But for eating a rasher in what you take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fry'd in.
But hold-let me pause-don't I hear you pronounce
This tale of the bacon's a damnable bounce?
Well, suppose it a bounce-sure a poet may try
By a bounce now and then to get courage to fly.

But, my lord, it's no bounce; I protest in my turn,
It's a truth, and your lordship may ask Mr. Burn.'
To go on with my tale :—as I gazed on the haunch
I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch;
So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undrest

To paint it, or eat it, just as he lik'd best.

Of the neck and the breast I had next to dispose,
'Twas a neck and a breast that might rival Monroe's.

But in parting with these I was puzzled again,

With the how, and the who, and the where, and the when.
There's Hd, and C―y, and H―rth, and H-ff,
I think they love venison-I know they love beef.
There's my countryman Higgins-Oh! let him alone
For making a blunder or picking a bone:
But hang it-to poets who seldom can eat,

Your very good mutton's a very good treat;

Such dainties to send them their health it might hurt,
It's like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.
While thus I debated in reverie centr❜d,

An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, enter'd;

An under-bred fine-spoken fellow was he,

And he smil'd as he look'd at the venison and me.
"What have we got here?-why this is good eating!
Your own, I suppose—or is it in waiting?"
"Why, whose should it be?" cried I with a flounce,
"I get these things often:" (but that was a bounce)
"Some lords my acquaintance, that settle the nation,
Are pleas'd to be kind; but I hate ostentation."

"If that be the case then," cried he, very gay, "I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words-I insist on't-precisely at three;

We'll have Johnson and Burke; all the wits will be there, My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare.

And now that I think on't, as I am a sinner,

We wanted this venison to make out the dinner!
What say you-a pasty; it shall, and it must;
And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust.

Here, porter-this venison with me to Mile-end;
No stirring, I beg, my dear friend, my dear friend.”
Thus snatching his hat, he brush'd off like the wind,
And the porter and eatables follow'd behind.

Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf,
And "nobody with me at sea but myself,”
Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty,
Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good venison pasty,
Were things that I never dislik'd in my life,
Though clogg'd with a coxcomb and Kitty his wife.
So next day in due splendor to make my approach,
I drove to his door in my own hackney coach.

When come to the place where we all were to dine
(A chair-lumber'd closet, just twelve feet by nine),
My friend made me welcome, but struck me quite dumb
With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come;
"For I knew it," he cried; "both eternally fail,
The one with his speeches and t'other with Thrale;
But no matter. I'll warrant we'll make up the party
With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty.
The one is a Scotsman, the other a Jew,

They're both of them merry, and authors like you.
The one writes the Snarler,' the other the Scourge;"
Some thinks he writes Cinna'-he owns to Panurge."
While thus he described them by trade and by name,
They enter'd, and dinner was serv'd as they came.

At the top a fried liver and bacon were seen,
At the bottom was tripe in a swinging tureen;
At the sides there was spinage and pudding made hot;
In the middle a place where the pasty

was not.

Now, my lord, as for tripe, it's my utter aversion,
And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian:
So there I sat stuck, like a horse in a pound,
While the bacon and liver went merrily round:
But what vex'd me most, was that d-n'd Scottish rogue,
With his long-winded speeches, his smiles and his brogue.
And "Madam," quoth he, " may this bit be my poison,

A prettier dinner I never set eyes on:

Pray a slice of your liver; though, may I be curst,

But I've eat of your tripe till I'm ready to burst."

66

"The tripe !" quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek,

"I could dine on this tripe seven days in the week:

I like these here dinners so pretty and small;
But your friend there, the doctor, eats nothing at all."

“Oh, oh !” quoth my friend, "he'll come on in a trice
He's keeping a corner for something that's nice :
There's a pasty”— -"A pasty !" repeated the Jew;
"I don't care if I keep a corner for't too."
"What the de'il, mon, a pasty !" re-echo'd the Scot;
"Though splitting, I'll still keep a corner for that."
"We'll all keep a corner," the lady cried out;
"We'll all keep a corner," was echo'd about.
While thus we resolv'd, and the pasty delay'd,
With looks that quite petrified, enter'd the maid;
A visage so sad, and so pale with affright,
Wak'd Priam in drawing his curtains by night.

But we quickly found out, for who could mistake her '
That she came with some terrible news from the baker.
And so it turn'd out; for that negligent sloven
Had shut out the pasty on shutting his oven.

Sad Philomel thus-but let similes drop-
And now that I think on't, the story may stop.
To be plain, my good lord, it's but labor misplac'd,
To send such good verses to one of your taste;
You've got an odd something-a kind of discerning-
A relish,-a taste-sicken'd over by learning;

At least, it's your temper, as very well known,
That you think very slightly of things all your own:

So, perhaps, in your habits of thinking amiss,

You may make a mistake, and think slightly of this.

'Lord Clare's nephew.

A passage in the love-letters of the then Duke of Cumberland (George the Third's brother) to Lady Grosvenor, which were making a great noise at the time.

WOLCOT.

(PETER PINDAR.)

BORN, 1738-DIED, 1819.

WOLC was successively a clergyman, a physician, a pensioner on the booksellers, and, it is said, on government. He had a taste for painting; introduced his countryman Opie to the world; and lived to a hale old age, mirthful to the last in spite of blindness. He was a genuine man of his sort, though his sort was not of a very dignified species. There does not seem to have been any real malice in him. He had not the petty spite and peevishness of his antagonist Gifford; nor, like him, could have constituted himself a snarler against his betters for the pay of greatness. He attacked greatness itself, because he thought it could afford the joke; and he dared to express sympathies with the poor and outcast. His serious poems, however, are nothing but common-places about Delias and the Muse. Nor have his comic ones the grace and perfection which a sense of the serious only can bestow. Wolcot had an eye for little that was grave in life, except the face-makings of absurdity and pretension; but these he could mimic admirably, putting on at one and the same time their most nonchalant and matter-of-course airs, while he fetched out into his countenance the secret nonsense. He echoes their words, with some little comment of approval, or change in their position; some classical inversion, or exaltation, which exposes the pretension in the very act of admitting it, and has an irresistibly ludicrous effect. But these points have been noticed in the Introductory Essay.

Peter wrote a good deal of trash, even in his humorous pieces: for they were composed, like the razors in one of his stories, "to sell." But his best things are surpassed by no banter in the language. I am sorry its coarseness prevents my repeating the story of the Pilgrims and the Peas; the same objection applies to passages of the Lousiad; and there are circumstances in the history of George the Third, which would render it unbecoming to extract even the once harmless account of his Majesty's Visit to Whitbread's Brewhouse. I have therefore confined myself to Pindar's other very best thing,-his versification of passages in Boswell and Thrale,-masterly for its facility and straightforwardness, which doubles the effect of the occasional· mock-herɔic inversions. To compare great things with small, and show that I commend nothing strongly which has not had a strong effect on myself, I can say, that Lear does not more surely move me to tears, or Spenser charm me, than I am thrown into fits of laughter when I hear these rhyming Johnsoniana. I can hardly, now this moment, while writing about them, and glancing at the copy which lies before me, help laughing to myself in private. This is not a good preface to a joke; but, if anybody can afford it, 1 think it is Peter.

CONVERSATION ON JOHNSON, BY MRS. PIOZZI (THRALE) ANT MR. BOSWELL.

Madame Piozzi.-Dear Doctor Johnson was in size an ox,
And from his Uncle Andrew learn'd to box,

A man to wrestlers and to bruisers dear,

Who kept the ring in Smithfield a whole year.

The Doctor had an Uncle, too, ador'd

By jumping gentry, call'd Cornelius Ford;

Who jump'd in boots, which jumpers never choose,

For as a famous jumper jump'd in shoes.

Bozzy. When Foote his leg, by some misfortune, broke,

Says I to Johnson, all by way of joke,

“Sam, sir, in paragraph will soon be clever,

And take off Peter better now than ever."

On which, says Johnson, without hesitation,