[8] One of the many frivolous charges brought against Mr. Hastings by factious men, is the removal of a Mr. FOWKE, contrary to the orders of the Directors, that he might make room for his own appointment of my so to the Residentship of BENARES. I have ever thought it my duty to support the late Governor-General, both at Leadenhall and in the House of Peers, against all such vexatious accusations.
[9] As many of my Competitors have complained of Signer Delpini’s ignorance, I cannot help remarking here, that he did not know BISHOPTHORP to be the name of my palace, in Yorkshire; he did not know Mr. Hastings’s house to be in St. James’s-place; he did not know Mrs. Hastings to have two sons by Mynheer Imhoff, her former husband, still living. And what is more shameful than all in a Critical Assessor, he had never heard of the poetical figure, by which I elegantly say, thy place, St. James’s, instead of St. James’s-place.
[10] Signor Delpini wanted to strike out all that follows, because truly it had no connection with the rest. The transition, like some others in this and my former Ode to Arthur Onslow, Esq. may be too fine for vulgar apprehensions, but it is therefore the more Pindaric.
IMITATIONS OF MYSELF.
Strophe I.
This goodly frame what virtue so approves,
And testifies the pure ætherial spirit,
As mild benevolence?
My Ode to Arthur Onslow, Esq.
Epode I.
How shall my aukward gratitude,
And the presumption of untutor’d duty
Attune thy numbers all too rude?
Little he recks the meed of such a song;
Yet will I stretch aloof, &c.
Ibid.
Antistrophe II.
To HENRYS and to EDWARDS old,
Dread names, I’ll meditate the faithful song, &c.
Ibid.
Epode II. Justice with steady brow, Trim plenty, Laureat peace, and green-hair’d commerce, In flowing robe of thousand hues, &c. On this imitation of myself, I cannot help remarking, how happily I have now applied some of these epithets, which, it must be confessed, had not half the propriety before.
Strophe III.
Or trace her navy, where in towering pride
O’er the wide-swelling waste it rolls avengeful.
Ibid.
Antistrophe III.
How headlong Rhone and Ebro, erst distain’d
With Moorish carnage, quakes thro’ all her branches!
Soon shall I greet the morn,
When, Europe saved, BRITAIN and GEORGE’s name
Shall soon o’er FLANDRIA’s level field,
Familiar in domestic merriment;
Or by the jolly mariner
Be carol’d loud adown the echoing Danube.
Ibid.