So may'st thou prosper in the paths of Sale,[1]
And Longman smirk and critics cease to rail.
All hail to Matthews![2] wash his reverend feet,
And in my name the man of Method greet,—
Tell him, my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,
Who cannot love me, and who will not mend,
Tell him, that not in vain I shall assay
To tread and trace our "old Horatian way,"[3]
And be (with prose supply my dearth of rhymes)
What better men have been in better times.
Here let me cease, for why should I prolong
My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song?
Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist!
Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist,
So pleased the printer's orders to perform
For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme.
Go—Get thee hence to Paternoster Row,
Thy patrons wave a duodecimo!
(Best form for letters from a distant land,
It fits the pocket, nor fatigues the hand.)
Then go, once more the joyous work commence[4]
- ↑ [The word "Sale" may have a double meaning. There may be an allusion to George Sale, the Orientalist, and translator of the Koran.]
- ↑ ["In Matthews I have lost my 'guide, philosopher, and friend.'"—Letter to R. C. Dallas, September 7, 1811, Letters, 1898, ii. 25. (For Charles Skinner Matthews, see Letters, 1898, i. 150, note 3.)]
- ↑ [Compare—
"In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is
Horatian, 'Medio tu tutissimus ibis.'"Don Juan, Canto V. stanza xvii. lines 8, 9.
The "doctrine" is Horatian, but the words occur in Ovid, Metam., lib. ii. line 137.—Poetical Works, 1902, vi. 273, note 2.]
- ↑ [Hobhouse's Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turkey, 4to, was published by James Cawthorn, in 1813.]
