Learning, with many a stroke, would hit
The pert vivacity of Wit;

And Wit threw all his keenest satire
On Learning's slow, pedantic nature.
It happen'd once when Jove had made
A feast in Ida's holy shade,

And all the gods, whose heads could bear it,
Had emptied each a flask of claret;
Wit, who from his celestial liquor
Wagg'd his free tongue a little quicker,
Began, with many a bitter scoff,

To play his brother Learning off;
Ask'd him if yet his pains and care
Had learnt to make the circle square?

If all his visionary ravings

Cou'd weave brocade from walnut shavings?
If his mechanic skill cou'd catch
Perpetual motion in a watch?
Or forge a pendulum endued
With power to tell the longitude?
Learning had much ado to sit,
And hear the petulance of Wit:
A ghastly paleness spread his look,

His nerves with quick convulsions shook :
At length, in accents loud and high,
Vesuvius flaming in his eye,

He burst" And dar'st thou, wayward chit!
Thou ideot god of ideot Wit!

Untaught as yet to know thy letters,
Affront, thou insolent! thy betters?
Here, puppy! with this penny get
A horn-book, or an alphabet;
And see if that licentious eye
Can tell a great A from an I?
Throw but another jest on me,
I'll lay thee, miscreant! on my knee,
And print such welks thy naked seat on,
As never truant felt at Eton."

Wit, with resentment raving wild,
Thus call'd an ideot and a child,
Without preambles or excuses,
Seiz'd upon Mercury's caduceus,

And with such force the weapon throws,
It flatted half his rival's nose:
While he, Minerva's boast and care,
Pluck'd a large bodkin from her hair,
And aim'd the steely pointed dart
With such dexterity of art,

That, had not beauty's lovely queen,
Fair Venus, spread her fan between,
And taught the flying death to fix
Guiltless among the iv'ry sticks,
Wit's future triumphs had been o'er,
And Europe heard his name no more.
Jove, who had no supreme delight in
Domestic brawls, or civil fighting,
Since first he heard the nuptial tune flow
So sweetly from the tongue of Juno,
Vex'd that these two illiberal guests
Should dare to violate his feasts,
In a tremendous fit of choler,
Seiz'd both their worships by the collar,
And, minding not their meek submitting,
Kick'd them from Ida down to Britain.
Poor Learning had the luck to fall
Plump in the area of Clare-hall,
Just as old Wilcox, from a slope,
Was gazing through his telescope,
To find a comet whose bright tail is
Eccentric from the time of Thales.
VOL XIV.

Pleas'd with his scientific look,
He sent him first to Sam the cook;
And having fill'd his empty belly
With mutton broth and meagre jelly,
Gave him a robe of sleek prunella,
And very wisely made him fellow.

Wit, as his destiny decrees,
Dropp'd in the court of Common-Pleas,
Upon a truss of briefs and bills,
And took the shape of justice Willes:
But soon observing round the columns
Reports in half a thousand volumes;
And, finding all those earth-worm souls
Who hold th' Exchequer, or the Rolls,
He left the law, and all its drudges,
With curses, to my lords the judges,
Call'd for a coach, and went to dwell
At Robin Dodsley's in Pall-Mall.

'Twas right-for now where'er he came
He busied all the tongues of Fame;
Was welcome to the festal board,
And had his footman, and his lord;
Would often visit in a chair
The noble Stanhope in May-fair;
Or dine, when business would permit,
With that great statesman William Pitt.
'Tis said too he was sometimes seen
On Garrick's visionary scene;
But Garrick, who prefers a guinea
To all the eloquence of Pliny,
Observing this unlucky railer
Was neither mechanist nor tailor;
That half the audience of the day
Came not to hear, but see, a play;
That many a 'squire, and many a cit,
Were pleas'd with any thing but Wit;
Shut out, with much indecent rage,
The genius of the comic stage,
And open'd his theatric inn
To Scaramouch and Harlequin.

Learning would sometimes drop his gown,
And take a winter-jaunt to town;
Often call'd in at Hitch's shop,
And din'd at Dolly's on a chop;
On Thursday met the grave resort
Of spider merchants in Crane-court,
To rack a cockle, or to see
The nice dissection of a flea:
But having never chane'd to wear

A bag-wig or a solitaire,

And dressing in a kersey, thicker
Than that which clothes a Cornish vicar,
He seldom had the luck to cat
In Berkeley Square, or Grosvenor Street.
'Twas written in the book of Fate,
These rivals should each other hate;
No wonder then that each proud imp was
As wayward here as on Olympus.
Wit look'd on Learning, as he grew great,
Just as a felon looks on Newgate:
While Learning, who could never hide
His haughty academic pride,
Had such a keen contempt for Wit,
He call'd him nothing but the chit;
And, if he met him at noon-day,
Would turn his face another way.

However, on some festal nights

By chance they both dropp'd in at White's
With learned lords, and noble bards,
Who had no appetite for cards,

S

And could decide whene'er they met
Momentous truths without a bet.
Wit with vivacity of tongue
First led th' admiring ear along;
His fancy active, wild, and free as
Conception when she breeds ideas,
Flew o'er each undiscover'd part
Of Nature, and the worlds of art,
And brought with such a nice decorum
A group of images before him,
So genuine, yet so uncommon,
With such a glow of tints upon 'em,
That all was spirit, force, and sense,
Loose as the zone of negligence,
Simple as Truth's fair handmaid, Nature,
And deadly as the sting of satire.
Dejected Learning sat oppress'd;
Around him flew the taunt and jest:
Whatever just remarks he made,
Or to demonstrate, or persuade,
Wit, by some sly malicious comment,
Took off, or routed in a moment.
However, when a pause appear'd,
And sober reason could be heard,
He then in all his thunder rises,
Strips off his rival's thin disguises;
Shows where his misconceiving sense
Led to a groundless consequence,
Mistook an errour for a wonder,
A demonstration for a blunder,
Or, having a delusive scent got,
Affirm'd the very thing he meant not.

Yet, after all, since mirth and drinking
Are priz'd above sedater thinking,
Though Learning got a world of praise,
And added splendour to his bays,
Their lordships, frighten'd at th' expense
Of list'ning to exalted sense,

And deeming that the taint of knowledge
Would make the coffee-house a college,
Determin'd, in a full committee,

That man's great end was to be witty:
And therefore order'd, every soul,
Wit should be enter'd on the roll,
And be allow'd, to raise his vein,
A weekly present of champaigne;
That if proud Learning should presume
To set his foot within the room,
Arthur should show him to the door,
And bid the pedant come no more,
Learning, thus kick'd from ev'ry palace,
And left a victim to the gallows,
Began to see that skill in letters

Would ne'er advance him with his betters;
That though he led them through the dark
With all the lights of Locke and Clarke,
And made his heart, and head, and eyes ach
With reading Nature, and sir Isaac,

Yet all that wisdom could not be
Priz'd like a lively repartee;
He therefore, in a gloomy fit,

Resolv'd to set up for a wit;

But found, alas! howe'er he drest her,
That Science was a wretched jester;

That though he jok'd from moon to moon,
He made a very dull buffoon;

For all his jocular narrations
Smelt of his algebra equations,
And came upon the tortur'd ear
Stiff as the periods of Dacier.

Wit, too, whose excellence and merit

Was mere vivacity of spirit,
Observing that your graver folk
Had little value for a joke,

Would needs, in Nature's bold defiance,
Mount the tremendous chair of Science;
And dar'd to argue pro and con

As gravely as the grave Sorbonne:
But wanting all that fine discerning
Which marks the character of Learning,
And all the elemental rules

Of erudition, and the schools,
The gay professor oft mistook
Alike his question and his book;
Dropp'd a conundrum out of season,
And jested when he ought to reason.

Thus on the world's wild billows tost,
And half their moments idly lost,
Tir'd of applause, and sick of strife,
They each resolv'd to take a wife.
Learning, who often went to see
Lady Anne Bentinck at her tea,
Met there a maid as fair as chaste,
In life's full bloom, whose name was Taste.
'Twas then his heart began to move
With the first tender throb of love,
And often heav'd, he knew not why,
With something softer than a sigh.
He gaz'd, he blush'd, he courted, prest,
And was at length completely blest:
For she, who had not learnt to doat
Ou Folly in a scarlet coat,

To Learning's blissful arms resign'd
Her graceful form and lovely mind.
Wit too, when past the fire of youth,
Was married to the vestal, Truth:
A nymph whose awful air and rien
Display'd the beauty, and the queen.
Tradition tells us, Hymen swore
That, till this bright auspicious hour,
There never in his holy house was
So fine a group of noble spouses;

For both the bridegrooms, on their marriage,
Improv'd in temper, sense, and carriage.
Learning, his charming wife to please,
Assum'd her elegance and case;
And Wit, to humour Truth, agreed
To pause, to doubt, reflect, and read.
In short, they led delicious lives,
Belov'd, and honour'd by their wives;
And, happy in their nuptial duties,
Each had a progeny of beauties,
Matchless in feature, form, and parts,
Distinguish'd by the name of Art..

FATHER'S EXTEMPORE CONSOLATION
ON THE DEATH OF TWO DAUGHTERS',
WHO LIVED ONLY TWO DAYS.

LET vulgar souls endure the body's chain,
Till life's dull current ebbs in every vein,
Dream out a tedious age, ere, wide display'd,
Death's blackest pinion wraps them in the shade.

The author's twin-daughters, Anne and Mary. C.

These happy infants, early taught to shun All that the world admires beneath the Sun, Scorn'd the weak bands mortality could tie, And fled impatient to their native sky.

Dear precious babes!-Alas! when, fondly wild, A mother's heart hung melting o'er her child, When my charm'd eye a flood of joy express'd, And all the father kindled in my breast, A sudden paleness seiz'd each guiltless face, And Death, though smiling, crept o'er ev'ry grace. Nature! be calm-heave not th' impassion'd sigh, Nor teach one tear to tremble in my eye. A few unspotted moments pass'd between Their dawn of being, and their closing scene: And sure no nobler blessing can be giv'n, When one short anguish is the price of Heav'n.

THE ANTIQUARIANS.

A TALE.

SOME antiquarians, grave, and loyal,
Incorporate by charter royal,

Last winter, on a Thursday night, were
Met in full senate at the Mitre.
The president, like Mr. Mayor,
Majestic took the elbow chair,
And gravely sat in due decorum
With a fine gilded mace before him.
Upon the table were display'd
A British knife without a blade,
A comb of Anglo-Saxon seal,
A patent with king Alfred's seal,
Two rusted mutilated prongs,
Suppos'd to be St. Dunstan's tongs,
With which he, as the story goes,
Once took the Devil by the nose.
Awhile they talk'd of ancient modes,
Of manuscripts, and Gothic codes,
Of Roman altars, camps, and urns,
Of Caledonian shields and churns:
Whether the Druid slipt or broke
The mistletoe upon the oak?
If Hector's spear was made of ash?
Or Agamemnon wore a sash?
If Cleopatra dress'd in blue,
And wore her tresses in a quene?

At length a dean, who understood
All that had pass'd before the flood,
And could in half a minute show ye
A pedigree as high as Noah,
Got up, and with a solemn air,
(First humbly bowing to the chair)

"If aught," says he, "deserves a name
Immortal as the roll of Fame,
This venerable group of sages
Shall flourish in the latest ages,
And wear an amaranthine crown
When kings and empires are unknown.
Perhaps e'en I, whose humbler knowledge
Ranks me the lowest of your college,
May catch from your meridian day
At least a transitory ray:

For I, like you, through ev'ry clime,
Have trac'd the step of hoary Time,
And gather'd up his sacred spoils
With more than half a cent'ry's toils.
Whatever virtue, deed, or naine,
Antiquity has left to fame,

In every age, and every zone,
In copper, marble, wood, or stone,
In vases, flow'r-pots, lamps, and sconces,
Intaglios, cameos, gems, and bronzes,
These eyes have read through many a crust
Of lacker, varnish, grease, and dust;
And now, as glory fondly draws
My soul to win your just applause,
I here exhibit to your view
A medal fairly worth Peru,
Found, as tradition says, at Rome,
Near the Quirinal Catacomb."

He said, and from a purse of sattin,
Wrapp'd in a leaf of monkish Latin,
And taught by many a clasp to join,
Drew out a dirty copper coin.
Still as pale Midnight when she throws
On Heav'n and Earth a deep repose,
Lost in a trance too big to speak,
The synod ey'd the fine antique;
Examin'd ev'ry point and part,
With all the critic skill of art;
Rung it alternate on the ground
In hopes to know it by the sound;
Applied the tongue's acuter sense
To taste its genuine excellence,
And with an animated gust
Lick'd up the consecrated rust:
Nor yet content with what the eye
By its own sun-beams could descry,
To ev'ry corner of the brass
They clapp'd a microscopic glass;
And view'd in raptures o'er and o'er
The ruins of the learned ore.

Pythagoras, the learned sage,

As you may read in Pliny's page,
With much of thought, and pains, and care,
Found the proportions of a square,
Which threw him in such frantic fits
As almost robb'd him of his wits,
And made him, awful as his name was,
Run naked through the streets of Samos.
With the same spirits doctor Romans,
A keen civilian of the Commons,
Fond as Pythagoras to claim
The wreath of literary fame,
Sprung in a frenzy from his place
Across the table and the mace,

And swore by Varro's shade that he

Conceiv'd the medal to a T.

It rings," says he, "so pure and chaste, And has so classical a taste,

That we may fix its native home
Securely in imperial Rome.

That rascal, Time, whose hand purloins
From Science half her kings and coins,
Has eat, you see, one half the tail,
And hid the other in a veil:

But if, through cankers, rust, and fetters,
Misshapen forms, and broken letters,
The critic's eye may dare to trace
An evanescent name and face,

This injur'd medal will appear,

As mid-day sunshine, bright and clear.
The female figure on a throne
Of rustic work in Tibur' stone,
Without a sandal, zone, or boddice,
Is Liberty's immortal goddess ;
Whose sacred fingers seem to hold
A taper wand, perhaps of gold:

Which has, if I mistake not, on it
The Pileus, or Roman bonnet:
By this the medallist would mean
To paint that fine domestic scene,
When the first Brutus nobly gave
His freedom to the worthy slave."

When a spectator 'as got the jaundice,
Each object, or by sea or land, is
Discolour'd by a yellow hue,
Though naturally red or blue.

This was the case with 'squire Thynne,
A barrister of Lincoln's Inn,
Who never lov'd to think or speak
Of any thing but ancient Greek.
In all disputes his sacred guide was
The very venerable Suidas;

And though he never deign'd to look
In Salkeld, Littelton, or Coke,
And liv'd a stranger to the fees
And practice of the Common-Pleas;
He studied with such warmth and awe,
The volumes of Athenian law,
That Solon's self not better knew
The legislative plan he drew;
Nor cou'd Demosthenes withstand
The rhet'ric of his wig and band:
When, full of zeal and Aristotle,
And fluster'd by a second bottle,
He taught the orator to speak
His periods in correcter Greek.

"Methinks," quoth he, "this little piece
Is certainly a child of Greece:
Th' ærugo has a tinge of blue
Exactly of the Attic hue;
And, if the taste's acuter feel
May judge of medals as of veal,
I'll take my orth the mould and rust
Are made of Attic dew and dust.
Crities may talk, and rave, and foam,
Of Brutus and imperial Rome;
But Rome, in all her pomp and blis,
Ne'er struck so fine a coin as this.
Besides, though Time, as is his way,
Has eat th' inscription quite away,
My eye can trace, divinely true,
In this dark curve a little Mu:
And here, you see, there seems to lie
The ruins of a Doric Xi.

Perhaps, as Athens thought, and writ
With all the pow'rs of style and wit,
The nymph upon a couch of mallows
Was meant to represent a Pallas;
And the baton upon the ore
Is but the olive branch she bore."

He said-but Swinton, full of fire.
Asserted that it came from Tyre:
A most divine antique he thought i',

And with an empire would have bought it.
He swore the head in full profile was
Undoubtedly the head of Belus;
And the reverse, though hid in shade,
Appear'd a young Sidon an maid,
Whose tresses, buskins, shape, and mien,
Mark'd her for Dido at sixteen ;
Perhaps the very year when she was
First married to the rich Sichæus.
The rod, as he could make it clear,
Was nothing but a hunting-spear,
Which all the Tyrian ladies bore,

To guard them when they chas'd the boar.

A learned friend, he could coufide on,
Who liv'd full thirty years at Sidon,

Once show'd him, midst the seals and rings
Of more than thirty Syrian kings,
A copper piece, in shape and size
Exactly that before their eyes,
On which, in high relief, was seen
The image of a Tyrian queen;

Which made him think this other dame

A true Phoenician, and the same.
The next, a critic, grave and big,
Hid in a most enormous wig,

Who in his manner, mien, and shape was
A genuine son of Esculapius,

Wonder'd that men of such discerning
In all th' abstruser parts of learning,
Cou'd err, through want of wit or grace,
So strangely in so plain a case.

"I came," says he, "or I will be whipt,
From Memphis in the Lower Egypt.
Soon as the Nile's prolific flood

Has fill'd the plains with slime and inud,
All Egypt in a moment swarms
With myriads of abortive worms,
Whose appetites would soon devour
Each cabbage, artichoke, and flow'r,
Did not some birds, with active zeal,
Lat up whole millions at a meal,
And check the pest while yet the year
Is ripening into stalk and ear.
This blessing, visibly divine,
Is finely portray'd on the coin;
For here this line, so faint and weak,
Is cotainly a bill or beak;
Which bill, or beak, upon my word,
In hieroglyphies means a bird,
The very bird whose num'rous tribe is
Distinguish'd by the name of ib ́s.
Besides the figure with the wand,
Mark'd by a sistrum in her hand,
Appears, the moment she is seen,
An I, Egypt's boasted queen.
Sir, I'm as sure, as if my eye
Had seen the artist cut the die,

That these two curves, which wave and float thus,
Are but the tendrils of the lotus,
Which, as Herodotus has said,
Th' Egyptians always eat for bread."
He spoke, and heard, without a pause,
The rising murmar of applause;
The voice of admiration rung
On ev'ry ear from ev'ry tongue :
Astonish'd at the lucky hit,
They star'd, they deify'd his wit.

But ah what arts by Fate are tried
To vex and humbl human pride!
To pull down po ts from Painassus,
torn grave doctors into asses!

Tor whilst the band their voices raise
To celebrate the sage's praise,
And Echo through the house convey'd
Their pæans loud to man and maid;
Tom, a port waiter, smart and elever,
A droit pretence who wanted never,
Curious to see what caus'd this rout,
And what the doctors were about,
Slyly stepp'd in to snuff the candles,
And ask whatc'er they pleas'd to want else.
Soon as the synod he came near,
Loud dissonance assail'd his ear;

Strange mingled sounds, in pompous style,
Of Isis, Ibis, Lotus, Nile;

And soon in Romans' hand he spies
The coin, the cause of all their noise.
Quick to his side he flies amain,
And peeps, and snuffs, and peeps again.
And though antiques he had no skill in,
He knew a sixpence from a shilling;
And, spite of rust or rub, cou'd trace
On humble brass Britannia's face.
Soon her fair image he descries,
And, big with laughter and surprise,

He burst-" And is this group of learning
So short of sense and plain discerning,
That a mere halfpenny can be
To them a curiosity?

If this is your best proof of science,
With wisdom Tom claims no alliance;
Content with Nature's artless knowledge,
He scorns alike both school and college."
More had he said-but, lo! around

A storm in ev'ry face he found:
On Romans' brow black thunders hung,
And whirlwinds rush'd from Swinton's tongue;
Thynne lightning flash'd from ev'ry pore,
And Reason's voice was heard no more.

The tempest ey'd, Tom speeds his flight,
And, sneering, bids 'em all good night;
Convinc'd that Pedantry's allies

May be too learned to be wise.