These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed! made up of impudence and trick, With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, Who now defends, would then have done the deed. Who but must meet the proffered hand half-way POET. (aside) (Rome's smooth go-between!) FRIEND. Laments the advice that soured a milky queen— Who rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds, With actual cautery staunched the church's wounds! And though he deems, that with too broad a blur We damn the French and Irish massacre, Yet blames them both-and thinks the Pope might err! What think you now? Boots it with spear and shield Against such gentle foes to take the field Whose beckoning hands the mild Caduceus wield? What POET. What think I now? Even what I thought before ;boasts though may deplore, Still I repeat, words lead me not astray When the shown feeling points a different way. Smooth can say grace at slander's feast, And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest; Leaves the full lie on -'s gong to swell, Content with half-truths that do just as well; But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks, And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks! So much for you, my friend! who own a Church, Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood, And who shall blame him that he purs applause, Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt, THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS. I. FROM his brinstone bed at break of day A walking the devil is gone, To visit his snug little farm the earth, Over the hill and over the dale, And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he switched his long tail As a gentleman switches his cane, III. And how then was the devil drest? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best: His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through. IV. He saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dung hill hard by his own stable; And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind V. He saw an apothecary on a white horse And the devil thought of his old friend VI. He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, And the devil did grin, for his darling sin VII. He peep'd into a rich bookseller's shop, 1 And all amid them stood the tree of life High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold (query paper money :) and next to Life Our Death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by.— So clomb this first grand thief Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life Sat like a cormorant. PAR. LOST. IV. The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for "life" Cod. quid. habent, VIII. Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide, A pig with vast celerity; And the devil looked wise as he saw how the while, It cut its own throat. "There!" quoth he with a smile, "Goes England's commercial prosperity." IX. As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw And the devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint "trade." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called xar' ižóny, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, &c. of the trade, exclaimed, "Ay! that's what I call Life now!" This "Life, our Death," is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of authorship.-Sic nos non nobis mellificamus apes. Of this poem, which with the Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, first appeared in the Morning Post, the 1st, 2d, 3d, 9th, and 16th stanzas were dictated by Mr. Southey, See Apologetic Preface, vol. i. meant, the If any one should ask who General author begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but he might have been mistaken, and most certainly he did not hear any names mentioned. In simple verity, the author never meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerel. |