Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.
Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race!
At once the boast of learning, and disgrace:
So lost to Phœbus, that not Hodgson's verse
Can make thee better, or poor Hewson's worse.
But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath she wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove;
Where Richards wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons glory in their sires.
For me, who, thus unasked, have dared to tell My country, what her sons should know too well, Zeal for her honor bade me here engage The host of idiots that infest her age; No just applause her honored name shall lose, As first in freedom, dearest to the muse. Oh! would thy bards but emulate thy fame, And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name! What Athens was in science, Rome in power, What Tyre appeared in her meridian hour, "Tis thine at once, fair Albion! to have been Earth's chief dictratress, ocean's lovely queen: But Rome decayed, and Athens strewed the plain, And Tyre's proud piers lie shattered in the main; Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurled, And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world. But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate, With warning ever scoffed at, till too late; To themes less lofty still my lay confine, And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.
Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the people's jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense
The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
While Canning's colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame Portland fills the place of Pitt.
Yet once again, adieu! ere this the sail
That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale;
And Afric's coast and Calpe's adverse height,
And Stamboul's minarets must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray through beauty's native clime,
Where Kaff is clad in rocks, and crowned with snows
sublime.
But should I back return, no tempting press
Shall drag my journal from the desk's recess :
Let coxcombs, printing as they come from far,
Snatch his own wreath of ridicule from Carr;
Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of vertù;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments and maimed antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art:
Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell,
I leave topography to rapid Gell;
And, quite content, no more shall interpose
To stun the public ear at least with prose.
Thus far I've held my undisturbed career, Prepared for rancor, steeled 'gainst selfish fear: This thing of rhyme I ne'er disdained to own Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown:
My voice was heard again, though not so loud,
My page, though nameless, never disavowed;
And now at once I tear the veil away:
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of Melbourne house,
By Lambe's resentment, or by Holland's spouse,
By Jeffrey's harmless pistol, Hallam's rage,
Edina's brawny sons and brimstone page.
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are “penetrable stuff":"
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe.
The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall;
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawled beneath my eyes:
But now so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I've learned to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learned to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss;
Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;
And, armed in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared; if my incondite lay
Hath wronged these righteous times, let others say;
This, let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.
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