"Caitiffs avaunt! talk not to me! avaunt! Sound the trumpet, beat the drum ; High in prowess, high in fame, Great Maidstone shall record my never-dying name. " 'Tis Liberty, sweet Liberty alone, Sleep ne'er should hang upon my penthouse lid, Forsake my children, wife and all, To sign my name in Maidstone town-hall. "Fancy paints the long-drawn line Where Robert Cobb in pedigrean pomp shall shine; The honours of their glorious name, And, pointing, say, This ancestor was mine.' "Sink not, for shame, in sloth's dull lap; Arise, put on that glorious cap, With which Hogarth (alas! he's dead) Learn from me to greatly dare; Let us our country's praises share. On Monday next at Maidstone meet me, Or else, or else, what then?- let's see, At N.'s on Tuesday I'll meet thee." "It is an unaccountable thing, but I have sent all over the town and cannot get a lemon, and if I have no lemon I can make no punch, and if I make no punch I can make no letter: the thing is absolutely impossible. • Have you been to the Dolphin, James?' Yes, Sir, but they have none; and they say you owe them for two already.' Why, then, I cannot write to Bowdler. O thou gentle goddess of bergamot, (for I suppose thee to be the very essence of lemon,) hover, I beseech thee, around my head, and deign to guide my quill. What, though there smokes not on my board the draught nectarious, high flavoured with the rich product of the western world, and wafted on the wings of Zephyr to our frigid clime, long ere rebellion's tooth had taught the anana not to bloom—what, though I have only to offer thee the blushing juice which Lusitanian hills have ripened, -Well, thou knowest I oft have on thine altar poured the rich libation. Come, then, thou Sapphire-wing'd, but you see it won't do, Bowdler, and so good-night. "R. C." "How comes it to pass, that you should never have told me of Rowley's Poems? and how strange is it that I should talk of nothing else for four hours the other day with Miss Carter ?" Among Mr. Bowdler's companions at this period, was a person mentioned in one of these letters, possessed of considerable poetical talent, and of great taste and power in theatrical declamation. He was bred a solicitor, but being sometimes perhaps inclined to "pen a stanza when he should engross," he addressed his friend in language suited to the taste of both. Some extracts from a poetical letter may be pleasing. "In prose we fearless laugh, and freely pour These, when his polish'd pen a master draws, Why, hapless! then so hard a toil embrace? Banks - Beckford - Grafton-here can have no place Not even from him, whose's tortur'd name's so dear To every rhymer in each gazetteer, Whose scatter'd letters, torn from out their place, From him no inspiration I derive, Quick turn the leaves, and lo- the work is done! Nor longer studious, seek the noisy bar, Here spring the myrtle — there the blushing vine, Clothed with eternal green his hills should rise, And kiss his brighter than Egyptian skies. "But Cantium - No!- Old English Kent-disdains Imagination's wild and frantick strains. Nor asks the bard on Camus' banks to dream, Or quaff the sacred source of Isis' stream; Nor needs he once advert to classick lore, With curious eye his antique piles explore,- 66 * Already hoary winter, bursting forth, Has left the regions of the dreary North; Through the brown woods the quivering leaves display And soon, alas! he'll take his annual round, Ev'n now I feel his more than magic pow'r.- Nor touch the guest, - the friend, the monarch's life; And now it falls! - he's number'd with the dead! Proclaim the tempest's past, the sky's serene, And virtue crowns Cordelia more than queen. E |