* * * * * Yet, chance, in that sequester’d spot is laid Some heart well fram’d for ministerial hire, Hands that for Treasury job had well been paid, Or wak’d to fame some Admiralty lyre[25]. But Treasury to their eyes the ample page, Rich with a people’s spoil, did ne’er unrol; Some puny job must fire their noble rage, And ope the loyal current of their soul. Full many a Castlereagh, with hands yet clean, The hinder benches on his side may bear, Full many a sad Fitzgerald blush unseen, And waste his diffidence on desert air. Their names, their numbers, to the public gaze, May show as fair as some of nobler note, And many a holy hint Charles Long conveys, To teach the rustic senator to vote. For he (division’s stern demand to meet), His custom’d place and company resign’d, Oft leaves the precincts of his Treasury seat, To coax some longing lingering lout behind. On helps like these each pension’d soul relies, Such aid each new-rais’d salary requires, Though from the press the voice of Croker[26] cries, Though in the Courier live his wonted fires. And thou who, mindful of that honour’d scribe, Dost for a salary like Croker’s wait, If, chance, by kindred calculation led, Of his four thousand pounds you ask the fate. Haply some Admiralty Clerk may say, “Oft have we seen him, at the morning’s call, Brushing, with hasty step, on quarter day, To meet his salary near fair Whitehall. “Then, at the lower end of yonder Board, He’d hold his vain fantastic head so high, You’d think the Regent had made _him_ first Lord, And put his duller master, Melville, by. “Oft to the Courier Office, as in spite, Muttering half-form’d, half-witted squibs, he’d rove, Now all the Quarterly’s worst trash indite, Now woo th’unwilling Grub Street Muse to love. “One eve we miss’d him on his custom’d round, Nor at the Board, nor at the House, was he; Nor ’mid the Courier’s devils was he found, Nor was he scribbling for the Quarterly. “The next, to condign doom in due debate, His annual thousands came, a sad display! Approach and read, where all may read, their fate, In all the papers of the following day.” EPITAPH. Here rests his pension, strangled in its birth, His name to merit, as to praise, unknown; Yet Fortune frown’d not on his little worth, For Castlereagh had mark’d him for his own. Large was his impudence, nor small his gains, For well such talent did its master grace; He gave the Court, a sorry gift, his brains; The Court gave him, ’twas all he wished, a place. No farther seek his merit to disclose, Or draw the annual increase to his pelf; Hopeless alike his fame and pence repose, Lost to the Court, the office, and himself. From _The New Tory Guide_. London. J. Ridgway, 1819.