Since the day I attempted to print a gazette, This Shylock Ap-Shenkin does nothing but fret: Now preaching and screeching, then nibbling and scribbling, Remarking and barking, and whining and pining, and still in a pet,
From morning‘ till night, with my humble gazette. Instead of whole columns our page to abuse, Your readers would rather be treated with News: While wars are a-brewing, and kingdoms undoing,
While monarchs are falling, and princesses squalling, While France is reforming, and Irishmen storming — In a glare of such splendour, what folly to fret At so humble a thing as a poet's Gazette!
No favours I ask'd from your friends in the East: On your wretched soup-meagre I left them to feast; So many base lies you have sent them in print, That scarcely a man at our paper will squint:—
And now you begin ( with a grunt and a grin, With the bray of an ass, and a visage of brass, With a quill in your hand and a Lie in your mouth ) To play the same trick on the men of the South!
One Printer for Congress ( some think ) is enough, To flatter, and lie, to palaver, and puff, To preach up in favour of monarchs and titles, And garters, and ribbands, to prey on our vitals:
Who knows but Pomposo will give it in fee, Or make mister Shenkin the Grand Patentee!!! Then take to your scrapers, ye Republican Papers, No rogue shall go snacks — and the News-Paper Tax
Shall be puff'd to the skies, as a measure most wise — So, a spaniel, when master is angry, and kicks it, Sneaks up to his shoe, and submissively licks it.
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