The Works of Peter Pindar [i.e. John Wolcot] :: :: University of Virginia Library

Am I awake, or dreaming, O ye gods?
Alas! in waking's favour lie the odds!
The dev'l it is! ah me! 'tis really so!
How, sirs! on majesty's proud corns to tread!
Messieurs Academicians, when you're dead,
Where can your impudencies hope to go?

Refuse a monarch's mighty orders!—
It smells of treason—on rebellion borders!
'Sdeath, sirs! it was the queen's fond wish as well,
That Master Laurence should come in!
Against a queen so gentle to rebel!
This is another crying sin!

What!—not oblige, in such a trifling thing,
So sweet a queen, and such a goodly king!

A queen unus'd to opposition-weather—
At disappointment so unus'd to start—
So full of dove-like gentleness her heart,
As if the dove had lent its softest feather,
That heart of gentleness to form,
Unus'd (as I have said) to opposition-storm!

O let me just inform you, one and all,
That kings and potentates, both great and small,

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Born to be humour'd, for obedience battle:
Most instantaneous too must be compliance;
Refusal is most damnable defiance;
They struggle for't, like children for the rattle.

But in our simile some diff'rence lies—
We whip a bantling when it kicks and cries,
Fully determin'd not to please it;
But lo! the children that possess a crown
(Young Herculeses) knock us down,
And, angry for the bauble, seize it.

Each of you, sirs, has kept a cur, perchaunce:
Poor wretch, how oft his eyes with lightnings dance;
How he looks up to master for a smile!
Shakes his imploring head with wriggling tail,
Now whining yelps, now pawing to prevail,
Eager with such anxiety the while;

And if a pat should bless the whining scraper,
Lord, how the animal begins to caper!

Thus should it be with subjects and great kings—
But you are strangers to these humble things.
For shame! upon the courtier's creed go look—
And take a leaf from humble Hawksb'ry's book;
Or sweet neck-bending water-gruel Leeds,
Who majesty with pap of flatt'ry feeds;
Which pap, if highly relish'd, will of course,
Rewarded, make him Master of the Horse.

Where was Prerogative?—asleep?
A blockhead, not a better watch to keep
In this most solemn, most important hour!
Why heard we not the thunder of his voice;
Saw down your gullets cramm'd the royal choice,
So easy to the iron arm of power?

Why slept his sledge, the guardian of a crown,
So form'd to knock unruly rascals down?
Ah me! Prerogative seems nearly dead!
Behold his tott'ring limbs and palsied head;

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Sunk in their orbits his dim eyes;
His teeth dropp'd out; and hark! his voice so weak;
A mouse behind the wainscot—eunuch squeak!
‘Ah! non sum qualis eram,’ now he sighs.
To ev'ry body's call, ah! now so pliant!
Sad skeleton of once a sturdy giant!

Poor bending shrivell'd form, but just alive,
Art thou that bully once—Prerogative?
Where is the mien of Mars, the eye's wild stare,
A meteor darting horror with its glare?
How like a brandy-drinker, who on flame
Feeds with a rosy beacon-face at first;
But, by his enemy Intemp'rance curst,
Yields to that victor of mankind with shame;
Pale, hobbling, voiceless, crawling to decay,
Just like a passing shadow, sinks away!

Bed-chamber lords are all in ire—
The maids of honour all on fire;
Nay, though despotically shav'd, the cooks,
Bluff on th' occasion, put on bull's-beef looks:
And really this is very grand behaving,
So nobly to forgive the famous shaving!

See Madam Schwellenberg most cat-like stare;
And though no fav'rite of the king,
She cries, ‘By Got, it shock and make my hair
Upright—it is so dam dam saucy ting.’

Stanhope, perchance, will clasp you in his arms;
And Price's ghost, with eloquence's charms,
Will, from his tomb upspringing, sound applause:
But know, I deem not so of Edmund Burke:
He nobly styles the deed, ‘a d*mn'd day's work;’
Superior he to cutting royal claws.

Mun very justly thinks the human back
Should be to kings a sort of humble hack;
That ev'ry subject ought to wear a saddle,
O'er which those great rough-riders, kings, may straddle.

A young portrait-painter of some merit.