No. III.-A POSTHUMOUS WORK OF S. JOHN

SON.

AN ODE. APRIL 15. 1786.

BY GEORGE COLMAN, ESQ.

ST. Paul's deep bell, from stately tow'r,
Had sounded once and twice the hour,
Blue burnt the midnight taper;
Hags their dark spells o'er cauldron brew'd,
While Sons of Ink their work pursu❜d,
Printing the Morning Paper.

Say, Herald, Chronicle, or Post,

Which then beheld great JOHNSON'S Ghost,
Grim, horrible, and squalid?

Compositors their letters dropt,

Pressmen their groaning engine stopt,
And Devils all grew pallid.

Enough! the Spectre cried; Enough!
No more of your fugacious stuff,
Trite Anecdotes and Stories;

Rude Martyrs of SAM. JOHNSON's name,
You rob him of his honest fame,

First in the futile tribe is seen
TOM TYERS in the Magazine,
That teazer of Apollo!

With goose-quill he, like desperate knife,
Slices, as Vauxhall beef, my life,

And calls the town to swallow.

The cry once up, the Dogs of News,
Who hunt for paragraphs the stews,
Yelp out JOHNSONIANA !

Their nauseous praise but moves my bile,
Like Tartar, Carduus, Camomile,
Or Ipecacuanha.

Next BOSWELL comes (for 't was my lot
To find at last one honest Scot)

With constitutional vivacity;

Yet garrulous, he tells too much,
On fancied failings prone to touch,
With sedulous loquacity.

At length

Job's patience it would tireBrew'd on my lees, comes THRALE's Entire,

Straining to draw my picture;

For She a common-place-book kept,
JOHNSON at Streatham dined and slept,
And who shall contradict her?

THRALE, lost 'mongst Fidlers and Sopranos, With them play Fortes and Pianos,

Adagio and Allegro !

I lov'd THRALE'S widow and THRALE's wife;

But now, believe, to write my life
I'd rather trust my Negro. (1)

1 His black servant.

I gave the Public works of merit,

Written with vigour, fraught with spirit;
Applause crown'd all my labours:
But thy delusive pages speak

My palsied pow'rs, exhausted, weak,

The scoff of friends and neighbours.

They speak me insolent and rude,
Light, trivial, puerile, and crude,

The child of Pride and Vanity;
Poor Tuscan like Improvisation
Is but of English sense castration,
And infantine inanity.

Such idle rhymes, like Sybil's leaves,
Kindly the scatt'ring wind receives;
The gath'rer proves a scorner.
But hold! I see the coming day!

No. IV. A POETICAL AND CONGRATULATORY
EPISTLE TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
On his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with the celebrated

Doctor Johnson;

BY PETER PINDAR, Esq. ()

— Τρώεσσιν ἐβούλετο κυδος ὀξέξαι.

HOMER.

O BOSWELL, Bozzy, Bruce, whate'er thy name,
Thou mighty shark for anecdote and fame;
Thou jackall, leading lion Johnson forth,
To eat M Pherson 'midst his native North;

[(1) Dr. Wolcot, published in 1787.]

To frighten grave professors with his roar,
And shake the Hebrides from shore to shore-
All hail! At length, ambitious Thane, thy rage,
To give one spark to Fame's bespangled page,
Is amply gratified — a thousand eyes

Survey thy books with rapture and surprise!

Loud, of thy Tour, a thousand tongues have spoken,
And wondered that thy bones were never broken!

Triumphant thou through Time's vast gulf shalt sail, The pilot of our literary whale ;

Close to the classic Rambler shalt thou cling,

Close as a supple courtier to a king!

Fate shall not shake thee off, with all its power,

Stuck, like a bat to some old ivied tower.

Nay, though thy Johnson ne'er had blessed thy eyes,
Paoli's deeds had raised thee to the skies!
Yes! his broad wing had raised thee (no bad hack)
A tom-tit, twittering on an eagle's back.

Thou, curious scrapmonger, shalt live in song,
When death hath still'd the rattle of thy tongue;
Even future babes to lisp thy name shall learn,
And Bozzy join with Wood, and Tommy Hearn,
Who drove the spiders from much prose and rhyme,
And snatch'd old stories from the jaws of time.

Sweet is thy page, I ween, that doth recite,
How thou and Johnson, arm in arm, one night,

Marched through fair Edinburgh's Pactolian showers,
Which Cloacina bountifully pours;

Those gracious showers, that, fraught with fragrance, flow,

And gild, like gingerbread, the world below.

How sweetly grumbled, too, was Sam's remark,

"I smell you, master Bozzy, in the dark!"

Alas! historians are confounded dull,
A dim Boeotia reigns in every skull;

Mere beasts of burden, broken-winded, slow,

Heavy as dromedaries, on they go,

Whilst thou, a Will-o'-wisp, art here, art there,
Wild darting coruscations every where.

What tasteless mouth can gape, what eye can close,
What head can nod, o'er thy enlivening prose?
To others' works, the works of thy inditing
Are downright diamonds, to the eyes of whiting.
Think not I flatter thee, my flippant friend;
For well I know, that flattery would offend :
Yet honest praise, I'm sure, thou wouldst not shun,
Born with a stomach to digest a tun!

Who can refuse a smile, that reads thy page,
Where surly Sam, inflamed with Tory rage,

Nassau bescoundrels, and with anger big,

Swears, Whigs are rogues, and every rogue a Whig?
Who will not, too, thy pen's minutiæ bless,
That gives posterity the Rambler's dress?
Methinks I view his full, plain suit of brown,

The large grey bushy wig, that graced his crown;
Black worsted stockings, little silver buckles;
And shirt, that had no ruffles for his knuckles.
I mark the brown great-coat of cloth he wore,
That two huge Patagonian pockets bore,
Which Patagonians (wondrous to unfold!)
Would fairly both his Dictionaries hold.
I see the Rambler on a large bay mare,
Just like a Centaur, every danger dare;
On a full gallop dash the yielding wind;
The colt and Bozzy scampering close behind.

Of Lady Lochbuy with what glee we read, Who offer'd Sam, for breakfast, cold sheep's head; Who, press'd and worried by this dame so civil, Wished the sheep's head, and woman's at the devil.