The Age Reviewed A Satire: In two parts: Second edition, revised and corrected [by Robert Montgomery] |
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 | The Age Reviewed |  |
Rich Nature favoured with her largest dower;
To tickle George's ear with Laureate hums;—
Protean bard!—that once could Tyler sing,
Then slipped his hide—and lo! 'twas Court and King!
Since wordy lumps of artificial stuff
Insure thine homage of a Quarter's puff,—
If egotistic spleen can ought avail,
To keep thy laurels green, and odes unstale;—
Long sound the peerless trumpet of thy praise,
Let self for ever load the Laureate lays;
In these, the suction of a tory brain,
More faddling far than Pye or Whitehead's strain.
Peace to thy pond'rous Epics!—few can dare
To waddle through the dronish lumber there;
That last weak dribble came replete with whine,—
The tale of Paraguay—thine, only thine!—
While Madam Southey press'd her genial straw!
If ever vapid dross in sickly verse,
Proclaimed a piddling Laureate growing worse—
Thou showd'st it here—not filthy Latin lore
Could save the twaddle from Oblivion's store.
Oh! Southey, scorn the verse which few can read,
And sweat for Murray, where thy prose is meed;
That garland green which crowns thy living head,
Will deck a turncoat's shame, when thou art dead!
Blest in her bounty with the largest dower
That heaven indulges to a child of earth.” ------
Now, really, Doctor, this is more than a quantum suff. Your fancy must have been drunk with the inspiring crystal of the Keswick Lakes, when she told you such insufferable conceit. A little after, in the same “Carmen Nuptiale,” we have,—
“That green wreath which decks the bard when dead,That laureate garland crowns my living head.”
A laureate is always expected to be conceited; but this egotism is not at all, à la mode. Dr. Southey has fallen off dreadfully in his poetry. His Epics were never generally liked, notwithstanding his own high opinion of them; but friend or foe, who could like his “Tale of Paraguay,” or Laureate Odes, &c.? He is an admirable prose writer; but extremely artificial, even in his best poetry; it will bear reading but once. The following observations by Galt, are worth perusing. “Mr. Southey cogitates himself into a state of poetical excitement, but he seems to be rarely touched with the fine frenzy of the poet. He has capacity and means to build a pyramid; but the little entaglio of Gray's Elegy, is more valuable than all this great tumulus to the memory of the last of the Goths.”
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