crust for the critics."-Bayes in the Rehearsal. (2) 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, by choking Fitz. with bad wine, or worse poetry) "me servavit Apollo!" (3) "Fitzscribble," originally "Fitzgerald." (See p. 00).-E. (4) On his table were found these words: "What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong." But Addison did 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!--[Eustace Budgell, a friend and relative of Addison's, leapt into the Thames" to escape a prosecution on account of forging the will of Dr. Tindal; in which Eustace had provided For there his carcass he might freely fling, Budgell, a rogue and rhymester, for no good, Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,―him Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach, Si quis curet opem ferre, et demittere funem; himself with a legacy of two thousand pounds. To this Pope alludes: "Let Budgell charge low Grab-street on my quill, And write whate 'er be please-except my will."-E. (5) "We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself.-. -JOHNSON. 'I should never think it time to make away with myself. I put the case of Eustace Badgeli, who was accused of forging a will, and sunk himself in the Thames, before the trial of its authenticity came on. Suppose, Sir,' said 1, that a man is absolutely sure that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace, and expulsion from society?'-JOHNSON. Then, Sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known." See Croker's Boswell, vol. ii. pp. 229. 290.-E. (6) If "dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent couplet, I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present. |