‘Defensor culpæ dicet mihi, “Fecimus et nos Hæc juvenes.” Esto. Desîsti nempe nec ultrà Fovisti errorem.’ Juvenal.

‘Lignorum aliquid posce ocius, et, quæ

Componis, doa Veneris, ****, marito.’ Juvenal.

‘Truth: a New Year’s Gift for Scribblers.
‘Defensor culpæ dicet mihi, “Fecimus et nos Hæc juvenes.” Esto. Desîsti nempe nec ultrà Fovisti errorem.’ Juvenal.

‘Lignorum aliquid posce ocius, et, quæ Componis, doa Veneris, ****, marito.’ Juvenal.

Moths, millers, gnats, and butterflies, I sing;

Far darting Phœbus, lend my strain a sting;

Much courted virgins,* long enduring Nine,

Screw tight the catgut of this lyre of mine:

If D-na, D-wes, and P—rp-nt ask your aid,

If W-ll-s takes to rhyming as a trade,

If L-nt and F-nn to Pindus’ top aspire,

I too may blameless beg one spark of fire;

Not such as warmed the brains of Pope and Swift—

With less assistance I can make a shift:

To Gifford’s bow and shafts I lay no claim;

He shot at hawks, but I at insects aim:

Yet grant, since I must war on little things,

Just flame enough to singe their puny wings;

A feather besom, too, to bring them down,

And pins to stick them in my beaver’s crown.

* —Narrate, pulæ

Pierides: prosit mihi vos dixisse puelas!—Juvenal.

O Faust, O Faust! an’ if thy story ’s true,

In thee the Devil only got his due:

In bullets moulded and by nitre hurled,

Thy types had done less mischief to the world.

Thou wretch, if spirits can reply from hell,

The purpose of thy black invention tell.

Couldst thou not see thy press and printing tools

Create an endless jubilee for fools,

Whole herds of dunces throng this luckless land,

Like shoals of cod on fishy Newfoundland?

Couldst thou not see our loathing public crammed

With verse on verse? Most justly art thou damned.

I hear a voice that cries, ‘Lift up thine hand

Against the legions of this locust band.

Egypt was plagued with frogs, and lice, and fleas;

Columbia’s plague is worse than all of these:

Arise,—o’er each delinquent wield the scourge;

On brain-sick youngsters try a healing purge;

Serve, serve them up, like smelts upon a string,

And o’er their books a final requiem sing.

Arise,—convince thy country of her shame;

Rise, ere her genius be no more a name.’

Roused by the call of Duty, I obey;

I draw the sword, and fling the sheath away.

But where begin?—When vermin thus abound,

No shaft I shoot can bloodless reach the ground.

Lo! paddling down the Nashaway, in a scow

Of his own building, Rufus makes his bow,

And sings how Peggy, erst the kitchen’s pride,

Became enamoured, pined, and wined, and died;*

Then tells how strangely salmon swim up stream,

And stranger still, how wolves and ’peckers’ scream;

Or names the fount that washed his school-boy chin.—

Pity the booby did not tumble in!

In time, perhaps, our servile bard may find,

Of two who ride one horse, one rides behind;

And, peradventure, learn that Goldsmith’s steed

By Goldsmith only can be urged to speed.

A pause,—and Rufus croaks another air,

About a sprite that dwelleth everywhere:†

He ’s wrong; for ‘Beauty’s Spirit’ never shines

Through the impervious dulness of his lines.

His last sheet printed, and his volume out,

Vainglorious Rufus anxious looks about,

Anticipates due praise, and trembling fears

To have the critics all about his ears.

Superfluous care! nor praise nor blame is heard;

Not even snarling T***** growls a word.

Stung with the slight, resolved to rouse the pack,

On the whole town he pens a dire attack:

His Strokes and Strictures* meet with equal scorn,

And, like his poems, leave the press still-born.

The fount to which, in Boston’s earlier day,

Men came to drink, and went refreshed away—

The fane our pious pilgrim fathers sought,

To hear the Saviour’s vital precepts taught—

The Church, is now the club-room of small wits;

The desk ’s the nest where Dulness brooding sits,

And hatches by the score such chicks unclean

As Pinney, W-re,† P—b-dy,‡ Doane,§ and Deane,¶

Who thrive upon their mother’s milk so well,

They chirp in numbers ere they chip the shell.

Hark! little wool, great cry! that doleful whine

Is P—rp-nt’s, howling Airs of Palestine:*

Prime parson, but poor poet; sells, in short,

Soup for the alms-house, at a cent a quart.

His motive ’s good, but yet I grieve to tell

The crude concoction never would, will sell:

Scarce any food to Yankees comes amiss;

But saw-dust better relishes than this.

P—rp-nt, a man may be of judgment clear,

Have taste, and talent, and a faultless ear,

Yet be no poet: be advised by me;

Stick to thy pulpit; let the Muses be.

A sail, my muse! Pursue in full career;

Train our bow-chaser on this privateer;

This pirate rather, for his flag is black—

Let ’s lay the whip upon his recreant back:

’T is Cr-sw-ll, stupid servant of the Lord,

Who steals his strain from Wordsworth, word for word.†

I’ll take his stolen goods, but harm him not;

Poor Devil, he ’s not worth another shot.

When clumsy Vulcan strives to forge a wtach,

’T is ten to one his work will prove a botch:

Each to his trade—there ’s Edward,* learned, wise,

Great in the world’s opinion, madly tries

To scale Parnassus, makes his readers sick

(To use his own vile rhyme) of Alaric—†

His empty lines contain instruction yet;

They prove ‘poeta nascitur, non fit.’

Muse, shall we not a few brief lines afford

To give poor Natty P. his meet reward?

What has he done to be despised by all

Within whose hands his harmless scribblings fall?

‘And Roman hearts shall long be sick

When men shall think of Alaric.’

Why, as in bandbox-trim* he walks the streets,

Turns up the nose of every man he meets,

As if it scented carrion? Why, of late,

Do all the critics claw his shallow pate?

True, he ’s a fool;—if that ’s a hanging thing,

Let Pr-nt-ce, Wh-tt-er, M-ll-n also swing.

When W-ll-s saw the light, ’t is said his sex

Did for a month the neighbourhood perplex.

(’T is doubtful now.) Desiring much a son,

His parents put the coat and breeches on;

And grateful Natty, mindful of their loves,

A true Tiresias redivivus proves;

Except in this, he lacks Tiresias’ fire,

And always goes abroad in male attire.

While yet a boy, (by which I do n’t infer

He ’s now a man,) his brains began to stir

With throes ambitious. ‘We shall see,’ he cries

‘If I do n’t make the natives ope their eyes!’

Forth comes the volume. David screams with pain,

And Absalom his son expires again.†

My hand, if child of mine had made such slip,

Had cured his cacoethes with a whip.

Then Natty filled the Statesman’s ribald page,

With the rank breathings of his prurient age;

And told the world how may a half-bred miss,

Like Shakspeare’s fairy, gave an ass a kiss.

Long did he try the art of sinking on

The muddy pool he took for Helicon;

Long did he delve and grub, with fins of lead,

At its foul bottom, for precarious bread.

All geese, nay, goslings, much delight to roam,

And cats called Thomas seldom stay at home;

So Natty, all aspiring, leaves his den

Apollo minimus of little men,

And keeps a public house, where, monthly, all

Are served with fragments from some musty stall.

Ah, Nat! I’ve too much charity by half;—

I cannot slay and eat thee, though a calf.

Dishonest critic, and ungrateful friend,*

Still on a woman thy stale jokes expend;

Live—at thy meagre table still preside,

While foes commiserate, and friends deride;

Yet live, thy wonted follies to repeat;

Live, till thy printer’s ruin is complete;

Strut out thy fleeting hour upon the stage,

Amidst the hisses of the passing age.*

So much for scolding; come now, Natty, come

To me, poor thing, and get a sugar-plum.

The rod, I think, has made thy cutis sore,

Thou writest so much better than before.

With father’s love I ’ve watched thy mind unfold,

And joyed to see some spangles of pure gold.

Bright with intrinsic light ‘The Leper’ glows,

‘The Alchemist’ no common genius shows.

Low as thy credit is, some hopes remain;

Write more such verse, and see it rise again.

Hast thou, my reader, felt the frowns of Fate?

Hast lost thy purse, thy character, estate?

Has every cherished hope thy breast forsook?

Hast thou no trade?—No matter—write a book.

Try prose, or better still, poetic flights,

For Brother Jonathan in verse delights;

So shall the papers all thy work extol,

And thou, in time, thyself the press control.

What if no college gave thee a degree,

What if the muses never smiled on thee,

* At pulchrum est, digito monstrari, et dicier, Hic est?

Persius.

What if thy book is careless, flat, and tame?

To Yankee editors ’t is all the same:

Fear not the whipping to thy folly due,

Some ‘damned good-natured friend’ shall help thee through.

But if thou hast no editorial friend,*

Straight to some well-known print a copy send;

For that ’s the current value of a puff;

Then send a copy, and have praise enough.

Or, what ’s a very common way to bribe,

Go to the printing-office, and subscribe.

Bribe, bribe the editor, and hear him swear

That Homer never cooked a dish so rare.

To gain attention art thou doubtful still?

Behold what piles of drugs the bookshops fill:

Here W-tm-re stands; M’L-ll-n here is seen;

There W-ll-s, with his Monthly Magazine.

By puffs reciprocal, by hook or crook,

Each draws the public eye upon his book.

When these, and such as these to publish dare,

Need thou, need any one on earth, despair?

But if thy book be good, beware of spite;

The dog that wags his tail for sops can bite.

Does any critic view thee with distaste?

To stretch the hand of Friendship out, make haste.

All provocation given straight recall,

Else shall thy first-born offspring pay for all.

Lo! one, reviewed himself, in turn reviews;

Another, whom his outraged tailor sues,

Uncorks the vials of his wrath, and reaches

To pour them on the tailor’s coats and breeches.

Some criticise from malice, some for pay,

But most for want of something else to say.

Here ’s milk-and-water M-ll-n, just from Maine,

His native fogs condensed within his brain.

Where gottest thou, O M-ll-n, so much brass,

To think thy farthings might for guineas pass?

‘Sad Tales and Glad Tales’—very sad indeed;—

Sad ‘Dreams’ and sadder ‘Visions’ next succeed;

Saddest of all,—to make his foes rejoice,

In strain satiric last he lifts his voice;

And, bent on taking common sense by storm,

Calls on his kindred dunces to reform;

Vainglorious deeming, that to christian ears

His yell will seem the music of the spheres.

What time the brazen poet raved and sung,

Misusing shamefully the English tongue,

The only blows he ever made to tell,

On taste and on his hearers’ patience fell.

Good reader, has it never given thee pain

To hear a warbling girl her gullet strain?

Just so it fares with M-ll-n; for a while

He sung, and made the indulgent public smile;

But raise his note so high!—his case is bad;

Bring a straight jacket, for the man is mad.*

He write a satire!—He presume to call

(Himself the very longest eared of all,)†

His fellows asses!—He presume to chide

At zanies!—’t is a downright fratricide.

His impudence, restricted to the bar,

Would push his fortune, Heaven but knows how far.

Unnatural M-ll-n, how, how didst thou dare

Fowls of thy proper kind to rend and tear?

Were the same measure meted out to thee,

How great, poor fellow, would thy sufferings be!

‘But is his work so very dull?’ you ask.

Buy it, and if you can, perform the task

Of reading; if your judgments then disclose

Whether ’t is rhyme or blank, or verse or prose,

’T is more than mine can, though I read it through:

You stare,—but on my sacred word ’t is true.

Dismissing M-ll-n to the state of mist,

The name of P-uld-ng* next adorns the list;

A name well worthy of no second place

On the dark record of the land’s disgrace.

When first ambitious hopes his heart inspired,

The itch,† congenial theme, his fancy fired:

A theme that Nature did express devise,

To find his hand its proper exercise:

So well his pen the subject seemed to match,

And brought his thoughts so promptly to the scratch,

That all who read, this common inference drew,

He wrote with feeling, and from knowledge too.

On mountain ridges, over stump and stone,

His coach poetic next goes jolting on,*

Until the passengers, with tears and groans,

Complain of aching heads and broken bones,

And swear, if once they reach the level plain,

Never to patronize ‘that line’ again;

But rather go on foot for all their lives,

Than trust the car that such a Jehu drives.

Arch demon raiser of the realms of rhyme,

Great horror monger of the eastern clime,

Monk Lewis, look this way, behold thy ghosts,

Scared by a Yankee fiend, stand mute as posts.

Scattering our babes and sucklings sans remorse,

Comes D-na, charging on his spectre horse.†

He lights, to let us know how Matthew Lee

His master’s weasand slit, then went to sea,

Turned pirate, burnt a ship, and, strange to tell,

By his own bonfire light rode off to hell!

Classic the theme, and classic are the words

That leave the lips of D-na’s gallows birds.

Ah! D-na, on the seas no longer roam,

But ring ‘Home Changes’ quietly at home;

Cut short, I pray thee, thy career of rhyme.

Know, what disgusts can never be sublime.

But if, resolved such pictures to exhibit,

Thou needs must steal thy subjects from the gibbet,

Select thy hero from the realms of evil,

To horse again, and gallop to the Devil.

Since, Muse, a rest thy wearied pinions crave,

Alight, and weep on Brainard’s early grave.*

Lamented Brainard! since no living line

Records thy worth, I ’ll make that merit mine:

Be mine the task to make fresh roses bloom,

Ad shed undying fragrance on thy tomb.

In thine own mind our cause of mourning grew—

The falchion’s temper cut the scabbard through.

Hard, hard thy lot, and great thy country’s shame,

Who let such offspring die without his fame.

He pined to see the buds his brow that decked

Nipt by the bitter blight of cold neglect.

Torn from the tree, they perished one by one,

Before their opening petals saw the sun;

While the same chilling blast that breathed on them,

Froze the rich life-blood of the noble stem.

But not neglect, nor sorrow’s rankling smart

Could sour the kindly current of his heart;

And not the canker that consumed his frame

Could to the last his eagle spirit tame;

With faltering hand his master harp he strung,

While music echoed from his dying tongue,

Then winged his passage to a higher sphere,

To seek the glory we denied him here.

Fair Cygnus thus, while life’s last pulses roll,

Pours forth in melody his parting soul.

Sit down, good guests, the cloth again is spread,

The bill of fare exhibits a calf’s head:

’T is L-nt’s*—the brains I cannot give; the lout

Long since on Byron’s tomb-stone beat them out.

L-nt is no poet, he has no pretence

To taste or talent—scarce to common sense:

I searched his scribblings for a painful hour,

To find some traces of the mighty power

Dunce Kettle† gives him; deeper as I went

I found myself the farther off the scent:

Then, wroth to be beguiled of time by stuff

As stale and worthless as a Traveller puff,

I tore the volume, in my rising ire,

And put it where it should be—in the fire.

L-nt, bless thy great good luck! My strain shall save

Thy else forgotten poems from the grave.

Stuck in terrorem to the rhyming race,

Hundreds shall be deterred by thy disgrace.

The Muse’s mount thy figure shall adorn,

Hung like a scare-crow in a field of corn.

As when a rocket climbs the vault of night,

And briefly falters in its fiery flight,

Yet starts again, as it begins to fail,

Upborne by bursting blasts beneath its tail,

So overrated Spr-g-e is seen to rise,

Puffed by the papers to the very skies.

Great is his merit,—greater still his fame;

Bright, but not dazzling, burns his steady flame.

His is the sterling bullion, thrice refined,

Right from the rich exchequer of his mind.

Sense, strength, and classic purity combine

With genius in his almost faultless line;

Trained in the olden school, his tide of song

Bears truth and judgment on its breast along.

Forbid it, Justice, this brave bard should lie

On the same coals that cooked the smaller fry;

Yet to the tainted plague-spots on his hide

The friendly caustic needs must be applied.

My heart sweats blood, that he, so prized by all,

Should only string his harp at Mammon’s call.*

’T is clear his bank accounts and studies clash:

He counts his numbers as he counts his cash.

Too plain his verses show the marks of toil,

And each and every distich smells of oil.†

Dead on the ear his accents often fall;

Though just, yet harsh, and something dull withal.

Stern Truth declares that his is not the art

To rouse the fancy, or to touch the heart.

Stoop very low, my muse, apply the lash

To J. O. R-ckw-ll,* author of such trash

As in this age of trash is seldom seen—

Not even in the Monthly Magazine:

R-ckw-ll, who somewhat conscious he ’s a bore,

Signs very properly his pieces J. O. R[.]:†

R-ckw-ll, who sometimes hammers out a line,

Perhaps by accident, that ’s really fine;

But in the self-same breath, to make amends,

Fires a broadside of nonsense at his friends.

That R-ckw-ll ever writes is strange indeed—

Stranger that any can be found to read:‡

Yet those whose time the Statesman serves to kill,

May, with a relish, gulp this smaller pill.

Blown by the breath of Flattery off his legs,

Lo! weak M’L-ll-n§ screws his tuneful pegs;

And scrapes with sawyer’s arm each fiddle-string,

Goaded by Satan and his imps to sing;

Awakening notes that men, when drenched in wine

At public dinners, think exceeding fine;*

Or scribbles by the score such lines as swell

The Dunces’ Corner in the Centinel.†

At last the obstetric printer’s devil’s hand

Exhibits Isaac’s bantling to the land,

And gives a certain maid alike a hearse

And place of burial in his grave-yard verse;‡

Then shows the ‘Indian’s Fall’ and dark despair—

Alas! my readers, what a fall was there!§

Yet Isaac’s book may boast of merits two;

His paltry pieces are both short and few:¶

And still the work would be the more improved,

The more the number of the lines removed.

Isaac is friendless, or ’t is very clear

Advice had saved him from a notice here.

Chop wood, O Isaac, make the anvil ring,

Dig mud, pick oakum, anything but sing!

’T is plain the county Cumberland, in Maine,

Contains no hospital for folks insane:

Though never there, the fact I nothing doubt,

Since N-al and M-ll-n run at large about.

When the moon waxes, plaintive M-ll-n howls;

But Johnny like a bull-dog snaps and growls;

Or strikes his brother poetasters mute,

With harsh vibrations of his three-stringed lute.

‘Grant me, O Lord!’ N-al’s anxious father prayed,

‘To se my son an ornament to trade.

Grant him to run the race his father ran,

A noted, honest, and respected man.’

Noted he is—for so much of the prayer

Was heard,—the rest was lost in empty air.

Then, in a notion shop, did Johnny find

Employ precisely fitted to his mind.

Had once mischance not happ’d, one grievous ill,

He there might sell soft soap and ‘sodder’ * still.

What time red Sirius rules the autumnal sky,

The cows go mad, the brains of poets fry,

And verses out of measure multiply.

’T was then, while on his master’s errands flown,

Full on N-al’s skull the raging dog-star shone.

Adieu the shop—he took to Baltimore

No jot of that small sense he had before.

From his fond parent’s eye a tear-drop fell,

And his good angel sighed a last farewell.

Then, breaking bounds, our hero did appear

Critic, and novelist, and sonnetteer.

Such novels! They deserve the name, at least;

Their like was never seen in west or east.

Such criticisms! His victims all to kill

The critic lacked the power, but not the will;

He found his blows, though thick and fast applied,

Too light to penetrate each ass’s hide.

As brazen implements are ever found,

And empty casks, to yield the greatest sound,

So, louder than the rest our hero roared,

And over lesser owls superior soared.

O for a tongue! to tell how Johnny N-al

Broke common decency upon the wheel;

What notoriety he gained, and fame—

The pillory and the gibbet give the same;

Till not the western hemisphere at length

Gave scope sufficient to his clumsy strength.

Then, ‘for his country’s good’ he crossed the tide:

‘Good bye, good riddance, John,’ his country cried.

Aware what passenger the transit made,

The packet owners no insurance paid.

A raving lunatic he crossed the main,

A ranging madman he returns again.

Spasmodic energy, galvanic starts,

Make the sum total of his wit and parts.

Look at his poems, where each ray of light

Is by a veil of tinsel hid from sight;

Where wondering nominatives strain their eyes,

And call for verbs;—in vain—no verb replies;*

Where every line and every word we scan,

Cries ‘I am Ego N-al’s; beat me who can!’

Yet, let me do the bilious bard no wrong—

No pilfered harp was his, no borrowed song;

His freaks and pranks were his, and his alone;

His faults were infinite, but all his own:

Still, as his blundering fingers swept the lyre,

Amidst much smoke were seen some sparks of fire.

N-al, fare thee well! I do not wish thee worse

Than reading over thine own prose and verse.

I pray the powers to patch thy mental flaw,

Or send thee a kind keeper, and clean straw.

This much I ’ll say for L-gg-t,*—he ’s not rude;

His muse begs pardon—hopes she don’t intrude.†

To praise her song though rigid Truth denies,

The modest shall find favor in my eyes.

A glorious planet in the zenith beams;

From north to south its golden radiance streams:

’T is he whose merit Yankee songsters feel

And imitate—but English scribblers steal:

’T is he whose accents, whether grave or gay,

Like flames electric round the heart-strings play.

’T is he who stands among the highest high,

‘One of the few who are not born to die;’ ‡

’T is he whose strong-winged genius never halts:

We love him better for his very faults;

For faults in Halleck’s glowing measure run:*

So spots obscure the surface of the sun.

Still the hot spirit, the pervading soul

Breathes through each number, and redeems the whole.

The careless poet has inscribed a name

Not to be blotted from the book of Fame;

A name that Yankees to be born shall view,

And boast that Halleck was a Yankee too.

Dear Halleck, Nature’s favorite and mine,

Curst be the hand that plucks a hair of thine:

Accept the tribute of a muse inclined

To bow to nothing, save the power of mind.

Bard of Bozzaris, shall thy native shore

List to thy harp and mellow voice no more?

Shall we, with skill like thine so nigh at hand,

Import our music from a foreign land?

While Mirror M-rr-s chants in whimpering note,

And croaking D-na strains his screech-owl throat;

While crazy N-al to metre shakes his chains,

And fools are found to listen to his strains;

While childish Natty P. the public diddles,

And L-nt and R-ckw-ll scrape his second fiddles;

While Brooks,* and Sands,† and Smith, and either Clark,

In chase of Phœbus, howl, and yelp, and bark,

Wilt thou be silent? Wake, O Halleck, wake!

Thine and thy country’s honor are at stake.

Wake, and redeem the pledge; thy vantage keep;

’T is pity one like thee so long should sleep.

In aid of Science, to extend her lore,

To let in light where all was dark before,

To waken infant Freedom into birth,

To sound the trump of Reason through the earth,

To raise the lowly, was the Press designed—

Bright emanation of the Godhead’s mind!

Whose silent, but not less resistless sway,

Mankind, e’en stiff-necked Yankees, must obey.

In this free land the engine’s mighty use

Is fully equalled by its foul abuse.

We trust a steam-boat to her engineers

Alone; a tailor only, wields the shears

That shape our garments; but the great machine,

That ought to keep our lives and letters clean,

In charge of many a pair of hands is found,

Scarce fit to turn a grindstone’s handle round.

Does some smart cobbler to the winds disperse

His ends, and, like his shoe soles, creak in verse,

Some printer’s devil throw away his stick,

Bit by poetic maggot to the quick,

Forthwith Sir Oracle is seen to squint

At the poor public through some paltry print.

Not mine the task to tell what ills ensue—

At least not all, I ’ll merely note a few.

The wax still sticking to his fingers’ ends,

The upstart Wh-tt-r, for example, lends

The world important aid to understand

What ’s said, and sung, and printed in the land.

Unchecked by modesty, our Johnny Raw

Instructs his elders, and expounds the law;

Pronounces, ex cathedrá, on the worth

Of poems, novels, annuals, and so forth;

And, with God-only-knows-how-gotten light,

Informs the nation what is wrong or right.

On men and things alike his strictures fall,

The self-appointed judge decides on all.

Proud of some scores of barely decent lines,

Heavens, how he swells! and how his genius shines!

Rich in a wisdom never learned at school,

To him the son of Sirach was a fool.

The cushion of an editorial chair

Must, sure, inclose some spell of virtue rare!

Like Wh-tt-r, hosts, and each self-deemed a sage,

Corrupt the taste and judgment of the age:

But, as a cure for scorpion stings is found

In crushing other scorpions on the wound,

Whatever dirt one zany’s sheets display,

Some rival zany wipes, in part, away.*

When, Wh-tt-r, thou didst hoist thy cock-boat’s sail,

And leave the harbour with the wind in tail,

I did not deep so soon to see thee sink,

Brought to, all standing, in the sea of ink:

For thee a life more private had been best;

Ne sutor ultra—prithee guess the rest.†

* ——Audis,

Jupiter, hæc, nec labra moves, quum mittere vocem

Debueras, vel marmoreus vel ænus?      Juvenal.

Sed quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero

Auriculas?      Persius.

Wit, like a red-hot rapier, wounds two ways;

It cuts the foe, and burns the hand that sways.

I ask, has Henry F-nn’s much boasted wit

Drawn ever blood, or scorched his fingers yet?

Far famed for acting, for good conduct more,

Skilful to set the boxes in a roar,

Formed at the social board to give delight,

’T is pity that he ever learned to write.

Needs of his sorry play be nothing said—

Peace to its ghost, I war not on the dead:

’T is with the rhymester I must pick a crow;

Set forth in proper light his rhymes shall show.

In conversation, o’er the cheerful glass,

A happy, quick-imagined pun may pass:

But puns premeditated, set to time,

And strung like onions on a rope, in rhyme,

Though puffed by all the editorial crew,

And sung by Henry F-nn, will never do.*

Yet gains he the applause of the press;

For Fashion rules in letters as in dress.

One fool makes many—even timid sheep

Where the bell-wether sprang will also leap;

When one hound yelps, the others all give tongue;

Had Hood ne’er chanted, F-nn had never sung.

Hood on a vicious charger bravely rides;

His wretched mimic, F-nn, an ass bestrides.

Heaven help the grammar! He assaults the verbs,

And conquering on, the A. B. C. disturbs;

Puts adverbs, nouns, and adjectives to rout,

And turns the tripes of syntax inside out.

Help, help, good men, to put the parts of speech

Safe from his mangling poniard, out of reach.

‘Not laugh at F-nn!’ exclaim the critic crew;

‘Nor at his book!’ Indeed, my friends, I do.

In every self-styled Comic page, I meet

Some thrice told tale, stale joke, or low conceit.

I find his Attic salt, by every test,

Base Glauber, or but Epsom at the best.

O for some plaintive interjection, fit

To tell my pity for his costive wit.*

Straight on the fire, good F-nn, thine Annual cast,

Let this emphatically be thy ‘last.’

Not only th’ emporium of the north

Her hordes of lettered Vandals vomits forth;

But senior sister Salem too, can boast

She adds at least one champion to the host.

As in the field a cumbrous twentyfour

Above less noisy twelves is heard to roar,

So ponderous P-ck-r-ng sways the northern flank,

And belches volumes of undoubted blank.

Ye Salemites, my friendly counsel take—

Plant not for him the gibbet or the stake;

Let not the fear of witchcraft shake your souls,

To roast your poet, were a waste of coals—

He is no wizard. Not the less a sin

It were to hang or burn the bard of Lynn.*

Lynn, once renowned for rocks and lots of leather,

Has now an awl to peg them fast together;

A bard to chant her tides, and wondrous things,

In lines as rugged as the soil he sings.

Why should not L-w-s write? We daily see

Whole troops who write more badly still than he.

His were the follies of a tender age,

As proves his every line, and every page.

At last he wisely stays his mad career,

And moves with credit in an humbler sphere.

There ’s balm in Gilead, L-w-s, for thy case;

I ’ll treat them well—repentance merits grace:

The Lord forbid that I should treat as crimes,

Regretted faults—I mean thy school-boy rhymes.

Not born to reach the ladder’s topmost round,—

To know it, proves at least thy judgment sound.

Now, having given ambitious clambering o’er,

Farewell, good L-w-s;—go, and sin no more.

Shakspeare could weekly serve a drama up

From the mere overflowing of his cup;

Could well afford, from his exhaustless mine,

To fling a handful of his pearls to swine;

But such a mover of the mind appears

On earth but once in twice three thousand years.

Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, and Ben,

Still wrote and burnt, and wrote and burnt again

An hundred times, and wore the painful file,

Before they deemed their pieces worth the while.

Our Yankee play-wrights write like Shakspeare, fast;

But that ’s the first resemblance, and the last:

Here ’s St-ne, for instance, with his Indian piece,

His broken English, clap-traps, paint, and grease,

Throws mother Nature into ague fits,

And for his pains five hundred dollars gets;

Then, conscience smitten, for forgiveness prays,—

His work, he says, but cost him forty days.*

* ——Dic, O vanissime, quis te

Festinare jubet?

What ’s done in hurry ill is ever done;

So says the adage, and ’t is proved by St-ne.

Five hundred dollars!—he deserves the rack;

At least the law of Moses on his back.

O sun! O moon! O stars! Shall Europe see

Our country’s intellectual poverty?

What! shall the Drama to the world appear

Enveloped in Cimmerian darkness here?

Shall B-rk-r, St-ne, and Sm-th, and M-rr-s stand

To represent the talent of the land?

Forbid it, gods! Rise, classic Hillhouse, rise;

Mix in the contest, and bear off the prize.

True, thou hast faults—what gem did ever shine

Free from the stains of earth, in any mine?

Rise in thy strength, let step-dame Britain find

Herself o’ertaken in the march of mind:

Cast all her bards, but Shakspeare, into shade—

Thy country asks it; be her voice obeyed:—

Rise in thy mellower age, with taste mature—

Give us one play, forever shall endure:

Write not for ‘stars,’ for Forrest or for Kean;

Try not thy pinion in a flight so mean.

What though her modest bard Columbia slights,

While Metamora runs for twenty nights? *

* Populi frons durior hujus,

Qui sedet et spectat.

Not thine, but ours, O Hillhouse, is the shame—

Our children’s sons shall glory in thy name.

In times of old, Imperial Rome, we read,

Was doomed by three sharp swords at once to bleed.

We too, if I may name small things with great,

Are trebly curst with a triumvirate;

For Pr-nt-ce, M-rr-s, and the blockhead Cl-rk,

Like poachers’ dogs, in yelping concert bark

At honest men. Bestow on one a kick,

The others join, and bite you to the quick.

Whatever counterfeit is coined by one,

The others stamp the current mark upon.

Offend the one—the fellow, wrong or right,

Secure of backers, scruples not to fight.*

Behold the bully butcher Pr-nt-ce stand,

With ready cleaver lifted in his hand;

And, save his kindred crew, the world must feel

The ragged edge of that all smiting steel.

Does a poor author win some small renown?

With brutal fury Pr-nt-ce knocks him down,

Stabs him—and, still insatiate, turns around

His rusty knife within the victim’s wound.

Just or unjust, to him ’t is all the same;

No worth, no talent his blind rage can tame.

On filthy chopping-block with murderous axe,

Many a better than himself he hacks.

Detested wretch, surcharged with spite and spleen,

Curst critic, literary Sawney Bean,*

Hast thou so long on human offal fed,

Slandered and railed unchallenged for thy bread,

To think that none dare meet thee, eye to eye?

I ’ll teach thee better, sirrah, by ad by.

Back to thy shambles, and with Cl-rk renew

Thine intercourse, with Mirror M-rr-s too;

Praise and be praised by these and other bards,

As black-legs help each other cheat at cards:

Requite their flatteries in thy low Review;

Scratch one another, as sore Scotchmen do;

Think not to office ’t is the certain way,

To soil the noble name of Henry Clay;

Go, see, a patron more upon thy level;

Go, plaster Andrew Jackson,—or the Devil;

Go, curry favor with the sire of crime,

Sure of the benefit some future time.†

† Aude aliquid brevibus Gyrais et carcere dignum,

Si vis esse aliquis.      Juvenal.

The chief thus scourged, his men shall share his fate;

I ’ll throw my gauntlet at the second rate,

Port Folio Cl-rk, whose efforts to amuse

Make women yawn, and give the men the blues;

I mean those few who read him. Pass him by;

I ’ll leave him wallowing in his southern sty,

And turn to Mirror M-rr-s, he whose head

Is as the Fever River rich in lead;

Which, as it weekly melts, and leaves its soil,

Serves, in the form of types, his reams to spoil.

Bear witness Brier Cliff, his paltry play,

And his warped Mirror’s false reflected ray.

One bard there is I almost fear to name,

Much doubting whether to applaud or blame.

In P-rc-v-l’s productions, wheat and chaff

Are mixed, like sailor’s tipple, half and half;

But, duly bolted through the critic’s mill,

I find the better part is wholesome still.*

Diffuse, long-winded, feeble, out of joint,

Some of his verses lack both edge and point.

The rest for many a mortal sin atone;

Such even Bryant might be proud to own.

No more—unkind neglect has quenched his fires,

And cankering rust corrodes his silent wires;

Alike unmindful now of praise or blame,

‘He sleeps, forgetful of his once bright fame.’

When Mediocrity his page displays,

And frontless courts a picked committee’s gaze;

When such a picked committee vote his shines,

And pay him fifty dollars for his lines;

Such lines, as, judging by the gaps and rents

In sense and sound, were dear at fifty cents,

To say which merits pity most, is hard—

The paying critics or receiving bard.

Undaunted W-tm-re,* what I most admire

In thee, is not thy fancy or thy fire;

On these thy qualities I need not touch;

Bryant and Halleck have, perhaps, as much:

No, ’t is thy matchless courage, that could squint

Twice at thy sheets, and yet resolve to print:

Of triple brass or steel thy nerves must be;

Certain damnation wakes no awe in thee.*

What though our fathers beat the British sore?

Beneath thy hand they suffer ten times more;

And, tit for tat, our buried fathers feel

The random strokes of they all-conquering steel.

No British bullet made their marrow thrill

As does, though cased in mould, great W-tm-re’s quill.

To flay thee, W-tm-re, gives me no delight;

’T would please me much to see thee better write:

But, like a mad dog’s bite, thine ill, I ’m sure

The actual cautery alone can cure.

The doctor, therefore, mindful of thy youth,†

Administers a dose of wholesome truth;

He tells thee, Prosper, that the laurel tree

Is yet a seed that bears one leaf for thee,

And bids thee, like thy namesake in the play,

To break thy staff, and fling thy book away.

Ye master tradesmen, to my words give heed,

I ’ll give ye counsel that ye greatly need;

Does any ’prentice take it in his head

To pen a stanza,—see him blistered, bled:

If that won’t answer, straight his wages pay,

And give him leave, or else he ’ll run away:

Or, to your tender feelings give the reins—

Do him an almsdeed, and beat out his brains.

Ye ’prentice boys, who one day would be men,

Stick to your handy-works—eschew the pen;

Better to touch hot iron than a quill,

Or play with firebrands in a powder-mill.

What dire exposure and what bitter wo

Bad verses cause, shall Samuel W--dw-rth show.

He too, like you, once earned his daily bread

With hands more profitable than his head;

Till, blinded by some Jack o’ Lanthorn sprite,

He took for Phœbus—he resolved to write—

One splendid lyric to the future past,

His first thing excellent, as well as last.*

From that bright haystack fire no phœnix rose,—

A goose its cinders merely did compose,

Whose eggs, though hatched with long and painful brooding,

Brought neither empty praise nor solid pudding;

But yet, untaught by any a griping fast,

The foolish fowl will cackle to the last.

Ye who to soar on paper wings prepare,

Be warned by W--dw-rth’s fall, in time beware.

Fresh lots of fools our markets yearly yield,

Whole cohorts from Manhattoes take the field;

Nor fewer Philadelphia rears than these;

In her they breed like skippers in a cheese.

Time was, when quite another race of men,

Abode within the town of William Penn.

A broad-brimmed hat ensconced each knowledge-box,

Their standard works were Bunyan and George Fox;

Their strict economy and sterling sense

Gave no encouragement to vain pretence.

The times are changed—M’H-nry, Sm-th, M’C-ll,*

And more, like amorous cats discordant squall;

Nay, even B-rk-r in the lists appears,

To yield the tribute of his ‘Smiles and Tears.’†

In kind, with interest, I pay his toils;

Tears for his rashness, for his folly smiles:

And when I listen as the tuneful dolt

Sings how a beast a little maid did bolt,

And gravely draws this moral from his song,

That maids to talk with beasts do very wrong,

I quite forget that now I rank with men,

And think I ’m in my granny’s arms again.

Still Philadelphia some taste betrays;

She damns his poems, as she damned his plays;

But with an alderman and soldier too,

What can the fear of aught but hunger do?*

O miracle! What next! The greatest owl

Alive salutes us with an Irish howl;

And with a screech of horrible distress

Proclaims the wonders of the ‘Wilderness.’

Cease, cease, M’H-nry,† cease for Heaven’s dear sake,

Thy other drugs are bad enough to take:

Think of the infamy thy novels gained;

Think of the name of Washington profaned;

Proceed not thus, still adding crime to crime,—

What, what the Devil prompted thee to rhyme?

Beside, the fashion never was in vogue

To woo the Muses in the Munster brogue.

Put by the pen—enough is given to fame;

Or rather, sooth to speak, Big O, to shame.

Buy up two broken stools, at trifling cost;

And one supplies the leg the other lost.

I ’ll sell thee, reader, cheap, a brace of fools,

To take and treat as one might treat the stools.

Both are half witted, yet, if so Heaven please,

The twain, perhaps, may make one perfect piece.

The one is rather better than the other,

And so I ’ll make the numskull sell his brother.*

Th-mps-n is bad at sonnets, Sm-th at verse,†

Wretched at prose, and at the drama worse.

Who offers ninepence? Four pence, shall I say?

Take them for nothing, and with thanks away.

Off hats, off hats! for lo! upon the stage

The Aristarchus of this scribbling age:

A man who knows that heated iron is hot,

That ice is cold—ye gods! what knows he not?

Art, science, metaphysics, and all that,

And the nine muses, strut beneath his hat:

Critiques dogmatic in his brain are bred;

O happy hat, to cover such a head!

‘Is W-lsh,’* you cry, ‘with inspiration big?

As well an elephant might dance a jig.’

Alas! he writes no verses now; but once,

Before the general voice proclaimed him dunce,

Such fruits of toil his sullied sheets confest,

As not e’en Kettle’s stomach could digest.

No room the worthy trash collector found

For Robert’s poems in that burial-ground,

His book; but Robert, in his next review,

Set down poor Kettle for a blockhead too.†

Et quodcunque semel chartis illeverit, omnes

Gestiet a furno reduntes scire lacuque,

Et pueros et anus.      Horace.

A negro, thus, whose shins his brother hurts,

Their common color to reproach converts.

The roll is called, my work is almost done—

The last and greatest name remains alone:

But ill the censor’s public debt were paid

To slight the mighty master of the trade.

Search the rich stores of Greek and Roman lore,

Or turn the page of modern letters o’er;

But look for nothing better, in its kind,

Than that which bears the impress of the mind

Of Bryant;* he who shines without a peer,

The brightest star that lights our hemisphere:

Clear, smooth, and strong, with classic beauty graced,

He writes no line his friends could wish effaced;

And, like a certain potentate of old,

Whate’er he touches he converts to gold.

Few are his gems, but worth a mighty sum;—

None but Pitt diamonds from his work-shop come.

* Ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior, atque os

Magna sonatarum, des nominis hujus honorem.

Write, Bryant, write; the land’s reproach redeem,

Exalt thy country in the world’s esteem.

Whatever theme inspires, I ’m sure of this,

That if thou wouldst, thou canst not sing amiss.

Now have I thumped each lout I meant to thump,

And my worn pen is nothing but a stump;

Now have I shot my shafts at beast and brute,

And trampled reptiles with my spurning foot:

Many have suffered, many gone scot free,—

As all unworthy of a shot from me.

Let those who deem their laurels still unshorn,

For such forbearance thank my utter scorn;

And those to whose reform my censures tend,

Bow to the staff in sorrow, and amend.

I ’ve driven the scalpel deeply, to be sure;

But desperate means a desperate ill must cure.

Let Candor judge what motive nerved my arm,

And if I meant my country good, or harm;

On her fair verdict safely I rely,

Nor wish to draw my finger from the pie.

For the bought suffrage of a venal press,

I prize it little, and I fear it less.

For ye whose backs, and sides, and shoulders still

Twinge with my blows, and, may be, ever will;

Whose yard-long ears my honest muse offends,

I ’ll tell ye, dunces, how to get amends:

Serve this, as each has served his proper line,

Resume your quills, and do your worst on mine.

To those who listens to my humble lay,

Untouched and unattempted, this I say;

No private malice on my course propelled,

No anger spurred me, and no fear withheld;

In these my strictures on my fellow men,

Truth held the light, and CONSCIENCE drove the pen.