But yet, so near all modern worthies run, 'Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun;

Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike,

Our bards and censors are so much alike.

Then should you ask me, why I venture

o'er

The path which POPE and GIFFORD trod

before;

If not yet sicken'd, you can still proceed; Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read.

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise, When Sense and Wit with Poesy allied, No fabled Graces, flourish'd side by side, From the same fount their inspiration drew, And, rear'd by Taste, bloom'd fairer as they grew.

Then, in this happy isle, a POPE's pure strain Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;

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: The loaded press beneath her labour groans, And printers' 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;
Some leaden calf- but whom it matters not,
From soaring SOUTHEY down to groveling
STOTT.

Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew, For notice eager, pass in long review: Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace, And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race, Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode; And tales of terror jøstle 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 their 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 graceA mighty mixture of the great and base. And thinkst thou, Scorr! by vain conceit perchance,

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
Low may they sink to merited contempt,
And Scorn remunerate the mean attempt!
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 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!

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,
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wonderous 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 chaunt too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could

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, 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;"

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,

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 elegize an ass.
How well the subject suits his noble mind!
"A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind."

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

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 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 qualis, 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 vain: 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,

On such occasions, feel as much as manThe Tolbooth felt defrauded of his charms If JEFFREY died, except within her arms: Nay, last not least, on that portentous morn The sixteenth story, where himself was born,

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.

Scorr may perchance his name and influence lend,

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

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 hirelings, 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,

Turn beef to bannocks, cauliflowers to kail." Thus having said, the kilted Goddess kist Her son, and vanish'd in a Scottish mist. Illustrious HOLLAND! hard would be his lot, 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

escape,

And tinge with red the female reader's cheek, My lady skims the cream of each critique; Breathes o'er the page her purity of soul, Reforms each error and refines the whole.

Now to the Drama turn. Oh,motley sight! What precious scenes the wondering eyes invite!

Puns, and a prince within a barrel pent. And Dibdin's nonsense yield complete

content.

Though now, thank Heaven! the Rosciomania's o'er, are endured once

And full-grown actors

more ;

Yet what avail their vain attempts to please, While British critics suffer scenes like these? While REYNOLDS vents his "dammes, poobs, and zounds,"

And common-place, and common - sense confounds? While KENNY's World, just suffer'd to proceed,

Proclaims the audience very kind indeed? And BEAUMONT's pilfer'd Caratach affords A tragedy complete in all but words? Who but must mourn while these are all the rage,