"To mock the rigour of this cruel sky,"
"In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid"--
"Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side,"

have here no dramatic propriety we opine--and show the slobberer.

The Satirist betrays the same poverty of invention in the sentiments as in
the language of the Swains. They illustrate no concealed character--they
reveal no latent truth.

"Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran,
Furnished with bitter draughts _the steady clan_;"

and yet the swains are averse from war, and exclaim--

"Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms;
Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms?"

And, at the same time, they talk of--

"the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride."

The dialogue is throughout absolutely stupid. You are not made by it
either to hate or despise the Swains, nor are you led to laugh at them;
but lay down the satire for minute or two, peevishly suspecting that you
have been reading arrant nonsense.

You take up the trash again; and, being a Scotsman, you are perhaps not
altogether quite so well pleased to find that it suddenly waxes into
something very like poetry. The description of the cave had made you
wince--why, you knew not; for nothing the least like it ever existed in
Scotland, or out of it; and your high cheekbones had tingled. The
reprobate can write, you are forced to confess, while Christopher North
holds up to your confusion the picture of Famine.

"Thus plain'd the boys, when from her throne of turf
With boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf,
Vile humours, which, in life's corrupted well,
Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell,
Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes,
Where hunger ev'n to madness seem'd to rise,
Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart,
Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start.
Her hollow cheeks were each a deep sunk cell,
Where wretchedness and horror lov'd to dwell:
With double rows of useless teeth supply'd,
Her mouth from ear to ear extended wide,
Which when for want of food her entrails pin'd
She op'd, and, cursing, swallow'd nought but wind:
All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there,
Making their way by force, her bones lay bare:
Such filthy sight to hide from human view
O'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw.
"'Cease,' cry'd the goddess, 'cease, despairing swains!
And from a parent hear what Jove ordains.
"'Pent in th