Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears,"

Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears!"

i. Till lo! that modern Midas of the swainsFeels his ears lengthen-with the lengthening strains.[MS. M. erased.] ii. Adds a week's growth to his enormous ears.-[MS. M. erased.] many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of "Remains" utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well; but the "tragedies" are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of "Remains" come under the statute against "resurrection men." What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in an octavo? "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be ;" and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of éclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now, might not some of this Sutor ultra Crepidam's friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then his inscription split into so many modicums!"To the Duchess of Somuch, the Right Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs, and Miss Somebody, these volumes are," etc. etc.why, this is doling out the "soft milk of dedication" in gills,there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the devil.

There lives one Druid, who prepares in time1 'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;

Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse,

To publish faults which Friendship should excuse. 740
If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach
More polished usage of his parts of speech.
But what is shame, or what is aught to him? -
He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim.

i. But what are these? Benefits might bind

Some decent ties about a manly mind.—[MS. M.]

[For Robert Bloomfield, see English Bards, 11. 774-786, and note 2. For Joseph Blacket, see English Bards, 11. 765-770, and note 1. Blacket's Remains, with Life by Pratt, appeared in 1811. The work was dedicated "To Her Grace the Duchess of Leeds, Lady Milbanke and Family, Benevolent Patrons of the Author," etc.]

1. [Lines 737-758 are not in either of the three original MSS. of Hints from Horace, and were probably written in the autumn of 1811. They appear among a sheet of "alterations to English Bards, and S. Reviewers, continued with additions" (MSS. L.), drawn up for the fifth edition, and they are inserted on a separate sheet in MS. M. Á second sheet (MSS. L.) of "scraps of rhyme, . . . principally additions and corrections for English Bards, etc." (for the fifth edition), some of which are dated 1810, does not give the whole passage, but includes the following variants (erased) of lines 753-756:

(i.) "Then let thy ponderous quarto steep and stink,
The dullest fattest weed on Lethe's brink.
Down with that volume to the depths of hell!
Oblivion seems rewarding it too well."

(ii.) "Yet then thy quarto still may,” etc.

A "Druid" (see English Bards, line 741) was Byron's name for a scribbler who wrote for his living. In MS. M., "scribbler" has been erased, and "Druid" substituted. It is doubtful to whom the passage, in its final shape, was intended to apply, but it is possible that the erased lines, in which "ponderous quarto" stands for "lost songs," were aimed at Southey (see ante, line 657, note 1).]

Some fancied slight has roused his lurking hate,
Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;

Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon

The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.

Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown, Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town: 750

If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man-

May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be-sold!
Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now,1
In modern Physics, we can scarce allow),
Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
Some rhyming Peer-there's plenty of the sort. 2

i. Our modern sceptics can no more allow.—[MS. L. (a).]
ii. Some rhyming peer-Carlisle or Carysfort.3-[MS. M.]

1. [MS. L. (a) recommences at line 758.]

760

2. Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the "ultimus Romanorum," the last of the Cruscanti-" Edwin" the "profound" by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of "well said Baviad the Correct." I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate. A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MORNING CHRONICLE."

66 What reams of paper, floods of ink,"
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'll say of me,
In which your readers may agree.

All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his Chaplain's yawn!)

Still I write on, and tell you why;
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain

Without the risk of giving pain, etc., etc.

ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMISTS.
In tracing of the human mind
Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
It knows not its resources :

And men through life assume a part

For which no talents they possess,
Yet wonder that, with all their art,

They meet no better with success, etc., etc.

[A Familiar Epistle, etc., by T. Vaughan, Esq., was published in the Morning Chronicle, October 7, 1811. Gifford, in the Baviad (1. 350), speaks of "Edwin's mewlings," and in a note names Edwin" as the "profound Mr. T. Vaughan." Love's Metamorphoses, by T. Vaughan, was played at Drury Lane, April 15, 1776. He also wrote The Hotel, or Double Valet, November 26, 1776, which Jephson rewrote under the title of The Servant with Two Masters. Compare Children of Apollo, p. 49 :—

"Jephson, who has no humour of his own,

Thinks it no crime to borrow from the town ;
The farce (almost forgot) of The Hotel

Or Double Valet seems to answer well.

This and his own make Two Strings to his Bow."]

3. [To variant ii. (p. 444) is subjoined this note: "Of 'John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort,' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morea. Being a rhymer himself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his 'foolscap crown octavos."-[John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was

Condemn the unlucky Curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the Rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.

Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,

770

(The Lord forgive him!) "Bravo! Grand! Divine!" Hoarse with those praises (which, by Flatt'ry fed," Dependence barters for her bitter bread),

He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye,
As when the dying vicar will not die !

ii.

Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;----
But all Dissemblers overact their part.

Ye, who aspire to "build the lofty rhyme," 1 Believe not all who laud your false "sublime;" But if some friend shall hear your work, and say, "Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,"

780

i. Hoarse with bepraising, and half choaked with lies, Sweat on his brow and tear drops in his eyes.-[MS. L. (a).] ii. Then sits again, then shakes his piteous head

As if the Vicar were already dead.—[MS. L. (a).]

joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems (Dramatic and Miscellaneous Works, 1810), he published two pamphlets (1780, 1783), to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.]

1. [See Milton's Lycidas.]