--It is happy for the author that
these _bijoux_ are presented to persons of high degree; countesses,
foreign and domestic; "Maids of Honour to Louisa Landgravine of Hesse
D'Armstadt;" Lady Blank, and Lady Asterisk, besides---, and---, and
others anonymous; who are exactly the kind of people to be best pleased
with these sparkling, shining, fashionable trifles. We will solace our
readers with three stanzas of the soberest of these odes:
"ADDRESSED TO LADY SUSAN FINCASTLE, NOW COUNTESS OF DUNMORE.
"What ails you, Fancy? you're become
Colder than Truth, than Reason duller!
Your wings are worn, your chirping's dumb,
And ev'ry plume has lost its colour.
"You droop like geese, whose cacklings cease
When dire St. Michael they remember,
Or like some _bird_ who just has heard
That Fin's preparing for September?
"Can you refuse your sweetest spell
When I for Susan's praise invoke you?
What, sulkier still? you pout and swell
As if that lovely name would choke you."
We are to suppose that "Fin preparing for September" is the lady with
whose "lovely name" Fancy runs some risk of being "choked;" and, really,
if _killing partridges_ formed a part of her Ladyship's accomplishments,
both "Fancy" and Feeling were in danger of a quinsey. Indeed, the whole
of these stanzas are couched in that most exquisite irony, in which Mr.
S. has more than once succeeded. All the songs to "persons of quality"
seem to be written on that purest model, "the song by a person of
quality;" whose stanzas have not been fabricated in vain.
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