TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.
Nostrorum sermonum candide judex!
Bard of the borrow’d lyre! to whom belong
The shreds and remnants of each hackney’d song;
Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore,
And count but one good line in eighty-four!
Whoe’er thou art, all hail! Thy bitter smile
Gilds our dull page, and cheers our humble toil!
For yet—though firm and fearless in the cause
Of pure Religion, Liberty, and Laws,—
Though TRUTH approved, though fav’ring VIRTUE smiled,
Some doubts remained: WE yet were unreviled.
10
Thanks to thy zeal! those doubts at length are o’er!
Thy suffrage crowns our wish!—WE ask no more
To stamp with sterling worth each honest line,
Than Censure, cloth’d in vapid Verse like thine!
But say—in full blown honours dost thou sit
’Midst Brookes’s elders[[48]] on the BENCH OF WIT,
Where Hare,[[49]] chief-justice, frames the stern decree,
While with their learned brother, sages three,
Fitzpatrick,[[50]] Townshend,[[51]] Sheridan, agree?
Or art thou One—THE PARTY’S flattered fool,[[52]]
20
Train’d in Debrett’s, or Ridgway’s civic school—
One, who with rant and fustian daily wears,
Well-natured Richardson![[53]] thy patient ears;—
Who sees nor Taste nor Genius in these times,
Save Parr’s[[54]] buzz prose,[[55]] and Courtenay’s[[56]] kidnapp’d rhymes?[[57]]
Or is it he,—the youth,[[59]] whose daring soul
With half a mission sought the Frozen Pole;—
And then, returning from the unfinish’d work,
Wrote half a letter,—to demolish Burke?
Studied Burke’s manner,—aped his forms of speech;
30
Though when he strives his metaphors to reach,
One luckless slip his meaning overstrains,
And loads the blunderbuss with Bedford’s brains.[[60]]
Whoe’er thou art—ne’er may thy patriot fire,
Unfed by praise or patronage, expire!
Forbid it, Taste!—with Compensation large
Patrician hands thy labours shall o’ercharge![[61]]
Bedford and Whitbread shall vast sums advance,
The Land and Malt of Jacobin Finance!
Whoe’er thou art—before thy feet we lay,
40
With lowly suit, our Number of to-day!
Spurn not our offering with averted eyes!
Let thy pure breath revive the extinguished Lies!
Mistakes, Mis-statements, now so oft o’erthrown,
Rebuild, and prop with nonsense of thy own!
Pervert our meaning, and misquote our text—
And furnish us a motto for the next!
