Vile chroniclers of vice, do ye pretend
By half-forged tales the virtuous to befriend?
Ye write for pelf, no matter, if for bread;
Better to starve than be by falsehood fed!

Beware, ye youths, beware of Cantwell's art; Lies on his tongue, and malice at his heart. Behold the foul he-gossip; let him pass,

This would-be lion is at best an ass.

The spirit of a scold, a pot-boy's wit,
The self-detected hypocrite befit!

Mark! in these times how talent is despised,
Scandal is read, and Hazlitt hardly prized,
Rob-Roy diluted, on the stage attracts
Crowds, while in vain the perfect Dowton acts.
Our Sheils and Soanes, sublime in verse and
Mad tragedies, and melo-drames, compose.

The country, with its infinite delights
At morn and eve, is left for Loudon nights;

prose,

The melody of birds for harlot's throats,
The flow'ry meads for 'broider'd petticoats;
The pensive pleasures of a moon-light walk,
For squeezes, waltzes, and unmeaning talk.
The landlord hurries from his country seat,
Where 'mong his tenants he is truly great,
To waste his useless wealth 'mid scenes of vice,
On horses, women, snuff-boxes, and dice! 19

What shall we call thee, Fashion? ape of

apes,

Thou Proteus goddess with a thousand shapes.
The votaries of Almack's and French plays
(While Kean's forgot) lavish on thee their praise.
Well may they worship thee, thou dost dispense
With wisdom, judgment, wit, and common sense.
Let Dandies bring their offerings to thy shrine,
Wear stiff cravats, "cut" friends, be vastly fine.
The servile herd may own thy changeful sway-
Thy laws are too refin'd for me t' obey.

"Great wits to madness sure are near allied," This well might gall our intellectual pride:

21

20

Else why when "Senates hung on all he spoke,"
Did Canning venture on an ill-tim'd joke?

Risk, for a moment's laugh, his well-earn'd fame,

That 'gainst him boys and witlings might declaim! 22

Some say for office that e'en Peel's unfit,2

23

That Castlereagh wants firmness, Canning wit.
These are your party spirits, such I hate;
They might as well of Newton's weakness prate.

Say rather truth, that trampled nations cry For vengeance on wide-spreading tyranny ; That Draco-lawgivers offenders strike,

For murder and for forgery alike;

That laws are wrested from their just intent;
That men beneath oppression's yoke are bent;
That heartless senators to pamper wealth,
Would blight in infancy the bud of health;

That avarice all-grasping grinds the poor,

To squeeze from o'er-work'd hands one penny more: That usurers, contractors, jobbers live

In splendor, nay, that vile informers thrive;

20

POESY; A SATIRE.

That dark-brow'd methodists throughout the land,

24

"Mid canting converts hurl sedition's brand;2
(Since their own pastors will not shew the way,
The uninstructed from the path must stray)
That from a lust of pleasure, hate of worth,
A thousand modern Wilmots take their birth;
That, amid scenes of revelry we meet
Wretches, pale, famished, dying in the street !25
That savage critics with a merciless zeal,
Themselves unfeeling, mangle those who feel!

The time is come that poets have foretold, The blessed age of paper, not of gold!

Revive the May-games, ye fat-acred squires, And make your peasants happy, like your sires. O let their pressing wants your time engross, Read Pope, and imitate the Man of Ross.

NOTES ON "POESY."

1 Gods! what a swarm are here! the motley crowd
Of bards, and jackdaw bardlings chatter loud!

Quis expedivit psittaco suum Xaige
Picasque docuit verba nostra conari?

Though M- -y sends forth every year a poet!

A well-known fashionable bookseller, a wholesale and retail dealer in Venetian, Turkish, and Persian Tales. Goldsmith's Traveller is worth all the "hundred tales of love" and villainy put together.

To Portman-square the Byron's name repeat!

Lord Byron is undoubtedly the first poet of the day. When all the adventitious advantages, which his poetry has derived