Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.
Poets and painters, as all artists know,[1]
May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
But make not monsters spring from gentle dams—
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.20
A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends;[2]
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As Pertness passes with a legal gown:[3]
Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain[4]
- ↑ as we scribblers.—[MSS. L. (a and b), MS. M.]
- ↑ Like Wardle's[a] speeches.—[MS. L. (a).]
↑ a. [Gwyllim Lloyd Wardle (1762- 1834), who served in Ireland in 1798, as Colonel of the Welsh Fusiliers, known as "Wynne's lambs," was M.P. for Okehampton 1807-12. In January, 1809, he brought forward a motion for a parliamentary investigation into the exercise of military patronage by the Duke of York, and the supposed influence of the Duke's mistress, Mary Anne Clarke.] - ↑
As pertness lurks beneath a legal gown.
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down.—[MS. L. (a).]
or, Which covers all things like a Prelate's gown.—[MS. L. (b).]
or, Which wraps presumption.—[MS. M. erased.] - ↑
As when the poet to description yields
Of waters gliding through the goodly fields;
The Groves of Granta and her Gothic Halls,
Oxford and Christchurch, London and St. Pauls,
Or with a ruder flight he feebly aims
To paint a rainbow or the River Thames.
Perhaps you draw a fir tree or a beech,
But then a landscape is beyond your reach;
Or, if that allegory please you not,
Take this— you'ld form a vase, but make a pot.—[MS. L. (a).]
