AustLit

Author's note: At head of the first poem: Few of your readers, I suppose, are aware that Dr. Southey, (q. v.) the Poet Laureate of England, published a series of poems, a great many years ago, under the title of 'Botany Bay Eclogues.' One may easily imagine what sort of pieces such poems were likely to be - representations, forsooth, of our lifers and fourteen-years-men sitting on the rocks that overhang the blue waters of the Pacific, and mingling their salt tears with the ocean brine, or soliloquising the kangaroos and the gum-trees in the forests of the interior, on the miseries of their exile. The worthy Laureate knew very little of 'Life in New South Wales,' of which, Doctor, I propose to send you a few specimens in a series on 'Genuine Botany Bay Eclogues,' which, however inferior in poetical merit, will, nevertheless, I doubt not, be greatly superior, in truth of colouring, to his transmarine effusions.