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ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.
Dull Maurice[1] all his granite weight of leaves:
Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain!
The petrifactions of a plodding brain,
That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back again.
With broken lyre and cheek serenely pale,
Lo! sad Alcæus wanders down the vale;
Though fair they rose, and might have bloomed at last,
His hopes have perished by the northern blast:421
Nipped in the bud by Caledonian gales,
His blossoms wither as the blast prevails!
O'er his lost works let classic Sheffield weep;
May no rude hand disturb their early sleep![2]
- ↑ Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto, upon the beauties of "Richmond Hill," and the like:—it also takes in a charming view of Turnham Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent. [The Rev. Thomas Maurice (1754-1824) had this at least in common with Byron—that his History of Ancient and Modern Hindostan was severely attacked in the Edinburgh Review. He published a vindication of his work in 1805. He must have confined his dulness to his poems (Richmond Hill (1807), etc.), for his Memoirs (1819) are amusing, and, though otherwise blameless, he left behind him the reputation of an "indiscriminate enjoyment" of literary and other society. Lady Anne Hamilton alludes to him in Epics of the Ton (1807), p. 165—
"Or warmed like Maurice by Museum fire,
From Ganges dragged a hurdy-gurdy lyre."He was assistant keeper of MSS. at the British Museum from 1799 till his death.]
- ↑ 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.
