.

Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,
By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone, but, pausing on the road,
The bard sighs forth a gentle episode ;*
And gravely tells-attend, each beauteous Miss!
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.

Bowles, in thy memory let this precept dwell-
Stick to thy sonnets, man! at least they sell.
But if some new-born whim or larger bribe
Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe
If chance some bard, though once by dunces feared,
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered-

If Pope, whose fame and genius from the first
Have foiled the best of critics, needs the worst-
Do thou essay; each fault, each failing, scan ;
The first of poets was, alas! but man!
Rake from each ancient dunghill every pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll;†

Let all the scandals of a former age

Perch on thy pen and flutter o'er thy page;
Affect a candour which thou canst not feel,
Clothe envy in the garb of honest zeal;
Write as if St. John's soul could still inspire,
And do from hate what Mallett did for hire.
Oh! hadst thou lived in that congenial time,

To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme ;§

* The episode above alluded to is the story of Robert a Machin' and 'Anna d'Arfet,' a pair of constant lovers, who performed the kiss above mentioned, that startled the woods of Madeira.

+ Curl is one of the heroes of the 'Dunciad,' and was a bookseller. Lord Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, author of 'Lines to the Imitator of Horace.'

Lord Bolingbroke hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the poet had retained some copies of a work by Lord Bolingbroke, (the 'Patriot King,') which that splendid, but malignant genius, had ordered to be destroyed. § Dennis, the critic, and Ralph, the rhymester.

'Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,

Making night hideous; answer him, ye owls !' Dunciad.

S

Thronged with the rest around his living head,
Not raised thy hoof against the lion dead;
A ineet reward had crowned, thy glorious gains,
And linked thee to the Dunciad for thy pains.*

Another Epic! who inflicts again

More books of blank upon the sons of men ?
Boeotian Cottle, rich Bristowa's boast,
Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast,
And sends his goods to market-all alive!
Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five!"
Fresh fish from Helicon! who'll buy? who'll buy ?
The precious bargain's cheap-In faith, not I:
Too much in turtle Bristol's sons delight,
Too much o'er bowls of rack prolong the night:
If Commerce fills the purse, she clogs the brain,
And Amos Cottle strikes the lyre in vain.
In him an author's luckless lot behold!
Condemned to make the books which once he sold.
Oh! Amos Cottle-(Phœbus! what a name
To fill the speaking-trump of future fame !)-
Oh! Amos Cottle! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink
When thus devoted to poetic dreams,
Who will peruse thy prostituted reams?
Oh! pen perverted! paper misapplied!
Had Cottle+ still adorned the counter's side,
Bent o'er the desk, or, born to useful toils,
Been taught to make the paper which he soils,
Ploughed, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb,
He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him.

As Sisyphus against the infernal steep

Rolls the huge rock, whose motions ne'er may sleep,

* See Bowles's late edition of Pope's works, for which he received three hundred pounds: thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another than to elevate his own.

+ Mr. Cottle, Amos, or Joseph, I don't know which, but one or both, once sellers of books they did not write, and now writers of books that do not sell, have published a pair of Epics. Alfred,' (poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!) Alfred, and the Fall of Cambria.'

So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond! heaves

Dull Maurice* all his granite weight of leaves :
Smooth solid monuments of mental pain!

The petrifactions of a plodding brain,

That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back again.

With broken lyre and cheek serenely pale,

Lo! sad Alcæus wanders down the vale!

Though fair they rose, and might have bloomed at last,
His hopes have perished by the Northern blast:
Nipped in the bud by Caledonian gales,

His blossoms wither as the blast prevails!
O'er his lost works let classic Sheffield weep:
May no rude hand disturb their early sleep!+

Yet, say! why should the bard, at once, resign
His claim to favour from the sacred Nine,
For ever startled by the mingled howl
Of Northern wolves that still in darkness prowl;
A coward brood, which mangle as they prey,
By hellish instinct, all that cross their way ?
Aged or young, the living or the dead,
No mercy find-these harpies must be fed.
Why do the injured unresisting yield
The calm possession of their native field?
Why tamely thus before their fangs retreat,
Nor hunt the bloodhounds back to Arthur's Seat?

Health to immortal Jeffrey! once, in name,
England could boast a judge almost the saine :
In soul so like, so merciful, yet just,

Some think that Satan has resigned his trust,

Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto upon the beauties of Richmond Hill,' and the like:-it also takes in a charming view of Turnham Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent.

+ Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the Bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius: his ' Wanderer of Switzerland' is worth a thousand Lyrical Ballads,' and at least fifty' degraded Epics.'

Arthur's Seat; the hill which overhangs Edinburgh.