Lord Derby's lines on Miss Farren's portrait.” It is unfortunate that the only pseudonym in the list which it is of much interest to decipher, should still remain a mystery. It is to “Arley” that we owe the admittedly excellent ballad of “Wapping old Stairs,” which first appeared in the _World_ for November 29th, 1787, and shines, a solitary pearl, in the pages of the _British Album_. The Della Cruscan mania was at its height—“bedridden old women and girls at their samplers began to rave,”—when Gifford, in search of a quarry for a seasonable satire, came before the town with the _Baviad_. Of this poem I shall say but little, as it is better known than the writings which it satirised. It contains passages of a certain coarse and rank vigor not difficult of attainment by a student of Dryden and Juvenal. There is, in fact, a sort of Billingsgate raciness about the _Baviad_; and the notes, which are better written than the poem, contain much amusing matter. The imputation made against the Della Cruscan love-poetry of licentious warmth is, however, wholly absurd—as absurd as the charge made by Mathias, the author of _The Pursuits of Literature_, that Merry— Proves a designer works without design, And fathoms Nature with a Gallic line; a notion which arose merely from the fact that he identified himself with the anarchists of France, and wrote odes for the Revolution Society, thereby acquiring the name, as Madame d'Arblay tells us, of “Liberty Merry,” and no doubt also the reputation for free-thinking then associated with everything French. As for detecting any breach of decorum in the mannered and falsetto gallantries of insincere Reubens addressing imaginary Annas, the idea was only possible to a satirist who started with the determination to fling all the mud he could find; and, it must be added, when he flung it at irreproachable characters such as Mrs. Piozzi, he did but excite a certain revulsion of sympathy for the victims. Nor was this Gifford's only misrepresentation. He asserted, in order to bring in an apt quotation from Martial, that the interview which finally took place between Merry and Mrs. Cowley, produced mutual disgust. This is not the testimony of Della Crusca himself in the poem of _The Interview_. My song subsides, yet ere I close The lingering lay that feeds my woes, Ere yet forgotten Della Crusca runs To torrid gales or petrifying suns, Ere, bowed to earth, my latest feeling flies, And the big passion settles on my eyes; Oh, may this sacred sentiment be known, That my adoring heart is Anna's own! Such is the immortality of poetic attachments— For ever wilt thou love and she be fair.