To Captain Riddell

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, should know it!