Classic Poem

Wanted — Authors of all-work to job for the season,
No matter which party, so faithful to neither;
Good hacks who, if posed for a rhyme or a reason,
Can manage, like ****** to do without either.

If in jail, all the better for out-o'-door topics;
Your jail is for travellers a charming retreat;
They can take a day's rule for a trip to the Tropics,
And sail round the world at their ease in the Fleet.

For a dramatist too the most useful of schools —
He can study high life in the King's Bench community;
Aristotle could scarce keep him more within rules ,
And of place he at least must adhere to the unity .

Any lady or gentleman, come to an age
To have good " Reminiscences " (three-score or higher)
Will meet with encouragement — so much, per page,
And the spelling and grammar both found by the buyer.

No matter with what their remembrance is stockt,
So they 'll only remember the quantum desired; —
Enough to fill handsomely Two Volumes, oct. ,
Price twenty-four shillings, is all that's required.

They may treat us, like Kelly, with old jeu-d'esprits ,
Like Dibdin, may tell of each farcical frolic;
Or kindly inform us, like Madame Genlis.
That gingerbread-cakes always give them the colic.

Wanted also a new stock of Pamphlets on Corn
By " Farmers " and " Landholders " — (worthies whose lands
Enclosed all in bow-pots their attics adorn,
Or whose share of the soil may be seen on their hands).

No-Popery Sermons, in ever so dull a vein,
Sure of a market; — should they too who pen 'em
Be renegade Papists, like Murtagh O'Sullivan,
Something extra allowed for the additional venom.

Funds, Physics, Corn, Poetry, Boxing, Romance,
All excellent subjects for turning a penny; —
To write upon all is an author's sole chance
For attaining, at last, the least knowledge of any .

Nine times out of ten, if his title is good,
The material within of small consequence is; —
Let him only write fine, and, if not understood,
Why — that 's the concern of the reader, not his.

Nota Bene — an Essay, now printing, to show,
That Horace (as clearly as words could express it)
Was for taxing the Fund-holders, ages ago,
When he wrote thus — " Quodcunque in Fund is, assess it . "