Agreeably to the request of the Right Reverend Author, the following Ode is admitted into this collection; and I think it but justice to declare, that I have diligently scanned it on my fingers; and, after repeated trials, to the best of my knowledge, believe the Metre to be of the Iambic kind, containing three, four, five, and six feet in one line, with the occasional addition of the hypercatalectic syllable at stated periods. I am, therefore, of opinion, that the composition is certainly verse; though I would not wish to pronounce too confidently. For further information I shall print his Grace’s letter.

TO SIR JOHN HAWKINS, BART.

SIR JOHN, As I understand you are publishing an authentic Edition of the Probationary Odes. I call upon you to do me the justice of inserting the enclosed. It was rejected on the Scrutiny by Signor Delpini, for reasons which must have been suggested by the malevolence of some rival. The reasons were, 1st, That the Ode was nothing but prose, written in an odd manner; and, 2dly, That the Metre, if there be any, as well as many of the thoughts, are stolen from a little Poem, in a Collection called the UNION. To a man, blest with an ear so delicate as your’s, Sir John, I think it unnecessary to say any thing on the first charge; and as to the second, (would you believe it?) the Poem from which I am accused of stealing is my own! Surely an Author has a right to make free with his own ideas, especially when, if they were ever known, they have long since been forgotten by his readers. You are not to learn, Sir John, that de non apparentibus & non existentibus eadem est ratio: and nothing but the active spirit of literary jealousy, could have dragged forth my former Ode from the obscurity, in which it has long slept, to the disgrace of all good taste in the present age. However, that you and the public may see, how little I have really taken, and how much I have opened the thoughts, and improved the language of that little, I send you my imitations of myself, as well as some few explanatory notes, necessary to elucidate my classical and historical allusions.

I am, SIR JOHN,
With every wish for your success,
Your most obedient humble servant,
WILLIAM YORK.

* * * * *

PINDARIC ODE,

By DR. W. MARKHAM,
Lord Archbishop of York, Primate of England, and Lord High Almoner
to his Majesty, formerly Preceptor to the Princes, Head Master of
Westminster School, &c. &c. &c.

STROPHE I.
The priestly mind what virtue so approves,
And testifies the pure prelatic spirit,
As loyal gratitude?
More to my King, than to my God, I owe;
God and my father made me man,
Yet not without my mother’s added aid;
But George, without, or God, or man,
With grace endow’, and hallow’d me Archbishop.

ANTISTROPHE I.
In Trojan PRIAM’s court a laurel grew;
So VIRGIL sings. But I will sing the laurel,
Which at St. JAMES’s blooms.
O may I bend my brows from that blest tree,
Not flourishing in native green,
Refreshed with dews from AGANIPPE’s spring:
But, [1]like the precious plant of DIS,
Glitt’ring with gold, with royal sack irriguous.

EPODE I.
So shall my aukward gratitude,
With fond presumption to the Laureat’s duty
Attune my rugged numbers blank.
Little I reck the meed of such a song;
Yet will I stretch aloof,
And tell of Tory principles,
The right Divine of Kings;
And Power Supreme that brooks not bold contention:
Till all the zeal monarchial
That fired the Preacher, in the Bard shall blaze,
And what my Sermons were, my Odes once more shall be.

STROPHE II.
[2]Good PRICE, to Kings and me a foe no more,
By LANSDOWN won, shall pay with friendly censure
His past hostility.
Nor shall not He assist, my pupil once,
Of stature small, but doughty tongue,
Bold ABINGDON, whose rhetoric unrestrain’d,
Rashes, more lyrically wild,
[3]Than GREENE’s mad lays, when he out-pindar’d PINDAR.

ANTISTROPHE II.
With him too, EFFINGHAM his aid shall join,
[4] Who, erst by GORDON led, with bonfires usher’d
His Sov’reign’s natal month.
Secure in such allies, to princely themes,
To HENRY’s and to EDWARD’s young.
Dear names, I’ll meditate the faithful song;
How oft beneath my birch severe,
Like EFFINGHAM and ABINGDON, they tingled:

EPODE II.
Or to the YOUTH IMMACULATE
Ascending thence, I’ll sing the strain celestial,
By PITT, to bless our isle restor’d.
Trim plenty, not luxuriant as of old,
Peace, laurel-crown’d no more;
[5] Justice, that smites by scores, unmov’d;
And her of verdant locks,
Commerce, like Harlequin, in motley vesture,
[6]Whose magic sword with sudden sleight,
Wav’d o’er the HIBERNIAN treaty, turns to bonds,
The dreams of airy wealth, that play’d round PATRICK’s[7] eyes.

STROPHE III.
But lo! yon bark, that rich with India spoils,
O’er the wide-swilling ocean rides triumphant,
Oh! to BRITANNIA’s shore
In safety waft, ye winds, the precious freight!
’Tis HASTINGS; of the prostrate EAST
Despotic arbiter; whose [8] bounty gave
My MARKHAM’s delegated rule
To riot in the plunder of BENARES.

ANTISTROPHE III.
How yet affrighted GANGES, oft distain’d
With GENTOO carnage, quakes thro’ all his branches!
Soon may I greet the morn,
When, HASTINGS screen’d, DUNDAS and GEORGE’s name.
Thro’ BISHOPTHORP’s[9] glad roofs shall sound,
Familiar in domestic merriment;
Or in thy chosen PLACE, ST. JAMES,
Be carol’d loud amid th’ applauding IMHOFFS!

EPODE III.
When wealthy Innocence, pursued
By Factious Envy, courts a Monarch’s succour,
Mean gifts of vulgar cost, alike
Dishonour him, who gives, and him, who takes.
Not thus shall HASTINGS sav’d,
Thee, BRUNSWICK, and himself disgrace.
[10]O may thy blooming Heir,
In virtues equal, be like thee prolific!
Till a new race of little GUELPS,
Beneath the rod of future MARKHAMS train’d,
Lisp on their Grandsire’s knee his mitred Laureat’s lays.

[1] See Virgil’s Æneid, b. vi.

[2] During the Administration of Lord SHELBURNE, I was told by a friend of mine, that Dr. PRICE took occasion, in his presence, to declare the most lively abhorrence of the damnable heresies, which he had formerly advanced against the Jure divino doctrines, contained in some of my Sermons.

[3] See a translation of PINDAR, by EDWARD BURNABY GKEENE.

[4] This alludes wholly to a private anecdote, and in no degree to certain malicious reports of the noble Earl’s conduct during the riots of June, 1780.

[5] The present Ministry have twice gratified the public, with the awfully sublime spectacle of twenty hanged at one time.

[6] These three lines, I must confess, have been interpolated since the introduction of the fourth Proposition in the new Irish Resolutions. They arose, however, quite naturally out of my preceding personification of commerce.

[7] I have taken the liberty of employing Patrick in the same sense as Paddy, to personify the people of Ireland. The latter name was too colloquial for the dignity of my blank verse.

[8] One of the many frivolous charges brought against Mr. Hastings by factious men, is the removal of a Mr. FOWKE, contrary to the orders of the Directors, that he might make room for his own appointment of my so to the Residentship of BENARES. I have ever thought it my duty to support the late Governor-General, both at Leadenhall and in the House of Peers, against all such vexatious accusations.

[9] As many of my Competitors have complained of Signer Delpini’s ignorance, I cannot help remarking here, that he did not know BISHOPTHORP to be the name of my palace, in Yorkshire; he did not know Mr. Hastings’s house to be in St. James’s-place; he did not know Mrs. Hastings to have two sons by Mynheer Imhoff, her former husband, still living. And what is more shameful than all in a Critical Assessor, he had never heard of the poetical figure, by which I elegantly say, thy place, St. James’s, instead of St. James’s-place.

[10] Signor Delpini wanted to strike out all that follows, because truly it had no connection with the rest. The transition, like some others in this and my former Ode to Arthur Onslow, Esq. may be too fine for vulgar apprehensions, but it is therefore the more Pindaric.

IMITATIONS OF MYSELF.

Strophe I.
This goodly frame what virtue so approves,
And testifies the pure Ætherial spirit,
As mild benevolence?
My Ode to Arthur Onslow, Esq.

Epode I.
How shall my aukward gratitude,
And the presumption of untutor’d duty
Attune thy numbers all too rude?
Little he recks the meed of such a song;
Yet will I stretch aloof, &c.
Ibid.

Antistrophe II.
To HENRYS and to EDWARDS old,
Dread names, I’ll meditate the faithful song, &c.
Ibid.

Epode II. Justice with steady brow, Trim plenty, Laureat peace, and green-hair’d commerce, In flowing robe of thousand hues, &c. On this imitation of myself, I cannot help remarking, how happily I have now applied some of these epithets, which, it must be confessed, had not half the propriety before.

Strophe III.
Or trace her navy, where in towering pride
O’er the wide-swelling waste it rolls avengeful.
Ibid.

Antistrophe III.
How headlong Rhone and Ebro, erst distain’d
With Moorish carnage, quakes thro’ all her branches!
Soon shall I greet the morn,
When, Europe saved, BRITAIN and GEORGE’s name
Shall soon o’er FLANDRIA’s level field,
Familiar in domestic merriment;
Or by the jolly mariner
Be carol’d loud adown the echoing Danube.
Ibid.

Epode III.
O may your rising hope,
Well-principled in every virtue, bloom,
’Till a fresh-springing flock implore,
With infant hands, a Grandsire’s powerful prayer,
Or round your honour’d couch their pratling sports pursue.