“But, ah! Parmenio, ’mongst the sons of men, This world will never see his like again; The greatest bard that ever breath’d is dead! Gen’ral Parmenio, what think you?” “Indeed ’tis true, my liege, ’tis very true,” Parmenio cry’d, and, sighing, shook his head. Then from his pocket took a knife so nice, With which he chipp’d his cheese and onions, And from a rafter cut a handsome slice, To make rare toothpicks for the Macedonians; Just like the toothpicks which we see At Stratford, made from Shakespear’s mulb’ry tree. What pity that the squire and knight Knew not to prophesy as well as fight; Then had they known the future men of metre: Then had the gen’ral and the monarch spy’d In fate’s fair book, our nation’s equal pride, That very Pindar’s cousin Peter! Daughter of thatch, and stone, and mud, When I, no longer flesh and blood, Shall join the 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 old cousin; On thee shall rising generations stare, That come to Kingsbridge and to Dodbrook fair, For such thy history and mine shall learn; Like Alexander shall they ev’ry one Heave a deep sigh, and say, since Peter’s gone, With rev’rence let us look upon his Barn. His allusions to Pindar the Greater make one fear that he has paid an ill compliment to his old friends, and that in his choice of a _nom de plume_ he has allowed, as in many other instances, his merciless satire to overcome his evenness of judgment. Like his namesake, he turned from the country to find his laurels in the town, and there the parallel ends. It is not true that the people of South Devon, who singularly combine agricultural skill with good seamanship, so that they handle equally well the plough and the oar, are open to any implication of special dulness. There is little in common between the two Pindars, the ancient and the modern. Peter displayed great skill of a kind in his versification, but no one can say it was to any extent truly lyrical. We cannot imagine the people singing his productions. They were popular, readable, pungent, savoury (too much so by a long way), but certainly not lyrical, for he had not the singer’s heart or the singer’s sweetness. Beyond the attraction of “apt alliteration’s artful aid,” we can see no great reason why he should have gone so far as Thebes in 540 B.C. to appropriate the name of that ancient singer of triumphal hymns for classic warriors.