Oh! wonder-working LEWIS! monk, or bard,
Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a churchyard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy Muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand,
By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age,
All hail, M. P.!* from whose infernal brain
Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command "grim women" throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,

With "small gray men,"—" wild yagers," and what not,
To crown with honour, thee, and WALTER SCOTT;
Again all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease;
Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir

Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,

With sparkling eyes, and cheeks by passion flush'd, Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hush'd? "Tis LITTLE! young Catullus of his day,

As sweet, but as immoral in his lay!

Griev'd to condemn, the Muse must still be just,

Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.

Pure is the flame which o'er her altar burns;

From grosser incense with disgust she turns:
Yet, kind to youth, this expiation o'er,

She bids thee" mend thy line and sin no more."

* "For every one knows little Matt's an M. P."-See a poem to Mr. Lewis,

the Statesman, supposed to be written by Mr. Jekyll.

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian STRANGFORD! with thine eyes of blue,*
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,

Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires,
And o'er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author's sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place
By dressing CAMOENS in a suit of lace?

Mend, STRANGFORD! mend thy morals and thy taste;
Be warm, but pure, be amorous, but be chaste:
Cease to deceive; thy pilfer'd harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian band to copy MOORE.
In many marble-cover'd volumes view
HALEY, in vain attempting something new:
Whether he spin his comedies in rhyme,

Or scrawl, as WOOD and BARCLAY walk, 'gainst time,.
His style in youth or age is still the same;
For ever feeble and for ever tame.

Triumphant first see "Temper's triumphs" shine!
At least I'm sure they triumph'd over mine.
Of" Music's Triumphs" all who read may swear
That luckless Music never triumph'd there.f

*The Reader who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to "Strangford's Camoens," page 127, note to page 56, or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Camoens.

It is also to be remarked, that the things given to the public as Poems of Camoens, are no more to be found in the original Portuguese, than in the Song of Solomon.

Hayley's two most notorious verse productions, are "Triumphs of Temper," and "Triumphs of Music." He has also written much comedy in rhyme, epistles, &c. &c. As he is rather an elegant writer of notes and biography, let us recommend Pope's Advice to Whycherly to Mr. H.'s consideration; viz. "to convert his poetry into prose," which may be easily done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull Devotion-lo! the sabbath bard,
Sepulchral GRAHAME, pours his notes sublime,
In mangled prose, nor even aspires to rhyme,
Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;
And undisturb'd by conscientious qualms,
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the psalms.*
Hail Sympathy! thy soft idea brings

A thousand visions of a thousand things,
And shows, dissolv'd in thine own melting tears,
The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.
And art thou not their prince, harmonious BOWLES!
Thou first great oracle of tender souls?
Whether in sighing winds thou seek'st relief,
Or consolation in a yellow leaf;

Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,†
Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend,
In every chime that jingled from Ostend?
Ah! how much juster were thy Muse's hap,
If to thy bells thou would'st but add a cap!
Delightful BOWLES! still blessing, and still blest,
All love thy strain, but children like it best:
"Tis thine with gentle LITTLE's moral song,
To sooth the mania of the amorous throng!
With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere miss, as yet, completes her infant years:
But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;
She quits poor BOWLES, for LITTLE's purer strain.

* Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name of "Sabbath Walks" and "Biblical Pictures."

† See Bowles's Sonnets, &c." Sounet to Oxford," and "Stanzas on hearof Ostend."

Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine,
"Awake a louder and a loftier strain,"
Such as none heard before, or will again;
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark repos'd 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 fear'd,
Now, prone in dust, can only be rever'd;

If Pope, whose fame and genius from the first
Have foil'd 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,‡

* “ Awake a louder," &c. &c. is the first line in Bowles's "Spirit of Disco very;" a very spirited and pretty dwarf epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following:

"A kiss

Stole on the listening silence, never yet

Here heard; they trembled even as if the power," &c. &c.

That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss, very much astonished,

as well they might be, at such a phenomenon.

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.

Curll is one of the heroes of the Dunciad, and was a bookseller. Lord

Let all the scandals of a former age
Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page;
Affect a candour which thou can'st 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 MALLET did for hire.*
Oh! hadst thou liv'd in that congenial time,
To rave with DENNIS and with RALPH to rhymet
Throng'd with the rest around his living head,
Not rais'd thy hoof against the lion dead,

A meet reward had crown'd thy glorious gains,
And link'd thee to the Dunciad for thy pains.‡
Another Epic! who inflicts again

More books of blank upon the sons of men!
Bætian 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.

Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervy, 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

+ See P hund

"Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
Making night hideous! answer him, ye owls!"

Dunciad.

> edition of Pope's works, for which he received three r. B. has experienced how much easier it is to pro ther, than to elevate his own.