ROBERT H. ROSE is the author of the "Sketches in Verse," published in 1810, nearly all of which had previously appeared in the _Port Folio_, where the "Sketches" were termed "a kind of chalk drawings." One of them, "To a Market Street Gutter," was a parody of the "Ode to the Raritan," and was the cause of John Davis writing the "Pursuits of Philadelphia Literature".[14] [14] There is no mention of Robert Rose in Duyckinck, or Allibone, in Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Biography, or in the admirable Stedman-Hutchinson Library of American Literature. The _Port Folio_ of May, 1816 (page 361), has a frontispiece engraving of "Silver Lake," the seat of Robert Rose, in Susquehanna County, on the New York line. ODE TO A MARKET STREET GUTTER. _A Specimen of Local Description._ O sweetest Gutter! though a clown, I love to see thee running down; Or mark thee stop awhile, then free From ice, jog on again, like me; Or like the lasses whom I meet, Who, sauntering, stray along the street, As if they had nowhere to go! At times, so rapid is thy flow, That did the cits not wish in vain Thou wouldst be in the pumps again, But like a pig, whose fates deny To find again his wonted sty, You turn, and stop, and run, and turn, Yet ne'er shall find your "native urn." How oft has rolled down thy stream Things which in song not well would seem, Ere scavengers their scrapers plied To drag manure from out thy tide, Or hydrants bade thy scanty rill Desert its banks and cellars fill. Last Thursday morn, so very cold, A morn _not_ better felt than told, Then first in all its bright array, Did I thy "frozen form" survey; And, goodness! what a great big steeple! What sights of houses! and such people!! And then I thought, did I not stutter, But verse could, like _some poets_, utter, How much I'd praise thee, sweetest Gutter! After the publication of this parody John Davis printed "The Philadelphia Pursuits of Literature. By Juvenal Junius of New Jersey. Phila.: John Davis, 1805." "Then Muses aid me! and I'll fain review The Philadelphia lounging scribbling crew."