TO THE PUBLIC.
READER,
Pleasant and numerous are the volumes in
ana; viz. Scaligeriana, Thuana, Huetiana,
enagiana, Chævreana, Carpenteriana, &c. to
which I have added, for thine amusement, Pindariana.
May the spirits of Chaucer, of Shakespeare,
of Cervantes, of Rabelais, of Sterne, of Fontaine,
of Tibullus, of Horace, of Martial, of Theocritus,
and my great old cousin of Thebes, have entered
my Portfolio, and animated my leaves
Ah! may no eye wax dim upon my page;
The lid, all heavy-laded, dully closing;
The drooping head, as though from palsied age,
Reclining lumpish on the breast, and dozing;
While from th' ungrasping hand, tremendous sound,
The poor forgotten volume greets the ground!
May no fastidious critic be able to say of my lucubrations
what the blaspheming Dr. Johnson, with his
oracular and growling pomposity, asserted of the
sublime Ossian—‘that as good a thing might be
written by many men, many women, and many
children!’
Griev'd should I be, could my poetic spawn
Produce one melancholy, damning yawn.
O let me feel the muse's warmth divine!
Perdition seize a soporific line!
Ne'er may the leaden lumber load my brain!
Avaunt the sleepy verse! confound the song
That dragging, heavy, snail-like, crawls along!
Oblivion, bid thy mud o'erwhelm the strain!
I hate it, as old Snuffle I abhor;
The parson who, with one unvarying tone,
Sets all the jaded audience in a snore—
Such the strong opiate of his drowsy drone.
Nor, O ye pow'rs of poesy, be mine
The roaring, blust'ring, mad, and bullying line,
As though the muses all were lying-in
Of some wild Calibanish, mountain form;
An earthquake, or volcano, or a storm,
So huge the sound, so horrible the din.
Nor let me prove so pompously obscure—
A mode of writing, I detest, abjure;
With stiff inversions the poor sense to screen
From ev'ry aching brain, and poring eye,
And in a rage to make the reader cry,
‘Why, what the devil can the booby mean?
Thus too with epithets to cannonade us,
As if the beast were vomiting a gradus!’
Let me not act the goose, screaming and waddling,
Poking his silly head, in mudpools paddling:
No!—with a lofty pinion let me rise;
Face with an eagle wing the solar beam,
Drink with undazzled gaze th' effulgent stream,
And with the rush of whirlwinds sweep the skies;
Thence, in an instant be the humble wren,
Twitt'ring his love-notes sweet to Mistress Hen.
O Versatility, I hold thee dear!
The Proteus power be mine, to take each shape;
Skip like a Will-o'-whisp—be here, be there—
Now the grave moralist, and now an ape.
Now roar the savage of the Libyan shade,
Where horror listens to the shrieking ghost;
Now Pompey in Belinda's bosom laid,
Or whining, pawing for a piece of toast.
Now roll the monarch of the stormy deep,
The floundering terror of the finny race;
Now the slim eel, of ponds so lucid, creep;
Now leap a salmon, and now glide a plaice.
Thrice happy change of soul-delighting song!
This were my talent, blest would Peter be!
But who, alas! is thus divinely strong?
Shakespeare, that envied pow'r I mark in thee.
Let me inform thee, reader, that no order will be
observed with respect to the various pieces. Thou
wilt receive them as they leap from the portfolio; so
that there will subsist as little connexion between
one and another, as between Lady Mary and the
Graces, Lord Th---w and the Lord's Prayer, Signor
Marchesi and creation, Sir Joseph Banks and
philosophy, Sir William Hamilton and the secrets of
Mount Vesuvius, Judge K. and a whole bottle of
port, Judge B. and reprieve.
Various will be the subjects of the muse. Ode,
Elegy, Fable, Tale, Ballad, Epigram, &c. a version,
at times, of parts of the venerable classics, whose
spirit has been but feebly transfused through our
modern languages, will be given;
Whose oaks so lofty (what abomination!)
Are chang'd to paltry broomsticks, by translation:
Their pyramids, a little village spire;
Their skies, blue paper; their ear-rending thunder,
With lightnings darting danger, blazing wonder,
A poor coal coffin bouncing from the fire;
Their cities, emmets' nests—a spider's hole!
Their mountains, what?—the mansion of the mole.
Too oft the roses of th' Athenian vale
Resign their blushes for a deadly pale;
An Attic sun converted in a trice
To a dull torpid cake of shiv'ring ice!
A rill, their oceans that no longer roar;
Their storms, a wind's small whistle through a door;
The sun-clad eagle, a weak flick'ring bat;
And Afric's royal brute, a squeaking rat.
The tender passion will make a prominent figure
on the canvass; and why not, as it is one of the most
prominent features of Nature? Who is there that
has not sacrificed to the amorous goddess?
When dew-clad Evening's modest blushes fade,
And Nature sinks amid the deep'ning shade,
And Labour pauses on the fainting light:
When beetles hum, and bats in circles skim,
When hills and hamlets, trees and tow'rs, grow dim,
And Silence steals upon the gloom of night;
With joy I tread the secret grove,
To meet the idol of my love.
What a monster, who never felt the soft emotion!
Ah! whence art thou, of wealth the slave?
Go, seek the haunted gloom, the grave;
Whose eye, on money taught to roll,
Admits not beauty to the soul:
Fly thou the day, who scorn'st the fair,
For thou wert born an imp of care.
But who art thou, with anxious eye,
With panting hope, and melting sigh,
Who biddest tempting gold depart,
And only woo'st the virgin's heart?
Go thou where Beauty holds her throne;
For bliss was form'd for thee alone.
Next to the contemner of the charming sex, is the
savage who abuses it. Poor Marian! sweet is thy
song of sorrow!
MARIAN'S COMPLAINT.
SINCE truth has left the shepherd's tongue,
Adieu the cheerful pipe and song;
Adieu the dance at closing day,
And, ah! the happy morn of May.
How oft he told me I was fair,
And wove the garland for my hair!
How oft for Marian cull'd the bow'r,
And fill'd my lap with ev'ry flow'r!
No more his gifts of guile I'll wear,
But from my brow the chaplet tear;
The crook he gave, in pieces break,
And rend his ribbons from my neck.
How oft he vow'd a constant flame,
And carv'd on ev'ry oak my name!
Blush, Colin, that the wounded tree
Is all that will remember me.
Rich fragments of the Tragic and Comic Muse, not
forgetting the muse of ballad, yclept Opera, will occasionally
pour their coruscations through the work.
—Moreover will I present thee with delicious scraps
of Criticism: thou shalt likewise have Apophthegms
—so that a part of my labours may with propriety
be baptized the Wisdom of Peter. The Wisdom of
Solomon is well known. Plato and Xenophon, the
two famous disciples of Socrates, gathered the good
things of their sublime master, fancying every sentence
that dropped from his mouth, a gem of inestimable
value. Pythagoras uttered sage maxims for
the benefit of posterity. Nor did the good Marcus
Aurelius think it beneath his dignity to turn collector.
The eastern hemisphere glitters with apophthegmatic
constellations; and now behold a bard
resolved to add a star to that of the west.
Reader, thou shalt have more than all this. Thou
shalt be presented with some of the Travels of the
bard, who, like the hero of the Odyssey, mores hominum
multorum videt et urbes. But expect no
wonders, as I am neither a Mandeville, a Psalmanazar,
nor an Abyssinian Bruce. Unfortunately I have
met with no ‘Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
do grow beneath their shoulders.’
How many numbers I shall offer thee, is a mystery
even to myself.—Should we not be eaten up by the
threatening and hungry sans-culottes; by the blessing
of Apollo and the Nine Ladies, a handsome volume
or two may be produced; and to give thee my
sentiment on the sans-culottes subject, I really
think we shall not be devoured.
Howl thyself hoarse, wild war—of this fair isle
The happy natives shall for ever smile,
While by thy rage the kingdoms bleed around;
Safe as the chirping birds amid the oak,
That bids defiance to the tempest's stroke,
And keeps with stern sublimity his ground.
ADIEU.
