The curs, without one atom of court-breeding, And 'stead of your mouth, wished it in their own; Now tell me honestly-pray don't you find As, for example, when your mistress, Fame, Takes up her trump to give the just applause, How have you, puppy-like, pawed, wished, and And growled, and cursed, and swore, and pined, TO MYSELF. O THOU! Whose daring works sublime Defy the rudest rage of Time, Say!-for the world is with conjecture dizzy, Did Mousehole give thee birth, or Mevagizzy? Hail, Mevagizzy! what a town of note! Where boats, and men, and stinks, and trade, are stirring; Where pilchards come in myriads to be caught; Pilchard, the idol of the Popish nation! On which the Catholics in Lent are crammed,- Beam on the wandering Beauties of the night, With Will-o'-Wisp, to brighten up his brains. FAREWELL ODES (1786),2 I. PETER, like famed Christina, queen of Sweden, "Thank God!" the works of Loutherbourg exclaim- "No longer now afraid of rhyming praters, Shall we be christened tea-boards, varnished waiters! "Thank heaven !" exclaims Rigaud, with sparkling eyes— And fill each gaping mouth and eye with wonder." It may be so. To think thy stars have made so strange a blunder, That spoiled, to make a dauber, a good brazier ! 1 A very old woman of Mousehole, supposed (falsely however) to have been the last who spoke the Cornish language. The honourable antiquarian, Daines Barrington Esq., journeyed, some years since, from London to the Land's-end, to converse with this wrinkled yet delicious morceau. 2 Concluding a series of criticisms in verse on the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy. "Thank Heaven!" cries Mr. Garvy; and "Thank God!" Cries Mr. Copley, "that this Man of Ode No more, barbarian-like, shall o'er us ride; "No more hung up in this dread fellow's rhyme, Pleased that no more my verses shall annoy, Glad that my blister Odes shall cease their stinging,] Each wooden figure's mouth expands with joyHark! how they all break forth in singing!— In boastful sounds the grinning artists cry;' "Lo! Peter's hour of insolence is o'er: His Muse is dead-his lyric pump is dry His Odes, like stinking fish, not worth a groat a score. "Our kings and queens in glory now shall lie, "Our oaks, our brushwood, and our lofty elms, In peace shall our stone-hedges sleep, "They who shall see this Peter in the street And cry, 'Is this the man of keen remark? "He whose broad cleaver chopped the sons of paint; Crushed like a marrowbone each lovely saint; Spared not the very clothes about their backs; The little duck-winged cherubims abused, That could not more inhumanly be used, Poor lambkins! had they fallen among the blacks;He, once so furious, soon shall want relief, Staked through the body like a paltry thief. "How art thou fallen, O Cherokee !' they cry; Ye goodly gentlemen, repress your yell; Your hearty wishes for my health restrain; For, if our works can put us into hell, Kind Sirs! we certainly shall meet again. II. A MODEST love of praise I do not blame- Young forward bullies seize her round the waist; Reader!-of images here's no confusion Thou therefore understand'st the bard's allusion. But possibly thou hast a thickish head, And therefore no vast quantity of brain :— Why then, my precious pig of lead, 'Tis necessary to explain. Some artists, if I so may call 'em,— Wish to the stars, like Blanchard,1 to be raised: 1 The famous Aeronaut. If disappointed in some Stentor's tongue, What prigs to immortality aspire, Who stick their trash around the room Trash, meriting a very different doom,I mean the warmer regions of the fire. Heaven knows that I am angered to the soul To find some blockheads of their works so vainSo proud to see them hanging cheek by jowl With his whose powers the art's high fame sustain. To wondrous merit their pretension, Brings to my mind a not unpleasant story, A shabby fellow chanced one day to meet Garrick, of whom our nation justly brags. The fellow hugged him, with a kind embrace. "Good Sir, I do not recollect your face," Quoth Garrick. "No?" replied the man of rags. "The boards of Drury you and I have trod Full many a time together, I am sure.” "When?" with an oath cried Garrick; "for, by God, I never saw that face of yours before !— What characters, I pray, Did you and I together play?" "Lord!" quoth the fellow, think not that I mock When you played Hamlet, Sir,—I played the cock.” 1 The President Reynolds, 2 In the Ghost Scene. |