The Poetical Works of the Right Hon. George Canning Comprising the Whole of his Satires, Odes, Songs, and Other Poems |
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 | The Poetical Works of the Right Hon. George Canning |  |
20
Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen,
Neckar's fair daughter,—Stael, the Epicene!
Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and purple nose
The bloom of young desire unceasing glows!
Fain would the Muse—but ah! she dares no more,
A mournful voice from lone Guyana's shore.
—Sad Quatremer—the bold presumption checks,
Forbid to question thy ambitious sex.
These lines contain the secret History of Quatremer's deportation. He presumed in the Council of Five Hundred to arraign Madame de Stael's conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. He was sent to Guyana. The transaction naturally brings to one's mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakspeare's Henry IV.
Fal.Thou art neither fish nor flesh—a man cannot tell where to have thee.
Quick
Thou art an unjust man for saying so—thou or any man knows where to have me.
| The Poetical Works of the Right Hon. George Canning | |