Such are American Mecenasses, And if you dare to style them mean asses, By submarine explosions, soon active at the great book fairs at Leipzig. There are, we believe, some of the sort in America, who are most inveterate Frenchmen in their politicks. As they belong to the dominant party, and we are now tributary to France,* they are of course pretty peaceable. Should we ever assert our independence and attempt to get out of the leading strings of the French faction, we shall see them display their powers in causing whiskey insurrections, Genet fraternal scrapes, &c. 63 Will blow your island to the moon. This your worships may depend on as no threat which ought to pass by you as the " idle wind." If you will take the trouble to consult our American Philosophical Transactions (which you will find at Mr. Johnson's, the bookseller, St. Paul's Church yard, a number having been sent there for sale, and remaining, we believe, all on hand) vol. iv. from page 303, to page 313. you will see what Mr. D. Bushnell of Connecticut has done and had like to have done by virtue of submarine explosions. You will find that several English ships have been put in jeopardy, and one schooner actually blown up and demolished by Mr. * We have been good enough to pay to France seventeen millions of dollars for a tract of land. Our title, however, is merely a right to govern the said tract, the fee of the soil remaining in the proprietors who purchased under Spain. Now don't laugh at us, for we could not help it, we have no navy, no army, no government, and France swore she would knock us on the head if we did not pay her money. For patronising poets, oft, We've made us wooden wights, like Loft, " Bushnell's submarine explosions. There is also a pretty little piece of poetry called the Battle of the Kegs, written by Francis Hopkinson, Esq. of Philadelphia, preserved among the poems of Col. Humphreys, which will prove that subaqueous explosions are no trifling matters. No, gentlemen, if you do not wish to make a bishop Wilkins's tour, under some very disagreeable circumstances, you will be careful how you provoke us Americans. 64 We've made us wooden wights, like Loft. Mr. Capel Loft, Esq. to whom we have so happily alluded, is a gentleman, who commenced an authoring career, by building a superstructure on the foundation of Baron Gilbert's Law of Evidence. The book, when finished, somewhat resembled Nebuchadnezzar's image, part iron, and part clay; the latter material being supplied plentifully by the said Mr. Loft, Esq. Finding his legal abilities were not duly appreciated, either by the bench, bar, or the publick, our lawyer set up as a patron, annotator, and preface monger for poor poets, and has performed wonders by introducing to the world Mr. Robert Bloomfield, author of the Farmer's Boy, &c. and another gentleman, brother to the man who wrote that masterly production, whose christian name we have forgotten. The poem styled the Farmer's Boy, was, it seems, made to undergo Mr Capel Loft's criticism, modifications, &c. and a most fiery ordeal it must have passed, as is evident from its present purity. This sublime poet begins his lucid performance, by invoking a " blest spirit," which is a "rushing warmth," which is a "sweet inmate," and says And, in more instances than one he He'll take a man, suppose a cobbler, " Be thou my muse, and faithful still to me It would be very hazardous for any man, in my hearing, to say fudge! after reading or hearing such a sublime couplet. 65 And make his works a "Counter Blast." See king James's " puff collusive" on the staple commodity of Virginia. 66 Το "stick, good cobbler to your last." "Ne sutor ultra crepidam," long since said that old aristocrat Horace. But had he been a modern philosopher he would have known that wonderfully successful bards might exist, who were poetical, by intuition, without learning or inspiration. That a man, who was neither poeta fit nor poeta nascitur, might become a great favourite with an enlightened publick, in a scribbling capacity, merely because he was a cobbler, and set up for a poet, without serving a regular apprenticeship for the latter trade. But Horace as well as Homer aliquando dormitat. Should a man make us a most unconscionable pair of boots, resembling those so famous in romance of seven leagued dimensions, with stitches like cart ruts, and every thing about them disproportioned in that proportion, pro 4 We set some young apprentice hewers To make us "Critical Reviewers," vided we were told that the fabricator of these articles was a man of genius in obscurity, whose works must be brought into fashion, we should not hesitate to dance a minuet in them, at St. James's at his Majesty's birthnight ball, with the prettiest of the princesses royal; or convince us that the artist was bred a bricklayer, but felt himself propelled by certain cordwaining energies and propensities to relinquish the trowel for the last, we would foot it as aforesaid, in a pair of his shoes, though made so tight that they would torture Miss Cinderella or a Chinese lady. On such principles and actuated by such motives we will always eulogize Mr. Bloomfield's fashionable and fascinating performances. It is true that I have heard of some musty old gentlemen, who are called great poets, and who seemed to have made themselves masters of all the sciences of the ages in which they respectively lived, before they gave vent to their genuis, by publishing their poetry. But your Homers and your Miltons it is to be hoped will be put down, and your Bloomfields, and your Della Cruscas will occupy their niches in the temple of Fame. And there is one Gifford, of Baviad and Meviad memory, who might have stood as high as poet Bloomfield, as he was once as much perplexed with the res angusti domi, had it not been for his impertinent curiosity to become a man of extensive erudition. But I fancy that his poring over Latin and Greek has destroyed all that " rushing warmth which is the sine qua non of your genuine poet. But we hereby announce, for the benefit of those who wish to climb Parnassus without trouble, that we intend to overturn the mountain into the swamp below, by For Solomons did not intend them, But though their int'lects were obtuse, He could not tell, in common sailing, The thickest head, or I'm mistaken, methods similar to those by which we make our artificial earthquakes, that candidates for the wreathe of Apollo like the heroes of the Dunciad, may hereafter dive till they reach the pinnacle of the foundation of poetical eminence. 67 And therefore could not recommend them. These were much like the gentlemen who attempted to review Mr. Gifford's translation of Juvenal. But they were not precisely the same. They were guilty of nothing like forging a passage, in order to find fault with it, and in that particular, to say nothing further, were superiour to those reviewers. 68 Plain irony from downright railing. The Critical Reviewers could not possibly ascertain whether our former editions of Terrible Tractoration were for or against the tractors.* Owls, though reputed birds of Minerva, are not judges of spots in the sun. * See Critical Review of Terrible Tractoration for Nov. 1803, and Jan. 1804. 1 |