He seems to have gained little by his early poems, many of which were directed against the Royal Academicians. One commences:—
"Sons of the brush, I'm here again!
At times a Pindar and Fontaine,
Casting poetic pearl (I fear) to swine!
For, hang me, if my last years odes
Paid rent for lodgings near the gods,
Or put one sprat into this mouth divine."
Sometimes he calls the Academicians, "Sons of Canvas;" sometimes "Tagrags and bobtails of the sacred brush." He afterwards wrote a doleful elergy, "The Sorrows of Peter," and seems not to have thought himself sufficiently patronized, alluding to which he says—
"Much did King Charles our Butler's works admire,
Read them and quoted them from morn to night,
Yet saw the bard in penury expire,
Whose wit had yielded him so much delight."
Wolcott was a little restricted by a due regard for religion or social decorum. He reminds us of Sterne, often atoning for a transgression by a tender and elevated sentiment. The following from the "Tales of a Hoy," supposed to be told on a voyage from Margate gives a good specimen of his style—
Captain Noah. Oh, I recollect her. Poor Corinna![14] I could cry for her, Mistress Bliss—a sweet creature! So kind! so lovely! and so good-natured! She would not hurt a fly! Lord! Lord! tried to make every body happy. Gone! Ha! Mistress Bliss, gone! poor soul. Oh! she is in Heaven, depend on it—nothing can hinder it. Oh, Lord, no, nothing—an angel!—an angel by this time—for it must give God very little trouble to make her an angel—she was so charming! Such terrible figures as my Lord C. and my Lady Mary, to be sure, it would take at least a month to make such ones anything like angels—but poor Corinna wanted very few repairs. Perhaps the sweet little soul is now seeing what is going on in our cabin—who knows? Charming little Corinna! Lord! how funny it was, for all the world like a rabbit or a squirrel or a kitten at play. Gone! as you say, Gone! Well now for her epitaph.
Corinna's Epitaph.
"Here sleeps what was innocence once, but its snows
Were sullied and trod with disdain;
Here lies what was beauty, but plucked was its rose
And flung like a weed to the plain.
"O pilgrim! look down on her grave with a sigh
Who fell the sad victim of art,
Even cruelty's self must bid her hard eye
A pearl of compassion impart.
"Ah! think not ye prudes that a sigh or a tear
Can offend of all nature the God!
Lo! Virtue already has mourned at her bier
And the lily will bloom on her sod."
He wrote some pretty "new-old" ballads—purporting to have been written by Queen Elizabeth, Sir T. Wyatt, &c., on light and generally amorous subjects. Much of his satire was political, and necessarily fleeting.
In "Orson and Ellen" he gives a good description of the landlord of a village inn and his daughter,
"The landlord had a red round face
Which some folks said in fun
Resembled the Red Lion's phiz,
And some, the rising Sun.
"Large slices from his cheeks and chin
Like beef-steaks one might cut;
And then his paunch, for goodly size
Beat any brewer's butt.
"The landlord was a boozer stout
A snufftaker and smoker;
And 'twixt his eyes a nose did shine
Bright as a red-hot poker.