________________________________________________
Title: Literary Advertisement
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
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,[1]
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 maybe 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,[2]
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."_
NOTE:
[1] This lady also favors us, in her Memoirs, with the address of those apothecaries, who have, from time to time, given her pills that agreed with her; always desiring that the pills should be ordered "_comme pourelle_."
[2] A gentleman, who distinguished himself by his evidence before the Irish Committees.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Literary Advertisement
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
