_I hear some one say "Murrain take him, the ape!" And so Murrain shall, in a bookseller's shape; An evil-eyed elf, in a down-looking flurry, Who'd fain be a coxcomb, and calls himself_ Murray. _Adorn thou his door, like the sign of the Shoe, For court-understrappers to congregate to; For_ Southey _to come, in his dearth of invention, And eat his own words for mock-praise and a pension; For_ Croker _to lurk with his spider-like limb in, And stock his lean bag with waylaying the women; And Jove only knows for what creatures beside To shelter their envy and dust-liking pride, And feed on corruption, like bats, who at nights, In the dark take their shuffles, which they call then flights; Be these the court-critics and vamp a Review. And by a poor figure, and therefore a true, For it suits with thy nature, both shoe-like and slaughterly Be its hue leathern, and title the_ Quarterly, _Much misconduct, and see that the others Misdeem, and misconstrue, like miscreant brothers; Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate, Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate, Misinform, misconjecture, misargue; in short, Miss all that is good, that ye miss not the Court_. * * * * * _And finally, thou, my old soul of the tritical, Noting, translating, high slavish, hot critical, Quarterly-scutcheon'd, great heir to each dunce, Be Tibbald, Cook, Arnall, and Dennis at once_ At the end, Mercury dooms the ugly boot to take the semblance of a man, and the satire closes with its painful metamorphosis into Gifford. The poem is not without cleverness, but it is chiefly remarkable for a savage tone which is not, we think, repeated elsewhere throughout the writings of Hunt. The allusions to Gifford's relations, nearly half a century earlier, to that Earl Grosvenor who first rescued him from poverty, the well-deserved scorn of his intolerable sneers at Perdita Robinson's crutches: _Hate Woman, thou block in the path of fair feet; If Fate want a hand to distress them, thine be it; When the Great, and their flourishing vices, are mention'd Say people "impute" 'em, and show thou art pension'd; But meet with a Prince's old mistress_ discarded, _And_ then _let the world see how vice is rewarded_-- the indications of the satirist's acquaintance with the private life of his victim, all these must have stung the editor of the _Quarterly_ to the quick, and are very little in Hunt's usual manner, though he had examples for them in Peter Pindar and others. There is a very early allusion to "Mr. Keats and Mr. Shelley," where, "calm, up above thee, they soar and they shine." This was written immediately after the review of _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_.