[82] “Rodondo; or, the State Jugglers,” was published in 1763. The third canto soon followed the first and second; and a fourth was promised, but never appeared, probably owing to the author’s being rewarded with the post of Attorney-General of Grenada, where he died in 1774. He also wrote “Woodstock; a Poem,” reprinted in Pearch’s collection. His daughter married Dr. afterwards Sir John Elliot, the eminent physician.—(MS. note in the British Museum.)
With abundance of humour and no mean skill in versification, this poem might have ranked high among English satires, had the author bestowed more pains on its action; this is below criticism. A description of Mr. Pitt after the manner of Hudibras, with an invocation to the Muse, fills the first canto.—The second contains little beyond a shrewish lecture delivered by Lady Chatham to Mr. Pitt, and a long message from the latter to his footman. In the third is Mr. Pitt’s capitulation to the gout, and the distribution of his defects among his followers. The various characters are introduced awkwardly enough, as if to show the author’s proficiency in the art of vituperation; and in the last canto, where he descends to attack some of the City politicians, his coarseness becomes disgusting. This particularly applies to his invectives against Churchill. The shafts which he aims at Pitt are more worthy of their object.
The motto is ingenious and appropriate:
“Uno minor est Jove—dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum
Præcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est.”
After fixing the date of his story:—
“When knowledge, courage, sense, and worth
Were first defined by North and South,
And Tweed’s irremeable waves
Became the boundary of knaves;—”
a portrait is given of the hero, of which these lines are a fair specimen.
“He raised the Nation’s apprehensions,
With Court-corruption, Places, Pensions:
Words which, when well dissected, mean,
That I am out and you are in;
And which, when properly repeated,
In every Question that’s debated,
Can ope a thousand mouths at once,
And make a hero of a dunce.
Your IF is good at making peace:
Rodondo went to war with these.
* * * * *
The Nation knows
My maxim ever was Oppose;
And be the Minister who will,
My maxim is—Oppose him still.
For though to Britain necessary,
’Tis good for me that all miscarry,
Excepting one—I need not name him,—
Envy herself would blush to blame him.”