A SATIRE ON SATIRISTS.

For eaters of goose-liver there is drest

This part alone; the cats divide the rest;
The fire that plumps it, leaves the creature dry,
So too with poets does the poetry:
This is their liver, trufled, tender, sweet,

And all beside is sad unchristian* meat.

* And all beside is sad unchristian meat.-He who could partake of such an abominable luxury, knowing its process, ought not even to be buried where men are buried, but (in strict retributive justice) given to the kites and crows.

Let thou the Muse's spangled tissue play About thy head and bosom, night and day, But throw the bone 'twas workt upon, away.

Thinly by Nature is our honey spread
On very coarse and very bitter bread.
And from our corners we descry asquint
A prettier book than ours, a sharper print;
And in this school-room call the cleverest lad

If sober, stupid, and if fiery, mad.

Who in hard stems and clotted leaves would rout,

When the whole essence he may have without ?
Who to the husks of poets would sit down,
When Murray sells the kernels for a crown?
Grant me, propitious Fate! to meet our best
Only on Pindus, and in heaven the rest;
Leaving, to walk beside me while I stay,
The kind companion of an earlier day,
Whom genius, virtue, manly grief, endear,
And bonds draw closer every circling year.

In fashionable squares and new-built streets

Suburban Muses take their several beats ;

And whoso passes their select purlieus
Is thief or strumpet, anything but Muse.

Sooner shall Tuscan Vallombrosa lack wood

Than Britain Grub-street, Billingsgate, and Black

wood.

Slave-merchants, scalpers, cannibals, agree ..

In Letter-land no brotherhood must be.

If there were living upon earth but twain,

One would be Abel and the other Cain,

Here, be our cause the wrong one or the right,
Better to pay than play, to run than fight.
Foul are the boxers, seconds, ring, and green ...
And we wear gloves, and much prefer the clean.
The strife of letters will allow no peace,
No Truce of God, no sabbath's armistice.
66 Down with your money! down with it, new-

“ And rise Sir Sotheby,* and stand by Homer.
« O’er Pope, o'er Cowper, lift thy licensed head,
“ Beat all the living, challenge all the dead.
“ He who refuses us our fare, forgets
“ Our junction-magazines and branch-gazettes ;
“ Our rail-ways running into every town,
“ And our facilities for setting down.
“ Precaution taken, each may find his friend,

66 Who makes the limberest threadcase stand on end.

“ Few are the authors here with lives uncharm'd,

“ And thinnest ghosts march through their moon

light, arm’d.”

There never squatted a more sordid brood Beneath the battlements of Holyrood,

* Who can account for the eulogies of Blackwood on Sotheby's Homer, as compared with Pope's and Cowper's ? Eulogy is not reported to be the side he lies upon, in general.