By Leveson Gower’s crop-imitating wig,
That, could the pow’rs which in those numbers shine,
Could that warm spirit animate my line,
Your glorious deeds which humbly I rehearse—
Your deeds should live immortal as my verse;
And, while they wonder’d whence I caught my flame,
Your sons should blush to read their fathers’ shame’.
“Happily the eminent and accomplished sons of these fathers will smile, rather than blush, at this allusion to their sires, and smile the more when they remember from which side the attack proceeded. It is clear from the Answer, that, whilst the band were not a little ruffled, they had not the remotest suspicion that their assailant was a youth in his nineteenth year. Amongst other prefatory remarks they say:—
“‘We assure the author of the epistle, that the answer which we have here the honour to address to him, contains our genuine and undisguised sentiments upon the merits of the poem.
“‘Our conjectures respecting the authors and abettors of this performance may possibly be as vague and unfounded as theirs are with regard to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin. We are sorry that we cannot satisfy their curiosity upon this subject—but we have little anxiety for the gratification of our own.