University of Virginia Library

The Fates warr'd with Reason when Sheridan rose
From Hibernian loins to correct human woes;
Then Pallas obey'd the command of her sire,
And touch'd his young brain with Athenian fire;
The Pierian maids led the youth in despite
To the hill of Parnassus and font of delight,
Where Phœbus his dogmas was wont to rehearse,
And shew'd him the force and the features of verse;
Fed his mind with large draughts from their translucent spring,
And taught him those arts which made Sophocles sing—
Tho' a one-headed Cerberus, he's destin'd by Fate
To watch o'er the int'rests of drama and state;
Now Policy, hideous witch, wakes her charms,
To woo the equivocal wight to her arms;
And to cheat the fine sense of her retrograde suitor,
Deceives him with shadows, and points to the future:
Now the Muse spreads, like Phryne, her arts of seduction,
And urges poor Dick for a comic production;
Now he writes bitter anti-amicable hints,
For the Premier's good, in the scandalous prints;
Then fabricates odes for the mad and the stupid,
Then strings pretty verses for Emma Crewe's Cupid,
And lives but a sorrowful standard at best
To prove Genius a bubble, and Wisdom a jest;
A Cameleon statesman, endued with strange powers
To seize every hue, and those hues at all hours;
With talents that call'd human kind to admire,
With morals that slew the behest of his sire;
Like an Epicæne animal form'd for deception,
His worth is an instance that staggers perception.
What he is, or is not, is a point in dispute,
Propose what you will, and 'tis Brinsley can do't:
So fit for all things, yet, alas! fit for none,
Continually doing, yet always undone;
So beckon'd by Hope, yet by Hope so oft cheated,
For ever contending, yet ever defeated;
By much too sincere for a good politician,
Too eccentric to make a sound mathematician;
Too proud for attendance, too vain to beseech,
Too poor to be happy, too candid to preach:
Thus he swims in a strange indeterminate mean,
Neither hallow'd nor damn'd, but betwixt and between.
When Genius essays to effect his conversion,
Attachments obtrude and defeat the exertion;
Tho' Satire has arm'd him to regulate men,
Young Gratitude draws all the ink from his pen.
If to lacerate Folly he wings the keen dart,
It wounds his best friend in the core of his heart;
If levelling at vice he his archery tries,
By the arrow transfix'd an ex-minister dies,
His fancy's blythe sports o'er our faculties steal,
All poignant as Congreve, as Horace genteel;
But viewing those tablets inwove in his will,
Like the Sybil's black leaves they predict embrio ill,
And his fruitless attemps to make ideots wise,
Resembles Domitian pursuing his flies,
Or stern Dionysius correcting his boys,
Or Britain's Elizabeth sporting with toys.
Like a truant to Fame he has fled from his duty,
To give varlets respect and gaunt Faction a beauty,
His sensible heart seem'd, when Excellence found it,
Like Hermes' Cadeuceus, with reptiles clung round it;
For his manners are spoil'd by the limbs of inferno,
Like Arethuse streams in the lake of Averno;
Could critical Alchymy mend such base elves,
I'd place their vile dross on Truth's high-valued shelves,
Tho' my deeds, like Caligula's arts, might be crost,
Who, intent to make gold, moan'd the time he had lost;
For Wit and Discretion in amity bound,
Like the circle's quadrature, will never be found.
Generosity's seen on each eye-brow depicted,
His ideas are vast, yet his purse is restricted.
Tho' a minion of Onus he passes his hours
In feats that dishonour his limitless powers,
Defiling the page of loud Rumour with fears
That a chief may have err'd in twice seventeen years.
Like Sallust he's brilliant, and both shone as senators,
Tho' neither by living uprais'd their progenitors.
His brain, like the library of fam'd Pisistratus,
Is so laden with wit we can find no hiatus;
Like Israel's foul children, for Ruin ne'er spar'd him,
He ran from that Canaan which Phœbus prepar'd him.
Fascination with all her best witch'ries has clad him,
For he ne'er ask'd a friend but in asking he had him:
He dignified tumults Expedience made,
And seems, like the lion, superior to aid,
As inordinate gorging at Obloquy's feasts,
Where, alas! he's but first mid confederate beasts,
He speaks to illumine, sublime, and surprise,
As Columbus taught Indians the laws of the skies,
While the national crowds round the wanderer ran
In doubt if the alien was God or a man;
Tho' Sophistry partially darkens the way,
He beams like the sun, and creates his own day;
Foul Tergiversation shall fashion his history,
For his life, like the Pentateuch's, mark'd by its mystery,
Like the rock-striking Hebrew he marshals his throng,
But the force of his amulet lives in his song.
When he visited Fortune, the wench most uncivil,
Sent him and his suite to Charles Fox or the Devil:
He wept, he beseech'd, he bemoan'd, he lamented,
Till, chill'd by her mien, left the house discontented.
Thus Dick is oppress'd in his efforts to court her,
For the nymph shuts her gates and he can't bribe the porter.
'Tis said that she once lov'd the indirect youth
Ere polluted associates had led him from Truth;
She saw him deluded, and pitied his blindness,
And sooth'd him with smiles, and embrac'd him with kindness;
But he, like a dolt, with her quiet disported,
Abus'd her remonstrance, and scoff'd when she courted;
Till stung and enrag'd, hopeless, mad, and forlorn,
The dignified wench felt the pressure of scorn,
And imbibing that hatred the dramatist taught her,
Consign'd the proud fool to the care of her daughter;
For as ladies forgive not contemptuous slights,
She frowns on his toils if he speaks or indites;
Pre-damns all his essays in verse and in prose,
And yields him a victim to merciless foes:
Created to live in Society's school
As the mark of perfection, and bane of a fool;
It mads me to see such superlative merit
Metamorphos'd by Pride to a petulant ferret,
Which Fox drags about with a sinister chain,
To drive the political rats from the grain.
Unfortunate Charles! once the inmate of Glory;
Tho' now he's illustrious only in story,
All his splendour's absorb'd by the Minister's ray,
Thus the grandeur of Memphis gave Thebes to Decay.
Thus Satan lay writhing when Michael trod o'er him,
As demons in clusters crept round to deplore him!

The sceptre of Drury has known many masters,
Like the throne of Warsaw, it seems fraught with disasters;
In all points of government weak and defective;
But that realm must decay where the crown is elective;
When brainless musicians can figure in story,
And, like David Rizzo, debase regal glory.