"

290

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue,*..
And boasted locks of red, or auburn hue,

Whose plaintive strain each love-sick Miss admires,
And o'er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canʼst, to yield thine author's sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place
By dressing CAMOENS in a suit of lace?

Mend, STRANGFORD! mend thy morals and thy

taste;

Be warm, but pure-be amorous, but be chaste: 300
Cease to deceive; thy pilfered harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian bard to copy MOORE.
In many marble-covered volumes view
HAYLEY, in vain attempting something new;
Whether he spin his comedies in rhyme,

Or scrawl, as WOOD and BARCLAY walk, 'gainst time,

His style in youth or age is still the same;

For ever feeble and for ever tame.

Triumphant first see 'Temper's Triumphs' shine! At least, I'm sure they triumphed over mine. 310 Of 'Music's Triumphs' all who read may swear That luckless music never triumphed there.t

* The reader, who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to 'Strangford's Camoens,' p. 127, note to p. 56, or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Camoens.

It is also to be remarked, that the things given to the public as poems of Camoens, are no more to be found in the original Portuguese, than in the Song of Solomon.

f Hayley's two most notorious verse productions, are 'Triumphs of Temper,' and 'Triumphs of Music.' He has also written much comedy in rhyme, epistles, &c. &c. As he is rather an elegant writer of notes and biography, let us recommend Pope's advice to Wycherley, to Mr. H.'s consideration; viz. to convert his poetry into prose,' which may be easily done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet rewardo I On dull devotion-lo! the Sabbath bard, Sepulchral GRAHAME, pours his notes sublime, H In mangled prose, nor e'en aspires to rhyme, Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke, And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch; And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms, 319 Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms. Hail sympathy! thy soft idea brings A thousand visions of a thousand things,

2

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329

And shews, 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 seek'st relief,
Or consolation in a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,t
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 would'st 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: 340
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,

* Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name of 'Sabbath Walks,' and ' Biblical Pictures.? ++ 313 + See Bowles's Sonnets, &c. Sonnet to Oxford,' and 'Stanzas on hearing the Bells of Ostend."

• Awake a louder and a loftier strain,"

H

『སྐ WA

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. 350
Nor this alone, but passing on the road,
The bard sighs forth a gentle episode;+

And gravely tells--attend each beauteous Miss!-
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.

H

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; 360
If POPE, whose fame and genius from the first
Have foiled 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 ev'ry pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in CURLL;
Let all the scandals of a former age

Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page;

* Awake a louder,' &c. &c. is the first line in Bowles's "Spirit of Discovery; a very spirited and pretty dwarf of epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following:

"A kiss

Stole on the list'ning silence, never yet

Here heard; they trembled, even as if the power,' &c. That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss, very much 1 astonished, as well they might be, at such a phenomenon.

+ The episode above alluded to, is the story of Robert a Machin, and Anna d'Arfet,' a pair of constant lovers, who performed the kiss above mentioned, that startled the woods of Madeira.

Curll is one of the heroes of the Dunciad, and was a book seller. Lord Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, author of Lines to the Imitator of Horace.

370

380

Affect a candour which thou can'st not feel,
Clothe envy in the garb of honest zeal;
Write, as if St. John's soul could still inspire,
And do from hate, what MALLET did for hire.?
Oh! had'st thou lived in that congenial time,
To rave with DENNIS, and with RALPH to rhyme,
Thronged with the rest around his living head,
Not raised thy hoof against the lion dead,
A meet reward had crowned thy glorious gains,
And linked thee to the Dunciad for thy pains.
Another epic! who inflicts again
More books of blank upon the sons of men?
Baotian COTTLE, rich Bristowa's boast,
Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast,
And sends his goods to market-all alive;
Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five!
Fresh fish from Helicon! who'll buy? who'll buy?
The precious bargain's cheap-In faith, not I.
Too much in turtle Bristol's sons delight,
Too much o'er bowls of rack prolong the night;
If commerce fills the purse, she clogs the brain,
And AMOS COTTLE strikes the lyre in vain.
In him an author's luckless lot behold!
Condemned to make the books which once he sold.
Oh! AMOS COTTLE-Phoebus! what a name
To fill the speaking trump of future fame!—
Oh! AMOS COTTLE! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!

390

Lord Bolingbroke hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the poet had retained some copies of a work by Lord Bolingbroke (The Patriot King,') which that splendid, but malignant genius, had ordered to be destroyed.

+ Dennis, the critic, and Ralph, the rhymester:

Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, Making night hideous, answer him ye owls.-Dunciad, See Bowles's late edition of Pope's Works, for which he re ceived 3007. thus Mr. B. has experienced, how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another, than to elevate his own

When thus devoted to poetic dreams, vse joY
Who will peruse thy prostituted reams? mislo eiB
Oh pen perverted! paper misapplied! 812 1579 mi
Had COTTLE still adorned the counter's side, 400
Bent o'er the desk, or, born to useful toilswo
Been taught to make the paper which he soils, 8
Ploughed, delved, or plied the bar with lusty limbs
He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him. vero of
As Sisyphus against the infernal steep drob W
Rolls the huge rock, whose motions ne'er may sleep,
So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond! beaves vdH
Dull MAURICEt all his granite weight of leaves to
Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain! Arizo
The petrifactions of a plodding brain, bra 410
That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back!
again.

With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale,s baf Lo! sad ALCEUS wanders down the valehine al Though fair they rose, and might have bloomed at

His hopes have perished by the northern blast ;Nipped in the bud by Caledonian gales, da *y at His blossoms wither as the blast prevails! paiź O'er his lost works let classic SHEFFIELD weep: ~T May no rude hand disturb their early sleep!‡ of P

*Mr. Cottle, Amos, or Joseph, I don't know which, but ore of both, once sellers of books they did not write, and now writers of books that do not sell, have published a pair of epics, “AT& fred,' (poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!) Alfred} apd] the Fall of Cambria."

+ Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of ponderous quarto, upon the beauties of Richmond Hill, and the like it also takes in a charming view of Turnba. Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent ↑ Poor Montgomery! though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the bard? of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius; but his Wanderer of Switzerland' is worth a thousand Lyrical Ballads," and at least fifty Degraded Epics.**i *** *** *TRIPE *