Impromptu Lines To Captain Riddell

  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!