Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate,
Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;
Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon
The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.
Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,
Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town:750
If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man—
May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be—sold!
Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now,[1]
In modern Physics, we can scarce allow),[2]760
Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
- ↑ [MS. L. (a) recommences at line 758.]
- ↑ Our modern sceptics can no more allow.—[MS. L. (a).]
- ↑ Some rhyming peer—Carlisle or Carysfort.[i]—[MS. M.]
↑ i. [To variant ii. (p. 444) is subjoined this note: "Of 'John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort,' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morea. Being a rhymer himself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his 'foolscap crown octavos.'"—[John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems (Dramatic and Miscellaneous Works, 1810), he published two pamphlets (1780, 1783), to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.] - ↑ Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the "ultimus Romanorum," the last of the Cruscanti—"Edwin" the "profound" by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of "well said Baviad the Correct." I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate.
A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MORNING CHRONICLE."
{{block center|"What reams of paper, floods of ink,"
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'll say of me,
In which your readers may agree.
