The Rhode Island Republican

POETRY

A COMPLIMENTARY ODE,
Addressed to that Leviathan in Erudition
Nicholas Brown, Esq. First Senator of
Rhode-Island: occasioned by his famous
and inimitable Letter of April 7, 1810.

BY PETER TINDERHORN, ESQ.

Thou mighty and transcendent sage,
The wonder of this wond'rous age,
In whose capacious, potent mind,
The pow'rs of nature are enshrin'd,
Permit an humble bard to swell his lays,
With notes of grateful and unfeigned praise.

What partial god inspired thy soul,
When thou didst into being roll?
What pow'r supreme, propitious, smil'd,
And hail'd thee fortune's fav'rite child?
What guardian genius did from heav'n descend,
To guide thy steps and aid celestial staul
In wisdom thou dost far excel
What ancient stories proudly tell,
Or modern annals can display,
(The shining worthies of the day,)
Bravo one, whose name, the raptur'd muse ere long:
Will make the subject of euphemick song
In knowledge of orthography
No man can boast so well as thee
Johnson, confounded Towly bends,
And Sheridan no more contends,
And of Fredonia's states the brilliant pride,
Webster must now no more attempt to
In grammar thou dost boldly soar
Beyond th' ken of mortal lore,
Priestley and Perry, Ash and Lowth,
Illustrious sons of British growth,
Must sink with Murray's celebrated fame
And be, hereafter, scarcely known by name.
From thy inventive brain has sprung,
New beauties of the English tongue,
Harris and Horne, to thee must own,
Is due the meed of high renown;
Ages unborn to thee shall homage give,
Thy lustrous fame in distant regions live.
How pure, how smooth thy diction flows!
What force commands! what pathos glows!
What brilliance does thy page illume!
Exceeding Tully, Blair or Hume;
Thy peerless letter, lucid and sublime,
With loud eclat shall mock the wastes of time.
Then courage take, nor vainly fear,
The "world's dread laugh," or poignant jeer
Though satire hurl its shafts of flame,
And bombast eulogize thy name;
Thy learning, talents shall for ages shine,
And fadeless laurels round thy temples twine.

A broad hint.

As the coining of new words has become very
fashionable among a certain class of writers, Peter
Tinderhorn has dared to aspire to a like honour.
He thinks that the adjective euphemick is as elegant
as the noun euphemism, which makes such a distin-
guished figure in some dictionaries. It will not be
necessary to inform the classical reader, that both
terms are derived from the same Greek radicals, viz.
eu, signifying well, and phemi, to say, and that the
epithet euphemick has much the same meaning as
encomiastick, or panegyrick.