Or what can prove a blister more severe,
Than quondam author's impudence to hear;
Whose vile productions are but idle vapour,
Destructive of such countless reams of paper;
Fit for that office,* long ordain'd by fate,
Which I, from decency, refrain to state:

there is still an abundance, both as rhymesters and blank verse composers: not to lay any stress on the score of obscenity, which has been published by these gentlemen, to the detriment of morality, there are, literally productions of this nature, which neither display one spark of the fire of imagination, nor even a trace of the composition, so requisite in all poetic effusions. To every rhymester of this class, I advise the selection of themes, similar to those which follow, for the trial of his skill in versification.

He would an elegy compose,

On maggots, squeez'd out of his nose;

In lyric numbers write an ode on
His mistress eating a black pudden;

And, when imprison'd air escap'd her,

It puft him with poetic rapture.

To all such dabblers in the puddles of Parnassus, I will content myself, with saying, in the words of Boileau,

*

Pauvre gens, je les plains, car on a pour les foux,
Plus de pitie que de corroux,

Supposed, in allusion to the offerings presented, of necessity, at the altars of the renowned goddess, Cloacina.

For vendors* now of books do not aspire
To publish sense, but nonsense, by the quire.

* Having annotated the theme of our bard, as far as relates to the mushroom tribe of poets and authors, who have of late years sprung up, it would be highly culpable in me not to say something on the score of publishers; as I shall, by this means, put the other two classes of fools into better humour with me than they enjoy in the present in

stance.

It is necessary, in the first place, to remark, that printers and publishers were, formerly, one and the same thing; while it must be added that their scientific knowledge was extensive, and not circumscribed, as at the present period, to the title and dimensions of a work. No bookseller thinks of purchasing a production, now-a-days, without sending the MS. to be perused by some supposed learned critic in the back ground, who is payed for his trouble, whose fiat is irrevocable with the dealer; possessing a head, in most instances as thick and ponderous as the binder's hammer, which, at some future period, belabours the publication, previous to its adonization in morocco, russia, or calf. There is, however, no rule without an exception, as may be instanced in a famous vendor of modern made books, whom I shall denominate the great Mecenas of literary lumber. This gentleman arrogates to himself exclusively the title of

T

For, as to wisdom pure, they long have lost her:
For she ran raving mad in Paternoster:

author and book-maker general; as no work, he affirms, issues from his warehouse, which had not only received his mere sanction, but was positively planned by himself; so that, upon all occasions, he converts his writers into labourers, who are to commit his sublime conceptions to paper.

Nervis alienis mobili lignum.

Therefore it is no longer the author who supports the bookseller, but the bookseller the author, according to his maxim. But to have done with this Mecenas, let us but glance our eyes from Tower Hill to Hyde Park Corner, and where shall we find a publisher possessed of one genuine spark, connected with the love of Les Belles Lettres? no where is this phoenix to be found. Genius may go hang or drown itself, while the execrable trash of men of fortune and rank is caught at with avidity; and, being bedecked with margin and plates, struts into the world to be bought by fools, whose judgment is circumscribed to the love of Gewgaw, and whose reading extends no further than the gold tinsel which bedecks the bindings of their trumpery purchase. As such, O! poets and authors, are the publishers of the present era, no wonder that your idiot reveries are committed to the press, since being

And, far from human eyes, mopes melancholy, To see the idiot world's consummate folly; Which in her stead, chose men who place reliance

On wire-wove paper, margin, plates-not science.*

yoke fellows all, it would be strange, indeed, to find the fool capable of discriminating and despising his brother's folly.

* Not to lay any stress on the voluminous productions of of that class of metaphysical and philosophical fools, mentioned by the poet in the foregoing section, there are, indeed, a sufficient quantity of a different species to warrant these lines; and of that number we may particularly instance the works of plagiarists, which are incessantly issuing from the press, and managed with so little skill and such barefaced effrontery, as absolutely to create astonishment. This neglect, however on their parts, may be construed, in some respects, as a proof of their knowledge of society, as it is, which contents itself with the froth, the saperface, or flyaway literature, leaving the sterling to the few who have minds sufficiently enlightened to profit by the instructions they contain. Of plagiarists we may say, with Jovius: Castrant alios, ut libros suos, per se graciles, alieno adipe suffarciant. With respect to novels and romances, they are of longer standing than may at first be imagined: not to mention ancient metrical romances, the Arcadia of Sir Philip

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

Ere thou aspir'st to rhyme, and stand high stilt

on,

Consult a Dryden, Pope, Shakspeare, and Milton; And, if from thence, thou feel'st assur'd, endite. So, after study and unceasing toil,

Vying with Locke, Swift, Newton, Burton, Boyle, Then, authors, pr'ythee, wield your pens, and write.

Sidney, written in the reign of Elizabeth, &c. and which is justly lashed by my Lord Orford, who calls it a dull pedantic production, which a love-sick maid could not wade through, we have other instances which are of French extraction; such as Cassandra, The Grand Cyrus of madam Scudery, &c. which were translated into English by sir Clement Cotterel, Loveday, &c. and which, doubtless, led the way to the after productions of a similar stamp, and which are now not daily, but hourly produced, to the disgrace of modern times. These reams of Leaden Hall lumber, though issuing under the auspices of a Minerva, aré not, however, to be solely condemned on the score of nonsense, but are deserving the severest lash of criticism, on account of the frequent destructive tendency they have to the morality of the rising generation, which reads this species of production with such marked avidity.