ounce is by Congreve; he wrote
indeed another poem to celebrate this astonishing book, for, considered
as the production of a young lady, it is a miraculous, rather than a
human, production. The last lines in this poem we might expect from
Congreve in his happier vein, who contrives to preserve his panegyric
amidst that caustic wit, with which he keenly touched the age.

A POEM IN PRAISE OF THE AUTHOR.

I that hate books, such as come daily out
By public license to the reading rout,
A due religion yet observe to this;
And here assert, if any thing's amiss,
It can be only the compiler's fault,
Who has ill-drest the charming author's thought,--
That was all right: her beauteous looks were join'd
To a no less admired excelling mind.

But, oh! this glory of frail Nature's dead,
As I shall be that write, and you that read.[142]
Once, to be out of fashion, I'll conclude
With something that may tend to public good;
I wish that piety, for which in heaven
The fair is placed--to the lawn sleeves were given:
Her justice--to the knot of men, whose care
From the raised millions is to take their share.
W.C.

The book claimed all the praise the finest genius could bestow on it.
But let us hear the editor.--He tells us, that "It is a vast
disadvantage to authors to publish their _private undigested thoughts_,
and _first notions hastily set down_, and designed only as materials for
a future structure." And he adds, "That the work may not come short of
that great and just expectation which the world had of her whilst she
was alive, and still has of everything that is the genuine product of
her pen, they must be told that this _was written for the most part in
haste_, were her _first conceptions_ and overflowings of her luxuriant
fancy, noted with _her pencil at spare hours_, or _as she was dressing_,
as her [Greek: Parergon] only; and _set down just as they came into her
mind_."

All this will serve as a memorable example of the cant and mendacity of
an editor! and that total absence of critical judgment that could assert
such matured reflection, in so exquisite a style, could ever have been
"first conceptions, just as they came into the mind of Lady Gethin, as
she was dressing."

The truth is, that Lady Gethin may have had little concern in all these
"Reliquiae Gethinianae." They indeed might well have deli