The press, or literary chit-chat :: :: University of Virginia Library

The press, or literary chit-chat

A Satire [by J. H. Reynolds]

Reynolds, John Hamilton (1794-1852)

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III.

IV.

VI.

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VIII.

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XIII.

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XXI.

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III.

PART III.

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III. PART III.

For praise I care not, yet I must confess
'Tis sweet to feel the public's dear caress;
'Tis doubtless sweet beyond compare to hear
Words of applause resounding—ev'ry where;
To view admiring crowds your footsteps haunt,
And hear each coterie prating of your chaunt:
'Tis sweet, I know, to hear by female tongue
Your own light verses musically sung,
As trembling voice, and tell-tale eyes betray
All that the singer wishes—fears to say.

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Such joys I've felt, and, though the songstress now
Might view, I fear, my form with unmoved brow,
Yet still 'tis sweet to muse upon those hours
When life's green paths were strew'd with fresh-pluck'd flowers,
And led by Mem'ry clad in pensive robe,
View that dear spot—the dearest on the globe!
Where youthful buoyancy of thought impress'd
Each well-known object with a faëry vest:
Ecstatic dream! too soon it fades to nought,
To-day, with stern realities enfraught,
Appals my shrinking breast, and fruitless sighs
For brighter yesterday, alas! arise.

Oh! for a lodge in some vast solitude

“Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness.”

Cowper.

Where wood-fringed rocks display their features rude,
Where the dark pines the foaming cat'ract shade,
And the light red-deer gambols in each glade!
Futile the wish; the crowded haunts of men
At once demand my presence and my pen,

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So buckle-to, my fancy, nor in vain
Sigh after joys you ne'er may know again.

The city, too, hath charms, but of a kind
To me less pleasing, as they're less refined.
'Tween man and man the frequent intercourse
That chills the heart, yet gives the mind fresh force;
Feeling decays, and we as cautious grow
As if each one we spoke to were a foe.
But yet there's joy in London;—sure 'tis sweet
To view the gas illume the crowded street;
'Tis sweet to hear along the river creep
The voice of lighterman so loud and deep;
'Tis sweet to hear the watchman's honest bark,
And sweet the craft 'neath London-bridge to mark,
As through its centre arch they swiftly glide,
Impell'd not by the oar, but with the tide;
'Tis sweet to call a coach on rainy night,
And chuckle as you pass each dripping wight;
Sweet is the sound of footman's moving feet
When you impatient linger in the street,

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Hearing the chearful tones of those you love
Talking and laughing in the room above;
And sweet to hear your name announced, and know
Eyes will look brighter as you make your bow.

Vide Don Juan, Canto I. Stanza 122.

“What, in the name of wonder, has this proem
To do, sage author, with The Press, a Poem?”

Still sager reader, nothing I confess,
So I'll conclude it, and resume The Press.—

HOCUS.
Thank thee, my Jocus, for the hum'rous verse
Which you last night so kindly did rehearse,
But which we—slumbering ere the half was o'er,—
Neglected then to thank the author for.

JOCUS.
Enough, enough, my friends; we yet have lots
Of men to combat—English, Irish, Scots.

POCUS.
Ay—'midst the first appears pedantic Bowles;
The Irish ranks display the form of Knowles;
Scotland, though ransack'd by our brains full well,
Hath yet great names—for instance, Andrew Bell.

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HOCUS.
Bowles hath been touch'd by Byron's cutting powers,

Vide English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

We'll therefore spare him from the lash of ours;
And, as for Knowles—

Knowles' Virginius is greatly superior to the generality of modern tragedies. Whoever has beheld Macready and Miss Foote perform in it, hath seen one of the finest spectacles the stage of to-day can exhibit.

POCUS.
His play deserves our praise,
For it reminds us of those better days,
When real genius cater'd for the stage,
Not the mean drama-mongers of our age.

JOCUS.
Thanks unto Bell! now lisping children write,

Dr. Andrew Bell, the inventor of the Madras system of Education, well deserves the thanks of his countrymen. He is master of Sherburn Hospital in the county of Durham—a charitable institution, and therefore, it is presumed, worthy of the epithet sacred.

Soon sucking infants may a page recite;
Let subtle disputants the wisdom doubt
Of teaching letters to each infant lout,
Mine be the task to praise Bell's happy plan
For making knowledge general to man;
Long may he live in Sherburn's sacred bowers,
And calm seclusion gild his latter hours!

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POCUS.
Ere we depart from Durham's mitred vales,
We'll talk of Faber and his well-spun tales,

Mr. Faber's Dissertations on the Prophecies are too generally known to require further notice. His work on Pagan Mythology displays a prodigious fund of research, though in some parts too abstruse and confused.

Where lore Peruvian, Hindoo, and Chinese,
Mixt in due order cannot fail to please,
As Brama, Vishnu, Juggernaut, and Jove,
The Indian mountain, or the British grove,
With the conceptions of the Chinese sage,
Rear their strange forms aloft in every page.

HOCUS.
Oh! when a mind can dare such dang'rous theme,
Nor like a Drummond or a Phillips dream,
Due praise be his, although we vainly try
To follow through the maze of prophecy.

JOCUS.
Let Bridge Street levies crowd Sir Richard's door,

Vide Part I. Note 41.

The while Sir William keeps to Naples' shore,—

Sir W. Drummond, author of several works of a deistical tendency, resides, or did lately reside, at Naples.

To favour'd Naples, which the travelling press
Of travelling Brydges too vouchsafes to bless—

Sir Egerton Brydges, when at home, prints from his private press at Lee Priory, and when abroad edifies the natives of the country he happens to be in with sundry and divers concoctions of his brain. For instance;—At Geneva he published a work on Political Economy—at Florence a volume of Miscellanies—at Rome, too, he had his printing press—at Naples he published, and I believe is still publishing and intending to publish a periodical work under the title of Res Literariæ. Probably, when the Baronet puts into force his intention of visiting Lapland, he will delight the Laps (Vide the Specimens lately exhibited by Mr. Bullock) in a similar manner.

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POCUS.
Brydges! ah, is he there? but yesterday
I made to him in Paris my congè.

JOCUS.
You've doubtless heard of those who throng our isle,

The class of itinerant venders of books in numbers, principally from the press of Nuttall and Co. of Liverpool.

Daring each narrow glen, and stern defile,
With, 'neath their arm, portfolios cramm'd with books
T' inform our ploughmen, dairy-maids, and cooks,—
Sir Egerton, no doubt, keeps these in view,
But carries books and printing-presses too.
At once the friend of learning and mankind,
His happy thoughts are not to us confined;
Ideas concocted in his Priory's shade
O'er all benighted Europe are convey'd;
French and Italians, Swiss and Germans, feel
Th' enlightening influence of the trav'ller's zeal.

POCUS.
Yes, whilst most authors travel to relate
To friends at home what dangers were their fate,

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Our philanthropic baronet doth roam
To spread abroad what he composed at home.

HOCUS.
Out on the travelling mania that pervades
Both wives and husbands, bachelors and {maids}!
When will thy torrent, Exportation, cease,
And Britons their own mutton kill in peace?

JOCUS.
All-glorious age! the march of intellect
Produces curious wishes to inspect
All that is foreign: Cunninghame in vain

Mr. Cunningham of Harrow hath written an Address to Britons on the danger likely to arise from indulging the travelling mania.

Caution'd his countrymen, and may again.
Hobhouse, and Leigh, and Matthews, Mrs. Grahame

The names of different travellers whose works have lately been published. The list might be increased an hundred-fold.

The deaf, the dumb, the blind, and eke the lame

This is not mere hyperbole. A blind gentleman of the name of Hopland has published his travels, from which it appears he has made diligent use of his remaining senses.

Publish their travels—lo! the passion spreads,
And each, delighted, foreign regions treads.
Pachas and Viziers, all the turban'd race,
The Frenchman bowing with polite grimace,
Swarthy Italians, or the darker Copt,
Lure us the trav'lling mania to adopt;

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No more we slumber as our fathers did,
But dare the geyser or the pyramid.

POCUS.
Oh! noble noon-day of the mind—no more
We will submit to live as those of yore;
Ere long, no doubt, cast-iron footmen may,
Impell'd by steam, our each behest obey,
Whilst the same agents all our work may do,
And those who labour now, their joys pursue.

JOCUS.
The age of reason is at hand no doubt,
Carlile and Hone will bring the change about;
Soon, doubtless, Cobbett will our senate rule,
And take the reins from weaker Liverpool,
Whilst spouting Hunt, once more at large, may bawl
To anxious list'ners in St. Stephen's hall:
Taxes unheard of; public debt expunged,
(The holders all in Lethe's torrent plunged,)
Once more Britannia may o'er Britons smile,
And peace and plenty charm her sea-girt isle;

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Now, food's so cheap, and seasons are so fine,
John Bull, half-starved, is hardly set to dine.
Oh! Faber, prophesy—Oh! Malthus, say,
When will arrive the long-expected day,—
When will the eyes of thousands, now purblind,
Confess the sacred brilliancy of mind,—
When will each man be equal, as at birth,
And lawless mobs cry havoc o'er the earth!

HOCUS.
Ay, when December strews our fields with flowers,
Or August's snows depopulate our bowers,
When wives are faithful—lawyers honest men,
Those happy times may come—but not till then.

POCUS.
Nations decay, and fade away to nought,
Whilst their remains by curious eyes are sought.

HOCUS.

Yes! Grecian heroes little thought that Rome
Mistress of all their valleys would become;

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And Roman governors, who shudd'ring view'd
Britannia's painted sons, and solitude,
As little would the surmise have believed
Of what we are and what we have achieved.
And, ah! ere many years shall flee away,
Perchance some distant realm may Albion sway;
Whilst Thames' wide stream may through a silent waste
Unseen, unthought of, daily hurry past;
Again may beasts of chace the precincts own
Of sylvan Hyde, or desert Marybone,
And herns and bitterns safely build their nests
Where now perchance the lordly frigate rests!
Then as some stranger from a distant shore,
Versed in what he will deem as ancient lore,
By guides, half-barb'rous, o'er the ruins led,
The sole memorials of the mighty dead,
Views prostrate columns strew the weed-clad ground
O'er which the breezes creep with moaning sound,
Thoughts such as these may throng his breast, as sighs
O'er the wild haunts of Desolation rise;—

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“The scenes of ruin that around I scan
Tempt me to ask with doubtings—What is man?
Ye falling fanes—ye prostrate columns say—
The flutt'ring insect of a short-lived day!
Lo! from yon moss-clad, crumbling pile arise
The bittern's shriek, the wolf's appalling cries;
The noxious things of earth now fearless crawl
O'er marbled floor, and pillar-circled hall.
Here haply once the fair and tender hung
O'er notes a Stephens or a Paton sung,
Or here a list'ning senate sate to hear
A Canning lash the age with speech severe—
I once could weep—but now mine eyes are dry,
Thoughts far too deep for tears within my bosom lie.”

JOCUS.

Some future Byron may our relics view,
And paint the present and the future too;
Some Hope may gather from them scenes to fill

The Anastatius of Mr. Hope is the best novel of our time— far superior in my opinion to any of the works attributed to Sir Walter Scott. The scene being laid in a distant country hath prevented its acquiring such popularity as the Scottish novels, but the adventures of the modern Greek possess a strength and vividness in vain sought for in Waverley or any of its followers. I am sorry to be obliged to add that Anastatius is of somewhat too rosy a hue for indiscriminate perusal.

Novels his distant countrymen to thrill;
A Smedley or a Dale their pensive page

Mr. Smedley hath written several Prize and other Poems much superior to the generality of academic productions. Mr. Dale's muse is also deserving of praise; but I am sorry to say his first production (The Widow of the City of Nain) is his best. I observe he hath just announced a translation of Euripides—a bold undertaking.

Fill with the actions of the present age,

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Or a Belzoni bring to light once more

The less Memnon, now in the British Museum, is one of those relics of antiquity so very ancient that we are inclined to doubt their being the works of art, but rather to assign them a place amongst those things created “in the beginning.” Its stupendous mass is apparently destined to brave the teeth of Time for centuries to come. Who can predict its future destiny?

Memnon, to carry to a foreign shore,
As wond'ring crowds the monstrous bust behold,
And ask what chisel could such features mould;
A knot of antiquarians may dispute
On the remains of our Achilles' foot,

This statue has excited more controversy than the most celebrated one of antiquity. I shall leave the reader to guess my opinion respecting it.

And nations wonder if his were the size
Of those who rear'd his form to mortal eyes.
And haply, too, the nearly-finish'd page
I now compose will charm a distant age,
And students, in some college yet unbuilt,
Amazed, compute the floods of ink I spilt.

Some names we have, so long to readers known,
We hardly deem their period as our own;
For instance, nature-painting Crabbe still rhimes

Mr. Crabbe's first poems were perused and approved of by Dr. Johnson, a short period before his death.

And links our years to those of Johnson's times;
Mackenzie's works, too, we can hardly join
With their's who, whilst we're eating, live and dine;
Yet both are living—both are writing too,
Whilst others daily make their first debût;

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Galt monthly yields his quaint yet pleasing tomes,

Mr. Galt hath recently showered his works upon us with a rapidity almost unexampled—but none of his later productions equal his “Ayrshire Legatees.” He ought to remember the proverb—“More haste and worse speed.”

Colman with laughter shakes the Roscian domes;
Egan astounds with civic slang our ears,

“Life in London” hath, I trust, had its run—a run acquired not by the lame prose of Mr. Egan, but by the humourous prints by Cruickshank accompanying it.

And Bloomfield's muse unhurt by age appears;
Montgomery writes, and, void of conscious qualms,
Gives us a rosy version of the Psalms.—

Mr. Montgomery hath recently published a version of several of the psalms, certainly not quite so fanciful as Moore's “Sacred Songs.”

Wind up the list.—Each æra hath its crest,
And with some striking signet is imprest;
But age of gold and that of iron sink
Before the present age—the age of ink;
Long may it flourish—long may plenty bless
Those who are copy-caterers to the Press!

Copy is the technical term in printing-offices for the MS. or print from which the types are set.