With large bequest of disappointed eggs,
And take the brawler whose unstudied dress
Becomes him better, and protects him less;
Give me the bullying of the scoundrel crew,
If swaggering virtue wont insult me too!
Leaving, with this impersonation, “The noisy tribe in panta-loons or -lets,” the poet drives directly at the august cities of Boston and New York, and ruthlessly smashes all the literary crockery in those two emporiums of letters. Here is his gird at the modern Athens:
The pseudo-critic-editorial race
Owns no allegiance but the law of place;
Each to his region sticks through thick and thin,
Stiff as a beetle spiked upon a pin.