LINES INSCRIBED UPON A CUP FORMED FROM A SKULL. (1) START not-nor deem my spirit fled: In me behold the only skull, From which, unlike a living head, Whatever flows is never dull. I lived, I loved, I quaff'd, like thee; Fill up The worm hath fouler lips than thine. Better to hold the sparkling grape, Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood; And circle in the goblet's shape The drink of Gods, than reptile's food. Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone, And when, alas! our brains are gone, What nobler substitute than wine? "The gar (1) Lord Byron gives the following account of this cup: dener, in digging, discovered a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey, about the time it was demonasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell." It is now in the possession of Colonel Wildman, the proprietor of Newstead Abbey. In several of our elder dramatists, mention is made of the custom of quaffing wine out of similar cups. For example, in Dekker's " Wonder of a Kingdom," Torrenti says, — "Would I had ten thousand soldiers' heads, Their skulls set all in silver; to drink healths E Quaff while thou canst: another race, Why not? since through life's little day Newstead Abbey, 1808. ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS, A SATIRE. "I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew! SHAKSPEARE. "Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true, POPE. [The first edition of this satire, which then began with what is now the ninety-seventh line (" Time was, ere yet," &c.), appeared in March, 1809. A second, to which the author prefixed his name, followed in October of that year; and a third and fourth were called for during his first pil grimage, in 1810 and 1811. On his return to England, a fifth edition was prepared for the press by himself, with considerable care, but suppressed, and, except one copy, destroyed, when on the eve of publication. The text is now printed from the copy that escaped; on casually meeting with which, in 1816, he re-perused the whole, and wrote on the margin some annotations, which also we shall preserve, distinguishing them, by the insertion of their date, from those affixed to the prior editions. The first of these MS. notes of 1816 appears on the fly-leaf, and runs thus: -"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for the contents; and nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another, prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames."- EJ PREFACE. (1) ALL my friends, learned and unlearned, have urged me not to publish this Satire with my name. If I were to be "turned from the career of my humour by quibbles quick, and paper bullets of the brain," I should have complied with their counsel. But I am not to be terrified by abuse, or bullied by reviewers, with or without arms. I can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive. An author's works are public property: he who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors I have endeavoured to commemorate may do by me as I have done by them. I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings, than in mending their own. But my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better. As the poem has met with far more success than I expected, I have endeavoured in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusal. (1) This preface was written for the second edition, and printed with it. The noble author had left this country previous to the publication of that edition, and is not yet returned. Note to the fourth edition, 1811.["He is, and gone again."-B. 1816.] |