Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Bidding the wearer still inherit
Its primitive possessor's merit ;
Why then some nobles would appear
Just the reverse of what they are.-
But all NE.'s claim to ancestry
Some genealogists deny,

And prove by treatise erudite

He was a human aërolite,

Ejected from some moon volcano,

(Though that is more than I or they know), Where still are kept the wits of Muggs, In one of Ariosto's jugs.

If he had chosen to have had 'em,

He might have bought descents from Adam;
And proved his folly and his blood
By pedigrees from old King Lud,
Such as the College keeps by dozens,

With blanks for Norman sires and cousins.

Birth cannot give our faults redemption;
'Tis an excitement, not exemption.-
Intrinsic honesty and knowledge

Emblaze themselves, without the College;
While herald honours on the base

Do but degrade their wearers more,
As sweeps, whom May-day trappings grace,
Show ten times blacker than before.

As to his trade our hero held
Chattels and goods by few excell'd ;
Such as brooms, pipkins, treacle, tops,
Tobacco, brick dust, lollipops,

Gilt gingerbread, and penny trumpets,
Red herrings, blacking, snuff, and crumpets:

In short, the catalogue to stop,

He kept a thriving chandler's shop.

Snuff, treacle, tops, he spurn'd them all,
Fancying he heard a voice beseeching
Him (Muggs!) to listen to a call,
And go, like Hudibras, a-preaching.-
'Twas a new light, which might, in fact,
Have enter'd where his head was crack'd.-

Is it that addled brains perchance,

When the scull's dark with ignorance,

Like rotten eggs survey'd at night,
Emit a temporary light?

Or is it that a heated brain,

When it is rubb'd against the grain,

Like a cat's back, though dark as charcoal, Will in the gloom appear to sparkle? Whatever was the cause, the fact is,

That Muggs conceived his call was true; And so began to read and practise,

To fit him for his grand début.

[ocr errors]

'Twas his first care his voice to muffle,
And get the genuine nasal snuffle;
For these low candlestick apostles
Illuminate us from their nozzles,
And through the nose as surely pray,
As make their congregations pay.—
To aid his whine, an ample dose
Of snuff was thrust into his nose,
As old Demosthenes put stones
Into his mouth to mend his tones :-
Last, he resolved his stile should be
Original and savoury;

While to prevent the sneers and sniggers
Of those who look for learned theses,
He studied metaphors and figures,
Tropes, similes, and catachreses,
That both Quintilian and Longinus
Should over-reach or undermine us.-

So qualified and recommended,
To Stratford fair, with pompous pace,
And solemn sanctimonious face,
He bent his way—a cart ascended,
And thus, collecting all his powers,
Scatter'd his oratoric flowers:-

"Viler than vilest of vile sinners!
Ye who at fairs or alehouse dinners

Sup on your reprobate Welsh rabbit; Ye who love skittles, bowls, and dice, And make disorder'd nights of vice Your regular and daily habit :What! will ye still, ye heathen, flee From sanctity and grace,

Until your blind idolatry

Shall stare you in the face? Will ye throw off the mask, and show Thereby the cloven foot below? Do- -but remember you must pay What's due to you on settling day; For Heaven's eye, it stands to sense, Can never stomach such transgressions; Nor can the hand of Providence Wink at your impious expressions.The profligate thinks vengeance dead, And in his fancied safety chuckles,

But Atheism's hydra head

Shall have a rap upon the knuckles ;—
The never-blushing cheek of vice
Shall kick the bucket in a trice;
While the deaf ear that never pray'd,
Shall quickly by the heels be laid."

At this display of declamation,
The unconverted congregation
Laughter in such loud peals emits,
That Echo seem'd to be in fits;

Whereat our Muggs with anger fumed,
And thus in louder key resumed-
"The finger of uplifted scorn

In vain exalts its wicked horn,
Cocks up its nose at what I teach,
And turns its back upon my speech;—
You fear my words-"Just then, alas!
They did seem anxious to prevent 'em,
For some one threw a muddy mass
Into his eye with such momentum,
That by the well-directed sally
'Twas closed and seal'd hermetically.
Another gave the cart a tilt,

To stop our ranting Boanerges,
Whereby he suddenly was spilt
Into a dunghill's sable surges,
Which closed the sermon of our Flamen,
Ere he had time to utter-Amen.

DEATH-POSTHUMOUS MEMORIALS

CHILDREN.

DEATH hath not any appalling concomitants, either as a "thin melancholy privation, or more confounding positive." He is the sleeping partner of life, to whom we give ourselves up every night without any compunctious visitings: we know not, when we enter them, that the sheets of our bed shall not prove our winding sheets, yet our hearts quake not. We walk arm-in-arm with him, almost every hour; and when his gentle hand draws the curtain around us, and covers us up in our narrow bed, what is it but to fall

asleep, and to have a little longer to wait for the daylight? As I return to my sequestered quiet cottage, after the bustle of a day in London, and a glimpse at the pageantry of the theatre; so, after the great drama of life, shall we return to the tranquil non-existence from which we started ;- --we had our turn, and must make room for others.

Ay, but to die, and go we not where,—
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot!-
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice!

Shakspeare, with his usual insight into human nature, has put the cowardly speech of which this is the commencement, with all its monstrous notions of the Deity, and its abject and grovelling conclusion, into the mouth of Clodio, a dastard, who would purchase a pittance of life with his sister's dishonour.-Well might she exclaim

O you beast!

O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!

Yet there is some force in the earnestness with which he urges the uncertain nature of death. "We know what we are, but we know not what we may be."And yet, after all, it is the love of what we are going from, more than the fear of what we are going to, that makes us draw back our foot when the grave opens beneath it. Three-fourths of mankind, in their last moments, seem more anxious to be recorded in

« AnteriorContinuar »