Lord Wellington and the Ministers
1813.
So gently in peace Alcibiades smiled,
While in battle he shone forth so terribly grand,
That the emblem they graved on his seal, was a child
With a thunderbolt placed in its innocent hand.
Oh Wellington, long as such Ministers wield
Your magnificent arm, the same emblem will do;
For while they’re in the Council and you in the Field.
We’ve the babies in them, and the thunder in you!
The following trifles, having enjoyed in their circulation through the newspapers all the celebrity and length of life to which they were entitled, would have been suffered to pass quietly into oblivion without pretending to any further distinction, had they not already been published, in a collective form, both in London and Paris, and, in each case, been mixed up with a number of other productions, to which, whatever may be their merit, the author of the following pages has no claim. A natural desire to separate his own property, worthless as it is, from that of others, is, he begs to say, the chief motive of the publication of this volume.