The works of Lord Byron A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero |
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HINTS FROM HORACE:
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 | The works of Lord Byron |  |
HINTS FROM HORACE:
BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE “AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICÂ,” AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO “ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.”
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.”
Hor. De Arte Poet., 11. 304 and 305.
Fielding's Amelia, Vol. iii. Book and Chap. v.
His costly canvas with each flattered face,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid's tail?
Or low Dubost —as once the world has seen—
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems
The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.
May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
But make not monsters spring from gentle dams—
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends;
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As Pertness passes with a legal gown:
Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain
The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,
King's Coll—Cam's stream—stained windows, and old walls:
Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims
To paint a rainbow, or—the river Thames.
But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
You plan a vase—it dwindles to a pot;
Then glide down Grub-street—fasting and forgot;
Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till—true.
Let it at least be simple and entire.
(Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)
Are led astray by some peculiar lure.
I labour to be brief—become obscure;
One falls while following Elegance too fast;
Another soars, inflated with Bombast;
Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
He spins his subject to Satiety;
Absurdly varying, he at last engraves
Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the waves!
The flight from Folly leads but into Vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.
For galligaskins Slowshears is your man
But coats must claim another artisan.
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
Black eyes, black ringlets, but—a bottle nose!
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voice,
Await the Poet, skilful in his choice;
With native Eloquence he soars along,
Grace in his thoughts, and Music in his song.
With future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author choose, or that reject,
Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting word.
Some term unknown, or obsolete in use,
(As Pitt has furnished us a word or two,
Which Lexicographers declined to do;)
So you indeed, with care,—(but be content
To take this license rarely)—may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase;
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden's or to Pope's maturer Muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt, and Walter Scott?
Since they, by force of rhyme and force of lungs,
Enriched our Island's ill-united tongues;
Reform in writing, as in Parliament.
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to Fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though as a Monarch nods, and Commerce calls,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drained, sustain
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean's roar,
All, all, must perish; but, surviving last,
The love of Letters half preserves the past.
True, some decay, yet not a few revive;
As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey.
Are they not shown in Milton's sacred page?
His strain will teach what numbers best belong
To themes celestial told in Epic song.
The Lover's anguish, or the Friend's complaint.
But which deserves the Laurel—Rhyme or Blank?
Which holds on Helicon the higher rank?
Let squabbling critics by themselves dispute
This point, as puzzling as a Chancery suit.
You doubt—see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick's Dean.
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side.
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden's days,
No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;
Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and pun in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point, because they wrote in verse.
But so Thalia pleases to appear,
Poor Virgin! damned some twenty times a year!
Adapt your language to your Hero's state.
And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone;
Nor unregarded will the act pass by
Where angry Townly “lifts his voice on high.”
Again, our Shakespeare limits verse to Kings,
When common prose will serve for common things;
And lively Hal resigns heroic ire,
To “hollaing Hotspur” and his sceptred sire.
To polish poems; they must touch the heart:
Where'er the scene be laid, whate'er the song,
Still let it bear the hearer's soul along;
Command your audience or to smile or weep,
Whiche'er may please you—anything but sleep.
The Poet claims our tears; but, by his leave,
Before I shed them, let me see him grieve.
Lulled by his languor, I could sleep or sneer.
Sad words, no doubt, become a serious face,
And men look angry in the proper place.
And Sentiment prescribes a pensive eye;
For Nature formed at first the inward man,
And actors copy Nature—when they can.
She bids the beating heart with rapture bound,
Raised to the Stars, or levelled with the ground;
And for Expression's aid, 'tis said, or sung,
She gave our mind's interpreter—the tongue,
Who, worn with use, of late would fain dispense
(At least in theatres) with common sense;
O'erwhelm with sound the Boxes, Gallery, Pit,
And raise a laugh with anything—but Wit.
Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court;
Whether they seek applause by smile or tear,
To draw a Lying Valet, or a Lear,
A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull;
All persons please when Nature's voice prevails,
Scottish or Irish, born in Wilts or Wales.
Who cares if mimic heroes lived or not!
One precept serves to regulate the scene:
Make it appear as if it might have been.
Present him raving, and above all law:
If female furies in your scheme are planned,
Macbeth's fierce dame is ready to your hand;
For tears and treachery, for good and evil,
Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil!
But if a new design you dare essay,
And freely wander from the beaten way,
Preserve consistency from first to last.
Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;
A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err;
Yet copy not too closely, but record,
More justly, thought for thought than word for word;
Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways,
But only follow where he merits praise.
To tremble on the nod of all who read,
Beware—for God's sake, don't begin like Bowles!
“Awake a louder and a loftier strain,”—
And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?—
He sinks to Southey's level in a trice,
Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire
The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
“Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit”
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song.
As if we witnessed all already done;
Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean
To raise the subject, or adorn the scene;
Gives, as each page improves upon the sight,
Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness—light;
And truth and fiction with such art compounds,
We know not where to fix their several bounds.
What soothes the many-headed monster's ear:
If your heart triumph when the hands of all
Applaud in thunder at the curtain's fall,
Deserve those plaudits—study Nature's page,
And sketch the striking traits of every age;
While varying Man and varying years unfold
Life's little tale, so oft, so vainly told;
Observe his simple childhood's dawning days,
His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays:
Till time at length the mannish tyro weans,
And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens!
O'er Virgil's devilish verses and his own;
He flies from Tavell's frown to “Fordham's Mews;”
(Unlucky Tavell! doomed to daily cares
By pugilistic pupils, and by bears,)
Fines, Tutors, tasks, Conventions threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket Plain.
Rough with his elders, with his equals rash,
Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash;
Constant to nought—save hazard and a whore,
Unread (unless since books beguile disease,
The P---x becomes his passage to Degrees);
Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away,
And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.;
Master of Arts! as hells and clubs proclaim,
Where scarce a blackleg bears a brighter name!
He apes the selfish prudence of his Sire;
Marries for money, chooses friends for rank,
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the Senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow—for himself was there.
Mute, though he votes, unless when called to cheer,
His son's so sharp—he'll see the dog a Peer!
He quits the scene—or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o'er each departing penny grieves,
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
O'er hoards diminished by young Hopeful's debts;
Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
Complete in all life's lessons—but to die;
Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
Commending every time, save times like these;
Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
Expires unwept—is buried—Let him rot!
Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less.
Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred,
When what is done is rather seen than heard,
Yet many deeds preserved in History's page
Are better told than acted on the stage;
The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,
And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,
True Briton all beside, I here am French—
Bloodshed 'tis surely better to retrench:
The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;
We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
And find small sympathy in being sick.
Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
Appals an audience with a Monarch's death;
Young Arthur's eyes, can ours or Nature bear?
A haltered heroine Johnson sought to slay—
We saved Irene, but half damned the play,
And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating times
Stint Metamorphoses to Pantomimes;
And Lewis' self, with all his sprites, would quake
To change Earl Osmond's negro to a snake!
Because, in scenes exciting joy or grief,
We loathe the action which exceeds belief:
And yet, God knows! what may not authors do,
Whose Postscripts prate of dyeing “heroines blue”?
Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man,
Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.
Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid,
I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did;
Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,
Rage, love, and aught but moralise—in song.
Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends,
Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!
Napoleon's edicts no embargo lay
On whores—spies—singers—wisely shipped away.
Our giant Capital, whose squares are spread
Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,
In all iniquity is grown so nice,
It scorns amusements which are not of price.
Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,
Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
His anguish doubling by his own “encore;”
Squeezed in “Fop's Alley,” jostled by the beaux,
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease,
Till the dropped curtain gives a glad release:
Why this, and more, he suffers—can ye guess?—
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!
Give us but fiddlers, and they're sure of fools!
Ere scenes were played by many a reverend clerk,
(What harm, if David danced before the ark?)
In Christmas revels, simple country folks
Were pleased with morrice-mumm'ry and coarse jokes.
Improving years, with things no longer known,
Produced blithe Punch and merry Madame Joan,
'Tis strange Benvolio suffers such a show;
Suppressing peer! to whom each voice gives place,
Oaths, boxing, begging—all, save rout and race.
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time:
And turned some very serious things to jest.
Nor Church nor State escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the Gown—Priests—Lawyers—Volunteers:
“Alas, poor Yorick!” now for ever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
Ape the swoln dialogue of Kings and Queens,
When “Crononhotonthologos must die,”
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
Yes, Friend! for thee I'll quit my cynic cell,
And bear Swift's motto, “Vive la bagatelle!”
Which charmed our days in each Ægean clime,
As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme.
Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past,
Soothe thy Life's scenes, nor leave thee in the last;
But find in thine—like pagan Plato's bed,
Some merry Manuscript of Mimes, when dead.
Where fettered by whig Walpole low she lies;
Corruption foiled her, for she feared her glance;
Decorum left her for an Opera dance!
'Gainst laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays;
Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains,
And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains.
Repeal that act! again let Humour roam
Wild o'er the stage—we've time for tears at home;
Let Archer plant the horns on Sullen's brows,
And Estifania gull her “Copper” spouse;
The moral's scant—but that may be excused,
Men go not to be lectured, but amused.
He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill
Aye, but Macheath's example—psha!—no more!
It formed no thieves—the thief was formed before;
And spite of puritans and Collier's curse,
Plays make mankind no better, and no worse.
Nor burn damned Drury if it rise again.
But why to brain-scorched bigots thus appeal?
Can heavenly Mercy dwell with earthly Zeal?
For times of fire and faggot let them hope!
Times dear alike to puritan or Pope.
As pious Calvin saw Servetus blaze,
So would new sects on newer victims gaze.
E'en now the songs of Solyma begin;
Faith cants, perplexed apologist of Sin!
While the Lord's servant chastens whom he loves,
And Simeon kicks, where Baxter only “shoves.”
Enraptured, thinks to do the same at once;
But after inky thumbs and bitten nails,
And twenty scattered quires, the coxcomb fails.
To match the youthful eclogues of our Pope?
Yet his and Philips' faults, of different kind,
For Art too rude, for Nature too refined,
Instruct how hard the medium 'tis to hit
'Twixt too much polish and too coarse a wit.
In this nice age, when all aspire to taste;
The dirty language, and the noisome jest,
Which pleased in Swift of yore, we now detest;
But even too nasty for a City Knight!
Unmatched by all, save matchless Hudibras!
Whose author is perhaps the first we meet,
Who from our couplet lopped two final feet;
Nor less in merit than the longer line,
This measure moves a favourite of the Nine.
Though at first view eight feet may seem in vain
Formed, save in Ode, to bear a serious strain,
Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late
This measure shrinks not from a theme of weight,
And, varied skilfully, surpasses far
Heroic rhyme, but most in Love and War,
Whose fluctuations, tender or sublime,
Are curbed too much by long-recurring rhyme.
What few admire—irregularity.
This some vouchsafe to pardon; but 'tis hard
When such a word contents a British Bard.
Lest Censure hover o'er some faulty line?
To gain the paltry suffrage of “Correct”?
Or prune the spirit of each daring phrase,
To fly from Error, not to merit Praise?
By day and night, to read the works of Greece.
But our good Fathers never bent their brains
To heathen Greek, content with native strains.
The few who read a page, or used a pen,
Were satisfied with Chaucer and old Ben;
The jokes and numbers suited to their taste
Were quaint and careless, anything but chaste;
Yet, whether right or wrong the ancient rules,
It will not do to call our Fathers fools!
Though you and I, who eruditely know
To separate the elegant and low,
Can also, when a hobbling line appears,
Detect with fingers—in default of ears.
To learn, who our first English strollers were;
Or if, till roofs received the vagrant art,
Our Muse, like that of Thespis, kept a cart;
But this is certain, since our Shakespeare's days,
There's pomp enough—if little else—in plays;
Without high heels, white plume, and Bristol stone.
Though too licentious for dramatic laws;
At least, we moderns, wisely, 'tis confest,
Curtail, or silence, the lascivious jest.
Our enterprising Bards pass nought untried;
Nor do they merit slight applause who choose
An English subject for an English Muse,
And leave to minds which never dare invent
French flippancy and German sentiment.
Where is that living language which could claim
Poetic more, as philosophic, fame,
If all our Bards, more patient of delay,
Would stop, like Pope, to polish by the way?
O'erthrow whole quartos with their quires of faults,
And prove our marble with too nice a nail!
Democritus himself was not so bad;
He only thought—but you would make us—mad!
Against that ridicule they deem so hard;
In person negligent, they wear, from sloth,
Beards of a week, and nails of annual growth;
Reside in garrets, fly from those they meet,
And walk in alleys rather than the street.
The name of Poet may be got with ease,
So that not tuns of helleboric juice
Shall ever turn your head to any use;
Write but like Wordsworth—live beside a lake,
And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake;
Then print your book, once more return to town,
And boys shall hunt your Bardship up and down.
To purge in spring—like Bayes—before I write?
If this precaution softened not my bile,
I know no scribbler with a madder style;
But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice)
I cannot purchase Fame at such a price,
I'll labour gratis as a grinders' wheel,
And, blunt myself, give edge to other's steel,
Nor write at all, unless to teach the art
To those rehearsing for the Poet's part;
From Horace show the pleasing paths of song,
And from my own example—what is wrong.
'Tis just as well to think before you write;
So shall you trace it to the fountain-head.
To friends and country, and to pardon foes;
Who models his deportment as may best
Accord with Brother, Sire, or Stranger-guest;
Who takes our Laws and Worship as they are,
Nor roars reform for Senate, Church, and Bar;
In practice, rather than loud precept, wise,
Bids not his tongue, but heart, philosophize:
Such is the man the Poet should rehearse,
As joint exemplar of his life and verse.
Without much grace, or weight, or art, will hold
A longer empire o'er the public mind
Than sounding trifles, empty, though refined.
The Muse may celebrate with perfect praise,
Whose generous children narrowed not their hearts
With Commerce, given alone to Arms and Arts.
Our boys (save those whom public schools compel
To “Long and Short” before they're taught to spell)
From frugal fathers soon imbibe by rote,
“A penny saved, my lad, 's a penny got.”
The third, how much will the remainder make?—
“A groat.”—“Ah, bravo! Dick hath done the sum!
He'll swell my fifty thousand to a Plum.”
'Tis clear, are fit for anything but rhymes;
And Locke will tell you, that the father's right
Who hides all verses from his children's sight;
For Poets (says this Sage, and many more,)
Make sad mechanics with their lyric lore:
And Delphi now, however rich of old,
Discovers little silver, and less gold,
Is poor as Irus, or an Irish mine.
Or one or both,—to please or to improve.
Whate'er you teach, be brief, if you design
For our remembrance your didactic line;
Redundance places Memory on the rack,
For brains may be o'erloaded, like the back.
And fairy fables bubble none but youth:
Expect no credit for too wondrous tales,
Since Jonas only springs alive from Whales!
Maturer years require a little Sense.
To end at once:—that Bard for all is fit
Who mingles well instruction with his wit;
The patronage of Paternoster-row;
His book, with Longman's liberal aid, shall pass
(Who ne'er despises books that bring him brass);
Through three long weeks the taste of London lead,
And cross St. George's Channel and the Tweed.
That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
And wayward voices, at their owner's call,
With all his best endeavours, only squall;
Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
And double-barrels (damn them!) miss their mark.
We must not quarrel for a blot or two;
But pardon equally to books or men,
The slips of Human Nature, and the Pen.
Despises all advice too much to mend,
But ever twangs the same discordant string,
Give him no quarter, howsoe'er he sing.
Let Havard's fate o'ertake him, who, for once,
Produced a play too dashing for a dunce:
At first none deemed it his; but when his name
Announced the fact—what then?—it lost its fame.
Though all deplore when Milton deigns to doze,
In a long work 'tis fair to steal repose.
The critic eye, and please when near at hand;
But others at a distance strike the sight;
This seeks the shade, but that demands the light,
Nor dreads the connoisseur's fastidious view,
But, ten times scrutinised, is ten times new.
Hath led to listen to the Muse's voice,
Receive this counsel, and be timely wise;
Few reach the Summit which before you lies.
Reward to very moderate heads indeed!
In these plain common sense will travel far;
All are not Erskines who mislead the Bar:
But Poesy between the best and worst
No medium knows; you must be last or first;
For middling Poets' miserable volumes
Are damned alike by Gods, and Men, and Columns.
How wakes my bosom to its wonted fires!
Fires, such as gentle Caledonians feel
When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel,
Or mild Eclectics, when some, worse than Turks,
Would rob poor Faith to decorate “Good Works.”
My Falcon flies not at ignoble game.
For thee my Pegasus would mend his pace.
Arise, my Jeffrey! or my inkless pen
Shall never blunt its edge on meaner men;
Till thee or thine mine evil eye discerns,
“Alas! I cannot strike at wretched kernes.”
Inhuman Saxon! wilt thou then resign
A Muse and heart by choice so wholly thine?
Dear d—d contemner of my schoolboy songs,
Hast thou no vengeance for my Manhood's wrongs?
If unprovoked thou once could bid me bleed,
Hast thou no weapon for my daring deed?
What! not a word!—and am I then so low?
Wilt thou forbear, who never spared a foe?
Hast thou no wrath, or wish to give it vent?
No wit for Nobles, Dunces by descent?
No jest on “minors,” quibbles on a name,
Nor one facetious paragraph of blame?
Is it for this on Ilion I have stood,
And though of Homer less than Holyrood?
On shore of Euxine or Ægean sea,
My hate, untravelled, fondly turned to thee.
From Corydon unkind Alexis turns:
Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego,
Nor woo that anger which he will not show.
What then?—Edina starves some lanker son,
To write an article thou canst not shun;
Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found,
As bold in Billingsgate, though less renowned.
Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish;
As oil in lieu of butter men decry,
And poppies please not in a modern pie;
If all such mixtures then be half a crime,
We must have Excellence to relish rhyme.
Mere roast and boiled no Epicure invites;
Thus Poetry disgusts, or else delights.
Will he who swims not to the river run?
And men unpractised in exchanging knocks
Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box.
None reach expertness without years of toil;
But fifty dunces can, with perfect ease,
Tag twenty thousand couplets, when they please.
Why not?—shall I, thus qualified to sit
For rotten boroughs, never show my wit?
Shall I, whose fathers with the “Quorum” sate,
And lived in freedom on a fair estate;
Who left me heir, with stables, kennels, packs,
To all their income, and to—twice its tax;
Whose form and pedigree have scarce a fault,
Shall I, I say, suppress my Attic Salt?
Besides all this, must have some Genius too.
Be this your sober judgment, and a rule,
And print not piping hot from Southey's school,
Who (ere another Thálaba appears),
I trust, will spare us for at least nine years.
Burn all your last three works—and half the next.
Can never be recalled—from pastry-cooks!
May travel back to Quito—on a trunk!
Led all wild beasts but Women by the ear;
We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower;
And old Amphion, such were minstrels then,
Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren.
Verse too was Justice, and the Bards of Greece
Did more than constables to keep the peace;
Abolished cuckoldom with much applause,
Called county meetings, and enforced the laws,
Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes,
And served the Church—without demanding tithes;
And hence, throughout all Hellas and the East,
Each Poet was a Prophet and a Priest,
Whose old-established Board of Joint Controls
Included kingdoms in the cure of souls.
And Fighting's been in fashion ever since;
And old Tyrtæus, when the Spartans warred,
Though walled Ithome had resisted long,
Reduced the fortress by the force of song.
In song alone Apollo's will was told.
Then if your verse is what all verse should be,
And Gods were not ashamed on't, why should we?
In turns she'll seem a Paphian, or a prude;
Fierce as a bride when first she feels affright,
Mild as the same upon the second night;
Wild as the wife of Alderman or Peer,
Now for His Grace, and now a grenadier!
Her eyes beseem, her heart belies, her zone—
Ice in a crowd—and Lava when alone.
Kind Nature always will perform her part;
Though without Genius, and a native vein
Of wit, we loathe an artificial strain,
Yet Art and Nature joined will win the prize,
Unless they act like us and our allies.
Must bear privations with unruffled face,
Be called to labour when he thinks to dine,
And, harder still, leave wenching and his wine.
Ladies who sing, at least who sing at sight,
Have followed Music through her farthest flight;
But rhymers tell you neither more nor less,
“I've got a pretty poem for the Press;”
And that's enough; then write and print so fast;—
If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last?
They storm the Types, they publish, one and all,
They leap the counter, and they leave the stall.
Provincial Maidens, men of high command,
Yea! Baronets have inked the bloody hand!
Cash cannot quell them; Pollio played this prank,
(Then Phœbus first found credit in a Bank!)
Not all the living only, but the dead,
Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' Head;
Damned all their days, they posthumously thrive,
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Those Books of Martyrs to the rage for rhyme.
Alas! woe worth the scribbler! often seen
In Morning Post, or Monthly Magazine.
There lurk his earlier lays; but soon, hot pressed,
Behold a Quarto!—Tarts must tell the rest.
Then leave, ye wise, the Lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets, or madder lords,
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft!
The Cobbler-Laureats sing to Capel Lofft!
Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears!
'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme;
Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse,
To publish faults which Friendship should excuse.
If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach
More polished usage of his parts of speech.
But what is shame, or what is aught to him?
He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim.
Some folly crossed, some jest, or some debate;
Up to his den Sir Scribbler hies, and soon
The gathered gall is voided in Lampoon.
Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,
Perhaps your Poem may have pleased the Town:
If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man—
May Heaven forgive you, for he never can!
Then be it so; and may his withering Bays
Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise
While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink
The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,
But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be—sold!
Should some rich Bard (but such a monster now,
In modern Physics, we can scarce allow),
Should some pretending scribbler of the Court,
Some rhyming Peer—there's plenty of the sort—
(Ah! too regardless of his Chaplain's yawn!)
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the Rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.
Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
(The Lord forgive him!) “Bravo! Grand! Divine!”
Hoarse with those praises (which, by Flatt'ry fed,
Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye,
As when the dying vicar will not die!
Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;—
But all Dissemblers overact their part.
Believe not all who laud your false “sublime;”
But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
“Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,”
Without amendment, and he answers, “Burn!”
That instant throw your paper in the fire,
Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
But (if true Bard!) you scorn to condescend,
And will not alter what you can't defend,
If you will breed this Bastard of your Brains,
We'll have no words—I've only lost my pains.
As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
No matter, throw your ornaments aside,—
Better let him than all the world deride.
Give light to passages too much in shade,
Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;
Your friend's a “Johnson,” not to leave one word,
However trifling, which may seem absurd;
Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
And furnish food for critics, or their quills.
Or the sad influence of the angry Moon,
As yawning waiters fly Fitzscribble's lungs;
Yet on he mouths—ten minutes—tedious each
As Prelate's homily, or placeman's speech;
Long as the last years of a lingering lease,
When Riot pauses until Rents increase.
While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays
O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented ways,
If by some chance he walks into a well,
And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,
“A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!”
Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
For there his carcass he might freely fling,
From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.
Though this has happened to more Bards than one;
I'll tell you Budgell's story,—and have done.
(Unless his case be much misunderstood)
“To die like Cato,” leapt into the Thames!
And therefore be it lawful through the town
For any Bard to poison, hang, or drown.
Who saves the intended Suicide receives
Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves;
And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose
The Glory of that death they freely choose.
Prick not the Poet's conscience as a curse;
Or got a child on consecrated ground!
And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage—
Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit:
But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,—him
He flays with Recitation limb by limb;
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach,
And gorges like a Lawyer—or a Leech.
Hints from Horace (Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811); being an Imitation in English Verse from the Epistle, etc.
Hints from Horace: being a Partial Imitation, in English Verse, of the Epistle Ad Pisones, De Arte Poeticâ and intended as a sequel to English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.
Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 12, 1811.In an English newspaper, which finds its way abroad wherever there are Englishmen, I read an account of this dirty dauber's caricature of Mr. H---as a “beast,” and the consequent action, etc. The circumstance is, probably, too well known to require further comment.
“While pure Description held the place of Sense.”— Pope, Prol. to the Sat., L. 148.
Shines like a Beau in his Birthday Embroidery.”
“Fas est et ab Hoste doceri.” In the 7th Art. of the 31st No. of the Edinburgh Review (vol. xvi. Ap. 1810) the “Observations” of an Oxford Tutor are compared to “Children's Cradles” (page 181), then to a “Barndoor fowl flying” (page 182), then the man himself to “a Coach-horse on the Trottoir” (page 185) etc., etc., with a variety of other conundrums all tending to prove that the ingenuity of comparison increases in proportion to the dissimilarity between the things compared.
Mere common mortals were commonly content with one Taylor and with one bill, but the more particular gentlemen found it impossible to confide their lower garments to the makers of their body clothes. I speak of the beginning of 1809: what reform may have since taken place I neither know, nor desire to know.
Mr. Pitt was liberal in his additions to our Parliamentary tongue; as may be seen in many publications, particularly the Edinburgh Review.
Old ballads, old plays, and old women's stories, are at present in as much request as old wine or new speeches. In fact, this is the millennium of black letter: thanks to our Hebers, Webers, and Scotts!
Mac Flecknoe, the Dunciad, and all Swift's lampooning ballads. Whatever their other works may be, these originated in personal feelings, and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the ability of these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts from the personal character of the writers.
With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators, and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition.
I have Johnson's authority for making Lear a monosyllable—
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride.”
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.”
Hor: De Arte Poet: 128–130.
Mons. Dacier, Mons. de Sévigné, Bolleau, and others, have left their dispute on the meaning of this sentence in a tract considerably longer than the poem of Horace. It is printed at the close of the eleventh volume of Madame de Sévigné's Letters, edited by Grouvelle, Paris, 1806. Presuming that all who can construe may venture an opinion on such subjects, particularly as so many who can't have taken the liberty, I should have held my “farthing candle” as awkwardly as another, had not my respect for the wits of Louis 14th's Augustan “Siècle” induced me to subjoin these illustrious authorities. I therefore offer firstly Boileau: “Il est difficile de traiter des sujets qui sont à la porteé de tout le monde d'une manière qui vous les rende propres, ce qui s'appelle 'appoprier un sujet par le tour qu'on y donne.” 2dly, Batteux: “Mais il est bien difficile de donner des traits propres et individuels aux êtres purement possibles.” 3dly, Dacier: “Il est difficile de traiter convenablement ces caractères que tout le monde peut inventer.” Mr. Sévigné's opinion and translation, consisting of some thirty pages, I omit, particularly as Mr. Grouvelle observes, “La chose est bien remarquable, aucune de ces diverses interpretations ne parait être la véritable.” But, by the way of comfort, it seems, fifty years afterwards, “Le lumineux Dumarsais” made his appearance, to set Horace on his legs again, “dissiper tous les nuages, et conclier tous les dissentiments;” and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demoliosh Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am happy to say, “la longueur de la dissertation” of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G. from saying any more on the matter. A better poet than Boileau, and at least as good a scholar as Mr. de Sévigné, has said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” And by the above extract, it appears that a good deal may be rendered as useless to the Proprietors.
About two years ago a young man named Townsend was announced by Mr. Cumberland, in a review (since deceased), as being engaged in an epic poem to be entitled “Armageddon.” The plan and specimen promise much; but I hope neither to offend Mr. Townsend, nor his friends, by recommending to his attention the lines of Horace to which these rhymes allude. If Mr. Townsend succeeds in his undertaking, as there is reason to hope, how much will the world be indebted to Mr. Cumberland for bringing him before the public! But, till that eventful day arrives, it may be doubted whether the premature display of his plan (sublime as the ideas confessedly are) has not,—by raising expectation too high, or diminishing curiosity, by developing his argument,— rather incurred the hazard of injuring Mr. Townsend's future prospects. Mr. Cumberland (whose talents I shall not depreciate by the humble tribute of my praise) and Mr. Townsend must not suppose me actuated by unworthy motives in this suggestion. I wish the author all the success he can wish himself, and shall be truly happy to see epic poetry weighed up from the bathos where it lies sunken with Southey, Cottle, Cowley (Mrs. or Abraham), Ogilvy, Wilkie, Pye, and all the “dull of past and present days.” Even if he is not a Milton, he may be better than Blackmore; if not a Homer, an Antimachus. I should deem myself presumptuous, as a young man, in offering advice, were it not addressed to one still younger. Mr. Townsend has the greatest difficulties to encounter; but in conquering them he will find employment; in having conquered them, his reward. I know too well “the scribbler's scoff, the critic's contumely;” and I am afraid time will teach Mr. Townsend to know them better. Those who succeed, and those who do not, must bear this alike, and it is hard to say which have most of it. I trust that Mr. Townsend's share will be from envy; he will soon know mankind well enough not to attribute this expression to malice.
Harvey, the circulator of the circulation of the blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say, “the book had a devil.” Now such a character as I am copying would probably fling it away also, but rather wish that “the devil had the book;” not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of “Long and Short” is enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life, and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.
“Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem.” I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me; and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.— To the above events, “quœque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui,” all times and terms bear testimony.
“Hell,” a gaming-house so called, where you risk little, and are cheated a good deal. “Club,” a pleasant purgatory, where you lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.
“Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but the audience cried out ‘Murder!’ and she was obliged to go off the stage alive.”—Boswell's Johnson
In the postscript to The Castle Spectre, Mr. Lewis tells us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he could have produced the effect “by making his heroine blue,”—I quote him—“blue he would have made her!”
In the year 1808, happening at the opera to tread on the toes of a very well-dressed man, I turned round to apologize, when, to my utter astonishment, I recognized the face of the porter of the very hotel where I then lodged in Albemarle Street. So here was a gentleman who ran every morning forty errands for half a crown, throwing away half a guinea at night, besides the expense of his habiliments, and the hire of his “Chapeau de Bras.”
The first theatrical representations, entitled “Mysteries and Moralities,” were generally enacted at Christmas, by monks (as the only persons who could read), and latterly by the clergy and students of the universities. The dramatis personæ were usually Adam, Pater Cœlestis, Faith, Vice, and sometimes an angel or two; but these were eventually superseded by Gammer Gurton's Neele.—Vide Warton's History of English Poetry.
Benvolio does not bet; but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little pharisaical. Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for chastity, because she herself did not commit fornication.
Under Plato's pillow a volume of the Mimes of Sophron was found the day he died.—Vide Barthélémi, De Pauw, or Diogenes Laërtius, if agreeable. De Pauw calls it a jest-book. Cumberland, in his Observer, terms it moral, like the sayings of Publius Syrus.
Jerry Collier's controversy with Congreve, etc., on the subject of the drama, is too well known to require further comment.
Mr. Simeon is the very bully of beliefs, and castigator of “good works.” He is ably supported by John Stickles, a labourer in the same vineyard:—but I say no more, for, according to Johnny in full congregation, “No hopes for them as laughs.”
Baxter's Shove to heavy-a—d Christians, the veritable title of a book once in good repute, and likely enough to be so again.
As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid, and may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualification than one half of the heads he crops, viz.— Independence.
I have not the original by me, but the Italian translation runs as follows:—“E una cosa a mio credere molto stravagante, che un Padre desideri, o permetta, che suo figliuolo coltivi e perfezioni questo talento.” A little further on: “Si trovano di rado nel Parnaso le miniere d' oro e d' argento,”—Educazione dei Fanciulli del Signor Locke (Venice, 1782), ii. 87.
“Iro pauperior:” a proverb: this is the same beggar who boxed with Ulysses for a pound of kid's fry, which he lost and half a dozen teeth besides. (See Odyssey, xviii. 98.)
As Mr. Pope took the liberty of damning Homer, to whom he was under great obligations—“And Homer (damn him!) calls”—it may be presumed that anybody or anything may be damned in verse by poetical licence and, in case of accident, I beg leave to plead so illustrious a precedent.
For the story of Billy Havard's tragedy, see Davies's Life of Garrick. I believe it is Regulus, or Charles the First. The moment it was known to be his the theatre thinned, and the bookseller refused to give the customary sum for the copyright.
To the Eclectic or Christian Reviewers I have to return thanks for the fervour of that charity which, in 1809, induced them to express a hope that a thing then published by me might lead to certain consequences, which, although natural enough, surely came but rashly from reverend lips. I refer them to their own pages, where they congratulated themselves on the prospect of a tilt between Mr. Jeffrey and myself, from which some great good was to accrue, provided one or both were knocked on the head. Having survived two years and a half those “Elegies” which they were kindly preparing to review, I have no peculiar gusto to give them “so joyful a trouble,” except, indeed, “upon compulsion, Hal;” but if, as David says in The Rivals, it should come to “bloody sword and gun fighting,” we “won't run, will we, Sir Lucius?” I do not know what I had done to these Eclectic gentlemen: my works are their lawful perquisite, to be hewn in pieces like Agag, if it seem meet unto them: but why they should be in such a hurry to kill off their author, I am ignorant. “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong:” and now, as these Christians have “smote me on one cheek,” I hold them up the other; and, in return for their good wishes, give them an opportunity of repeating them. Had any other set of men expressed such sentiments, I should have smiled, and left them to the “recording angel;” but from the pharisees of Christianity decency might be expected. I can assure these brethren, that, publican and sinner as I am, I would not have treated “mine enemy's dog thus.” To show them the superiority of my brotherly love, if ever the Reverend Messrs. Simeon or Ramsden should be engaged in such a conflict as that in which they requested me to fall, I hope they may escape with being “winged” only, and that Heaviside may be at hand to extract the ball.
Mr. Southey has lately tied another canister to his tail in The Curse of Kehama, maugre the neglect of Madoc, etc., and has in one instance had a wonderful effect. A literary friend of mine, walking out one lovely evening last summer, on the eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of “one in jeopardy:” he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on butter-milk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel-spear and a landing net, and at last (horresco referens) pulled out —his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its “alacrity of sinking” was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of “Felo de bibliopolâ” against a “quarto unknown;” and circumstantial evidence being since strong against The Curse of Kehama (of which the above words are an exact description), it will be tried by its peers next session, in Grub-street — Arthur, Alfred, Davideis, Richard Cœur de Lion, Exodus, Exodiad, Epigoniad, Calvary, Fall of Cambria, Siege of Acre, Don Roderick, and Tom Thumb the Great, are the names of the twelve jurors. The judges are Pye, Bowles, and the bell-man of St. Sepulchre's.
The same advocates, pro and con, will be employed as are now engaged in Sir F. Burdett's celebrated cause in the Scotch courts. The public anxiously await the result, and all live publishers will be subpœnaed as witnesses.—But Mr. Southey has published The Curse of Kehama,—an inviting title to quibblers. By the bye, it is a good deal beneath Scott and Campbell, and not much above Southey, to allow the booby Ballantyne to entitle them, in the Edinburgh Annual Register (of which, by the bye, Southey is editor) “the grand poetical triumvirate of the day.” But, on second thoughts, it can be no great degree of praise to be the oneeyed leaders of the blind, though they might as well keep to themselves “Scott's thirty thousand copies sold,” which must sadly discomfort poor Southey's unsaleables. Poor Southey, it should seem, is the “Lepidus” of this poetical triumvirate. I am only surprised to see him in such good company.
“Such things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,But wonder how the devil he came there.”
The trio are well defined in the sixth proposition of Euclid:— “Because, in the triangles D B C, A C B; D B is equal to A C; and B C common to both; the two sides D B, B C, are equal to the two A C, C B, each to each, and the angle D B C is equal to the angle A C B: therefore, the base D C is equal to the base A B, and the triangle D B C (Mr. Southey) is equal to the triangle A C B, the less to the greater, which is absurd,” etc.—The editor of the Edinburgh Register will find the rest of the theorem hard by his stabling; he has only to cross the river; 'tis the first turnpike t' other side Pons Asinorum.
This Latin has sorely puzzled the University of Edinburgh. Ballantyne said it meant the “Bridge of Berwick,” but Southey claimed it as half English; Scott swore it was the “Brig o' Stirling:” he had just passed two King James's and a dozen Douglasses over it. At last it was decided by Jeffrey, that it meant nothing more nor less than the “counter of Archy Constable's shop.”
Voltaire's Pucelle is not quite so immaculate as Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc, and yet I am afraid the Frenchman has both more truth and poetry too on his side—(they rarely go together)—than our patriotic minstrel, whose first essay was in praise of a fanatical French strumpet, whose title of witch would be correct with the change of the first letter.
Like Sir Bland Burges's Richard; the tenth book of which I read at Malta, on a trunk of Eyre's, 19, Cockspur-street. If this be doubted, I shall buy a portmanteau to quote from.
Gurgite cum medio portans Œagrius Hebrus,
Volveret Eurydicen vox ipsa, et frigida lingua;
Ah, miseram Eurydicen! animâ fugiente vocabat;
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ.”
Georgic, iv. 523-527.
I beg Nathaniel's pardon: he is not a cobbler; it is a tailor, but begged Capel Lofft to sink the profession in his preface to two pair of panta—psha!—of cantos, which he wished the public to try on; but the sieve of a patron let it out, and so far saved the expense of an advertisement to his country customers—Merry's “Moorfields whine” was nothing to all this. The “Della Cruscans” were people of some education, and no profession; but these Arcadians (“Arcades ambo”—bumpkins both) send out their native nonsense without the smallest alloy, and leave all the shoes and smallclothes in the parish unrepaired, to patch up Elegies on Enclosures, and Pæans to Gunpowder. Sitting on a shopboard, they describe the fields of battle, when the only blood they ever saw was shed from the finger; and an “Essay on War” is produced by the ninth part of a “poet;”
This well-meaning gentleman has spoiled some excellent shoemakers, and been accessory to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing; nor has the malady confined itself to one county. Pratt too (who once was wiser) has caught the contagion of patronage, and decoyed a poor fellow named Blackett into poetry; but he died during the operation, leaving one child and two volumes of “Remains” utterly destitute. The girl, if she don't take a poetical twist, and come forth as a shoemaking Sappho, may do well; but the “tragedies” are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done: for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of “Remains” come under the statute against “resurrection men.” What does it signify whether a poor dear dead dunce is to be stuck up in Surgeons' or in Stationers' Hall? Is it so bad to unearth his bones as his blunders? Is it not better to gibbet his body on a heath, than his soul in an octavo? “We know what we are, but we know not what we may be;” and it is to be hoped we never shall know, if a man who has passed through life with a sort of éclat is to find himself a mountebank on the other side of Styx, and made, like poor Joe Blackett, the laughing-stock of purgatory. The plea of publication is to provide for the child; now, might not some of this Sutor ultra Crepidam's friends and seducers have done a decent action without inveigling Pratt into biography? And then his inscription split into so many modicums!— “To the Duchess of Somuch, the Right Hon. So-and-So, and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are,” etc. etc.— why, this is doling out the “soft milk of dedication” in gills,— there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication to the devil.
Here will Mr. Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the “ultimus Romanorum,” the last of the Cruscanti—“Edwin” the “profound” by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of “well said Baviad the Correct.” I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate.
Do some men spoil, who never think!
And so perhaps you'll say of me,
In which your readers may agree.
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain
Without the risk of giving pain, etc., etc.
Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
It knows not its resources:
For which no talents they possess,
Yet wonder that, with all their art,
They meet no better with success, etc., etc.
Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, etc. etc.
And the “waiters” are the only fortunate people who can “fly” from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the “Literary Fund,” being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a hope of exclaiming, “Sic” (that is, by choking Fitz. with bad wine, or worse poetry) “me servavit Apollo!”
On his table were found these words:—“What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.” But Addison did not “approve;” and if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his daughter on the same water-party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of “Atticus,” and the enemy of Pope!
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