His honour's meaning dulness thus exprest,

He wins this patron, who can tickle best."

He chinks his purse, and takes his seat of state: With ready quills the dedicators wait; Now at his head the dexterous task commence, And, instant, fancy feels the imputed sense; Now gentle touches wanton o'er his face, He struts Adonis, and affects grimace: Rolli the feather to his ear conveys, Then his nice taste directs our operas: Bentley his mouth with classic flattery opes, And the puffed orator bursts out in tropes. But Welsted most the poet's healing balm Strives to extract from his soft, giving palm; Unlucky Welsted! thy unfeeling master,

The more thou ticklest, gripes his fist the faster.

While thus each hand promotes the pleasing pain,

And quick sensations skip from vein to vein;
A youth unknown to Phoebus, in despair,

Puts his last refuge all in heaven and prayer.
What force have pious vows! The Queen of
Love

His sister sends, her votaress, from above,
As, taught by Venus, Paris learned the art
To touch Achilles' only tender part;

Secure, through her, the noble prize to carry,
He marches off his grace's secretary.

"Now turn to different spots" (the goddess cries),

"And learn, my sons, the wondrous power of noise.

To move, to raise, to ravish every heart,

With Shakespeare's nature, or with Johnson's art,

Let others aim: 'tis yours to shake the soul
With thunder rumbling from the mustard-bowl.
With horns and trumpets now to madness swell,
Now sink in sorrows with a tolling bell;
Such happy arts attention can command,
When fancy flags, and sense is at a stand.
Improve we these. Three cat-calls be the bribe
Of him, whose chattering shames the monkey
tribe;

And his this drum, whose hoarse heroic bass
Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass."
Now thousand tongues are heard in one loud
din;

The monkey-mimics rush discordant in;

'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all,

And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval, Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and conclusion quick. "Hold!" (cried the queen), "a cat-call each shall win:

Equal your merits! equal is your din!

But that this well-disputed game may end, Sound forth, my brayers, and the welkin rend."

C

As, when the long-eared milky mothers wait
At some sick miser's triple bolted gate,
For their defrauded, absent fools they make
A moan so loud, that all the guild awake:
Sore sighs Sir Gilbert, starting at the bray,
From dreams of millions, and three groats to pay.
So swells each wind-pipe; ass intones to ass;
Harmonic twang! of leather, horn, and brass;
Such as from labouring lungs the enthusiast
blows,

High sound, attempered to the vocal nose;
Or such as bellow from the deep divine;

There, Webster! pealed thy voice, and Whitfield! thine.

But far o'er all, sonorous Blackmore's strain;
Walls, steeples, skies, bray back to him again.
In Tottenham fields, the brethren, with amaze,
Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze;
'Long Chancery Lane retentive rolls the sound,
And courts to courts return it round and round;
Thames wastes it thence to Rufus' roaring hall,
And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl.
All hail him victor in both gifts of song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.
This labour passed, by Bridewell all descend,
(As morning prayer and flagellation end)
To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.

"Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,

Here prove who best can dash through thick and

thin,

And who the most in love of dirt excel,

Or dark dexterity of groping well.

Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the weekly journals bound; * A pig of lead to him who dives the best;

A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest."
In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,

And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands;
Then, sighing, thus, " And am I now three-score?
Ah why, ye gods, should two and two make
four?"

He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright.
The senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher.

Next Smedley dived, slow circles dimpled o'er The quaking mud, that closed, and oped no more, All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; "Smedley" in vain resounds through all the coast.

Then essayed; scarce vanished out of sight,
He buoys up instant, and returns to light:
He bears no token of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the swans of Thames.
True to the bottom see Concanen creep,

A cold, long-winded native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies;
No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,

The unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.

Next plunged a feeble, but a desperate pack, With each a sickly brother at his back:

Ask

Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood, Then numbered with the puppies in the mud. ye their names? I could as soon disclose The names of these blind puppies as of those. Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone), Sits mother Osborne, stupefied to stone! And monumental brass this record bears, "These are,-ah no! these were, the gazetteers!"

Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull,
Furious he dives, precipitately dull.

Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb, and backward to advance.
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the journals and the lead.
The plunging prelate, and his ponderous
grace,

With holy envy gave one layman place.
When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood;
Slow rose a form, in majesty of mud;
Shaking the horrors of his sable brows,
And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.
Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;
Then thus the wonders of the deep declares.

First he relates, how sinking to the chin,