Chapter 21

Shades of those belles whose reign began of yore, With George the Third's--and ended long before!-- Though in your daughters' daughters yet you thrive, Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive! Back to the ball-room speed your spectred host; Fools' Paradise is dull to that you lost. No treacherous powder bids conjecture quake; No stiff-starch'd stays make meddling fingers ache (Transferr'd to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, women in their shape): No damsel faints when rather closely press'd, But more caressing seems when most caress'd; Superfluous hartshorn and reviving salts; Both banished, by the sovereign cordial, "Waltz".

Seductive Waltz!--though on thy native shore Even Werter's self proclaim'd thee half a whore: Werter--to decent vice though much inclined, Yet warm, not wanton; dazzled, but not blind-- Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Staël, Would even proscribe thee from a Paris ball; The fashion hails--from countesses to queens, And maids and valets waltz behind the scenes; Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads, And turns--if nothing else--at least our _heads_; With thee even clumsy cits attempt to bounce, And cockneys practise what they can't pronounce. Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts, And rhyme finds partner rhyme in praise of "Waltz!"

Blest was the time Waltz chose for her _début_: The court, the Regent, like herself, were new, New face for friends, for foes some new rewards; New ornaments for black and royal guards; New laws to hang the rogues that roar'd for bread; New coins (most new) to follow those that fled; New victories--nor can we prize them less, Though Jenky wonders at his own success; New wars, because the old succeed so well, That most survivors envy those who fell; New mistresses--no, old--and yet 'tis true, Though they be _old_, the _thing_ is something new; Each new, quite new--(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ----, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are _no more_, and petticoats _not much_: Morals and minuets, virtue and her stays, And tell-tale powder--all have had their days. The ball begins--the honours of the house First duly done by daughter or by spouse, Some potentate--or royal or serene-- With Kent's gay grace, or sapient Glo'ster's mien, Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush Might once have been mistaken for a blush, From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, That spot where hearts were once supposed to be; Round all the confines of the yielded waist, The stranger's hand may wander undisplaced; The lady's in return may grasp as much As princely paunches offer to her touch. Pleased round the chalky floor how well they trip, One hand reposing on the royal hip: The other to the shoulder no less royal Ascending with affection truly loyal! Thus front to front the partners move or stand, The foot may rest, but none withdraw the hand; And all in turn may follow in their rank, The Earl of--Asterisk--and Lady--Blank; Sir--Such-a-one--with those of fashion's host, For whose blest surnames--_vide Morning Post_ (Or if for that impartial print too late, Search Doctors' Commons six months from my date)-- Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow, The genial contact gently undergo; Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk, If "nothing follows all this palming work". True, honest Mirza!--you may trust my rhyme-- Something does follow at a fitter time; The breast thus publicly resign'd to man In private may resist him--if it can.

O ye who loved our grandmothers of yore, Fitzpatrick, Sheridan, and many more! And thou, my prince! whose sovereign taste and will It is to love the lovely beldames still! Thou ghost of Queensbury! whose judging sprite Satan may spare to peep a single night, Pronounce--if ever in your days of bliss Asmodeus struck so bright a stroke as this; To teach the young ideas how to rise, Flush in the cheek, and languish in the eyes; Rush to the heart, and lighten through the frame, With half-told wish and ill-dissembled flame; For prurient nature still will storm the breast-- _Who_, tempted thus, can answer for the rest?

But ye, who never felt a single thought, For what our morals are to be, or ought; Who wisely wish the charms you view to reap, Say--would you make those beauties quite so cheap? Hot from the hands promiscuously applied, Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side, Where were the rapture then to clasp the form From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warm? At once love's most endearing thought resign, To press the hand so press'd by none but thine; To gaze upon that eye which never met Another's ardent look without regret; Approach the lip which all, without restraint, Come near enough--if not to touch--to taint; If such thou lovest--love her then no more, Or give--like her--caresses to a score; Her mind with these is gone, and with it go The little left behind it to bestow.

Voluptuous Waltz! and dare I thus blaspheme? The bard forgot thy praises were his theme. Terpsichore, forgive!--at every ball My wife _now_ waltzes--and my daughters _shall_; _My_ son--(or stop--'tis needless to inquire-- These little accidents should ne'er transpire; Some ages hence our genealogic tree Will wear as green a bough for him as me)-- Waltzing shall rear, to make our name amends, Grandsons for me--in heirs to all his friends.

LX. "THE DEDICATION" IN DON JUAN.

Southey as Poet Laureate was a favourite target for satirical quips and cranks on the part of Byron. This "Dedication" was not published until after the author's death.

I.

Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race; Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory Last--yours has lately been a common case-- And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at? With all the Lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like "four-and-twenty Blackbirds in a pie;

II.

"Which pie being open'd they began to sing" (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King", Or Regent, who admires such kind of food-- And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood-- Explaining metaphysics to the nation-- I wish he would explain his Explanation.

III.

You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only blackbird in the dish; And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!

IV.

And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion" (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages), Has given a sample from the vasty version Of his new system to perplex the sages; 'Tis poetry--at least by his assertion, And may appear so when the dog-star rages-- And he who understands it would be able To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

V.

You--Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion From better company, have kept your own At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion Of one another's minds, at last have grown To deem as a most logical conclusion, That Poesy has wreaths for you alone; There is a narrowness in such a notion, Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for ocean.

VI.

I would not imitate the petty thought, Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price, You have your salary; was't for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise! You're shabby fellows--true--but poets still, And duly seated on the immortal hill.

VII.

Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows-- Perhaps some virtuous blushes, let them go-- To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs, And for the fame you would engross below, The field is universal, and allows Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow; Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try 'Gainst you the question with posterity.

VIII.

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses, Contend not with you on the winged steed, I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses, The fame you envy and the skill you need; And recollect a poet nothing loses In giving to his brethren their full meed Of merit, and complaint of present days Is not the certain path to future praise.

IX.

He that reserves his laurels for posterity (Who does not often claim the bright reversion) Has generally no great crop to spare it, he Being only injured by his own assertion; And although here and there some glorious rarity Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion, The major part of such appellants go To--God knows where--for no one else can know.

X.

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues, Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time, If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs, And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "_sublime_", _He_ deign'd not to belie his soul in songs, Nor turn his very talent to a crime; _He_ did not loathe the sire to laud the son, But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

XI.

Think'st thou, could he--the blind old man--arise, Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, Or be alive again--again all hoar With time and trials, and those helpless eyes, And heartless daughters--worn--and pale--and poor: Would _he_ adore a sultan? _he_ obey The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

XII.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore, The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want, With just enough of talent, and no more, To lengthen fetters by another fix'd. And offer poison long already mix'd.

XIII.

An orator of such set trash of phrase Ineffably--legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile; Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

XIV.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are afraid, States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or Congress to be made-- Cobbling at manacles for all mankind-- A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains, With God and man's abhorrence for its gains.

XV.

If we may judge of matter by the mind, Emasculated to the marrow _It_ Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind, Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit, Eutropius of its many masters,--blind To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit, Fearless--because _no_ feeling dwells in ice, Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

XVI.

Where shall I turn me not to _view_ its bonds, For I will never _feel_ them:--Italy! Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds Beneath the lie this State-thing breathed o'er thee-- Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green wounds, Have voices--tongues to cry aloud for me. Europe has slaves--allies--kings--armies still, And Southey lives to sing them very ill.

XVII.

Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate, In honest simple verse, this song to you. And if in flattering strains I do not predicate, 'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue"; My politics as yet are all to educate: Apostasy's so fashionable, too, To keep _one_ creed's a task grown quite Herculean: Is it not so, my Tory, Ultra-Julian?

VENICE, September 16, 1818.

THOMAS HOOD.

(1798-1845.)

LXI. COCKLE _v_. CACKLE.

This is not meant as a "cut" at that standard medicine named therein which has wrought such good in its day; but is a satire on quack advertising generally. The more worthless the nostrum, the more universal the advertising of it, such is the moral of Hood's satire.

Those who much read advertisements and bills, Must have seen puffs of Cockle's Pills, Call'd Anti-bilious-- Which some physicians sneer at, supercilious, But which we are assured, if timely taken, May save your liver and bacon; Whether or not they really give one ease, I, who have never tried, Will not decide; But no two things in union go like these-- Viz.--quacks and pills--save ducks and pease. Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow, Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow, And friends portended was preparing for A human pâté périgord; She was, indeed, so very far from well, Her son, in filial fear, procured a box Of those said pellets to resist bile's shocks, And--tho' upon the ear it strangely knocks-- To save her by a Cockle from a shell! But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth, Who very vehemently bids us "throw Bark to the Bow-wows", hated physic so, It seem'd to share "the bitterness of Death": Rhubarb--Magnesia--Jalap, and the kind-- Senna--Steel--Assa-foetida, and Squills-- Powder or Draught--but least her throat inclined To give a course to boluses or pills; No--not to save her life, in lung or lobe, For all her lights' or all her liver's sake, Would her convulsive thorax undertake, Only one little uncelestial globe!

'Tis not to wonder at, in such a case, If she put by the pill-box in a place For linen rather than for drugs intended-- Yet for the credit of the pills let's say After they thus were stow'd away, Some of the linen mended; But Mrs. W. by disease's dint, Kept getting still more yellow in her tint, When lo! her second son, like elder brother, Marking the hue on the parental gills, Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills, To bleach the jaundiced visage of his mother-- Who took them--in her cupboard--like the other.

"Deeper and deeper still", of course, The fatal colour daily grew in force; Till daughter W. newly come from Rome, Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part, To cure Mamma, another dose brought home Of Cockles;--not the Cockles of her heart! These going where the others went before, Of course she had a very pretty store; And then--some hue of health her cheek adorning, The medicine so good must be, They brought her dose on dose, which she Gave to the up-stairs cupboard, "night and morning". Till wanting room at last, for other stocks, Out of the window one fine day she pitch'd The pillage of each box, and quite enrich'd The feed of Mister Burrell's hens and cocks,-- A little Barber of a by-gone day, Over the way Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops, Was one great head of Kemble,--that is, John, Staring in plaster, with a Brutus on, And twenty little Bantam fowls--with crops. Little Dame W. thought when through the sash She gave the physic wings, To find the very things So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash, For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet! But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles, Each peck'd itself into a peck of troubles, And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet. They might as well have addled been, or ratted, For long before the night--ah woe betide The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died Unfatted!

Think of poor Burrel's shock, Of Nature's debt to see his hens all payers, And laid in death as Everlasting Layers, With Bantam's small Ex-Emperor, the Cock, In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle, Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle! To see as stiff as stone, his un'live stock, It really was enough to move his block. Down on the floor he dash'd, with horror big, Mr. Bell's third wife's mother's coachman's wig; And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble, Burst out with natural emphasis enough, And voice that grief made tremble, Into that very speech of sad Macduff-- "What!--all my pretty chickens and their dam, At one fell swoop!-- Just when I'd bought a coop To see the poor lamented creatures cram!"

After a little of this mood, And brooding over the departed brood, With razor he began to ope each craw, Already turning black, as black as coals; When lo! the undigested cause he saw-- "Pison'd by goles!"

To Mrs. W.'s luck a contradiction, Her window still stood open to conviction; And by short course of circumstantial labour, He fix'd the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;-- Lord! how he rail'd at her: declaring how, He'd bring an action ere next Term of Hilary, Then, in another moment, swore a vow, He'd make her do pill-penance in the pillory! She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream Of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard, Lapp'd in a paradise of tea and cream; When up ran Betty with a dismal scream-- "Here's Mr. Burrell, ma'am, with all his farmyard!" Straight in he came, unbowing and unbending, With all the warmth that iron and a barbe Can harbour; To dress the head and front of her offending, The fuming phial of his wrath uncorking; In short, he made her pay him altogether, In hard cash, very _hard_, for ev'ry feather, Charging of course, each Bantam as a Dorking; Nothing could move him, nothing make him supple, So the sad dame unpocketing her loss, Had nothing left but to sit hands across, And see her poultry "going down ten couple".

Now birds by poison slain, As venom'd dart from Indian's hollow cane, Are edible; and Mrs. W.'s thrift,-- She had a thrifty vein,-- Destined one pair for supper to make shift,-- Supper as usual at the hour of ten: But ten o'clock arrived and quickly pass'd, Eleven--twelve--and one o'clock at last, Without a sign of supper even then! At length the speed of cookery to quicken, Betty was called, and with reluctant feet, Came up at a white heat-- "Well, never I see chicken like them chicken! My saucepans, they have been a pretty while in 'em! Enough to stew them, if it comes to that, To flesh and bones, and perfect rags; but drat Those Anti-biling Pills! there is no bile in 'em!"

LORD MACAULAY.

(1800-1859.)

LXII. THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN'S TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE.

This is one of the numerous _jeux d'esprit_ in which Macaulay, in his earlier years, indulged at election times. It was written in 1827.

As I sate down to breakfast in state, At my living of Tithing-cum-Boring, With Betty beside me to wait, Came a rap that almost beat the door in. I laid down my basin of tea, And Betty ceased spreading the toast, "As sure as a gun, sir," said she, "That must be the knock of the Post".

A letter--and free--bring it here, I have no correspondent who franks. No! yes! can it be? Why, my dear, 'Tis our glorious, our Protestant Bankes. "Dear sir, as I know you desire That the Church should receive due protection I humbly presume to require Your aid at the Cambridge election.

"It has lately been brought to my knowledge, That the Ministers fully design To suppress each cathedral and college, And eject every learned divine. To assist this detestable scheme Three nuncios from Rome are come over; They left Calais on Monday by steam, And landed to dinner at Dover.

"An army of grim Cordeliers, Well furnish'd with relics and vermin, Will follow, Lord Westmoreland fears, To effect what their chiefs may determine. Lollards' tower, good authorities say, Is again fitting up as a prison; And a wood-merchant told me to-day 'Tis a wonder how faggots have risen.

"The finance-scheme of Canning contains A new Easter-offering tax: And he means to devote all the gains To a bounty on thumb-screws and racks. Your living, so neat and compact-- Pray, don't let the news give you pain? Is promised, I know for a fact, To an olive-faced padre from Spain."

I read, and I felt my heart bleed, Sore wounded with horror and pity; So I flew, with all possible speed, To our Protestant champion's committee. True gentlemen, kind and well bred! No fleering! no distance! no scorn! They asked after my wife who is dead, And my children who never were born.

They then, like high-principled Tories, Called our Sovereign unjust and unsteady, And assailed him with scandalous stories, Till the coach for the voters was ready. That coach might be well called a casket Of learning and brotherly love: There were parsons in boot and in basket; There were parsons below and above.

There were Sneaker and Griper, a pair Who stick to Lord Mulesby like leeches; A smug chaplain of plausible air, Who writes my Lord Goslingham's speeches. Dr. Buzz, who alone is a host, Who, with arguments weighty as lead, Proves six times a week in the _Post_ That flesh somehow differs from bread.

Dr. Nimrod, whose orthodox toes Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup. Dr. Humdrum, whose eloquence flows, Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup; Dr. Rosygill puffing and fanning, And wiping away perspiration; Dr. Humbug, who proved Mr. Canning The beast in St. John's Revelation.

A layman can scarce form a notion Of our wonderful talk on the road; Of the learning, the wit, and devotion, Which almost each syllable show'd: Why, divided allegiance agrees So ill with our free constitution; How Catholics swear as they please, In hope of the priest's absolution:

How the Bishop of Norwich had barter'd His faith for a legate's commission; How Lyndhurst, afraid to be martyr'd, Had stooped to a base coalition; How Papists are cased from compassion By bigotry, stronger than steel; How burning would soon come in fashion, And how very bad it must feel.

We were all so much touched and excited By a subject so direly sublime, That the rules of politeness were slighted, And we all of us talked at a time; And in tones, which each moment grew louder, Told how we should dress for the show, And where we should fasten the powder, And if we should bellow or no.

Thus from subject to subject we ran, And the journey pass'd pleasantly o'er, Till at last Dr. Humdrum began: From that time I remember no more. At Ware he commenced his prelection, In the dullest of clerical drones: And when next I regained recollection We were rumbling o'er Trumpington stones.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

(1802-1839.)

LXIII. THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL'S DECOY.

Published in Knight's _Annual_.