He praised the present, and abused the past,
Reversing the good custom of old days,

An Eastern anti-Jacobin at last

His polar star being one which rather ranges,
And not the fix'd-he knew the way to
wheedle:

So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges;
And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill),
He lied with such a fervour of intention-

There was no doubt he earn'd his laureate pen

sion.

LXXXI.

But he had genius,-when a turn-coat has it,
The Vates irritabilis' takes care
That without notice few full moons shall pass it;
Even good men like to make the public stare-
But to my subject-let me see-what was it?--
Oh!-the third canto-and the pretty pair-
Their loves, and feasts, and house, and dress,
Of living in their insular abode. [and mode

LXXXII.

Their poet, a sad trimmer, but no less
In company a very pleasant fellow,
Had been the favourite of full many a mess

Of men, and made them speeches when half
mellow;

And though his meaning they could rarely guess,
Yet still they deign'd to hiccup or to bellow
The glorious meed of popular applause,

Of which the first ne'er knows the second's cause..

LXXXIII.

But now, being lifted into high society,

And having pick'd up several odds and ends Of free thoughts in his travels for variety,

He deem'd, being in a lone isle among friends, That without any danger of a riot, he

Might for long lying make himself amends; And singing as he sung in his warm youth, Agree to a short armistice with truth.

LXXXIV.

He had travell'd 'mongst the Arabs, Turks, and
Franks,

And knew the self-loves of the different nations,
And having lived with people of all ranks,

Had something ready upon most occasions-
Which got him a few presents and some thanks.
He varied with some skill his adulations;
To 'do at Rome as Romans do,' a piece
Of conduct was which he observed in Greece.
LXXXV.

Thus usually when he was ask'd to sing,

He gave the different nations something national;

He turn'd, preferring pudding to no praise-'Twas all the same to him-' God save the king,'

For some few years his lot had been o'ercast
By his seeming independent in his lays,
But now he sung the Sultan and the Pasha,
With truth like Southey, and with verse like
Crashaw.

LXXX.

He was a man who had seen many changes,
And always changed as true as any needle;

Or Ça ira, according to the fashion all : His muse made increment of anything,

From the high lyric down to the low rational; If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?

LXXXVI.

In France, for instance, he would write a chan-
In England, a six-canto quarto tale; [son;

worse:

[wrong;

Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts,
Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well de-
scribes);
[exacts
Like Cromwell's pranks ;-but although truth
As most essential to their hero's story,
These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
They do not much contribute to his glory.

XCIII.

His strain display'd some feeling-right or All are not moralists, like Southey, when
And feeling, in a poet, is the source
Of others' feeling: but they are such liars,
And take all colours-like the hands of dyers.

LXXXVIII.

But words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions,
think :
[uses
'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper-even a rag like this-
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!

LXXXIX.

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,
His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,

Or graven stone found in a barrack's station
In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up as a rare deposit.

XC.

And glory long has made the sages smile;
'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion,
wind-

Depending more upon the historian's style,

Than on the name a person leaves behind.
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle:
The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough's skill in giving
knocks,

Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

XCI.

Milton's the prince of poets-so we say ;
A little heavy, but no less divine :
An independent being in his day--

Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine;
But his life falling into Johnson's way,

We're told this great high priest of all the Nine Was whipt at college-a harsh sire-odd spouse, For the first Mrs Milton left his house.*

XCII.

All these are, certes, entertaining facts,
Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's
bribes ;

• See Johnson's Life of Milton [in Lives of the Poetsl

Or

He prated to the world of Pantisocracy;' Wordsworth, unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

XCIV.

Such names at present cut a convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado vigour,

Are good manure for their more bare bio-
graphy.

Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger

Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy, frowzy poem call'd The Excursion, Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

XCV.

He there builds up a formidable dyke

Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Johanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind--so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

XCVI.

But let me to my story: I must own,

If I have any fault, it is digression-
Leaving my people to proceed alone,

While I soliloquize beyond expression;
But these are my addresses from the throne,
Which put off business to the ensuing session;
Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

XCVII.

I know that what our neighbours call 'longueurs'
(We've not so good a word, but have the thing,
In that complete perfection which ensures

An epic from Bob Southey every spring-)
Form not the true temptation which allures
The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring
Some fine examples of the épopée

To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

XCVIII.

We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes
sleeps ;'
[wakes.
We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes