SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET  
    A thankless task! to come to you and mar
  Your dwindling appetite for caviar,
  And so I told him!
                       [He calls within.
                   Sir, the critics sneer,
  And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"!
  "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause
  And doubly damn with negligent applause!
  Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar
  Less to repentance than to too much liquor!
  Find Louis naught! de Gâtinais inane!
  Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain,
  And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine!
  Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save—
  You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave.
 
    [He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out
          again. He resolves to make the best of it.
 
    The author's obdurate, and bids me say
  That—since the doings of our far-off day
  Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea—
  His tiny pictures of ............