THE PRESS.

A FRAGMENT.

How great this fact all men must now confess,
A power exists which reigns supreme-THE PRESS!
A power for ages to the world unknown:

A tyrant now-to despotism grown-
It swallows up all others in its own.
A wonderful embodiment of mind-
Monstrous-intangible-and undefined :-

A modern hydra-which, with countless heads,
O'er the whole earth its voice in whirlwind spreads;
Rousing men's angry passions at its will:—

Who shall foretell its course-for good or ill?

No. 21.

Hood's Magazine.*

SONG. THE PRESS.

Tune.-The Sea.

THE Press! the Press! the glorious Press!
The deep, the fresh, the ever free,
Without a mark, without a bound,

It searcheth the earth's wide regions round.
It plays with despots, it mocks their spleen,
Or like a flaming rod is seen.

I'm on the press! I'm on the press!

I am where I would ever be,

With the ink above, and the paper below,

And the devil to pay wherever I go.

If the O'st should storm, and threaten my fall,
What matter?-what matter?-I can beat them all.

It loves, oh! how it loves to ride

On the lordly voice of the popular tide,

When every madcap speaks his mind,

Or thumps his knuckles for want of wind.

Thomas Hood, the distinguished writer, and editor of the above magazine, died May 6, 1845. His works will be long remembered, and, amongst their class, may well be described as unrivalled.

+ Overseers.

And tells how goeth the national debt,
And why at taxes the people fret.

I never reported for one short hour,
But I love the free press more and more,
And backwards flew to my devils and type,
Like a bear-cub that loveth its mother's gripe;
And kinder and kinder it is to me,

For the press was born to be useful and free!

The world was changed, and the pope looked round
When the hydra head of the press was unbound,
And the eyes of oppression and hatred rolled,
And tyrants offered their bars of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,

As strove to smother the free-born child.

It has stood since then with great strength and weight,
In spite of prisons and engines great,

With truth to guide, and power to range,
And never may England see its change;
And life,-whenever it loves me less,
Shall see me bound to the glorious Press !

ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.*
IN good Queen Anna's days, when tories reign'd,
And the just liberty of the press restrain'd,
Sad whigs complain'd, in doleful notes and sundry,
O LIBERTY! O VIRTUE! O MY COUNTRY !

But when themselves had reach'd the days of grace,
They chang'd their principles as well as place;
From messengers secure no printer lies,

They take compositors, pressmen, devils, flies:
What means this change? the sum of all the stories,
Tories deprest are whigs, and whigs in power are tories.

The above epigram appeared upon the conduct of the Whig government towards the press. On the 19th June, 1729, Robert Knell, compositor, and John Clark. pressman, of Mist's Weekly Journal, were set in the pillory for working that paper, of the 24th of August, 1728.

THE POET'S ANATHEMA.

ON A PRINTER WHO HAD DISPLEASED HIM.

MAY all your columns fall in pie,
Each chase be gnawed by rust;
Weak, weak as water be your lye,
Your cases filled with dust.

May all your sticks untrue be made,
Your frames too high or low;
No page upon the stone be laid
Where it should rightly go.

May all your rules be short and rough,
Your bodkin but a nail;

Your balls be like a barber's puff,
And rats your pelts assail.

May crooked stand of type each kind,
Your press run hard for oil;
Your gallies ten degrees inclined,
Your paste be vermin's spoil.

May all your devils idle be,

Yet look to you for bread;

And may you ne'er from duns be free,
Until you 're dead-dead-dead-

LANGUAGES.

R S. COFFIN.

THE ancient Hebrew clad with mysteries,
The learned Greeke, rich in fit epithetes,
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words;
The Chaldea wise, the Arabian physicall,
The Roman eloquent, the Tuscan grave,

The braving Spanish, and the smooth-tongued French.

1617.

ANDREW BREWER.

THE PRESS.

Now reigns Apollo, earth hath told
Its brazen and its iron ages;

The Press brings on the " Age of Gold,"
Foretold by inspiration's pages."

Sing, earth, thou wilderness of time;
Creation's desert, rise and sing;
Thy wastes shall glow with summer prime,
And with eternal concord ring.

Ye tyrants, tremble on your thrones !
Despot! the hand upon the wall
Has writ thy doom, I hear thy groans;
I see thy helpless-hopeless fall.

The sky of liberty ne'er shone

In ages past so fair and bright;

The Press we hail, the Press alone,

Brings freedom, power, and life, and light.

PAUL RODGERS.†

ON THE WORLD.

THE world's a printing-house, our words are thoughts,
Our deeds are characters of several sizes;

Each soul's a compositor, of whose faults

The Levites are correctors and Heaven revises;
Earth is the common press, from which being driven.
We're gather'd, sheet by sheet, and bound for heaven.

THE world's a book, writ by th' eternal art
Of the great Author; printed in man's heart;
'Tis falsely printed, though divinely penn'd,
And all the errata will appear at th' end.

Isaiah, chap. Ix. &c. &c.

QUARLES

From "Poems, or Amusements in Rhyme," Sheffield, July, 1845. Mr. Rodgers was born in that class of society which has produced a Bamford, an Elliot, a Prince, and a Cooper; and, from the humble capacity of a working shoemaker in a country village, has by his talents and good conduct obtained a responsible public situation at Sheffield, where he now resides.

AN AUTHOR.

AN author! 'tis a venerable name!

How few deserve it, and what numbers claim !
Unblest with sense above their peers refin'd,
Who shall stand up, dictators to mankind?
Nay, who dare shine, if not in virtue's cause?
That sole proprietor of just applause.

DR. YOUNG.

SONG. THE ALBION PRESS*

Air.-Roast Beef of Old England.

WHEN a nation's right or glory calls,
'Tis Albion's sons and wooden walls;
But here, my friends, let 's make a pause,
The ALBION PRESS claims our applause.

From year to year three hearty good cheers,
For the Albion factory, huzza, boys,
For the Albion factory, huzza!

Proudly on high it takes its stand,
'Tis known in every foreign land;
The trump of fame its praise sends forth
From east to west, from south to north.
From year to year, &c.

Its enemies spring up apace,

But soon they fall into disgrace;

The more they try to pull it down.

Their malice speaks its great renown.

From year to year, &c.

The time, my friends, you see has come,
That a thousand improved ones are done,

In the month of April, 1839, Mr. J Hopkinson, of Finsbury, London, had completed one thousand of his "IMPROVED ALBION PRESS," upon which occasion he entertained his workmen at a supper; and, during the hilarity of the evening. William Hawkins, an operative engineer, almost extempore, composed and sang the above song; therefore, his desire to please will, it is hoped, disarm criticism.