SCOTT:

Again all hail! Iftales 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 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

1

more."

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, dissolved 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 seekst 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 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! With thee our nursery-damsels shed their tears,

Ere Miss as yet completes her infant years: But in her teens thy whining powers are vaim 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;

If chance some bard, though once by dunces
feared,
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 every
pearl,

And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by?

Oh day disastrous! on her firm set rock,
Dunedin's castle felt a secret shock;
Dark roll'd the sympathetic waves of Forth,
Low groan'd the startled whirlwinds of the
north;

TWEED ruffled half his wave to form a tear,
The other half pursued its calm career;
ARTHUR'S steep summit nodded to its base;
The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place?
The Tolbooth felt-for marble sometimes

can,

Known be thy name, unbounded be thy sway! Thy HOLLAND's banquets shall each toil

repay;

While grateful Britain yields the praise she owes

To Holland's hirclings, and to Learning's foes,

Yet mark one caution, ere thy next Review Spread its light wings of saffron and of blue, Beware lest blundering BROUGHAM destroy the sale,

His patrimonial garret fell to ground,
And pale Edina shudder'd at the sound:
Strew'd were the streets around with milk-
white reams,
Flow'd all the Canongate with inky streams;
This of his candour seem'd the sable dew,
That of his valour shew'd the bloodless hue,
And all with justice deem'd the two combined
The mingled emblems of his mighty mind.
But Caledonia's Goddess hover'd o'er
The field, and saved him from the wrath
of MOORE;
From either pistol snatch'd the vengeful lead,
And straight restored it to her favourite's
head;

That head, with greater than magnetic

power,

Caught it, as Danaë the golden shower, And, though the thickening dross will scarce refine,

Augments its ore, and is itself a mine.
"My son," she cried, "ne'er thirst for gore
again,

Resign the pistol and resume the pen;
O'er politics and poesy preside,
Boast of thy country, and Britannia's guide!
For, long as Albion's heedless sons submit,
Or Scottish taste decides on English wit,
So long shall last thine unmolested reign,
Nor any dare to take thy name in vain.
Behold a chosen band shall aid thy plan,
And own thee chieftain of the critic clan.
First in the ranks illustrious shall be seen
The travell'd Thane! Athenian ABERDEEN.
HERBERT shall wield THOR's hammer, and
sometimes,

In gratitude, thou'lt praise his rugged
rhymes.
Smug SYDNEY too thy bitter page shall seek,
And classic HALLAM, much renown'd for
Greek.

Scort may perchance his name and influence lend,

And paltry PILLANS shall traduce his friend; While gay Thalia's buckless votary, LAME, As he himself was damn'd, shall try to damn.

His hirelings mention'd and himself forgot! HOLLAND, with HENRY PETTY at his back, The whipper-in and huntsman of the pack. Blest be the banquets spread at HollandHouse,

Where Scotchmen feed, and critics may carouse!

Long, long beneath that hospitable roof Shall Grub-street dine, while duns are kept aloof.

See honest HALLAM lay aside his fork, Resume his pen, review his Lordship's work, And, grateful to the founder of the feast, Declare his landlord can translate, at least! Dunedin! view thy children with delight, They write for food, and feed because they write,

And lest, when heated with th' unusual grape,

Some glowing thoughts should to the press

The degradation of our vaunted stage? Heavens! is all sense of shame, and talent gone?

Have we no living bard of merit?-none?
Awake, GEORGE COLMAN, CUMBERLAND awake!
Ring the alarum-bell, let folly quake!
Oh SHERIDAN! if aught can move thy pen,
Let Comedy resume her throne again,
Abjure the mummery of German schools,
Leave new Pizarros to translating fools;
Give, as thy last memorial to the age,
One classic drama, and reform the stage.
Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rear
her head

Where GARRICK trod, and KEMBLE lives to tread?

On those shall Farce display buffoonery's mask,

And bless the promise which his form displays;

While Gayton bounds before the enraptured looks

Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes: Let high-born letchers eye the lively Presle Twirl her light limbs that spurn the needless veil:

| Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, Wave the white arm and point the pliant toe; Collini trill her love-inspiring song, Strain her fair neck and charm the listening throng!

Raise not your scythe, suppressors of our vice!

Reforming Saints, too delicately nice!
By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save,
No sunday-tankards foam, no barbers shave,
And beer undrawn and beards unmown
display

While SHAKESPEARE, OTWAY, MASSINGER,

GOOSE? forgot,

On stalls must moulder, or in closets rot? Lo!with what pomp the daily prints proclaim The rival candidates for Attic fame!

In grim array though LEWIS' spectres rise,

Still SKEFFINGTON and Goose divide the prize.

And sure great SKEFFINGTON must claim our praise, For skirtless coats, and skeletons of plays Renown'd alike; whose genius ne'er confines Her flight to garnish GREENWOOD's gay designs;

Nor sleeps with "Sleeping Beauties," but

anon

In five facetious acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewilder'd with

the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean; But as some hands applaud, a venal few! Rather than sleep,why John applauds it too.

Such are we now, ah! wherefore should

we turn To what our fathers were, unless to mourn? Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame, Or, kind to dulness, do ye fear to blame? Well may the nobles of our present race Watch each distortion of a Naldi's face; Well may they smile on Italy's buffoons, And worship Catalani's pantaloons,

Since their own drama yields no fairer trace Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace.

Or hail at once the patron and the pile Of vice and folly, Greville and Argyle! Where yon proud palace, Fashion's hallow'd fane,

Spreads wide her portals for the motley
train,
Behold the new Petronius of the day,
The arbiter of pleasure and of play!
There the hired Eunuch,the Hesperian choir,
The melting lute, the soft lascivious lyre,
The song from Italy, the step from France,
The smile of beauty, and the flush of wine,
The midnight orgy, and the mazy dance,
For fops, fools, gamesters, knaves, and

lords combine:

Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters The first in lengthen'd line majestic swim, leap: The last display the free, unfetter'd limb: With art the charms which Nature could Those for Hibernia's lusty sons repair not spare;

These after husbands wing their eager flight,

Pour her exotic follies o'er the town,
To sanction vice and hunt decorum down:
Let wedded strumpets languish o'er Des-
hayes,

night.

Oh! blest retreats of infamy and ease! Where, all forgotten but the power to please,

Each maid may give a loose to genial thought,

Each swain may teach new systems, or be

taught:

What harm? in spite of every critio elf, Sir T. may read his stanzas, to himself; MILES ANDREWS still his strength in couplets try,

from Spain,

Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling

main;
The jovial Caster's set, and seven's the nick,
Or-done!--a thousand on the coming trick!
If mad with loss, existence 'gins to tire,
And all your hope or wish is to to expire,
Here's PowELL's pistol ready for your life,
And, kinder still, a PAGET for your wife.
Fit consummation of an earthly race
Begun in folly, ended in disgrace,
While none but menials o'er the bed of death,
Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy waver-
ing breath;

Traduced by liars, and forgot by all,
The mangled victim of a drunken brawl,
To live like CLODIUS, and like FALKLAND fall.

Truth! rouse some genuine Bard, and guide his hand To drive this pestilence from out the land. Even I-least thinking of a thoughtless throng,

Just skill'd to know the right and chuse the wrong, Freed at that age when Reason's shield is lost To fight my course through Passion's countless host,

Whom every path of pleasure's flowery way Has lured in turn, and all have led astrayE'en I must raise my voice, e'en I must feel Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal;

Altho' some kind, censorious friend will say, "What art thou better, meddling fool, than they?"

And every brother-rake will smile to see
That miracle, a Moralist in me.
No matter when some Bard, in virtue

And 'tis some praise in Peers to write at all. Yet, did or taste or reason sway the times, Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes?

Roscommon! SHEFFIELD! with your spirits fled,

No future laurels deck a noble head;
No Muse will cheer, with renovating smile,
The paralytic puling of CARLISLE :
The puny schoolboy and his early lay
Men pardon, if his follies pass away;
But who forgives the senior's ceaseless verse,
Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes
grow worse?
What heterogeneous honours deck the Peer!
Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer !
So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age,
His scenes alone had damn'd our sinking
stage:

But Managers for once cried "hold, enough!" Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff.

Yet at their judgment let hisLordship laugh, And case his volumes in congenial calf: Yes! doff that covering where Morocco shines,

And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines.

With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead, Who daily scribble for your daily bread, With you I war not: GIFFORD's heavy hand Has crush'd, without remorse, your numerous band.

strong,

ing song,

Then sleep my pen for ever! and my voice Be only heard to hail him and rejoice; Rejoice, and yield my feeble praise; though I May feel the lash that virtue must apply.

As for the smaller fry, who swarm in shoals,

From silly HAFIZ up to simple BOWLES, Why should we call them from their dark abode,

In broad St. Giles's or in Tottenham Road? Or (since some men of fashion nobly dare To scrawl in verse) from Bond-street, or the Square?

If things of ton their harmless lays indite, Most wisely doom'd to shun the public sight,

And

peace be with you! 'tis your best reward. Such damning fame as Dunciads only give Could bid your lines beyond a morning live;

But now at once your fleeting labours close,
With names of greater note in blest repose.
Far be't from me unkindly to upbraid
The lovely Rosa's prose in masquerade,
Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her
mind,

Leave wondering comprehension far behind.
Though CRUSCA's bards no more our jour-
nals fill,
Some stragglers skirmish round their co-
lumns still.
Last of the howling host which once was
BELL'S,
MATILDA snivels yet, and Hafız yells;