One more, "Is incest not enough?

And must there be adultery too? Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire Is twenty times too good for you.

"By that last book of yours we think
You've double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn."

All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
For carriage, ten-pence Peter paid-
Untied them-read them-went half mad.

"What!" cried he, "this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?

"What have I done to them?-and who
Is Mrs. Foy "Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Emma so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!

I've half a mind to fight a duel.

"Or," cried he, a grave look collecting,

"Is it my genius, like the moon, Sets those who stand her face inspecting, That face within their brain reflecting,

Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?"

For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown

From God's own voice* in a review.

All Peter did on this occasion

Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticise; their station
Is to delight, not pose.

The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair,

For Born's translation of Kant's book; A world of words, tail foremost, where Right-wrong-false-true-and foul-and fair, As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,-he
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
More than will e'er be due to me.

I looked on them nine several days,

And then I saw that they were bad; A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,He never read them ;-with amaze

I found Sir William Drummond had.

When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale,+ Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.

Fire, which ex luce præbens fumum,

Made him beyond the bottom see

Of truth's clear well-when I and you Ma'am, Go, as we shall do, subter humum,

We may know more than he.

Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor bad-nor knave nor fool,
-Among the woods and rocks.

Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,-
He half believed White Obi.

This steed in vision he would ride,

High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side-
A mad-brained goblin for a guide-

Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.

Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute of philosophical accuracy.

+ Quasi, Qui valet verba :-i. e. all the words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his posterity.

After these ghastly rides, he came

Home to his heart, and found from thence Much stolen of its accustomed flame; His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame Of their intelligence.

To Peter's view, all seemed one hue ;
He was no whig, he was no tory;
No Deist and no Christian he ;-
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.

One single point in his belief
From his organisation sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That "happiness is wrong;"

So thought Calvin and Dominic ;

So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might " do their do."

His morals thus were undermined :-
The old Peter-the hard, old Potter
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter *.

In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.†

So in his Country's dying face

He looked and lovely as she lay, Seeking in vain his last embrace, Wailing her own abandoned case,

With hardened sneer he turned away:

And coolly to his own soul said;—
"Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she's dead:
Or, no-a thought is in my head-

Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take.

"My wife wants one.-Let who will bury

This mangled corpse! And I and you, My dearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,― Ay-and at last desert me too."

A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists.

† See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonising death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panicstricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses.

This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

Nature.

"Pray find some cure or sinecure ;

To feed from the superfluous taxes, A friend of ours-a poet-fewer Have fluttered tamer to the lure

Than he." His lordship stands and racks his

Stupid brains, while one might count

As many beads as he had boroughs,-
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:

"It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require

No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs ;-like Oliver,

That he'll be worthy of his hire."

These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,-
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,-meat and drink enough,-
Yet that same night he died.

The Devil's corpse was leaded down; His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, Mourning-coaches, many a one, Followed his hearse along the town:Where was the devil himself?

When Peter heard of his promotion,

His eyes grew like two stars for bliss: There was a bow of sleek devotion, Engendering in his back; each motion Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.

He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,-
As if defying all who said,

Peter was ever poor.

It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious.

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge.