The high-mettled racer is sold to the hounds.

Charles Dibdin.

This, being a sporting song, would be quite out of place here, but that Dibdin followed it up, by writing an imitation of it, on a naval topic. This is one of the somewhat rare cases of an author composing a parody on one of his own poems:—

The Pride of the Ocean.

See the shore lined with gazers, the tide comes in fast,

The confusion, but hear! bear a hand there, avast!

The blocks and the wedges the mallets obey,

And the shores and the stanchions are all cut away:

While with head like a lion, built tight fore and aft,

Broad amidships, lean bows, and taper abaft