ON AN UNFAVOURABLE REVIEW.
Reading edition
“I’ll give him dash for dash.”
ERDAN, farewell! farewell to all Who ever praised me, great or small Your poet’s course is run! A weekly—no, an every-day Reviewer takes my fame away, And I am all undone! I cannot live an author long! When I did write, O I did wrong To aim at being great; A Diamond Poet in a pin May twinkle on in peace, and win No diamond critic’s hate! No small inditer of reviews Will analyse his tiny muse, Or lay his sonnets waste; Who strives to prove that Richardson, That calls himself a diamond one, Is but a bard of paste? The smallest bird that wings the sky May tempt some sparrow shot, and die; But midges still go free! The peace that shuns my board and bed May settle on a lowlier head, And dwell, “St. John, with thee!” I aimed at higher growth; and now My leaves are withered on the bough, I’m choked by bitter shrubs! O Mr. F. C. W.! What can I christen thy review But one of “Wormwood Scrubs?” The very man that sought me once— (Can I so soon be grown a dunce?) He now derides my verse; But who, save me, will fret to find The editor has changed his mind,— He can’t have got a worse.
