A POSTSCRIPT TO "RETALIATION" [After the Fourth Edition of Doctor GOLDSMITH'S Retaliation was printed, the Publisher received a supplementary Epitaph on the Wit and Punster Caleb Whitefoord. Though it is found appended to the later issues of the Poem, it has been suspected that Whitefoord wrote it himself. It may be that the following, which has recently come to light, is another forgery.] HERE JOHNSON is laid. walk; Have a care how you If he stir in his sleep, in his sleep he will talk. sound, What a torrent of His hearers invaded, encompass'd and-drown'd! Your premiss is wrong," or "You don't see your way, Sir!" How he silenc'd a prig, or a slip-shod romancer! How he pounc'd on a fool with a knock-me-down answer! But peace to his slumbers! Tho' rough in the rind, The heart of the giant was gentle and kind: What signifies now, if in bouts with a friend, When his pistol miss'd fire, he would use the butt-end ? If he trampled your flow'rs, like a bull in a garden, What matter for that? he was sure to ask pardon; And you felt on the whole, tho' he'd toss'd you and gor'd you, It was something, at least, that he had not ignor'd you. Yes! the outside was rugged. But test him within, You found he had nought of the bear but the skin; duty; And he hated the Whigs, and he soften'd to Beauty. Turn now to his Writings. I grant, in his tales, The crowd of compilers who copied his faults,- So strong in expression, conviction, persuasion ? So prompt to take colour from place and occasion? So widely remov'd from the doubtful, the ten tative; So truly and in the best sense-argumentative? You may talk of your BURKES and your GIBBONS so clever, But I hark back to him with 66 And I feel as I muse on his ponderous figure, OT to be tuneless in old age! NOT Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage, Who, in his Winter's snow, Still sings with note as sweet and clear As in the morning of the year When the first violets blow! Blest!—but more blest, whom Summer's heat, Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat, Have taught no feverish lure; Whose Muse, benignant and serene, Lie calm, O white and laureate head! Since from the voiceless grave, Thy voice shall speak to old and young CHARLES GEORGE GORDON "RA ATHER be dead than praised," he said, In this slack-sinewed age endued "Rather be dead than praised!" Shall we, Who loved thee, now that Death sets free Thine eager soul, with word and line Our pain Nay, let us hold, be mute. |