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ADVERTISEMENT.
My bookseller assuring me, with a most solemn
countenance, that the public expect more for
their half-crown than was provided: in imitation of
our most compliable Administration, I have yielded
to their hungry wishes, and cooked up a pretty dish
of bubble and squeak.
The composition is elegiac, that is to say, full of
complaint and tenderness; and I have moreover
baptized it a Jeremi-ad, on account of a tender and
sublime resemblance between my song and the songs
of the prophet. The birth of my Jeremi-ad immediately
succeeded Pitt's and Grenville's two celebrated
Bills of Terror.
It pathetically lamenteth the fallen state of one
of our most admired poets, videlicet, myself! and
is addressed to Mr. George Rose, of the treasury, a
pains-taking man, of low extraction, pitiful talents,
and of no education; but who, finding, in his journey
from Scotland to England, a couple of ladders,
very much like those employed by Messieurs Pitt,
Dundas, Jenkinson, and Co. called impudence and
perseverance, ascended, like the aforesaid bold gentlemen,
to nearly the same plane of elevation; showing
thereby the little or no importance of merit and
modesty towards the attainment of fortune and honours.
