All are not moralists, like Southey, when

He prated to the world of "Pantisocrasy;" Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

Such names at present cut a convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado rigour,

Are good manure for their more bare biography.
Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birthday of typography;
A drowsy frowsy poem, call'd the "Excursion,"
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

He there builds up a formidable dyke

Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike
The public mind-so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes sleeps ;" We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,—

To show with what complacency he creeps,

With his dear "Waggoners," around his lakes. He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deeps

Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes

Another outcry for "a little boat,"
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

If he must fain sweep o'er the etherial plain,

And Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon," Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain ? Or pray Medea for a single dragon?

Or if too classic for his vulgar brain,

He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on, And he must needs mount nearer to the moon, Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

"Pedlars, and "Boats," and "Waggons!" Oh! ye shades

Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?
That trash of such sort not alone evades

Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss
Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades
Of sense and song above your graves may hiss !—
The "little boatman," and his "Peter Bell,"

Can sneer at him who drew "Achitophel !"

POETICAL COMMANDMENTS.

(DON JUAN, Canto i. Stanzas 204-206.)

If ever I should condescend to prose,

I'll write poetical commandments, which
Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those

That went before; in these I shall enrich
My text with many things that no one knows,
And carry precept to the highest pitch :
I'll call the work "Longinus o'er a Bottle,
Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle."

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;

Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,

The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy: With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,

And Campbell's Hipprocrene is somewhat drouthy : Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor Commit-flirtation with the muse of Moore.

Thou shalt not covet Mr. Sotheby's Muse,
His Pegasus, nor any thing that's his;
Thou shalt not bear false witness like "the Blues
(There's one, at least, is very fond of this);
Thou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose:
This is true criticism, and you may kiss-

Exactly as you please, or not-the rod;
But if you don't, I'll lay it on, by G-d!

BYRON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

(DON JUAN, Canto xi. Stanzas 53-60.)

JUAN knew several languages-as well

He might-and brought them up with skill, in time To save his fame with each accomplish'd belle, Who still regretted that he did not rhyme. There wanted but this requisite to swell

His qualities (with them) into sublime : Lady Fitz-Frisky and Miss Mævia Mannish, Both long'd extremely to be sung in Spanish.

However, he did pretty well, and was
Admitted as an aspirant to all
The coteries, and, as in Banquo's glass,
At great assemblies or in parties small,
He saw ten thousand living authors pass,
That being about their average numeral ;
Also the eighty "greatest living poets,"
As every paltry magazine can show it's.

In twice five years the "greatest living poet,"
Like to the champion in the fisty ring,
Is call'd on to support his claim, or show it,
Although 'tis an imaginary thing.

Even I-albeit I'm sure I did not know it,

Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king,

Was reckon'd a considerable time,

The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.

T

But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero

My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain : "La Belle Alliance" of dunces down at zero,

Now that the Lion's fall'n, may rise again :
But I will fall at least as fell my hero;

Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign;
Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go,
With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.

Sir Walter reign'd before me; Moore and Campbell
Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble
With poets almost clergymen, or wholly;
And Pegasus hath a psalmodic amble

Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol-by the hilts!

Then there's my gentle Euphues; who, they say,
Sets up for being a sort of moral me;
He'll find it rather difficult some day

To turn out both, or either, it may be.

Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway; And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three ; And that deep-mouth'd Boeotian "Savage Landor" Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander.

John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek

Contrived to talk about the gods of late
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow ! His was an untoward fate;

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.