’Nature fits all her children with something to do,
He who would write and can’t write can surely review,
Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his
Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies;
Thus a lawyer’s apprentice, just out of his teens,
Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines;
Having read Johnson’s lives of the poets half through, 1790
There’s nothing on earth he’s not competent to;
He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles,—­
He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles;
It matters not whether he blame or commend,
If he’s bad as a foe, he’s far worse as a friend: 
Let an author but write what’s above his poor scope,
He goes to work gravely and twists up a rope,
And, inviting the world to see punishment done,
Hangs himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun;
’Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along 1800
Who has anything in him peculiar and strong,
Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gundeck at him,
And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him—­’

Here Miranda came up and began, ‘As to that—­’
Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat,
And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared,
I too snatched my notes and forthwith disappeared.

THE UNHAPPY LOT OF MR. KNOTT

PART I

SHOWING HOW HE BUILT HIS HOUSE AND HIS WIFE MOVED INTO IT

My worthy friend, A. Gordon Knott,
  From business snug withdrawn,
Was much contented with a lot
That would contain a Tudor cot
’Twixt twelve feet square of garden-plot,
  And twelve feet more of lawn.

He had laid business on the shelf
  To give his taste expansion,
And, since no man, retired with pelf,
  The building mania can shun, 10
Knott, being middle-aged himself,
Resolved to build (unhappy elf!)
  A mediaeval mansion.

He called an architect in counsel;
  ‘I want,’ said he, ’a—­you know what,
  (You are a builder, I am Knott)
  A thing complete from chimney-pot
Down to the very grounsel;
  Here’s a half-acre of good land;
  Just have it nicely mapped and planned 20
And make your workmen drive on;
  Meadow there is, and upland too,
  And I should like a water-view,
D’you think you could contrive one? 
  (Perhaps the pump and trough would do,
  If painted a judicious blue?)
  The woodland I’ve attended to;’
  [He meant three pines stuck up askew,
Two dead ones and a live one.]
  ’A pocket-full of rocks ’twould take 30
To build a house of freestone,
  But then it is not hard to make
What nowadays is the stone;
  The cunning painter in a trice
  Your house’s outside petrifies,
  And people think it very gneiss
Without inquiring deeper;
  My money never shall be thrown
  Away on such a deal of stone,
When stone of deal is cheaper.’ 40