An equestrian epistle in verse, to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Jersey, To H. R. H. The Prince of Wales occasioned by the publication of the correspondence between the Earl and Countess of Jersey, and the Rev. Dr. Randolph, upon the subject of some letters belonging to H. R. H. the Princess of Wales. Adorned with notes. By the author of the epistle to the Rev. Dr. Randolph [i.e. T. J. Mathias] |
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 | An equestrian epistle in verse, to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Jersey, To H. R. H. The Prince of Wales |  |
AN EQUESTRIAN EPISTLE IN VERSE, TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF JERSEY, MASTER OF THE HORSE TO THE Prince of Wales.
Shew'd what love taught, and prov'd that books are vain;
With the brisk dalliance of a fond Divine;
And like the bird of night, in accent clear,
Sung spousal in my Randolph's am'rous ear;
Now from celestial Psyche's charms withdrawn,
I quit the prospect of the churchman's lawn.
Warm with the theme, and conscious of the time,
Trappings of nobler prose await my rhyme;
I sing the Master of the Cambrian Horse;
And bid my humbler Pegasus at home
O'er Jersey dash his light poetic foam.
Content distils her dews in drowsy show'rs,
Where no distrust, no care, no baneful strife,
Perplex the husband and the faithful wife;
No doubt alarms, no luscious sweetness cloys
The blest endearment of your mutual joys;
Where scarce a soft vicissitude is known,
Save letter'd fears, and letters not your own;
While on Elysium oft your fancy dreams,
Of groves unfading and Lethean streams,
Where, from the Prince apart, the Tyrian Dame
Sichæus sought, and fann'd his equal flame.
Your Lady's resignation, or your fate?
Your prudence, or the honours of your head;
Or patience, shewn alike at board and bed?
Nor think, my Jersey, lost your classic taste,
That unobserv'd your periods run to waste,
Or that alone to Randolph may belong
The gleams of wit, or music of my song.
Who in this rare adventure went his half,
Yet should I call him Randolph, 'tis all one)
Convinc'd I read your clear mellifluous lay,
Where prose to metre wins its easy way,
“Hear me, ye Pow'rs, who smile on Hymen's bands,
“It never was in Lady Jersey's hands!”
And when detraction opes her brazen throat,
You hurl defiance in its boldest note;
Justice and Jersey rumble thro' the line;
You throw the glove with such impassion'd art,
That Dymock's self from you might learn his part.
Rides on the whirlwind of infected air,
Vestige on vestige tread, and trace on trace:
Yet still forgive your pensive Poet's fear,
What's past is past, and nothing will appear.
Ah! Randolph! Jersey! ah!— forbear to jar,
Tutor with Peer is barb'rous Gallic war.
Plain truth you love, and hate an equivoque :
But chief, my Lord, that courage I admire,
No papers shake, no repetitions tire;
What others feel, by you unheeded pass,
Your Lady's conscience is a wall of brass,
“For who unblushing could a letter ope,
“Pockets might pick, and soon deserve a rope;”
And sure, if truth and sense to verse belong,
Horace and she go hand in hand in song.
But what's a newsman's tittle tattle-breath?
Born with the day, at night consign'd to death;
Nor tales, nor words, can be preserv'd by Croft.
Stars in their course, and Heralds stand convict;
The source of light himself, the Sun will lie,
And truest Britons here with Perry vie.
Large is their bounty, and their zeal sincere;
They give, they take, they lend, they beg, they steal,
Their force, at Dunkirk, Chancellors can feel;
Arm'd in his sagum Loughb'rough's form they draw,
The blunderbuss at once of war and law,
And on his woolsack paint the hated wall,
And York's retreat, and gallant Moncrief's fall.
Or when Balcarras, in the isles afar,
Lets slip the Cuban dogs of blood and war;
They cry, “mere negro freaks, and things of course,”
And force can be repell'd alone by force.
What cannot magic paragraphs dispense?
To Sinclair, heads of wool and common sense;
To Erskine, modesty; to Mitford, fire;
Coolness, to Burke; to Carlisle, Pindar's lyre,
To sing, in lofty or consoling lay,
Transfers of love by night, or stocks by day.
Lord Grenville's taste for gard'ning in the Park,
Where grave Las Casas, bent on state pursuits,
Indignant spurn'd old England's Puss-in-boots.
Sometimes they paint, how Chom'ley dreams intent
On quarter'd bills, first tax'd by Timmy Brent;
While, at your call when grooms the steeds adorn,
The Prince comes forth, and blushes like the morn,
What time she first unbars the purple doors
Rich from the East, and o'er the regal floors
With lavish hand the gifts of nature throws,
Flow'rs of all hues, and, with some thorns, the rose.
From Carlton's columns to the silvan Grange;
Or should the Grange displease a vagrant taste,
(Mindless the while how states and treasures waste)
Some soft retreat in Dorset's vales may smile,
Some nook sequester'd in this favour'd isle,
Where, now conceal'd, some Gabrielle yet untried,
In youth's prime flow'r, or settled beauty's pride,
Shines in neglect; nor, like Fitzherbert known,
Curses the form that beam'd before the throne.
No Vallombrosa sooths my lonely hour,
While brooding o'er my bleeding country's cries,
Damps of domestic melancholy rise,
And all my balm of life would fain consume;
Still my firm soul, superior o'er the gloom,
Fortune to others leaves, still proud to own
The muse, her hope, and studious cares alone.
No words are dark from your excess of light,
Nor reason's rules, once taught in Plato's grove,
Bend, like fond Randolph's, in the cause of love.
Simplicity's my aim; whate'er I tell,
I call no rhymes from the profound of hell,
I sail before the breeze, but never sink.
Stones from high heav'n, with cloud-compelling King,
Nor yet with Stutz, or Blagden, move awhile
Distorted mouths with many a scoffing smile.
I mark where fortune's sons, in golden dreams,
Bask in the fields of ministerial day,
Know their own sun, and stars of purest ray,
With many a lord and many a lady bright,
And Portland blushing in purpureal light.
Round Ocean's King where guardian Nereids sport:
Oh, may no felon blast assault the sail,
When proud Fiorenzo rides before the gale;
Yet think how faithless is the billowy realm,
Death's on the prow, though pleasure's at the helm:
Pause on that shore, great Brunswick! trust the muse;
Nor give your kingdom for a morning's cruize!—
Where The Young Wantons sport on Anna's Hill;
Content with ease and cryptogamic love;
Or to the harp in angel notes recall
His own sad Indian bill, and hapless fall;
Calypso's charms marine and Circe's bow'rs,
Homer to Charles presents a happier plan,
And sooths the lot of the much suffering man.
Britannia's primal trident now denied,
While Confessors, with Mary at the board,
Sad requiems chaunt to her state-parted lord,
With emigration's martyr steps and slow
In drear procession through the groves of Stow,
Hang on each sacred bough their Romish creeds,
Ropes, masses, bloodstones, rosaries, and beads.
As once Umbritius in th'Egerian vale,
He never trusts a lady, or a priest;
Eyes the Laertian realms, and barren rock,
Where foil'd by Pitt, he sunk beneath the shock,
His hands not bound indeed, (as round he steals,)
One guards his fob, and one his heart conceals.
Then Thurlow, Richmond—These are fields of woe,
Where baffled statesmen in sad order go.
Proclaims aloud the Proletarian reign:
Who now shall mourn the ravages of war?
Fond Randolph guides Lucina's teeming car;
And lo! refulgent in the conscious East
The star of Tamerlane! in saffron vest
The Fencibles of Hymen all appear,
Some light in front, some heavy in the rear,
One universal marriage through the land.
Loud thunder shakes the Commons! Love descends;
And either William with reluctance bends:
Lo, sons turn wise, and know their proper sires,
And matrons burn no more with lawless fires;
Suits are suspended! with unusual fears
Battine, and Coote, and Fisher drop their ears,
Seems as an ass of an unequal mind.
All with the fond Divine prepar'd to own
Wedlock's the cordial of the state alone:
Deans, Judges, Bishops, Doctors, all approve,
All, by the fond example, live and love.
Jersey commands; they raise the choral strains,
And rapture thrills through Doctor Randolph's veins;
“Let those love now, who never lov'd before;
“And those, who always lov'd, now love the more!”
It is by no means insinuated here, that my late hero, the Rev. Dr. Randolph, English Preceptor to H.R.H. the Princess of Wales, has applied himself to the study of books in vain; or that, when learning was first introduced into the Doctor's brain, a fermentation ensued, till the whole was exhausted, and left it in a state of nature; but the allusion is simply to the little use there is in booking a packet in a mail-coach designed for a Princess, of which much has been said and sung. See my Epistle to Dr. R. or rather the original, in the Correspondence.
—Put synonimously for any Doctor in Divinity's wife; but here, by way of eminence, for Mrs. Randolph. Psyche is a pleasing term of endearment, Ζωη και Ψυχη, as the Doctor (Dr. Randolph) knows. For I really think, since the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, no union, or consummation of the tenderest wedded love ever attracted the public interest and affection so much as that of the Rev. Dr. R. and his spouse.—See my Epistle again, or the Doctor's own fond thoughts and words, in his Correspondence with Lady Jersey.
(in Dr. Johnson's words) signifies “Fine Linen, remarkable for being used in the sleeves of Bishops.”—I am not acquainted with any Bishop-milliner in London or Bath, or I would recommend her to Dr. R. on a prospect of this fine linen being put in requisition for him.
i.e. The Prince of Troy, Æneas.
RefugitIn nemus umbriferum, conjux ubi pristinus illi
Respondet curis, œquatque Sichæus amorem.
Æn. 6.
It is consoling to read so tender a Poet as Virgil, and especially such a passage as this, at Bognor Rocks, or at any other retreat on the sea-shore.
Δικταιον αεισομεν, ηε Λυκαιον;Εν δοιη μαλα θυμος: επει γενος αμφηριστον.
Callim: Hym. ad Jov.
It is impossible for me to pay a higher respect to the Earl of Jersey, than by thinking of Jupiter, Callimachus, and his Lordship at the same time.
“A Squire he had, whose name was Ralph,
Tho' writers, for more stately tone,
To call him Ralpho, 'tis all one.”
Hudibras, P. i. C. 1.
Hear my Lord's own words. “The paragraphs alluded to refer to a Packet, consigned to the care of a gentleman, the Rev. Dr. Randolph, to be conveyed to Brunswick: It never was in Lady Jersey's hands! but given to him by Her Royal Highness herself!”—Lord Jersey's Introduction to the Correspondence, p. 3.—The reader sees the necessity of a declaration from a modern writer, whether he actually writes in verse or prose, as his Lordship has supplied me with the most emphatical verse in either of my epistles, when a superficial observer would have thought Lord Jersey was only writing prose.
See the opening of Lord Jersey's Introduction. “Great pains having been taken, &c. &c. accusing the Countess of Jersey of having opened a letter, &c. &c. I do now take upon me to assert unequivocally, and without the possibility of a contradiction, that such insinuations are founded solely in malice, and not in truth, and fabricated for the most wicked purposes.” p. 1 and 2. See also the letter, or rather the Cartel de defiance from Lord Jersey to Dr. Randolph, p. 24. “It now becomes my duty to call upon you, and I do require it of you, that an explicit narrative be laid before the public; it is a justice She is entitled to; a justice Lady Jersey's Character claims, and which she has, and you have acknowledged she has, a right to demand at your hands. Your silence on this occasion I shall consider as countenancing that calumny, which the false representations of business have so shamefully and unjustly drawn upon Lady Jersey.” p. 24.—See also the end of the Introduction by Lord. J. “However indignant Lady Jersey may feel at the atrocity and fasehood of such a charge, and to be called upon to make any answer to it, it is my duty to see her character justified; and for that purpose I do lay before the public all the particulars of the transaction, as they could be collected.” Introd. p. 3.
Mr. Dymock is the Champion of England.—But I trust England has a champion in every hand and heart to defend her in this awful hour, whatever may be the shades of political opinions. Indeed our country has never appeared so dignified and so powerful as in the moments of the greatest danger: in the American contest and the present war with the Republic of France.
“Utrumne Secundis,An magis adversis staret Romana propago?
Scilicet adversis: nam quam defendier armis
Suadet amor patriæ, et captiva penatibus uxor,
Convenit ut—”
But I should be ashamed to say what is proper to be done: my country has decided, and she will maintain it. Edmund Burke will read these noble lines of a Roman Poetess, this mascula Sappho, with that rapture which threescore winters have not subdued or diminished. Surely I may be excused if on such an occasion I add some lines, from the same poem, perhaps not generally known:
“Quidnam pater Ille DeorumCogitat? an terras et patria sæcula mutat,
Quasque dedit quondam morientibus eripit artes,
Invidus? an frustra, mendaxne Diespiter olim
“Imperium sine fine dedi,” dixisse probatur?”
Such again are the words, and such the tone of this gallant Female, who could at once deplore the extinction of learning and philosophy in the Empire, and recall the memory of ancient valour in the day of depression.
If there ever was a time in these our kingdoms, of awe, of terror, of recollection, of diligence, and of seriousness, but not of despondency, it is the present hour. May it pass from us! We have to contend with a foe, cruel, powerful, inhuman, and implacable; terrible alike to every neutral state, and every pretended ally. Policy and safety are now one and the same word, and I trust every overture consistent with them will be made for peace, and no more. Experience was designed for the guide of all who are placed in similar circumstances. Had the states of the German empire offered voluntarily to their common defender, their gallant and honest Emperor, when he requested them, but half the treasures which have been extorted from them by the common plunderers and banditti of Europe, their constitution, their safety, and their happiness might have been preserved!
“An object I shall never leave uninvestigated.” Lord Jersey. —Correspondence p. 37. in Lord Jersey's Epilogue on Peroration.
Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.
So far Horace: now hear Lady Jersey: “I think you will agree with me, that defending myself from the charge of opening a letter, is pretty much the same as if I was to prove that I had not picked a pocket.” Lady Jersey's Letter to Dr. R. Correspondence, p. 18.
The author of a book now forgotten, called Love and Madness. From one of these qualifications, as one might suppose, he presumed to think himself equal to supply the place of Samuel Johnson, as regulator of the English language!!! “Non homines, non Dii, non concessere columnæ”—It was a much fitter office for him to collect a set of silly paragraphs in the newspapers, and make them into a pamphlet, to which I allude.
“I take upon me to assert without a possibility of contradiction, &c. Lord Jersey's Introduction to the Corresp. p. 2.
The Editor of the Morning Chronicle will excuse a Poet for a wild fiction, which supposes even for a moment that he can have any principle, public or private, in common with a true Briton.
That beautiful plot of ground before Lord Grenville's house in the Green Park, laid out with such exquisite design and variety of plan.
In the late sublime manifesto of the Spanish Court (published in our Newspapers), the principal cause of the rupture between the courts, was declared to be the reception of the Spanish Ambassador Las Casas by Lord Grenville in his boots.
Junguntur taciti, contentique auspice Bruto.
Lucan de nuptiis Corneliæ.
See “A Poem written towards the close of the year 1794, upon a Prospect of the Marriage of the Prince of Wales,” by The Rev. J. Hurdis, B. D. Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford.”—The Professor may appropriate to himself the “De Profundis Clamavi,” as appears by almost all his verses, but most in the following:
“Though Hell“Her murky legions round about him pour,
“Hell fire his ramparts, Hell in her own smoke
“Cloud his recoiling bastions, Hell direct
“His molten sleet, Hell show'r upon his foe
“His pond'rous hail intense, yet, &c. &c. &c. Hola!
Indeed before I perceived that the Oxford Poetry-Professor was speaking of the French, as I now imagine he is, (for one may be well lost in the bathos of the subject, and the συναθροισμος of the Tartarian images) I was fearful he was about to say to some illustrious personage or other, “Down, down to hell, and say I sent thee there;” whereas it should be the peculiar office of all Professors of Poetry and and Divinity to keep him from it, if possible. Mr. Hurdis is certainly no rival to the Dean, so celebrated for “never naming hell to ears polite;” for he out-Satans Satan. The boldness of Oxford exceeds that of Florence; and the infernal poetry of Mr. Professor Hurdis will soon supersede Dante. Yet I own I was surprised, when Mr. Professor was about to sing of royal nuptials, that the idea of Paradise should not rather have opened to his view. But alas, “Fate had fast bound him with Styx nine times round him;” and so I leave Mr. Professor Hurdis to be exorcised by all his Brother Conjurors in the University in a solemn incantation at the opening of the term, in the Sheldonian theatre, or under the dome of Radcliffe, with the high mass of “Serus in cœlum redeat!” —N.B. The University of Oxford trusts many faculties and sciences to their various Professors for life, but with the greatest propriety (hoc populus sapiens et justus in uno) will never trust her Poetry for a longer term than seven years to any of her chosen Laureats.—From what I have seen of poetical animals, and from conversation with Sir John Sinclair and the Board of Agriculture, I think it is sometimes proper to change the pasture of a poet, in order to produce different kinds of verses, and sometimes even to cross the breed in the Universities. For when a Professor has been shut up and fed on hard dry meat in a college for a long time, he naturally acquires a viscidity in his juices, and moves stiff, which can only be removed by turning him out to grass.—I do not mean to recommend this to Poets near London, as we want all the grass for the cows; but perhaps the Ranger, Lord Euston (one of the best-natured and very best tempered men in the kingdom I ever knew) might be prevailed upon to allow a poet to frisk a little in the Green Park before Lord Grenville, to try what he could get.
Νεφεληγερετα Ζευς.—See a very ingenious treatise just published in 4to entitled, “Remarks concerning Stones, said to have fallen from the Clouds, both in these days and in ancient times, By Edward King, Esq. F.R.S. and F.A.S.”—Much curious information is collected and brought into one point of view on a singular subject.—But all I mean to say is this; I neither go down to Hell, nor up to the clouds, for my subjects, as I wish to be intelligible upon earth; and wish all authors would have no higher ambition. “Indocilis privata loqui,” is the great bane and pest of modern language, in speaking and in writing.
Abbè Stutz, Assistant in the Imperial cabinet of curiosities at Vienna, has described some of the stones, &c. &c. and Sir Charles Blagden has fairly translated part of his account, “About the origin “of which many mouths have been distorted with scoffing laughter.” Mr. King's R. p. 23. Yet I am sure I have no objection to any account of these stones “verified by Wolfgang Kukulyewich, Spiritual Vicar of Francis Baron Clobuschiczky Bishop of Agram.” p. 24. for whom I have a great respect; but I must own I have some distrust of the propriety of the German-Anglo phrases introduced by Sir Charles in his translation. I am also rather uneasy, as I have a suspicion that the King of Prussia may have been tampering with Sir Charles Blagden (when he was on his tour) and persuading him to introduce this sartago of speech into England, first among the Royal Society Philosophers, thence to the Linnæans, thence to the Board of Agriculture, thence to, &c. &c. Indeed there is no trusting his Majesty of Prussia in any thing, from a treaty to a grammar: he dupes the Minister, and confounds the philologist.
Purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
Æn. 6.
A beautiful periphrasis of the ministerial regions.
I rather value myself on this description of a blue Ribband; especially as the Earl Howe relinquished the honour to the Duke of Portland.
St. Fiorenzo is the name of the ship in which the King takes the diversion of sailing at Weymouth. (in 1796)
“Sic te Diva potens Cypri,Ventorumque regat Pater,
Navis, quæ tibi creditum
Debes Brunsvicium! finibus, ah, suis
Reddas incolumem, precor,
Et serves patriæ dimidium meæ!”
It is to be hoped H.M. will deeply consider the consequences of “A royal captivity among inhuman foes!” and the nature, or perhaps the impossibility, of a ransom or a Redemption, amidst the agony and affection of his brave and loyal people.
Mr. Fox's summer amusements this year (1796) at St. Anne's Hill, Surry, have been most judiciously and happily divided between the study of botany, the harp of young Meyer, the wit of Aspasia, and the pleasantest of all romances, the Odyssy of Homer in the original Greek. Mr. Fox will know I am well acquainted with his menus plaisirs.
Alluding to the class of plants called cryptogamia; my allusion is merely botanical. See the last note.
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall.”
See Milton's account of the amusement of the devils after their defeat. B. 2. Or, as Mr. Fox is now in a course of Greek, I may say,
Τον δ'ευρεν φρενα τερπομενον φορμιγγι λιγειη,Τη ογε θυμον ετερπεν: αειδε δ'αρα κλεα ανδρων.
II. 9.
I believe no man enters into the spirit of Homer more deeply or more accurately than Mr. Fox. I shall never, to the latest hour of my life, forget the impression which his commentary on some lines of Homer, at the summing up of one of the charges against Mr. Hastings in Westminster Hall, made upon me. It was the rapture of Longinus tempered by the reasoning of the Stagyrite.
The M. of B. married Mary Daughter of Earl Nugent, the great Patroness of the Catholic cause in England.
Juv. Sat. 3.
If all this is so, my Lord, it is certainly better to go into the Country.
No man is supposed to have a more extensive foreign correspondence in all parts of Europe, or to have obtained more accurate information, and at a greater expence, than the Marquis of Lansdown. I never heard that any of his letters or packets miscarried, booked or unbooked.
The attitude of the M. of Lansdown when he is speaking in the H. of Lords: one hand in his breeches pocket, and the other in his breast.
Ad cælum tendens ardentia lumina frustra, &c.Virg: Æn.
Old Littleton informs me that Proletarius is “a man who giveth nothing to the Common wealth, but only a supply of children,”
surely the most valuable of all citizens, and most worthy of respect, and the word proletarian is used in this sense under the auspices of Dr. Randolph
—Magnum Jovis incrementum!Ornatur ferro.
It is expected that Dr. Randolph, in case of an invasion, will be presented with a compleat suit of armour by Mr. Pitt; for as the Right Hon. Minister (to use old Littleton's words) giveth not to the commonwealth any supply of children himself, he is bound to provide for all the Proletarian Doctors in every faculty throughout the kingdom.
We read in history that the celebrated Tamerlane, in the intervals between his warlike expeditions, used to have all the young Females assembled, and order a general marriage which he solemnized with uncommon splendor.
Doctors Commons. The prospect of the influence which Dr. Randolph's fondness will have over the whole island of Great Britain, and that unshaken fidelity which will be the consequence of it, however pleasing to the world in general, is rather terrifying to the advocates and judges in the celebrated courts of Doctors Commons.
The Right Hon. Sir William Wynne, Kt. and Sir William Scott, Kt. both men of the highest integrity, dignified characters, and the most consummate erudition, ability, and professional skill.
The late Annals of Doctors Commons justify the word “matrons” but too well. However this will cease under Dr. Randolph's auspicious fondness.
| An equestrian epistle in verse, to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Jersey, To H. R. H. The Prince of Wales | |