Or cheer the "drunken lark," that upward flies,

Warbling its matins in cœrulean skies.

The river glideth at its own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep,

And all that mighty heart (the river's) is lying still!

They bolted on me thus, and lo!

And, in the twinkling of an eye.....

Then Wilson, gentle Wilson, soft should tread

Each blooming bower, and flower-bespangled mead;

NOTES.

More Twinklings.

O gentle sleep! do they belong to thee,

These twinklings of oblivion?

The Sky-Lark.

And, though little troubled with sloth,

Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth

To be such a traveller as I!

-Happy liver!

With a soul as strong as a mountain river.

The Nightingale.

O nightingale! thou surely art

A creature of a fiery heart, &c. &c.

The green Linnet.

A brother of the leaves he seems,
When in a moment forth he teems

His little song in gushes••••••

Where, as the humming bird before him flew, 745
Sipping with "tiny" bill the morning dew,

The Bard should start with wonder and delight,
And hail the " blessed vision of the light!"

With these had vanished then a motley Band,

That now around the Muses' temple stand,
Casting their offerings on the sacred shrine,

As grateful tribute to the "tuneful Nine."

750

Had these but gone, as would they had, from hence To plague in other regions Common Sense,

Puts it beneath a tree where it shines, and then

I led my Lucy to the spot: "Look here,"

O joy it was for her, and joy for me!

Then had my task been spared; nor I decreed 755 To censure witlings, and give fools their meed. Fated myself to join the exiled throng,

An humble scribbler 'mid the "sons of song."

760

While Folly's children haunt Apollo's fame,
Startling the Muses from their lov'd domain,
The worst, rank scum of a degraded age,
Pour all their scrawling fury on the Stage.
No painter's aid our sterner fathers sought,
To brighten nonsense, or to strengthen thought;
Rough from the life their mimic scenes they drew,
Enough for them if but to Nature true.

Their gaudier sons the path of Taste forego,
And greet, for Sense, the dazzled eye with Show.

*

E'en Actors now to Elephants submit,

And splendid Pageants fill the place of Wit. 770

NOTES.

*Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus, seu

Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo,

So pass they on;-repeated ev'ry night, Shakspeare, e'en Shakspeare, ceases to delight: His Tempest mangled to amuse the Town, Makes simp'ring Folly smile, and Wisdom frown:

NOTES.

Sive elephas albus vulgi converteret ora:
Spectaret populum ludis attentiùs ipsis,

Ut sibi præbentem mimo spectacula plura :

SCRIPTORES AUTEM NARRARE PUTARET ASELLO
FABELLAM SURDO.

HOR. Epist. lib. ii. 1.

And so it is,

The Town, the Town, good Pit, has Asses' ears!

Baviad.

* Alluding to an alteration from the Tempest of Shakspeare, by Dryden, wholly unworthy of that great man, and, as the Compilers of the Biographia Dramatica remark," a fruit entirely unequal to the noble stock on which it is engrafted." Yet the Proprietors of Covent Garden Theatre thought proper to revive this with all the aid of scenery, machinery, &c. &c.

Hæc fierent, si testiculi vena ulla paterni