impromptu lines to captain riddell

    on returning a newspaper.

    your news and review, sir.

    i've read through and through, sir,

    with little admiring or blaming;

    the papers are barren

    of home-news or foreign,

    no murders or rapes worth the naming.

    our friends, the reviewers,

    those chippers and hewers,

    are judges of mortar and stone, sir;

    but of meet or unmeet,

    in a fabric complete,

    i'll boldly pronounce they are none, sir;

    my goose-quill too rude is

    to tell all your goodness

    bestow'd on your servant, the poet;

    would to god i had one

    like a beam of the sun,

    and then all the world, sir, should know it!