with one consent allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side;
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song hero rants in modern plays;--
While modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point because they wrote in verse;
But so Thalia pleases to appear,--
Poor virgin!--damn'd some twenty times a year!"

There is more of poetry in the following verses upon Milton than in any
other passage throughout the Paraphrase:--

"'Awake a louder and a loftier strain,'
And, pray, what follows from his boiling brain?
He sinks to S * *'s level in a trice,
Whose epic mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire
The tempered warblings of his master lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit'
He speaks; but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades, echo with the song."

The annexed sketch contains some lively touches:--

"Behold him, Freshman!--forced no more to groan
O'er Virgil's devilish verses[9], and--his own;
Prayers are too tedious, lectures too abstruse,
He flies from T----ll's frown to 'Fordham's Mews;'
(Unlucky T----ll, doom'd to daily cares
By pugilistic pupils and by bears!)
Fines, tutors, tasks, conventions, threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket plain:
Rough with his elders; with his equals rash;
Civil to sharpers; prodigal of cash.
Fool'd, pillaged, dunn'd, he wastes his terms away;
And, unexpell'd perhaps, retires M.A.:--
Master of Arts!--as Hells and Clubs[10] proclaim,
Where scarce a black-leg bears a brighter name.

"Launch'd into life, extinct his early fire,
He apes the selfish prudence of his sire;
Marries for money; chooses friends for rank;
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow--for himself was there;
Mute though he votes, unless when call'd to cheer,
His son's so sharp--he'll see the dog a peer!

"Manhood declines; age palsies every limb;
He quits the scene, or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves,
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
Counts cent. per cent., and smiles, or vainly frets
O'er hoards