Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown’d.
Thus when Philomela, drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
This mellifluous piece of nonsense was published in the Miscellanies of Alexander Pope, but it was also inserted amongst the poems of Dean Swift, where it was entitled A Love Song in Modern Taste. It ridiculed an affected style of poetry then much in vogue, and which continued in fashion for many years, culminating in the writings of a clique, known as the Della Cruscans, which was originated by a few English, of both sexes, assembled at Florence in 1785. They were named Della Cruscans because their leader, one Robert Merry, signed his trashy effusions as a member of the Acadamy Della Crusca at Florence. Merry wrote a tragedy, entitled Lorenzo, which was more successful than many comedies, for it made the audience laugh immoderately, besides innumerable poems long since forgotten. By a deliberate system of mutual puffing the Della Cruscans forced their absurd productions upon the public, and in the early years of the present century nearly every journal contained some of their poems, published over assumed names, such as Laura Maria, Edwin, Anna Matilda, &c. These were afterwards gathered into volumes, with a few poems by really able writers such as M. G. Lewis, Robert Southey, and S. T. Coleridge, and published by subscription.