These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed ! These mark the spot where lies the treasure Worth !

made up of impudence and trick,
With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick,
Rome's brazen serpent—boldly dares discuss
The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss !
And with grim triumph and a truculent glee
Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy,
That made an empire's plighted faith a lie,
And fix'd a broad stare on the devil's eye-
(Pleas'd with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart
To stand out-master'd in his own black art!)
Yet

FRIEND.

Enough of —! we're agreed, Who now defends, would then have done the deed. But who not feels persuasion's gentle sway, Who but must meet the proffered hand half-way When courteous

POET. (aside)

(Rome's smooth go-between!)

FRIEND.

Laments the advice that soured a milky queen-
(For “ bloody” all enlighten'd men confess
An antiquated error of the press :)
Who rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds,

6

VOL. II.

With actual cautery staunched the church's wounds!
And though he deems, that with too broad a blur
We damn the French and Irish massacre,
Yet blames them both—and thinks the Pope might err!
What think you now? Boots it with spear and shield
Against such gentle foes to take the field
Whose beckoning hands the mild Caduceus wield?

POET.

What think I now? Even what I thought before ;What boasts though

may deplore, Still I repeat, words lead me not astray

I When the shown feeling points a different way. Smooth can say grace at slander's feast, And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest; Leaves the full lie on —'s gong to swell, Content with half-truths that do just as well; But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks, And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks!

So much for you, my friend! who own a Church,
And would not leave your mother in the lurch !
But when a Liberal asks me what I think
Scar'd by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink,
And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam,
In search of some safe parable I roam-
An emblem sometimes may comprise a tome!

Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood,
I see a tiger lapping kitten's food :

And who shall blame him that he purs applause,
When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause ;
And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his

claws!
Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt,
I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws
More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,
Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws !

From his brimstone bed at break of day

A walking the devil is gone,
To visit his snug little farin the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

II.
Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,
And backward and forward he switched his long tail
As a gentleman switches his cane,

III.
And how then was the devil drest ?
Oh! he was in bis Sunday's best :
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.

IV.
He saw a lawyer killing a viper

On a dung hill hard by his own stable ;

a

And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind

Of Cain and his brother Abel.

v.
He saw an apothecary on a white horse

Ride by on his vocations ;
And the devil thought of his old friend

Death in the Revelations.

VI.

а

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,

A cottage of gentility;
And the devil did grin, for his darling sin

Is pride that apes humility.

VII.

He peep'd into a rich bookseller's shop,

Quoth he! “ We are both of one college ! For I sate myself, like a cormorant, once

Hard by the tree of knowledge.” 1

And all amid them stood the tree of life High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold (query paper money :) and next to Life Our Death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by.

So clomb this first grand thief-
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life
Sat like a cormorant.

PAR. LOST. IV.

The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for “ life " Cod. quid. habent,

VIII.

Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,

A pig with vast celerity ; And the devil looked wise as he saw how the while, It cut its own throat. “There!" quoth he with a smile,

“Goes England's commercial prosperity.”

IX.

As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw

A solitary cell ;
And the devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint

For improving his prisons in hell.

6 trade.” Though indeed the trade, i.e. the bibliopolic, so called xar' do xuv, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, &c. of the trade, exclaimed,“Ay! that's what I call Life now !" This “ Life, our Death,” is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of authorship.—Sic nos non nobis mellificamus apes.

Of this poem, which with the Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, first appeared in the Morning Post, the 1st, 2d, 3d, 9th, and 16th stanzas were dictated by Mr. Southey, See Apologetic Preface, vol. i. If any one should ask who General

meant, the author begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but he might have been mistaken, and

most certainly he did not hear any names mentioned. In in simple verity, the author never meant any one, or indeed

any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerel.