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A polish'd nation's praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people's, as the poet's fame.
Like him great Dryden pour'd the tide of song,
In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
Then Congreve's scenes could cheer, or Otway's melt-
For nature then an English audience felt.
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let satire's self allow,
No dearth of bards can be complain'd of now. 1
The loaded press beneath her labour groans,
And printer's devils shake their weary bones;
While Southey's epics cram the creaking shelves,
And Little's lyrics shine in hot-press'd twelves.
Thus saith the preacher: "Nought beneath the sun
Is new;" yet still from change to change we run:
What varied wonders tempt us as they pass !
The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas,
In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts—and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize :
O'er taste awhile these pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own; 2
Some leaden calf - but whom it matters not,
From soaring Southey down to grovelling Stott. 3

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["With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced that we are all upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, not worth a damn in itself, and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free. I am the more confirmed in this by having lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I tried in this way: I took Moore's poems, and my own, and some others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really astonished and mortified at the ineffable distance, in point of sense, learning, effect, and even imagination, passion, and invention, between the little Queen Anne's man, and us of the Lower Empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I would mould myself accordingly."— B. Diary, 1817.]

3 Stott, better known in the " Morning Post" by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:- (Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia.) —

"Princely offspring of Braganza, Erin greets thee with a stanza," &c. Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:

"Oh! for a Lay, loud as the surge That lashes Lapland's sounding shore." Lord have mercy on us! the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" was nothing to this.

* See the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," passim. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the groundwork of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning, prologuising to Bayes' tragedy, unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, “ a stark moss-trooper,"

Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And tales of terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering folly loves a varied song,
To strange mysterious dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.

Thus Lays of Minstrels — may they be the last ! — On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.

While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
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!5 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 6, not for fame :
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!

videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, "'t was his neck-verse at Harri bee," i. e the gallows. -The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are chefs-d'œuvre in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a knight and charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The poem was manufactured for Messrs. Constable, Murray, and Miller, worshipful booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money; and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr. Scott will write for hire, let him do his best for his pay-masters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repetition of black-letter ballad imitations.

5 ["When Lord Byron wrote his famous satire, I had my share of flagellation among my betters. My crime was having written a poem for a thousand pounds; which was no other. wise true, than that I sold the copyright for that sum. Now, not to mention that an author can hardly be censured for accepting such a sum as the booksellers are willing to give him, especially as the gentlemen of the trade made no complaints of their bargain, I thought the interference with my private affairs was rather beyond the limits of literary satire. I was, however, so far from having any thing to do with the offensive criticism in the Edinburgh, that I remonstrated against it with the editor, because I thought the "Hours of Idleness" treated with undue severity. They were written, like all juvenile poetry, rather from the recollection of what had pleased the author in others, than what had been suggested by his own imagination; but, nevertheless, I thought they contained passages of noble promise."- SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

[Lord Byron, as is well known, set out with the determin. ation never to receive money for his writings. For the liberty to republish this satire, he refused four hundred guineas; and

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. 2 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 Camoens, 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!

I

the money paid for the copyright of the first and second cantos of Childe Harold, and of the Corsair, he presented to Mr. Dallas. In 1816, to a letter enclosing a draft of 1000 guineas, offered by Mr. Murray for the Siege of Corinth and Parisina, the noble poet sent this answer:-" Your offer is liberal in the extreme, and much more than the two poems can possibly be worth-but I cannot accept it, nor will not. You are most welcome to them, as additions to the collected volumes, without any demand or expectation on my part whatever. have enclosed your draft torn, for fear of accidents by the way. I wish you would not throw temptation in mine; it is not from a disdain of the universal idol —-nor from a present superfluity of his treasures-I can assure you, that I refuse to worship him, but what is right is right, and must not yield to circumstances." The poet was afterwards induced, at Mr. Murray's earnest persuasion, to accept the thousand guineas. The subjoined statement of the sums paid by him at various times to Lord Byron for copyright may be considered a bibliopolic curiosity :

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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.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on, 3
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wond'rous son;
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb !
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
Oh, Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song!
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, 6
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
"God help thee," Southey 7, and thy readers too. 8

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 poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?

3" 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. "Joan of Arc," was marvellous enough, but "Thalaba," was one of those poems" which," in the words of Porson," will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but — not till then.”

[“ Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."— Madoc.]

5 We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degrading 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, have not exalted the epic muse; but as Mr. Southey's poem dains the appellation," allow us to ask-has he substituted any thing better in its stead? or must he be content to rivai Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

dis

6 See "The Old Woman of Berkley," a ballad, by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high-trotting horse."

7 The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the Anti-jacobin to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics.[Lord Byron here alludes to Mr. Gifford's parody on Mr. Southey's Dactylics, which ends thus: —

"Ne'er talk of ears again! look at thy spelling-book; Dilworth and Dyche are both mad at thy quantities-Dactylics, call'st thou 'em?- God help thee, silly one.""]

[Lord Byron, on being introduced to Mr. Southey in 1813, at Holland House, describes him "as the best-looking bard he had seen for a long time."-" To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would," he says, "almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, and a man of talent, and all that, and there is his eulogy." In his Journal, of the same year, he says" Southey I have not seen much of. His appearance is epic, and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed to their authorship. His manners are mild, but not those of a mar. of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation-posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present, he has a party, but no public -except for his prose writings. His Life of Nelson is beautiful." Elsewhere, and later, Lord Byron pronounces Southey's Don Roderick, "the first poem of our time."]

1

Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double; "2
Who, 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; 3
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.

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Lyrical Ballads, p. 4.-"The Tables Turned." Stanza 1.
"Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

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

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

"And thus to Betty's questions he

Made answer, like a traveller bold.
The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo,

And the sun did shine so cold," &c. &c, p. 129.

4 Coleridge's Poems, p. 11., Songs of the Pixies, i. e. De vonshire fairies; p. 42. we have, "Lines to a young Lady;" and, p. 52.," Lines to a young Ass."

5 [Thus altered by Lord Byron, in his last revision of the satire. In all former editions the line stood,

"A fellow-feeling makes us wond'rous kind."]

6 [" Unjust," B. 1816.-In a letter to Mr. Coleridge, written in 1815, Lord Byron says, " You mention my Satire,' lampoon, or whatever you or others please to call it. I can only say, that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side ever since: more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subse quently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends; which is heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attempted attacks."]

His

7 [Matthew Gregory Lewis, M. P. for Hindon, never distinguished himself in Parliament, but, mainly in consequence of the clever use he made of his knowledge of the German language, then a rare accomplishment, attracted much notice in the literary world, at a very early period of his life. Tales of Terror; the drama of the Castle Spectre; and the romance called the Bravo of Venice (which is, however, little more than a version from the Swiss Zschocke); but above all, the libidinous and impious novel of The Monk, invested the

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. 8! 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 discase:
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 cheek 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!

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." 10

For thee, translator of the tinsel song, To whom such glittering ornaments belong, Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue, 11. 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.

name of Lewis with an extraordinary degree of celebrity, during the poor period which intervened between the obscuration of Cowper, and the full display of Sir Walter Scott's talents in the " Lay of the Last Minstrel,". - a period which is sufficiently characterised by the fact, that Hayley then passed for a poet. Next to that solemn coxcomb, Lewis was for several years the fashionable versifier of his time; but his plagiarisms, perhaps more audacious than had ever before been resorted to by a man of real talents, were by degrees unveiled, and writers of greater original genius, as well as of purer taste and morals, successively emerging, Monk Lewis, dying young, had already outlived his reputation. In society he was to the last a favourite; and Lord Byron, who had be come well acquainted with him during his experience of London life, thus notices his death, which occurred at sea in 1818:"Lewis was a good inan, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially, Madame de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was the jewel of a man, had he been better set; I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Poor fellow he died a martyr to his new riches of a second visit to Jamaica:

That is,

"I'd give the lands of Deloraine,
Dark Musgrave were alive again!"
"I would give many a sugar cane,
Mat Lewis were alive again!"]

8"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.

9 [In very early life, "Little's Poems" were Lord Byron's favourite study. "Heigho!" he exclaims, in 1820, in a letter to Moore, "I believe all the mischief I have ever done, or sung, has been owing to that confounded book of yours."] 10 [Originally, "mend thy life, and sin no more."]

11 The reader, who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to "Strangford's Camoëns," p. 127. note to p. 56., or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Ca moëns.

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,
Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise,
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. 2

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward On dull devotion-Lo! the Sabbath bard, Sepulchral Grahame 3, 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.

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.

2 Hayley's two most notorious verse productions are "Triumphs of Temper," and "The Triumph 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 be easily done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.

- [The only performance for which Hayley is now remembered is his Life of Cowper. His personal history has been sketched by Mr. Southey in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi. p. 263.]

3 Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name of "Sabbath Walks," and "Biblical Pictures.". [This very amiable man, and pleasing poet, published subsequently "The Birds of Scotland," and other pieces; but his reputation rests on his "Sabbath." He began life as an advocate at the Edinburgh bar; but he had little success there, and being of a melancholy and very devout temperament, entered into holy orders, and retired to a curacy near Durham, where he died in 1811.]

[Immediately before this line, we find in the original manuscript, the following, which Lord Byron good naturedly consented to omit, at the request of Mr. Dallas, who was, no doubt, a friend of the scribbler they refer to:

"In verse most stale, unprofitable, flat

Come, let us change the scene, and glean' with Pratt;
In him an author's luckless lot behold,

Condemn'd to make the books which once he sold:
Degraded man! again resume thy trade-

The votaries of the Muse are ill repaid,

Though daily puffs once more invite to buy

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A new edition of thy Sympathy.'

To which this note was appended:-" Mr. Pratt, once a Bath bookseller, now a London author, has written as much, to as little purpose, as any of his scribbling cotemporaries. Mr. P.'s Sympathy' is in rhyme; but his prose productions are the most voluminous." The more popular of these last were entitled" Gleanings."]

5 See Powles's " Sonnet to Oxford," and " Stanzas on hear. ing the Bells of Ostend."

6 "Awake a louder," &c. is the first line in Bowles's

And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles ¡
Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?
Whether thou sing'st with equal ease, and grief,
The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells, 5
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.
"T is thine, with gentle Little's moral song,
To soothe 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. 6
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; 7
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.

"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. &c. That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss; very much astonished, as well they might be, at such a phenomenon. ["Misquoted and misunderstood by me; but not intentionally. It was not the 'woods,' but the people in them who trembled why, Heaven only knows unless they were over. heard making the prodigious smack."— Byron, 1816.]

7 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.

8

.

["Although," says Lord Byron, in 1821, " I regret having published English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' the part which I regret the least is that which regards Mr. Bowles, with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that public ation, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's Pope are in the first edition of English Bards,' and are quite as severe, and much more poetical, than my own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, by which the work gained less than Mr. Bowles.". The following are the lines written by Mr. Hobhouse: —

"Stick to thy sonnets, man! - at least they sell.
Or take the only path that open lies

For modern worthies who would hope to rise:
Fix on some well-known name, and, bit by bit,
Pare off the merits of his worth and wit;
On each alike employ the critic's knife,
And when a comment fails, prefix a life;
Hint certain failings, faults before unknown,
Review forgotten lies, and add your own;
Let no disease, let no misfortune 'scape,
And print, if luckily deform'd, his shape:
Thus shall the world, quite undeceived at last,
Cleave to their present wits, and quit their past;
Bards once revered no more with favour view,
But give their modern sonneteers their due;
Thus with the dead may living merit cope,
Thus Bowles may triumph o'er the shade of Pope.' ]

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 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; 1
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 2 did for hire.
Oh! hadst thou lived in that congenial time,
To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme; 3
Throng'd with the rest around his living head,
Not raised thy hoof against the lion dead; 4
A meet reward had crown'd thy glorious gains,
And link'd thee to the Dunciad for thy pains. 5

Another epic! Who inflicts again More books of blank upon the sons of men ? Baotian 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 6! 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, Condemn'd to make the books which once he sold. Oh, Amos Cottle! - Phoebus! what a name, To fill the speaking trump of future fame ! —

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."

2 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.—

Bolingbroke's thirst of vengeance," says Dr. Johnson, "incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations."]

3 Dennis the critic, and Ralph the rhymester. —
"Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
Making night hideous: answer him, ye owls !".

Dunciad.

4 See Bowles's late edition of Pope's Works, for which he received three hundred pounds. Thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another than to elevate his own.

[Lord Byron's MS. note of 1816 on this passage is, "Too savage all this on Bowles:" and well might he say so. That venerable person is still living; and in spite of all the criticisms to which his injudicious edition of Pope exposed him afterwards, there can be no doubt that Lord B., in his calmer moments, did justice to that exquisite poetical genius which, by their own confession, originally inspired both Wordsworth and Coleridge.]

6 ["Fresh fish from Helicon !"-" Helicon " is a mountain, and not a fish-pond. It should have been " Hippocrene.". Byron, 1816.]

7 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 they do not sell, have published a pair of epics. "Alfred,"-(poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!) Alfred," and the " Fall of Cambria: "

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[Here Lord B. notes in 1816: — “ All right. I saw some

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. 8

[again.

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 9 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 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! 10

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; A coward brood, which mangle as they prey, By hellish instinct, all that cross their way; Aged or young, the living or the dead, No mercy find these harpies 11 must be fed. Why do the injured unresisting yield The calm possession of their native field? Why tamely thus before their fangs retreat, Nor hunt the bloodhounds back to Arthur's Seat ? 12

letters of this fellow (Joseph Cottle) to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions, which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of, he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly resist assailing him, even were it unjust, which it is not for verily he is an ass."- B. 1816. The same person has had the honour to be recorded in the Antijacobin, probably by Canning :

"And Cottle, not he who that Alfred made famous,
But Joseph, of Bristol, the brother of Amos."]

9 Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto, upon the beauties of "Richmond Hill," and the like: it also takes in a charming view of Turnham Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent. [The Rev. Thomas Maurice also wrote Westminster Abbey," and other poems, the "History of Ancient and Modern Hindostan," &c., and his own" Memoirs; comprehending Anecdotes of Literary Characters, during a period of thirty years;" a very amusing piece of autobiography. He died in 1824, at his apartments in the British Museum; where he had been for some years assistant keeper of MSS.]

10 Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius. His "Wanderer of Switzerland" is worth a thousand " Lyrical Ballads," and at least fifty" degraded epics."

[In a MS. critique on this satire, by the late Reverend William Crowe, public orator at Oxford, the incongruity of these metaphors is thus noticed:-" Within the space of three or four couplets he transforms a man into as many dif ferent animals: allow hun but the coinpass of three lines, and he will metamorphose him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will make him a biood-hound." On seeing Mr. Crowe's remarks, Lord Byron desired Mr. Murray to substitute, in the copy in his possession, for hellish instinct," "brutal instinct," for "harpies" "felons," and for “ bloodhounds,"" hell-hounds."]

12 Arthur's Seat; the hill which overhangs Edinburgh.

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