 | |  |
1706
A Trip to Leverpoole, By Two of Fate's Children, In Search of Fortunatus's Purse. A Saytre [sic]. Address'd to the Honourable the Commissioners of Her Majesties Customs. [Motto] Hudibrass. By a Gentleman of Lincoln's-Inn. London: Printed for Richard Croskill Bookseller in Lincoln's-Inn. 1706. [B. M.]
pp. 1-21. o.c.
Hudibrastic.
A satire on financial corruption in Liverpool;
So Wealthy grown, so full of Hurry,
That She eclipses Bristol's Glory:
Her Trade, as well as Sumptuous Houses,
Where the Chief Publican Carouses,
The Port's infallible Director,
In modern English call'd Collector,
Does manifestly Testify
Her Mightiness a Mystery;
A Riddle wants an Exposition,
Without the Purse's kind Permission;
A Treasure inexhaustible,
Constantly drain'd, yet always full:
A Hocus Pocus way of Thriving,
A sudden Tast of Splendid Living,
Which by the Merchants does appear,
By Chance, or Choice establisht here. [p. 3]
The narrator-hero successfully exploits this corruption for a time, mainly by seducing the wife and daughter of the "Chief Publican." But things go wrong when he marries another woman, and at the end of the poem he leaves for London in order to expose the practices by which he had temporarily profited. The publican is left describing an ominous dream in which he is visited by a former colleague who has committed suicide:
Then from His hollow Trunk a Sound,
Which did my shivering Conscience wound;
Prepare thou Miscreant to be
A Shameful Mark of Infamy.
Not Hartley, Peters, Crafty Pool
Can save thy Body, less thy Soul.
A Purgatory's here prepar'd,
And Hell hereafter's thy Reward:
Thy Wife's vampt off with all the Pelf,
In Limbo thou may'st hang thy self. [pp. 20-21]
So Wealthy grown, so full of Hurry,
That She eclipses Bristol's Glory:
Her Trade, as well as Sumptuous Houses,
Where the Chief Publican Carouses,
The Port's infallible Director,
In modern English call'd Collector,
Does manifestly Testify
Her Mightiness a Mystery;
A Riddle wants an Exposition,
Without the Purse's kind Permission;
A Treasure inexhaustible,
Constantly drain'd, yet always full:
A Hocus Pocus way of Thriving,
A sudden Tast of Splendid Living,
Which by the Merchants does appear,
By Chance, or Choice establisht here. [p. 3]
The narrator-hero successfully exploits this corruption for a time, mainly by seducing the wife and daughter of the "Chief Publican." But things go wrong when he marries another woman, and at the end of the poem he leaves for London in order to expose the practices by which he had temporarily profited. The publican is left describing an ominous dream in which he is visited by a former colleague who has committed suicide:
Then from His hollow Trunk a Sound,
Which did my shivering Conscience wound;
Prepare thou Miscreant to be
A Shameful Mark of Infamy.
Not Hartley, Peters, Crafty Pool
Can save thy Body, less thy Soul.
A Purgatory's here prepar'd,
And Hell hereafter's thy Reward:
Thy Wife's vampt off with all the Pelf,
In Limbo thou may'st hang thy self. [pp. 20-21]
| | |