For his commercial customers.
God Bacchus Bath not a thirstier votary. Many a pipe Of Porto's vintage hath contributed
To give his cheeks that deep carmine engrained; And many a runlet of right Nantes, I ween, Hath suffered percolation through that trunk, Leaving behind it in the boozy eyes A swoln and red suffusion, glazed and dim. Our next is in the evangelical line,- A leaden-visaged specimen,-demure, Because he hath put on his Sunday's face; Dull by formation, by complexion sad, By bile, opinions, and dyspepsy sour. One of the sons of Jack,-I know not which, For Jack hath a most numerous progeny, Made up for Mr Colburn's magazine This pleasant composite. A bust supplied The features; look, expression, character, Are of the artist's faucy, and free grace. Such was that fellow's birth and parentage! The rascal proved prolific! one of his breed By Docteur Pichot introduced in France, Passes for Monsieur Sooté, and another,- An uglier miscreant too,-the brothers Schumann, And their most cruel copper-scratcher, Zschoch, From Zwickau sent abroad through Germany. I wish the Schumenn and the copper-scratcher No worse misfortune for their recompense Than to fall in with such a cut-throat face In the Black Forest, or the Odenwald.
The Bust, which was the innocent grandfather, I blame not, Allan. T was the work of Smith-- A modest, mild, ingenious man; and errs, Where erring, only because over true, Too close a likeness for similitude; Fixing to every part and lineament Its separate character, and missing thus That which results from all.
Sir Smug comes next; Allan, I own Sir Smug! I recognise That visage with its dull sobriety: I see it duly as the day returns,
When at the looking-glass, with lathered chin And razor-weaponed hand, I sit, the face Composed, and apprehensively intent Upon the necessary operation About to be performed, with touch, alas, Not always confident of hair-breadth skill. Even in such sober sadness and constrained Composure cold, the faithful painter's eye Had fixed me like a spell, and I could feel My features stiffen as he glanced upon them. And yet he was a man whom I loved dearly, My fellow traveller, my familiar friend, My household guest. But when he looked upon me, Anxious to exercise his excellent art,
The countenance he knew so thoroughly Was gone, and in its stead there sate-Sir Smug.
Under the graver's hand, Sir Smug became Sir Smouch,-a son of Abraham. Now albeit I would far rather trace my lineage thence Than with the proudest line of peers or kings Claim consanguinity, that cast of features Would ill accord with me, who in all forms
Of pork,-baked, roasted, toasted, boiled or broiled, Fresh, salted, pickled, seasoned, moist, or dry, Whether ham, bacon, sausage, souse, or brawn, Leg, blade-bone, bald-rib, griskin, chine, or chop, Profess myself a genuine philopig.
It was, however, as a Jew whose portion Had fallen unto him in a goodly land
Of loans, of omnium, and of three per cents, That Messrs. Percy, of the Anecdote-firm, Presented me unto their customers.
Poor Smouch endured a worse judaization Under another hand: in this next stage He is on trial at the Old Bailey, charged With dealing in base coin. That he is guilty, No judge or jury could have half a doubt, When they saw the culprit's face; and he himself, As you may plainly see, is comforted
By thinking he has just contrived to keep Out of rope's reach, and will come off this time For transportation.
Stand thou forth for trial
Now William Darton, of the society
Of friends called Quakers; thou who in the fourth month Of the year twenty-four, on Holborn Hill, At No 58, didst wilfully,
Falsely, and knowing it was falsely done, Publish upon a card, as Robert Southey's,
A face which might be just as like Tom Fool's, Or John, or Richard. Any body else's! What had I done to thee, thou William Darton, That thou shouldst for the lucre of base gain, Yea, for the sake of filthy fourpences, Palm on my countrymen that face for mine? O William Darton, let the yearly meeting Deal with thee for that falseness!-All the rest Are traceable: Smug's Hebrew family; The German who might properly adorn A gibbet or a wheel, and Monsieur Sooté, Sons of Fitzbust the evangelical;
I recognise all these unlikenesses,
Spurious abominations though they be, Each filiated on some original,
But thou, Friend Darton,-and observe me, man, Ouly in courtesy and quasi Quaker,
I call thee Friend!-hadist no original, No likeness, or unlikeness, silhouette, Outline, or plaister, representing me, Whereon to form this misrepresentation! If I guess rightly at the pedigree
| Of thy bad groat's-worth, thou didst get a barber To personate my injured Laureateship:
An advertising barber, one who keeps
A bear, and when he puts to death poor Bruin, Sells his grease fresh as from the carcase cut, Pro bono publico, the price per pound
Twelve shillings and no more. From such a barber, O Unfriend Darton! was that portrait made,
I think, or peradventure, from his block. Next comes a minion, worthy to be set
In a wooden frame; and here I might invoke Avenging Nemesis, if I did not feel Just now, God Cynthius pluck me by the ear. But, Allan, in what shape God Cynthius comes, And wherefore he admonisheth me thus, Thou and I will not tell the world; hereafter The commentators, my Malones and Reeds,
May, if they can. And in my gallery,
Though there remaineth undescribed good store, Yet of enough enough, and now no more,» (As honest old George Gascoigne said of yore); Save only a last couplet to express
That I am always truly yours,-R. S.
Keswick, Sept. 1, 1828.
ATHWART the island here, from sea to sea, Between these mountain barriers, the great glen Of Scotland offers to the traveller, Through wilds impervious else, an easy path, Along the shore of rivers and of lakes, In line continuous, whence the waters flow Dividing, east and west. Thus had they held For untold centuries their perpetual course Unprofited, till in the Georgian age
This mighty work was plann'd, which should unite The lakes, control the innavigable streams, And through the bowels of the land deduce
A way, where vessels which must else have braved The formidable cape, and have essay'd The perils of the Hyperborean sea, Might from the Baltic to the Atlantic deep Pass and repass at will. So when the storm Careers abroad, may they securely here,
Through birchen groves, green fields, and pastoral hills, Pursue their voyage home. Humanity May boast this proud expenditure, begun By Britain in a time of arduous war; Through all the efforts and emergencies Of that long strife continued; and achieved After her triumph, even at the time When national burdens bearing on the State Were felt with heaviest pressure. Such expense Is best economy. In growing wealth, Comfort, and spreading industry, behold The fruits immediate! And in days to come, Fitly shall this great British work be named With whatsoe'er of most magnificence For public use, Rome in her plenitude Of power effected, or all-glorious Greece, Or Egypt, mother-land of all the arts.
Thou who hast reach'd this level, where the glede, Wheeling between the mountains in mid-air, Eastward or westward as his gyre inclines, Descries the German or the Atlantic Sea, Pause here; and as thou seest the ship pursue Her easy way serene, call thou to mind
By what exertions of victorious art
The way was opened. Fourteen times upheaved, The vessel hath ascended since she changed The salt sea-water for the Highland lymph: As oft, in imperceptible descent
Must, step by step, be lower'd, before she woo The ocean breeze again. Thou hast beheld
What basins most capacious of their kind Enclose her, while the obedient element Lifts or depones its burthen. Thou hast seen The torrent, hurrying from its native hills, Pass underneath the broad canal inhumed, Then issue harmless thence; the rivulet, Admitted by its intake peaceably, Forthwith by gentle overfall discharged; And haply too thou hast observed the herds Frequent their vaulted path, unconscious they That the wide waters on the long low arch Above them, lie sustain'd. What other works Science, audacious in emprize, hath wrought, Meet not the eye, but well may fill the mind. Not from the bowels of the land alone, From lake and stream hath their diluvial wreck Been scoop'd to form this navigable way; Huge rivers were controll'd, or from their course Shoulder'd aside; and, at the eastern mouth, Where the salt ooze denied a resting-place, There were the deep foundations laid, by weight On weight immersed, and pile on pile down-driven, Till stedfast as the everlasting rocks
The massive outwork stands. Contemplate now What days and nights of thought, what years of toil, What inexhaustive springs of public wealth The vast design required; the immediate good, The future benefit progressive still,
And thou wilt pay thy tribute of due praise To those whose counsels, whose decrees, whose care For after ages, formed the generous work.
Where these capacious basins, by the laws Of the subjacent element receive
The ship, descending or upraised, eight times, From stage to stage with unfelt agency Translated, fitliest may the marble here Record the architect's immortal name. Telford it was by whose presiding mind
The whole great work was plann'd and perfected; Telford, who o'er the vale of Cambrian Dee, Aloft in air, at giddy height upborne, Carried his navigable road, and hung High o'er Menai's straits the bending bridge; Structures of more ambitious enterprise Than Minstrels in the age of old romance To their own Merlin's magic lore ascribed. Nor hath he for his native land performed Less, in this proud design; and where his piers Around her coast from many a fisher's creek, Unsheltered else, and many an ample port, Repel the assailing storm; and where his roads In beautiful and sinuous line far seen, Wind with the vale, and win the long ascent, Now o'er the deep morass sustained, and now Across ravine, or glen, or estuary, Opening a passage through the wilds subdued.
IMITATION FROM THE PERSIAN. LORD! who art merciful as well as just, Incline thine ear to me, a child of dust! Not what I would, O Lord! I offer thee,
Father Almighty, who hast made me man, And bade me look to heaven, for thou art there, Accept my sacrifice and humble prayer. Four things which are not in thy treasury, I lay before thee, Lord, with this petition My nothingness, my wants, My sins, and my contrition!
The object of thy worthy choice possest; And in thy prime, and in thy wedded bliss, And in the genial bed, -the cradle drest, Hope standing by, and Jo, a bidden guest! "T is this that from the heart of private life Makes unsophisticated sorrow flow: We mourn thee as a daughter and a wife, And in our human nature feel the blow.
WRITTEN UPON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS
TIME and the world, whose magnitude and weight Bear on us in this now, and hold us here To earth inthralled, what are they in the past? And in the prospect of the immortal soul How poor a speck! Not here her resting-place; Her portion is not here: and happiest they Who, gathering early all that earth can give, Shake off its mortal coil, and speed for Heaven. Such fate had he whose relics here repose. Few were his days; but yet enough to teach Love, duty, generous feelings, high desires, Faith, hope, devotion: and what more could length Of days have brought him! What but vanity? Joys, frailer even than health or human life; Temptation; sin and sorrow, both too sure; Evils that wound, and cares that fret, the heart! Repine not, therefore, ye who love the dead.
COULD I look forward to a distant day With hope of building some elaborate lay, Then would I wait till worthier strains of mine Might bear inscribed thy name, O Caroline! For I would, while my voice is heard on earth, Bear witness to thy genius and thy worth. But we have both been taught to feel with fear How frail the tenure of existence here, What unforeseen calamities prevent, Alas, how oft! the best resolved intent; And therefore this poor volume I address To thee, dear friend, and sister Poetess.
been printed, but Rosweyde obtained a copy of it from the Royal Library at Paris. He intimates no suspicion concerning the authenticity of the life, or the truth of this particular legend; observing only, that hæc narratio apud solum invenitur Amphilochium. It is, indeed, ¦ the flower of the work, and as such had been culled by some earlier translator than Ursus.
The very learned Dominican, P. François Combefis, published the original with a version of his own, and endeavoured to establish its authenticity in opposition to Baronius, who supposed the life to have been written by some other Amphilochius, not by the Bishop of Ico Had Combefis possessed powers of mind equal i to his erudition, he might even then have been in some degree prejudiced upon this subject, for, according to ROBERT SOUTHEY. Baillet, il avoit un attachement tout particulier pour
THE story of the following Poem is taken from a Life of St Basil, ascribed to his contemporary St Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium; a Latin version of which, made by Cardinal Ursus in the ninth century, is inserted by Rosweyde, among the Lives of the Fathers, in his compilation Historia Eremitica. The original had not then
St Basile. His version is inserted in the Acta Sanctorum (Jun. t. ii. pp. 937-957). But the Bollandist Baert brands the life there as apocryphal; and in his annotations treats Combefis more rudely, it may be suspected, than he would have done, had he not belonged to a rival and hostile order.
Should the reader be desirous of comparing the Poem with the Legend, he may find the story, as transcribed from Rosweyde, among the Notes.
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