While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,⚫
Despatch a courier to a wizard's grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit per-

chance,

On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though Murray with his Miller may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,
And bid a long 'good-night to Marmion.'*
These are the themes that claim our plaudits

now;

These are the bards to whom the muse must bow; While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot, Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.

The time has been, when yet the muse was young,

When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung,
An epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name:
The work of each immortal bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.+
Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave them
birth,

Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor bards content,
On one great work a life of labour spent:
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!
To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England, and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen.

Good-night to Marmion-the pathetic and also phetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.

Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wondrous son ;
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb!
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;
Now, last and greatest. Madoc spreads his sails,
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
O! Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song t
A bard may chant too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare!
A fourth, alas, were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way,
If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,+
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue :
'God help thee,' Southey, and thy readers too.§
Next comes the dull disciple of thy school
The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
As soft as evening in his favourite May,

Who warns his friend to shake off toil and trouble,

[ble: And quit his books, for fear of growing douWho, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose: Convincing all, by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose insane; And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme Contain the essence of the true sublime. Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy, The idiot mother of an idiot boy ;' A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way, And, like his bard, confounded night with day

Thalaba, Mr Southey's second poem, is written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. Foan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of these poems which, in the words of Porson, will be read when Homes and Virgil are forgotten, but-not till then.'

↑ We beg Mr Southey's pardon; Madoc disdains the degraded title of epic. See his preface. Why is epic degraded and by whom? Certainly the late romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye. Ogilvy, Hole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, lave not exalted the epic muse; but as Mr Southey's poem “die dains the appellation,' allow us to ask-Has he substitued anything better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Becketb See The Old Woman of Berkley, a ballad by Mr Scathey.

on a high trotting horse."

page 23.

+ As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider the Paradise Lost and Gierusalemme Liberata as their standard efforts; since neither the Jerusalem Conquered of the Italian, nor the Paradise Regained of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former Doems. Query Which of Mr Southey's will survive?

Up, up, my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double.'

Mr W., in his preface, labours hard to prove that prost and verse are much the same and certainly his precepts practice are strictly conformable:

So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the 'idiot in his glory,'
Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegise an ass.
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays the laureat of the long-ear'd tribe.
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 gibb'ring 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 grey men,' wild yagers,' and what

not,

To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
SLuke 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, [flush'd,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion
Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are
"Tis Little! young Catullus of his day, [hush'd?
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!
Grieved 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 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,

And thus to Betty's question he

Made answer, like a traveller bold,
The cock did crow to whoo, to-whoo,
And the sun did shine so cold.' &c., &c.-

Lyrical Ballads, page 129. • Coleridge's Poems, page 1, Songs of the Pixies, i.e. Devonshire fairies; p. 42, we have Lines to a Young Lady; ad 52 Lines to a Young Ass.

For every one knows little Matt's an M.P.-See a Poem to Mr. Lewis, in the Statesman, supposed to be written by Mr Jekyll

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

Cammens.

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 Camoëns 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 bard to copy Moore.

Behold!-ye tarts! one moment spare the text,
Hayley's last work, and worst—until his next;
Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,
His style in youth or age is still the same,
Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise,
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.†

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull devotion-Lo! the Sabbath bard,
Sepulchral Grahame, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e'en 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, still whimpering through threescore of years,

The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers. And art thou not their prince, harmonious

Bowles !

Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?
Whether thou sing'st with equal ease and griet,
The fall of empires or 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 wouldst 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 soothe the mania of the amorous throng!

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 Wycherley to Mr H.'s consideration, viz. to convert his poetry into prose,' which may easily be done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.

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

§ See Bowles's Sonnets, &c.-Sonnet to Oxford, and Stantes on hearing the Bells of Ostend.

With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere miss as yet completes her infaut years;
But in her teens thy whining powers are
She quits poor Bowles for Little's purer strain.
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 reposed 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;
[fear'd,
If chance some bard, though once by dunces
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered ;
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 ev'ry pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll; ‡
Let all the scandals of a former age
Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page;
Affect a candour which thou canst 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 lived in that congenial time,
To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme;||
Throng'd with the rest around his living head,
Not raised 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.¶

Awake a louder,' &c., &c., is the first line in Bowles's Spirit of Discovery, a very spirited and pretty dwarf epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following: 'A kiss

Stole on the list'ning silence, never yet

Here heard; they trembled even as if the power,' &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 here 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 Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, 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:
Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
Making night hideous; answer him, ye owls-'

Dunciad.

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.
Your turtle-feeder's verse must needs be flat,
Though Bristol bloat him with the verdant fat;
If Commerce fills the purse, she clogs the brain,
And Amos Cottle strikes the lyre in vain.
In him an author's luckless lot behold, [sold.
Condemn'd to make the books which once he
Oh, Amos Cottle !- Phoebus! what a name
To fill the speaking trump of future fame !—
Oh, Amos Cottle! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!
When thus devoted to poetic dreams,
Who will peruse thy prostituted reams?
Oh! pen perverted! paper misapplied!
Had Cottle still adorn'd the counter's side,
Bent o'er the desk, or, born to useful toils,
Been taught to make the paper which he soils,
Plough'd, delved, or plied the oar with lusty
limb,

He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him.

As Sisyphus against the infernal steep Rolls the huge rock, whose motions ne'er may sleep,

So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves
Dull Maurice all his granite weight of leaves:†
Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain!
The petrifactions of a plodding brain,
That, ere they reach the top fall lumbering
back again.

With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale, Lo! sad Alcæus wanders down the vale;

Though fair they rose, and might have bloom'd

at last,

His hopes have perish'd by the northern blast:
Nipp'd in the bud by Caledonian gales,
His blossoms wither as the blast prevails!
O'er his lost works let classic Sheffield weep:
May no rude hand disturb their early sleep!

Yet, say! why should the bard at once resign
His claim to favour from the sacred Nine?
For ever startled by the mingled howl
Of northern wolves, that still, in darkness prowl:

Mr Cottle, Amos, Joseph, I don't know which, but one or both, once sellers of books they did not write, and now writers of books that do not sell, have published a pair of epas Alfred-poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!)-dfrid and the Fall of Cambria.

Mr Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto, upon the Beauties of Richmond H and the like: it also takes in a charming view of Turnhar Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the pr adjacent.

After a

f Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English R view, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. the bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genus; a Wanderer of Switzerland is worth a thousand Lyrical Bal lads, and at least fifty' degraded epics.'