Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,
And bid a long "good night to Marmion.” (1)

These are the themes that claim our plaudits now; These are the bards to whom the muse must bow! While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot, Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.

The time has been, when yet the muse was young, When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung, An epic scarce ten centuries could claim, While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name: The work of each immortal bard appears The single wonder of a thousand years: (2) Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth, Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth, Without the glory such a strain can give As even in ruin bids the language live. Not so with us, though minor bards, content, On one great work a life of labour spent: With eagle pinion soaring to the skies, Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise! To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield, Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field. First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,

(I) "Good night to Marmion"-the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion.

[Notwithstanding these harsh lines, Byron has, in many passages of his poems and journals, evinced his profound regard and veneration for the character and talents of Sir Walter Scott, whom he elsewhere designates as "the Monarch of Parnassus and most English of Bards," and in Childs Harold, canto iv., stanza 40, his Lordship pays a well-merited compliment to his gifted friend, styling him

"the minstrel who called forth

A new creation with his magic line, And, like the Ariosto of the north, Sang ladye love and war, romance and knightly worth."-P. E.] (2) As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be classed as one grand historical poem. In alluding to Milton and Tasso, we consider

The scourge of England and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in glory's niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on, (3)
Arabia's monstrous, wild, and wondrous son; (4)
Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
For ever reign-the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
Oh, Southey! Southey! (5) cease thy varied song!
A bard may chant too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil, (6)
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
"God help thee," Southey,(7) and thy readers too! (8)

the Paradise Lost, and Gerusalemme Liberata, as their standard efforts; since neither the Jerusalem Conquered of the Italian, nor the Paradise Regained of the English bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive?

(3) Thalaba, Mr. Southey's second poem, is written in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. Joan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of those poems "which," in the words of l'orson, "will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but not till then.” (4) "Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."-Madoc. -L. E.

(5) We beg Mr. Southey's pardon: "Madoc disdains the degrading title of epic." See his preface. Why is epic degraded? and by whom? Certainly the late romaunts of Masters Cottle, Laureat Pye, Ogylvy, Hoole, and gentle Mistress Cowley, have not exalted the epic muse; but as Mr. Southey's poem "disdains the appellation," allow us to ask -has he substituted any thing better in its stead? or must he be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as quality of his verse?

(6) See The Old Woman of Berkley, a ballad, by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a “high-trotting horse."

(7) The last line, "God help thee," is an evident plagiarism from the Anti-jacobin to Mr. Southey, on his Dactylics. [Lord Byron here alludes to Mr. Gifford's parody on Mr. Southey's Dactylics, which ends thus:

"Ne'er talk of cars again! look at thy spelling-book; Dilworth and Dyche are both mad at thy quantitiesDactylics, call'st thou 'em? God help thee! silly one."-L. E (8) Lord Byron, on being introduced to Mr. Southey in 1813, at Holland House, describes him "as the best-looking bard he had seen for a long time."-"To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would," he says, "almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, a man of talent, and all that, and there is his eulogy." In his Journal, of the same year, he says-"Southey I have not seen much of. His appearance is epic, and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed to their authorship. His manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation-posterity will probably select. He

Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May, (1)
Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;" (2)
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;

And Christmas stories, tortured into rhyme,
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of "an idiot boy;"

A moon-struck silly lad, who lost his way,

Oh! wonder-working Lewis! (7) monk, or bard, Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a church-yard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou takest thy stand, By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P.! (8) from whose infernal brain Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train!

So close on each pathetic part he dwells, And each adventure so sublimely tells, That all who view the "idiot in his glory" Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a pixy for a muse, (4)
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ass.
So well the subject suits his noble mind,

He brays, (5) the laureat of the long-ear'd kind. (6)

has passages equal to any thing. At present, he has a party, but no public-except for his prose writings. His Life of Nelson is beautiful." Elsewhere, and later, Lord B. pronounces Southey's Don Roderick, "the first poem of our time."-L. E.

(1) "Unjust."-B. 1816. L. E.

(2) Lyrical Ballads, p. 4.-"The Tables Turned." Stanza I.
Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up, up, my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double."

(3) Mr W., in his preface, labours hard to prove that prose and verse are much the same; and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable :--

"And thus to Betty's questions he
Made answer, like a traveller bold,
The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo,

And the sun did shine so cold," etc. etc. p. 129.

(4) Coleridge's Poems, p. II, Songs of the Pixies, i. e. Devonshire fairies; p. 42, we have, Lines to a young Lady; and p. 52, Lines to a young Ass.

(5) Thus altered by Lord Byron, in his last revision of the satire. In all former editions the line stood,

"A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind."-L. E. (6) "Unjust." B. 1816.—In a letter to Mr. Coleridge, written in 1815, Lord Byron says,-"You mention my 'Satire,' lampoon, or whatever you or others please to call it. I can only say, that it was written when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side ever since: more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends; which is heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attempted attacks."—L. E.

(7) Matthew Gregory Lewis, Esq. M. P. for Hindon, never distinguished himself in Parliament, but, mainly in consequence of the clever use he made of his knowledge of the German language, then a rare accomplishment, attracted much notice in the literary world, at a very early period of

Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir

Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd,
Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hush'd?
'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!

Grieved to condemn, (9) the muse must still be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.
Pure is the flame which o'er her altar burns;
From grosser incense with disgust she turns:
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o'er,

She bids thee "mend thy line, and sin no more."(10)

his life. His Tales of Terror; the drama of the Castle Spectre; and the romance called the Bravo of Venice (which is, however, little more than a version from the Swiss Zschocke); but above all, the libidinous and impious novel of The Monk, invested the name of Lewis with an extraordinary degree of celebrity, during the poor period which intervened between the obscuration of Cowper, and the full display of Sir Walter Scott's talents in the Lay of the Last Minstrel,-a period which is sufficiently characterized by the fact, that Hayley then passed for a Poet. Next to that solemn coxcomb, Lewis was for several years the fashionable versifier of his time; but his plagiarisms, perhaps more audacious than had ever before been resorted to by a man of real talents, were by degrees unveiled, and writers of greater original genius, as well as of purer taste and morals, successively emerging, Monk Lewis, dying young, had already outlived his reputation. In society he was to the last a favourite; and Lord Byron, who had become well acquainted with him during his experience of London life, thus notices his death, which occurred at sea in 1818:-"Lewis was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,-Madame de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was the jewel of a man, had he been better set; I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory, to every thing and every body. Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches-of a second visit to Jamaica:"I'd give the lands of Deloraine, Dark Musgrave were alive again!"

That is,

"I would give many a sugar cane,
Mat Lewis were alive again!"—L. E.

(8) "For every one knows little Matt's an M. P."-See a poem to Mr. Lewis, in The Statesman, supposed to be written by Mr. Jekyll.

(9) In very early life, Little's Poems were Lord Byron's favourite study. "Heigho!" he exclaims in 1820, in a letter to Moore, "I believe all the mischief I have ever done, or sung, has been owing to that confounded book of yours."L. E.

(10) In the original manuscript, the words were "mend thy life," but the poet subsequently adopted line.—See Dallas. -L. E.

For thee, translator of the tinsel song, To whom such glittering ornaments belong, Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue, (1) And boasted locks of red or auburn hue, Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires, And o'er harmonious fustian half expires, Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author's sense, Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence. Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place, By dressing Camoëns (2) in a suit of lace? Mend, Strangford! mend thy morals and thy taste;

Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste:

Cease to deceive; thy pilfer'd harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian bard to copy Moore.

Behold!-ye tarts! one moment spare the textHayley's last work, and worst-until his next; Whether he spin poor couplets into plays, Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise, His style in youth or age is still the same, For ever feeble and for ever tame. Triumphant, first, see Temper's Triumphs shine! At least I'm sure they triumph'd over mine. Of Music's Triumphs, all who read may swear That luckless music never triumph'd there. (3)

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward On dull devotion-Lo! the Sabbath bard, Sepulchral Grahame, (4) pours his notes sublime In mangled prose, nor e'en aspires to rhyme; Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke, And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch; And, undisturb'd by conscientious qualms, Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings (5) A thousand visions of a thousand things,

(I) The reader, who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to Strangford's Camoëns, p. 127, note to p. 56; or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Camoens.

(2) It is also to be remarked, that the things given to the public as poems of Camoens are no more to be found in the original Portuguese than in the Song of Solomon.

(3) Hayley's two most notorious verse productions are Triumphs of Temper, and The Triumphs of Music. He has also written much comedy in rhyme, epistles, etc. etc. As he is rather an elegant writer of notes and biography, let us recom. mend Pope's advice to Wycherley to Mr. H.'s consideration, viz. "to convert his poetry into prose," which may be easily done by taking away the final syllable of each couplet.[The only performance for which Hayley is now remembered is his Life of Cowper. His personal history has been sketched by Mr. Southey in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi. p. 263.—L. E.] (4) Mr. Grahame has poured forth two volumes of cant, under the name of Sabbath Walks, and Biblical Pictures. [This very amiable man, and pleasing poet, published subsequently, The Birds of Scotland, and other pieces; but his reputation rests on his Sabbath. He began life as an advocate at the Edinburgh bar; but he had little success there, and, being of a melancholy and very devout temperament, entered into holy orders, and retired to a curacy near Durham, where he died in 1811.-L. E.]

(5) Immediately before this line, we find, in the original manuscript, the following, which Lord Byron good-naturedly consented to omit, at the request of Mr. Dallas, who was, no doubt, a friend of the scribbler they refer to:

"In verse most stale, unprofitable, flat,

Come, let us change the scene, and glean' with Pratt;
In him an author's luckless lot behold,
Condemn'd to make the books which once he sold:
Degraded man! again resume thy trade-

The votaries of the Muse are ill repaid,
Though daily puffs once more invite to buy
A new edition of thy Sympathy."

And shows, still whimpering through threescore of

years,

The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.

And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles!
Thou first great oracle of tender souls?
Whether thou sing'st, with equal ease and grief,
The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells, (6)
Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend
In every chime that jingled from Ostend;
Ah! how much juster were thy muse's hap
If to thy bells thou wouldst but add a cap!
Delightful Bowles! still blessing and still blest,
All love thy strain, but children like it best.
'Tis thine, with gentle Little's moral song,
To soothe the mania of the amorous throng!
With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere miss as yet completes her infant years:
But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;
She quits poor Bowles for Little's purer strain.
Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;
"Awake a louder and a loftier strain," (7)
Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all Discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,
By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone; but, pausing on the road,
The bard sighs forth a gentle episode; (8)
And gravely tells-attend, each beauteous miss!-
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.
Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,
Stick to thy sonnets, man!—at least they sell. (9)
But if some new-born whim, or larger bribe,
Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe;

To which this note was appended:-" Mr. Pratt, once a Bath bookseller, now a London author, has written as much, to as little purpose, as any of his scribbling contemporaries. Mr. P.'s Sympathy is in rhyme; but his prose productions are the most voluminous." The more popular of these last were entitled Gleanings.-L. E.

(6) See Bowles's Sonnet to Oxford, and Stanzas on hearing the Bells of Ostend.

(7) "Awake a louder," etc., is the first line in Bowles' Spirit of Discovery; a very spirited and pretty dwarf-epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following:

"A kiss

Stole on the list'ning silence, never yet

Here heard; they trembled even as if the power," etc. etc. That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss; very much astonished, as well they might be, at such a phenomenon.-[" Misquoted and misunderstood by me; but not intentionally. It was not the woods,' but the people in them who trembled-why, Heaven only knows-unless they were overheard making the prodigious smack." B. 1816.-L. E.]

(8) The episode above alluded to is the story of "Robert a Machin" and "Anna d'Arfet," a pair of constant lovers, who performed the kiss above mentioned, that startled the woods of Madeira.

(9) "Although," says Lord Byron, in 1821, "I regret having published English Bards, the part which I regret the least is that which regards Mr. Bowles, with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's, Pope are in the first edition of English Bards, and are quite as severe, and much more poetical, than my own, in the second. On reprinting the work, as I

If chance some bard, though once by dunces fear'd,
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered;
If Pope, whose fame and genius, from the first,
Have foil'd the best of critics, needs the worst,
Do thou essay: each fault, each failing scan;
The first of poets was, alas! but man.
Rake from each ancient dunghill every pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll; (1)
Let all the scandals of a former age

Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page;
Affect a candour which thou canst not feel,
Clothe envy in the garb of honest zcal;
Write, as if St. John's soul could still inspire,
And do from hate what Mallet (2) did for hire.
Oh! hadst thou lived in that congenial time,

To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme; (3)
Throng'd with the rest around his living head,
Not raised thy hoof against the lion dead; (4)
A meet reward had crown'd thy glorious gains,
And link'd thee to the Dunciad for thy pains. (5)

Another epic! Who inflicts again
More books of blank upon the sons of men?
Baotian Cottle, rich Bristowa's boast,
Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast,
And sends his goods to market--all alive!
Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five!
Fresh fish from Helicon! (6) who'll buy! who'll buy?
The precious bargain's cheap-in faith, not I.
Your turtle-feeder's verse must needs be flat,
Though Bristol bloat him with the verdant fat;
If Commerce fills the purse, she clogs the brain,
And Amos Cottle strikes the lyre in vain.
In him an author's luckless lot behold,
Condemn'd to make the books which once he sold.

put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, by which the work gained less than Mr. Bowles."-[The following are the lines written by Mr. Hobhouse :

"Stick to thy sonnets, man!—at least they sell.
Or take the only path that open lies
For modern worthies who would hope to rise:
Fix on some well-known name, and, bit by bit,
Pare off the merits of his worth and wit;
On each alike employ the critic's knife,
And, when a comment fails, prefix a life;
Hint certain failings, faults before unknown,
Review forgotten lies, and add your own;
Let no disease, let no misfortune. 'scape,
And print, if luckily deform'd, his shape:
Thus shall the world, quite undeceived at last,
Cleave to their present wits, and quit their past;
Bards once revered no more with favour view,
But give to modern sonneteers their due;
Thus with the dead may living merit cope,

Thus Bowles may triumph o'er the shade of Pope."—L. E.] (1) Curll is one of the heroes of the Dunciad, and was a bookseller. Lord Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, author of Lines to the Imitator of Horace.

(2) Lord Bolingbroke hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the poet had retained some copies of a work by Lord Bolingbroke-The Patriot King-which that splendid but malignant, genius had ordered to be destroyed. -{"Bolingbroke's thirst of vengeance," says Dr. Johnson, incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations."-L. E.]

(3) Dennis the critic, and Ralph the rhymester:**Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,

Making night hideous: answer him, ye owls!"-Dunciad. (4) See Bowles's late edition of Pope's Works, for which he received three hundred pounds. Thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another than to elevate his own.

(5) Lord Byron's MS. note of 1816 on this passage is,"Too savage all this on Bowles:" and well might he say That venerable person is still living; and in spite of all

Oh, Amos Cottle!-Phoebus! what a name
To fill the speaking-trump of future fame!--
Oh, Amos Cottle! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!
When thus devoted to poetic dreams,
Who will peruse thy prostituted reams?
O pen perverted! paper misapplied!
Had Cottle (7) still adorn'd the counter's side,
Bent o'er the desk, or, born to useful toils,
Been taught to make the paper which he soils,
Plough'd, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb,
He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him. (8)

As Sisyphus against the infernal steep
Rolls the huge rock whose motions ne'er may sleep,
So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves
Dull Maurice (9) all his granite weight of leaves:
Smooth solid monuments of mental pain!

The petrifactions of a plodding brain,

That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back again.
With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale,
Lo! sad Alcæus wanders down the vale;
Tho' fair they rose, and might have bloom'd at last,
His hopes have perish'd by the northern blast:
Nipp'd in the bud by Caledonian gales,
His blossoms wither as the blast prevails!
O'er his lost works let classic Sheffield weep;
May no rude hand disturb their early sleep! (10)

Yet say! why should the bard at once resign
His claim to favour from the sacred nine?
For ever startled by the mingled howl
Of northern wolves, that still in darkness prowl;
A coward brood, which mangle as they prey,
By hellish instinct, all that cross their way;

the criticism to which his injudicious edition of Pope exposed him afterwards, there can be no doubt that Lord B., in his calmer moments, did justice to that exquisite poetical genius which, by their own confession, originally inspired both Wordsworth and Coleridge. -L. E.

(6) "Fresh fish from Helicon! "-"Helicon" is a mountain, and not a fish-pond. It should have been "Hippocrene." B. 1816.-L. E.

(7) Mr. Cottle, Amos, Joseph, I don't know which, but one or both, once sellers of books they did not write, and now writers of books they do not sell, have published a pair of epics-Alfred,-(poor Alfred! Pye has been at him too!) -Alfred, and the Fall of Cambria.

(8) Here Lord B. notes in 1816:-" All right. I saw some letters of this fellow (Joseph Cottle) to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions, which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of, he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that 1 could hardly resist assailing him, even were it unjust, which it is not-for verily he is an ass." B. 1816.-The same person has had the honour to be recorded in the Anti

jacobin, probably by Canning:

"And Cottle, not he who that Alfred made famous, But Joseph, of Bristol, the brother of Amos."-L. E.] (9) Mr. Maurice hath manufactured the component parts of a ponderous quarto, upon the beauties of Richmond Hill, and the like; it also takes in a charming view of Turnham Green, Hammersmith, Brentford, Old and New, and the parts adjacent. [The Rev. Thomas Maurice also wrote Westminster Abbey, and other poems, the History of Ancient and Modern Hindostan, etc. and his own Memoirs, comprehending Anecdotes of Literary Characters, during a period of thirty years; -a very amusing piece of autobiography. He died in 1824, at his apartments in the British Museum; where he had been for some years assistant keeper of MSS.-L. E.]

(10) Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius. His anderer of Switzerland is worth a thousand Lyrical Ballads, and at least fifty "degraded epics."

Aged or young, the living or the dead,

No mercy find these harpies (1) must be fed.
Why do the injured unresisting yield
The calm possession of their native field?
Why tamely thus before their fangs retreat,
Nor hunt the bloodhounds back to Arthur's Seat? (2)

Health to immortal Jeffrey! (3) once, in name,
England could boast a judge almost the same;
In soul so like, so merciful, yet just,
Some think that Satan has resign'd his trust,
And given the spirit to the world again,
To sentence letters, as he sentenced men.
With hand less mighty, but with heart as black,
With voice as willing to decree the rack;
Bred in the courts betimes, though all that law
As yet hath taught him is to find a flaw;
Since well instructed, in the patriot school,
To rail at party, though a party tool,
Who knows, if chance his patrons should restore
Back to the sway they forfeited before,
His scribbling toils some recompense may meet,
And raise this Daniel to the judgment-seat? (4)
Let Jeffries' shade indulge the pious hope,
And greeting thus, present him with a rope:
"Heir to my virtues! man of equal mind!
Skill'd to condemn as to traduce mankind,
This cord receive, for thee reserved with care,
To wield in judgment, and at length to wear."

Health to great Jeffrey! Heaven preserve his life, To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, And guard it sacred in its future wars, Since authors sometimes seek the field of Mars! Can none remember that eventful day, (5) That ever-glorious, almost fatal, fray, When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by? (6) Oh, day disastrous! On her firm-set rock, Dunedin's castle felt a secret shock;

(I) In a MS. critique on this satire, by the late Reverend William Crowe, public orator at Oxford, the incongruity of these metaphors is thus noticed:-"Within the space of three or four couplets he transforms a man into as many different animals: allow him but the compass of three lines, and he will metamorphose him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will make him a bloodhound!" On seeing Mr. Crowe's remarks, Lord Byron desired Mr. Murray to substitute, in the copy in his possession, for "hellish instinct,” “brutal instinct," for "harpies" "felons," and for "blood-hounds" "hell-hounds. "—L. E. (2) Arthur's Seat, the hill which overhangs Edinburgh. (3) Mr. Jeffrey, who, after the first Number or two, succeeded the Rev. Sidney Smith in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, retired from his critical post some little time before he was appointed Lord Advocate for Scotland: he is now (1834) a Lord of Session. "I have often, since my return to England," says Lord Byron (Diary, 1814), "heard Jeffrey most highly commended by those who knew him, for things independent of his talents. I admire him for thisnot because he has praised me, but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under the relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other, would have had the liberality to act thus: none but a great soul dared hazard it a little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter."-L. E.

(4) "Too ferocious-this is mere insanity." B. 1816.— L. E.

(5) "All this is bad, because personal." B. 1816.-L. E. (6) In 1806, Messrs. Jeffrey and Moore met at Chalk-Farm. The duel was prevented by the interference of the magistracy; and, on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evapor

Dark roll'd the sympathetic waves of Forth,
Low groan'd the startled whirlwinds of the north;
Tweed ruffled half his waves to form a tear, (7)
The other half pursued its calm career; (8)
Arthur's steep summit nodded to its base,
The surly Tolbooth scarcely kept her place.
The Tolbooth felt-for marble sometimes can,
On such occasions, feel as much as man—
The Tolbooth felt defrauded of his charms,
If Jeffrey died, except within her arms: (9)
Nay last, not least, on that portentous morn,
The sixteenth story, where himself was born,
His patrimonial garret, fell to ground,
And pale Edina shudder'd at the sound: [reams,
Strew'd were the streets around with milk-white
Flow'd all the Canongate with inky streams;
This of his candour seem'd the sable dew,
That of his valour show'd the bloodless hue;
And all with justice deem'd the two combined
The mingled emblems of his mighty mind.
But Caledonia's goddess hover'd o'er
The field, and saved him from the wrath of Moore;
From either pistol snatch'd the vengeful lead,
And straight restored it to her favourite's head:
That head, with greater than magnetic power,
Caught it, as Danaë caught the golden shower,
And, though the thickening dross will scarce refine,
Augments its ore, and is itself a mine.

"My son," she cried, "ne'er thirst for gore again,
Resign the pistol, and resume the pen;
O'er politics and poesy preside,

Boast of thy country, and Britannia's guide!
For long as Albion's heedless sons submit,
Or Scottish taste decides on English wit,
So long shall last thine unmolested reign,
Nor any dare to take thy name in vain.
Behold! a chosen band shall aid thy plan,
And own thee chieftain of the critic clan.
First in the oat-fed phalanx shall be seen
The travell'd thane, Athenian Aberdeen. (10)

ated. This incident gave occasion to much waggery in the daily prints.

[The above note was struck out of the fifth edition, and the following, after being submitted to Mr. Moore, substi tuted in its place:-"I am informed that Mr. Moore published at the time a disavowal of the statements in the newspapers, as far as regarded himself; and, in justice to him, I mention this circumstance. As I never heard of it before, I cannot state the particulars, and was only made acquainted with the fact very lately. Nov. 4, 1811.”—L. E.] (7) In the original manuscript, the line was-

"Half Tweed combined his waves to form a tear." Dallas.-P. E.

(8) The Tweed here behaved with proper decorum; it would have been highly reprehensible in the English half of the river to have shown the smallest symptom of apprehension.

(9) This display of sympathy on the part of the Tolbooth (the principal prison in Edinburgh), which truly seems to have been most affected on this occasion, is much to be commended. It was to be apprehended, that the many unhappy criminals executed in the front might have rendered the edifice more callous. She is said to be of the softer sex, because her delicacy of feeling on this day was truly feminine, though, like most feminine impulses, perhaps a little selfish.

(10) His lordship has been much abroad, is a member of the Athenian Society, and reviewer of Gell's Topography of Troy.-[George Hamilton Gordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen, K.T., F.R.S., and P.S.A. In 1822, his Lordship pablished an Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture.-L. E.]