oem is, with reference to the original, ingenious:--

"Who would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace
His costly canvass with each flatter'd face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush?
Or should some limner join, for show or sale,
A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail?
Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen)
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems
The book, which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic nightmares, without head or feet."

The following is pointed, and felicitously expressed:--

"Then glide down Grub Street, fasting and forgot,
Laugh'd into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till--true."

Of the graver parts, the annexed is a favourable specimen:--

"New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase:
What Chaucer, Spenser, did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt and Walter Scott,
Since they, by force of rhyme, and force of lungs,
Enrich'd our island's ill-united tongues?
'Tis then, and shall be, lawful to present
Reforms in writing as in parliament.

"As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain;
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar--
All, all must perish. But, surviving last,
The love of letters half preserves the past:
True,--some decay, yet not a few survive,
Though those shall sink which now appear to thrive,
As custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey."

I quote what follows chiefly for the sake of the note attached to it:--

"Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt?--See Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean.[8]

"Blank verse is now