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KEW GARDENS. 78

Hail Kew! thou darling of the tuneful nine,
Thou eating-house of verse where poets dine;
The temple of the idol of the great,
Sacred to council-mysterys of state;
St. Gilbert oft, in dangerous trials known,
To make the shame and felony his own,
Burns incense on thy altars, and presents
The grateful sound of clam'rous discontents:
In the bold favour of thy goddess vain,

He brandishes his sword and shakes his chain.
He knows her secret workings and desires,
Her hidden attributes, and vestal fires,
Like an old oak has seen her godhead fall,
Beneath the wild descendant of Fingal,
And happy in the view of promis'd store
Forgot his dignity and held the door.
happy genius comes along

*

*

*

Humming the music of a Highland song:
Rough and unpolish'd in the tricks of state,
He plots by instinct, is by nature great.
Who, not a mantled herald, can dispute
The native grandeur of the house of Bute?

78 Printed from a transcript in the hand-writing of the late Mr. Isaac Reed, contained in Mr. Haslewood's collection.

Who, not a Caledonian, can deny

By instinct all its noble branches lye ?
'Tis an entail'd estate upon the name,
To plunder, plot, and pillage into fame,
To live in splendour, infamy, and pride,
The guiders of the tools who seem to guide;
Or starve on honesty, in state their own,
And marshal sheep unnotic'd and unknown.
**vers'd in juntos and intrigues,

*

*

The fool and statesman in close union leagues;
Sits at the council's head; esteem'd at most
An useful kind of circulating post:

Through whose short stage each future measure's laid,
And all the orders of the Thane convey'd.

He gives the written text by fortune wrote;
Sir Gilbert adds his necessary note.
Dyson, a plodding animal of state,
Who's classically little to be great;
An instrument made use of to record
The future witty speeches of his lord:
To write epistles to his powerful dame,
And in the dark supply his loss of flame;
To sell preferment; grovel in the dust;
The slave of interest and the slave of lust.
To lick his lordship's shoes, and find a flaw
In every statute that oppos'd his law,

Το

carry orders to the guiding tool,

To flatter * * * * with the hopes of rule.

To send congratulations to the man,

Who stands so well affected to the clan,

To *

*

*

* whose conscientious mind,

Does universal service to mankind,

When red with justice, and the royal cause,
His bloody musket shook with court applause:
When monarchs, representatives of God,
Honour'd the rascal with a gracious nod,

Three ghosts in George's sanguine field were seen,
And two struck horror into Bethnal Green.
Soft pity's voice, unnotic'd by the crown,
Stole in a murmur through the weeping town';
And freedom, wand'ring restless and alone,
Saw no redress expected from the throne :
Then bade remonstrance wear a bolder dress,
And loudly supplicate, and force success.

*

*

*

* heard, and resting on his mace,
The usual fees, my lord, and state the case.
Three thousand, and reversion to your son:
The seals my lord are mine, the matter's done.
This house of foolish cits, and drunken boys,
Offends my ears, like Broderip's horrid noise:
"Tis a flat riot by the statute made,
Destructive to our happiness and trade.
Thy action * * * * is just in law,

In the defence of ministry I'll draw
Nor doubt I when, in solemn pomp array'd,
To act as bravely, be as richly paid.

So * * * * spoke, and in his usual way,
When giving out his syllables for pay,
With happy fluency he scatter'd round
His nicely cull'd varieties of sound:
Unmeaning, unconnected, false, unfair,
All he can boast is-modulated air.
To bribe the common council to protest;
To learn a witless alderman to jest;
The father of the city to deprave,

And add the humm'd apostate to the knave,
Who wisely disinherits his first born,
And doats upon the blossom of his horn;
To fill up places by preferment void,
Is Dison by his quadruples employed;
He bears the message of the garter'd trate;
The running footman to the favour'd great:
When spent with labour, overgrown with spoil,
Some barony or earldom pays his toil.

Whilst two chief actors wisely keep away,
And two before the mystic curtain play;
The goddess, mourning for her absent god,
Approves the flying measures with a nod;
Her approbation, with her pow'r combin'd,
Exalts her tools above the common kind;
She turns the movements of the dark machine,
Nor is her management of state unseen;
Regardless of the world she still turns round,
And tumbles * * * * to his native ground.

Great in possession of a mystic ring,

She leads the Lords and Commons in a string.
Where is the modest muse of Jones retir'd ;79
So bashful, so impatiently admir'd?

Ah! is that noble emulation dead,

Which bad the laurels blossom on his head,
When Kew's 80 enchanting heap of stones was sung,
In strains superior to a mortal tongue ?

And kitchen gardens most luxurious glow'd,

With flow'rs which ne'er in Mayor's window blow'd;

Where cabbages, exotically divine,

Were tagg'd in feet, and measur'd with a line?
Ah! what invention grac'd the happy strain;
Well might the laureate bard of Kew be vain.
Thy Clifton 81 too! how justly is the theme,
As much the poet's as his jingling dream.
Who but a muse inventive, great, like thine,
Could honour Bristol with a nervous line?
What gen'rous, honest genius would have sold
To knaves and catamites his praise for gold?
To leave alone the notions which disgrace
This hawking, peddling, catamitish place,

79 Henry Jones, author of "the Earl of Essex," and other pieces. He had been a bricklayer, in Ireland, before he was taken under the protection of the late Earl of Chesterfield.

80 See "Kew Garden," a poem, in two cantos. By Henry Jones, 4to. 1767.

81" Clifton, a poem, in two cantos, including Bristol and all its Environs." By Henry Jones, 4to. 1766.

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