"He whose broad cleaver chopped the sons of paint; Crushed like a marrowbone each lovely saint; Spared not the very clothes about their backs; The little duck-winged cherubims abused, That could not more inhumanly be used, Poor lambkins! had they fallen among the blacks;He, once so furious, soon shall want relief, Staked through the body like a paltry thief. "How art thou fallen, O Cherokee !' they cry; Ye goodly gentlemen, repress your yell; Your hearty wishes for my health restrain; Kind Sirs! we certainly shall meet again. II. A MODEST love of praise I do not blame- Reader!-of images here's no confusion Thou therefore understand'st the bard's allusion. But possibly thou hast a thickish head, And therefore no vast quantity of brain :Why then, my precious pig of lead, 'Tis necessary to explain. Some artists, if I so may call 'em,- Wish to the stars, like Blanchard,1 to be raised: 1 The famous Aeronaut. If disappointed in some Stentor's tongue, What prigs to immortality aspire, Who stick their trash around the room?Trash, meriting a very different doom,— I mean the warmer regions of the fire. Heaven knows that I am angered to the soul To find some blockheads of their works so vainSo proud to see them hanging cheek by jowl With his1 whose powers the art's high fame sustain. To wondrous merit their pretension, On such vicinity-suspension, Brings to my mind a not unpleasant story, A shabby fellow chanced one day to meet Garrick, of whom our nation justly brags. The fellow hugged him, with a kind embrace. "Good Sir, I do not recollect your face," Quoth Garrick. "No?" replied the man of rags. "The boards of Drury you and I have trod Full many a time together, I am sure." "When?" with an oath cried Garrick; "for, by God, I never saw that face of yours before !— What characters, I pray, Did you and I together play?" "Lord!" quoth the fellow, "think not that I mockWhen you played Hamlet, Sir,-I played the cock."2 1 The President Reynolds, 2 In the Ghost Scene. CHARLES MORRIS. [Captain Morris was born in 1740, and died in 1832). THE CONTRAST. IN London I never know what I'd be at, But the Country, Lord help me! sets all matters right, In town if it rain, why it damps not our hope, In the country what bliss, when it rains in the fields, In London, if folks ill together are put, A bore may be dropped, and a quiz may be cut ; In the country you're nailed, like a pale in the park, In London how easy we visit and meet ! In the country, how sprightly our visits we make In London the spirits are cheerful and light, R But how gay in the country! what summer delight In town we've no use for the skies overhead, In the country these planets delightfully glare But 'tis in the country alone we can find ; Indeed I must own, 'tis a pleasure complete I have heard, though, that love in a cottage is sweet, Your magpies and stock-doves may flirt among trees, In the country, if Cupid should find a man out, I know love's a devil, too subtle to spy, That shoots through the soul from the beam of an eye ; In town let me live then, in town let me die, HANNAH MORE. [Born at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, in 1745, daughter of a village schoolmaster; died at Clifton in 1833. The talents of Hannah excited attention at a very early age, and she set up a good day school, and afterwards a boardingschool. Her first printed work was the drama entitled The Search after Happiness; this was followed by Sacred Dramas, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, and a number of other works having for the most part a directly religious or didactic object]. THE BAS BLEU; OR, CONVERSATION. ADDRESSED TO MRS. VESEY. The following trifle owes its birth and name to the mistake of a Foreigner of distinction, who gave the literal appellation of the Bas-bleu to a small party of friends who had been often called, by way of pleasantry, the Blue Stockings. These little Societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were composed of persons distinguished, in general, for their rank, talents, or respectable character, who met frequently at Mrs. Vesey's and at a few other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from other parties but that the company did not play at cards. May the author be permitted to bear her grateful testimony (which will not be suspected of flattery now that most of the persons named in this Poem are gone down to the grave) to the many pleasant and instructive hours she had the honour to pass in this company; in which learning was as little disfigured by pedantry, good taste as little tinctured by affectation, and general conversation as little disgraced by calumny, levity, and the other censurable errors with which it is too commonly tainted, as has perhaps been known in any Society. VESEY! of Verse the judge and friend ! ́ A while my idle strain attend. Which crowned the Athenians' social name; The first Bas-bleu at Athens known; Where Socrates unbending sat, With Alcibiades in chat, And Pericles vouchsafed to mix Brought conquests and brought cherries home. What classic images will follow! How wit flew round, while each might take Conchylia from the Lucrine lake; And Attic salt, and Garum sauce, And lettuce from the isle of Cos; The first and last from Greece transplanted, Used here because the rhyme I wanted, |