THE MODERN DUNCIAD.

P. How anxious is the Bard, and yet how vain His wishes:

F.

Cease this moralizing strain,

What mortal will peruse it?

P.

P'rhaps a few:

F. Alas! the town has something else to do, Than read one line of all thou shalt indite,

While Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, and Croker write. "Tis hard-but

P.

Spare thy pity, 'tis my lot;

What some might think a grievance, hurts me not:
The bard by fashion dragg'd before the scene,
Nor wakes my envy, nor provokes my spleen.
Let venal critics puff him to the town,

And herald hawkers cry him up and down,

B

Indiff'rent still, I hear the loud acclaim,
Nor court that noisy strumpet, Common Fame.
Yes, I can bear that envy, hate, and spite,
And cold contempt attend on all I write ;
That Cottle's* idiot, Thurlow's splay-foot line,
And Barrett's doggerel be preferr'd to mine;
No threats can sway me, no opinions bend,
I care not; let them censure or commend.

Yet would I speak, but coward fear restrains
The rebel blood just rising in my veins;
Puts my imagination to a stand,

And makes my pen drop harmless from my hand. F. Why Truth, that arms the Stoic, ne'er can fail

P. Then fear for once give way, and Truth prevail. When I behold in this weak driv❜ling age, Poole, Dibdin, Pocock, Hook possess the stage; Charm gallery, box, and pit, a judging throng! With melodrame, and pantomime, and song:

* Mr. Joseph Cottle, a good citizen, but a bad poet. + Mr. Eaton Stannard Barrett, student of the Inner Temple, is the author of a poem called "Woman," from which might be extracted many passages that would illustrate the Bathos; and "The Heroine,” a novel, superior in wit (according to his own statement!) to Tristram Shandy, and in spirit and contrivance to Don Quixote. He has also obliged the town with a Bartholomew-Fair comedy, entitled, "My Wife, What Wife!"

See boxing* Yarmouth in the lists appear,
And Hawke drive forth a flaming charioteer;
See Coutts ape all that Queensb'ry was before,
A palsied, am'rous Strephon of fourscore!

Yes! when I hear frail Misses, grey in

years, Scream their lascivious odes, and rhyming Peers

In little sonnets, tender, dull, and soft,
Outwhine the mawkish frippery of Lofft; +
Then, then I boldly rise, and dare the worst-
F. Forbear this railing:

P.

I must speak, or burst.

* If a dustman or drayman have a cruel appetite to blacken his wife's eyes upon scientific principles, he may be initiated without offering much violence to the dignity of his order, and hammer away at his vocation as if he was paid regular wages for his exertions; but if a noble lord aspire to boxing honors, he must receive instructions in his favorite art from, and exercise it, not on his peers, but the veriest ruffians of society. Lord Byron's passion for pugilism is an exception that proves the rule; yet I may just remark, that a more decorous manifestation of filial grief, and a higher consolation for a mother's death, might have been derived and sought than through the medium of a game at fisty-cuffs, at which his lordship had a sorrowful set-to while the funeral procession of his only remaining parent was slowly moving from his ancestral domain. I question if even the venerated mothers of Belasco and Dutch Sam were mourned with similar obsequies.

+ Mr. Capel Lofft, a sonnet-writer in the " Monthly

Mirror."

There was a time when Churchill, bold and coarse,
Gave wit its point, and satire all its force;
When Pope, immortal Satʼrist! made his prey
The Herveys and the Gildons of the day;
Dragg'd into light th' abandon'd scribbling crew,
And boldly scourg'd them in the public view:
But now,
so cheap is praise, there scarce remains
One fool to flatter in our courtly strains.
Had they but liv'd to witness present times,
What sins, what dulness had provok'd their rhymes;
Satire unaw'd would then have dar'd to speak,
Till deep conviction glow'd on H--df--t's cheek ;
And Manners, brainless blockhead! stood confest
The public nuisance, and the public jest.

F. Once more forbear-thy proper medium
know:-

Degraded names! can Satire stoop so low?
When H--df--t ambles in a courtier's guise,
All know the hoary pimp, and all despise.
Does credence wait on each prepost'rous tale?
Who cares a jot when Agg,* and Manners + rail?

* Mr. Thomas Agg, a sometime Bristol bookseller, and now an auctioneer, has long been the hired scribe of a deceased publication, called "Town Talk." He writes under the assumed names of Humphrey Hedgehog, and Jeremiah Juvenal; and has recently adopted that of Peter Pindar, hoping to confound his spurious trash with the