Nor wou'd I for kingdoms that verdant sprig

blight,

Wherewith fancy's hand had thy temples bedight:
Ne'ertheless, as before, I repeat-thy worn quill
Too often hath needed Apollo's sharp drill;
But he that for booksellers e'er hath been drudge,
For one flash of talent a twelvemonth must trudge:
Such truth I proclaim, to poor wretches that feed 'em,
Wou'd those that have bled were in turn doom'd to
bleed 'em!

was held out as the Republican Christ! O blasphemy! where is thy blush? La Revelliere, in 1796, was the Republican Moses: Rewbell shone forth a Solon: and Carnot blazed the living Vauban! To this vile flattery, by way of finale, I shall subscribe the lines once addressed to the facetious but inoffensive Tom D'Urfey, making only a slight alteration.

"In the next world expect thy blows,

For none shall wipe thy stains out;
Sully shall pluck thee by the nose,
A Eugene beat thy brains out."

Walter Scott.

Utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad famam protulerat.

Tacitus.

Other writers have acquired the meed of fame by persevering industry; but this individual owes his success to indolence.

UNHEARD of before, as from clouds straight

descended,

A Scot appears, teeming with verse strangely

blended;

Whose maxim is that of all common scribes trite,

Whether sterling or not, still the Muse needs must

write;

For whether it prove of a Minstrel last Lay,
Which bears of his flights much poetic array,

Or the Lady bewitching of Lake crystal clear,
Where still most unequal is made to appear;
That sloven performance, the which I must sigh on,
Renown'd Field of Flodden, and fighting Mar-mi-on:
Or Roderick's dream, surely penn'd in derision,
Since Muses were drunk when composing Don's

Vision;

And lastly of Rokeby, the quick lash'd-up lore, Replete with the faults of those themes trac'd

before.

Now although viva voce, the public en masse

Hath affirm'd that these Lays other efforts surpass,

And that while love of rhymes shall exist, envied

lot

Of wearing the bays must belong to a Scot;
Still I dare this slap-bang assertion dispute,
For though thus oppos'd, I will never be mute.
I stand unappall'd, tho' by numbers surrounded;
Calm reason was never by legions confounded:

i

My bulwark is sense, on that fort I rely,
And a stronger exists not between you and I:(x)

(x) So numerous and in such quick succession have appeared the flights of Mr. Scott, that to enter into a separate review of each poem would swell my notes into so many chapters: a step not only incompatible with the limits of this production, but rendered of little utility, after the concise strictures as delivered above by Sir Scribblecumdash. If the Greek adage was correct, which goes to state that

θελω τυχης σαλαγμον, η φρενων πίδον,

Give a man good luck, and throw him into the sea,

then, indeed, had our poet long ago found a watery grave: but when we call to mind that the love of money begetteth more, it may not appear wonderful if he

Declinat cursus aurumque volubile tollit,

Greedy of the shining fruit, steps back

To catch the rolling gold.

An occupation, by the by, in which poets of the present æra are but very seldom engaged. Throughout Mr. Scott's produc

So I'll e'en tell the bard who with rhyming's thus

bitten,

Had one theme been trac'd while the five thus were

written,

tions there is nothing so striking as the inequalities observable both in his style and versification. In one poem the name of Marmion is incessantly made a tag at the end of the line; while the words enlisted to form a jingle are strained and unpoetical in

the extreme: witness

"Charge, Chester, charge!—on, Stanley, on !'—
Were the last words of Mar-mi-on."

In reply to which, one might well exclaim―

Charge, Mazard, charge!-Quack on, quack on!
O! that such lays he ne'er had quack'd upon!

In Mudford's Life of Cumberland is introduced a long note, upon the subject of our northern leviathan and the late Miss Seward, to the which I refer the public for a specimen of just criticism, as to the literary pretensions of this once metrical and corresponding duetto, whose diffidence and modesty are there