Or when some doubtful bantling of your brain, Conceived in pleasure but achieved with pain, A bit of satire, or a play perchance, A fresh, warm epic, or new-laid romance, Receives from all to whom your work you show Civil endurance, or a faint 'so so;' When men of taste, men always made of ice, Cool your gay fancies with _a friend's advice_, And prudent fathers, yawning as you read, Knit the sage lips, and wag the pregnant head, And bid you stick to your molasses tierces, And leave sweet ladies to concoct sweet verses: How oft your MURRAY, with a keener eye, Detects the gems that mid your rubbish lie; Instructs you where to alter, where to blot, And how to darn and patch your faulty plot; Then bravely buys, and gives you to the town In duodecimo, for half a crown. And oh! how oft when some dyspeptic swain Pours forth his agonies in sickly strain, Mistaking, in the pangs that through him dart, A wretched liver for a breaking heart; And prates of passions that he never felt, And sweats away in vain attempts to melt; Or takes to brandy, and converts his verse, From sad to savage, nay, begins to curse, And raves of Nemesis and hate and hell, And smothered woes that in his bosom swell; When Newstead is the name his fancy gives The snug dominion where he cheaply lives, And aping still th' aristocratic bard, With 'Crede Jenkins' graved upon his card, When with his trash he hurries to the press, Crying 'O print me! print me!' in distress, Some bookseller, perhaps, most kindly cruel, Uses the dainty manuscript for fuel. Ah! Ned, hadst thou, when once with rhyme opprest, Found such a friend, (pray pardon me the jest,) Hadst thou but been as friendly to thyself, Thy Poems never had adorned thy shelf. But all is ended now! John's work is o'er; He praises, pays, and publishes no more. Henceforth no volume, save the Book of fate, Shall bear for him an interest small or great: And if in heaven his literary soul Walk the pure pavement where the planets roll, Few old acquaintances will greet him there, Amid the radiant light and balmy air; Since few of all who wrote or sang for him Shall join the anthem of the seraphim. Yet there might Fancy, in a mood profane, Behold him listening each celestial strain, Catching the cadences that sweetly fall, Wond'ring if such would sell, below, at all, And _calculating_, as they say on earth, How much those heavenly hymns would there be worth.