"Not savage … nor gentle BAIN—
She was in love with Warwick Lane."
An "Address to the Prince," on the exposed style of women's dress, consists of little more than single lines, not yet wedded into couplets; such as—"The more you show, the less we wish to see."—"And bare their bodies, as they mask their minds," &c. This poem, however, must have been undertaken many years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove:—"I like it no better for being from France—whence all ills come—altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire."
There are also some Anacreontics—lively, but boyish and extravagant.
For instance, in expressing his love of bumpers:—
"Were mine a goblet that had room
For a whole vintage in its womb,
I still would have the liquor swim
An inch or two above the brim."
The following specimen is from one of those poems, whose length and completeness prove them to have been written at a time of life when he was more easily pleased, and had not yet arrived at that state of glory and torment for the poet, when
"Toujours mecontent de ce qu'il vient de faire,
Il plait a tout le monde et ne scaurait se plaire:"—
"The Muses call'd, the other morning,
On Phoebus, with a friendly warning
That invocations came so fast,
They must give up their trade at last,
And if he meant t' assist them all,
The aid of Nine would be too small.
Me then, as clerk, the Council chose,
To tell this truth in humble prose.—
But Phoebus, possibly intending
To show what all their hopes must end in,
To give the scribbling youths a sample,
And frighten them by my example,
Bade me ascend the poet's throne,
And give them verse—much like their own.
"Who has not heard each poet sing
The powers of Heliconian spring?
Its noble virtues we are told
By all the rhyming crew of old.—
Drink but a little of its well,
And strait you could both write and spell,
While such rhyme-giving pow'rs run through it,
A quart would make an epic poet," &c. &c.
A poem on the miseries of a literary drudge begins thus promisingly:—
"Think ye how dear the sickly meal is bought,
By him who works at verse and trades in thought?"