And other Victors fill th' applauding skies;[1]
A few brief generations fleet along,
Whose sons forget the Poet and his song:
E'en now, what once-loved Minstrels scarce may claim
The transient mention of a dubious name!
When Fame's loud trump hath blown its noblest blast,
Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last;
And glory, like the Phœnix[2] midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.960
Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the Muse? ah, no! she flies,
Even from the tempting ore of Seaton's prize;[3]
Though Printers condescend the press to soil
- ↑ Line 952. Note—
"Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora."
(Virgil.) - ↑ "The devil take that 'Phœnix'! How came it there?"—B., 1816.
- ↑ And even spurns the great Seatonian prize.—[MS. First to Fourth Editions (a correction in the Annotated Copy).]
- ↑ [The Rev. Charles James Hoare (1781-1865), a close friend of the leaders of the Evangelical party, gained the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge in 1807 with his poem on the Shipwreck of St. Paul.]
- ↑
With odes by Smyth[i] and epic songs by Hoyle,
Hoyle whose learn'd page, if still upheld by whist
Required no sacred theme to bid us list.—[MS. British Bards.]
↑ i. 5. [William Smyth (1766-1849), Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, published his English Lyrics (in 1806), and several other works.]
- ↑ [Edmund Hoyle, the father of the modern game of whist, lived from 1672 to 1769. The Rev. Charles Hoyle, his "poetical namesake," was, like Hoare, a Seatonian prizeman, and wrote an epic in thirteen books on the Exodus.]
