Shun thou the shades of cat-enfeebling ease!
Watch o'er the weal of Rhedycinian cheese;
The melting marble of collegiate brawn
For Heads of Houses guard, and lords in lawn;
And keep each recreant rat and mouse in awe
That dares to show his nose in Golgotha *.
So may the brightest honours of the gown
Thy riper years and active virtue crown!--
Say, shall not cats, fraught with ethereal fire †,
To seats of letter'd eminence aspire?-
Caligula a consul made his steed;

[read,

What though the beast could neither write nor Yet could he talents negative display,

And silence opposition with his neigh.

If Charles of Sweden swore he would depute,
The senate to control, his old jack-boot;
If modern taste a learned pig reveres,

And pigs unlearn'd keep company with peers +;
If erst Rome's papal crown a gossip wore,
Then, Dick, thou mayst become vice chancellor.

'Might I but live, though crazy, old, and sick,
To see thee stalk behind thy beadles, Dick!
Behold my brindled boy with conscious pride
O'er convocated grizzle wigs preside!
Hear thee, ere I explore my latest home,
Confer degrees in Sheldon's spacious dome!
See thee in scarlet robe encase thy fur,
And at St. Mary's venerably purr!

The place of a scull,' a name ludicrously affixed to the place in which the Heads of Colleges assemble.

+ Electrical sparks elicited by friction from a cat's back.

The sociable porker here alluded to is well known to have been the assiduous companion of Lord Mount Edgecomb's ex ursions.

Then let me be translated to the skies,

And close in welcome death these gooseberry eyes!
'Yet think not, darling Dick, that Fame allows
Her glorious palm, unearn'd, to grace thy brows:
By toil Herculean and profound "earch
Expect to thrive in politics or church!

The herd who worship at preferment's shrine
No servile task, no sacrifice decline;

Courtiers for coronets their conscience pawn,
Clerks in prunello creep, then soar in lawn.
See, with the riband graced and radiant star,
The chief that waged the continental war!
Such palms diminish'd realms can yet afford
To patriotic Howe's protracting sword!
See Wilkes, intrusted with the city key
Till he made fools of all the livery!

See grovelling S*** the wealth of India share:
He taught the Hindù race to feed on air!

'Mark the career of Rhedycina's bard; Not such his toil, not such his vast reward. Glean'd from antiquity's exhaustless mine, He bade the gems of science brighter shine; His care retrieved each venerable name Reft by oblivion from the rolls of Fame; And with new glory crown'd the strains sublime That echoed from the harps of elder Time. 'Twas his, midst mouldering palms of chivalry, To braid the deathless blooms of poesy; On learning's gloom the rays of Taste to pour, And gild with genuine wit the social hour; Affection and applause alike he shared, All loved the man, all venerate the bard: Even Prejudice his fate afflicted hears, And letter'd Envy sheds reluctant tears.

sense,

'Of genius, taste, philanthropy, and Candour and wit-behold the recompense!

No sinecure, no venerable stall

He fills, o'ercanopied with crimson pall;

No choir obsequious waits his dread commands,、
Where supple vergers pace with silver wands;
Where soft reclines in velvet pomp supreme
Divinity, entranced in mitrous dream:

No coin his meed-for classic fobs unfit-
For, ah! what fellowship has wealth with wit!
Such worth the laurel could alone repay,
Profaned by Cibber, and contemn'd by Gray *;
Yet hence its wreath shall new distinction claim,
And, though it gave not, take from Warton fame.'
While glory's steep ascent Grimalkin shows,
Dick's breast with emulative ardour glows;
His emerald eyes with richer radiance roll,
And all the cat awakens in his soul.
Within the tender velvet of his paw,

Though yet unbloodied, lurks each virgin claw;
Anticipated palms his hope descries,

And conquests gain'd o'er visionary mice: Though much for milk, more for renown he mews, And nobler objects than his tail pursues.

O, could I call the Muses from their spheres To sing the triumphs of his riper years! What strife the larder's conscious shelves beheld! What congregated rats his valour quell'd! What mice descended, at each direful blow, To nibble brimstone in the realms below!The victor, who his foes in furious mood Hurl'd from the Granic to the Stygian flood;

On the death of Cibber the place of poet laureate was offered to Mr. Gray, who refused to accept it.

Churchill, whose bounty fainting Frenchmen gave
Soup-meagre gratis in the Danube's wave;
Heathfield, whose red hot vengeance Spain defied,
Blistering, like Spanish flies, old Neptune's hide;
Who plunged his enemies, a whisker'd group,
In green waves twice as hot as green peas soup,
While Fate on Calpe's summit sat, and smiled
To see the dingy dons like lobsters boil'd,
Or by the lightning of the' exploded shell
Dispatch'd to seek a cooler birth in hell-
All heroes, bloody, brave, or politic,

All, all should yield preeminence to Dick :
And everlasting laurels, thick as hops, [chops.
Wreath their bright foliage round his brindled
Mysterious Powers, who rule the destinies
Of conquerors and kings, of cats and mice,
Why did your will the Pylian chief decree
Three centuries, unspectacled, to see,
Yet summon from his patriot toils away
Illustrious Dick, before his beard was gray ?
Of valour, sense, or skill, how vain the boast!-
Dick seeks the shades, an undistinguish'd ghost,
And turns his tail on this terrestrial ball,
Dismiss'd without mandamus medical;
Sent, without purge or catapotium,
In prime of cathood to the catacomb;
No doctor fee'd, no regimen advised,
Unpill'd, unpoulticed, unphlebotomized!

91

Ye sage divines, if so concise our span, Who for preferment would turn cat-in-pan? Since clergymen and cats one fate betides, And worms shall eat their sermons and their hides! Polecats, who Dick's disastrous end survive, Shall bless their stars that they still stink alive;

Muskcats shall feel a melancholy qualm,
And with their sweets departed Dick embalm;
Cats in each clime and latitude that dwell,
Brown, sable, sandy, gray, and tortoiseshell,
Of titles obsolete, or yet in use,

Tom, Tybert, Roger, Rutterkin *, or Puss;
Cats who with wayward hags the moon control,
Unchain the winds, and bid the thunders roll;
Brave in enchanted sieves the boisterous main,
And royal barks with adverse blasts detain† ;
Nay, two-legged cats, as well as cats with four,
Shall Dick's irreparable loss deplore.

Cats who frail nymphs in gay assemblies guard,
As buckram stiff, and bearded like the pard;
Calumnious cats, who circulate faux-pas,
And reputations maul with murderous claws;
Shrill cats whom fierce domestic brawls delight;
Cross cats who nothing want but teeth to bite;
Starch cats of puritanic aspect sad;

And learned cats who talk their husbands mad;

* A cat of this name was caterconsin to the great great great great great great great great grandmother of Grimalkin, and first cat in the caterie of an old woman who was tried for be. witching the daughter of the Countess of Rutland, in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

+ Moreover she confessed that she took a cat and christened it, &c. and that in the night following the said cat was conveyed into the middest of the sea by all those witches sayling in their riddles, or ceves, and so left the said cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland. This doone, there did arise such a tempest at sea as a greater hath not been seen, &c.'

Againe, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause of the Kinges Majesties shippe, at his comminge forthe of Denmarke, had a contrarie winde to the rest of the shippes then being in his companie, which thing was most straunge and true, as the Kinges Majestie acknowledgeth, for when the rest of the shippes had a faire and good winde, then was the winde contrarie and altogether against his Majestie, &c.'Newes from Scotland,' 1591. See also notes to Macbeth, in Johnson and Steevens' edition of Shakspeare.