powers of oral eloquence, it is impossible to contemplate its deficiencies, compared with written compositions, (more especially as conveyed to the public by means of hired reporters of debates,) without astonishment at the error of such an opinion entertained by a strong understanding!

Alas! his own fame is now suffering through the consequences of this mistake! He did not know the value of literature; and he never drew its masters around him. His reputation therefore begins to be eclipsed, in the eye of the nation, by that of the great rival, who soon followed him to the grave; and who, having adorned his brilliant talents with this kind of cultivation, now enjoys the effect of it in the adulation paid to his memory.

In truth, in what other way can the credit now given to Mr. Fox, for superiority in certain points, as a statesman, to which he has no fair pretension, be accounted for? The panegyrists of that illustrious senator seem to take for granted, that because the measures of Mr. Pitt failed to rescue the Continent of Europe from the grasp of France, the opinions and predictions of his opponent have been verified by time, and would have produced both the preservation of the nations which have fallen, and the

i A sensible pamphlet on this subject was published about ten years ago by a "NEAR OBSERVER."

peace and security and prosperity of Great Britain! An illegitimate inference, which were the friends of the departed premier as zealous, and as active, in the fair means of regulating the public sentiment, as they ought to be, would have been long ago exposed! I conceive, on the contrary, no mathematical demonstration more certain, than that, whatever may be the event of the present struggle, if we had merely stood upon the defensive, nursed our resources, cultivated our commerce, and hugged the blessings of peace in a delusive safety till we were attacked, while France was cherishing her strength her ferocity and her skill in arms by the difficulties and dangers of warfare, our fate would have been, on the first onset, to have fallen, in all the debility of ease wealth and luxury, even without a blow. So much for the wise opinions, which have lately obtained uncontradicted applause for Mr. Fox, who, if he had put the principles, which he promulgated when in opposition, into execution on the attainment of power, (a folly of which I do not for a moment suspect him,) would have brought his country to irreparable ruin!

But such is the predominance, and in many respects the merited predominance, of him, who has courted the favour of the Muses!

D

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longâ

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Paulum sepultæ distat inertiæ
Celata virtus: non ego te meis
Chartis inornatum silebo.

Totve tuos patiar labores
Impune, Lolli, carpere lividas
Obliviones." k

That they, who adored the son of Chatham when living, would desert his memory when dead, ought to have been within his contemplation, if he had exercised his sagacity on the characters of those, whom for the most part he suffered to surround him.

"He rests among the dead!

The swarm, that in thy noon-tide beam were born,
Gone to salute the rising morn!"

For me, who never received favour or notice from him when alive, and who am precluded from any effectual co-operation in the principles by which he was actuated, from the coldness and strange indifference of those who have assumed the name of

k Hor. Od. 9. Lib. iv.

his surviving friends, I will not lightly be driven from the office of strewing his grave with flowers!

Yet how ungrateful a task I perform, how little I have been "fed with the fostering dew of praise," it would seem querulous to detail. But I will not be deterred from recording the following two sonnets, which a late occasion drew forth.

SONNET I.

Composed at Midnight, Feb. 11, 1807.

Amid these sylvan shades I live unknown
To the coarse spirit, who with public brawls
Shakes in false fury Senatorial walls;
And, vainly claiming to himself alone

All worth, importance, talent, and renown,
Deems him, who, list'ning to the Muse's calls,
Spends his calm life in distant rural halls,

A cypher, whom his rolls of Fame disown!
Poor, narrow-minded, groveling, base-soul'd knave!
When all the frothy torrents of thy tongue
Sink, like thyself, forgotten in the grave,

Still fresh shall flourish what the bard has sung;
And future Wisdom shall record his praise;
And unborn Beauty tremble o'er his lays!

SONNET II.

Written, Feb. 12, 1807.

Tho' in my veins the blood of monarchs flow,
Plantagenet and Tudor!! not for these

With empty boasts my lifted mind I please ;

But rather that my heart's emotions glow
With the pure flame, the Muse's gifts bestow;
Nor would it my aspiring soul appease,

In rank, birth, wealth, to loll at sensual ease;
And none but Folly's stupid flattery know!
But yet when upstart Greatness turns an eye
Of scorn and insult on my modest fame,
And on descent's pretensions vain would try
To build the honours of a nobler name;
With pride defensive swelling, I exclaim,
"Base one, e'en there with me thou dar'st not vie!"

1 This is a fact, which may easily be ascertained by obvious authorities, of which it is unnecessary to mention any other than Sandford, or Stebbing. The sentiments are exactly those which the author feels, and has ever felt, on the subject of descent. He would never oppose it but to those who assume airs on that pretence.

March 2, 1807.