Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found,

As bold in Billingsgate, though less renown'd.

As if at table some discordant dish Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish; 629

As oil in lieu of butter men decry,
And poppies please not in a modern pie;
If all such mixtures then be half a crime,
We must have excellence to relish rhyme.
Mere roast and boil'd no epicure invites;
Thus poetry disgusts, or else delights.

Who shoot not flying rarely touch a gun: Will he who swims not to the river run? And men unpractised in exchanging knocks Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box. Whate'er the weapon, cudgel, fist, or foil, None reach expertness without years of toil;

640

But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease, Tag twenty thousand couplets when they please.

Why not?-shall I, thus qualified to sit For rotten boroughs, never show my wit? Shall I, whose fathers with the quorum

but you,

Besides all this, must have some genius too. Be this your sober judgment, and a rule, And print not piping hot from Southey's school,

Who (ere another Thalaba appears),

I trust, will spare us for at least nine years. And hark ye, Southey! pray — but don't be vex'd

Burn all your last three works and half the next.

But why this vain advice? once publish'd, books Can never be recall'd from pastry-cooks! Though Madoc, with Pucelle, instead of punk,

May travel back to Quito

on a trunk!

661

Must bear privations with unruffled face, Be call'd to labour when he thinks to dine, And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine.

Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight, Have follow'd music through her farthest flight;

But rhymers tell you neither more nor less, 'I've got a pretty poem for the press;' 710 And that's enough; then write and print so fast;

If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last? They storm the types, they publish, one and all,

They leap the counter, and they leave the stall.

Provincial maidens, men of high command, Yea, baronets have ink'd the bloody hand! Cash cannot quell them; Pollio play'd this prank

(Then Phoebus first found credit in a bank !),

Not all the living only, but the dead,
Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head; 720
Damn'd all their days, they posthumously

thrive

Dug up from dust, though buried when alive! Reviews record this epidemic crime,

should we?

THE CURSE OF MINERVA

-Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas Immolat, et pœnam scelerato ex sanguíne sumit. Eneid xii. [948, 949].

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 Egina'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 mountain-shadows kiss

II