But 'tis indeed a pain, (though Interest seems
To bid me scorn unprofitable themes,)

While the old bards adorn my shelves, to quit
At once their world of poetry and wit!

Where the dense yellow fog o'erhangs the Thames, The sage, great Coke, thy close attention claims; Yet wilt thou seize, at intervals of time, On Byron's Lara-Cowper's Task sublime! The mind is healthy that to works like these, Amid the toil of thought, can turn with ease.

Content, thou hast eight hundred pounds a-year,
Books, and, far better still, a conscience clear;
Thou dost not feel, what squires have felt, distress,
When their rents fail, and mortgages oppress!
Debts, taxes, and annuities might make
The proudest landlord for his acres quake!

Like Machiavel in politics, thou art
A Tory, or a Radical at heart!

Rejoicing oft to see how Whigs are hit

Now by John Bull's, and now by Cobbett's wit.
Yet politics are but ephemeral things;

Kings, though the world's progressive, will be kings: Statesmen are statesmen still-the mob will roar,

And

be what Wilkes has been before!

Say, dost thou seek the Caledonian squeeze,
Where few can stand, and fewer sit with ease;
Where Irving's glowing oratory shows

The skeleton at least of Taylor's prose !

Or, blest with better taste, wilt thou not hear
Andrews, as eloquent, and far more clear?
Then, at a brother lawyer's country-seat,
In social converse find a sabbath treat?

As magic lanthorns throw along the wall
Forms of gigantic shape, yet shadows all,
In florid self-importance thus the vain
Burst on our sight-then shrink to nought again.
Their well-known faces haunt me where I walk,
And oh how wearisome their well-known talk!

Yet such are men; though reason, 'tis confest,
Illumes their minds with scattered rays at best:
Such have immortal spirits, which must be
Happy, or wretched, through eternity!

Go, triflers, tread Love's flowery path; but know
Ye burn with dæmons, or with seraphs glow!

Oft have we laugh'd at (for in truth we've seen
The world) their civil smiles that nothing mean;
Their dolorous looks, whene'er they seem'd to grieve;
And can such poor dissemblers e'er deceive?
Give me the man who, if at times he err,

At least shows something like a character,