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.