Damir'd all their days, they posthumously thrive
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Reviews record this epidemic crime,

|Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate.
Some folly cross'd, some jest, or some debate,
Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon

Those "Books of Martyrs" to the rage for rhyme. The gather'd gall is voided in lampoon.
Alas! wo worth the scribbler! often seen
In Morning Post or Monthly Magazine.
There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot-prest,
Belold a quarto!-Tarts must tell the rest.
Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords,
To muse-mad baronets or madder lords,

Di country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
The cobbler laureats sing to Capel Lofft!+
Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears,
Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears!

There lives one druid who prepares in time
'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;
Racks his dull memory, and his duller muse,
To publish faults which friendship should excuse.
If friendship's nothing, self-regard might teach
More polish'd usage of his parts of speech.
But what is shame, or what is aught, to him?
He vents his spleen or gratifies his whim.

Bis terque expertum frustra, delere jubebat,
Et male tornatos incudi reddere versus.
Si defendere delictum quam vertere malles,
Nullum ultra verbum, aut operam insumebat
inanem,

Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown
Perhaps your poem may have pleased the town;
If so, alas, 'tis nature in the man-
May heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise!
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before)-be sold!
Should some rich bard, (but such a monster now,
In modern physics, we can scarce allow,)
Should some pretending scribbler of the court,
Some rhyming peer-there's plenty of the sort-
All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his chaplain's yawn!)
Condemn the unlucky curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn eacn rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.

Quin sine rivali teque et tua solus amares.

Vir bonus et prudens versus reprehendet inertes. Culpabit duros; incomptis allinet atrum Transverso calamo signum; ambitiosa recidet Ornamenta; parum claris lucem dare coget;

⚫ I beg Nathaniel's partion; he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged • Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of panta-psha! | sole survivor, the "ultimus Romanorum," the last of the "Cruscant !"of centos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patronu let it "Edwin," the "profound," by our Lady of Punishment here he in no out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country custo lively as in the days of "well said Baviad the Correct." I thought Fitzgerald mers.-Merry's "Moorfield's whine" was nothing to all this. The "Della had been the tail of poesy, but, alas ! he is only the penultimate. Cruscans" were people of some education, and no profession: but these Arcadians ("Arcades ambo "-tampkins both) send out their native nonsense A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and smallclothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures and Pans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shopboard, they describe fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an "Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet."

"And own that nine such poets made a Tate."

Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and if he did, why not take it as his motto?

This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire sing ing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too, (who once was wiser,) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of "Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well; but the "tragedies" are as rickety as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end, and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done, for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (Lite) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of "Remains " come under the statute against "resurrection men." What does it signify whether a poor, dear, dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in ar ocavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through lite with a sort of eclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Backed, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to pro vale for the child; now, might not some of this "Sutor ultra Crepidam's " friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then his inscription split into so many modicuma 1-"To the Duchess of Somuch, the Rght Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are, &c., &c."-why, this is doling out the "soft milk of delication" in gills,-there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dusen Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff eft? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet?-There is a child, a book, and a dedication; send the girl to her grace, the volume to the grocer, and the dedication to the

CHRONICLE.

"What reams of paper, floods of iuk,”
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'!! say of me,
In which your readers muy agree.
Still I write on, and tell you why;
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain,
Without the risk of giving pain.
And should you doubt what I assert,
The name of Camden I insert,
Who novels read, and oft maintain'd
He here and there some knowledge gain'd:
Then why not I indulge my pen,
Though I uo fame or profit gain,
Yet moy amuse your idle men;

Of whom, though soine may be severe,
Others may read without a aneer?
Thus much premised, I next proceed
To give you what I feel my creed,
And in what follows to display
Some humors of the passing lay.

ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS

In tracing of the human mind
Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
it knows not its resources:

And men through life assume a part

For which no talents they possem,
Yet wonder that, with all their art,
They meet no better with succesu.
"Tis thus we see, through lite's career,
So few excel in their profession;
Whereas, would each man but appear
In what's within his own posscmniota,

• For much every man is who either appears to be what he is not, or strives e to t what he can't

And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage-
Fear'd like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to simpleton or wit:

Objectos caveæ valuit si frangere clathros,
Indoctum doctumque fugat recitator acerbus.

But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,-him
He flays with recitation limb by limb;
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach.
And gorges like a lawyer or a leech.

Quem vero arripuit, tenet, occiditque legendo,
Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris, hirudo.

"Dficile est proprie communia dicere."-Mde. Dacier, Mde. de Sevigne, some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as M. Grouvelle observes, "La chom Boileau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this passage in est bien remarquable, aucun de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the veritable." But, by way of comfort, it seems, flity years afterwards, "Le close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sevigné's Letters, edited by luminenx Dumaresis " made his appearance to set Horace on his leg aga Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an" dissaper tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentimens ;" and, one opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who can not have taken the fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtles start u að same liberty, I should have held my "farthing candle" as awkwardly as demolish Dumarsals and his system on this weighty affair, as if he wee no another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis the Fourteenth's Augustan better than Ptolemy or Tycho, or comments of no more consequence than siecle induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. 1st, Boileau: "11 astronomical calculations on the present comet. I are happy to say, "lu est difficile de traiter des sujets qui sont à la portée de tout le monde d'une longueur de la dissertation" of M. D. prevents M. G. from saying say mim manière qui vous les rende propes, ce qui s'apelle s'approprier un sujet par le on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at least as good a har tour qu'on y donne." 2dly, Batteux: "Mais il est bier, difficile de donner Sevigué, has said, des traits propres et individuels aux êties purement possibles." 3dly, Dacier: "A little learning is a dangerous thing," "Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères que tout le monde and by this comparison of comments it may be perceived how a good de We inventer." Mde. de Sevigne's opinion and translation, consisting of may be rendered as perilous to the proprietors.

THE

CURSE OF MINERVA.

"Pallas te hos vulnere, Pallas

Immolat, et pænam acelerato ex sanguine sumit."

NEID, . zii.

Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 17, 1811.
SLOW sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows;
On old Ægina's rock and Hydra's isle
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the monntain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquer'd Salamis !
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.

On such an eve his palest beam he cast
When, Athens! here thy wisest looked his last.

• The lines with which this satire opens, to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' face," are repeated, with some alterations, at the commencement of The third cunto of the Corsair,

How watch'd thy better sons his farewell ray.
That closed their murder'd sage's latest day.
Not yet-not yet-Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seem'd to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frown'd before;
But ere he sunk below Citharon's head,
The cup of wo was quaff'd-the spirit fled;
The soul of him that scorned to fear or fly,
Who lived and died as none can live or die.

But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain
The queen of night asserts her silent reign; t
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form.
No murky vapor, herald of the storm,
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,

• Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset, (the hour of re cution, notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun wen down

The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country; ûr days in winter are louger, but in summer of less duration

And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkled o'er the minaret:
The groves of olive scatter'd dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds nis scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The glimmering turret of the gay kiosk,*
And sad and sombre mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane, yon solitary palm;
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that pass'd them heedless by.

Again the Egean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold

Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown, where gentler oceau deigns to smile.

As thus within the walls of Pallas' fane,
I mark'd the beauties of the land and main,
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poets' lore:
Oft as the matchless dome I turn'd to scan,
Sacred to gods, but not secure from man,
The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!

Hours roll'd along, and Dian's orb on high
Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky;
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god:
But chiefly, Pallas! thine; when Hecate's glare,
Check'd by thy columns, fell more sadly fair
O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mused, and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When, lo! a giant form before me strode,
And Pallas hail'd me in her own abode !

Yes, 'twas Minerva's self; but, ah! how changed
Since o'er the Dardan field in arms sne ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appeared from Phidias' plastic hand;
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance
Seem'd weak and shaftless e'en to mortal glance;
The olive branch, which still she deign'd to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch, and wither'd in her grasp;
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimm'd her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourn'd his mistress with a shriek of wo!

'Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain;
These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adorn'd,*
That Adrian rear'd when drooping Science mourn'd
What more I owe let gratitude attest-

Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.

That all may learn from whence the plunderer came
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
For Elgin's fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,
Below, his name-above, behold his deeds;
Be ever hail'd with equal honor here
The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won.
So when the lion quits his fell repast,

Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last:
Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own
The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.
Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are cross'd;
See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Another name with his pollutes my shrine:
Behold where Dian's beams disdain'd to shine:
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half avenged Minerva's shame."+

She ceased awhile and thus I dared reply,
To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:
"Daughter of Jove! in Britian's injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not;
Athena! no! thy plunderer was a Scot.
Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyles

towers

Survey Boeotia; Caledonia's ours.

And well I know within that bastard land
Hath Wisdom's goddess never held command:
A barren soil, where Nature's germs confined
To stern sterility, can stint the mind;
Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist;
A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.
Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till, burst at length each wat'ry head o'erflows
Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows.
Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her scheming children far and wide;
Some east, some west, some every where but north
In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.
And thus-accursed be the day and year!
She sent a Pict to play the felon here.

"Mortal!"-'twas thus she spake "that blush of Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,

shame

Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honor'd less by all, and least by me:
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seek'st thou the cause of loathing ?-look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive tyrannies expire.

• The kiosk la a Turkish summer-house; the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree the wall intervenes. Ceplisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Illiasus has no stream at all.

As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth;
So may her few, the letter'd and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,
Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand.

• This is spoken of the city in general, and not of the Acropolis in partis ular: the temple of Jupiter Olympus, by some supposed the Pantheon, was finished by Hadrian; sixteen columns are standing, of the most beautifu marble and architecture.

↑ His lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon; ahove, in a part not far distant, are the torn remnants of the basso relievos destroyed in a vain attempt to remove thern ↑ "Irish bastards," according to Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan

As once, of yore, in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race."

"Mortal!" the blue-eyed maid resumed, "once
Bear back my mandate to thy native shore. [more
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear then in silence Pallas' stern behest;
Hear and believe, for time will tell the rest.

"First on the head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light, on him and all his seed:
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire:
If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,
Believe him a bastard of a brighter race:
Still with his hireling artists let him prate
And Folly's praise repay for Wisdom's hate;
Long of their patron's gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest, native gusto is-to sell:
To sell, and make-may Shame record the day!
The state receiver of his pilfer'd prey.
Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,
Europe's worst dauber, and poor Britain's best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o'er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.*
Be all the bruisers cull'd from all St. Giles',
That art and nature may compare their styles;
While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his lordship's 'stone shop't there.
Round the throng'd gate shall sauntering coxcombs

creep,

To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;
While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,
On giant statues casts the curious eye:

The room with transient glance appears to skim,
Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;
Mourns o'er the difference of now and then :
Exclaims, These Greeks indeed were proper men!
Draws sly comparisons of these and those,
And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.

Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid,
Or break the compact which herself hath made,
Far from such counsels, from the faithless field
She fled-but left behind her Gorgon shield:
A fatal gift, that turn'd your friends to stone,
And left lost Albion hated and alone.

"Look to the East, where Ganges' swarthy race
Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;
Lo! there Rebellion rears her ghastly head,"
And glares the Nemesis of native dead;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish!-Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.

"Look on your Spain !-she clasps the hand she
hates,

But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,

Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach that one retreat
Retrieved three long olympiads of defeat?

"Look last at home-ye love not to look there
On the grim smile of comfortless despair:
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft ;
No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit, who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck'd each premier by the ear,
Who gods and men alike disdain'd to hear;
But one, repentant o'er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls, but calls, alas! too late:
Then raves for **; to that Mentor bends,

When shall a modern maid have swains like these! Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules !

And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,
In silent indignation mix'd with grief,
Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.
Oh, loathed in life, nor pardon'd in the dust,
May hate pursue his sacrilegious lust!
Link'd with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,
And Eratostratus and Elgin shine
In many a branding page and burning line;
Alike reserved for aye to stand accurst,
Perchance the second blacker than the first.

"So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,
Fix'd statue on the pedestal of Scorn;
Though not for him alone revenge shall wait,
But fits thy country for her coming fate:
Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To to do what oft Britannia's self had done.
Look to the Baltic-blazing from afar,
Your old ally yet mourns perfidious war,

• Mr. West, on seeing the "Elgin Collection," (I suppe we shall hear of the "Abershaw" and "Jack Shephard's" Coilection,) declared himself "a mere tyro " in art.

↑ Poor Crib was sadly puzzled when exhibited at E-House; he ked if it was not "a stone shop?"-He was right, it is a shop.

Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So once of yore, each reasonable frog
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign 'log.'
Thus hail'd your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a god.

"Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish'd power;
Gloss o'er the failure of each fondest scheme;
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream
Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind,
And pirates barter all that's left behind.t
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.
The idle merchant on the useless quay,
Droops o'er the bales no bark may bear away?
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores,
Rot piecemeal on his own encumber'd shores:
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him 'gainst the common doom
Then in the senate of your sinking state,

Show me the man whose counsels may have weight

"Blest paper credit! last and best supply,

That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly 1"-Pope The Deal and Dover traffickers in specie.