BISHOP BONNER'S GHOST.*

REFORMER, hold! ah, spare my shade,
Respect the hallow'd dead!
Vain pray'r! I see the op'ning glade,
See utter darkness fled.

Just so your innovating hand
Let in the moral light;

So, chas'd from this bewilder'd land,
Fled intellectual night.

Where now that holy gloom which hid
Fair truth from vulgar ken?
Where now that wisdom which forbid
To think that monks were men?

* The author accompanied the late Bishop PORTEUS when he first went to take possession of the Palace at Fulham. He complained to her that he found no retired walk to which he might withdraw occasionally. She pointed out a spot where such a retreat might be formed; and while he was clearing away the branches, the following verses were written. A few copies only

were printed by HORACE WALPOLE, Earl of Orford, at his press at Strawberry Hill.

The tangled mazes of the schools,
Which spread so thick before;
Which knaves entwin'd to puzzle fools,
Shall catch mankind no more.

Those charming intricacies where ?
Those venerable lies?

Those legends, once the church's care?
Those sweet perplexities?

Ah! fatal age, whose sons combin'd
Of credit to exhaust us;

Ah! fatal age, which gave mankind
A LUTHER and a FAUSTUS! *

Had only JACK and MARTIN † liv'd,
Our pow'r had slowly fled;

Our influence might have still surviv'd,
Had laymen never read.

For knowledge flew, like magic spell,
By typographic art:

Oh, shame! a peasant now can tell
If priests the truth impart.

Ye councils, pilgrimages, creeds!
Synods, decrees, and rules!

Ye warrants of unholy deeds,

Indulgences and bulls!

*The same Age which brought Heresy into the Church, unhappily introduced Printing among the Arts, by which means the Scriptures were unluckily disseminated among the Vulgar.

+ How Bishop BONNER came to have read SWIFT's Tale of a Tub it may now be in vain to inquire.

Where are ye now? and where, alas!
The pardons we dispense?

And penances, the sponge of sins;
And Peter's holy pence?

Where now the beads, which us❜d to swell
Lean virtue's spare amount?

Here only faith and goodness fill

A heretic's account.

But soft-what gracious form appears?
Is this a convent's life?
Atrocious sight! by all my fears,
A prelate with a wife!

Ah! sainted MARY*, not for this
Our pious labours join'd;
The witcheries of domestic bliss

Had shook evʼn GARDINER's mind.

Hence all the sinful, human ties,

Which mar the cloyster's plan;

Hence all the weak fond charities
Which make man feel for man.

But tortur'd memory vainly speaks
The projects we design'd;
While this apostate Bishop seeks
The freedom of mankind.

* An orthodox Queen of the sixteenth century, who laboured with might and main, conjointly with these two venerable Bishops, to extinguish a dangerous heresy ycleped the Reformation.

Oh, born in ev'ry thing to shake
The systems plann'd by me!
So heterodox, that he would make
Both soul and body free.

Nor clime nor colour stays his hand ;
With charity deprav'd,

He would from Thames' to Gambia's Strand,
Have all be free and sav'd.

And who shall change his wayward heart,
His wilful spirit turn?

For those his labours can't convert,

His weakness will not burn.

Ann. Dom. 1900.

A GOOD OLD PAPIST.

By the lapse of time the three last Stanzas are become unintelligible. Old Chronicles say, that towards the latter end of the 18th century, a bill was brought into the British Parliament, by an active young Reformer, for the Abolition of a pretended Traffic of the Human Species. But this only shows how little faith is to be given to the exaggerations of History; for as no vestige of this incredible Trade now remains, we look upon the whole story to have been one of those fictions, not uncommon among Authors, to blacken the memory of former ages.

FLORIO:

A TALE,

FOR FINE GENTLEMEN AND FINE LADIES.

In Two Parts.