"Dear love!" Belinda cried, as, sprucely sage,

She sipp'd her cocoa, then the news-cramm'd page,

While at her noontide breakfast languid sat,

To legislate for night in morning chat,

"Here's Lady Laura-do I cheat my sight!

They hint❞—

"Indeed! Mamma, about to write?".

66

My love! will you allow me to declare ?—

Why, read! as authoress she's mentioned there."

"She write! I can't believe so vain a thing Can do aught else but slander, flirt, and sing. She write! well, who shall say, if this be true, What titled vice and vanity may do?”

A bell hath jingled: "John, immediate go,—

My compliments to Messrs. Puff and Co.,

They'll please to put down Lady Lumley's name

The first, for FORTUNE,' FLATT'RY,' 'FOOLS,'

and 'FAME."

If knavish puffery were but confined

TO BURLINGTON-the boundless master-mind

Some hopes were left; for now and then he dares

Turn out some sense amid his printed wares:

Be witness, W-d! above the scrawling race,
Thy classic pen displays delightful grace:

Taught by thy truths, the heart forgets to roam

In search of others' faults, to look at home;
And B--n, too-long may his genius write
The puff-born, puff-bred mimics from our sight.

But puff monopoly can never be,

In the snug race of modern villainy:

The puff-plague rages to the meanest grade

Of book-mechanics, christen'd now "the trade;"

All, puff-inspired by the primeval fount,

Pant by its dirty tricks to gain and mount.

But let the muse, to graceful merit due,

Of BURLINGTON's famed rivals hint a few.
First, BONE and SKIN-a sleek and supple pair

As ever shut up shop to sniff the air;

Then CHIVERTON, whose cultivated soul

Should scorn the pettifogging puff's control;
Then, FRIPPERY, a most outrageous man,

For clawing, catching, scraping all he can,

And, last, long FUNGUS, with his neck awry,
Brag in his tongue, and puppy in his eye;
All in the puffing, quacking art excel,—
Arise, ye dunderheads! applaud them well.

What wonder, then, while puffs insure a sale, That, thick as muck-flies in the evening gale, Authors appear, of every breed and kind,

Far as absurdity can stretch the mind:

Pun-clenchers—they whose eyes poetic roll

With all the hot insanity of soul;

Prose-dabblers, wrenching, like great L――'s face,

Their style and words into a monstrous grace,

Makers of tales, romance-mechanics, all

Book-scrawlers, brazen, barren, great and small,—

Arise each morn-assert their lofty claim,

And yelp, like hungry puppies, for their fame.

A choice acquaintance with newspaper trash,
All that the monthly humdrums dress and hash,
And index lore, a picking from each page,
With flash and flippancy to feed the age;—
All this, combined with arrogance, and ease
To spin out nonsense nimbly as you please,
May form an "AUTHOR" of imposing mien,
And melt the honey from a magazine !

"But sure, to fill three volumes from the brain

Deserves a moiety of applause to gain!"

Fill'd from the brain !-dear sir, sound brains are rare,

And heads, like wind-guns, oft explode in air.