When teased with creditors' continual claims,
"To die like Cato," leapt into the Thames!
And therefore be it lawful through the town
For any bard to poison, hang, or drown.
Who saves the intended suicide receives

Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves;
And sooth to say, mad poets must not lose

The glory of that death they freely choose.

Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse
Prick not the poet's conscience as a curse;
Dosed with vile drams on Sunday he was found,
Or got a child on consecrated ground!
And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage-
Fear'd like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,

Fatal at once to simpleton or wit:

But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,―him
He flays with recitation limb by limb;

Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Etnam
Insiluit sit jus liceatque perire poetis :
Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.
Nec semel hoc fecit; nec, si retractus erit, jam
Fiet homo, et ponet famosæ mortis amorem.
Nec satis apparet cur versus factitet: utrum
Minxerit in patrios cineres, an triste bidental
Moverit incestus: certe furit, ac velut ursus,
Objectos caveæ valuit si frangere clathros,
Indoctum doctumque fugat recitator acerbus.

3 On his table were found these words :-"What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong." But Addison did not "approve ;" and if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his daughter on the same water-party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of "Atticus," and the enemy of Pope !-[Eustace Budgell, a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt into the Thames" to escape prosecution for forging the will of Dr. Tindal, in which Eustace had provided himself with a legacy of two thousand pounds. "We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself. I put the case of Eustace Budgell. Suppose, sir,' said I, 'that a man is absolutely sure that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace, and expulsion from society?' JOHNSON. Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.'

If "dosed with," &c. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," &c. into a decent couplet. I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present.

VOL. I.

LI.

Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach, And gorges like a lawyer-or a leech.

Quem vero arripuit, tenet, occiditque legendo,
Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris, hirudo.

THE WALTZ:

AN APOSTROPHIC HYMN

"Qualis in Eurote ripis, aut per juga Cynthi, Exercet Diana choros."-VIRGIL.

Such on Eurota's banks, or Cynthia's height,
Diana seems and so she charms the sight,
When in the dance the graceful goddess leads
The quire of nymphs, and overtops their heads."
DRYDEN'S VIRGIL

TO THE PUBLISHER.

SIR,

I am a country gentleman of a midland county. I might have been a parliament-man for a certain borough; having had the offer of as many votes as General T. at the general election in 1812.* But I was all for domestic happiness; as, fifteen years ago, on a visit to London, I married a middle-aged maid of honour. We lived happily at Hornem Hall till last season, when my wife and I were invited by the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of my spouse) to pass the winter in town. Thinking no harm, and our girls being come to a marriageable (or, as they call it, marketable) age, and having besides a Chancery suit inveterately entailed upon the family estate, we came up in our old chariot,—of which, by the bye, my wife grew so much ashamed in less than a week, that I was obliged to buy a second-hand barouche, of which I might mount the box, Mrs. H. says, if I could drive, but never see the insidethat place being reserved for the Honourable Augustus Tiptoe, her partner-general and opera-knight. Hearing great praises of Mrs. H.'s dancing (she was famous for birthnight minuets in the latter end of the last century), I unbooted, and went to a ball at the Countess's, expecting to see a country dance, or, at most, cotillons,

* State of the poll (last day) 5.