The Age Reviewed A Satire: In two parts: Second edition, revised and corrected [by Robert Montgomery] |
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 | The Age Reviewed |  |
Their grandsires felons, or their fathers hung,
To cram their hungry mouths on England's shore!
In pocket empty, but replete in head,
They grub, and plot, and pilfer for their bread;
Till, helped by craft, and temper ever raw,
They rise from tanning hides to dress the law!
Good B---, cease thy cold and savage jeer,
And, caustic G---, “doff” that varlet sneer.
Who tramp to England for their bed and board;
These pliant rogues how Fashion pants to feed,
While native merit sinks in toil-worn need!
There's such enchantment in the sloppy face
Of French buffoons —and such imposing grace!
Their pristine grandeur with the Bourbon's throne
Was crush'd complete—their pride was overthrown!
Grovelling at first, the scyophantic gang
Whine through the kingdom with deceitful slang;
Till nasty, nosy gabble mouth'd for hire,
Puff their mean souls into Presumption's fire;
Then! hear each ragamuffin hoot and hack
The Isle that hung a shirt upon his back!
Our island serves as a sort of sink to drain the poor of other nations. Of all the foreign poachers, the Italian and French are the most obtrusive. The first either turn pimps for people of quality, squall bravuras at a fashionable conclave of midnight ideots, or pull their greasy whiskers over an Italian Lesson. The last—(to save the trouble of a note in any other part of the work,) what spot of ground is not infected by them? They are the most frequent vagabonds of the street; they import all the obscenities and deistic rankness of their country into our's; they feed on our charity; render us half ashamed of our own language; filch fortunes by the resources of innate duplicity; infest the purity of domestic circles, or abduce some of our countrywomen; and then abuse us for our want of “politesse, and cold manners!!” This is not all; they are patronized, stuffed, and almost deified, for their talents, while Britons, though of equal talent, are left to plod on in the path of obscurity.
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