LD ENGLAND has not loft her pray'r,
And GEORGE, (thank heav'n!) has got an heir.
A royal babe, a PRINCE of WALES.
-Poets! I pity all your nails-
What reams of paper will be spoil'd!
What gradufes be daily foil'd
By inky fingers, greasy thumbs,
Hunting the word that never comes!
Now Academics pump their wits,
And lash in vain their lazy tits;
In vain they whip, and flash, and spur,
The callous jades will never stir;
Nor can they reach Parnassus' hill,
Try every method which they will.
Nay, fhould the tits get on for once,
Each rider is fo grave a dunce,
That, as I've heard good judges fay,
'Tis ten to one they'd lofe their way;
Though not one wit beftrides the back
Of useful drudge, ycleped hack,
But fine bred things of mettled blood,
Pick'd from Apollo's royal ftud.
Greek, Roman, nay Arabian steeds,
Or those our mother country breeds;
Some ride ye in, and ride ye out,
And to come home go round about,
green fwerd, nor the road, And that I think they call an ODE. Some take the pleasant country air,
And fmack their whips and drive a pair,
Each horfe with bells which clink and chime,
And fo they march-and that is rhime.
Some copy with prodigious skill
The figures of a buttery-bill,
Which, with great folks of erudition,
Shall pass for Coptic or Phoenician.
While fome, as patriot love prevails,
To compliment a prince of Wales,
Salute the royal babe in Welsh,
And fend forth gutturals like a belch.
What pretty things imagination
Will fritter out in adulation!
The Pagan Gods fhall vifit earth,
To triumph in a Chriftian's birth.
While claffic poets, pure and chafte,
Of trim and academic TASTE,
Shall lug them in by head and shoulders,
To be or Speakers, or beholders.
MARS fhall prefent him with a lance,
To humble Spain and conquer France;
The GRACES, buxom, blith, and gay,
Shall at his cradle dance the Hay;
And VENUS, with her train of LOVES,
Shall bring a thousand pair of doves
To bill, to coo, to whine, to fqueak,
Through all the dialects of Greeks.
How many Swains of claffic breed,
Shall deftly tune their oaten reed,
And bring their Doric nymphs to town,
To fing their measures up and down,
In notes alternate clear and sweet,
Like Ballad-fingers in a street.
While those who grasp at reputation,
From imitating imitation,
Shall hunt each cranny, nook, and creek,
For precious fragments in the Greek,
And rob the fpital, and the wafte,
For fenfe, and sentiment, and taste.
What Latin hodge-podge, Grecian hash, With Hebrew roots, and English trash,
Shall academic cooks produce
For present show and future ufe!
FELLOWS! who've foak'd away their knowledge,
In fleepy refidence at college;
Whose lives are like a ftagnant pool,
Muddy and placid, dull and cool;
Mere drinking, eating; eating, drinking;
With no impertinence of thinking;
Who lack no farther erudition,
Than just to set an impofition
To cramp, demolish, and difpirit,
Each true begotten child of merit;
Cenfors, who, in the day's broad light,
Punish the vice they act at night;
Whofe charity with felf begins,
Nor covers others venial fins;
But that their feet may fafely tread,
Take up hypocrify inftead,
As knowing that must always hide
A multitude of fins befide;
Whose rufty wit is at a stand,
Without a freshman at their hand;
(Whose service muft of course create
The juft return of fev❜n-fold hate)
Lord! that fuch good and useful men
Should ever turn to books agen.
YET matter must be gravely plann'd,
And fyllables on fingers fcann'd,
And racking pangs rend lab'ring head,
Till lady Mufe is brought to-bed:
What hunting, changing, toiling, fweating,
To bring the ufual epithet in!
Where the crampt measure kindly shows
It will be verse, but should be profe.
So, when its neither light nor dark,
To 'prentice spruce, or lawyer's clerk,
The nymph, who takes her nightly ftand
At some fly corner in the Strand,
Plump in the cheft, tight in the boddice,
Seems to the eye a perfect goddefs;
But canvafs'd more minutely o'er,
Turns out an old, ftale, batter'd whore.
Yet must these fons of GOWNED EASE,
Proud of the plumage of Degrees,
Forfake their APATHY a while,
To figure in the Roman ftile,
And offer incenfe at the fhrine
Upon a throne the goddess fits, Surrounded by her bulky wits; FABRICIUS, COOPER, CALEPINE,
AINSWORTHIUS, FABER, CONSTANTINE;
And he, who like DODONA fpoke,
DE SACRA QUERCU, HOLYOAKE;
These are her counsellors of state,
Men of much words, and wits of weight;
Here GRADUS, full of phrases clever,
Lord of her treasury for ever,
With liberal hand his bounty deals;
SIR CENTO KEEPER of the Seals.
Next to the person of the queen,
Old madam PROSODY is feen;
Talking inceffant, although dumb,
Upon her fingers to her thumb.
And all around her portraits hung
Of heroes in the Latin Tongue;
Italian, English, German, French,
Who moft laboriously entrench
In deep parade of language dead,
What would not in their own be read,
Without impeachment of that TASTE,
Which LATIN IDIOM turns to chafte.
SANTOLIUS here, whofe flippant joke,
Sought refuge in a Roman cloak:
With dull COMMIRIUS at his fide,
In all the pomp of jefuit pride.
|