Our mothers gained their literary store?
Alas! stiff-skirted Grandison gives place
To novels of a new and rakish race;
And honest Bunyan’s pious, dreaming lore,
To the lascivious rhapsodies of Moore.
And, last of all, behold the mimic stage
Its morals lend to polish off the age,
With flimsy farce, a comedy miscall’d,
Garnished with vulgar cant, and proverbs bald,
With puns most puny, and a plenteous store