What harm? In spite of every critic elf, The paralytic puling of Carlisle. The puny schoolboy and his early lay Men pardon, if his follies pass away; But who forgives the senior's ceaseless verse, Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse? With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead, Has crush'd, without remorse, your numerous band. The Earl of Carlisle has lately published an eighteenpenny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his plan for building a new theatre: it is to be hoped his Lordship will be permitted to bring forward anything for the stage-except his own tragedies. +Doff that lion's hide, And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."SHAKSPEARE, King John. Lord C.'s works, most resplendently bound, form a conspicuous ornament to his book-shelves: When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall, Employs a pen less pointed than his awl, Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes, St. Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse Heavens how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud ! How ladies read, and literati laud! If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest, Stemm'd the rude storm, and triumph'd over fate: So shall the fair your handiwork peruse, Your sonnets sure shall please, perhaps your shoes. To the famed throng now paid the tribute due, * Capel Lofft, Esq., the Maecenas of shoemakers, and preface-writer-general to distressed versemen: a kind of gratis accoucheur to those who wish to be delivered of rhyme, but do not know how to bring forth. † See Nathaniel Bloomfield's ode, elegy, or whatever he or any one else chooses to call it, on the enclosure of Honington Green. Vide Recollections of a Weaver in the Moorlands of Staffordshire. The rest is all but leather and prunella,' This lively little Jessica, the daughter of the noted It would be superfluous to recall to the mind of Jew K- seems to be a follower of the Della Crusca the reader the authors of The Pleasures of Memory school, and has published two volumes of very respect- and The Pleasures of Hope, the most beautiful didac able absurdities in rhyme, as times go; besides sundry tic poems in our language, if we except Pope's Essay novels in the style of the first edition of The Monk. on Man; but so many poetasters have started up. These are the signatures of various worthies who that even the names of Campbell and Rogers are figure in the poetical departments of the newspapers. become strange. No! though contempt hath mark'd the spurious! This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest; brood, The race who rhyme from folly, or for food, Yet still some genuine sons 'tis hers to boast, Who, least affecting, still affect the most; Feel as they write, and write but as they feel: Bear witness Gifford, Sotheby, Macneil.* Why slumbers Gifford? once was ask'd in vain !† Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again. Are there no follies for his pen to purge? Are there no fools whose backs demand the Are there no sins for satire's bard to greet? Unhappy White! while life was in its spring, There be, who say, in these enlighten'd days, 'Tis true that all who rhyme-nay, all who write- Gifford, author of the Baviad and Mæviad, the first satires of the day, and translator of Juvenal. Sotheby, translator of Wieland's Oberon and Virgil's Georgies, and author of Saul, an epic poem. Macneil, whose poems are deservedly popular, particularly Scotland's Scaith; or, The Waes of War, of which ten thousand copies were sold in one month. + Mr. Gifford promised publicly that the Baviad and Maviad should not be his last original works. Let him remember 'Mox in reluctantes dracones.' Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best. And here let Shee and genius find a place, Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace: To guide whose hand the sister arts combine, And trace the poet's or the painter's line; Whose magic touch can bid the canvas glow, Or pour the easy rhyme's harmonious flow; While honours, doubly merited, attend The poet's rival, but the painter's friend. Blest is the man who dares approach the bower The cline that nursed the sons of song and war, And you, associate bards! who snatch'd to light 1 Let these, or such as these, with just applause Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die: Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop, Mr. Shee, author of Rhymes on Art, and Ele ments of Art. + Mr. Wright, late Consul-General for the Seven Henry Kirke White died at Cambridge in October Islands, author of a very beautiful poem entitled 1806, in consequence of too much exertion in the pur- Hora Ionica; descriptive of the isles and adjacent suit of studies that would have matured a mind which coast of Greece. disease and poverty could not impair, and which The translators of the Anthology have since death itself destroyed rather than subdued. His published separate poems, which evince genius that poems abound in such beauties as must impress the only requires opportunity to attain eminence. reader with the liveliest regret that so short a period The neglect of the Botanic Garden is some proof was allotted to talents which would have dignified of returning taste. The scenery is its sole recommen. even the sacred functions he was destined to assume. dation, Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, And thou, too, Scott,f resign to minstrels rude Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse, Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse, Of Grub Street, and of Grosvenor Place the best, * Messrs. Lambe and Lloyd, the most ignoble followers of Southey and Co. By the by, I hope that in Mr. Scott's next poem his hero or heroine will be less addicted to Gramarye; and more to grammar, than the Lady of the Lay, and her bravo William of Deloraine. It may be asked why I have censured the Earl of Carlisle, my guardian and relative, to whom I dedicated a volume of puerile poems a few years ago. The guardianship was nominal, at least as far as I have been able to discover; the relationship I cannot help, and am very sorry for it; but as his Lordship seemed to forget it on a very essential occasion to me, I shall not burden my memory with the recollection. I do not think that personal differences sanction the unjust Say, will not Caledonia's annals yield Yet what avails the sanguine poet's hope, The transient mention of a dubious name! When fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last; Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons, Ye, who in Granta's honours would surpass, There Clarke, still striving piteously to please,' A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race ! condemnation of a brother scribbler; but I see no reason why they should act as a preventive, when the author, noble or ignoble, has for a series of years beguiled a discerning public' (as the advertisements have it) with divers reams of most orthodox, imperial nonsense. Besides, I do not step aside to vituperate the Earl; no-his works come fairly in review with those of other patrician literati. If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in favour of his Lord. ship's paper books, it was in the way of dutiful dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment, and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation. I have heard that some persons conceive me to be under obligations to Lord Carlisle; if so, I shall be most particularly The Games of Hoyle, well known to the votarie happy to learn what they are, and when conferred, of whist, chess, etc., are not to be superseded by th that they may be duly appreciated and publicly vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem com acknowledged. What I have humbly advanced as an prised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, a opinion on his printed things, I am prepared to support, the plagues of Egypt.' if necessary, by quotations from elegies, eulogies, des, + This person, was the writer of a poem denom episodes, and certain facetious and dainty tragedies bearing his name and mark: • What can enoble knaves, or fools, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards! So says Pope. Amen! nated the Art of Pleasing, as lucus a non lucend. containing little pleasantry and less poetry. He als acted as monthly stipendiary and collector of calun nies for the Satirist. Into Cambridgeshire the Emperor Probus tras ported a considerable body of Vandals.'--Cipher So sunk in dulness, and so lost to shame, Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue That Smythe and Hodgson scarce redeem thy The shade of fame through regions of virtů; fame! But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave, For me, who, thus unask'd, have dared to tell Then, hapless Britain, be thy rulers blest, Yet once again, adieu! ere this the sail snows sublime. But should I back return, no letter'd rage Decline and Fall, page 83, vol. ii, There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion; the breed is still in high perfection. Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks, And make their grand saloons a general mart Of Dardan tours iet dilettanti tell, I leave topography to classic Gell ;† Thus far I've held my undisturb'd career, Prepared for rancour, steel'd 'gainst selfish fear; This thing of rhyme, I ne'er disdain'd to own- From lips that now may seem imbued with gall; The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my eyes; But now, so callous grown, so changed since youth, I've learn'd to think, and sternly speak the truth; And, arm'd in proof, the gauntlet cast at once This let the world, which knows not how to spare, The Aboriginal Britons, an excellent poem by forthcoming, with due decorations, graphical, topo Richards. graphical, and typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of the Stranger in Ireland. Oh fie, my Lord! has your Lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist? But two of a trade,' they say, etc. Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. Apollo bestowed on her the gift of prophecy; but added to it the curse that no one should believe her predictions. A friend of mine being asked why his Grace of P. was likened to an old woman, replied, he supposed it was because he was past bearing." Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar. tants. * Mount Caucasus. Lord Elgin would fain persuade us that all the figures, with and without noses, in his stone-shop, are he work of Phidias! Credat Judæus !' + Mr. Gell's Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr. G. conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the respective works tt Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are display. POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION. I HAVE been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well-beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so bedeviled with their ungodly ribaldry: Tantæne animis coelestibus ir:' I suppose I must say of Jeffrey as Sir Andrew Aguecheek saith, 'An' I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him dd ere I had fought him.' What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed! But I yet hope to light my pipe with it in Persia. My Northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality towards their great literary anthropo phagus, Jeffrey; but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by lying and slandering." and slake their thirst by 'evil speaking? I have adduced facts already well known, and of Jeffrey's mind I have stated my free opinion; nor has he hence sustained any injury: what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England because I have censured there 'persons of honour and wit about town;' but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal; those who do not, may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed: I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas, 'the age of chivalry is over,' or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days. There is a youth yclept Hewson Clarke (Subaudi Esquire), a Sizer of Emanuel College, and I believe a denizen of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet. He is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the Satirist, for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name till coupled with the Satirist. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather pleased than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the Editor of the Satirist, who, it seems, is a gentleman, God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr. Jerningham is about to take up the cudgels for his Maecenas, Lord Carlisle. I hope not: he was one of the few who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, pour on, I will endure. I have nothing further to add, save a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publisher; and, in the words of Scott, I wish |