Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons, Expert in science, more expert at puns? Shall these approach the Muse? ah, no! she flies, Even from the tempting ore of Seaton's prize; [lxviii] Though Printers condescend the press to soil With rhyme by HOARE, [146] and epic blank by HOYLE: [lxix] [147] Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist, Requires no sacred theme to bid us list. [148] Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass, Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass; 970 A foal well worthy of her ancient Dam, Whose Helicon [149] is duller than her Cam. [lxx] There CLARKE, [150] still striving piteously "to please," [lxxi] Forgetting doggerel leads not to degrees, A would-be satirist, a hired Buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low Lampoon, [151] Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine, Devotes to scandal his congenial mind; Himself a living libel on mankind. 980 Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race! [152] At once the boast of learning, and disgrace! So lost to Phoebus, that nor Hodgson's [153] verse Can make thee better, nor poor Hewson's [154] worse. [lxxii] But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave, The partial Muse delighted loves to lave; On her green banks a greener wreath she wove, [lxxiii] To crown the Bards that haunt her classic grove; Where RICHARDS wakes a genuine poet's fires, And modern Britons glory in their Sires. [155] [lxxiv] 990 For me, who, thus unasked, have dared to tell My country, what her sons should know too well, [lxxv] Zeal for her honour bade me here engage [lxxvi] The host of idiots that infest her age; No just applause her honoured name shall lose, As first in freedom, dearest to the Muse. Oh! would thy bards but emulate thy fame, And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name! What Athens was in science, Rome in power, What Tyre appeared in her meridian hour, 1000 'Tis thine at once, fair Albion! to have been-- Earth's chief Dictatress, Ocean's lovely Queen: [lxxvii] But Rome decayed, and Athens strewed the plain, And Tyre's proud piers lie shattered in the main; Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurled, [lxxviii] And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world. But let me cease, and dread Cassandra's fate, With warning ever scoffed at, till too late; To themes less lofty still my lay confine, And urge thy Bards to gain a name like thine. [156] 1010 Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest, The senate's oracles, the people's jest! Still hear thy motley orators dispense The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense, While CANNING'S colleagues hate him for his wit, And old dame PORTLAND [157] fills the place of PITT.