Let these, or such as these, with just applause | Whose sons forget the poet and his song:
Restore the muse's violated laws;

But not in flimsy Darwin's pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme;
Whose gilded symbols, more adorn'd than clear,
The eye delighted, but fatigued the ear;
In show the simple lyre could once surpass,
But now, worn down, appear in native brass;
While all his train of hovering sylphs around
Evaporate in similes and sound:

Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die:
False glare attracts, but more offends the eye.*
Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd:
Let them but hold, my muse, nor dare to teach
A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach:
The native genius with their being given
Will point the path, and peal their notes to
heaven.

And thou, too, Scott, resign to minstrels rude
The wilder slogan of a border feud:
Let others spin their meagre lines for hire;
Enough for genius, if itself inspire!
Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific every spring, be too profuse;
Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse,
And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse:
Let spectre-mongering Lewis aim, at most,
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;
Let Moore be lewd; let Strangford steal from
Moore,

And swear that Camoëns sang such notes of yore;
Let Hayley hobble on, Montgomery rave,
And godly Grahame chant a stupid stave;
Let sonneteering Bowles his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let Stott, Carlisle, Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub Street, and of Grosvenor Place the best,
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,
Shouldst leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the Nine,
Demand a hallow'd harp-that harp is thine.
Say, will not Caledonia's annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field,
Than the wild foray of a plundering clan,
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?
Or Marmion's acts of darkness, fitter food
For outlaw'd Sherwood's tales of Robin Hood?
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 recall,
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;
A few brief generations fleet along,

*The neglect of the Botanic Garden is some proof of returning taste.

+ Messrs Lambe and Lloyd, the most ignoble followers of Southey and Co.

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,
Condemn'd 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.*

Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race!†
At once the boast of learning, and disgrace;
So sunk in dulness, and so lost to 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.t

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 honour'd 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 appear'd in her meridian hour,
'Tis thine at once, fair Albion, to have been-
Earth's chief dictatress, ocean's mighty queen:
But Rome decay'd and Athens strew'd the plain,
And Tyre's proud piers lie shatter'd in the main:
Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurl'd,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.

* This person, was the writer of a poem denominated the Art of Pleasing, as "lucus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry and less poetry.

+"Into Cambridgeshire the Emperor Probus transported a considerable body of Vandals."Gibbon's Decline and Fall, page 83, vol. ii.

The Aboriginal Britons, an excellent poem by Richards.

1

But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate,*
With warning ever scoff'd 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, thy 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's adverse height,
And Stamboul's minarets, must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray through beauty's native
clime,!

Where Kaff's is clad in rocks, and crown'd with
snows sublime.

But should I back return, no letter'd 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:
Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue
The shade of fame through regions of virtù :
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art.
Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell,

*Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. Apollo bestowed on her the gift of prophecy; but added to it the curse that no one should believe her predictions.

+ Calpe is the ancient name of Gibraltar. ↑ Georgia, remarkable for the beauty of its inhabitants.

§ Mount Caucasus.

Lord Valentia.

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

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 undisturb'd career,
Prepared for rancour, steel'd 'gainst selfish fear;
This thing of rhyme, I ne'er disdain'd to own--
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown:
My voice was heard again, though not so loud.
My page, though nameless, never disavow'd;
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 buickram 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 follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my
eyes;

But now, so callous grown, so changed since
youth,

I've learn'd to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learn'd to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss:
Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;

And, arm'd in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared to do; how far my lay
Hath wrong'd these righteous times, let others

POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I have been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and wellbeloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so bedeviled with their ungodly ribaldry: "Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ:"

I suppose I must say of Jeffrey as Sir Andrew Aguecheek saith, "An' I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him d-d ere I had fought him." What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed! But I yet hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.

My Northern friends have accused me, with justice, of personality towards their great literary anthropophagus, Jeffrey; but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by "lying and slandering," and slake their thirst by "evil speaking?" I have adduced facts already well known, and of Jeffrey's mind I have stated my free opinion; nor has he hence sustained any injury: what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England because I have censured there "persons of honour and wit about town;" but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal; those who do not, may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed: I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas, "the age of chivalry is over," or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.

There is a youth yclept Hewson Clarke (Subaudi Esquire), a Sizer of Emanuel College, and I believe a denizen of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much

better company than he has been accustomed to meet. He is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the Satirist, for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name till coupled with the Satirist. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather pleased than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the Editor of the Satirist, who, it seems, is a gentleman, God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr Jerningham is about to take up the cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord Carlisle. I hope not: he was one of the few who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy; and whatever he may say or do, “pour on, I will endure." I have nothing further to add, save a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publisher; and, in the words of Scott, I wish

"To all and each a fair good night,

And rosy dreams and slumbers light."

THE CURSE OF MINERVA.*

WRITTEN 1811,-PUBLISHED 1828.
"Pallas, te hoc vulnere, Pallas

Immolat, et pœnam scelerato ex sanguine sumit."-Æneid.

SLOW sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows.
On old Egina's rock and Hydra's isle

The god of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious gulf, unconquer'd Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance;
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of
heaven;

Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.

On such an eve his palest beam he cast,
When, Athens! here thy wisest look'd his last.
How watch'd thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murder'd sage's latest day;
Not yet not yet-Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain's once delightful dyes;
Gloom o'er the lovely land he seem'd to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frown'd before;
But ere he sank below Citharon's head,
The cup of woe was quaff'd-the spirit fled;
The soul of him that scorn'd to fear or fly,
Who lived and died as none can live or die.

But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain,
The
queen of night asserts her silent reign:
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams
play,

There the white column greets her grateful ray;
And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret:
The groves of olive scatter'd dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And sad and sombre 'mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus' fane, yon solitary palm:
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.

Again the Ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mix'd with the shades of many a distant isle,
That frown, where gentler ocean deigns to smile.

As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane,*
I mark'd the beauties of the land and main,
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poet's lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turn'd to scan,
Sacred to gods, but not secure from man,
The past return'd, the present seem'd to cease,
And glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!

Hours rolled along, and Dian's orb on high
Had gain'd the centre of her softest sky;
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O'er the vain shrine of many a vanish'd god;
But chiefly, Pallas, thine; when Hecate's glare,
Check'd by thy columns, fell more sadly fair
O'er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mused, and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,

* The Parthenon, or temple of Minerva.

Ask'st thou the difference? From fair Phyle's Draws sly comparisons of these and those,

And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.

When shall a modern maid have swains like these?

"Irish bastards," according to Sir Callaghan | Alas, ou Harry is no Hercules!