I must'nt forget though, that Bob, like a gander, Would give A particular friend of his,-one Mr. Rose:27 26 But the God look'd at Southey, and shrugging his shoulder, Cried, When, my good friend, will you try to grow older?" Then nodding to Scott, he said, Pray be as portly And rich as you please, but a little less courtly.' The wreaths on their temples grew brighter of bloom, And the wine in the glasses went rippling in rounds, 1As if follow'd and fann'd by the soft-winged sounds. Thus chatting and singing they sat till eleven, When Phoebus shook hands, and departed for heaven ; For poets," he said, who would cherish their powers, And hop'd to be deathless, must keep to good hours.'? § So off he betook him the way that he came, And shot up the north, like an arrow of flame; For the Bear was his inn; and the comet, they say, Was his tandem in waiting to fetch him away. The others then parted, all highly delighted; And so shall I be, when you find me invited. NOTES ON THE FEAST OF THE POETS. * I think-let me see-yes, it is, I declare, · As long ago now as that Buckingham there. SHEFFIELD, Duke of Buckinghamshire, one of the licentious dabblers in wit, who were educated in the court of Charles the Second. It would have appeared a great piece of insolence to this flimsy personage, who in a posthumous edition of his works is recommended to the care of "Time, Truth, and Posterity," to be told, that at the distance of a hundred years, it would be necessary to say who he was. His Grace, it is true, by favour of long standing, and of the . carelessness or ignorance of compilers, still keeps his place in those strange medleys of good and bad, called collections of the English Poets; but very few persons know any thing of him; and they who do, will hardly object to the tone of contempt with which Apollo speaks of a grave coxcomb, who affected to care nothing for the honours of either literature or the world, when he was evidently ambitious of both. In his election of a Poet Laureat, where Pope, Prior, and others, are among the candidates, he thus modestly introduces himself: When Buckingham came, he scarce car'd to be seen, But a laureat peer had never been known, Yet if the kind God had been ne'er so inclined I may here, by the way, take notice of a strange piece of carelessness, which has escaped Mr. Walter Scott in his edition of Dryden, and which, unless he had made eighteen volumes of it, might be construed |