The mob are beasts, exclaims the Knight of Daggers:
What creature's he that's troubled with the staggers?

When Billy found he scarce could stand,
"Help, help!" he cried, and stretched his hand,
To faithful Henry calling:

Quoth Hal, "My friend, I'm sorry for❜t;

"Tis not my practice to support

A minister that's falling."

"Who's up ?" inquired Burke of a friend at the door:

"Oh! no one," says Paddy; "though Pitt's on the floor."

CHAP. XVIII.

PUBLICATION

OF THE

PHOENISSE. OBSERVATIONS ON THE NOTES TO

THE PLAY. REVIEW OF PYBUS'S SOVEREIGN IN THE MONTHLY
REVIEW."
RHYMES ON PYBUS AND OTHERS. GREEK TRANSLATION
NURSERY RHYME. PORSON RECEIVES A LETTER AND SOME

OF A

BOOKS FROM GAIL.-A SECOND LETTER INTIMATING THAT THE FIRST HAS NOT BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED.

IN 1799 came out the Phoenissæ. In the notes to this play Porson abstains from any allusions to Wakefield or Hermann, with the exception of one slight touch on Wakefield, and two animadversions on the lovers of anapæsts. The censure of Wakefield, whom he does not name, is given on ver. 1521, for having unadvisedly altered τόνδε λόγον to τούσδε λόγους, in the 548th verse of the Alcestis, on the faith of an unsound passage Hesychius.

in

On ver. 1354, which, in Aldus's edition, commences with Στείχοντος, ὃς ἡμίν, but in all the manuscripts ΣTEίXOVTOS OS Tav, he exclaims, "How savagely would the patrons of anapasts have exulted over their enemies, if all the manuscripts had agreed with the edition of Aldus, or if the edition of Aldus had been the only surviving copy of the Phonissa!" On ver. 1371, which ends with τέρμον Ἰοκάστη, βίου, but which Grotius had edited τέρμ' Ιοκάστη, τοῦ βίου, he observes, “ If any one prefer Grotius's reading, I shall utter no heavier imprecation on him than that he may read in Orest. 590, Ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐξέπνευσε ̓Αγαμέμνων τὸν βίον.”

In 1800 nothing is known, we believe, to have been given to the public from the pen of Porson, except a review of Pybus's "Sovereign," a poem addressed to the Emperor of Russia. Mr. Kidd calls this "a truly neat specimen of playful criticism," and says that when Porson first opened the Laureate's splendid volume, he exclaimed, in the hearing of several friends,

66

I sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket-full of rye,'
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie :

When the pie was open'd

The birds began to sing:

And was not this a dainty dish
To set before a king?

The review is as follows. It appeared in the Monthly Review" for December 1800.

The Sovereign. Addressed to His Imperial Majesty
PAUL, Emperor of all the Russias. By CHARLES
SMALL PYBUS, M.P., one of the Lords Commis-
sioners of the Treasury. Folio, pp. 60. Price

17. 18., or, with a Portrait, 17. 11s. 6d. White, 1800.

The inventive genius of modern times appears with peculiar lustre in that new species of the sublime, of which the magnificent poem before us is an astonishing example. The gigantic types, the folio wove paper, and the awe-inspiring portrait, like the

Vultus instantis tyranni,

have superseded the old rules of Longinus, and have forced admiration from the appalled beholder, even before he reads. Mr. Pybus is certainly "as tall a poet of his hands" as any wight that has issued from the press within our memory; and he may vie for title-page, print, and margin, with the first of

our bards. When, however, we have bestowed this praise on his work, we have exhausted every source of panegyric; for his verses are formed only to be viewed, not to be perused; his poetry is so like a picture, according to the Horatian precept, that it will not bear the near approach of the eye.

The happy alliteration resulting from the title, A Poem to Paul by the poet Pybus, reminds us of the Latin work entitled Pugna Porcorum, per Publium Porcium, Poetam. Though this work is addressed to the Emperor Paul, it is, with inimitable dexterity, dedicated to our own king. This is a flight of courtly wit, which perhaps will never again be attempted; and the amazing resemblance which Mr. Pybus has asserted between the illustrious personages, to one of whom he addresses his address to the other, will be ranked by posterity among the most unexpected discoveries of the present age.

To compress the shining lines of Mr. Pybus into our narrow and unadorned pages, is, like translating Virgil, to lose all the beauty of the original. But we shall endeavour to gratify our friends in the country with a specimen of this state-performance, in the address to Peter I. and his ill-fated descendant:

"Illustrious shade! Oh! could thy soul infuse
Its faint resemblance in the anxious Muse,
Then, in sublimer song, her voice should raise
Strains less unequal to our hero's praise.
But what at last avails the poet's fire?
Vain are his honours, and his boasted lyre;
Vain is the laurel that adorns his brow;
Vain are his numbers; nor can all bestow,
But from their deathless theme alone receive,
The fame not e'en Mæonides could give.
Since then establish'd glory thus defies
The
power of poesy that never dies,
How much more vain are offerings alone,
Composed of perishable brass and stone,
Though quarries were consumed and millions spent,

When the whole empire forms one monument.

"And thou, ill-fated prince, whom discord gave
An early victim to misfortune's grave,

Whate'er thy frailties were (and who has none?),
Amply thy greater virtues shall atone,
Whose heralds on the wings of mercy cross'd
The trackless deserts of Siberian frost.
Thee coward cruelty in horrors dight,
And mean suspicion that avoids the light,
And persecution with tormenting flame,
Shall ever execrate, and hate thy name;
While freedom's gratitude and pity's tear
Shall drop a tribute on thy mournful bier.
But Heaven will'd! Nor let thy realms deplore
The mix'd event, that left one Peter more."

This other Peter, it seems, means the late empress; who, by a poetical licence, which can only be derived from royal authority, is here invested with the name of her husband. Perhaps Mr. Pybus had been thinking of a passage in Shakspeare:

"And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter."

In truth, the author seems liable to mistakes of this kind; for we observe that some of his couplets terminate with words which have not even so much affinity with each other as that which subsisted between Peter and Catharine:

"Rhymes, like Scotch cousins, in such order placed,
The first scarce claims acquaintance with the last."

Considered in its political relations, Mr. Pybus's work is not less unfortunate than in its literary station. After the high and splendid hopes of curbing France, which are held out in the poem, comes a dolorous prose epilogue, to inform us that the glory of Europe is blasted, and that the Emperor has withdrawn his troops! Subsequent occurrences have lamentably deepened the gloom of this disappointment; and we sincerely condole with Mr. Pybus on the ungracious return which this northern Mecænas has made to the British treasury, both for its solid pudding and its empty praise.