Peter Faultless to his brother Simon :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fed, erst, by thee, we utter truths divine,
And, soft as cabbage boil'd, th' unmeaning line,
While Simon's prose sounds just like verse of mine!
Hail, gloom in light! let hope before thee melt;
And long may Simon make his darkness felt.”

What think'st thou of it? tell me by the post:
My wife likes all my odes, but this the most.
That it hath meaning thou wilt quickly see,
For sweetly it alludes to thee and me.
Curse on long poems! dull, heroic stuff!
Ten lines, at once, are excellence enough;
And know, each tedious canto-weaving churl,
A little ode is Cleopatra's pearl.
What, though despised? the tiny strains we prize
Are strains immortal—in their author's eyes;
Not the full flower on each rank soil that grows,
But gem-like petals of the classic rose;
Or, cast by rapid genius from behind,
His sweetest winglets of poetic wind.
Sweet, to read rhyme with emulation's tingle!
More sweet, the proser's languish into jingle!

Most sweet, to die of Liliputian lay,
In ecstasies of epigram, away!
Vain dreamer, who expects we will, or can,
Dissect his tedious incidents and plan!
Unread his book, if read, not understood,
To praise, or blame in generals, is good.
An epic insult cannot be forgiven!
What then? a sonnet is a little heaven,
The bard's Elysium, and the critic's too:
Measured with ease, in each dimension true.
It asks no skill—the eye can comprehend it;
Prais'd, without risk—if faultless, who can mend it?
But ere thou splash with censure, or applause,
Elaborate Epic, or high Drama—pause.
Ask if the crowd receive the numbers well?
Ask if the first edition promptly sell?
If beaux admire and buy it in a trice,
As every dunce did Milton's Paradise?
Then tremble at the uncertain deep no more,
But launch thy bark with safety from the shore;
Then read a page, to understand a volume,
And columns fill with grubs, on half a column.

Greatly, like thee, in trifles I delight,
Songs, chaste as those thou lov'st to praise, I write,
Like thee, for dull monotony I plead,
And what was poorly written, vilely read;
And long to lounge with coxcombs now and then,
And nonsense humbly lisp to childish men,
Who sing by rule, and safely praise by rote,
And idolize the fashion of a coat.
I, too, with all the critic's genuine spirit,
Would rather damn, than read a work of merit;
Hear the poor poet howl to all his pain,
And laugh to see him rant and rave in vain,
Write satires on us, and be damn'd again;
For nobler 'tis, and easier, to excel
In slandering basely, than in writing well,
And bliss to mark the pangs of bard in critic's hell.

Thou more than Johnson, in verbosity,
Than Pope in smoothness! who shall vie with thee?
Weave verse, without or merit, or defect,
And write the Babylonish dialect?

Richly, in scraps of sad translation, flows
The thick molasses of thy rhyming prose,
Darkening our sage Review, that all may see
No poet living can translate, but thee;
And still I wonder, (as, at length, I tell thee,)
The murder'd ancients never rose to fell thee.
But who, like thee, infallible in lies,
Can slander genius, alias criticise?
Let malice say (for what can malice less?)
That, in our censure, we our fear express,
Poor mediocrity's affrighted yell,
And writhing envy's hiss, that startles hell.
Shalt thou, for taunts, the scourge, thy hope below,
And, with the scourge, thy very soul forego?
Tithe of the tenth part of a tailor's! No.

Classic like thee, though less profound than thou,
Snarl'd once Ben Jonson; but who heeds him now
Less learn'd the Caliban that Shakespeare drew;
But Ben, all envy, prov'd the portrait true.
Grinning, he rail'd, and gasp'd for brains and breath;
But Shakespeare smil'd, and still fools read Macbeth.

Then, Simon, droop not thou! With spleen elate,
Vent all thou hast, and leave th' effect to fate.
Let irony applaud thy depth, thy skill;
Let no fool equal thee in writing ill;
Curtail'd in soul, let pedantry suffice;
Oppose to truth thy shield of prejudice;
Excel even Darwin in the Fudge sublime;
Then print critiques that emulate my rhyme;
And pour the oil of eulogy on those
Whose lofty verses ape thy lifeless prose.
Though Scott shall live, like sin in deathless fire,
And future Byrons read him, and admire;
A better doom than Ben's awaits thy lies,
If thee oblivion's self shall patronize.

Should some plain rustic, fac'd with impudence,
Bid thee translate thy jargon into sense;
Hard is the task (and do not thou begin it)
To write no meaning, and find meaning in it.
Should some sly school-boy, o'er his grammar squatting,
Ask, “Who was't taught thee, what he knew not, Latin?”

Say, that thy patron paid, and paid enough,
To make a prodigy of stubborn stuff.
“What are thy powers?” should some prick'd poet cry;
Say, fudge and Latin all thy wants supply;
Say, quoted Latin, (well misunderstood,)
Not English,—though we'd write it if we could;
(But this apart,—the vulgar must not know it;
Oh, tell it not in Gath, thou fear'd of poet!)
Say, quoted Latin proves thy learned pains,
And misapplied, atones for lack of brains;
Latin, which taught Demosthenes to speak,
And made old Homer write so well—in Greek.
Should sceptics still, with intellects awry,
Presume to doubt thy learned stupidity,
Chop from thy solid sconce a fragment ample,
And, by the waggon, send the ponderous sample,
(As curious folks might do by th' Sheffield air,)
And make the unbelievers gasp and stare.
And should the times grow worse, as some expect,
Pack sundry parcels of thine intellect,

Swear that Bœotia's densest can't excel it,
Call't “mist of mind,” and in Newfoundland sell it;
For there the happy people feed on vapour,
Just like thy readers,—but they save their paper.

Mute hears conceit, while self and folly teach:
Bigots preach pride, and practise what they preach:
So, like spoil'd children, genuine critics still
Adore their own dear petulance of will.
In music, all who can count eight are singers;
So, all are poets who can count their fingers.
Yet, dread and shun the sin of bastard rhyme,
Where “shone,” with “throne,” is vilely made to chime;
For still such coupling shall be deem'd by me
Rank crambo, whoredom, and adultery.
Write thou by th' compass, and th' unerring string,
Sweet strains, that we, who cannot read, may sing.
Let not thy line, like drunken wight perplex'd,
In reeling errors, run into the next.
Seize thou each wordy truant by the throat,
Pass thou thy five feet rule o'er every thought;

And bid reviewing knights, where'er they go,
Hang all but our firm, Epigram and Co.
Nor stop thou there, but write what none else may,
An epic in acrostics, or a play!
With fist of wool, strike sense, the smiler, dumb;
Dire difficulties make, and overcome,
Not to poor purpose, but to none at all;
Call faultless that which Crabbe would senseless call;
Cram thy bless'd song with labour'd stuff to fulness,
And be, at least, original in dulness.
So shall our perfect art, in its result,
Be best amusement for the babe adult.
So shall sage Sing-song bend th' adoring knee,
And Titum, Tumti, Tweedle-dum, to thee,
Grand metropolitan of Tweedle-dee!
So shall the dread, oh, Simon, of thy shears
Make each true poet loath to show his ears.
So, hungry as a rat, shall genius prowl,
And at thy line, thy rule, thy compass growl;
Yet scorn, tho' lean as death, and fed on hope,
To ape the mimic of the apes of Pope,
And boast of bondage. In the crowded fair,
So shall the pedlar clothe his honour'd ware

In lawn Parnassian; and the chandler see
His counter shagg'd with shades of poesy—
Immortal! If the fates no shop-fiend move
To rend, with stormy hand, the Heliconian grove.

Far from the white man's frown, to western skies
The vanquish'd native of Columbia flies,
And, flying, hears, amid the sunless brake,
His father's spirits, in each hissing snake,
Taunt their degenerate offspring! On his soul,
Black in the torrent's growling depth they scowl;
Invoke the storms, on every mountain's brow,
To chill him with the forest-wail of woe;
Flap o'er his eyes the night-bird's ominous pinion,
And, viewless, chase the desert's frighted minion;
Or, gamboling with the vollied rain in ire,
Deride him with their dreadful laugh of fire,
Shout in the voice of the contending cloud,
Howl to his heart, and smite their hands aloud.
Shame on his temples pales the raven's wing:
He lies him down upon the serpent's sting,

No more to feel it! and the white man's child
Crops on his grave the floweret of the wild.
Thus, high-soul'd Genius, vanquish'd in the strife
With Envy's shield of lead, and viewless knife,
Flies far, and pines aloof, but scorns to weep.
He calls no more his “spirits from the deep;”
Diseas'd in soul, he dreads to meet the morn,
And those who pity seem to him to scorn.
Vainly in woods of deepest shade he lingers;
The very bushes seem to count their fingers,
Emptiness calls for rhyme in every breeze,
And tortured syllables seem to leaf the trees.
He rushes to thy dreamless bed, Despair!
But Malice, with the stake, shall find him there,
And deep transfix him in unhallow'd clay:
The fools he scorn'd shall drag his faults to day,
Gloat on his woes, till rancour hath her fill,
And, true to baseness, mangle whom they kill.

Let all, who trash and Cumberland admire,
Condemn thy censure, and call folly fire;

To letter'd woe her tear let pity pay,
Dull Franklin praise harsh Cowper's tasteless lay,
And genius, and the bleeding heart, deplore,
O'er Kirk White's dust, the flower that blooms no more.
But still ply thou the finger-counting trade;
Be still of sense and scoundrel wit afraid;
Still curse the ravings of the Avonian Seer,
And all that Milton lov'd—the style severe,
The iron verse, with happiest labour wrought,
The verbal strength that girds the might of thought.
Still, when thou writ'st, write nonsense! smooth and fine,
In wiry length, drawl out the empty line;
For brew we flat blank verse, or dulcet rhyme,
The sterling senseless is the true sublime.
Then (by thy scull, I swear!) our stuff is good;
And damn'd be he whose verse is understood!
Damn'd to be read! his snowy couplets stain'd,
And every page with sweaty thumbs profan'd;
While not an eye, with envious leer malign,
Presumes to glance on page of thine, or mine.

Proud may we be to sleep “in virgin sheets!”
Even Talma spouts Racine to empty seats;
In France itself the Faultless loses ground;
All fly the perfect Drama's drowsy sound;
And, while spoil'd Shakespeare pleases in Voltaire,
Boileau reposes with the things which were.

Thou tyrant Dwarf! who, hating still the tall,
Would'st to thy paltry standard level all!
Malignant instinct of pedantic dulness,
That feed'st on merit's pangs, and cram'st to fulness!
Swell to the Mammoth's bulk thy worshipp'd mouse,
And bid the lion deify a louse.
What! shall th' undazzl'd eagle from on high
Implore the bat to lead him thro' the sky?
What! shall our guides be blinder than the blind?
Must strength adore thine impotence of mind?
Aye, “dash Apollo from his throne of light!”
And let the hunch-back'd cripple, letter'd spite,
Shuffling and puff'd, as frog in fable big,
Place there a monkey in a periwig,

To snarl, and peep thro' glass at button-hole,
And whisk his sapient tail, in sign of soul.
Fly, fly to Thule, ere we singe thy wings,
Fly, Scott, and rest with unremember'd kings!
Hide, hide thee, Southey, in some savage wild,
And spout to trees thine “English undefil'd!”
Crabbe, burn thy rules, thy brains—unlearn thy trade;
Paint views for tea-pots, without light or shade!
Prais'd, dreaded Childe! some rhyming farce produce,
And barter Hippocrene for turnip-juice!
Mend, Harold, mend, thou heretic in disguise!
Mend, or consent to lose thy ears and eyes!
Lo, genius falls, and falls to rise no more!
His day Aurelian, and its pomp, are o'er:
Deep plung'd in darkness, who shall heed his pain,
Who mark the smile of his sublime disdain?
Art thou, too, fall'n—immortal and divine,—
Thou only giant who could'st vanquish time?
No—not Bœotia's mist, not envy's shade,
Not zealous Simon's diuretic aid,

Can quench thy torch, or hide, or dim its ray,
The star that never sets of mental day.
There needs no angel th' uncontroll'd to free,
No resurrection, deathless life, to thee!

Is there a rhymster, musical as Pope,
A wholesale dealer in magnific trope,
Proud stiffest crambo's buckram'd Nash to be,
At war with grammar, but at peace with thee,
Tho' much 'twould pose the sovereign of pretence
To cull from half his stanzas six of sense?
Is there a sage of titum-tumti skill
Who, writing little, writes that little ill,
(Sweet school-boy jingle, meaningless as sweet,
Chaste thoughtlets, sinless as a virgin sheet,)
And steeps in numbers pure as scentless rose
The wond'rous things which gossips say in prose,
To form with labour, in his tranquil rabies,
A lullaby for intellectual babies?
Them shall our very hate of genius raise
To one hour's long eternity of praise,

Consistent folly laud them to the sky,
And malice growl applause, lest envy die.
When moral essays, sermons spoil'd with rhyme,
And back'd by Byron, fail to vanquish time;
When tuneful memory sleeps with tuneful hope;
Shall Scott, Crabbe, Southey, dare with fate to cope?

Is there a poet, whose congenial mind
Young Milton would have chos'n from all mankind?
And can that poet flatter in his lay
The literary bigots of the day,
And taunt with thankless sneer the men of might
Whose hands unbarr'd for him “the gates of light?”
Lo, virtue weeps o'er self-degraded worth!
Lo, kindred bards, the deathless of the earth,
Tremble with rage and grief in every limb,
And envy dulness, to be unlike him,
Compell'd to see, in agony and scorn,
The courser with the eyelids of the morn,
The fire-wing'd courser, stoop so meanly low,
Ev'n from Olympus, to salute a crow!

But we—on talents' golden deeds severe,—
Commend his wond'rous fault, in wond'ring fear;
Swear that he far the northern Bear surpasses,
And dub him almost equal to our asses;
Yet inly dread the thunder of his mane,
And curse his deviations from our lane,
And humbly bid him, if he would excel,
Respect its dear twin fences, trimm'd so well.

All hail to him, whose thoughts are as the wind
Free and unchainable,—the man whose mind
Glows like his heart, and shines instinct with light!
Let him review the work which he could write.
Hard is the task, and hourly harder, too,
To write a book in style and matter new,
Where sense and fancy are in splendour blent,
At once original and excellent.
But if to hunt for flaws, to merit blind,
Requires perfection, too, of other kind,
Grave folly, the ridiculous by rule,
And basest spleen, ne'er found but in a fool;

What wonder, if thy zealous lash assail'd
Cowper's first song, and for a time prevail'd?
What wonder, if thou try, so bravely well,
To crush young genius bursting from the shell,
Sure that the noble bird, once plum'd and freed,
Would soar, and spurn thy malice and thy creed?
What wonder, if—since cowards loudest boast,
And he who least deserves still claims the most—
Each prosing grandmamma, each sage old woman,
(Female or male,) each broken-knee'd and common
Slave of the monthly press, should rail to live?
Insolence is the fool's prerogative.
Proud of that art which in the dunce is nature,
Critic and dunce! conceit dilates his stature.
The very ease with which he gropes his way,
The ardour of the dupes who flock to pay
Gold for his dross, the frequent fractured head
Of thin-scull'd genius fell'd with fist of lead,
Make him mistake for truth the witticism,
That want of sense and shame is criticism.
His cap and crown, pedantic arrogance,
Blind as the mole in letter'd ignorance,

Vain as the Gropius of some modern Vandal,
Or queen of gossips taking tea and scandal,
He boasts his mean inglorious victories,
He boasts the very dulness of his lies.
Owl-eyed to splendour, eagle-ey'd to spy
Spots on the disk of glory, Envy's eye
Admires no loveliness, beholds no worth;
Her soul is darkness, for her brain is earth:
No joy she knows, but in another's smart;
No God she worships, but her own black heart.
Hell dreads her coming, with erected hair,
For, envy absent, 'tis Elysium there!
No fiend, o'er fiery broth, with hollow eye,
Pines to behold his neighbour's brimstone pye;
No sparkless devil damns, in scribbling ire,
The happier, hotter devil's pen of fire;
But Satan, pleas'd, resigns his earthly throne,
And swears our monthly hell exceeds his own
In dulness, darkness—every thing, but light:
Down, zealous Simon, set his dunces right!
Run, mother Ph—ps, teach his worship spite!

Back to that isle, the banish'd maids of song
Let Southey lead, with stripling hand, along.
Struck by th' assassin's blow, let genius come,
Knock at his heart, and find her friend at home,
From her pierc'd brain to draw th' envenom'd steel,
And all but cure the wound which death must heal.
Let him, with Spenser's mastery, and his own,
Paint Madoc, David, Conrade, Rhoderic, Joan;
Wild Laila, fiction's cherub; in her sire
Evil, that will not hope; in Julian's ire,
Faith wounded, trampling glory in the dust,
Arm'd vengeance, almost in rebellion just;
What in Florinda? beauty, sorrow, worth,
A suffering angel, in the garb of earth.
Let him to light drag Hades; bid the deep,
Reserv'd for him, Fate's awful secrets keep;
And (wildest spirit, on the strongest wing)
Soar sightless heights, a matchless wreath to bring
From that bright heav'n, where none but he durst soar,
And never flower was snatch'd for truth before.

Triumphant o'er the ear-offending tone,
Sublimely mournful, let Sheaf's bard, alone,
Attain in rhyme great Shakespeare's rhymeless ease,
The pleasing sweet that never fails to please.
Tearing from want's dread woes the rags and all,
Let Crabbe the eye of startled ease appal,
Obtrude a gorgon on his dream of bliss,
And show poor human nature as it is.
Let Erin's child produce his wond'rous gem,
And set the emerald in her diadem,
That she, unrivall'd in her sons before,
May strike ev'n envy silent, bless'd with Moore.
What second Shakespeare, faultless without plan,
Creates anew the wond'rous Proteus, Man?
Who steals from Heav'n a pencil wildly true?
Scott, Scott alone, can draw as Shakespeare drew,
Dip the heath's bell in immortality,
Bid landscapes bloom in hues that cannot die,
Paint battle's rage, while awe his hand controls,
And sketch the surge of horror as it rolls;
Or, give the wild weird sisters' attributes
To her whose wildness well such horror suits,

More dire than they who made their presence—air,
Who seem'd not of the earth, and yet were there.
Let Byron, in his hurried line, condense
“Impassion'd music,” energy, and sense,
And proudly reign, with misanthropic scowl,
Lord of the realms of pathos and of soul;
Or snatch from Churchill's urn, with dreadful hand,
Resistless satire's asp, and torturing brand;
Or play at boyhood, with a seraph's smile,
Drink on love's lip the sweetness, with the guile,
Win wisdom's heart, by praising her darn'd hose,
And, laughing, rip her garment, in the close.
What, tho' their strains, with more than magic thrall,
Charm the great vulgar, and enchant the small?
Where are the feet which drowsy measures keep?
Where is the music of poetic sleep?
Let man and maid, in praise and price, enhance
The crambo novel, and the rhym'd romance;
While man and maid their merits stale discuss,
They leave the rest to—Dulness, and to us.
What need of mental light, and hues divine,
To please an eyeless intellect, like thine?

Eunuch in soul, and slave amid the free!
Still squeak thine exultation such to be,
That all the sons of jingle, as they pass,
May bless the half-bray of their viewless ass,
And, cursing sense, tho' by her scorn forgiv'n,
Ascend, in thought, thy ears, and reach their heav'n.
Proud of disgrace, as Dandies of their stays,
On want of candour build thy claim to praise;
Untried, condemn; create the fault unfound;
Invoke the gloom; with unseen dagger wound;
Damn into fame the merit that we hate;
With laugh'd at plaudits, plume each witling's pate;
And, with no meaning, since 'tis all thou hast,
Patch Latin nonsense on thine English fast,
As beggary, strutting in her best attire,
Sports rags for lace, and bids the world admire.
Why should not lacquer'd ware for genuine pass?
Though not Corinthian, Simon, thou art brass.
But say, when wilt thou, least a slave in rhyme,
Convert to crambo Young's unrhym'd sublime?
Ape meanly him, whose famine flatter'd vice,
And tag, once more, the lay of Paradise?

Regretted days! when causes vile combin'd
To Frenchify the genuine British mind!
No wight, to whom the soul of song was giv'n,
Could then for gold, or brass, sell “light from Heaven;”
But pining merit, poorest of the poor,
Saw every spaniel thrive, and every whore;
Most prais'd was he who best could shake his chains,
And he wrote best who had most lack of brains;
While scribblers fam'd, on Eden's poet frown'd,
And it was glory to be unrenown'd.
Go, call the dead, call Dryden from his urn,
Go, bid the rhyming dramatist return!
Go, wake the dust of Waller, and expose
To th' opiate snuff each true poetic nose!
Come bonds again, with ribald rhyme, along!
And reproscribe—not Milton, but his song.

Once, blundering into fairness, wast thou known
(Wond'rous event!) to blush, and once alone:
Amaz'd, asham'd, thou stard'st, like waking Timon,
And I, too, stared aghast, and knew not Simon!

Back sank thy soul into its vapoury trance;
And, o'er the desert of thy countenance,
(That isleless sea, without or wave, or coast,)
Truth sought a gleam of sense, and wander'd lost.
But fate consol'd thee; for thy curs'd applause
Was deep damnation to the author's cause:
Tho' dipp'd in Heav'n, his song, unsold, unsought,
Was deem'd some faultless nothing good for nought;
And, had not Johnstone for pale merit carv'd,
Damn'd by thy praise, even Mickle might have starv'd.

Bless'd were the times, when vengeance fed on fire,
And Smithfield saw Religion's fools expire!
We ne'er, alas! such bright revenge may take,
And burn the bugbear, Genius, at the stake;
Or bid the heretic poets of the nation
Roar, in legitimate rhyme, their recantation!
But, should thy patron sage again be sent
To sit (his proper place) in Parliament,
Bid him, with all thy eloquence, propose
(Yet slyly, at the important session's close)

A law, which must, and shall be then decreed—
To flay whoever laughs at this our creed:
“Fudge, ever empty, and yet ever full,
“'Mid change unchang'd, inerrable, and dull,
“Fast bound to nonsense, cannot, will not budge,
“But makes Fate choice, and is, and shall be Fudge.
“Perfection is emasculated song;
“Fudge is perfection: right, whoe'er is wrong,
“We, crown'd with bells, the Fudge-presiding powers
“Are, and will be; and no Fudge equals ours.”

Vile is the work, and written by a fool,
That dares to deviate from our classic rule;
Tame, if not turgid; if blank verse, not rhyme;
Bombast and German horror, if sublime.
So (deeming Newton's merit a pretence)
Our cousin calls his nonsense common sense,
Converts the sun to ice, by wordy spell,
And makes cold Saturn hot as blazing hell;
Or (homager of lawless conquest) pays
The cant of freedom in a tyrant's praise,

Transforming, with his necromantic pen,
The prince of despots into th' first of men.
Oh, had the freeborn Briton in his heart
His ponderous Essays sent to Bonaparte,
(Dire ammunition!) when th' invading foes
Fir'd insolent squibs beneath th' imperial nose,
Blucher, appall'd, had fled from Gallic ground,
And Congreve's rockets been excell'd—in sound!
Greatest of sage fudgeosophers are we,
But Dickey is the greatest of us three.
To all who know thy powers, thy powers are known,
And every dunce might take them for his own;
We both write rhyme in which no discord jars;
But Dickey plays the devil with the stars!
All this thou know'st—But, ah, my light decays,
Emblem of man's frail trust, and winged days!—
Oh, what is stable in this world of change?
Insects of care! bards, kings—even critics, range
From flower to weed, and sport their little hour,
As sports the moth, air's gem, on flying flower
O'er hyacinthine odours, passion-borne,
On wings of splendour, rivalling the morn!

To-morrow kills the deathless of to-day!
What will th' inerrable in crambo say,
When Pope neglected, like dead Pug, or Pero,
The Dunciad's author, lives but in its hero?
How will they redden, and almost with shame,
To hear the voice of time and truth proclaim
One scene in Cibber, Manuel's weeping laughter,
Worth Pope, Pope's mimics, and their apes hereafter?
Lays, that with our immortal lays might vie,
Die in a day, a brief eternity;
Die, tho' the Monthly praise with all his breath;
Die—for our praise is everlasting death!
Vainly in ought vain mortals put their trust;
Ev'n folly's granite turns, at last, to dust;
States rise to fall; the very angels fell;
And Priestley says the fire's extinct in hell!
Thou, Simon, art the sole infallible.
And should'st thou tire, best scholar in thy school,
Of blowing the “posterior trump” by rule;
Or praise a wit; or fail to praise a fool;
Or write blank verse; or, ere thou damn it, read;
Or wisely blame; or, blam'd with candour, heed;

Or quote, and understand; or cease to scribble
The only genuine unintelligible;
Or be no more half learned, tho' an ass;
Phillips himself may blush at his own brass!—
Almost in darkness?—I must cease to write,
And wish thee (not perchance a last) good night!
Remaining still (what fisher ever caught less?)
Fame's angler thin, thy brother,

Peter Faultless.