Reviews record this epidemic crime,
Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme.
Alas! woe worth the scribbler! often seen
In Morning Post, or Monthly Magazine.
There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot pressed,[1]
Behold a Quarto!—Tarts must tell the rest.
Then leave, ye wise, the Lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords,[2]730
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
- ↑
There see their sonnets first—but Spring—hot prest
Beholds a Quarto—Tarts must tell the Rest.—[MS. M. erased.] - ↑ To fuddled Esquires or to flippant Lords.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of panta—psha!—of cantos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country customers—Merry's "Moorfields whine" was nothing to all this. The "Delia Cruscans" were people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians ("Arcades ambo"—bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and small-clothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures, and Pæans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shop-board, they describe the fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an "Essay on War" is produced by the ninth part of a "poet;"
"And own that nine such poets made a Tate."
Did Nathan ever read that line of Pope? and if he did, why not take it as his motto? [An Essay on War; Honington Green, a Ballad, . . . an Elegy and other Poems, was published in 1803.]
- ↑ This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical undoing of
