In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts—and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O'er Taste awhile these Pseudo-bards prevail;[1]
Each country Book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful Genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;[2]140
Some leaden calf—but whom it matters not,
From soaring Southey, down to groveling Stott.[3]
- ↑ O'er taste awhile these Infidels prevail.—[MS.]
- ↑ Erect and hail an idol of their own.—[MS.]
- ↑ Stott, better known in the Morning Post by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, when the reigning family left Portugal, a special Ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus:—(Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia)—
"Princely offspring of Braganza,
Erin greets thee with a stanza," etc.Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering Ode, commencing as follows:—
"Oh! for a Lay! loud as the surge
That lashes Lapland's sounding shore."Lord have mercy on us! the "Lay of the Last Minstrel"
Charles Perkins, founder of the Perkinean Institution in London, as a "cure for all Disorders, Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs."
In Galvanism several experiments, conducted by Professor Aldini, nephew of Galvani, are described in the Morning Post for Jan. 6th, Feb. 6th, and Jan. 22nd, 1803. The latter were made on the body of Forster the murderer.
For the allusion to Gas, compare Terrible Tractoration, canto 1—
Sent me a bag full of his gas,
Which snuff'd the nose up, makes wit brighter,
And eke a dunce an airy writer."]
