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

“You think this cruel?—take it for a rule,

No creature smarts so little as a fool.”—Pope.

FRIEND.

What! bent to write?

AUTHOR.

Ay, more; to print again.

FRIEND.

Can neither love nor fear your mood restrain?

Will you, a man to wealth, to fame unknown,

Against a host of foes make head alone?

An insect swarm infests the land, ’tis true;

But pray, my meddling friend, what’s that to you?

If fools will still be fools, why need you care?

AUTHOR.

A public grief is ev’ry man’s affair.

If in my neighbor’s corn a swine I see,

Shall I stand idle?—it concerns not me?—

No to; my biting whip-lash shall not spare

To teach him that I’ll have no grunting there.

And shall those swine, two-legged though they be,

That mar our country’s music, ’scape scot-free?

FRIEND.

To carry out your swinish trope, my friend,

Your two-legg’d swine is apt to turn and rend:

Then, swine on four legs, though a stiff-neck’d race,

May, being soundly beaten, learn their place;

But that no upright porker ever will—

You preach to blocks—you over-rate your skill.

No task so hard was ever set at school,

As of his folly to convince a fool.

AUTHOR.

I care no more than does the Pope of Rome,

How lofty each in his own eyes may loom:

Let Paulding still persist, let Mellen fill

The Token’s page with dribblings from his quill;

I hope not their reform—with him who buys,

As well as him who writes, my business lies;

If these are bent to palm upon the land,

Help’d by th’ accomplice press, their “notes” of hand,

I’ll nail them fast to some oft open’d door,

Inscrib’d, “worth just my weight in rags—no more.”

FRIEND.

Who thanks you, if the public good you prize

Above your own?—Know, Quixote, he who tries

To prove his neighbor’s judgment faulty, gains

Contempt and hatred only for his pains:

Take Butler’s word, a pleasure quite as sweet

Is felt in being cheated as to cheat.

AUTHOR.

If neither thanks nor praise the world afford,

Well-doing is, to me, its own reward.

FRIEND.

Be not so ultra-patriotic, think

What cruel guerdon pays your waste of ink:

Webb’s* trusty cudgel, Whittier’s paring-knife,

Clark’s mad-dog slaver, may assail your life:

Think, Willis, woman’s likeness and her foe,

Stands, both hands full of filth, in act to throw,

Behind his dull file-leader Clapp;* you stand

The mark of all the boobies in the land;

Oh Smelling Joseph! Thou art like a cur,

(I’m told thou once didst live by hunting fur)

Of bigger dogs thou smellest, and in sooth,

Of one extreme, perhaps, canst tell the “Truth;”

’Tis a wise thrift, and shows thou know’st thy powers,

To leave thy “North West Tales” and take to smelling ours!”

1st. I liv’d by hunting fur thou say’st—so let it be—

But tell me, Natty, had I hunted thee,

Had not my time been thrown away, young sir?

And eke my powder?—puppies have no fur.

2nd. Our tails?—thou own’st, then, to a tail—

I’ve scann’d thee o’er and o’er;

But though I guess’d thy species right

I was not sure before.

3rd. Our savages, authentic travelers say,

To natural fools religious honors pay—

Had’st thou been born a wigwam’s smoke and dirt in,

Nat, thine apotheosis had been certain.

And though the marksmen boast nor skill nor wit,

Some random shot may haply reach you yet.

AUTHOR.

Rail, Clark, Webb, Willis—’tis your only way

To gt a hearer—thick skinn’d Whittier, bray:

One’s heels, the other’s poor attempts to bite,

My pity, not my wrath or fears excite.

What care I that they flatter or condemn?

They rail at me—I gaily laugh at them.

When curs from ev’ry dunghill bay the moon,

Who ever heeds the key-note of the tune?

FRIEND.

A granite mansion stands in Lev’rett-street,

Where Massachusetts lodgings gives, and meat,

And free of charge, to him whose tongue or pen

Denies the merits of his fellow men.

Beware the law of libel.

AUTHOR.

Faith, not I;

The law and Mr. Badlam I defy.

I call’d John Neal a madman, Willis half

A man, and Finn a dunce, and Lunt a calf:

If that be construed into grave offence,

Our courts admit the truth in evidence;

And such an action will be deem’d a sham—

See J. N. Maffit vs. Buckingham.

FRIEND.

Take timely counsel; if your dire disease

Admits no cure, it needs not to displease.

Let Nature’s works, or Art’s, your fancy move,

The deeds of heroes, or the pangs of love.

Long have you practis’d solely to offend;

Now change your note, and make each foe a friend.

I grant our poets’ faults are not a few;

But some, ’tis thought, have striking beauties too:

Be these your theme.

AUTHOR.

Some public prints there are,

So prone to puffing all poetic ware,

That us’d, as though to look at pictures, roll’d

In tubes, they magnify a hundred fold

An author’s merit; and, what’s stranger still,

Make much that don’t exist, and never will:

Thro’ some such microscope have reach’d your eyes

The beauties you would have me eulogise.

I’d gladly pitch my pipe to praise—but how?

I’ve seen no subject, and I see none now,

Save some half dozen.

FRIEND.

Those who read your strains

Complain that gall, not ink, your paper stains:

They think, so hotly you your victims seek,

Not truth or justice, but your passions speak:

With equal wrath you hawks and flies pursue,

And wield a cudgel where a straw would do:

You know no diff’rence of degree in sin;

The scholar Pierpont and the punster Finn

Fare just alike. Amend—’tis not too late;

Erase, give credit, alter, mitigate:

To please the public, take a milder tone;

For sweets catch many flies, but acids none.

AUTHOR.

I know that Dulness to her sons and heirs

Gives not their heritage in equal shares:

The goddess mother of our rhyming band

Has squeez’d her poppies with a partial hand;

On one of Whittier’s eyes the juice she tried,

And bless’d that hopeful youth with one blind side;

At favor’d Fairfield’s visage aiming right,

She clos’d both optics in eternal night;

Then at her best lov’d Morris hurl’d the bowl,

And in a flood of folly drench’d his soul.

Howbeit, shall I the scale of fools explore?

The best deserves the whip, the worst no more.

Shall one to praise or pardon make pretence

Because he digs the grave of Common Sense

But five feet deep, while others sink to ten?

Grant it—and see him go to work again.

No, this Americo-Arcadian* breed

Need no such spur to make them show their speed.

’Tis perilous to compliment a dunce;

’Twere better knock him on the head at once.

Alonzo Lewis makes this problem clear;

I gave him six scant lines of praise last year,

And mark the consequence—his hand he mends,

And works, for very life, to show his friends

His firm resolve the world’s contempt to brave,

And bear the name of blockhead to his grave.

FRIEND.

Who takes another man to task, should be

From all the failings that he censures free.

Are you thus faultless? did you never scrawl

A verse you’d give a finger to recall?

Or give our bards just reason to condemn,

And do by you as you have done by them?

AUTHOR.

No doubt—no doubt—then let my verses be

Damn’d as they merit? prithee spare not me:

* Arcadia was famous for its jack-asses.

Lay on; I’m ready; let the buffet fall;

Come Blanche, come Sweetheart, “little dogs and all:”

Take all my trash, with strictest rigor try it;

I’ll weigh your censure well, and profit by it.

But though my house be glass, my arm has bone

And nerve sufficient to propel a stone

As well as his that’s better lodg’d, my eye

As well my neighbor’s windows can espy.

I wish, indeed, some abler hand than mine

Would vindicate our country and the Nine;

But since none offers, since I stand alone,

Coragio! be the thankless task my own.

FRIEND.

Well, since the voice of friendship not avails,

Go!—via! pande vela—spread your sails!

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 Fairfield, Dawes and Whittier ask your aid,

If Willis follow rhyming as a trade;

If Lunt and Finn to Pindus’ top aspire;

I too may blameless beg one spark of fire;

Not such as glow’d in Pope’s or Dryden’s song—

With less assistance I can get along;

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

He shot at hawks, I but at insects aim:

But grant, since I must war on little things,

Just flame enough to singe their puny wings;

A feather besom give, to bring them down,

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

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

In thee the Devil only got his due:

In bullets moulded, and by nitre hurl’d,

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,

As codfish swarm near fishy Newfoundland?—

Couldst thou not see the loathing public cramm’d

With verse on verse?—most justly art thou damn’d.

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

Against the legions of this locust band:

Let brain-sick youths the wholesome scourge endure;

Their case is urgent—spare not—kill or cure;

Hang, hang them up, like smelts upon a string,

And o’er their books a requiescat sing:

Arise,—convince thy country of her shame;

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

Rous’d by the call of Duty, I obey;

I draw the sword, and fling the sheath away.

But where being?—When vermin thus abound,

No shaft I shoot can bloodless reach the ground.

Lo! paddling down the Nash-way, in a scow

Of his own building, Rufus makes his bow:

And tells how Peggy, erst the kitchen’s pride,*

Became enamor’d, pined, and whined, and died:

Then, sings how strangely salmon swim up stream,

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

Or tells what streamlet wash’d his school-boy chin.—

Pity the booby had not fallen in!

In time, perhaps, our servile bard may find

That, riding double, one must ride behind;

And, peradventure, learn that Goldsmith’s steed

But by a Goldsmith can be urg’d to speed.

A pause,—and Rufus croaks another air,

About a sprite that dwelleth every where:†

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 quakes with fear

Lest justice should o’ertake his offspring dear:

Superfluous care! nor praise nor blame is heard,

Not even snarling Prentice growls a word.

Stung with the slight, resolv’d 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 refresh’d away—

The fame our pious pilgrim fathers sought,

To hear the Savior’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 chicks, in voice and mind her own,

Like Croswell, Ware, Peabody,† Deane‡ and Doane;

Who thrive upon their mother’s milk so well,

They chirp in numbers as they chip the shell.

Hark! little wool, great cry! that doleful whine

Is Pierpont’s, chanting “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;—and yet, I grieve to tell,

The crude concoction never would, will sell;

Scarce any food to Yankees comes amiss,

But saw-dust broth had pleas’d them more than this.

Pierpont, 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;

Or try thy wings in flights of lesser length,

In height and distance suited to their strength:

Still let thy notes, like those of that sweet bird

That strew’d the babes with leaves, near home be heard;

Again if thou set’st out for Palestine,

The fate of Icarus, good man, is thine.

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.

’Tis stupid Croswell, whose marauding sword

Has carv’d his verse from Wordsworth’s,* word for word.

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

Poor Devil! he’s not worth another shot.

If clumsy Vulcan thrum Apollo’s lyre

’Tis ten to one his fingers snap the wire—

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

Great in the world’s opinion, vainly tries

To climb Parnassus, makes his reader sick

(To use his own bad rhyme) of Alaric.†

The empty lines contain instruction yet;

They prove “poeta nascitur, non fit.”

See, Doane,‡ with feeble foot, but front of brass,

Puts forth his foot from cloud to cloud to pass:§

Why thus reluctant, Doane?—I prithee, tell?

He built the bridge, and knows its weakness well.

“And Roman hearts shall long be sick

When men shall think of Alaric.

But hark! he puts his raven voice in tune,

And chants a sonnet to “The Silent Moon:”

Would that he too were silent! now he sings,

“O had I but a pair of pigeon’s wings!”*

I would thou hadst, so high that thou might’st soar

The ear of man should never hear thee more!

Yet Doane with truth may boast of merits two;

His paltry pieces are both short and few:

And still his book would be the more improv’d

The more the number of the lines remov’d.

To notice Doane and Croswell, Mister Ware,

And let thee pass unmark’d, were hardly fair;

Thou stand’st, in truth, above these little men;

So does the sparrow differ from the wren.

I’ve read thy verses, and if right I deem,

Thy “Vision” † was at best a nightmare dream:

Some heavy food that undigested lay

Upon thy organs, did thy wits bewray:

Not Liberty, but vile Rebellion came,

And set thee free from all restraint of shame,

And sense; but courage! once thy brain begat

A good prize poem; rest thy fame on that.

Of all the notes of all our cleric friends

We hear thine least—it therefore least offends.

O Death! awhile thy vulgar aims give o’er;

Scatter the seeds of cholera no more;

Thy task of watching over beds of wo

Depute to tried physicians, sure, if slow:

If I last year did try my very best

To give thy charnel chaps a little rest;

If I thy reaping-hook relentless bore,

And mow’d down reputations by the score;

If, butcher, thou hast not too much to do

In Poland and in plague-doom’d Russia too,

Leave riding on the whirlwind and the storm,

And come and help me work a grand reform.

Thou know’st how little mortal might avails

To still these cleric would-be nightingales;

Then come, with twice the speed of seven-league boots,

And grub up their pretensions by the roots:

I would not have thee touch their persons—no—

But pray, no mercy to their verses shew:

O haste! in post haste, be this business sped;

Before thou com’st their poems else are dead.

Here ’s milk-and-water Mellen, just from Maine;

His native fogs condens’d upon his brain.

Where gottest thou, O Mellen, 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 howl will seem the music of the spheres.

What time the brazen poet rav’d and sung,

Misusing shamefully the English tongue,

The only blows he ever made to tell,

On taste, and on his readers’ patience fell.

When some sharp voice beyond its compass strains

And, knife-like, thrills through marrow, nerves, and brains,

Then, reader, think on Mellen; for a while

He sung and made th’ indulgent public smile;

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

Bring a straight jacket; sure, the man is mad:

He write a satire!—he presume to call

(Himself the very longst ear’d of all)

His fellow asses!—he presume to chide

At zanies!—’twas a downright fratricide.

His impudence, restricted to the bar,

Would push his fortune, heaven but knows how far.

“But is his work so very dull?” you ask.

Go through the all-unutterable task

Of reading: if your judgments then disclose

Whether ’tis rhyme or blank, or verse or prose,

’Tis more than mine can, though I read it through:

You stare,—upon my sacred word ’tis true.

Unnatural Mellen, how, how didst thou dare

Fowls of thine own dull feather thus to tear?

Were the same measure meted out to thee

How great, poor jack-daw, would thy sufferings be!*

Dismissing Mellen to the state of mist,

The name of Paulding† 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 inspir’d,

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 seem’d 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 coach that such a Jehu drives.

Then last, and worse by far than all the rest,

Stalks forth the blackguard “Lion of the West,”‡

Hight Nimrod Wildfire, one to all intents

A libel on the land he represents:

Extravagance, vulgarity and rant,

The hackney’d gleanings of a hackney’d cant,

Make up his speech.—Ah! Paulding, thou hadst best

Beware the vengeance of th’ insulted West:

Shouldst thou beyond the Laurel Ridge appear,

Not Ashe or Fearon had such cause for fear.

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

Hast lost thy purse, thy character, estate?

Has ev’ry cherish’d 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 extol thy book,

And thou, in time, thyself a press o’erlook.

What though on thee the Muses never smil’d,

Nor Alma Mater owns thee for her child?

What though thy work be careless, flat and tame?

To Yankee editors ’tis all the same:

Fear not the whipping to thy folly due,

Some “Damn’d good natur’d 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 cook’d a dish so rare.

To gain attention art thou doubtful still?

Behold what piles of drugs the bookshops fill:

Here Wetmore stands; Alonzo here is seen;

There Willis, with his Monthly Magazine.

When these, and such as these, to publish dare,

Needst 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 forth make haste.

All provocation given straight recall,

Else shall thy first-born offspring pay for all.

Lo! one, review’d himself, in turn reviews

Another, whom his outrag’d tailor sues,

his wrath, and reaches

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

These criticise from malice, these for pay,

And those for want of something else to say.

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?

Why, as in band-box 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 Lewis, Mellen, Woodworth also swing.

Let but a school-boy pen a twaddling theme,

Ye Gods—how Pa exults!—How Ma will scream!

So Natty,‡ having with a world of pain

Transmuted sacred prose to verse profane,

Was petted, flatter’d, sent forthwith to college,

To store his shallow skull with classic knowledge.

O what a tip-top tailor thus was spoil’d!

Had he but sat cross-legg’d what Snip had moil’d

To so much purpose?—He had cabbag’d then,

As now, and clipt the cloth of better men:

No goose had hiss’d like his; his want of skill

Had made our coats and breeches look as ill

As now it does mere paper;—then his shears

Had spar’d old authors, and his voice our ears.

Not quite a woman, by no means a man,

Escap’d from birch the joyful stripling ran,

In tuneful mood, with smutty rhymes to greet

The ear of ev’ry girl that walk’d the street;

Rhymes that his pitying friends essay’d to hush;

Rhymes that no woman read without a blush.

Awhile he graced the Statesman’s ribald page

With the rank breathings of his prurient age;

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

Like Shakespeare’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.

Then kept the youth an inn, where each and all

Were serv’d with fragments from some musty stall.

At his own “Table,” whence no hungry wretch

From June to May one wholesome crumb could catch;

Where neither mental mutton, veal nor beef

To the mind’s hunger gave the least relief;

Secure no law his monthly thefts could reach,

He sold his stolen goods to all and each.

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 tailor’s ruin is complete;

Live, moral Atlas, be a world of scorn

For life, as now, upon thy shoulders borne;

Yet strut thy fleeting hour upon the stage,

An “Awful Beacon” to the rising 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 shoulders sore,

Thou writest so much better than before.

With father’s love I’ve watch’d thy mind unfold,

And joy’d to see some spangles of pure gold:

Bright with intrinsic light “The Leper” glows,

“The Alchemist” no common talent shows.

Low though thy credit be, some hopes remain;

Write more such verse, and see it rise again.

Alas, he’s gone! the land that gave him birth

Has lost a never-failing source of mirth.

Vex not his track, O Boreas, o’er the main!

Fly, Time, and bring us back our butt again!

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,

And 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 the country’s shame

That let such offspring die without his fame.

He pin’d to see the buds his brow that deck’d

Nipt by the bitter blight of cold neglect.

Torn from the tree, they perish’d, one by one,

Before their opening petals saw the sun:

While the same chilling blast that breath’d on them,

Froze the rich life-blood of the noble stem.

But not neglect, or sorrow’s rankling smart,

Could sour the kindly current of his heart;

And not the canker that consum’d his frame

Could, to the last, his eagle spirit tame;

His master harp with falt’ring hand he strung,

And music echoed from his dying tongue.

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

Pours forth in melody his parting soul.*

Rest, Brainard!—though no sculptur’d column tell

Where sleeps the youth who lov’d our land so well,

Though not in graven brass thy praises shine,

A nobler epitaph, sweet bard, is thine:

Still be the sod where others moulder known

By such memorials—Brainard rear’d his own.

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

Our bill of fare exhibits a calf’s head;

’Tis Lunt’s† —the brains I cannot give; the lout

Long since on Byron’s tombstone beat them out.

Lunt is no poet, he has no pretence

To taste or talent—scarce to common sense:

Sic, ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis

——Ad vada Mændri concinit albus olor.

I search’d 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 beguil’d of time by stuff

As stale, as worthless as a Traveller puff,

I tore the volume in resistless hire,

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

Lunt, bless thy great good luck! My strain shall save

Thy else forgotten poems from the grave:

Hundreds shall be deterr’d by thy disgrace.

Hung in terrorem to the rhyming race,

The Muse’s mount thy figure shall adorn,

Plac’d like a scare-crow in a field of corn.

Arch demon-raiser of the realms of rhyme,

Great horror-monger of the eastern clime,

Monk Lewis, see thy devils, great and small,

By one of Yankee breed out-devil’d all:

Scatt’ring our babes and sucklings sans remorse,

Comes Dana, charging on his spectre horse.†

He lights, to let us know how Matthew Lee

His masters [sic] weasand slit, then went to sea,

Turn’d 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 Dana’s gallows birds.

Ah! Dana, on the seas no longer roam,

But ring ‘Home Changes’ quietly at home;

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

The loathsome, Sir, is not the true 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.

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 over-rated Sprague is seen to rise,

Puff’d by the papers to the very skies.

His is the sterling bullion, thrice refin’d,

Right from the rich exchequer* of his mind.

“The king’s exchecquer,

And all his wealthy Indies could not draw me,” &c.

The Chances.

Sense, strength, and classic purity combine

With genius in his almost faultless line;

Train’d in the olden school, his tide of song

Bears truth and judgment on its breast along.

Bright, yet not dazzling, burns his steady flem;

Great is his merit—greater still his fame.

Forbid it Justice, this brave bard should lie

On the same coals that cook’d 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 priz’d by all,

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

’Tis 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.†

Stern Truth declares that his is not the art

To rouse the fancy or to touch the heart.

Dead on the ear his accents often fall;

Though just, yet harsh, and something dull withal.

Stoop very low, my muse, apply the lash

To J. O. Rockwell,* author of such trash

As, in this age of trash, is seldom seen—

Not even in the Monthly Magazine:

Rockwell, who somewhat conscious he’s a bore,

Signs, very properly, his pieces J. O. R.:†

Rockwell, who sometimes hammer out a line,

Perhaps by accident, that’s really fine.

That Rockwell 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, bolt this smaller pill.

’Tis plain that Portland, n the state of Maine,

Can boast no hospital for folk insane:

The fact is prov’d, by this, beyond a doubt;

John Neal and Mellen run at large about!

When the moon waxes, plaintive Mellen 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!’ Neal’s anxious father prayed,

‘To see my son an ornament to trade.

Grant him to run the race his father ran,

A noted, useful, 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 one mischance not happ’d, one grievous ill,

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

What time red Sirius rules th’ autumnal sky,

Then in their pans the brains of poets fry.

’Twas then, while on his master’s errands flown,

Full on Neal’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—

His guardian angel sigh’d a last farewell.

Then, breaking bounds, behold the youth 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 lack’d the power, though 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 roar’d,

And over lesser owls superior soar’d.

O for a tongue! to tell how critic Neal

Broke common decency upon the wheel;

What notoriety he gain’d—what fame—

The pillory and 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 cross’d the tide:

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

A raving lunatic he cross’d the main,

A raging 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 staring 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 Neal’s; beat me who can!’

Yet, let me do the bilious bard no wrong—

No pilfer’d harp was his, no borrow’d song;

His freaks and pranks were his, and his alone;

His faults were infinite, but all his own:

Still, as his blund’ring fingers swept the lyre,

Amidst much smoke were seen some sparks of fire.

Neal, fare thee well! I do not wish thee worse

Than I’ve endur’d—to read thy own vile verse.

I pray the powers to patch thy mental flaw,

Or send these kindest keepers 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;†

And begs her youth may be her pardon’s plea

For hours unprofitably spent at sea:

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:

’Tis one whose merit Yankee songsters feel

And imitate—but English scribblers steal:

’Tis one whose accents, whether grave or gay,

Like flames electric on the heart-strings play.

’Tis one who stands among the highest high,

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

’Tis he whose strong-wing’d 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 inscrib’d 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, wither’d be the hands that dare

One laurel from thy noble brow to tear:

Accept the tribute of a muse inclin’d

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 Morris chants in whimpering note,

And croaking Dana strains his screech-owl throat;

While crazy Neal to metre shakes his chains,

And fools are found to listen to his strains;

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;

While Paulding wakes and writes, shall Halleck sleep?

When, bent on sport, I took my rifle gun,

And dunces were the game I warr’d upon,

How came I to o’erlook among the brood

An eyesore of such startling magnitude

As Master Sumner Lincoln Fairfield; one

Who tried all arts and trades—prov’d good at none.

Hiss’d from the stage, his coat so oft he turn’d,

His bread in such mysterious ways he earn’d,

And still such tokens of full feeding gave,

That some, uncharitably, call’d him knave.

Their thoughts have chang’d, his poems came in vogue,

And prov’d that Fairfield could not be a rogue.

In aid of Science, to extend her lore,

To let in light where all was dark before,

To hasten Freedom struggling into birth,

To sound the trump of reason through the earth,

To raise the lowly, was the Press design’d—

Bright emanation of the Godhead’s mind!

Whose silent, but not less resistless sway,

All mortals, even 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 that grand machine

In hands not fit to turn a crank is seen.

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,

But by poetic maggot to the quick.

Forthwith Sir Oracle is seen to squint

At the poor public through some paltry print.

The wax still sticking to his finger’s ends,

The upstart Whittier, for example, lends

The world important aid to understand

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

Uncheck’d by modesty, our Johnny Raw

Instructs his elders, and expounds the law;

Pronounces, ex cathedra, 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! how bright his genius shines!

Rich in a wisdom never learn’d 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 Whittier, hosts, and each self-deem’d 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.*

* ———Audis,

Jupiter, hæc, nec labra moves, quum mittere vocem

Debueras, vel marmoreus vel æneus?—Juvenal.

When, Whittier, with a six knot breeze astern,

Thy cock-boat from the harbor thou didst turn,

I did not deem 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.*

Wit, like a red hot rapier, hurts two ways;

It cuts the foe and burns the hand that sways:

Sed quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero

Auriculas?

I ask if Henry Finn’s obtrusive wit

Has e’er drawn blood, or scorch’d his fingers yet?

In conversation, o’er the cheerful glass,

A happy, quick-imagin’d pun may pass:

But puns premeditated—set to time—

And strung, like onions on a rope, in rhyme,

Though puff’d by all the editorial crew,

And sung by Henry Finn, will never do.*

Yet gains he the applauses of the press;

For fashion rules in letters as in dress.

Sam Johnson said (I half believe ’tis true)

Who makes a pun would pick a pocket too.

Finn’s hand, though not in picking pockets vers’d,

Writes “Comic Annuals”—Reader, which is worst?

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, Finn had never sung.

Hood on a vicious charger bravely rides;

His mimic, Finn, a sorry ass bestrides.

Heaven help the grammar! He assaults the verbs,

And conqu’ring on, the A, B, B, disturbs;

Puts adverts, nouns, and adjectives to rout,

And turns the tripes of syntax inside out.

Help all good men, to put the parts of speech

Safe from his mangling poniard, out of reach.

‘Not laugh at Finn!’ exclaim the critic crew;

‘Or 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 hard bound wit.*

Straight in the fire, good Finn, thine Annual cast,

Let this, emphatically, be thy ‘last.’ †

Alas, that good advice in vain should be!‡

There’s no fool like the old fool yet, I see.

’Tis well that Johnston’s burin to thy style

Gives zest, and shews thy readers where to smile;

’Tis well thy wealth suffices to engage

To pay for wit at dollars two per page.

O, hadst thou hit on that device before—

’Tis what no mortal ever needed more!—

Not only Boston, mother of the north,

Her hordes of letter’d 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 twenty-four

Above less noisy twelves is heard to roar,

So pond’rous Pickering* sways the northern flank,

And bleaches 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 renown’d for rocks and works in leather,

Has now an awl to peg them fast together;

A bard, to chant her tides and wond’rous things,

In lines as rugged as the soil he sings.

Why should not Lewis write? We daily see

Whole troops who write as ill, almost, as he.

His were the follies of a tender age,

As proves his ev’ry line—his ev’ry page.

At last he wisely stays his mad career,

And moves with credit in an humbler sphere.

There’s balm in Gilead, Lewis, for thy case;

I’ll treat thee 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 clamb’ring o’er,

Far[e]well, good Lewis;—go and sin no more.

We read, Pelides, elsewhere proof to steel,

Had yet a tender spot upon his heel:

Though no Achilles, Lewis, thou hast full

As soft a spot—nay, softer,—in thy skull:

I shew’d thee this—in vain—thy hand, instead

Of helmet, put a fool’s cap on thy head.

Thy harness yet is incomplete; provide

Forthwith apparel of rhinoceros’ hide;

’Twill serve a double purpose; to adorn

Thy limbs, and shield thee from the shafts of scorn.

Shakspeare could weekly serve a drama up,

Yet never find a vacuum in his cup;

Could well afford, from his exhaustless mine,

To fling a handful of his gold 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,

A hundred times, and plied the painful file,

Before they deem’d their pieces worth the while.

Our Yankee play-wrights write like Shakspeare, fast;

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

There’s Stone, for instance, with his Indian king;

By aid of clap-traps, makes the boxes ring,

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.*

What’s done in hurry ill is ever done;

So says the adage, and ’tis prov’d by Stone.

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

Envelop’d in Cimmerian darkness here?

Shall Barker, Stone, and Smith, and Morris 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 obey’d:—

Rise in thy riper 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?†

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 in a triumvirate;

For Prentice, Morris, and the blockhead Clark,

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 Prentice 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 Prentice knocks him down,

Stabs him—and still insatiate, turns around

His rusty knife within the victim’s wound.

Just or unjust, to him ’tis all the same;

No worth, no talent, his blind rage can tame.

On filthy chopping-block with murd’rous axe,

Many a better than himself he hacks

Detested wretch, surcharg’d with spite and spleen,

Curst critic, literary Sawney Bean,†

Hast thou so long on human offal fed,

Slander’d and rail’d unchalleng’d for thy bread,

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

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

Back to thy shambles, and with Clark renew

Thine intercourse, with Mirror Morris too;

Praise and be praised by these and other bards,

As sharpers help each other cheat at cards:

Think not to office ’tis the certain way,

To soil the noble name of Henry Clay:

Go, seek a patron more upon thy level;

Go, plaster Andrew Jackson,—or the Devil;

* Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris et carcere dignum,

Si vis esse aliquis.—Juvenal.

Go, curry favor with the sire of crime,

Sure of the benefit some future time.*

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

I’ll throw my gauntlet at the second rate.

Port Folio Clark—but no—the game’s too small;

’Twill make him vain to mention him at all.

Now turn to Mirror Morris—he whose head

Is as the Fever River rich in lead:

Bear witness Brier Cliff, his paltry play,

His little “Mirror’s” false reflected ray,

His verse, in which so little sense is seen,

That e’en the author asks “What can it mean?”*

It means his voice, if fit for any thing,

Is fit to cry lost children, not to sing.

One bard there is I almost fear to name,

As doubting whether to applaud or blame.

In Percival’s† productions chaff and wheat,

Mix’d half and half, in just proportion meet;

But, duly bolted in my poem-mill,*

I find the better part is wholesome still.

Diffuse, wind-broken, feeble, out of joint,

Full half his lines have neither edge nor point;

The rest for many a mortal sin atone;

Such, even Bryant might be proud to own.

No more—unjust neglect has quench’d his fires,

And cank’ring rust corrodes his silent wires;

Alike unmindful now of praise or blame,

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

When Mediocrity his claims displays,

And frontless grasps at profit and at praise;

When critics join his praises to rehearse,

And pay him fifty dollars for his verse;

Such verse, 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 Wetmore, 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, ’tis 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.

Alas! that same all mangling hand bestows

Upon our buried sires its random blows:

No British bullet made their marrow thrill,

As does, though cas’d in mould, great Wetmore’s quill.

It gives me Prosper Wetmore, small delight,

To pull thus rudely down thy little kite:

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 tradesman, 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 blister’d, bled,

If that wo’nt answer, turn him straight away,

Without twice thinking—he would never stay:

Or, to your tender feelings give the reins—

Do him an alms-deed, and beat out his brains.

Ye prentice boys, who one day would be men,

Stick to your handy-work—eschew the pen,

What sad exposure, and what bitter wo

Bad verses cause, shall Sammy Woodworth shew.

He too, like you, once earn’d his daily bread,

No matter how—it was not with his head;

Till blinded by some Jack o’ Lanthorn sprite

He took for Phœbus, he resolv’d to write.

One splend[i]d 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, tho’ hatch’d with patient care and pain,

Brought neither empty praise nor solid gain:

And yet, untaught by many a pinching fast,

The foolish fowl will cackle to the last.

Woodworth is friendless, or, ’tis very clear

Advice had sav’d him from a notice here.

Chop wood, O Woodworth, make the anvil ring,

Dig mud, pick oakum, any thing but sing!

Ye, who to soar on paper wings prepare,

Be warn’d by Woodworth’s fall—in time beware.

Fresh lots of fools our markets yearly yield,

Whole cohorts from Manhattoes take the field;

As many more does Philadelphia rear;

Vide the pages of her Souvenir.

Time was when quite another race of men

Abode within the town of William Penn.

A broad brimm’d hat ensconc’d each careful head,

George Fox and Bunyan were the books they read;

Their strict economy and sterling sense

Gave no encouragement to fond pretence.

The times are chang’d—M’Henry, Smith, M’Call,*

And twenty more, like cats on house tops squall;

Nay, even Barker in the lists appears,

And yields 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 damn’d his plays;

But bred to stand the brunt of steel and fire,

He laughs to scorn the critic’s harmless ire.†

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’Henry,* cease, for heaven’s dear sake,

Thy other drugs are bad enough to take:

Think of hte infamy thy novels gain’d;

Think of hte name of Washington profan’d:

Proceed not thus, still adding crime to crime—

What, what the Devil prompted thee to rhyme?

Wast ever where the fashion 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.

Purvey two broken stools, at trifling cost,

And one supplies the leg the other lost.

I’ll sell, dog-cheap, two men; (I won’t say fools)

Who buys, may treat them as he’d treat the stools.

Both are imperfect; yet if pains you take

The twain one perfect piece, perhaps, may make.

One’s not so wholly useless as the other,†

And therefore will I make him sell his brother,

Thompson is bad at sonnets, Smith at verse,‡

As bad at prose, and at the Drama worse.

Who offers ninepence?—fourpence shall I say?

Take them for nothing, and with thanks away.

Unhappy Carolina; from thy birth

Afflicted more than any state on earth;

Curst in thy statesmen, in thy temper curst,

Curst in the helots whom thy swamps have nurs’d,

Curst in thy pepper politics, thy clime,

Thou art, to cap the climax, curst in rhyme!

To pluck the comet Glory* from its sphere,

A Pillar did Stylites Holland rear,

Compos’d of bulky words, big sounding strains,

Cemented loosely with his sodden brains.

Perch’d on the top, his eyes with tears ran o’er

To find his mark as distant as before;

And, giddy with the unexpected check,

He fell, and broke his reputation’s neck.

Then Allston took the field, resolv’d to do

Great things on canvass, and on paper too.

Four forms on foolscap straight the youth portray’d,

Like nothing our creator ever made,

And, puzzled much to give his work a name,

With desp’rate hand scrawl’d “Sylphs” † beneath the same.

List, northern bards, a bilious critic’s mouth

Gapes, like an ogre’s, in the distant South:

He bids ye “with a grateful heart to God,

Devour each day your pudding and your cod;”

He threatens, if ye heed him not, to do

The worst his feeble brain can prompt him to;

And “having purged his choler, spilt his gall,”

Informs ye that “he does despise ye all.”

Strange, strange, that such should feel contempt! perchance

He means retaliation in advance.

Well dost thou, J. L. M.* to hide thy nam,e

And let three capitals bespeak thy shame.

’Tis not, poor thing, thy fancied fire and strength;

Thy tedious, weary, lazy, leaden, lumbering length;

’Tis not the scurril coarseness of thy line

Draws on thy nothingness rebuke of mine:

The sputt’ring spite that fills thy pin’s-head heart,

Compels my notice, cypher as thou art.

I know not what unhappy spot of earth

Claims the dishonor of thy parts and birth;

But leave it, wheresoe’er it be; repair

To dens where copper-heads, thy kindred, are:

Come never hither, lest we grant thy wish,

And serve thy calf’s—no—cod’s head in a dish.

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

The Aristarchus of this scribbling age:

A man who knows that heated steel 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 Walsh,’ * you cry, ‘with inspiration big?

As well an elephant might dance a jig.’

Et quodcunque semel chartis illeverit, omnes

Gestiet a furno rediuntes scire lacuque,

Et pueros et anus.      Horace.

Alas! he writes no verses now; but once,

Before the gen’ral voice proclaim’d him dunce,

Such fruits of toil his sullied sheets confess’d,

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.*

A negro thus, whose shins his comrade hurts,

Their common color to reproach converts.

Stop Time, and though, perhaps, thy pinions ache,

A small addition to thy burthen take:

Take Bailey up, a worthy load, the same

Who made, long since, one happy snatch at fame;

Take Thatcher up, and give Longfellow place;

Let Hannah Gould thy world-broad shoulders grace:

If she among the greatest and the best

May find no vacant place, set down the rest:

Give Holmes a ride, the muses’ youngest son,

Equall’d by few, surpass’d by none, not one—

A dawn of worth, in whose meridian blaze

Bryant with effort shall retain his bays.

Take these, and bear them down to future years;

If thus increas’d, thy load too great appears,

If easily thou couldst contrive to set

The hero and his whilome cabinet

Adrift, just so far on their downward road

As where John Milton’s hero makes abode;

A nation’s gratitude, O Time, were thine,

And nobly settled were these fares of mine.

The roll is call’d, 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.

Sea[r]ch 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 grac’d,

He writes no line his friends could wish effac’d;

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.

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 write amiss.

Now have I thump’d each lout I meant to thump,

And my worn pen exhibits but a stump;

Now have I shot my shafts at beast and brute,

And trampled reptiles with my spurning foot:

Many have suffer’d, 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 desp’rate means a desp’rate ill must cure.

Let Candor judge what motive nerv’d my arm,

And if I meant my country good, or harm;

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 till

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

Whose yard-long ears my honest muse offends,

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

To my poor lines be just such treatment shown

(For that’s your worst) as each has given his own.

To those who listen to my humble lay,

Untouch’d and unattempted, let me say;

No private malice on my course propell’d,

No anger spurr’d me, and no fear withheld;

In these my strictures on my fellow men,

Truth held the light, and CONSCIENCE drove the pen.