Than close upon the rear of each,
Nous flew to hear his gracious speech;
The consequent address he noted,

What patriot Gods th' amendment voted,
What Goddess made Olympus' portal
Eccho the din of lungs immortal.

Jove's parliament but ill accords

With ours,

-we boast an House of Lords,

Who, to assist in their decisions

Admit no lady politicians,

Though their good lordships all connive at

Ladies who legislate in private:

But in the regions over-head

Divinities are better bred:

Heav'n's courtesy the petticoat
Admits in parliament to vote,
Bills to prefer, and in long speeches
Challenge pre-eminence of breeches.
From stock of male and female orator,
Here Nous his budget fill'd memoritèr;
Then in a trice to earth he stole,
Freighted with news for Jobbernol,
His sleeping partner, a muckworm, a
Dull dog, who stuck to Terra Firma,

And made it his grand occupation
To give the tidings circulation.
Hence Homer, Hesiod, and Lucian
Treat us with such divine confusion,
While Gods above and Gods below
In hotbed verse like mushrooms grow:
Cupids display their bows and quivers,
And Naiads, flound'ring in the rivers,
Braid their dank locks with cress and sedges;
And Dryads peer through hawthorn hedges.

'Neath branching elms in shady vales
Lascivious Satyrs whisk their tails;
Fauns breakfast upon hips and haws,
And Woodnymphs make with Pan faux pas,
Here Mermaids press their liquid pillows,
And sing to sleep the growling billows;

Or make the ravish'd whales they chaunt to
In the churn'd ocean dance coranto.
With canzonettas and capricci's
Siren's catch dilettanti fishes;

With melting voice and wily looks
Allure john-dories to their hooks:
And scate, and sentimental sturgeon,
To list their dulcet song emerging;

Bid pilchards and elastic grigs

Frisk to Scotch reels and Irish jigs;
Crabs caper to melodious rhyme,

And lobsters with their tails beat time;
Eels circumvolving quit their holes

To shew they've music in their souls;
Cod-fish, with gills expanded wide,
In cadence to the kettle glide,

And soals come leaping to be fried.
And, as the strain harmonious swells,
Enamour'd oysters ope their shells,

To please each chauntress fair and fickle;
Who some would eat and some would pickle.—-

The Heav'n taught Bards of whom I speak

When time was young, in crabbed Greek,
Th' achievements of celestial legions

Detail'd among these lower regions.

The strains which rais'd Them to renown,
Into plain English melted down,

Make of each school-boy rhetorician

A prodigy of erudition;

Who manufactures prose too good

To be endur'd or understood,

And verse that emulates thy lay,

Jack Sprat! or thine, Jack Holliday!*

* The narrow compass of this single line introduces to the reader two Literary Diamonds of the first water brought in contact, cheek by jowl, like the two kings of Brentford smelling to one nosegay, videlicet:

JACK SPRAT, Esq. and JACK HOLLIDAY, Esq.

To the irreparable loss of the republic of letters the multitudinous and sublime poetical effusions of the FIRST of these distinguished personages, Jack Sprat, Esq. have all disappeared in the lapse of centuries, except the Lay here alluded to, whose justly merited popularity is, however, such that it may be said to be as familiar to the ear of an Englishman, and nearly as old an acquaintance, as his alphabet. It will suffice, therefore, to insert a moiety of it; the corresponding member and climax of the strophe (which unites the true Grecian simplicity with the acumen of the modern epigrammatist) will be supplied by the reader's recollection.

"JACK SPRAT

"Had a Cat

"Had but one ear;"

&c. &c. &c.

But the known liberality of the SECOND of these eminent characters, the inspired Conveyancer, Bard, and Historian of the present day, Jack Holliday, Esq. has afforded us ample scope for our admiration in his recent and invaluable poem, "THE "BRITISH OAK;" disporting myself amid the pleasurable parterre of whose luminous poesie, I have cull'd a few, from amongst innumerous blossoms of rival beauty and fragrance, for the improvement and delectation of persons of true classical taste; who are, however, admonished to provide themselves with green spectacles, lest their optic nerves should suffer

In courts, cathedrals, armies, navies,

A blockhead 's now a

rara avis:"

from excess of light in encountering this redundant blaze of poetical excellencies.

"Lenient balm of Boscobel-Venerable forms sipping scented "gales-Kings dissolving Queens-Disguised tythe-pigs sleep"ing in the snow-Muscular oaks bleeding for their country"Sheep breathing transparent pearly shade-Listening oaks "standing impressive-Confusion rising from ashes like a "Phoenix-Lord Nelson's wide spreading wings - Majestic "meeting of courtly oaks-Undulating hills-Tender plants, "with auburn locks and sparkling eyes-Adopted temples "humbly towering-Heroes polished by Mrs. Damer-Docile "anarchists going to Pomona-Oaks winging Io Pœans through "6 a breeze-Mother Church winning sweepstakes," &c. &c. &c. See pages 3, 4, 5, 10, 13, 34, 24, 26, 17, 32, 33, 11, 8, of The British Oak. 4to. Cadel, 1800.

So overpowering is the radiance of our illuminated British Oak as, in a manner, to obumbrate and eclipse the diminutive splendour of Jack the First, or Jack Sprat, who seems indeed, in the comparison, to dwindle to the dimensions of a Parnassian acorn; while the laurel already interweaves its foliage with the congenial curl of our Conveyancer's perriwig, and derives fresh verdure from the huge celebrity of his Life of Earl Mansfield.

Yet how imperiously soever our predilection may incline towards Jack the Second, or Jack Holliday, impartiality demands that the world should no longer be kept in the dark respecting the real extent of the merits and exertions of Jack the First, or Jack Sprat; who, upon more serious and intense investigation, appears (as Jack the second gravely advertises of himself, Morning Chronicle and Times, Dec.13,1800)," to shine with no less lustre as a biographer than as a poet :" he being