Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun!
Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun;
Whose temper was generous, open, sincere ;
A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear;
Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will;
Whose daily bons mots half a column might fill:
A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free;
A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he.

What pity, alas! that so lib'ral a mind

Should so long be to newspaper essays confin'd! Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar, Yet content "if the table he set in a roar ;"

Whose talents to fill station was fit,
any

Yet happy if Woodfall* confess'd him a wit.
Ye newspaper witlings! ye pert scribbling folks!
Who copy'd his squibs, and re-echo'd his jokes ;
Ye tame imitators, ye servile herd, come,
Still follow your master, and visit his tomb:
To deck it, bring with you festoons of the vine,
And copious libations bestow on his shrine;

* Mr. H. S. Woodfall, printer of the Public Advertiser.

Then strew all around it (you can do no less)
Cross-readings, ship-news, and mistakes of the press *.
Merry Whitefoord, farewell! for thy sake I admit

That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit:
This debt to thy mem'ry I cannot refuse,

"Thou best humour'd man with the worst humour'd
muse."

* Mr. Whitefoord has frequently indulged the town with humourous pieces under those titles in the Public Advertiser.

!

1

THE HERMIT.

A BALLAD.

FIRST PRINTED IN 1765.

LETTER

TO THE

PRINTER OF THE ST. JAMES'S CHRONICLE.

INSERTED IN THAT PAPER IN JUNE 1767.

SIR,

As there is nothing I dislike so much as newspaper controversy, particularly upon trifles, permit me to be as concise as possible in informing a correspondent of yours, that I recommended Blainville's Travels, because I thought the book was a good one; and I think so still. I said, I was told by the bookseller that it was then first published; but in that, it seems, I was misinformed, and my reading was not extensive enough to set me right.

Another correspondent of yours accuses me of having taken a ballad, I published some time ago,