Are pleasant, taking, nay, instructive things.
Yet some there are who relish not the sport,
That flutter in the sunshine of a Court;
Who, fearful Song might mar their high ambition,
Loose the gaunt Dogs of State, and bawl ‘Sedition.’ ”
Wolcot was clever enough usually to take for his verse topics in which the public were interested, and it was to this acuteness his success with his contemporaries must be largely attributed. He attacked Lord Lonsdale when that nobleman showed a great disregard of his neighbour’s rights, and “expostulated” with Hannah More, when in her “Strictures on Female Education,” she wrote, “The Poets again, to do them justice, are always ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done.” He inveighed against the strict enforcement of Sunday Observance, which to some extent resulted from Lady Huntingdon’s petition to the King, and the Puritanism of the Methodists:
“ ‘No,’ roars the Huntingdonian Priest; ‘no, no:
Lovers are liars; love’s a damned trade.
Kissing is damnable; to Hell they go:
The Devil claws away the rogue and jade.’ ”