This my tender vows shall prove—
Little Cupid’s thrilling dart
Has found refuge in my heart,”
has been considered so successful, that the publication of it is annually revived, and the fourteenth of February, sacred to St. Valentine, is the day usually chosen for its reappearance.
For the last twenty years of his life, poor Rivers laboured under severe fits of melancholy and depression, the cause of which he long held secret. Shortly before his decease, however, he confided to me the source of his grief. It was, that manuscripts which he had forwarded on approval to various publishers, had been returned as worthless, while a few months afterwards the same publishers would send forth books of poems in which the most direct plagiarisms from my poor friend’s productions would appear. He made me solemnly pledge myself to see him righted in the opinion of the world, and hence the publication of these papers.
I regret exceedingly to be obliged to hold up to public odium names which have hitherto stood so highly as those of Mr. A—f—d T—ys—n and his publisher, Mr. M—x—n, but I defy any candid reader to peruse the following vigorous and striking stanzas of my poor friend’s, and then turn to that weak and rambling production, “L—cks—y H—ll,” without perceiving which is the grand original, which the mean and despicable parody!
VAUXHALL.
Cabman, stop thy jaded knacker; cabman, draw thy slackened rein;
Take this sixpence—do not grumble, swear not at Sir Richard Mayne!
’Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the cadgers bawl—