LD ENGLAND has not loft her pray'r,
And GEORGE, (thank heav'n !) has got an heir.
A royal babe, a PRINCE of WALES.
-Poets! I pity all your nails-
What reams of paper will be fpoil'd!
What gradufes be daily foil'd
By inky fingers, greafy thumbs,
Hunting the word that never comes!
Now Academics pump their wits,
And lash in vain their lazy tits;
In vain they whip, and flafh, and fpur,
The callous jades will never ftir;
Nor can they reach Parnaffus' hill,
Try every method which they will.
Nay, should the tits get on for once,
Each rider is fo grave a dunce,
That, as I've heard good judges say,
'Tis ten to one they'd lose their way;
Tho' not one wit beftrides the back
Of ufeful drudge, ycleped hack,
But fine bred things of mettled blood,
Pick'd from Apollo's royal ftud.
Greek, Roman, nay Arabian fteeds,
Or thofe our mother country breeds ;
Some ride ye in, and ride ye out,
And to come home go round about,
Nor on the green fwerd, nor the road,
And that I think they call an ODe.
Some take the pleafant country air,
And fmack their whips and drive a pair,
Each horfe with bells which clink and chime,
And fo they marchand that is rhime.
Some copy with prodigious skill
The figures of a buttery-bill,
Which, with great folks of erudition,
Shall pafs for Coptic or Phoenician.
While fome, as patriot love prevails,
To compliment a prince of Wales,
Salute the royal babe in Welsh,
And fend forth gutturals like a belch.
What pretty things imagination
Will fritter out in adulation!
The Pagan Gods shall vifit earth,
To triumph in a Chriftian's birth.
While claffic poets, pure and chafte,
Of trim and academic TASTE,
Shall lug them in by head and shoulders,
To be or speakers, or beholders.
MARS fhall present him with a lance,
To humble Spain and conquer France;
The GRACES, buxom, blith, and gay,
Shall at his cradle dance the Hay;
And VENUS, with her train of Loves,
Shall bring a thousand pair of doves
To bill, to coo, to whine, to squeak,
Through all the dialects of Greek.
How many fwains of claffic breed,
Shall deftly tune their oaten reed,
And bring their Doric nymphs to town,
To fing their measures up and down,
In notes alternate clear and fweet,
Like Ballad-fingers in a street.
While those who grafp at reputation,
From imitating imitation,
Shall hunt each cranny, nook, and creek,
For precious fragments in the Greek,
And rob the fpital, and the wafte,
For fenfe, and sentiment, and taste,
What Latin hodge-podge, Grecian hafh, With Hebrew roots, and English trash, Shall academic cooks produce
For present show and future ufe!
FELLOWS! who've foak'd away their knowledge,
In fleepy refidence at college;
Whofe lives are like a stagnant pool,
Muddy and placid, dull and cool;
Mere drinking, eating; eating, drinking;
With no impertinence of thinking;
Who lack no farther erudition,
Than just to set an impofition
To cramp, demolish, and dispirit,
Each true begotten child of merit ;
Cenfors, who, in the day's broad light,
Punish the vice they act at night;
Whofe charity with felf begins,
Nor covers others venial fins;
But that their feet may safely tread,
Take up hypocrisy instead,
As knowing that must always hide
A multitude of fins befide;
Whose rufty wit is at a stand,
Without a freshman at their hand;
(Whose service muft of course create
The juft return of fev'n-fold hate)
Lord! that fuch good and useful men
Should ever turn to books agen.
YET matter must be gravely plann'd,
And fyllables on fingers fcann'd,
And racking pangs rend lab'ring head,
Till lady Mufe is brought to-bed :
What hunting, changing, toiling, sweating,
To bring the useful epithet in!
Where the crampt measure kindly shows
It will be verfè, but should be profe.
So, when its neither light nor dark,
To 'prentice spruce, or lawyer's clerk,
The nymph, who takes her nightly stand
At fome fly corner in the Strand,
Plump in the cheft, tight in the boddice,
Seems to the eye a perfect goddess;
But canvass'd more minutely o'er,
Turns out an old, ftale, batter'd whore.
Yet must these fons of GoWNED EASE,
Proud of the plumage of Degrees,
Forfake their APATHY a while,
To figure in the Roman ftile,
And offer incenfe at the fhrine
Of LATIN POETRY Divine.
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