Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

game, and directed his attacks against an illustrious persecuted brethren, to shift for himself. He accordstranger.

These, which were continued, from day to day, in the Morning Post, with a rancour that seemed indefatigable, were, after some time, incorporated with such additional falsehoods as the most savage hostility could supply, and printed in a book, to which Anthony thought fit to prefix his name.

It was now that I first found a fair opportunity for dragging this pest before the public, and setting him up to view in his true light. I was not slow in seizing it, and the immediate consequence was, that an action was commenced, or threatened against every publisher of the Baviad.

If we did not know the horror which these obscure reptiles, who fatten on the filthy dregs of slander and obscenity, feel at being forced into day, we might be justly surprised that a man who lived by violating the law should have recourse to it for protection; that a common libeller, who spared no rank nor condition, should cry out on the license of the times, and solicit pity and redress from that community, almost every individual of which he had wantonly and wickedly insulted.

The first, and, indeed, the only trial that came on, was that of Mr. Faulder, (a name not often coupled with that of a dealer in libels,) who was not only acquitted, but, by a verdict of his peers, declared to have been unjustly put in a state of accusation.

ingly engaged in a New York paper, called "The Federalist," but unfortunately his writings did not happen to hit the taste of his adopted countrymen; for after a few numbers had appeared, he was taken up for a libel, and is now either chained to a wheelbarrow on the Albany road, or rotting in the provincial jail.

I take some little credit to myself for having driven this pernicious pest out of the society upon which he preyed: I say some little-for, to be candid, (though I would not have shrunk from any talents in the contest,) the warfare with Anthony was finished ere well begun. Short and slight as it was, however, it furnishes an important lesson. Those general slanderers, those bugbears of a timid public, are as sneaking as they are insolent, as weak as they are wicked.-Resist them, and like the devil, to use a sacred expression, "Resist them, and they will flee from you."

THE BAVIAD;

A PARAPHRASTIC IMITATION OF THE FIRST SATIRE
OF PERSIUS.

Impune ergo mihi recitaverit ille SONETTAS,
Hic ELEGOS.

P. WHEN I look round on man, and find how vain His passions

F. Save me from this canting strain!

P. This, my friend, to me

F. None, by my life.
P. What! none? Sure, two or three-
F. No, no; not one. "Tis sad; but-

Mr. Garrow was furnished with a number of extracts from Anthony's multifarious productions. I lamented at first, that the impatient indignation of Why, who will read it? the jury at the plaintiff's baseness, coinciding with that of the upright judge who presided, stopped him short, and prevented their being read. But I am now satisfied with the interruption. It is better that such a collection of slander, and obscenity, and treason, and impiety, should moulder in the obscurity to which its ineffable stupidity has condemned it, than that it should be brought forward to the reprobation and abhorrence of the public.

Mr. Erskine, who did every thing for his client which could be expected from his integrity and abilities, applied in the "next ensuing term" for a new trial. I have forgotten the motives for this application, but it was resisted by Lord Kenyon; and chiefly on the ground of the marked indignation shown by the jury at the plaintiff's infamous conduct and character, and that, even before Mr. Garrow had fully entered into them,

To finish Anthony's history.-His occupation was now gone. As a minister of malevolence he was no longer worth hiring; and as a dispenser of fame, no longer worth feeding. Thus abandoned, without meat and without money, he applied to a charitable institution for a few guineas, with which he shipped himself off for America,

-Leonum

Arida nutrix.

But he was even here too late; that country had discovered, some time before Anthony reached it, that receiving into its bosom the refuse and offal of every clime, and seemingly for no other reason but because they were so, was neither the way to grow rich nor respectable. Anthony had, therefore, no congratulatory addresses presented to him on his arrival, but was left, with hundreds of his poor

P. "Sad, but!"-Why?

Pity is insult here. I care not, I,
Though Boswell,* of a song and

supper vain,

* Cui non dictus Hylas? And who has not heard of James Boswell, Esq.? All the world knows (for all the world has it under his own hand) that he composed a BALLAD in honour of Mr. Pitt, with very little assistance from Dr. Trusler, and less from Mr. Dibdin; which he produced, to the utter confusion of the Foxites, and sang thanks to the scombri, et quicquid ineptis amicitur chartis, at the lord mayor's table. This important" state paper,'

I have not been able to procure; but the terror and dismay which it occasioned among the enemy, with a variety of other circumstances highly necessary to be known, may be gathered from the following letter:

"To the Conductor of the World.

"Sir,-The wasps of opposition have been very busy with my State Ballad,' the GROCER of LONDON,' and they are welcome. Pray let them know that I am vain of a hasty composition which has procured me large draughts of that popular applause in which I delight. Let me add, that there was certainly no servility on my part; for I publicly declared in Guildhall, between the encores, 'that this same Grocer had treated ME arrogantly and

ungratefully; but that, from his great merit as a minister, I was compelled to support him!'

"The time WILL come when I shall have a proper oppor tunity to show, that in one instance, at least, the man has wanted wisdom

"JAM. BOS."

Atqui vultus erat multa et præclara minantis ! Poor Bozzy! But I too threaten.-And is there nee. of thy example, then, to convince us that on

And Bell's whole choir,* (an ever-jingling train,)
In splay-foot madrigals their powers combine,
To praise Miles Andrews' verse, † and censure

mine

-Our quickest attempts

The noiseless and inaudible foot of time
Steals ere we can effect them ?

"BELL'S WHOLE CHOIR! Quousque tantum-Yes, sir, I am proud of the insinuation while I despise it. The owl, they say, was a baker's daughter. We know what we ARE, but we know not what we MAY BE. Thereby hangs a tale: and the WORLD shall have it-Choice BIOGRAPHY is the boast of My paper-Verba sat-I have

friends-so has LAURA MARIA-She is the SAPPHо of the

age.

I wrong her-The MONTHLY REVIEWERS read GREEK, and they prefer our fair country woman. I read Greek, too, but I make no boast of it. I sell Mrs. RoBINSON's works, and I know their value- It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.'

"YENDA I despise; ANTHONY PASQUIN I execrateThe brilliant effusions of fancy, the bright coruscations of genius only, illuminate the ORACLE-and ARNO and CESARIO, names dear to the MUSE OF GLORY, constitute a proud distinction between the unfading leaves of the PYTHIAN shrine, and the perishable records of the day. "JOHN BELL. "P.S.BLOCKHEADS with reason'--you know the rest. I fear nothing-yet I love not everlasting feuds-At a word: Will one of my NEW COMMONPLACE BOOKS be acceptable ? "J. B."

+ This gentleman, who has long been known as an industrious paragraph-monger in the morning papers, took it into his head, some time since, to try his hand at a prologue. Having none of the requisites for this business, he laboured to little purpose till Dullness, whose attention to her children is truly maternal, suggested to him, that unmeaning ribaldry and vulgarity might possibly be substituted for harmony, spirit, taste, and sense. -He caught at the hint, made the experiment, and suc

ceeded to a miracle. Since that period every play-wright

No, not a whit. Let the besotted town
Bestow, as fashion prompts, the laurel crown;
But do not THOU, who makest a fair pretence
To that best boon of heaven, to COMMON SENSE,
Resign thy judgment to the rout, and pay
Knee-worship to the idol of the day:
For all are-

F. What? speak freely; let me know.
P. O might I! durst I! Then-but let it go;
Yet, when I view the follies that engage
The full-grown children of this piping age;
See snivelling Jerningham, at fifty, weep
O'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep;
See Cowley* frisk it to one ding-dong chime,
And weekly cuckold her poor spouse in rhyme;
See Thrale's gray widow with a satchel roam,
And bring, in pomp, her labour'd nothings home;
See Robinson forget her state, and move
On crutches towards the grave, to " Light o' Love;"t
See Parsons, while all sound advice he scorns,
Mistake two soft excrescences for horns;

*For the poetic amours of this lady, see the British Album, particularly the poem called the INTERVIEW. + Light o' Love, that's a tune that goes without a burden. Shakspeare.

In the first editions of this and the following poems I had overlooked Mr. Parsons, though an undoubted Bavian. This nettled him. "Ha!" quoth he, "better bo damn'd than mention'd not at all." He accordingly applied to me, (in a circuitous manner, I confess,) and as a particular favour was finally admitted, in the shape of a motto, into the title-page of the Mæviad. These were the lines:

May he who hates not Crusca's sober verse,

Love Merry's drunken prose, so smooth and terse; The same may rake for sense in Parsons' skull, And shear his hogs, poor fool! and milk his bull.

The first distich contains what Mr. Burke calls "high from O'Keefe to Della Crusca, "a heavy declension!" matter!" and can only be understood by the initiated; has been solicitous to preface his labours with a few the second, (would it had never been written!) instead lines of his manufacturing, to excite and perpetuate the good-humour of his audience. As the reader may pro-pected, and quieting him for ever, had a most fatal effect of gratifying the ambition of Mr. Parsons, as I fondly ex

bably not dislike a short specimen of Mr. Andrews' wonder-working poetry, I have subjoined the following extract from his last and best performance, his prologue to Lorenzo.

"Feg," cries fat Madam Dump, from Wapping Wall, "I don't love plays no longer not at all; They're now so vulgar, and begin so soon, None but low people dines till afternoon; Then they mean summot, and the like o' that,

And it's impossible to sit and chat.

Give me the uppero, where folks come so grand in,
And nobody need have no understanding.
Ambizione! del tiranno!

Piu forte, piu piano, a che fin

Zounds! here's my warrant, and I will come in.
Diavolo; who comes here to so confound us?
The constables, to take you to the round-house.
De round-house!-Mi!

Now comes the dance, the demi charactere,
Chacone, the pas de deux, the here, the there
And last, the chief high bounding on the loose toe,
Or poised like any Mercury, O che gusto!"

upon his poor head, and, from an honest, painstaking gentleman, converted him, in imagination, into a Mino

taur:

Continuo implevit falsis mugitibus urbem, Et sæpe in lævi quæsivit cornua fronte. The motto appeared on a Wednesday; and on the Saturday after, the morosoph Este (who appears to have believed in the reality of the metamorphosis) published the first bellowings of Mr. Parsons, with the following introduction:

therefore, I wash my hands-but I would fain ask Messrs. Morton and Rey. nolds, ("the worthy followers of O'Keefe, and the present supporters of the British stage," whether it be absolutely necessary to introduce their pieces with such ineffable nonsense as this,-

Betty, it's come into my head

Old maids grow cross because their cats are dead;

My governess hath been in such a fuss

About the death of our old tabby puss.

She wears black stockings-ah! ah! what a pother,
'Cause one old cat's in mourning for another 'a

If it be not-for pity's sake, gentlemen, spare us the disgrace of it; and O heavens! if it be-deign in mercy sometimes to apply to the bellmen, or the

And this was heard with applause! and this was read grave-stone cutter, that we may stand a little chance of having our doggrel with delight! O shame! where is thy blush?

-Morantur

Pauci ridiculum effugientem ex urbe pudorem.1

1 It is rightly observed by Solomon, that you may bray a fool in a mortar without making him wiser. Upon this principle I account for the stationary stupidity of Mr. A.; whose faculties, "God help the while!" do not seem a what improved by the dreadful pounding which he has received. Of him,

ribaldry "with a difference."

1 Parsons I know, and this I heard him say,
Whilst Gifford's harmless page before him lay,
I too can laugh, I was the first beginner.

Parsons of himself, Teleg. March 10
Quam multi faciunt quod Eros, sed lumine sicco;
Pars major lachrymas ridet, et intus habet!

See the "Will"-a Bartholomew-fair farce, by Mr. Reynolds

And butting all he meets, with awkward pains,
Lay bare his forehead, and expose his brains :
I scarce can rule my spleen--

F. Forbear, forbear;
And what the great delight in, learn to spare.
P. It must not, cannot be; for I was born
To brand obtrusive ignorance with scorn;
On bloated pedantry to pour my rage,
And hiss preposterous fustian from the stage.
LO, DELLA CRUSCA!* In his closet pent,
He toils to give the crude conception vent.

"ON MR. GIFFORD'S MOTTO.

"The following SPIRITED CHASTISEMENT of the vulgar ignorance and malignity in question was sent on Thursday night-but by an accidental error in one of our clerks,

or in the servant delivering the copy at the office, it was unfortunately mislaid!"—

Why this is as it should be ;-the gods take care of Cato! Who sees not that they interfered, and by conveying the copy out of the compositor's way, procured the author of the Mæviad two comfortable nights! But to the spirited chastisement.'

'Nor wool the pig, nor milk the bull produces.' The profundity of the last observation, by-the-by, proves Mr. Parsons to be an accurate observer of nature: and if the three Irishmen who went nine miles to suck a bull, and came back a-dry, had fortunately had the honour of his acquaintance, we should probably have heard nothing of their far-famed expedition

'Nor wool the pig, nor milk the bull produces,
Yet each has something for far different uses:
For boars, pardie! have tusks, and bulls have horns.'
Η, Νέμεσις δε κακαν εγραψατο φωναν

For from that hour scarcely a week, or indeed a day, has elapsed, in which Mr. Parsons has not made himself ridiculous by threatening me in the Telegraph, Oracle, World, &c., with those formidable nonentities.

Well and wisely singeth the poet, non unus mentes agital furor: yet while I give an involuntary smile to the oddity of Mr. Parsons' disease, I cannot but lament that his friends, (and a gentleman who is said to belong to more clubs than Sir Watkin Lewes must need have friends,) I cannot, I say, but lament, that on the first appearance of these knobs, these 'excrescences,' as I call them, his friends did not have him cut for the simples! LO, DELLA CRUSCA!

"O thou, to whom superior worth's allied,

Thy country's honour, and the muses' pride

So says Laura Maria

Et solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat?

Indeed she says a great deal more; but as I do not understand it, I forbear to lengthen my quotation.

Innumerable odes, sonnets, &c. published from time to time in the daily papers, have justly procured this gentleman the reputation of the first poet of the age: but the performance which called forth the high-sounding panegyric above-mentioned is a philosophical rhapsody in praise of the French revolution, called the "Wreath of Liberty,"

Of this poem no reader (provided he can read) is at this time ignorant; but as there are various opinions concerning it, and as I do not choose, perhaps, to dispute with a lady of Mrs. Robinson's critical abilities, I shall select a few passages from it, and leave the world to judge how truly its author is said to be

"Gifted with the sacred lyre, Whose sounds can more than mortal thoughts inspire." This supernatural effort of genius, then, is chiefly distinguished by three very prominent features.-Downright nonsense. Downright frigidity. Downright doggrel.— Of each of these as the instances occur.

"Hang o'er his eye the gossamery tear.
Wreathe round her airy harp the timorous joy.

Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound,
Truth sacrificed to letters, sense to sound,
False glare, incongruous images, combine;
And noise and nonsense clatter through the line.
"Tis done. Her house the generous Piozzi lends,
And thither summons her blue-stocking friends;
The summons her blue-stocking friends obey,
Lured by the love of poetry-and tea.

The BARDSteps forth, in birth-day splendour drest, His right hand graceful waving o'er his breast; His left extending, so that all may see

A roll inscribed "THE WREATH OF LIBERTY."
So forth he steps, and, with complacent air,
Bows round the circle, and assumes the chair;
With lemonade he gargles next his throat,
Then sweetly preludes to the liquid note:

And now 'tis silence all. "GENIUS OR MUSE"*
Thus while the flowery subject he pursues,

Recumbent eve rock the reposing tide. A web-work of despair, a mass of woes. And o'er my lids the scalding tumour roll." "TUMOUR, a morbid swelling."-Johnson. An excellent thing to roll over an eye, especially if it happen, as in the present case, to be "scalding."

"Summer tints begemm'd the scene, And silky ocean slept in glossy green." "While air's nocturnal ghost, in paly shroud, Glances with grisly glare from cloud to cloud," "And gauzy zephyrs, fluttering o'er the plain,

On twilight's bosom drop their filmy rain." Unus instar omnium! This couplet staggered me. I should be loath to be found correcting a madman; and yet mere folly seems unequal to the production of such exquisite nonsense.

"The explosion came

And burst the o'ercharged culverin of shame."
"Days of old

Their perish'd, proudest pageantry unfold."
-"Nothing I descry,

But the bare hoast of barren heraldry."
"The huntress queen

Showers her shafts of silver o'er the scene.

To these add," moody monarchs, turgid tyrant, pampered popes, radiant rivers, cooling cataracts, lazy Loires, (of which, by-the-by, there are none,) gay Garonnes, gloomy glass, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered lightnings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, blissful blessings, rich reasonings, meliorating mercies, vicious venalities, sublunary suns, dewy vapours damp, that sweep the silent swamp;" and a world of others, to be found in the compass of half a dozen pages.

"In phosphor blaze of genealogic line." N. B. Written to "the turning of a brazen candlestick." "O better were it ever to be lost

In blank negation's sea, than reach the coast." "Should the zeal of Parliament be empty words." -"Doom for a breath

A hundred reasoning hecatombs to death." A hecatomb is a sacrifice of a hundred head of oxen. Where did this gentleman hear of their reasoning? "A while I'll ruminate on time and fate;

And the most probable event of things"EUGE, MAGNE POETA! Well may Laura Maria say, "That Genius glows in every classic line,

And Nature dictates-every thing that's thine." "Genius or Muse, whoe'er thou art, whose thrill Exalts the fancy, and inflames the will, Bids o'er the heart sublime sensation roll, And wakes ecstatic fervour in the soul." See the commencement of the Wreath of Liberty, where our great poet, with a dexterity peculiar to himself, has contrived to fill several quarto pages without a single idea.

wild delirium round th' assembly flies;
Unusual lustre shoots from Emma's eyes,
Luxurious Arno drivels as he stands,
And Anna frisks, and Laura claps her hands.
O wretched man! And dost thou toil to please,
At this late hour, such prurient ears as these?
Is thy poor pride contented to receive
Such transitory fame as fools can give?
Fools, who, unconscious of the critics' laws,
Rain in such showers their indistinct applause,
That THOU, e'en THOU, who livest upon renown,
And, with eternal puffs, insult'st the town,
Art forced, at length, to check the idiot roar,

And are not now the author's ashes blest?
Lies not the turf now lightly on his breast?
Do not sweet violets now around him bloom?
Laurels now burst spontaneous from his tomb?-
F. This is mere mockery: and (in your ear)
Reason is ill refuted by a sneer.

Is praise an evil? Is there to be found
One so indifferent to its soothing sound,
As not to wish hereafter to be known,
And make a long futurity his own;
Rather than-

P. With 'Squire Jerningham descend To pastry cooks and moths," and there an end!" And cry," For heaven's sweet sake, no more, no O thou, who deign'st this homely scene to share, Thou know'st, when chance (though this indeed be

more !"

"But why, (thou say'st,) why am I learn'd, why
fraught

With all the priest and all the sage have taught,
If the huge mass within my bosom pent
Must struggle there, despairing of a vent?"
THOU learn'd! Alas, for learning! She is sped.
And hast thou dimm'd thy eyes, and rack'd thy
head,

And broke thy rest for THIS, for THIS alone?
And is thy knowledge nothing if not known?
O lost to sense!-But still, thou criest, 'tis sweet,
To hear "That's HE!" from every one we meet :
That's HE whom critic Bell declares divine,
For whom the fair diurnal laurels twine;
Whom magazines, reviews, conspire to praise,
And Greathead calls the Homer of our days.

F. And is it nothing, then, to hear our name
Thus blazon'd by the GENERAL VOICE of fame?
P. Nay, it were every thing, did THAT dis-
pense

The sober verdict found by taste and sense:
But mark our jury. O'er the flowing bowl,
When wine has drown'd all energy of soul,
Ere FARO comes, (a dreary interval !)
For some fond fashionable lay they call
Here the spruce ensign, tottering on his chair,
With lisping accent, and affected air,
Recounts the wayward fatet of that poor poet,
Who, born for anguish, and disposed to show it,
Did yet so awkwardly his means employ,
That gaping fiends mistook his grief for joy!
Lost in amaze at language so divine,

The audience hiccup, and exclaim, "Damn'd
fine!"

At this late hour-I learn from Della Crusca's lamentations, that he is declined into the vale of years; that the women say to him, as they formerly said to Anacreon, yepwv εt, and that Love, about two years since,

"Tore his name from his bright page, And gave it to approaching age."

rare)*

[blocks in formation]

Not mine the soul which pants not after fame :—
Ambitious of a poet's envied name,

1

I haunt the sacred fount, athirst, to prove
The grateful influence of the stream I love.

And yet, my friend-though still, at praise be-
stow'd,

Mine eye has glisten'd, and my cheek has
glow'd,

Yet, when I prostitute the lyre to gain
The Euges which await the modish strain,
May the sweet muse my grovelling hopes with-
stand,

And tear the strings indignant from my hand!
Nor think that, while my verse too much I prize,
Too much th' applause of fashion I despise ;
For mark to what 'tis given, and then declare,
Mean though I am, if it be worth my care.
-Is it not given to Este's unmeaning dash,
To Topham's fustian, Reynolds' flippant trash,
To Morton's catchword,† Greathead's idiot line,

Thou know'st, when chance, &c.-To see how a Cruscan can blunder! Mr. Parsons thus politely com ments on this unfortunate hemistich:

"Thou lowest of the imitating race,

Thou imp of satire, and thou foul disgrace;

Who callest each coarse phrase a lucky hit," &c. Alas! no: But this is of a piece with his qui-pro-quo on the preface of the Mæviad-where, on my saying that J had laid the poem aside for two years, he exultingly exclaims, "Soh! it was two years in hand, then!"

Mr. Parsons is highly celebrated, I am told, for his skill in driving a bargain: it is to be presumed that he does it with his spectacles on.-But, indeed, he began with a blunder :-if he had read my motto carefully, he must have seen that I never taxed him with keeping a bull for his own milking: no; it was the infatuated man who looked for sense in Mr. Parsons' skull that was charged + Recounts the wayward fate, &c.-In the INTERVIEW, of it produced the metamorphosis which I have already with this solecism in economics. And yet the bare belief see the British Album, the lover, finding his mistress in-noticed, and which his friends have not yet ceased to exorable, comforts himself, and justifies her, by boasting how well he can play the fool. And never did Don Quixote exhibit half so many extravagant tricks in the Sierra Morena, for the beaux yeux of his dulcinea, as our distracted amoroso threatens to perform for the no less beautiful ones of Anna Matilda.

"Yes, I will prove that I deserve my fate,

Was born for anguish, and was formed for hate;
With such transcendent wo will breathe my sigh,
That envying fiends shall think it ecstacy," &c.

deplore.

+ Morton's catchword. WONDERFUL is the profundity of the bathos! I thought that O'Keefe had reached the bottom of it; but, as uncle Bowling says, I thought a d-n'd lie; for Holcroft, Reynolds, and Morton have sunk beneath him. They have happily found

In the lowest deep a lower still, and persevere in exploring it with an emulation which does them honour.

And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant,* and Merry's Moor- That e'en the guilty at their sufferings smile,

fields whine ?t

Skill'd in one useful science, at the least,

The great man comes and spreads a sumptuous feast:

Then, when his guests behold the prize at stake,
And thirst and hunger only are awake,

My friends, he cries, what think the galleries, pray,
And what the boxes, of my last new play?
Speak freely;-tell me all ;-come, be sincere ;
For truth, you know, is music to my ear.
They speak! alas, they cannot. But shall I ?
I, who receive no bribe? who dare not lie?
This, then "That worse was never writ before,
Nor worse will be, till-thou shalt write once more."
Bless'd be "two-headed Janus!" though inclined,
No waggish stork can peck at him behind;
He no wry mouth, no lolling tongue can fear,
Nor the brisk twinkling of an ass's ear:
But you, ye St. Johns, cursed with one poor head,
Alas! what mockeries have not ye to dread!
Hear now our guests.-The critics, sir! they cry-
Merit like yours the critics may defy :
But this, indeed, they say, “Your varied rhymes,
At once the boast and envy of the times,
In every page, song, sonnet, what you will,
Show boundless genius and unrivall❜d skill.
"If comedy be yours, the searching strain
Blends such sweet pleasure with corrective pain,

* And Holcroft's Shug-lane cant. This is a poor stupid wretch, to whom infidelity and disloyalty have given a momentary notoriety, which has imposed upon the oscitancy of the managers, and opened the theatre to two or three of his gravelling and senseless productions.

And bless the lancet, though they bleed the

while.

If tragedy, th' impassion'd numbers flow,
In all the sad variety of wo,

With such a liquid lapse, that they betray
The breast unwares, and steal the soul away.'
Thus fool'd, the moon-struck tribe, whose best

essays

Sunk in acrostics, riddles, roundelays,
To loftier labours now pretend a call,
And bustle in heroics, one and all.
*E'en Bertie burns of gods and chiefs to sing-
Bertie, who lately twitter'd to the string
His namby-pamby madrigals of love,
In the dark dingles of a glittering grove,
Where airy lays,† woven by the hand of morn,
Were hung to dry upon a cobweb thorn!

Happy the soil, where bards like mushrooms

rise,

And ask no culture but what Byshe supplies! Happier the bards, who, write whate'er they will, Find gentle readers to admire them still!

Some love the verse that like Maria's flows, No rubs to stagger, and no sense to pose; Which read, and read, you raise your eyes in doubt, And gravely wonder-what it is about. These fancy" BELL'S POETICS" only sweet, And intercept his hawkers in the street; There, smoking hot, inhale MrT YENDA'st strains, And the rank fame of TONY PASQUIN's brains.

* E'en Bertie, &c.-For Bertie, (Greathead, I think they call him,) see the Mæviad.

Where airy lays, &c.

"Was it the shuttle of the morn
That hung upon the cobweb'd thorn
Thy airy lay? Or did it rise,
In thousand rich enamell'd dyes,
To greet the noonday sun?" &c.

Will future ages believe that this facetious triumvirate should think nothing more to be necessary to the construction of a play, than an eternal repetition of some contemptible vulgarity, such as "That's your sort!" "Hey, damme !" "What's to pay ?" "Keep moving !" &c. They will; for they will have blockheads of their own, who will found their claims to celebrity on similar follies. What, however, they will never credit is, that these dri--Album, vol. ii. vellings of idiotism, these catchwords, should actually preserve their respective authors from being hooted off the stage. No, they will not believe that an English audience could be so besotted, so brutified, as to receive such senseless exclamations with bursts of laughter, with peals of applause. I cannot believe it myself, though I have witnessed it. Haud credo-if I may reverse the good father's position-haud credo, quia possibile est.

† Merry's Moorfields whine.-In a most wretched rhapsody of incomprehensible nonsense, addressed by this gentleman to Mrs. Robinson, which she, in her valuable poems, (page 100,) calls a charming composition, abounding in lines of exquisite beauty, is the following

rant:

Conjure up demons from the main,
Storms upon storms indignant heap,
Bid ocean howl, and nature weep,

Till the Creator blush to see How horrible his world can be: While I will glory to blaspheme, And make the joys of hell my theme." The reader, perhaps, wonders what dreadful event gave birth to these fearful imprecations. As far as I can collect from the poem, it was the momentary refusal of the aforesaid Mrs. Robinson-to open her eyes! Surely, it is most devoutly to be wished that these poor creatures would recollect, amidst their frigid ravings and commonplace extravagances, that excellent maxim of POPE

"Persist, by nature, reason, taste unawed;
But learn, ye dunces, not to scorn your God."

MIT YENDA.-This is Mr. Tim, allas Mr. Timothy Adney, a most pertinacious gentleman, who makes a conspicuous figure in the daily papers under the ingenious signature above cited; it being, as the reader already sees, his own name read backward. "Gentle dulness ever loves a joke!"

Of his prodigious labours I have nothing by me but the following stanza, taken from what he calls his Poor Man:

Reward the bounty of your generous hand,

Your head each night in comfort shall be laid,
And plenty smile throughout your fertile land,
While I do hasten to the silent grave."

"Good morrow, my worthy masters and mistresses all, and a merry Christmas to you!"

I have been guilty of a misnomer. Mr. Adney has politely informed me, since the above was written, that his Christian name is not Timothy, but Thomas. The anagram in question, therefore, must be MOT YENDA, omitting the H, euphoniæ gratia. I am happy in an opportunity of doing justice to so correct a gentleman, and I pray him to continue his valuable lucubrations.

§ TONY PASQUIN.-I have too much respect for my reader, to affront him with any specimens of this man's poetry, at once licentious and dull beyond example: at the same time I cannot resist the temptation of presenting him with the following stanzas, written by a friend of mine, and sufficiently illustrative of the character in question:

« AnkstesnisTęsti »