SONNET

ADDRESSED

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

JUNE 2, 1792.

HAYLEY, thy tenderness fraternal shown

In our first interview, delightful guest!

To Mary and me for her dear sake distress’d,
Such as it is has made my heart thy own,
Though heedless now of new engagements grown;

For threescore winters make a wintry breast,

And I had purposed ne'er to go in quest Of Friendship more, except with God alone. But Thou hast won me; nor is God

my

foe, Who, ere this last afflictive scene began,

Sent Thee to mitigate the dreadful blow,

My Brother, by whose sympathy I know
Thy true deserts infallibly to scan,
Not more to admire the Bard than love the Man.

MARY AND JOHN.

IF John marries Mary, and Mary alone, 'Tis a very good match between Mary and John. Should John wed å score, Oh, the claws and the

scratches ! It can't be a match :-'tis a bundle of matches.

OF

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

Dear President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to time,
And bids transactions of a day,
That fleeting hours would waft away
To dark futurity, survive,
And in unfading beauty live,
You cannot with a grace decline
A special mandate of the Nine,
Yourself, whatever task you choose,
So much indebted to the Muse.
Thus

say

the sisterhood :-We come; Fix well your pallet on your thumb, Prepare the pencil and the tints, We come to furnish you with hints. French disappointment, British glory, Must be the subject of the story.

First strike a curve, a graceful bow,
Then slope it to a point below;
Your outline easy, airy, light,
Fillid

up
becomes a paper

kite.
Let independence, sanguine, horrid,
Blaze like a meteor in the forehead:
Beneath (but lay aside your graces)
Draw six-and-twenty rueful faces,
Each with a staring, steadfast eye,
Fix'd on his great and good ally.
France flies the kite—'tis on the wing-
Britannia's lightning cuts the string.
The wind that raised it, ere it ceases,
Just rends it into thirteen pieces,

Takes charge of every fluttering sheet,
And lays them all at George's feet.

Iberia, trembling from afar,
Renounces the confederate war;
Her efforts and her arts o'ercome,
France calls her shatter'd navies home;
Repenting Holland learns to mourn
The sacred treaties she has torn ;
Astonishment and awe profound
Are stamp'd upon

the nations round; Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose.

ON THE

AUTHOR OF LETTERS ON LITERATURE'.

The genius of the Augustan age

His head among Rome's ruins rear'd, And bursting with heroic rage,

When literary Heron appear'd, Thou hast, he cried, like him of old

Who set the Ephesian dome on fire, By being scandalously bold,

Attain'd the mark of thy desire. And for traducing Virgil's name

Shalt share his merited reward ; A perpetuity of fame,

That rots, and stinks, and is abhorr’d. Nominally by Robert Heron, but written by John Pinker

1