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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 pate perigord;
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_.


The Abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,
And wandered forth alone, to look
Upon the summer moon:
A starlight sky was o'er his head,
A quiet breeze around;
And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed
And the waves a soothing sound:
It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;
Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.
He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds
He clasped his gilded rosary,
But he did not tell the beads;
If he looked to the heaven, 'twas not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;
If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.
A pious priest might the Abbot seem,
He had swayed the crozier well;
But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream,
The Abbot were loth to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more,
He traced the windings of the shore.
Oh beauteous is that river still,
As it winds by many a sloping hill,
And many a dim o'erarching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,
And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honeysuckle sweetly shades,
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers!
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
About as much, in sooth,
As a lover thinks of constancy,
Or an advocate of truth.
He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;
He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess
The water had slept for many a year,
Unchanged and motionless;
From the river stream it spread away
The space of half a rood;
The surface had the hue of clay
And the scent of human blood;
The trees and the herbs that round it grew
Were venomous and foul,
And the birds that through the bushes flew
Were the vulture and the owl;
The water was as dark and rank
As ever a Company pumped,
And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank
Grew rotten while it jumped;
And bold was he who thither came
At midnight, man or boy,
For the place was cursed with an evil name,
And that name was "The Devil's Decoy"!

The Abbot was weary as abbot could be,
And he sat down to rest on the stump of a tree:
When suddenly rose a dismal tone,--
Was it a song, or was it a moan?--
"O ho! O ho!
Above,--below,--
Lightly and brightly they glide and go!
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping,
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping;
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy,
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy!"--
In a monstrous fright, by the murky light,
He looked to the left and he looked to the right;
And what was the vision close before him
That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him?
'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise,
And the life-blood colder run:
The startled Priest struck both his thigh,
And the abbey clock struck one!

All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod;
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore;
His arms and his legs were long and bare;
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble,
Had bent that stout back nearly double,
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago,
And the hands that worked his foreign vest
Long ages ago had gone to their rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Minnow or gentle, worm or fly,--
It seemed not such to the Abbot's eye;
Gaily it glittered with jewel and jem,
And its shape was the shape of a diadem.
It was fastened a gleaming hook about
By a chain within and a chain without;
The Fisherman gave it a kick and a spin,
And the water fizzed as it tumbled in!

From the bowels of the earth,
Strange and varied sounds had birth;
Now the battle's bursting peal,
Neigh of steed, and clang of steel;
Now an old man's hollow groan
Echoed from the dungeon stone;
Now the weak and wailing cry
Of a stripling's agony!--
Cold by this was the midnight air;
But the Abbot's blood ran colder,
When he saw a gasping knight lie there,
With a gash beneath his clotted hair,
And a hump upon his shoulder.
And the loyal churchman strove in vain
To mutter a Pater Noster;
For he who writhed in mortal pain
Was camped that night on Bosworth plain--
The cruel Duke of Glo'ster!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a haunch of princely size,
Filling with fragrance earth and skies.
The corpulent Abbot knew full well
The swelling form, and the steaming smell;
Never a monk that wore a hood
Could better have guessed the very wood
Where the noble hart had stood at bay,
Weary and wounded, at close of day.

Sounded then the noisy glee
Of a revelling company,--
Sprightly story, wicked jest,
Rated servant, greeted guest,
Flow of wine, and flight of cork,
Stroke of knife, and thrust of fork:
But, where'er the board was spread,
Grace, I ween, was never said!--
Pulling and tugging the Fisherman sat;
And the Priest was ready to vomit,
When he hauled out a gentleman, fine and fat,
With a belly as big as a brimming vat,
And a nose as red as a comet.
"A capital stew," the Fisherman said,
"With cinnamon and sherry!"
And the Abbot turned away his head,
For his brother was lying before him dead,
The Mayor of St. Edmund's Bury!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
It was a bundle of beautiful things,--
A peacock's tail and a butterfly's wings,
A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl,
A mantle of silk, and a bracelet of pearl,
And a packet of letters, from whose sweet fold
Such a stream of delicate odours rolled,
That the Abbot fell on his face, and fainted,
And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.

Sounds seemed dropping from the skies,
Stifled whispers, smothered sighs,
And the breath of vernal gales,
And the voice of nightingales:
But the nightingales were mute,
Envious, when an unseen lute
Shaped the music of its chords
Into passion's thrilling words:
"Smile, Lady, smile!--I will not set
Upon my brow the coronet,
Till thou wilt gather roses white
To wear around its gems of light.
Smile, Lady, smile!--I will not see
Rivers and Hastings bend the knee,
Till those bewitching lips of thine
Will bid me rise in bliss from mine.
Smile, Lady, smile!--for who would win
A loveless throne through guilt and sin?
Or who would reign o'er vale and hill,
If woman's heart were rebel still?"

One jerk, and there a lady lay,
A lady wondrous fair;
But the rose of her lip had faded away,
And her cheek was as white and as cold as clay,
And torn was her raven hair.
"Ah ha!" said the Fisher, in merry guise,
"Her gallant was hooked before;"
And the Abbot heaved some piteous sighs,
For oft he had blessed those deep blue eyes,
The eyes of Mistress Shore!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he took forth a bait from his iron box.
Many the cunning sportsman tried,
Many he flung with a frown aside;
A minstrel's harp, and a miser's chest,
A hermit's cowl, and a baron's crest,
Jewels of lustre, robes of price,
Tomes of heresy, loaded dice,
And golden cups of the brightest wine
That ever was pressed from the Burgundy vine.
There was a perfume of sulphur and nitre
As he came at last to a bishop's mitre!

From top to toe the Abbot shook,
As the Fisherman armed his golden hook,
And awfully were his features wrought
By some dark dream or wakened thought.
Look how the fearful felon gazes
On the scaffold his country's vengeance raises,
When the lips are cracked and the jaws are dry
With the thirst which only in death shall die:
Mark the mariner's frenzied frown
As the swaling wherry settles down,
When peril has numbed the sense and will
Though the hand and the foot may struggle still:
Wilder far was the Abbot's glance,
Deeper far was the Abbot's trance:
Fixed as a monument, still as air,
He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer
But he signed--he knew not why or how--
The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow.

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks,
As he stalked away with his iron box.
"O ho! O ho!
The cock doth crow;
It is time for the Fisher to rise and go.
Fair luck to the Abbot, fair luck to the shrine!
He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line;
Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south,
The Abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!"

The Abbot had preached for many years
With as clear articulation
As ever was heard in the House of Peers
Against Emancipation;
His words had made battalions quake,
Had roused the zeal of martyrs,
Had kept the Court an hour awake
And the King himself three quarters:
But ever from that hour, 'tis said,
He stammered and he stuttered
As if an axe went through his head
With every word he uttered.
He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban,
He stuttered, drunk or dry;
And none but he and the Fisherman
Could tell the reason why!



LXIV. MAD--QUITE MAD.

Originally published in the _Morning Post_ for 1834; afterwards
included in his _Essays_.


Great wits are sure to madness near allied.--_Dryden_.

It has frequently been observed that genius and madness are nearly
allied; that very great talents are seldom found unaccompanied by a
touch of insanity, and that there are few Bedlamites who will not,
upon a close examination, display symptoms of a powerful, though ruined
intellect. According to this hypothesis, the flowers of Parnassus must
be blended with the drugs of Anticyra; and the man who feels himself to
be in possession of very brilliant wits may conclude that he is within
an ace of running out of them. Whether this be true or false, we are
not at present disposed to contradict the assertion. What we wish to
notice is the pains which many young men take to qualify themselves for
Bedlam, by hiding a good, sober, gentlemanlike understanding beneath an
assumption of thoughtlessness and whim. It is the received opinion
among many that a man's talents and abilities are to be rated by the
quantity of nonsense he utters per diem, and the number of follies he
runs into per annum. Against this idea we must enter our protest; if we
concede that every real genius is more or less a madman, we must not be
supposed to allow that every sham madman is more or less a genius.

In the days of our ancestors, the hot-blooded youth who threw away his
fortune at twenty-one, his character at twenty-two, and his life at
twenty-three, was termed "a good fellow", "an honest fellow", "nobody's
enemy but his own". In our time the name is altered; and the
fashionable who squanders his father's estate, or murders his best
friend--who breaks his wife's heart at the gaming-table, and his own
neck at a steeple-chase--escapes the sentence which morality would pass
upon him, by the plea of lunacy. "He was a rascal," says Common-Sense.
"True," says the World; "but he was mad, you know--quite mad."

We were lately in company with a knot of young men who were discussing
the character and fortunes of one of their own body, who was, it seems,
distinguished for his proficiency in the art of madness. "Harry," said
a young sprig of nobility, "have you heard that Charles is in the
King's Bench?" "I heard it this morning," drawled the Exquisite; "how
distressing! I have not been so hurt since poor Angelica (his bay mare)
broke down. Poor Charles has been too flighty." "His wings will be
clipped for the future!" observed young Caustic. "He has been very
imprudent," said young Candour.

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