“Sweet haunt of solitude and rats, Mice, tuneful owls, and purring cats; Who, whilst we mortals sleep, the gloom pervade, And wish not for the sun’s all-seeing eye, Your mousing mysteries to spy; Blessed, like philosophers, amidst the shade; When Persecution, with an iron hand, Dared drive the moral-menders from the land, Called players,--friendly to the wandering crew, Thine eyes with tears surveyed the mighty wrong, Thine open arms received the mournful throng-- Kings without shirts, and queens with half a shoe. * * * * * Daughter of thatch, and stone, and mud, When I, no longer flesh and blood, Shall join of lyric bards some half-a-dozen; Meed of high worth, and, midst th’ Elysian plains, To Horace and Alcæus read my strains, Anacreon, Sappho, and my great cousin.[4] On thee shall rising generations stare, That come to Kingsbridge or to Dodbrooke fair: Like Alexander, shall they every one, Heave the deep sigh, and say, ‘Since Peter’s gone, With reverence let us look upon his barn.’” You will see by these last few lines that “Peter” had a good conceit of himself, and I must confess that I like him all the more for it. The same spirit flows through all his works in artless (or is it artful) manner; certainly it spurred his enemies (and they were many) to unseemly exhibitions of wrath in their retaliatory versicles, in which they could by no means match the flowing metre and sarcasm of Dr. Wolcot’s spiteful muse. Here is a specimen of the attacks upon him, which derives its point from his profession--the cheapness of the gibe is obvious:-- “I wish thou hadst more serious work,[5] As ’Pothecary to the Turk, How wouldst thou sweep the Mussulmans away: Not Janizaries breathing blood and ruin, And daily mischief and rebellion brewing, Not plagues, nor bowstring, nor a bloody battle Would kill so fast this unbelieving Cattle, As doses--mixt in Doctor Pindar’s way.” This versifier was a champion of George III., whom Wolcot was never weary of satirising for his meanness and parsimony and general dunderheadedness. That monarch was an excellent butt into which to fire arrows of stinging satire; in especial, his eccentric habit of incessantly repeating his words is delightfully taken advantage of, as, for example, in that extremely witty description of “A Royal Visit to Whitbread’s Brewery”-- “Grains, grains, said majesty, to fill their crops; Grains, grains!--that comes from hops-- Yes, hops, hops, hops.” John Wolcot was in early life apprenticed to his uncle, an apothecary of Fowey. After accompanying Sir William Trelawney to Jamaica, as physician, he took holy orders, and was presented to a living in the island.