Book: English Satires

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A distinction, I perceive, is taken by one of the most feeble noblemen
in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political
power; whereas, there is no more distinction between these two things
than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I
strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty
stripes ... I persecute; if I say, Everybody in the town where you live
shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you, who
are a Catholic ... I do not persecute! What barbarous nonsense is this!
as if degradation was not as great an evil as bodily pain or as severe
poverty: as if I could not be as great a tyrant by saying, You shall
not enjoy--as by saying, You shall suffer. The English, I believe, are
as truly religious as any nation in Europe; I know no greater blessing;
but it carries with it this evil in its train, that any villain who
will bawl out, "_The Church is in danger!_" may get a place and a good
pension; and that any administration who will do the same thing may
bring a set of men into power who, at a moment of stationary and
passive piety, would be hooted by the very boys in the streets. But it
is not all religion; it is, in great part, the narrow and exclusive
spirit which delights to keep the common blessings of sun and air and
freedom from other human beings. "Your religion has always been
degraded; you are in the dust, and I will take care you never rise
again. I should enjoy less the possession of an earthly good by every
additional person to whom it was extended." You may not be aware of it
yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you deny their freedom to the
Catholics upon the same principle that Sarah, your wife, refuses to
give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling: she values her
receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because
they remind her that her neighbours want it:--a feeling laughable in a
priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings
of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon of
religious freedom.

You spend a great deal of ink about the character of the present prime
minister. Grant you all that you write--I say, I fear he will ruin
Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interest
of his country: and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval,
and kind to the Master Percevals! These are, undoubtedly, the first
qualifications to be looked to in a time of the most serious public
danger; but somehow or another (if public and private virtues must
always be incompatible), I should prefer that he destroyed the domestic
happiness of Wood or Cockell, owed for the veal of the preceding year,
whipped his boys, and saved his country.

The late administration did not do right; they did not build their
measures upon the solid basis of facts. They should have caused several
Catholics to have been dissected after death by surgeons of either
religion; and the report to have been published with accompanying
plates. If the viscera, and other organs of life, had been found to be
the same as in Protestant bodies; if the provisions of nerves,
arteries, cerebrum, and cerebellum, had been the same as we are
provided with, or as the dissenters are now known to possess; then,
indeed, they might have met Mr. Perceval upon a proud eminence, and
convinced the country at large of the strong probability that the
Catholics are really human creatures, endowed with the feelings of men,
and entitled to all their rights. But instead of this wise and prudent
measure, Lord Howick, with his usual precipitation, brings forward a
bill in their favour, without offering the slightest proof to the
country that they were anything more than horses and oxen. The person
who shows the lama at the corner of Piccadilly has the precaution to
write up--_Allowed by Sir Joseph Banks to be a real quadruped_, so his
Lordship might have said--_Allowed by the bench of Bishops to be real
human creatures_.... I could write you twenty letters upon this
subject; but I am tired, and so I suppose are you. Our friendship is
now of forty years' standing; you know me to be a truly religious man;
but I shudder to see religion treated like a cockade, or a pint of
beer, and made the instrument of a party. I love the king, but I love
the people as well as the king; and if I am sorry to see his old age
molested, I am much more sorry to see four millions of Catholics
baffled in their just expectations. If I love Lord Grenville and Lord
Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor ... it is
because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at
the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an
ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester,
of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear
Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking up of
the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place;
and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he would have been
now declaiming against the cry of No Popery! instead of inflaming it.
With this practical comment on the baseness of human nature, I bid you
adieu!




JAMES SMITH.

(1775-1839.)


LVI. THE POET OF FASHION.

From the famous _Rejected Addresses_.


His book is successful, he's steeped in renown,
His lyric effusions have tickled the town;
Dukes, dowagers, dandies, are eager to trace
The fountain of verse in the verse-maker's face:
While, proud as Apollo, with peers _tete-a-tete_,
From Monday till Saturday dining off plate,
His heart full of hope, and his head full of gain,
The Poet of Fashion dines out in Park Lane.

Now lean-jointured widows who seldom draw corks,
Whose tea-spoons do duty for knives and for forks,
Send forth, vellum-covered, a six-o'clock card,
And get up a dinner to peep at the bard;
Veal, sweetbread, boiled chickens, and tongue crown the cloth,
And soup _a la reine_, little better than broth.
While, past his meridian, but still with some heat,
The Poet of Fashion dines out in Sloane Street,

Enrolled in the tribe who subsist by their wits,
Remember'd by starts, and forgotten by fits,
Now artists and actors, the bardling engage,
To squib in the journals, and write for the stage.
Now soup _a la reine_ bends the knee to ox-cheek,
And chickens and tongue bow to bubble-and-squeak.
While, still in translation employ'd by "the Row"
The Poet of Fashion dines out in Soho.

Pushed down from Parnassus to Phlegethon's brink,
Toss'd, torn, and trunk-lining, but still with some ink,
Now squat city misses their albums expand,
And woo the worn rhymer for "something off-hand";
No longer with stinted effrontery fraught,
Bucklersbury now seeks what St. James's once sought,
And (O, what a classical haunt for a bard!)
The Poet of Fashion dines out in Barge-yard.




WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

(1775-1864.)


LVII. BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS OF FONTANGES.

This is taken from Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_, and is one
of the best examples of his light, airy, satiric vein.


_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, it is the King's desire that I compliment you
on the elevation you have attained.

_Fontanges_, O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His Majesty
is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was,
"Angelique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the Bishop on the
dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the Dauphiness. I
desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank
sufficient to confess you, now you are Duchess. Let him be your
confessor, my little girl."

_Bossuet_. I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your
gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.

_Fontanges_. Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should be
ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank, who
writes like an angel.

_Bossuet_. The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your goodness
and modesty.

_Fontanges_. You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess to
you, directly, if you like.

_Bossuet_. Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young
lady?

_Fontanges_. What is that?

_Bossuet_. Do you hate sin?

_Fontanges_. Very much.

_Bossuet_. Are you resolved to leave it off?

_Fontanges_. I have left it off entirely since the King began to love
me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.

_Bossuet_. In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than
malice?

_Fontanges_. I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I
never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though
several have told me they should die for me.

_Bossuet_. Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?

_Fontanges_. Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.

_Bossuet_. You have something to answer for, then?

_Fontanges_. No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many
times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.

_Bossuet_. So, then! you would really have them die for you?

_Fontanges_. Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in
earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never
trust them again.

_Bossuet_. Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all
Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and
women!

_Bossuet_. I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and
the devil?

_Fontanges_. Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the
while, I will tell him so.--I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh,
I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt,
nor do anything that I know of.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle Marie-Angelique de Scoraille de Rousille,
Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?

_Fontanges_. Myself! does anyone hate me? Why should I be the first?
Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.

_Bossuet_. To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our
bodies, if we would save our souls.

_Fontanges_. That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so detestable
in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I think of him,
he has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate myself, if I would.
As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it was he who made the
King to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of
kings are in his rule and governance. As for titles and dignities, I do
not care much about them while His Majesty loves me, and calls me his
Angelique. They make people more civil about us; and therefore it must
be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and a hypocrite who
pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and Lizette have never
tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the mischievous old La
Grange said anything cross or bold; on the contrary, she told me what a
fine colour and what a plumpness it gave me. Would not you rather be a
duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the King gave you your choice?

_Bossuet_. Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of
your question.

_Fontanges_. I am in earnest, as you see.

_Bossuet_. Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous
forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to
you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your
virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest
reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are
undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to
pervert your intellect.

_Fontanges_. There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person
that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my
genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my
intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others
have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a
blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But His Majesty
never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable_! (what
is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite
still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.

_Bossuet_. I would aspire to the glory of converting you.

_Fontanges_. You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not
do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras
were heretics: you did right there. The King told the chancellor that
he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you
had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you
did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very
awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once
remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two
fingers at a time, when everyone is taught to use only the second,
whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for people
might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that she kept
a finger for each religion.

_Bossuet_. It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of
Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Marechali.

_Fontanges_. I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I should
like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man. I
understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.

_Bossuet_. To what do you refer, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of
wonder, how could you manage that?

_Bossuet_. By the grace of God.

_Fontanges_. Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any preacher
so much of his grace as to subdue this pest.

_Bossuet_. It has appeared among us but lately.

_Fontanges_. Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully,
from a child.

_Bossuet_. Really! I never heard so.

_Fontanges_. I checked myself as well as I could, although they
constantly told me I looked well in it.

_Bossuet_. In what, mademoiselle?

_Fontanges_. In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon-time. I
am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fenelon should
incline to it, as they say he does.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.

_Fontanges_. Is not then M. de Fenelon thought a very pious and learned
person?

_Bossuet_. And justly.

_Fontanges_. I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about a
knight-errant in search of a father. The King says there are many such
about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The
Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in
a charming hand, as much as the copybook would hold; and I got through,
I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I
never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own
story, and left them at once: in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon
his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the King has
promised him a famous _heretic-hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a
wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows
all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and if
you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would be
better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies on
my humble labours.

_Fontanges_. You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing
particular. The King assures me there is no harm whatever in his love
toward me.

_Bossuet_. That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you abstract
the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward heaven--

_Fontanges_. O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you
quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall
grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral
sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty
funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you preach
mine.

_Bossuet_. Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far
distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he
who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![231] May he
indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown in
you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by you
in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road you shall have
left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be spared: I am
advanced in age; you are a child.

_Fontanges_. Oh, no! I am seventeen.

_Bossuet_. I should have supposed you younger by two years at least.
But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so
many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may
preach a sermon on your funeral. We say that our days are few; and
saying it, we say too much. Marie Angelique, we have but one: the past
are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live
is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off
from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall between
us.[232] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at one
instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour, without
admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the march of
victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have animated armies
at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its crevices and
mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on this! Lady! so
live as to think on it undisturbed!

_Fontanges_. O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It is
in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened even
at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let us
talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you
were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a
pin or button.

_Bossuet_. Leave it there!

_Fontanges_. Your ring fell from your hand, my Lord Bishop! How quick
you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?

_Bossuet_. Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should
have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring
has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a
mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved
you more than my words.

_Fontanges_. It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the King
for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from the
chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I shall
ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it just when
I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself; he said but
yesterday--

'Such a sweet creature is worth a world':

and no actor on the stage was more like a king than His Majesty was
when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you
know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his
eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at
things.

_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to
conciliate our regard and love.

_Fontanges_. Well, I think so too, though I did not like it in him at
first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to
you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and particular
to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should say.

[Footnote 231: Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de
Fontanges died in child-bed the year following; he survived her
twenty-three years.]

[Footnote 232: Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of
feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fenelon, the fairest
apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.

While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by
Marlborough, who said to the Archbishop that, if he was sorry he had
not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the
pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our
generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.]




GEORGE, LORD BYRON.

(1788-1824.)


LVIII. THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.

_The Vision of Judgment_ appeared in 1822, and created a great
sensation owing to its terrible attack on George III., as well as
its ridicule of Southey, of whose long-forgotten _Vision of
Judgment_ this is a parody.


I.

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate;
His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
So little trouble had been given of late:
Not that the place by any means was full,
But since the Gallic era "eighty-eight",
The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull,
And "a pull all together", as they say
At sea--which drew most souls another way.

II.

The angels all were singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
Or curb a runaway young star or two,
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon
Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue,
Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

III.

The guardian seraphs had retired on high,
Finding their charges past all care below;
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky
Save the recording angel's black bureau;
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
With such rapidity of vice and woe,
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills,
And yet was in arrear of human ills.

IV.

His business so augmented of late years,
That he was forced, against his will no doubt
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers),
For some resource to turn himself about,
And claim the help of his celestial peers,
To aid him ere he should be quite worn out
By the increased demand for his remarks:
Six angels and twelve saints were named his clerks.

V.

This was a handsome board--at least for heaven;
And yet they had even then enough to do,
So many conquerors' cars were daily driven,
So many kingdoms fitted up anew;
Each day, too, slew its thousands six or seven,
Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,
They threw their pens down in divine disgust,
The page was so besmear'd with blood and dust.

VI.

This by the way; 'tis not mine to record
What angels shrink from: even the very devil
On this occasion his own work abhorr'd,
So surfeited with the infernal revel:
Though he himself had sharpen'd every sword,
It almost quench'd his innate thirst of evil.
(Here Satan's sole good work deserves insertion--
'Tis that he has both generals in reversion.)

VII.

Let's skip a few short years of hollow peace,
Which peopled earth no better, hell as wont,
And heaven none--they form the tyrant's lease,
With nothing but new names subscribed upon't:
'Twill one day finish: meantime they increase,
"With seven heads and ten horns", and all in front,
Like Saint John's foretold beast; but ours are born
Less formidable in the head than horn.

VIII.

In the first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died--but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad--and t'other no less blind.

IX.

He died! his death made no great stir on earth:
His burial made some pomp: there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth
Of aught but tears--save those shed by collusion.
For these things may be bought at their true worth;
Of elegy there was the due infusion--
Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners,
Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

X.

Form'd a sepulchral melodrame. Of all
The fools who flock'd to swell or see the show,
Who cared about the corpse? The funeral
Made the attraction, and the black the woe,
There throbb'd not there a thought which pierced the pall;
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

XI.

So mix his body with the dust! It might
Return to what it _must_ far sooner, were
The natural compound left alone to fight
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air,
But the unnatural balsams merely blight
What nature made him at his birth, as bare
As the mere million's base unmummied clay--
Yet all his spices but prolong decay.

XII.

He's dead--and upper earth with him has done;
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill,
Or lapidary's scrawl, the world has gone
For him, unless he left a German will.
But where's the proctor who will ask his son?
In whom his qualities are reigning still,
Except that household virtue, most uncommon,
Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.

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