Let simple WORDSWORTH chime his childish verse,
And brother COLERIDGE lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering LEWIS aim, at most,

To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;

Let MOORE be lewd; let STRANGFORD steal from MOORE,
And swear that CAMOENS sang such notes of yore;
Let HAYLEY hobble on; MONTGOMERY rave;
And godly GRAHAME chant a stupid stave;
Let sonnetteering BowLES his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;'
'But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Should'st leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country's voice, the voice of all the Nine
Demand a hallowed harp-that harp is thine.'
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,
And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give;
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recall,

And save her glory, though his country fall.'

He says the Muse flies the press soiled with rhyme by HOARE, and epic blank by HOYLE;' not him of whist, whose "Games" are not to be superceded by the vagaries of his namesake;—and with the doggerel of CLARKE,

'A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,'

'Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.'a

'Oh dark asylum of a Vandal race !b

At once the boast of Learning, and disgrace;

So sunk in dulness and so lost in shame

That SMYTHE and HODGSONC scarce redeem thy fame!'
But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,'-

a This person, who has lately betrayed the most rapid symptoms of confirmed authorship, is writer of a poem denominated the "Art of Pleasing," as "lucus a non lucendo," containing little pleasantry and less poetry. He also acts as monthly stipendiary and collector of calumnies for the Satirist. If this unfortunate young man would exchange the magazines for the mathematics, and endeavour to take a decent degree in his university, it might eventually prove more serviceable than his present salary.

b"Into Cambridgeshire the emperor Probus transported a considerable body of Vandals."-Gibbon's Decline and Fall, page 83, vol. 2.

c This gentleman's name requires no praise: the man who in translation displays unquestionable genius, may well be expected to excel in original composition, of which it is to be hoped we shall soon see a splendid specimen.

There RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons justly praise their sires.'a
'Let vain VALENTIA rival luckless CARR,

And equal him whose work he sought to mar;
Let ABERDEEN and ELGIN still pursue
The shade of Fame through regions of Virtu ;'
'Of Dardan tours, let Dilettanti tell,
I leave topography to classic GELL ;d

This thing of rhyme I ne'er disdained to own-
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown,
My voice was heard again, though not so loud,
My page, though nameless, never disavowed,
And now at once I tear the veil away :-
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
Unscared by all the din of MELBOURNE house ;-

'EDINA'S brawny sons and brimstone page.

Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
And feel they too are "penetrable stuff:"
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.

The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawled beneath my eyes;
But now so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I've learned to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learned to deride the critic's starch decree,
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss :
Nay more, though all my rival rhymsters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down:

a The "Aboriginal Britons," an excellent poem by Richards.

b Lord Valentia (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical, and typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of the "Stranger in Ireland."-Oh fye, my lord, has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow tourist? but "two of a trade," they say, &c.

c Lord Elgin would fain persuade us, that all the figures, with or without noses, in his stone-shop, are the work of Phidias; "Credat Judæus!"

d Mr. Gell's Topography of Troy and Ithaca cannot fail to ensure the approbation of every man possessed of classical taste, as well for the information Mr. G. conveys to the mind of the reader, as for the ability and research the respective works display.

And, armed in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to Southern dunce.
Thus much I've dared to do; how far my lay
Hath wronged these righteous times, let others say:
This, let the world, which knows not how to spare,
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.

POSTSCRIPT.

I HAVE been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so bedeviled with their ungodly ribaldry.

"Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ!"

I suppose I must say of JEFFREY as Sir ANTHONY AGUECHEEK saith: "An I had known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him." What a pity it is that I shall be beyond the Bosphorus before the next number has passed the Tweed. But I yet hope to light my pipe with it in Persia.

My northern friends have accused me with justice, of personality towards their great literary Anthropophagus, JEFFREY; but what else was to be done with him and his dirty pack, who feed by "lying and slandering," and slake their thirst by "evil speaking ?" I have adduced facts already well known, and of JEFFREY'S mind I have stated my free opinion, nor has he thence sustained any injury-what scavenger was ever soiled by being pelted with mud? It may be said that I quit England because I have censured there " persons of honour and wit about town;" but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return. Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal; those who do not, may one day be convinced. Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas! "the age of chivalry is over,” or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-adays.

There is a youth ycleped HEWSON CLARKE (subaudi, Esquire) a sizer of Emmanuel college, and I believe a denizen of Berwick upon Tweed, whom I have introduced in these pages to much better company than he has been accustomed to meet: he is, notwithstanding, a very sad dog, and for no reason that I can discover, except a personal quarrel with a bear, kept by me at Cambridge to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity cotemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the Satirist, for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name till coupled with the Satirist. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir FRETFUL PLAGIARY, he is rather pleased than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, that is, my bear and my book, except the editor of the Satirist, who it seems is a gentleman, God wot! I wish he could impart a little of his gentility to his subordinate scribblers. I hear that Mr. JERNINGHAM is about to take up the cudgels for his Mæcenas, Lord CARLISLE; I hope not; he was one of the few, who, in the very short intercourse I had with him, treated me with kindness when a boy, and whatever he may say or do, "pour on, I will endure." I have nothing further to add, save

a general note of thanksgiving to readers, purchasers, and publisher, and in the words of SCOTT, I wish

"To all and each a fair good night,

"And rosy dreams and slumbers light."

The following very judicious remarks, upon this Satire, are from the Analectic Magazine, of July, 1814.

"The poem was intrinsically excellent, possessing much of the "terseness and vigour of Roman satire; and though he lay about "him with an unsparing hand, and often cut down where he should "merely have lopped off, still, we think, the garden of poetry would "be wonderfully benefited by frequent visitations of the kind. The "most indifferent part of the poem is that where the author meant "to be most severe; his animadversions on the critics have too "much of pique and anger; the heat of his feelings has taken out "the temper of his weapon; and when he mentions Jeffrey he be"comes grossly personal, and sinks beneath the dignity of his 66 muse. Whatever may have been the temporary pain of the "application, we think Lord Byron was benefited by the caustic "of criticism. He was entering into literature with all the lulling "advantages of a titled author; a strong predisposition on the part "of [English] society to admire; and none of those goads to "talent that stimulate poor and obscure aspirers after fame, whose only means of rising in society is by the vigorous exertion of "their talents. His lordship might, therefore, have slipped quietly "into the silken herd of "persons of quality," who have from time "to time scribbled ['divers reams of most orthodox, imperial non"sense' to be cased in volumes of congenial calf']-had not the "rough critic of the north given a salutary shake to his nerves, "and provoked him to the exertion of his full and masculine "talent."

66

It must be remembered that a reviewer is excited by private aims, and warmed by ambition, as positively as the author of a separate work; that they are equally aspirers to the applause of the public, and equally amenable to that tribunal, which can give the only sure and the only final decision; and, though Reviewers have acquired the character of judges, that they are not free, in the discharge of such duties, from other responsibility than that to the silent opinion of the world.-We publish the attack of a poet, upon the editors of a 'Critical Journal,'-and their condemnation of a writer of ' poems,'-as of the same legitimate authority. That part of a retort which is entirely personal, can only be palliated by the necessity of making an Editor, by profession, more severely responsible, for the many critiques of unknown writers, by his personal as well as his literary standing.-The censure of Byron's

youthful poems was entirely unqualified,—though many of the pieces have the finest feeling and beauty of poetry. Some poems of the collection must have been written when he was but fifteen years of age; and certainly the whole gave the evidence of great promise. The ambition of many a young poet of equal promise, would have been suppressed for ever by the effect of such a lashing; and we may have lost many a Giaour, and Corsair and excellent Canto, by such trifling and misjudging pleasantry. Byron himself would not have recovered his confidence if he had not given play to his indignant spirit, in this anonymous publication; and we never should have heard CHILDE HAROLD sing, had not the applause attending this Satire, given boldness to his ambition. (See the Retrospective Review on DENNIS, in the next article.)

3. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt. By Lord BYRON. 4to. pp. 230. London, 1812. [Edinburgh Review, Feb. 1812] [It will be well to premise an extract from a paper appended as a note to this Romaunt,-dated at 'Athens, Franciscan Convent, 1811.'

"I must have some talk with this learned Theban."

'SOME time after my return from Constantinople to this city I ' received the thirty-first number of the Edinburgh Review as a great favour, and certainly at this distance an acceptable one, 'from the captain of an English frigate off Salamis. In that number, Art. 3. containing the Review of a French translation of Strabo, there are introduced some remarks on the modern Greeks ' and their literature, with a short account of Coray, a co-translator in the French version.'.....He goes on to speak of Coray, the most celebrated of living Greeks, at least among the Franks, who was born in Scio,' (not, he thinks, in Smyrna, as stated in the Review,) and of Polyzois, who is stated by the Reviewer to be the ' only modern, except Coray, who has distinguished himself by a 'knowledge of Hellenic; if he be the Polyzois Lampanitziotes of Yanina, who has published a number of editions in Romaic, he was 'neither more nor less than an itinerant vender of books; a man utterly destitute of scholastic acquirements.'

I cannot but observe that the Reviewer's lamentation over 'the fall of the Greeks appears singular, when he closes it with "these words:" the change is to be attributed to their misfortunes ' rather than to any physical degradation." It may be true that 'the Greeks are not physically degenerated, and that Constanti'nople contained on the day when it changed masters as many men ' of six feet high and upwards as in the hour of prosperity; but