Scrawl on, till death release us from the strain,
Or common Sense assert her rights again;
But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Should'st leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the Nine
Demand a hallowed harp-that harp is thine.
Say! will not Caledonia's annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field,
Than the vile foray of a plundering clan
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?

Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food

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For outlawed SHERWOOD's tales of ROBIN HOOD? 920
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,

And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give ;
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recal,
And save her glory, though his country fall.
Yet what avails the sanguine poet's hope?
To conquer ages, and with time to cope!
New eras spread their wings, new nations rise,
And other victors fill the applauding skies;

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the advice of others than my own judgment, and I seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation. I have heard that some persons conceive me to be under obliga. tions to lord Carlisle : if so, I shall be most particularly happy to learn what they are, and when conferred, that they may be duly appreciated, and publicly acknowledged. What I have humbly advanced as an opinion on his printed things, I am prepared to support if necessary, by quotations from Elegies, Eulogies, Odes, Episodes, and certain facetious and dainty tragedies bearing his name and mark:

"What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards? "Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards!"

So says Pope. Amen!

* "Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora."

Virgil.

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 Phoenix 'midst her fires,
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the Muse? ah no! she flies,
And even spurns the great Seatonian prize,

Though Printers condescend the Press to soil

With rhyme by HOARE, and epic blank by HOYLE:
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list.

Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass;
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam.

There CLARKE, still striving piteously to please," Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees,

A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,

A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind:
Himself a living libel on mankind.†

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The" Games of Hoyle," well known to the votaries of Whist, Chess, &c. are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake, whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the" Plagues of Egypt."

This person who has lately betrayed the most rapid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poem denominated the " Art of Pleasing," as " lucus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry and less poetry. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the Sa

Oh dark asylum of a Vandal race!*

At once the boast of Learning, and disgrace;

So sunk in dulness and so lost in shame

That SMYTHE and HODGSON+ scarce redeem thy fame! But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,

The partial Muse delighted loves to lave,

On her green banks a greener wreath is wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove,
Where RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons justly praise their sires.

For me, who thus unasked have dared to tell
My country, what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age.
No just applause her honoured name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the Muse.
Oh would thy bards but emulate thy fame
And rise, more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
What Tyre appeared in her meridian hour,
'Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been,
Earth's chief dictatress, Ocean's mighty queen :
But Rome decayed, and Athens strewed the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shattered in the main ;

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tirist. If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present salary.

*Into Cambridgeshire the emperor Probus transported a considerable body of Vandals."-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, pag. 83, vol. 2. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion; the breed is still in high perfection.

This gentleman's name requires no praise: the man who in translation displays unquestionable genius, may well be expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon see a splendid specimen.

The Aboriginal Britons," an excellent poem by Richards.

Like these thy strength may sink in ruin hurled,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread CASSANDRA's fate,
With warning ever scoffed at, till too late ;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.

Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate's oracles, the people's jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense

The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
While CANNING's colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame PORTLAND* fills the place of PITT.

Yet once again adieu! ere this the sail

That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale;
And Afric's coast and Calpe'st adverse height,
And Stamboul'st minarets must greet my sight:

Thence shall I stray through Beauty's native clime,

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Where Kaff is clad in rocks, and crowned with snows sublime.

But should I back return, no lettered rage

Shall drag my common-place book on the stage:
Let vain VALENTIA** rival luckless CARR,
And equal him whose work he sought to mar;

A friend of mine being asked why his grace of P. was likened to an old woman, replied, " he supposed it was because he was past bearing."

+ Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar.

Stamboul is the Turkish word for Constantinople.

Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants.
Mount Caucasus.

** Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical, and ty pographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of the" Stranger in Ireland."-Oh fy, my lord, has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist? but two of a trade," they say, &c.

Let ABERDEEN and ELGIN* still pursue
The shade of Fame through regions of Virtu;
T aste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments, and maimed antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art:

Of Dardan tours, let Dilettanti tell,
I leave topography to classic GELL ;†
And, quite content, no more shall interpose,
To stun mankind with poesy or prose.

Thus far I've held my undisturbed career
Prepared for rancour, steeled 'gainst selfish fears
This thing of ryhme I ne'er disdained to own-
Though not obstrusive, yet not quite unknown,
My voice was heard again, though not so loud,
My page, though nameless, never disavowed,
And now at once I tear the veil away :-
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of MELBOURNE house,
By LAMBE's resentment, or by HOLLAND's spouse,
By JEFFREY's harmless pistol, HALLAM's rage,
EDINA's brawny sons and brimstone page..
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are " penetrable stuff":"
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.

The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall,

Nor fools nor follics tempt me to despise

The meanest thing that crawled beneath my eyes:

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*Lord Elgin would fain persuade us, that all the fig ures, with and without noses, in his stone-shop, are the work of Phidias; Credat Judæus !"

+ Mr. Gell's Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr. G. conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the re spective works display.