Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

POET's CORNER.

Messieurs Printers,

If you please to insert in your Gazette the following lines from the celebrated Dr. Goldsmith's beautiful Poem--Retaliation--you will oblige all your readers who have a taste for Poetry, and perhaps many who have not.

There lies David Garrick, describe me who can,
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;
As an actor, confess without rival to shine,
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line;
Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart,
The man had his failings--a dupe to his art;
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colors he spread,
And beplaister'd with rouge, his own natural red.
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting:
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he vary'd full ten times a day;
Tho' secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick,
If they were not his own by finessing and trick;
He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came;
And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame;
Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease,
Who pepper'd the highest, was surest to please.
But let us be candid, and speak out our mind,
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind.
Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave!
What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave?
Nor did Grub-street re-echo the shouts that you rais'd,
Whilst he was berous'd and you were beprais'd?
But peace to his spirit wherever it flies,
To act as an angel, and mix with the skies;
Those poets, who owe their best fame to his skill,
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will.
Old Shakespeare, receive him, with praise and with love,
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.
Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt pleasant creature,
And slander itself must allow him good-nature;
He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper;
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper:
Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser!
I answer, no, no, for he always was wiser;
Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat;
His very worst foe can't accuse him of that.
Perhaps he confided in men as they go,
And so was too foolishly honest--ah no!
Then what was his failing? come tell it and burn ye:
He was,--could he help it?--a special attorney.
Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind,
He has not left a wiser or better behind:
His pencil was striking, resistless and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart;
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,
When they judg'd without skill, he was still hard of hearing:
When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, & stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

z.

+ Sir Joshua Reynolds, at the time this poem was written, was so remarkably deaf, as to be under the necessity of using an ear trumpet in company.

L.
C