Chapter 35

FROM PATRICK MAGAN, ESQ., TO THE REV. RICHARD ----.

He comes from Erin's speechful shore Like fervid kettle, bubbling o'er With hot effusions--hot and weak; Sound, Humbug, all your hollowest drums, He comes, of Erin's martyrdoms To Britain's well-fed Church to speak.

Puff him, ye Journals of the Lord,[1] Twin prosers, _Watchman_ and _Record_! Journals reserved for realms of bliss, Being much too good to sell in this, Prepare, ye wealthier Saints, your dinners, Ye Spinsters, spread your tea and crumpets; And you, ye countless Tracts for Sinners, Blow all your little penny trumpets. He comes, the reverend man, to tell To all who still the Church's part take, Tales of parsonic woe, that well Might make even grim Dissenter's heart ache:-- Of ten whole bishops snatched away For ever from the light of day; (With God knows, too, how many more, For whom that doom is yet in store)-- Of Rectors cruelly compelled From Bath and Cheltenham to haste home, Because the tithes, by Pat withheld, Will _not_ to Bath or Cheltenham come; Nor will the flocks consent to pay Their parsons thus to stay away;-- Tho' with _such_ parsons, one may doubt If 'tisn't money well laid out;-- Of all, in short, and each degree Of that once happy Hierarchy, Which used to roll in wealth so pleasantly; But now, alas! is doomed to see Its surplus brought to nonplus presently!

Such are the themes this man of pathos, Priest of prose and lord of bathos, Will preach and preach t'ye, till you're dull again; Then, hail him, Saints, with joint acclaim, Shout to the stars his tuneful name, Which Murtagh _was_, ere known to fame, But now is _Mortimer_ O'Mulligan!

All true, Dick, true as you're alive-- I've seen him, some hours since, arrive. Murtagh is come, the great Itinerant-- And Tuesday, in the market-place, Intends, to every saint and sinner in't, To state what _he_ calls Ireland's Case; Meaning thereby the case of _his_ shop,- Of curate, vicar, rector, bishop, And all those other grades seraphic, That make men's souls their special traffic, Tho' caring not a pin _which_ way The erratic souls go, so they _pay_.-- Just as some roguish country nurse, Who takes a foundling babe to suckle, First pops the payment in her purse, Then leaves poor dear to--suck its knuckle: Even so these reverend rigmaroles Pocket the money--starve the souls. Murtagh, however, in his glory, Will tell, next week, a different story; Will make out all these men of barter, As each a saint, a downright martyr, Brought to the _stake_--i.e. a _beef_ one, Of all their martyrdoms the chief one; Tho' try them even at this, they'll bear it, If tender and washt down with claret.

Meanwhile Miss Fudge, who loves all lions. Your saintly, _next_ to great and high 'uns-- (A Viscount, be he what he may, Would cut a Saint out any day,) Has just announced a godly rout, Where Murtagh's to be first brought out, And shown in his tame, _week-day_ state:-- "Prayers, half-past seven, tea at eight." Even so the circular missive orders-- Pink cards, with cherubs round the borders.

Haste, Dick--you're lost, if you lose time;-- Spinsters at forty-five grow giddy, And Murtagh with his tropes sublime Will surely carry off old Biddy, Unless some spark at once propose, And distance him by downright prose. That sick, rich squire, whose wealth and lands All pass, they say, to Biddy's hands, (The patron, Dick, of three fat rectories!) Is dying of _angina pectoris_;-- So that, unless you're stirring soon. Murtagh, that priest of puff and pelf, May come in for a honey-_moon_, And be the _man_ of it, himself!

As for _me_, Dick--'tis whim, 'tis folly, But this young niece absorbs me wholly. 'Tis true, the girl's a vile verse-maker-- Would rhyme all nature, if you'd let her;-- But even her oddities, plague take her, But made me love her all the better. _Too_ true it is, she's bitten sadly With this new rage for rhyming badly, Which late hath seized all ranks and classes, Down to that new Estate, "the masses "; Till one pursuit all tastes combines-- One common railroad o'er Parnassus, Where, sliding in those tuneful grooves, Called couplets, all creation moves, And the whole world runs mad _in lines_. Add to all this--what's even still worse, As rhyme itself, tho' still a curse, Sounds better to a chinking purse-- Scarce sixpence hath my charmer got, While I can muster just a groat; So that, computing self and Venus, Tenpence would clear the amount between us. However, things may yet prove better:-- Meantime, what awful length of letter! And how, while heaping thus with gibes The Pegasus of modern scribes, My own small hobby of farrago Hath beat the pace at which even _they_ go!

[1] "Our anxious desire is to be found on the side of the Lord."--_Record Newspaper_.