British Satire, 1785-1840, 5-Volume Set 9781851967292, 9780429348143

Citation preview

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 1 Collected Satires I: Shorter Satires

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 General Editor: John Strachan Consultant Editor: Steven E. Jones Volume Editors: Nicholas Mason David Walker Benjamin Colbert John Strachan Jane Moore

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 1 Collected Satires I: Shorter Satires

Edited by Nicholas Mason

First published 2003 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2003 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

A catalogue record for this title is available from the Library of Congress ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-729-2 (set) Typeset by JCS Publishing Services

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143

Figure 1: Seymour, ‘Poetry’, from The March of Intellect (1829) Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London: Thomas M’Lean, 1829.

CONTENTS List of illustrations

xi

Acknowledgements

xiii

General Introduction by John Strachan

xv

Editorial Principles

xxvii

Introduction by Nicholas Mason

xxix

Robert Burns ‘The Holy Fair’ (1786)

1

Helen Leigh ‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’ (1788) ‘The Lady and the Doctor; An Anecdote’ (1788)

11 15

William Cowper ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ (1788) ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’ (1788)

16 20

Elizabeth Hands ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant Maid’ (1789) 23 ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read’ (1789) 26 John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’) ‘Song, by Mr. Paine’ (1791) ‘Ode to Burke’ (1792)

30 33

Thomas Spence ‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’ (1793)

37

John Thelwall and Daniel Isaac Eaton ‘King Chaunticlere; or, The Fate of Tyranny’ (1793)

41

Daniel Isaac Eaton (‘Antitype’) The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing Upon Society, Exposed (c. 1793–94)

47

vii

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Anon. (attrib. to Robert Merry and Joseph Jekyll) ‘Wonderful Exhibition. Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ (1794) ‘No. II. More Wonderful Wonders!!!’ (1794) ‘Wonderful Exhibition!!! Positively the Last Season of His Performing’ (1795)

56 62 63

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter: A War Eclogue’ (1798)

68

Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne) ‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’ (c. 1798)

74

William Blake ‘When Klopstock England Defied’ (c. 1797–1800)

77

Mary Robinson ‘The Mistletoe, A Christmas Tale’ (1799) ‘The Confessor, A Sanctified Tale’ (1800)

81 87

William Wordsworth ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (1800)

90

Anna Dodsworth ‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq. On a Noble Captain’s Declaring that his Finger was Broken by a Gate’ (1802) ‘Badinage. On Recovering from a Bad Fit of Sickness at Bath’ (1802)

95 98

George Canning ‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’ (1803)

102

Anon., from The Anti-Gallican; or Standard of British Loyalty, Religion and Liberty ‘A Farce in One Act, Called THE INVASION OF ENGLAND’ (1804)

109

Anon., from The Scourge ‘An Ensorian Essay on Something, Meaning Any Thing, and Proving Nothing’ (1812) 112 Anna Laetitia Barbauld Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem (1812)

118

Charles Lamb ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ (1812)

130

Jane Taylor ‘Recreation’ (1816)

134

John Keats ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ (1817)

140

Anon., from The Black Dwarf ‘To Belinda’ (1818) ‘Rights of Women. Answer to Florio’ (1818)

143 147

viii

Contents

‘An Ode to the Ladies on their Alledged Rights’ (1818) ‘A Scene from the New Tragi-Comedy entitled the “Undebauched Royalists”, or, The Reformers Routed’ (1819) ‘The Peterloo Man’ (1819)

147 149 153

Percy Bysshe Shelley ‘Sonnet: England in 1819’ (1819) ‘A New National Anthem’ (1819)

155 157

William Hone ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’ (1820)

160

George Gordon, Lord Byron ‘The Irish Avatar’ (1821)

171

John Hughes ‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’ (1824)

179

Horace Smith ‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’ (1824–25)

185

Thomas Hood and John Hamilton Reynolds ‘Ode to Mr. Graham, The Aeronaut’ (1825) 201 ‘An Address to the Very Reverend John Ireland, D.D. Charles Fynes Clinton, LL.D. Thomas Causton, D.D. Howel Holland Edwards, M.A. The Bishop of Exeter. Wm. H. Edward Bentinck, M.A. James Webber, B.D. William Short, D.D. James Tournay, D.D. Andrew Bell, D.D. George Holcombe, D.D The Dean and Chapter of Westminster’ (1825 211 Anon., from The Globe and Traveller ‘Discovery of Another Poet’ (1825)

215

Anon. (attrib. Theodore Hook) The March of Intellect: A New Song (1825)

219

Robert Seymour From The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political (1829)

224

Ebenezer Elliott ‘Song: Child, is thy father dead?’ ‘Burns, from the Dead’ ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’ (1830)

229 232 233

W[illiam] T[homas] Moncrieff The March of Intellect, A Comic Poem (1830)

237

Anon., from The Prompter ‘A Notabil Ballad of ye Downefall of Kynges’ (1831)

250

ix

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

John Wilson (‘Christopher North’) ‘A New Song, to be Sung by All Loyal and True Subjects’ (1832)

255

Maria Abdy ‘My Very Particular Friend’ (1834) ‘A Governess Wanted’ (1838)

261 264

George Cruikshank and Anon. ‘The Wonderful Pill’ (1837)

267

Charles Dickens ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman. New Version. To be Said or Sung at All Conservative Dinners’ (1841)

273

Explanatory Notes

277

x

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Seymour, ‘Poetry’, from The March of Intellect (1829) Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London: Thomas M’Lean, 1829. frontispiece Figure 2: Gillray, ‘Anti-Saccharrites’ (1792) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plate 78.

22

Figure 3: Spence, cover from Pigs’ Meat (1794) Source: Frontispiece to Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, 2nd edn, London, T. Spence, 1794.

36

Figure 4: Gillray, ‘Doctor Sangrado Curing John Bull of Repletion’ (1803) Figure 5: Gillray, ‘Physical Aid’ (1803) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plates 274 and 275.

100 101

Figure 6: Cruikshank/Hone, ‘The Doctor’ from Man in the Moon (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, The Man in the Moon, London: W. Hone, 1820, p. 20–21.

107

Figure 7: Gillray, ‘The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver’ (1803) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plate 286.

108

Figure 8: Cruikshank, ‘The Prince of Whales’ (1812) Source: The Scourge, III, May 1812, p. 345.

129

Figure 9: Cruikshank, frontispiece to Non Mi Ricordo (1820) Figure 10: Cruikshank, ‘The Fat in the Fire’ from Non Mi Ricordo (1820) Figure 11: Cruikshank, ‘What are you at?’ from Non Mi Ricordo (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’, 5th edn, London, W. Hone, 1820, pp. frontispiece, 11, and 14.

159 169 170

Figure 12: Seymour, ‘Church Philanthropy’ from The March of Intellect (1829) 226 Figure 13: Seymour, ‘Philanthropy in Ireland’ from The March of Intellect (1829) 227 Figure 14: Seymour, ‘West India Philanthropy’ from The March of Intellect (1829) 228 Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London: Thomas M’Lean, 1829. xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many students and colleagues deserve thanks for helping bring this volume to frui­ tion. I owe a particular debt to the four research assistants who have worked with me on this project, Matt Squires, Heather Robison, Paul Westover, and Jamie Davis. Without their assistance, I might very well still be in the microfilm room, scrolling through old newspapers trying to hunt down obscure references. I am also grateful to John Strachan and Mark Pollard for their editorial feedback and their assistance in locating source material. John deserves special thanks for introducing me to many of the texts ultimately included in this anthology and guiding this volume along from start to finish. My institution, Brigham Young University, has been remarkably generous in sup­ porting this project. In addition to the feedback and encouragement I have received from my colleagues in the English Department and the College of Humanities, I have also benefited from significant research funding. The staff at BYU’s Depart­ ment of Special Collections has also been consistently helpful. I am particularly grateful to them for both granting permission to print most of the images in this volume and helping to prepare these graphics for publication. Finally, as in most things, my greatest debt is to my wife, Stacie, and my children, Sam, Anna, and Michael, who after long days in the archives have offered a welcome return to the twenty-first century.

xiii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The period that we now label ‘Romantic’ was an age of great satire. Indeed, the late Georgian age has a valid claim to be seen as the greatest period of satire in English cultural history. An epoch which can boast the talents, amongst many others, of Jane Austen, Lord Byron, George Cruikshank, Benjamin Disraeli, Maria Edgeworth, William Hone, Thomas Hood, Theodore Hook, William Gifford, James Gillray, Thomas Moore, the circle of brilliant Tory wits around The Anti-Jacobin (George Canning, George Ellis, Gifford and John Hookham Frere) and, later, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (James Hogg, John Gibson Lockhart, William Maginn and John Wilson), Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas Rowlandson, Thomas Spence and John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’) has only the early eighteenth century to rival it as an age of satire. Despite the elliptic tendency in much literary history to omit satirical poetry, if not the novel, from accounts of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century writing, the satirical urge was widespread in the Romantic period. And much of the age’s satire is compelling, a body of often brilliant, provocative and controversial poetry. Late Georgian satire has much to say about the social, political, and literary context in which it was written. Satire became a crucial site in which to debate the turbulent politics of a society in crisis in the 1790s and in the post-Napoleonic age. Ideologically partisan satire was a significant political vehicle, used to great effect from the right (in the likes of Gifford, T. J. Mathias, Blackwood’s and John Bull) and the left (in such figures as Spence, Byron, Shelley, Hone and Moore). The most significant political issues and events of the day (the French Revolution, Pittite authoritarianism, the Napoleonic wars, the Regency, the Queen Caroline crisis, the state of Ireland, agitation for Reform) resound through the satirical writing of the day. As well as being ideologically significant in terms of the geopolitics of the age, satirical writing of the period also provides illuminating social commentary on English life in the period, addressing, for instance, the position of women and the campaign for the abolition of slavery, as well as offering a fascinating insight into the manifold preoccupations of fashionable life. And satire in the Romantic period, as it had since the days of Persius and Horace, also possessed a literary-critical function: contemporary literary satires on the likes of Wordsworth and Coleridge or Keats and Hunt are important and revealing critical documents. Despite its contemporary importance, verse satire of the Romantic period, Byron apart, languished in an ill-merited neglect for most of the last century. While late Georgian graphic satire, in all its pungent brilliance, remained fixed in the critical xv

General Introduction

consciousness, its verse equivalent lingered in the shadows. Some critical attention was paid to the satirical work of canonical poets, notably Shelley, and to The AntiJacobin and the Blackwood’s circle (although the two journals often appeared cast in the role of critical anti-heroes hissing in the wings at the Lakers and the Cockney School). Romantic period satire deserved better, and in the 1990s there was a welcome revival in critical recognition and respect for the genre with the publication of several important monographs.1 That being said, textual scholarship has lagged critical attention; this is the first scholarly edition of Romantic period satire. The vast majority of the poetry included in the edition has not been edited or annotated before, and these volumes aim to let late Georgian satirical poetry speak again. For in all of its modes and tempers, this contentious, vigorous, and frequently excellent body of verse has much to offer.

I Though the fact is not evident from many twentieth-century literary histories, satire is a principal literary form of the late Georgian period. As Marilyn Butler once dryly remarked, ‘The so-called Romantics did not know at the time that they were supposed to do without satire’.2 Indeed, all of the canonical literary figures of the period, Wordsworth included, wrote satire and, in Byron, even the most restrictive canon of Romantic poetry, the so-called ‘Big Six’, includes a figure of the greatest satirical virtuosity. ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us’ wrote John Keats in 1818.3 But the poet was not always faithful to such baldly idealist principles, and though his satirical oeuvre is not large, and though his work in the genre is insignificant when compared to that of his great contemporaries Byron and Shelley, even Keats worked in the designing literary art of satire, comedy possessed of a moral purpose. The Romantic period was saturated in satire. The age saw a torrent of occasional satire: squib, pasquinade, ad hominem parody and lampoon in broadside, newspaper column and literary journal. The political, social and literary issues of the day resound though the age’s satire. And the age was listening. As Gary Dyer has written, ‘among the six canonical Romantic poets only Byron had more readers than “Peter Pindar”’.4 Despite, or probably in a certain measure because of, his Whiggism and scandalous nose-thumbing of the royal family, Wolcot enjoyed huge popular success in the Romantic period. And he was not alone; Gifford’s The Baviad went through ten new and revised editions in twenty years, Moore’s The Fudge Family in Paris was reprinted nine times within twelve months of its first appearance, and in various forms, over fifty editions of Hone and Cruikshank’s The Political House that Jack Built were published. Caricaturists, satirical pamphleteers, broadsheet balladeers and lampoonists fed the taste for satire, and anonymous satires, from the left and the right, became a staple of daily newspapers. Broadsheet, handbill and unstamped newspaper squibs brought satire to those without the means to buy a tax-paying newspaper. The likes of Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt developed reputations as xvi

General Introduction

feared newspaper satirists, and it did not seem beneath their dignity for S. T. Coleridge, Charles Lamb, P. B. Shelley and Lord Byron to contribute satirical verse to daily and weekly newspapers. As well as quotidian occasional satire, the Romantic period saw the continuance of the eighteenth-century tradition of the book-length literary satire spanning Pope’s The Dunciad through to Churchill’s The Times, in the classical satires of the 1790s of Gifford and Mathias through to Byron’s ’prentice work in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, or, indeed, in the mutated form of Don Juan. As well as collections of shorter satires and comic annuals containing satirical verse, hundreds of satirical books, from pamphlet-length squibs to poems as long as The Pursuits of Literature, appeared in the Romantic period. As Dyer notes, ‘About thirty satirical poems appeared in 1812 [alone], a year for which J. R. de J. Jackson’s bibliography Annals of English Verse, 1770–1835 lists only 134 volumes of original poetry’.5 Authors continued to employ the traditional models borrowed from classical satire, the Juvenalian, Horatian and, increasingly important in Romantic period prose satire, the Menippean modes, but there was also a stream of experimental work, especially in partisan satire using parodic models (as in the pamphlets of Hone and Cruikshank which develop the earlier, shorter work such as that of Spence and the ‘Signor Pistachio’ broadsides attributed to Robert Merry). Such satirists mixed their media, fusing graphic and literary satire and employing parodic models derived from popular culture rather than more elevated literary forms. That said, the ancient satirical modes did not disappear in the Romantic period. Horatian satire was by no means moribund; in the work of N. T. H. Bayly and Henry Luttrell the form had powerful advocates well into the 1820s. Indeed, in the brilliant metapoetical posturings of Wolcot in the 1790s and in the remarkable fusion of Ansteyan manner and metre with combative oppositionalism evident in the work of Thomas Moore in the Regency period and beyond, contemporary satirists took Horatian poetry in new and innovative directions during the Romantic period. The Juvenalian manner was also of great importance in the late Georgian age. Though the form best characterised the 1790s in the work of William Gifford and T. J. Mathias, there are examples of the sustained classical satire throughout the period, from William Gifford’s The Baviad (1791), printed at the period’s cusp, to Robert Montgomery’s The Age Reviewed (1827), published near its close. One of the most significant Juvenalian satirists of the first decade of the nineteenth century was the twenty-one year old Lord Byron, whose English Bards and Scotch Reviewers owes much to the ‘first satirist of the age’, William Gifford. Byron began his satirical career by copying Gifford, and ended it by imitating, and of course transcending, Gifford’s Anti-Jacobin colleague John Hookham Frere, whose use of ottava rima, colloquialism, comic feminine rhymes and improvisational manner in Whistlecraft was borrowed wholesale in Beppo and beyond. Byron engaged closely with his contemporaries, participating fully in a tradition which was still vibrant and innovative. The antediluvian critical notion that Byron’s work in satirical modes was either regressive or a conscious piece of attitudinising eccentricity is contradicted by the existence of a significant body of contemporary satirical writing. xvii

General Introduction

Satire did not die with Alexander Pope only to be resuscitated by a Byron in combative anti-Romantic mode, raking in the ashes of a dead tradition. Satire never went away, and the masterpiece of Romantic period literary satire, Don Juan, is part of a still healthy and lively satirical tradition. Like George Canning, William Gifford and Mary Robinson before him, Byron appealed to the shade of Pope in order to address the problems of the present more directly. Looking back to the eighteenth century allowed Lord Byron to talk about the nineteenth. Indeed, after the French Revolution of 1789, satire became, if anything, more important in English society than it ever had before, important in a way inconceivable to our modern world. To the Whig or radical, the codified nature of much satire allowed a measure of outspokenness in a society where free speech was severely restricted (as the trial of William Hone in 1817 demonstrated, it was notoriously difficult to prosecute for the publication of a satire). It is not insignificant that Leigh Hunt was imprisoned for seditious libel for an outspoken prose leading article on the Prince Regent rather than for publishing Charles Lamb’s ‘The Triumph of the Whale’, which makes the same points in satirical verse. And Hunt himself, on his release from prison, felt able to lampoon the Regent in a stream of verse satires published in The Examiner over the decade after his release from gaol. A measure of obliquity, however vestigal, became a useful prophylactic against imprisonment. It also facilitated the acidulous character assassination frequently employed in literary and graphic satire of the period. Indeed, satire is one of the few cultural forms that can seem less unbuttoned two hundred years ago than it does today. Few modern satirists mindful of laws concerning personal libel would, like the then Whig satirist George Ellis in the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (1785), allege that the Prime Minister (William Pitt) was an alcoholic homosexual whose sexual partner was a member of his cabinet, himself a future Prime Minister (Lord Liverpool). Satire became a principal vehicle for Whig and radical oppositionalists alike in the Romantic period, whether in traditional verse satire (in the Whig satirists Moore and Byron or in the radicalism of Hunt and Shelley), or in mixed-media form (from the broadsides of Thomas Spence in the 1790s to the work of Hone and Cruikshank in the 1810s). Satire and opposition went hand-in-hand in the Romantic period. However, if satire was an important plank in Whig and radical rhetoric, it was no less important to the forces of reaction. Satire is a promiscuous muse and overarching critical debate as to whether or not satire is innately ‘conservative’ or ‘radical’ during the period is best avoided. Satire consorted with the Tory establishment during the Romantic age, and often in brilliant and compelling ways; it is notable that an important part of the Tory government’s attack upon what it saw as an overly liberal press consensus during the 1790s was to fund and sponsor the brilliant satirists of The Anti-Jacobin,6 three of whom were Tory parliamentarians. Indeed, William Pitt is said to have contributed to the newspaper’s satirical manifesto, ‘New Morality’. The Quarterly Review, the voice of early nineteenth-century Toryism was edited by that iconic figure of Romantic period literary satire, William Gifford, and the most brilliant satirical journal of the period, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine espoused an iconoclastic brand of mordantly effective satire and ultra-Toryism. xviii

General Introduction

George Ellis after his conversion from Whiggism, Viscount Palmerston before his conversion to Whiggism, Benjamin Disraeli, John Hookham Frere: satire and Tory parliamentary politics are intimately entwined in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Romantic age remains the only period within literary history to have a satirist of genius – George Canning – as one of its Prime Ministers. Satire and conservatism went hand-in-hand in the Romantic period. Satire of the Romantic period is also an important literary-critical discourse. From satirico-didactic survey poems in the manner of The Dunciad (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, The Age Reviewed and so on), to sustained satirical campaigns against unwanted poetical innovation (Gifford on the Della Cruscans, The Anti-Jacobin on the ‘New School’ of Southey and Coleridge, Byron’s ambivalent relationship with Wordsworth), to lampoons which settle old scores in ad hominen personal satire (Gifford on Wolcot, Wolcot on Gifford, Hunt on Gifford, Moore on Hunt, just about everyone on Southey), satire was a forum for passionate debate as to the literary spirit of the age, and contemporary satires on the ‘Lake School’ or the ‘Cockney School’ (themselves near-satirical labels) are important critical documents. The literary criticism of the day is closely mirrored in satire: Byron’s review of the Poems in Two Volumes as ‘not simple but puerile’ is complemented by English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ attack on Wordsworth’s dullness. Often literary criticism and satire and parody form a kind of hermeneutical pincer movement. Indeed, on many occasions satire leads literary critical debate, as per The Baviad’s assault on the Della Cruscans or The Vision of Judgment’s attack on the hapless Southey’s laureate poem. From The Baviad onwards, each new literary movement within the Romantic period was greeted by vigorous satirical nosethumbing. Often satire, to use Byron’s phrase, saw itself as a ‘county physician’ purging the body of contemporary literature. As Steven E. Jones has written, the ‘satiric violence’ so often manifest in Romantic period writings ‘reflects an emerging consensus that the poetry they attacked – sentimental, Della Cruscan, Cockney, Lake School, Satanic school – was part of a dangerous new epidemic, but one that might still respond to the harsh treatment of satire’.7 Certainly satire was quick to identify the spirit of the age, and to a degree might be said to have contributed to the formation of the Romantic canon. Significantly, the first identification of a nascent ‘NEW SCHOOL’, with its political liberalism, self-conscious provincialism, sympathy for the poor and dispossessed and fondness for innovation is The Anti-Jacobin’s in November 1797. And satire shaped Wordsworth’s reputation, from the supposed idiotic driveller who appears in satire on the Poems in Two Volumes to the arcane prosing metaphysician evident in that which appears after the publication of The Excursion. All this is not to say that satire is only reactive, or lacking in imaginative power; few writings in the Romantic period match the ingenuity, innovativeness and energy of Byron, Canning, Hone or Moore at their best. Not all satire in the period addresses itself to the literary spirit of the age or profound issues of state. Satire is also a mode of social commentary, providing a real insight into English society in the late Georgian period. Romantic period satire offers us intimate access into the epiphenomena of fashionable life: men and women’s fashions, dining, shopping, drinking, gambling, blackmail, trends in the xix

General Introduction

theatre and music and so on. The dress code at Almack’s, the vogue for hot air ballooning, the ingenious advertising methods of quack doctors; the social minutiae of the age resounds through its satirical writing. Historians and literary critics have consistently engaged with such works of graphic satire as Cruikshank’s ‘Fashionables of 1817’, but caricature’s literary equivalents, Bayly’s Epistles from Bath or Luttrell’s Letters to Julia, and many of the squibs gathered in the first volume of this edition, are ignored. In both its graphic and its literary forms, satire is an invaluable vade mecum to the social ephemera of the age, and it is high time that verse satire on fashionable life was given its due importance. Late Georgian satirical writing also frequently addresses such important humanitarian and social issues as the campaign for the abolition of slavery and the position of women. A significant strand within abolitionist rhetoric in the late eighteenth century is poetical, whether satirical or non-satirical, and the edition includes examples of anti-slavery verse by William Cowper and Edward Jerningham. Satire on the blue-stockings, in the manner of Pope, continued apace, sometimes wry and affectionate Leigh Hunt’s Blue-Stocking Revels (1837)), sometimes vitriolic (The Baviad). And the emergence of the radical female jacobin provoked a good deal of rancorous Tory satire in the manner of Richard Polwhele’s The Unsex’d Females. A Poem (1797), much of which fastened delightedly on William Godwin’s unfortunately over-candid memoir of his late wife. Satire became a significant place in which to debate women’s rights and duties, amongst women as well as amongst male authors. As the first volume of this edition demonstrates there is a significant body of satirical poetry written by women in the period on the issue of how women and girls should behave, a kind of satirical conduct literature. This is not to say that female authors confined their satire to the purely domestic scene (and even here parallels are often made between domestic life and wider society). Satirists such as Mary Robinson, Lady Anne Hamilton and Anna Letitia Barbauld dealt with the same large political and social themes which their male counterparts addressed: European politics, high society, and the failings of the House of Hanover.

II British Satire 1785–1840 republishes a wealth of rare and often hitherto unedited satirical material and provides, for the first time, the necessary annotation and explanatory material necessary to a full appreciation of the complexities of Romantic period literary satire. The edition offers a representative collection of verse satire from the mid-1780s to the mid-1830s, offering a balance between literary and social satire, between radical and conservative political satire, between the Juvenalian and the Horatian manner and between classical satire and other formal modes. Despite the fact that the Romantic period saw an abundance of satirical poetry and the contemporary importance of that body of work, there has never been an anthology of Romantic period verse satire and this is the first collection in the field. xx

General Introduction

The edition is in five volumes: three volumes of Collected Satires and two single author editions devoted to the two figures who, after Byron, best represent Romantic period verse satire: William Gifford and Thomas Moore.8 Volume 1, Collected Satires I: Shorter Satires, edited by Nicholas Mason, anthologises a wide range of satirical poems, essays, squibs, and prints from the Romantic age. As such, it offers a survey of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century satirical traditions previously unavailable to students of the period. Perhaps the volume’s greatest strength lies in the diversity of its selections, as it demonstrates how satire was creatively and effectively employed by male and female, rich and poor, conservative and radical alike. The volume also illustrates how satirical trends like the mock broadside, the punladen spoof, and the Juvenalian jeremiad evolved between 1785 and 1840. In selecting authors, Mason has included several ‘major’ Romantic poets along with political firebrands, famed comedians, and, perhaps most significantly, a wide variety of satirically-minded women. The impressive collection of texts from this latter group should once and for all debunk the old myth that the realm of the satirist was no place for proper ladies. Volume 2, Collected Satires II: Extracts from Longer Satires, edited by David Walker, draws upon a neglected but rewarding body of Romantic period comic writing, the book-length satires discussed above. The Romantic period saw a plethora of sustained, book-length satires and this volume offers representative extracts from these writings. It features literary satire, including, for instance, Mant’s assault on the Lake Poets, The Simpliciad, Polwhele’s onslaught on female intellectuals, The Unsex’d Females, Combe’s satire on the vogue for the picturesque, The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax, the Morgans’ attack on Blackwood’s, The Mohawks, and Peacock’s lampooning of Byron and Coleridge, Sir Proteus. It also addresses political satire (Ellis’s second attack on Pitt in the Criticisms on the Rolliad, Shelley’s on the Regent in Oedipus Tyran­ nus, Barrett’s on the short-lived coalition which followed the death of Pitt, All the Talents) and social satire (Luttrell’s Horatian satire on fashionable life, Letters to Julia, and Montgomery’s vituperative Juvenalian assault upon it, The Age Reviewed). Volume 3, Collected Satires III: Complete Longer Satires, edited by Benjamin Colbert, contains complete facsimiles of five satires written between 1785 and 1822, selected to illustrate both the major genres of satiric production in the period and the interplay between them. Redressing the tendency among modern readers to downplay the comic genius of John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar, Esq.’), the volume opens with the first scholarly edition of The Lousiad: an Heroi-Comic Poem (5 Cantos, 1785–95), the cornerstone of Wolcot’s phenomenal success. Like many of his best satires, The Lou­ siad turns its razors against George III, who appears as a bumbling belligerent, outraged at the discovery of a louse on his dinner plate. The King orders that his cooks submit to having their heads shaved. They resist, and the scene is set for epic conflict between crown and kitchen. The facsimile reproduces the poem’s first collected edition (1794–96), revealing a complex Wolcot who seriously flirted with ultra-radical politics despite the great personal danger of doing so in a climate of reactionary legislation. Wolcot’s 1796 revisions to Canto 5 introduce outspoken Jacobinical passages that helped to dictate the terms by which ‘Peter Pindar’ was xxi

General Introduction

appreciated or vilified thereafter, not least by William Gifford, Wolcot’s most trenchant ideological rival in the 1790s. Widely recognised and lionised as the chief opposition satirist of his age, Wolcot enjoyed the friendship of William Godwin and Mary Robinson, and the admiration of Leigh Hunt and Shelley, as well as a rising generation of radical satirists who borrowed his nom de plume to fight new battles. With the notable exception of William Hone and George Cruikshank’s The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820), none of the other satires in Volume 3 enjoyed the success of The Lousiad. Yet they do offer an intriguing overview of the styles and subjects of satire during the glory years of ‘second generation’ Romanticism, 1817– 22. Nathaniel Thomas Haynes Bayly’s Epistles from Bath; or Q’s Letters to His Yorkshire Relations (1817) is a Neo-Horatian satire on Bath society and fashion, one of the best examples of a sub-genre derived from Christopher Anstey’s perennially popular New Bath Guide (1766) – and a useful companion to Jane Austen’s satiric Bath novel, Northanger Abbey, published the same year. Hone’s and Cruikshank’s The Queen’s Mat­ rimonial Ladder, A National Toy, with Fourteen Step Scenes; and Illustrations in Verse, with Eighteen Other Cuts (1820), on the other hand, is a mould-breaking, radical satire on George IV’s divorce proceedings against Queen Caroline, the one public event that galvanised the reform movement in the aftermath of Peterloo. Basing their design on a children’s toy, Hone and Cruikshank produced a multi-media pamphlet that belittled the new King with coarse graphics, jeering verses, and their own ‘National Toy’, a pasteboard ladder depicting George’s Hogarthian ‘progress’ of infamy. Volume 3 also includes two rare satires that, in different ways, take on the populist tendencies of literary culture: James Harley’s Neo-Juvenalian conversation satire, The Press, or Literary Chit-Chat (1822), with its synopsis of recent publications, authors, and controversies, and the Menippean interlude, The Illiberal! Verse and Prose from the North!! (1822), at once a parody and satire on Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt’s infamous but short-lived journal, The Liberal, or Verse and Prose from the South (1822–23). Both works are inflected by a high-Tory obsession with the pernicious influence of Cockney rhymesters on the precincts of high culture, ambivalently represented by that most enigmatic Romantic persona, Lord Byron. Volume 4, Gifford and the Della Cruscans, edited by John Strachan, combines William Gifford’s twin satires, The Baviad (1791) and The Mæviad (1795), acerbic but compelling assaults upon the Della Cruscan school of poetry, with an anthology of Della Cruscan poetry. Gifford, born into poverty and former apprentice cobbler, was enabled by patrons to proceed to Oxford, eventually becoming an important satirist and journalist (he was editor of two of the most important periodicals of the Romantic period, The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner and The Quarterly Review). Gifford was known in his day as the foremost classical satirist, a consensus exemplified in Byron’s eulogistic references in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, tributes made all the more impressive inasmuch as they come from a liberal Whig to an unflinching ultra-Tory. Modern readers have been less forgiving of Gifford’s combative antijacobinism and of the bludgeoning meted out to his satirical victims (as if ad hominem character assassination is acceptable when it proceeds from the pen of a Hazlitt or a Hunt, both of whom were expert exponents of the literary scalpel, but beyond the xxii

General Introduction

pale when it is from a Gifford or a Wilson). But we should not let ourselves be blinded to the power of Gifford’s performance. With the publication of The Baviad and The Mæviad Gifford became the iconic figure of Tory satire in the Romantic period, and, with his editorship of The Quarterly, the iconic figure of early nineteenthcentury literary Toryism as a whole. However, despite its political and literary significance, there is no modern edition of Gifford’s poetry, and this is the very first scholarly edition of Gifford’s troubling, mordant masterpieces. One problem which faces the modern reader of Gifford is the fact that there is no contemporary edition of his satirical targets, and Volume 4 also includes the first anthology of the Della Cruscan school, that remarkable cultural phenomenon that enraptured fashionable English life in the late 1780s and early 1790s. The Della Cruscan coterie, the most important of whom were Hannah Cowley (‘Anna Matilda’), Robert Merry (‘Della Crusca’) and Mary Robinson (‘Laura Maria’), with their poetry of highly-wrought and self-consciously artificial sentiment, was an important staging-post in the development of English Romanticism and Romantic period women’s writing, and here a representative selection from the poetry of what might be called their house journals, The World and The Oracle, is given alongside Gifford’s critique of their work. Gifford was not, as critical commonplace has had it, taking a sledgehammer to a nut; his assault is upon a significant avant-gardist literary movement. Gifford recognised the importance of the Della Cruscan project, and the very venom with which he treats it betokens that importance. The volume also includes Gifford’s ad hominem attack on John Wolcot, the Epistle to Peter Pindar (1800), a document unparalleled in the period for satirical ferocity (with the possible exception of Wolcot’s cloacal reply, Out at Last! (1801)). Additionally, it incorporates several important satirical responses to Gifford: Wolcot’s Out at Last!, but also Mary Robinson’s Modern Manners (1793) and Edward Jerningham’s ‘Lines on “The Baviad” and “The Pursuits of Literature”’ (1797; 1806). Finally, Volume 4 also features important contextual documents in its two appendices: the proceedings of the unsuccessful libel case brought against The Baviad by one of its principal victims, John Williams (‘Anthony Pasquin’), the ‘Proceedings of the Trial of Robert Faulder, Bookseller … for publishing a libel on John Williams alias Anthony Pasquin’ (1800) and, one ‘good hater’ savaging another, William Hazlitt’s compelling invective A Letter to Wil­ liam Gifford, Esq., from William Hazlitt, Esq. (1819). Volume 5, The Satires of Thomas Moore, edited by Jane Moore, collects the verse satires of Ireland’s most popular national poet. Although Moore is primarily remembered today as the poet of the Irish Melodies, and, perhaps, as the author of the National Airs or the biographer of Byron, he was celebrated during his own lifetime as an outstanding Whig satirist. His contemporaries knew him as much for his political satires and newspaper squibs as for his songs, and from 1812 he became the unofficial laureate of the Whig opposition. Moore discovered his mature satirical voice in the humorous but ideologically combative squibs which he began publishing in The Morning Chronicle in 1812 as a direct consequence of the decision by the Prince of Wales, upon assuming his full powers as Regent, to retain the Tory government. The squibs Moore wrote for the Chronicle and, later, for a while, The Times, xxiii

General Introduction

kept his name at the centre of public debate and won him the admiration of his great contemporaries, Byron, Hazlitt, Hunt, and Shelley, who applauded his light, rapid humour and lilting anapaests, a combination that was as important to Moore’s development as the discovery of ottava rima and the improvisational manner was for his fellow Whig poet Lord Byron. Moore was also the author of several significant book-length satires, attaining national and international recognition with such works as Intercepted Letters; or, the Twopenny Post-Bag and The Fudge Family in Paris, which fuse Horatian epistolary social satire with combative liberal politics. Moore’s verse satires fall into three categories: the Juvenalian satires in heroic couplets of his mid-twenties, written between the years 1804 and 1812; the Horatian satires of his maturity, written in the looser anapaestic measure; and the short topical verses mentioned above. Volume 5 gives all the major satires in full, from the early anti-American satires collected in Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806) to the classical satires Corruption and Intolerance (1808) and The Sceptic (1809) to the later Horatian satires: Intercepted Letters; or, the Twopenny Post-Bag (1813), The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress (1819; reprinted here in full for the first time), Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823) and The Fudges in England (1835). A full and representative selection of the occasional satire from the newspapers and periodicals is also included. The vast majority of the poetry in this edition has never been edited or annotated before, a consequence of the neglect of the period’s satirical heritage evident until the 1990s. Indeed, even where there are twentieth century editions of the writings collected in this set, as in the case of the 1910 Oxford edition of Moore edited by A. D. Godley, the reader is left to deal with poetry which is highly contextually allusive without the aid of headnotes or explanatory editorial annotation. Appreciation of Moore, as of much Romantic period literary satire, has been hampered by his densely allusive literary manner. Whilst some of the most memorable and engaging satirical works of the period require little editorial explanation, much satire is so intricately rooted in its own time that reading it without assistance is like reading Pope’s The Dunciad without annotation. Consequently, this edition provides detailed annotation and individual headnotes to each satire. These are especially necessary, given that this body of work, subtly intimate as it is with contemporary political and literary intrigues, is frequently reliant upon a knowledge of particular circumstances and contexts (literary, political and social) which often need to be restored for the modern reader. Reading the ad hominem, opportunistic or politically engaged satire of the period without annotation can be a frustrating experience and this edition provides the reader with the contextual knowledge needed to remove that frustration. It restores the resonances and subtleties of Romantic period satire, letting it speak clearly once again. John Strachan

xxiv

General Introduction 1 Marcus Wood’s Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790–1822, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, Gary Dyer’s British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, Steven E. Jones Shelley’s Satire: Violence, Exhortation and Authority, De Kalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1997 and the same author’s Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2000. 2 Marilyn Butler, ‘Satire and the Images of the Self in the Romantic Period’, in English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, ed. Claude Rawson, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, p. 209. 3 Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818. 4 Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 12. 5 Ibid., p. 12. 6 For The Anti-Jacobin, see volume 1, The Anti-Jacobin, of Parodies of the Romantic Age, ed. Graeme Stones and John Strachan, 5 vols, London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999. 7 Jones, Satire and Romanticism, pp. 7-8. 8 The two volumes complement each other well. They illustrate the political range: Gifford positioned on the right, Moore on the left. The satirists are active in the two periods of great satirical productivity: Gifford in the 1790s, Moore in the post-Napoleonic period. Their manners are also diverse (Gifford invariably Juvenalian; Moore predominantly Horatian) as are their metres (Gifford using the Popean couplet of English classical satire; Moore moving from heroics to his later iambic and anapaestic tetrameters).

xxv

EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES

This edition reprints satirical writings published between 1785 and 1840. Unless otherwise stated, the copy text is the first published version of each item. Authorial notes appear as footnotes on the bottom of the page; editorial notes appear as explanatory notes at the back of each volume. In the text itself, the following aspects have been retained: the use of large and small capitals; the use of italics; spelling, including archaic spellings. The texts have been altered in a number of ways to conform to the Pickering & Chatto house style: initial double quotation marks have been changed to single inverteds; quotation marks have been removed from around indented quotations; footnotes have been standardised to a system of asterisks, daggers and so on; the use of full stops after abbreviations has been dropped when the abbreviation ends with the final letter of the original word (‘St’ for ‘St.’ and ‘Dr’ for ‘Dr.’). Obvious errors in spelling, punctuation and typography have been silently corrected. Each work is furnished with an explanatory headnote and comprehensive annotation in the form of endnotes. Headnotes give details of first publication and contextualize each item. Explanatory endnotes provide information about proper names, quotations, obscure words, and foreign phrases (with the exception of those in French). The abbreviation DNB in an endnote indicates that an article on the person concerned will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Cross-references within a volume, and to other volumes in this edition, are given as upper-case (‘Vol.’) with Arabic numerals (‘1’) through (‘5’). References to all other editions are given as lower-case ‘vol.’. John Strachan

xxvii

INTRODUCTION

As the first collection of its kind, this anthology aims to reflect the richness and diversity of British satire from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While it is impossible to represent the entire scope of satirical writing from an era in a single volume, I have tried to select texts that touch on a wide range of issues and speak from a variety of perspectives. Thus, in the pages below, we hear from Paineites and Burkeans, feminists and misogynists, evangelicals and sinners. In tone, the texts range from ecumenical to chauvinist, wistful to blustering, Horatian to Juvenalian. And chronologically, the volume moves from the French Revolution and the rise of Pittite conservatism, through the Napoleonic wars and the Regency period, and into the Reform agitation of the 1820s and 1830s. In selecting texts, I have tried to mix traditional canonical voices with those of lesser-known writers. This is the rare anthology where inclusion of all six ‘major’ Romantic poets might actually seem ground-breaking, since satire has traditionally been held as anathema to High Romanticism.1 Most readers will probably have little difficulty envisioning Blake, Byron, and, perhaps, Shelley in such a volume; but, on the surface, the other three poets don’t seem to fit. I have, therefore, purposely included satirical poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats to challenge this perception and, above all, to bolster the argument, made most recently by Steven Jones,2 that satire is not nearly as incompatible with Lake School or Keatsian Romanticism as we have generally assumed. Another conscious choice I have made in compiling this edition has been to represent women authors more fully than they generally have been in previous collections of comic or parodic literature.3 While lamentable, the scarcity of women writers in earlier anthologies is in ways understandable, since historically satire, parody, and comedy have been viewed as predominantly male pursuits. It would be difficult to quantify exactly how often women writers employed satire in their work and whether they indeed turned to satire considerably less frequently than their male counterparts. The works of Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and several other novelists of the period certainly prove that women could excel as satirists. But, as Gary Dyer’s extensive bibliography of Romantic-era satire suggests, women writers generally seem to have shied away from the types of political and personal raillery that characterized the writing of popular male satirists like ‘Peter Pindar’, Lord xxix

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Byron, and Thomas Moore.4 This is particularly true with poetry, a mode in which society expected women to model sensibility, domesticity, and morality, not resentment and spleen. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that women’s verse of the Romantic era was altogether satire-free. As this anthology tries to establish, a number of women poets turned a critical eye on the world about them, using satire as a tool to expose society’s flaws. Many of these women, such as Helen Leigh, Carolina Oliphant, and Anna Dodsworth, wrote primarily for their families, taking as their subjects local events or private jokes within their social set. Others, such as Jane Taylor and Maria Abdy, aspired to reach a larger audience, satirizing courtship rituals, gossip, balls, and other common aspects of middle- and upper-class women’s experience. In rare instances, some women were even emboldened to write satire on the institutions of church or state, as is the case in two of the poems below: Mary Robinson’s ‘The Confessor’, a pointed critique of clerical misconduct, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, an elegy forecasting the seemingly imminent demise of the British Empire. Along with beginning to map out a tradition of women’s satire, another major aim of this anthology is to recover now-obscure texts that in their day had a major impact on public opinion and political policy. Many of the satirists anthologised below ranked among the age’s most widely read authors. John Wolcot (pseud. ‘Peter Pindar’), for instance, was immensely popular in the final decades of the eighteenth century and was largely responsible for fixing in the public’s mind the image of George III as a blundering and absent-minded but strangely endearing fool. Following Wolcot’s lead, several other late-eighteenth-century satirists took aim at political figures, with the seemingly scandal-proof prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, serving as a favourite target. Selections in this volume that lampoon Pitt and his repressive policies include Daniel Isaac Eaton’s pamphlet The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing Upon Society, Revealed, Coleridge’s eclogue ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’, and the anonymous ‘Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ broadsides.5 That radical satirical texts such as these proliferated in the 1790s and again in the late 1810s says much about both the nature of satire and the political climate of these years. In periods of heightened official paranoia and repression, when opponents of the government regularly found themselves in prison, at the gallows, or aboard a ship bound for Australia, satire proved an ideal medium for taking swipes at the nation’s leaders with relative impunity. A favourite ploy, for instance, in radical journals of the 1790s like Thomas Spence’s Pigs’ Meat and Eaton’s Politics for the People was the Swiftian tactic of ironically adopting the voice of a staunch loyalist to expose just how narrow-minded and reactionary the policies of the current administration had become. This type of satire would remain popular into the new century, as evidenced in such texts as Charles Lamb’s ‘Triumph of the Whale’, a mock panegyric on the profligate and obese ‘Prince of Whales’, and the Black Dwarf ’s ‘The “Undebauched Royalists”’, a one-act play where the instigators of the Peterloo massacre unwittingly condemn themselves through their own words. From time to time, the xxx

Introduction

government would prosecute the authors or publishers of such satires, as was the case when the crown arrested Eaton for circulating John Thelwall’s ‘King Chaunticlere’ fable. But, as a general rule, the satirist enjoyed much greater immunity from treason charges than the straightforward polemicist. Tellingly, when Leigh Hunt was convicted of sedition in 1812, it was not for his role in publishing satires like ‘Triumph of the Whale’, but for his direct and open editorial assaults on the Prince Regent’s morals. While in recent decades radical satire has attracted considerable scholarly attention,6 relatively little notice has been paid to conservative contributions to the genre. Whether accurate or not, there seems to be a sense that, with a few noteworthy exceptions, the Tory satire of this era lacked both the creativity and popular appeal of the radical tradition and is, therefore, less interesting two centuries later. It is important, however, not to lose sight of how extensively satire was used by all political factions. Thus, I have tried to include texts that represent the types of satirical arguments political moderates and conservatives were wont to make. In the ‘Song, by Mr. Paine’, for instance, we get a glimpse of the deep suspicion even a moderate like Wolcot felt toward Paine and his fellow republicans. In the Anti-Gallican’s ‘Invasion of England’ broadside, we witness the John Bull tradition in its purest form, contrasting British manliness with French foppery and taunting the puny Napoleon to dare set foot on British soil. And in the selections from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’ and ‘A New Song, to be Sung by All Loyal and True Subjects’), we see Tory writers impressively employing the tools of satire to promote the ideals of Burkean conservatism. Given the preponderance of powerful political satire from this era, it would have been easy to fill this entire volume with such texts. I have tried, however, to adequately represent other branches of the age’s satire, such as the social, literary, and religious, as well. As the selections that follow will reveal, few subjects or areas of society were off-limits to the satirist. An especially popular target was the hypocrisy of institutions or individuals, particularly the church and its ministers. That the keepers of Christ’s flock are failing to live up to their charge is a favourite theme throughout this volume, receiving its most extensive treatment in Burns’s ‘The Holy Fair’, Robinson’s ‘The Confessor’, and Reynolds’s ‘Address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster’. Literary figures also receive their comeuppance at several points below. Wordsworth is cast as a mirror image of the provincial poetaster ‘Dr Marshall’ in the anonymous ‘Discovery of Another Poet’; the German nationalist poet Klopstock is the subject of a scatological hex in Blake’s ‘When Klopstock England Defied’; and virtually every prominent figure in literary London is reduced to size in Hood’s ‘Ode to Mr. Graham, the Aeronaut’. A few final explanations for what follows. As will become readily apparent upon scanning this volume, most of its texts are in verse. The simplest explanation for this is that, by definition, this volume’s aim is to sample from the age’s ‘shorter’ satires. Obviously, then, all of the prose satire found in Romantic-era novels and much of that in the era’s magazines and literary reviews falls outside the length limitations xxxi

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

of this particular volume. Another reason for verse’s predominance here is that it remained the primary vehicle for satire well into the early 1830s, a fact that is born out in Dyer’s bibliography. That said, I have tried to balance the verse selections below with memorable examples of Romantic-era prose satire. The prose texts in this volume range from the mock polemic (Eaton’s The Pernicious Effects), to the mock broadside (the ‘Pittachio’ and ‘Invasion of England’ squibs), to the comic dictionary (Smith’s ‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’). Other noteworthy examples include Thelwall’s beast fable, ‘King Chaunticlere’; Hone’s spoof on the Queen Caroline trial, ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’; and the mock review ‘Discovery of Another Poet’ from the Globe and Traveller. I have also included several cartoons and caricatures in an attempt to emphasize the close relationship between the graphic and print satire of this era. Not only did cartoonists and literary satirists tend to share the same general subjects, but they also worked in unison quite regularly. Among the more fruitful collaborations showcased in this volume are those between James Gillray and George Canning (the ‘Doctor Addington’ satires) and William Hone and George Cruikshank (Non Mi Ricordo! and ‘The Doctor’ from Man in the Moon). These are powerful instances of cross-textuality, as in all these cases neither the written nor the visual satire is nearly as effective without its companion piece. Finally, in keeping with the general editorial guidelines for this series, I have used the first published edition as the copy-text for almost every entry. In those few instances when the text in this volume differs from the first published edition, I have tried to make clear my rationale for doing so. Except where noted, all formatting, spelling, and punctuation are reproduced exactly from the original text, with only the long ‘s’ and quotation marks having been modernized. Nicholas Mason

1 In a frequently cited passage from Natural Supernaturalism, for instance, M. H. Abrams hesitates to group Byron among the major Romantics ‘because in his greatest work he speaks with an ironic counter-voice and deliberately opens a satirical perspective on the vatic stance of his Romantic contemporaries’ (Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York and London, Norton, 1971, p. 13). 2 Steven E. Jones, Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s, 2000, pp. 1–4. 3 One need only skim modern anthologies of comic, satire, and parodic verse to sense how commonly women writers have been excluded from these categories. Of the thirty-six signed entries in Kent and Ewen’s Romantic Parodies, 1797–1831, London and Toronto, Associated University Press, 1992, only two are by women. This exact same two-out-ofthirty-six ratio is found in the non-anonymous entries between Samuel Johnson and Robert Browning in The Oxford Book of Comic Verse, ed. John J. Gross, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Even more relevantly, The Oxford Book of Satiric Verse, ed. Geoffrey Grigson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, includes twenty-five non-anonymous authors between Johnson and Dickens, none of whom are women. xxxii

Introduction 4 Dyer’s forty-page bibliography of Romantic-era satire is included at the end of British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. For Dyer’s reflections on women’s exclusion from the tradition of formal verse satire, see pp. 7, 54, 150–51. 5 For a history of the production and reception of radical broadsides during the 1790s, see John Barrell’s introduction in Exhibition Extraordinary!! Radical Broadsides of the Mid 1790s, Nottingham, Trent, 2001. 6 See Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style; Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790–1822, Oxford, Clarendon, 1994; and Michael Scrivener, Poetry and Reform: Periodical Verse from the English Democratic Press 1792–1824, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1992.

xxxiii

ROBERT BURNS

‘The Holy Fair’ (1786) [First published in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Kilmarnock, John Wilson, 1786, pp. 40–54. Since its initial publication in the 1786 Kilmarnock edition of Robert Burns’s (1759–96; DNB) poetry, ‘The Holy Fair’ has remained one of the poet’s most popular works with critics and general readers alike. According to a manuscript note, the poem was composed in 1785, and most Burns scholars agree that he probably wrote it sometime following the Mauchline communion held in August of that year.1 That the poem made it into the Kilmarnock edition is noteworthy primarily because of the number of early Burns satires that were consciously omitted from this collection. Whereas poems like ‘The Holy Tulzie’, ‘Address to Beelzebub’, and ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ were presumably excluded because of the personal and potentially offensive nature of their satire, Burns and his publisher seem to have felt ‘The Holy Fair’ was amiable enough to be published without risking widespread reprisals from its satirical targets. In many respects, ‘The Holy Fair’ is heavily indebted to centuries-old traditions of Scottish poetry. Its portrayal of the revelry and ritual of a popular celebration, for instance, hearkens back to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century festival poems such as ‘Peblis at the Play’ and ‘Chrystis Kirk on the Grene’. Even more directly, the poem builds upon Robert Fergusson’s ‘Leith Races’, a 1773 poetic portrait of holiday festivities in the country outside Edinburgh. A glimpse at the opening stanza of ‘Leith Races’ suggests how extensively Burns borrowed, both formally and thematically, from Fergusson’s poem: In July month, ae bonny morn, Whan Nature’s rokelay green Was spread o’er ilka rigg o’ corn To charm our roving een; Glouring about I saw a quean, The fairest ’neath the lift; Her een were o’ the siller sheen, Her skin like snawy drift, Sae white that day. 1

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-1

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Burns also took from ‘Leith Races’ his allegorical plot device, adapting Fergusson’s encounter with ‘Mirth’ into his own adventures with ‘Fun’, ‘Hypocrisy’, and ‘Superstition’. It would be a mistake, though, to see ‘The Holy Fair’ as little more than a skilful imitation or reworking of its poetic models. In many respects, the poem is the classic Burnsian satire, painting vivid pictures of communal life in late eighteenthcentury Ayrshire. Setting the poem at the annual Mauchline communion allows Burns to survey the heterogeneity of local culture, as gathered together on one plot is an eclectic mix of Calvinist firebrands, moderate moralists, well-to-do farmers, and village ‘swankies’ and ‘jades’. Ostensibly, the thousands who throng to Mauchline do so to receive the sacrament and hear the word of God. Burns, however, is more interested in divisions among the assembled than any unity of purpose. At the most basic level, the poem divides the godly from the carnal, cleverly employing zeugmas (‘Here, some are thinkan on their sins, / An’ some upo’ their claes’) and cutting back and forth between the pulpit and the ale-house to emphasize the diversity of the congregation. Burns is also interested in the fissures within these respective groups, devoting large sections of the poem to the tensions between conservative, ‘Auld Licht’ Calvinists and their moderate, ‘New Licht’ colleagues. Although ministers on both sides of this divide are open to his mockery, Burns clearly sympathizes with those who offer a gospel of love rather than damnation. By the late eighteenth century, ‘Auld Licht’ ministers had become a minority in the Scottish kirk, yet in Mauchline they maintained a powerful grip on the church and the community. As something of a free-thinker and a notorious fornicator, Burns regularly found himself at odds with the local church elders, on more than one occasion being subjected to public humiliation and punishment for his dalliances with village lasses. In some respects, then, ‘The Holy Fair’, like ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ and other poems from this period, is Burns’s revenge upon those who, in his assessment, showed greater devotion to the gospel of Calvin than that of Christ.2 Equally important in the poem, however, is its exploration of the basic internal struggles between soul and body, principle and hypocrisy, trained behaviour and natural instinct. In the process of exploring these tensions, Burns turns traditional religious poetry on its head. As David Daiches has pointed out, ‘Instead of starting from the natural and physical and moving up to the ecstatic and divine, Burns starts from the coldly theological and moves rapidly down to the physical and the earthy’.3 The result is a text that, like its author, longs for the religious ideal but in the end seems powerless before the inescapable charms of brandy and ‘Houghmagandie’.]

1 For a general textual history of ‘The Holy Fair’, see James Kinsley’s commentary in The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 3 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1968, vol. 3, pp. 1093–96. Kinsley’s excellent edition has served as a highly useful resource while preparing my own 2

Burns (‘The Holy Fair’) annotations of Burns’s text. For the sake of the reader’s patience, I have included glosses on Burns’s Scots as marginals on the page of the text rather than in endnotes. 2 Alan Bold’s A Burns Companion, New York, St Martin’s, 1991, contains an informative overview of Burns’s religious background and attitudes, including his quarrels with the ‘Auld Licht’ elders of Mauchline. See pp. 89–99. 3 David Daiches, Robert Burns, New York, Macmillan, 1966, p. 123.

3

A robe of seeming truth and trust Hid crafty observation; And secret hung, with poison’d crust, The dirk of Defamation: A mask that like the gorget show’d, Dye-varying, on the pigeon; And for a mantle large and broad, He wrapt him in Religion. HYPOCRISY A-LA-MODE.1

I. UPON a simmer Sunday morn, When Nature’s face is fair, I walked forth to view the corn, An’ snuff the callor air. The rising sun, our GALSTON Muirs, Wi’ glorious light was glintan; The hares were hirplan down the furrs, The lav’rocks they were chantan Fu’ sweet that day. II. As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad, To see a scene sae gay, Three hizzies, early at the road, Cam skelpin up the way. Twa had manteeles o’ dolefu’ black, But ane wi’ lyart lining; The third, that gaed a wee a-back, Was in the fashion shining Fu’ gay that day. III. The twa appear’d like sisters twin, In feature, form an’ claes; Their visage wither’d, lang an’ thin, An’ sour as ony slaes:

summer

fresh over hobbling/furrows larks

gazed

10

wenches hurrying cloaks one with gray stayed a ways back

clothes sloes 4

1

20

Burns (‘The Holy Fair’)

The third cam up, hap-step-an’-loup, As light as ony lambie, An’ wi’ a curchie low did stoop, As soon as e’er she saw me, Fu’ kind that day. IV. Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, ‘Sweet lass, ‘I think ye seem to ken me; ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face, ‘But yet I canna name ye.’ Quo’ she, an’ laughan as she spak, An’ taks me by the han’s, ‘Ye, for my sake, hae gien the feck ‘Of a’ the ten comman’s A screed some day.’ V. ‘My name is FUN—your cronie dear, ‘The nearest friend ye hae; ‘An’ this is SUPERSTITION here, ‘An’ that’s HYPOCRISY. ‘I’m gaun to *********2 holy fair, ‘To spend an hour in daffin: ‘Gin ye’ll go there, yon runkl’d pair, ‘We will get famous laughin At them this day.’ VI. Quoth I, ‘With a’ my heart, I’ll do’t; ‘I’ll get my sunday’s sark on, ‘An’ meet you on the holy spot; ‘Faith, we’se hae fine remarkin!’ Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time, An’ soon I made me ready; For roads were clad, frae side to side, Wi’ monie a wearie body, In droves that day. VII. Here, farmers gash, in ridin graith, Gaed hoddan by their cotters; There, swankies young, in braw braid-claith, Are springan owre the gutters. The lasses, skelpan barefit, thrang, 5

hop-step-and-jump curtsy

30

given the better part tear

40 sport If/wrinkled

shirt

breakfast filled many

wise/attire Went riding/cottagers strapping fellows/splendid hastening barefoot, in a group

50

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

In silks an’ scarlets glitter; Wi’ sweet-milk cheese, in monie a whang, An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter, Fu’ crump that day. VIII. When by the plate3 we set our nose, Weel heaped up wi’ ha’pence, A greedy glowr black-bonnet 4 throws, An’ we maun draw our tippence. Then in we go to see the show, On ev’ry side they’re gath’ran; Some carryan dails, some chairs an’ stools, An’ some are busy bleth’ran Right loud that day. IX. Here stands a shed to fend the show’rs, An’ screen our countra Gentry; There, racer Jess, an’ twathree wh-res, Are blinkan at the entry. Here sits a raw o’ tittlan jads, Wi’ heaving breasts an’ bare neck; An’ there, a batch o’ Wabster lads, Blackguarding frae K*******ck,5 For fun this day. X. Here, some are thinkan on their sins, An’ some upo’ their claes; Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins, Anither sighs an’ prays: On this hand sits an Elect swatch, Wi’ screw’d-up, grace-proud faces; On that, a set o’ chaps, at watch, Thrang winkan on the lasses To chairs that day. XI. O happy is that man, an’ blest! Nae wonder that it pride him! Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best, Comes clinkan down beside him! Wi’ arm repos’d on the chair-back, He sweetly does compose him; 6

60 many a large slice oatcakes crisp

glare must/two pence

planks blabbering

70

ward off two or three row of tittering girls weaver Come bent on mischief

80

clothes soiled group

Busy 90

nestling

Burns (‘The Holy Fair’)

Which, by degrees, slips round her neck, An’s loof upon her bosom Unkend that day. XII. Now a’ the congregation o’er Is silent expectation; For ******6 speels the holy door, Wi’ tidings o’ s–lv–t—n.7 Should Hornie, as in ancient days, ’Mang sons o’ G— present him, The vera sight o’ ******’s8 face, To’s ain het hame had sent him Wi’ fright that day. XIII. Hear how he clears the points o’ Faith Wi’ rattlin an’ thumpin! Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, He’s stampan, an’ he’s jumpan! His lengthen’d chin, his turn’d up snout, His eldritch squeel an’ gestures, O how they fire the heart devout, Like cantharidian plaisters9 On sic a day! XIV. But hark! the tent has chang’d its10 voice; There’s peace an’ rest nae langer; For a’ the real judges rise, They canna sit for anger. *****11 opens out his cauld harangues, On practice and on morals; An’ aff the godly pour in thrangs, To gie the jars an’ barrels A lift that day.12 XV. What signifies his barren shine, Of moral pow’rs an’ reason? His English style, an’ gesture fine, Are a’ clean out o’ season. Like SOCRATES or ANTONINE,13 Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, 7

his palm Unnoticed 100 climbs Satan Among sons of God his own hot home

110

ghastly

120

130

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

But ne’er a word o’ faith in That’s right that day. XVI. In guid time comes an antidote good Against sic poosion’d nostrum; poisoned For *******,14 frae the water-fit, Ascends the holy rostrum: See, up he’s got the word o’ G—, An’ meek an’ mim has view’d it, demurely While COMMON-SENSE has taen the road, An’ aff, an’ up the Cowgate15 Fast, fast that day. XVII. Wee ****** niest, the Guard relieves, An’ Orthodoxy raibles, Tho’ in his heart he weel believes, An’ thinks it auld wives’ fables: But faith! the birkie wants a Manse, So, cannilie he hums them; Altho’ his carnal Wit an’ Sense Like hafflins-wise o’ercomes him At times that day. 16

next pours forth

chap knowingly/humbugs

8

150

half

XVIII. Now, butt an’ ben,17 the Change-house fills, Wi’ yill-caup Commentators: ale-cup Here’s crying out for bakes an’ gills, biscuits/whisky An’ there the pint-stowp clatters; pint-measure While thick an’ thrang, an’ loud an’ lang, Wi’ Logic, an’ wi’ Scripture, They raise a din, that, in the end, Is like to breed a rupture O’ wrath that day. XIX. Leeze me on Drink! it gies us mair Than either School or Colledge: It kindles Wit, it waukens Lear, It pangs us fou o’ Knowledge. Be’t whisky-gill or penny-wheep, Or ony stronger potion, It never fails, on drinkin deep, To kittle up our notion, By night or day.

140

160

How well I love awakens learning crams us full small beer

excite

170

Burns (‘The Holy Fair’)

XX. The lads an’ lasses, blythely bent To mind baith saul an’ body, Sit round the table, weel content, An’ steer about the toddy. On this ane’s dress, an’ that ane’s leuk, They’re makin observations; While some are cozie i’ the neuk, An’ formin assignations To meet some day. XXI. But now the L—’s ain trumpet touts, Till a’ the hills are rairan, An’ echos back return the shouts; Black ******18 is na spairan: His piercin words, like Highlan swords, Divide the joints an’ marrow;19 His talk o’ H–ll, whare devils dwell, Our vera* ‘Sauls does harrow’20 Wi’ fright that day! XXII. A vast, unbottom’d, boundless Pit, Fill’d fou o’ lowan brunstane, Whase raging flame, an’ scorching heat, Wad melt the hardest whun-stane! The half asleep start up wi’ fear, An’ think they hear it roaran, When presently it does appear, ’Twas but some neebor snoran Asleep that day. XXIII. ’Twad be owre lang a tale to tell, How monie stories past, An’ how they crouded to the yill, When they were a’ dismist: How drink gaed round, in cogs an’ caups, Amang the furms an’ benches; An’ cheese an’ bread, frae women’s laps, Was dealt about in lunches, An’ dawds that day. * Shakespear’s Hamlet

9

stir/hot Scotch look corner 180

roaring

190 full of blazing brimstone whinstone

too long 200 ale wooden drinken vessels forms large pieces lumps

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

XXIV. In comes a gawsie, gash Guidwife, An’ sits down by the fire, Syne draws her kebbuck an’ her knife; The lasses they are shyer. The auld Guidmen, about the grace, Frae side to side they bother,21 Till some ane by his bonnet lays, An’ gies them’t, like a tether, Fu’ lang that day. XXV. Waesucks! for him that gets nae lass, Or lasses that hae naething! Sma’ need has he to say a grace, Or melvie his braw claithing! O Wives be mindfu’, ance yoursel, How bonie lads ye wanted, An’ dinna for a kebbuck-heel, Let lasses be affronted On sic a day! XXVI. Now Clinkumbell,22 wi’ rattlan tow, Begins to jow an’ croon; Some swagger hame, the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink,23 Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi’ faith an’ hope, an’ love an’ drink, They’re a’ in famous tune For crack that day. XXVII. How monie hearts this day converts, O’ sinners and o’ Lasses! Their hearts o’ stane, gin night are gane, As saft as ony flesh is. There’s some are fou o’ love divine; There’s some are fou o’ brandy; An’ monie jobs that day begin, May end in Houghmagandie Some ither day. 10

buxom/wise Then/cheese

210

rope

Alas!

soil with food his fine clothing

220

don’t/end of cheese

rope toll and sound can 230 remove their shoes chatter

before full 240 fornication

HELEN LEIGH

‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’ (1788) ‘The Lady and the Doctor; an Anecdote’ (1788)

[First published in Miscellaneous Poems, by Helen Leigh, of Middlewich, Manchester, C. Wheeler, 1788, pp. 16–21, 82–83. Helen Leigh (d. 1790s) is typical of many late-eighteenth-century women writers insofar as her poetry is practically the only remaining record of her life. Her lone published book, the 1788 collection Miscellaneous Poems, lists the names of over 700 subscribers but includes only the most basic facts about the poet herself. The title page identifies the author as a resident of Middlewich, and the preface apologizes for the works that follow by explaining that they were written by ‘the Wife of a Country Curate, and Mother of seven Children’. Beyond these details, the only thing we know about Leigh is that her husband, George, remarried in 1795, which suggests that the poet died not long after publishing her poems.1 Leigh’s poetry covers a wide range of genres, including nationalist histories (‘The Battle of Agincourt’), beast fables (‘The Worm and the Butterfly’), and didactic exempla (‘The Pursuit of Pleasure’). This generic diversity notwithstanding, the poems are relatively uniform in that they repeatedly contrast virtue and vice and place particular emphasis on accepting one’s position in the Great Chain of Being. Throughout the volume, Leigh takes on the voice of the conduct-book narrator, critiquing the ways of high society through the lens of middle-class domesticity. The two poems printed below, ‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’ and ‘The Lady and the Doctor’, showcase how Leigh is at her best when scorning the affectation and general corruption of Britain’s leisure class. In particular, these poems satirize the upper-class woman, suggesting that much of the folly of these women’s lives is owing to their misguided upbringing and inadequate education. Writing four years before the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Leigh puts forward many of the basic ideas that would eventually be synonymous with Wollstonecraftian feminism. In ‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’, for instance, she suggests that most of the vices characteristic of well-to-do women can be traced to their youth, when they were spoiled and improperly educated. The girl who always 11

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-2

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

has her way and is never taught to relish such disciplined activities as reading and needle-work will most likely become a wife who is inclined to ‘run astray’ from her husband. In the other poem included below, ‘The Lady and the Doctor’, Leigh implies that women have buried their true identities under layers of make-up. Not only does this face-painting rob the lady of the poem of her individuality, but, as the wise doctor diagnoses, the lead-based paint is also slowly killing her. Leigh wrote from a much more conservative base than Wollstonecraft, and hence it is not surprising that she places most of the blame for female woes on women themselves rather than on the patriarchal system that denies them the ability to think and behave rationally. Nevertheless, while she stops short of calling for a social revolution, she uses her moral authority as a mother and a curate’s wife to call for serious social reforms. Whether condemning the misguided education of women or critiquing (as she does elsewhere in her volume) such immoral traditions as duelling and ostracizing illegitimate children, Leigh proved a remarkably blunt satirist of late-eighteenth-century English society2.]

1 See the brief entry on Leigh in The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 647. 2 Leigh’s poem on illegitimate children, ‘The Natural Child’, is anthologised in Women Romantic Poets 1785–1832, ed. Jennifer Breen, London, J. M. Dent, 1992, pp. 8–9. Breen’s anthology also includes ‘The Lady and the Doctor’.

12

‘ A S PECIMEN

OF

MODERN F EMALE EDUCATION’

M ARIA, from her infant years, Was all her mother’s hopes and fears; To such a pitch that fondness grew, Miss did—whate’er she chose to do; Sole mistress of the nurs’ry, she Indulg’d in ev’ry thing must be; The maids, as order’d, still supply’d Her wants, and trembl’d if she cry’d; She must not cry, rather than that, To pieces goes my Lady’s hat; Gauzes and ribbands form a broom, And ostrich feathers sweep the room: Nay, shou’d she feel a strong desire, To see Sir Charles’s wig on fire, Rather than tears shou’d spoil her face, Another soon supplies its place.

1

10

Under such government as this, Can it be wonder’d at, that Miss Soon grew above my Lady’s hand, Nor e’er wou’d brook a reprimand.

20

To Boarding-School she now was sent; But, ’twas thought proper, e’er she went, To give the Governess her cue, And tell her what she had to do: ‘Dear Mrs. Sage,’ my Lady cries, ‘Pray don’t let reading spoil her eyes, Nor needle-work; and, do ye hear, Be sure you take the greatest care, That none e’er contradicts my child, She can’t bear that, she’s been so spoil’d.’

30

The Governess, in hopes to please Her Ladyship, to this agrees; Takes the young Lady with her home, And gives her the genteelest room: 13

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

But she, who ne’er had known restraint, Soon gave occasion for complaint; Unruly, insolent and vain, She thought o’er all the school to reign. The Governess, to soothe her pride, To reason with Maria try’d, But all in vain, for, void of grace, She slapp’d her Mistress in the face.

40

My Lady heard the tale, and smil’d; Admir’d the spirit of the child; Hop’d she’d excuse it—but she’d call At school, next day, and settle all. Accordingly, next day she goes, To chide her daughter, you’ll suppose; Not an improbable conjecture, She gave her—a most trimming1 lecture. Says she, ‘Maria, what I hear You’ve misbehav’d;—kiss me, my dear; Indeed it was not right to hit (Then burst into a laughing fit) Your Governess upon the face; You ought to suffer some disgrace For such behaviour—nay, don’t cry, I’ll send you something, by and by, A fine gold watch; and see, what’s here, Some pretty trinkets—take ’em dear, And give your Governess a kiss—’ With much ado, the stubborn Miss, At length, consented to be friends, And thus, my Lady’s chiding ends. But ’tis not very hard to guess, How much this hurt her Governess; However, she agreed at last, No more to notice what had past, Provided Miss, in future, wou’d Be very tractable and good— ‘Good!’ cries my Lady, ‘to be sure! Have not I just been talking to her? She’ll be much better, without doubt—’ This pass’d, as she was going out. 14

50

60

70

Leigh ( ‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’, ‘The Lady and the Doctor’)

The sequel shew’d, how much improv’d, Miss was, by being so reprov’d; For ere another day was o’er, She lock’d her Mistress out of door. This treatment rous’d the gentle dame, And to avoid still greater shame, She sent her home, to her wise mother, Who, when a child, was such another; And shou’d Maria chance to wed, Just so, her daughter must be bred.

80

If children thus, must have their way, Time will the blessed fruit display, And wives become, they run astray.

‘THE LADY

AND THE

D OCTOR ;

AN

ANECDOTE ’

A PHYSICIAN of eminence, some years ago, Was call’d in, to attend on a Lady of fashion, Who had long been admir’d—and the toast of each Beau, Tho’ now, her sunk features excited compassion.

1

The Doctor no sooner the Lady had ey’d, Than he begg’d—‘She for once would his freedom forgive, If he stept, from the rules of good-breeding, aside, To mention the terms upon which she might live.’ ‘By all means’—cry’d the Lady—‘for surely no word A Physician may utter, shou’d e’er give offence; Punctilio,2 in illness, is always absurd, And shews either Doctor, or Patient want sense.’

10

‘Why then, my dear Lady, I cannot resist Pronouncing this truth, like a plain honest man; That if, in the use of white paint you persist, No med’cine will save you, do all that I can.’ You astonish me, Doctor! but, such is my case, That I may as well die, as leave painting alone; For, shou’d I appear with my natural face Amongst my acquaintance—I shou’d not be known.

15

20

WILLIAM COWPER

‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ (1788) ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’ (1788)

[‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ first published in The Works of William Cowper, ed. Robert Southey, 15 vols, London, Baldwin and Cradock, 1835–37, vol. 2, pp. 369– 70; ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’ first published in the Northampton Mercury, 9 August 1788. The anti-slavery poems of William Cowper (1731–1800; DNB) are often consid­ ered among the most effectual literary contributions to the abolitionist cause in Britain. Thomas Clarkson, one of the abolition movement’s earliest voices, dubbed Cowper a ‘great coadjutor’ in the campaign to emancipate the slaves, and sub­ sequent generations have similarly praised the poet for his role in turning public sentiment against slavery.1 In light of this, it’s rather surprising how unenthusiastic Cowper actually was about using his pen to further the abolitionist cause. Not that Cowper wasn’t sincerely committed to emancipating the slaves, as he had publicly decried the immorality of slavery as early as 1781, two years before the establishment of Britain’s first abolitionist society.2 But in 1788, when several friends and acquaintances repeatedly entreated him to use his status as the nation’s most widely revered living poet to push for abolition, he was already feeling overwhelmed by tasks he previously had taken on, the most significant of which was a new trans­ lation of Homer. As he explained to his friend and collaborator on the Olney Hymns, the Reverend John Newton, ‘The truth is, that could I write with both hands, and with both at the same time, verse with one and prose with the other, I should not even so be able to dispatch both my poetry and my arrears of correspondence faster than I have need’.3 Eventually, though, Cowper relented, writing ‘The Negro’s Complaint’, ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’, and ‘The Morning Dream’ in March 1788 and ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’ a few months later. Even after writing the poems, however, Cowper remained ambivalent about the power of poetry to change an institution as deeply entrenched as slavery. In June of 1788, he explained to Newton,

16

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-3

Cowper (‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’, ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’) The more I have considered it, the more I have convinced myself that [slavery] is not a promising theme for verse. General censure on the iniquity of the practice will avail nothing. The world has been overwhelmed with such remarks already, and to particu­ larize all the horrors of it were an employment for the mind both of the poet and his readers, of which they would necessarily soon grow weary.4

Compared to the immensely popular ‘The Negro’s Complaint’ – which was reprinted at least ten different times in the five years following its composition5 – neither of the satirical poems included below was particularly influential during Cowper’s lifetime. ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’, with its coarsely tongue-in-cheek manner, apparently proved unsatisfying for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, as they never chose to circulate it widely.6 Cowper himself was also seemingly uneasy about the poem, repeatedly wondering in his letters if the tortur­ ing of slaves was a proper subject for poetry.7 Whether poetic or not, though, Cowper’s representation of the slaver’s mentality vividly imagines the depravity to which those employed in the slave trade had sunk. Like Swift’s copious lists of human vices in Gulliver’s Travels, the seemingly never-ending catalogue of devices used to torture slaves in ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ is grimly effective. Amid this series of revolting images, the only solace for Cowper’s ideal reader is exactly that which has the ‘slave-trader in the dumps’ – namely, rumours that Parliament is poised to bring an immediate end to Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. The last of Cowper’s abolitionist poems, ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’, appeared anonymously in the Northampton Mercury on 9 August 1788. Whereas ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ targets the most obvious contributors to the misery of Africans, those who capture and transport slaves to America, this later poem powerfully arraigns the average reader, who in the simple act of purchasing West Indian sugar, coffee, or tea becomes an accomplice to slavery. Cowper’s speaker employs the clas­ sic self-justifying logic of the modern consumer in suggesting, first, that the products of slavery (‘our Deserts, our Coffee, and Tea’) are indispensable to the English way of life, and, second, that the competing colonial powers in the West Indies (‘the French, Dutch and Danes’) will only re-enslave any Africans freed by the English. The poem-ending parable of the boy who against his convictions joins in the plundering of an apple orchard leaves readers with the uncomfortable truth of modern consumption: if we want ethically manufactured products, we need to be prepared to accept dramatic changes in our comfortable lifestyles.]

1 George Melvyn Ella, William Cowper: Poet of Paradise, Durham, Evangelical Press, 1993, p. 487. 2 For Cowper’s attacks on the slave trade prior to 1788, see ll. 137–54 of ‘Charity’ (1781) and ll. 21–47 of Book II of The Task (1785). 3 The Correspondence of William Cowper, ed. Thomas Wright, 4 vols, New York, AMS, 1968, vol. 3, p. 275. 4 The Correspondence of William Cowper, vol. 3, p. 276. 17

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 5 The most comprehensive textual history of the abolition poems comes in the commen­ tary section of The Poems of William Cowper, eds John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp, 3 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1995, vol. 3, pp. 283–87, 291. 6 The Poems of William Cowper, vol. 3, p. 285. 7 The Correspondence of William Cowper, vol. 3, pp. 245, 251, 253, 281–82.

18

‘S WEET M EAT H AS S OUR S AUCE 1: OR , THE SLAVE-TRADER IN THE DUMPS’ A TRADER I am to the African shore, But since that my trading is like to be o’er, I’ll sing you a song that you ne’er heard before, Which nobody can deny, deny, Which nobody can deny.

1

When I first heard the news it gave me a shock, Much like what they call an electrical knock,2 And now I am going to sell off my stock, Which nobody, &c. ’Tis a curious assortment of dainty regales,3 To tickle the Negroes with when the ship sails, Fine chains for the neck, and a cat with nine tails, Which nobody, &c.

10

Here’s supple-jack plenty, and store of rat-tan,4 That will wind itself round the sides of a man, As close as a hoop round a bucket or can, Which nobody, &c. Here’s padlocks and bolts, and screws for the thumbs, That squeeze them so lovingly till the blood comes, They sweeten the temper like comfits5 or plums, Which nobody, &c.

20

When a Negro his head from his victuals withdraws. And clenches his teeth and thrusts out his paws, Here’s a notable engine to open his jaws, Which nobody, &c. Thus going to market, we kindly prepare A pretty black cargo of African ware, For what they must meet with when they get there, Which nobody, &c. ’Twould do your heart good to see ’em below, Lie flat on their backs all the way as we go, 19

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Like sprats6 on a gridiron, scores in a row, Which nobody, &c. But ah! if in vain I have studied an art So gainful to me, all boasting apart, I think it will break my compassionate heart, Which nobody, &c. For oh! how it enters my soul like an awl!7 This pity, which some people self-pity call, Is sure the most heart-piercing pity of all, Which nobody, &c.

40

So this is my song, as I told you before; Come, buy off my stock, for I must no more Carry Cæsars and Pompeys8 to Sugar-cane shore, Which nobody can deny, deny, Which nobody can deny.

‘PITY

FOR THE

POOR A FRICANS ’

—Video meliora, proboque, Deteriora sequor. My Mind far better Things approves,

My Heart far worse, in Practice, loves.9 I Own I am shock’d at this Traffic of Slaves, And fear those who buy them, and sell them, are Knaves. What I hear of their Hardships, their Tortures & Groans, Is almost enough to draw Pity from Stones.

1

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum; For how could we do without Sugar and Rum? Especially Sugar so needful we see; What, give up our Deserts, our Coffee, and Tea? Besides, if we do, the French, Dutch and Danes10 Will heartily thank us, no Doubt, for our Pains: If WE do not buy the poor Creatures THEY will, And Tortures and Groans will be multiply’d still. If Foreigners likewise would give up the Trade, Much more in Behalf of your Wish might be said; 20

10

Cowper (‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’, ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’)

But whilst they get Riches by purchasing Blacks, Pray tell me, why we may not also go Snacks?11 Your Scruples and Arguments bring to my Mind A Story so pat, you may think it was coin’d, On Purpose to answer you, out of my Mint;— But I can assure you I saw it in Print.

20

A Youngster at School, more sedate than the Rest, Had once his Integrity put to the Test: His Comrades had plotted an Orchard to rob, And ask’d him to go and assist in the Job. He was shock’d, Sir, like you, and answer’d, O no!— What, rob our good Neighbour?—I pray you don’t go: Besides the Man’s poor, and his Orchard’s his Bread; Then think of his Children, for they must be fed. You talk very fine, and you look very grave; But Apples we want, and Apples we’ll have: If you will go with us, we’ll give you a Share; If not, you shall have neither Apple nor Pear.

30

They ceas’d, & Tom ponder’d, ‘I see they will go;— Poor Man! what a Pity to injure him so!— Poor Man! I would save him his Fruit, if I could; But staying behind them will do him no Good. ‘If the Matter depended alone upon me, His Apples might hang till they dropp’d from the Tree: But since they will have them, I think, I’ll go too; He’ll lose none by me, tho’ I get a few.’ His Scruples thus silenc’d, Tom felt more at Ease, And went with his Comrades the Apples to seize: He blam’d, and protested, but join’d in the Plan; He shar’d in the Plunder, but pity’d the Man.

21

40

Figure 2: Gillray, ‘Anti-Saccharrites’ (1792) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plate 78.

ELIZABETH HANDS

‘A Poem, On the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant Maid’ (1789) ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read’ (1789) [First published in The Death of Amnon, Coventry, N. Rollason, 1789, pp. 47–50, 50– 55. Few non-genteel poets of the late eighteenth century were as well prepared to satirize the prejudices and mannerisms of England’s privileged classes as Elizabeth Hands (fl. 1789). While only fragmentary records of her life remain, we do know that Hands worked as a domestic servant for the Huddesford family of Allesley and thus benefited from regularly observing members of the upper class in their natural surroundings. After successfully placing poems in the Coventry Mercury under the pseudonym Daphne, Hands was encouraged by Miss Huddesford and other members of the local gentry to print a volume of poems by subscription. This 1789 collection, entitled The Death of Amnon, proved a moderate success, attracting 1,200 subscribers, including notable literary and political figures such as Edmund Burke, Charles Fox, and Anna Seward.1 While Hands variously employs blank verse, pastoral, and mock heroic in her volume, perhaps her most impressive efforts are the companion satires anticipating how her poems will be received in high society. What is most striking about these pieces is how they weave together several strands of satire. At one level, the poems function as self-parody, gently mocking Hands’s own still-developing poetic skills and her presumptuousness in daring to enter the world of polite letters. Even with the recent critical and popular successes of labourer poets such as Thomas Chatterton, Ann Yearsley, and Robert Burns, Hands still apparently felt unsure how genteel readers would respond to the ‘scribblings’ of a servant maid. On a second level, the poems claim to reproduce the type of satire regularly directed towards the lower classes behind the closed parlour doors of England’s finer homes. As Hands sees it, the elite members of British society imagine workers 23

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-4

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

to be simple creatures whose thoughts never transcend the realm of mops and dishcloths and whose passions know nothing more stirring than the sight of Tom the Footman in his livery uniform. Accordingly, the servant maid who aspires to poetry is either a quixotic dunce who had best return to recipe-writing or a backsliding jade who would be well advised to confine her literary endeavours to writing letters to her mother and poring over volumes of sermons. The third, and strongest, strand of satire in the poems, however, comes in Hands’s trenchant critique of upper-class arrogance, ignorance, and all-around corruption. Borrowing heavily from the modes, themes, and character types of Restoration and Augustan satire, Hands invents a new school for scandal filled with all the stock character types of recent comedic drama. This is especially pronounced in ‘A Poem, on the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read’, where we meet up with the traditional rake (Captain Bonair), the superannuated beauty (Madame Du Bloom), the prude (Mrs. Consequence, Sir Timothy Turtle, and Mrs. Domestic), and the coquette (Miss Coquettella, Miss Gaiety, and Miss Belle). Of all the shortcomings of this group, it is their uninspiring reading habits that draws the most attention. When the conversation turns to the scriptural source for Hands’s poem on Amnon, for instance, the embarrassingly uninformed Miss Gaiety suggests that ‘If I thought I could readily find it, I’d borrow / My house-keeper’s Bible, and read it to-morrow’. A few lines later, the teenaged Miss Belle ranks novels among the more ‘polite’ productions of the age. And, perhaps most damningly, Hands makes the central joke of her second poem the fact that very few participants in the supposedly learned debate over the merits of the serving maid’s poetry have actually bothered to read the poems being discussed. By the end of the two-poem series, it is sufficiently clear that the leisure classes have done less with their seemingly limitless educational opportunities than the servant has done with her few spare hours each week.]

1 The most thorough study of Hands’s poetry to date comes in chapter 5 of Donna Landry’s Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. See also the introduction in Caroline Franklin’s recent edition of Hands’s The Death of Amnon and Ann Yearsley’s The Rural Lyre, London, Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1996.

24

A POEM, ON THE S UPPOSITION OF AN ADVERTISEMENT APPEARING IN A MORNING P APER, OF THE PUBLICATION OF A VOLUME OF POEMS , BY A S ERVANT M AID THE tea-kettle bubbled, the tea things were set, The candles were lighted, the ladies were met; The how d’ye’s were over, and entering bustle, The company seated, and silks ceas’d to rustle: The great Mrs. Consequence open’d her fan; And thus the discourse in an instant began: (All affected reserve, and formality scorning,) I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning, A Volume of Poems advertis’d—’tis said They’re produc’d by the pen of a poor Servant Maid. A servant write verses! says Madam Du Bloom; Pray what is the subject?—a Mop, or a Broom? He, he, he,—says Miss Flounce; I suppose we shall see An Ode on a Dishclout1—what else can it be? Says Miss Coquettilla, why ladies so tart? Perhaps Tom the Footman has fired her heart; And she’ll tell us how charming he looks in new clothes, And how nimble his hand moves in brushing the shoes; Or how the last time that he went to May-Fair,2 He bought her some sweethearts of ginger-bread ware. For my part I think, says old lady Marr-joy, A servant might find herself other employ: Was she mine I’d employ her as long as ’twas light, And send her to bed without candle at night. Why so? says Miss Rhymer, displeas’d; I protest ’Tis pity a genius should be so deprest! What ideas can such low-bred creatures conceive, Says Mrs. Noworthy, and laught in her sleeve. Says old Miss Prudella, if servants can tell How to write to their mothers, to say they are well, And read of a Sunday the Duty of Man;3 Which is more I believe than one half of them can; I think ’tis much properer they should rest there, Than be reaching at things so much out of their sphere. 25

1

10

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Says old Mrs. Candour, I’ve now got a maid That’s the plague of my life—a young gossiping jade; There’s no end of the people that after her come, And whenever I’m out, she is never at home; I’d rather ten times she would sit down and write, Than gossip all over the town ev’ry night. Some whimsical trollop most like, says Miss Prim, Has been scribbling of nonsense, just out of a whim, And conscious it neither is witty or pretty, Conceals her true name, and ascribes it to Betty.4 I once had a servant myself, says Miss Pines, That wrote on a Wedding, some very good lines: Says Mrs. Domestic, and when they were done, I can’t see for my part, what use they were on; Had she wrote a receipt,5 to’ve instructed you how To warm a cold breast of veal, like a ragou,6 Or to make cowslip wine, that would pass for Champaign; It might have been useful, again and again. On the sofa was old lady Pedigree plac’d, She own’d that for poetry she had no taste, That the study of heraldry was more in fashion, And boasted she knew all the crests in the nation. Says Mrs. Routella,7—Tom, take out the urn, And stir up the fire, you see it don’t burn. The tea things remov’d, and the tea-table gone, The card-tables brought, and the cards laid thereon, The ladies ambitious for each others crown, Like courtiers contending for honours sat down.

A POEM, ON

THE

40

50

60

S UPPOSITION OF THE BOOK HAVING BEEN P UBLISHED AND R EAD

THE dinner was over, the table-cloth gone, The bottles of wine and the glasses brought on, The gentlemen fill’d up the sparkling glasses, To drink to their king, to their country and lasses: The ladies a glass or two only requir’d, To th’ drawing-room then in due order retir’d; The gentlemen likewise that chose to drink tea; And, after discussing the news of the day, What wife was suspected, what daughter elop’d, What thief was detected, that ’twas to be hoped, 26

1

10

Hands (‘A Poem, On the Supposition …’)

The rascals would all be convicted, and rop’d; What chambermaid kiss’d when her lady was out; Who won, and who lost, the last night at the rout;8 What lord gone to France, and what tradesman unpaid, And who and who danc’d at the last masquerade; What banker stopt payment with evil intention, And twenty more things much too tedious to mention. Miss Rhymer says, Mrs. Routella, ma’am, pray Have you seen the new book (that we talk’d of that day, At your house you remember) of Poems, ’twas said Produc’d by the pen of a poor Servant Maid? The company silent, the answer expected; Says Mrs. Routella, when she’d recollected; Why, ma’am, I have bought it for Charlotte; the child Is so fond of a book, I’m afraid it is spoil’d: I thought to have read it myself, but forgat it; In short, I have never had time to look at it. Perhaps I may look it o’er some other day; Is there any thing in it worth reading, I pray? For your nice attention, there’s nothing can ’scape. She answer’d,—There’s one piece, whose subject’s a Rape.9 A Rape! interrupted the Captain Bonair, A delicate theme for a female I swear; Then smerk’d at the ladies, they simper’d all round, Touch’d their lips with their fans,—Mrs. Consequence frown’d. The simper subsided, for she with her nods, Awes these lower assemblies, as Jove awes the gods. She smil’d on Miss Rhymer, and bad her proceed— Says she, there are various subjects indeed: With some little pleasure I read all the rest, But the Murder of Amnon’s the longest and best. Of Amnon, of Amnon, Miss Rhymer, who’s he? His name, says Miss Gaiety’s quite new to me:— ’Tis a Scripture tale, ma’am,—he’s the son of King David, Says a Reverend old Rector: quoth madam, I have it; A Scripture tale?—ay—I remember it—true; Pray is it i’ th’ old Testament or the new? If I thought I could readily find it, I’d borrow My house-keeper’s Bible, and read it to-morrow. ’Tis in Samuel, ma’am, says the Rector:—Miss Gaiety Bow’d, and the Reverend blush’d for the laity. You’ve read it, I find, says Miss Harriot Anderson; Pray, sir, is it any thing like Sir Charles Grandison?10 How you talk, says Miss Belle, how should such a girl write 27

20

30

40

50

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

A novel, or anything else that’s polite? You’ll know better in time, Miss:—She was but fifteen: Her mamma was confus’d—with a little chagrin, Says,—Where’s your attention, child? did not you hear Miss Rhymer say, that it was poems, my dear? Says Sir Timothy Turtle, my daughters ne’er look In any thing else but a cookery book: The properest study for women design’d; Says Mrs. Domestic, I’m quite of your mind. Your haricoes,11 ma’am, are the best I e’er eat, Says the Knight, may I venture to beg a receipt.12 ’Tis much at your service, says madam, and bow’d, Then flutter’d her fan, of the compliment proud. Says Lady Jane Rational, the bill of fare Is th’ utmost extent of my cookery care: Most servants can cook for the palate I find, But very few of them can cook for the mind. Who, says Lady Pedigree, can this girl be; Perhaps she’s descended of some family:— Of family, doubtless, says Captain Bonair, She’s descended from Adam, I’d venture to swear. Her Ladyship drew herself up in her chair, And twitching her fan-sticks, affected a sneer. I know something of her, says Mrs. Devoir, She liv’d with my friend, Jacky Faddle, Esq. ’Tis sometime ago though; her mistress said then, The girl was exceedingly fond of a pen; I saw her, but never convers’d with her—though One can’t make acquaintance with servants, you know. ’Tis pity the girl was not bred in high life, Says Mr. Fribbello:—yes,—then, says his wife, She doubtless might have wrote something worth notice: ’Tis pity, says one,—says another, and so ’tis. O law! says young Seagram, I’ve seen the book, now I remember, there’s something about a mad cow.13 A mad cow!—ha, ha, ha, ha, return’d half the room; What can y’ expect better, says Madam Du Bloom? They look at each other,—a general pause— And Miss Coquettella14 adjusted her gauze.15 The Rector reclin’d himself back in his chair, And open’d his snuff-box with indolent air; This book, says he, (snift, snift) has in the beginning, (The ladies give audience to hear his opinion) Some pieces, I think, that are pretty correct; 28

60

70

80

90

Hands (‘A Poem, On the Supposition …’)

A stile elevated you cannot expect: To some of her equals they may be a treasure, And country lasses may read ’em with pleasure. That Amnon, you can’t call it poetry neither, There’s no flights of fancy, or imagery either; You may stile it prosaic, blank-verse at the best; Some pointed reflections, indeed, are exprest; The narrative lines are exceedingly poor: Her Jonadab is a ——— the drawing-room door Was open’d, the gentlemen came from below, And gave the discourse a definitive blow.

29

100

JOHN WOLCOT (‘PETER PINDAR’)

‘Song, by Mr. Paine’ (1791) ‘Ode to Burke’ (1792)

[‘Song, by Mr. Paine’ first published in Odes to Mr. Paine, Author of ‘Rights of Man’; on the Intended Celebration of the Downfall of the French Empire, by a Set of British Democrates, On the Fourteenth of July, London, J. Evans, 1791, pp. 8–10; ‘Ode to Burke’ first published in Odes of Importance, London, H. D. Symonds, 1792, pp. 10–15. The outbreak of revolution in France and the subsequent debates over the continued utility of monarchical government in Britain proved fertile ground for satirists. Not surprisingly, two of the most regularly lampooned figures of the early 1790s were Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. But whereas dozens of writers took to the pen to deride either one or the other of these polemicists, John Wolcot (1738–1819; DNB) distinguished himself by satirizing both Burke and Paine. After giving Paine his comeuppance in the 1791 pamphlet Odes to Paine, Wolcot turned to Burke the following year, painting him as a traitor to liberty in the Odes of Importance. Best known by his pen-name, ‘Peter Pindar’, Wolcot was the most popular and prolific satirist of the late eighteenth century, publishing nearly fifty books of satirical poems between 1785 and 1800. Originally a surgeon by vocation, he first came to prominence in the early 1780s with his series of spoofs on the Royal Academy. Over the next several decades, he would regularly return to the world of art and letters, directing his satires at Johnson’s duelling biographers (‘Bozzy and Piozzi’),1 England’s poet laureates (Thomas Warton and Henry James Pye), and several of the age’s most prominent painters. Wolcot’s greatest fame, though, came through his political satire, particularly the caricature of George III he developed in The Lousiad (1785–95; see Vol. 3, pp. 1–160) and revived in several subsequent poems.2 In the waning years of the eighteenth century, Pindar’s George III cemented in the public mind the image of the king as a dim-witted but benign bumbler. Beneath the levity of these royal portraits, however, was a serious message: monarchical government had become a laughing stock, as the modern European king was virtually indistinguishable from the court fools who served him.

30

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-5

Wolcot (‘Song, by Mr. Paine’, ‘Ode to Burke’)

Given the oppositionist agenda of works such as the George III satires, then, it must have surprised many when in Odes to Paine Wolcot redirected his spleen from the monarch himself to monarchy’s most famous antagonist. The Odes to Paine in many ways read like the work of a government-sponsored hack. After beginning by attributing Paine’s zeal to ambition rather than principle, the first ode scornfully asks, Say, didn’t thou fear that Britain was too blest, Of peace thou most delicious pest? How shameful that this pin’s head of an isle, Whilst half the globe in grief, should wear a smile?

The second ode follows a similar course, suggesting that a plan as diabolical as Paine’s could only have been hatched in hell. As if his stance on English republicanism weren’t already sufficiently clear from the two odes, Pindar concludes the volume with the ‘Song, by Mr. Paine’, wherein Paine and his ‘club’ of ‘poor rogues’ are categorized as hell-bent anarchists following in the tradition of Catiline, George Gordon, and other champions of chaos. To enthusiasts for Pindar’s earlier satires on the political establishment, the Odes to Paine must have suggested that, at best, Wolcot’s political views had moderated or, at worst, he had sold out, perhaps attacking Paine in exchange for a royal sinecure.3 Anxious to dispel any notion that he was pandering for political favour, Wolcot published The Remonstrance just a few months after the Odes to Paine. There he implores his loyal readers, ‘Know, that I scorn a prostituted pen: / No royal rotten wood, my verse veneers’. After taking several swipes at court poets and other flatterers of the throne, he explains that his primary objection to Paine and his band of ‘Crown-andAnchor sinners’ is that they have sold their English birthright by turning to France for a model for political reform. Invoking all that is British, the virulently Francophobic Wolcot concludes, ‘Who loves a Frenchman, wars with simple nature’.4 To further reaffirm his oppositionist credentials, in the following year Wolcot published his ‘Ode to Burke’, which paints the author of the Reflections on the Revolution in France as the lost leader of British liberalism. The aim here seems at least in part to suggest that it is Burke, not Wolcot, who should be branded a sycophant and hypocrite. In the second stanza, Wolcot insinuates that the king’s madness must be contagious, as Burke’s recent trips to wait on the king have apparently exposed him to the monarch’s malady. A few stanzas later, Wolcot brings George III on stage for a cameo appearance, and the King delivers with his trademark verbal ticks and hopelessly jumbled metaphors and allusions. As a foil to this blundering king of England, the poem ends with the appearance of the true monarch, Liberty, who accuses the conscience-stricken Burke of having deserted her to join the enemy. In many ways, the normally nimble Wolcot’s awkward attempt to cover his bases in this series of poems reveals the plight of the satirist in 1790s Britain. As domestic distresses and the prospect of protracted war with France filled Britons with patriotic fervour and loyalty to the crown, Wolcot’s livelihood was at stake. Only by proving himself a devoted citizen who was intent on protecting English liberties – 31

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

as he does in the Odes to Paine—could he convince his readers that there was nothing seditious about his satires on the king and his ministers. Thus, while the respective odes to Paine and Burke may not be Pindar’s most amusing satirical works, they are important insofar as they reveal the external pressures that shaped the work of even the most well established satirists of the Romantic era.]

1 Wolcot’s Bozzy and Piozzi (1786) is included in Parodies of the Romantic Age, eds Graeme Stones and John Strachan, 5 vols, London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 14–38. 2 For a concise overview of Wolcot’s life, see Robert L. Vales, Peter Pindar (John Wolcot), New York, Twayne, 1973. Chapter 1 of Gary Dyer’s British Satire and the Politics of Style 1789– 1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997 is also useful, as it contains an insightful discussion of Wolcot’s relationship to the other leading satirists of the 1790s (see particularly pp. 31–37). 3 The idea of Wolcot becoming a turncoat for the sake of a government pension in 1791 is not that far-fetched, since some evidence suggests that he entertained the idea of doing just that in 1795. See Vales, Peter Pindar, p. 20. 4 Wolcot’s Francophobia apparently dated to his short sojourn in France in 1760–61. See Vales, Peter Pindar, pp. 89–91.

32

S ONG,

BY

M R. P AINE 1

COME, good fellows all—Confusion’s the toast, And success to our excellent Cause:— As we’ve nothing to lose, lo, nought can be lost; So, perdition to Monarchs and Laws!

1

FRANCE shows us the way—an example how great! Then, like France, let us stir up a riot; May our names be preserv’d by some damnable feat, For what but a wretch would lie quiet? As we all are poor rogues, ’tis most certainly right, At the doors of the rich ones to thunder; Like the thieves who set fire to a dwelling by night, And come in for a share of the plunder.

10

Whoever for mischief invents the best plan, Best murders, sets fire, and knocks down, The thanks of our CLUB2 shall be giv’n to that MAN, And Hemlock shall form him a crown. Our Empire has tow’r’d with a lustre too long; Then blot out this wonderful SUN; Let us arm then at once, and in confidence strong Complete what dark GORDON3 begun.

20

But grant a defeat—we are hang’d, and that’s all; A punishment light as a feather;— Yet we triumph in death, as we CATILINES4 fall, And go to the Devil together.

ODE

TO

B URKE

AH, BURKE! full sorry is the Muse indeed That thou art from the Patriot Phalanx fled! For what? To crouch, and flatter Queens and Kings? Meanly to mingle with a Courtier gang, 33

1

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

That INFAMY herself would scorn to hang— Such a poor squalid host of creeping things! Has Madness fir’d thy brain?5 Alas! return: Thy fault in sackcloth and in ashes mourn:6 Join not a Court, and Freedom’s foulest foes— REPENTANCE, lo, shall try to wash thee white:7 Then howl not, EDMUND, ’mid the Imps of Night: Swell not the number of a flock of crows.

10

What murky cloud, the vapour black of Courts, (For many a cloud, the breath of Kings supports) Attempts thy Reputation’s spreading beam? What bat-like DEMON, with the damned’st spite, Springs on thy fame, on GLORY’s sacred height, To souse it in DISGRACE’s dirty stream?— Alas! if MAJESTY did gracious say, ‘BURKE, BURKE, I’m glad, I’m glad you ran away; I’m glad you left your party—very glad— They wish’d to treat me like a boy at school; Rope rope me like a horse, an ass, a mule— That’s very bad, you know, that’s very bad.’—

20

‘I hate the PORTLAND Junto8—hate it, BURKE— Poor rogues, poor rogues, that cannot draw a cork— Nothing but empty dishes, empty dishes— We’ve got the loaves and fishes, loaves and fishes.’— I say, if thus a mighty Monarch spoke As usual—not by way of joke; Did not the speech so with’ring make thee shrink? Didst thou not inward say, ‘I’ve damn’d myself— Why, what a miserable elf!’ And then upon each old acquaintance think; And with a sigh recall those attic days, When WIT and WISDOM pour’d the mingled blaze? BURKE, BURKE, most easily do I discover Thou loathest the weak smile that won thee over— From TR——RY9 borrow’d, ne’er to be return’d! E’en now thou art not happy at thy heart— It sighs for wisdom’s voice, and pants to part From fellows by the honest VIRTUES spurn’d. Thy tongue has promis’d friendship with a sigh— For, lo, th’ interpreter of thoughts, thine eye 34

30

40

Wolcot (‘Song, by Mr. Paine’, ‘Ode to Burke’)

Hangs heavy, beamless on the motley band— To whom thou stretchest forth thy leaden hand! Yes, slowly does that hand of friendship move: The startled Courtiers feel no grasp of love: A cold and palsied shake of gratulation, As though it trembled at contamination!

50

O BURKE! behold fair Liberty advancing— TRUTH, WIT, and HUMOUR, sporting in her train: Behold them happy, singing, laughing, dancing, Proud of a Golden Age again! When all thy Friends (thy friends of late, I mean) Shall, flush’d with conquest, meet their idol Queen, The Goddess at whose shrine a world should kneel; When they with songs of triumph hail the DAME, Will not thy cheek be dash’d with deepest shame, And CONSCIENCE somewhat startled feel?

60

Ah! will thine eye a gladsome beam display; Borrow from smooth HYPOCRISY’s a ray, To hail the long-desir’d return? Speak, wilt thou screw into a smile thy mouth, And welcome LIBERTY, with WIT and TRUTH; And for a moment leave thy Gang to mourn? Yes, thou wilt greet her with a half-forc’d smile, Quitting thy virtuous Company, a while, To say, ‘Dear Madam, welcome—how d’ye do?’ And then the DAME will answer with a dip, Scorn in her eye, contempt upon her lip, ‘Not much the better, Mister Burke, for you. Poor BURKE, I read thy soul, and feel thy pain— Go, join the sycophants that I disdain.’

35

70

Figure 3: Cover from Pigs’ Meat (1794) Source: frontispiece to Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, 2nd edition, London, T. Spence, 1794.

THOMAS SPENCE

‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’ (1793)

[Reprinted from One Pennyworth of Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, 3 vols, London, T. Spence, 1793–95, vol. 1, pp. 250–51. In 1787 Thomas Spence (1750–1814; DNB), the Newcastle radical who for well over a decade had been preaching the evils of private property, was fired from his position as a schoolteacher at St. Ann’s School in his native town. Spence next shows up in the historical record five years later, at which point he had moved to the capital and opened a book stall and drink stand at the end of Chancery Lane. Once in London, Spence appears to have moved quickly to introduce himself into the city’s leading radical circles. Francis Place and William Hone both date their acquaintance with him to 1792, and during the same year Spence participated in several early meetings of the London Corresponding Society. Also in 1792, Spence began writing political songs and broadsides, which he distributed from his book stall.1 Finding some success with these writings, the following year he began publishing a weekly series entitled One Pennyworth of Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude.2 Taking its title from Burke’s notorious reference to the ‘swinish multitude’ in Reflections on the Revolution in France, Pigs’ Meat was intended as something of a primer in the traditions of radical philosophy. Spence excerpted heavily from Locke, Swift, Gray, Goldsmith, and a variety of other prominent English authors in order to convince the common people, as he explained on the title page, that ‘their forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just Cause unpleaded, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages’. While most pages in Pigs’ Meat were devoted to classic texts on tyranny, liberty, and equality, occasionally Spence slipped in contemporary polemics and satires by himself and other London radicals. ‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’ is such a piece, having originally been written by Spence and distributed as a broadside at the highpoint of the ‘rights of man’ controversy of 1792.3 That a year later he would still find the poem topical enough to reprint it in Pigs’ Meat attests to both the enduring resentment against Burke and the fact that Spence apparently never heard a swine joke he didn’t like. To be fair, Spence was hardly alone in this respect, as 37

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-6

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

many of Britain’s leading radicals continued to derive much of their rhetoric from Burke’s phrase for decades to come.4 But few could match Spence’s obsession with the pig metaphor, something made abundantly clear in ‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’ and several similar parodies that appeared in Pigs’ Meat during its 1793–95 run.]

1 The best biographical sources on Spence are Malcolm Chase’s entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 158 (British Reform Writers, 1789–1832), Detroit, Gale, 1996, pp. 321–27; and P. M. Ashraf ’s The Life and Times of Thomas Spence, Newcastle upon Tyne, Frank Graham, 1983. 2 Spence eventually collected his weekly numbers of Pigs’ Meat and sold them as a bound, three-volume edition. Volume 1 (which contains ‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’) appeared in mid-1793, volume 2 in 1794, and volume 3 in 1795. Eventually, the book version of Pigs’ Meat would reach a third edition. For the second and third editions, Spence shortened the title from One Pennyworth of Pigs’ Meat to simply Pigs’ Meat, the name by which the series is now generally known 3 I have been unable to locate a copy of Spence’s original broadside, so the copy text for this edition is the 1793 reprinting of the poem in Pigs’ Meat. 4 See, for instance, Daniel Isaac Eaton’s Politics for the People (pp. 41–46 below), a political periodical in the style of Pigs’ Meat that bore the subtitle A Salmagundy for Swine and regularly included texts alluding to Burke’s ‘swinish multitude’.

38

TUNE , ‘DERRY DOWN , DOWN ,’ & C. YE vile SWINISH Herd, in the Sty of Taxation, What would you be after?—disturbing the Nation? Give over your grunting—Be off—To your Sty! Nor dare to look out, if a KING passes by: Get ye down! down! down!—Keep ye down! Do ye know what a KING is? By Patrick1 I’ll tell you; He has Power in his Pocket, to buy you and sell you: To make you all Soldiers, or keep you at work;2 To hang you, and cure you for Ham or Salt Pork! Get ye down! &c.

1

10

Do you think that a KING is no more than a Man? Ye Brutish, ye Swinish, irrational Clan? I swear by his Office, his Right is divine, To flog you, and feed you, and treat you like Swine! Get you down! &c. To be sure, I have said—but I spoke it abrupt— That ‘the State is defective and also corrupt.’3 Yet remember I told you with Caution to peep, For Swine at a Distance WE prudently keep— Get ye down! &c.

20

Now the Church and the State to keep each other warm, Are married together. And where is the Harm? How healthy and wealthy are Husband and Wife! But Swine are excluded the conjugal Life— Get ye down &c. The State, it is true, has grown fat upon SWINE, And Church’s weak Stomach on TYTHE-PIG can dine; But neither you know, as they roast at the Fire, Have a Right to find fault with the Cooks, or enquire. Get ye down! &c. ‘What Use do we make of your Money?’—You say; Why the first Law of Nature:—We take our own Pay— And next on our Friends a few Pensions bestow— 39

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

And to you we apply when our Treasure runs low, Get ye down! &c. Consider our Boroughs, Ye grumbling SWINE! At Corruption and Taxes, they never repine: If we only Proclaim, ‘YE ARE HAPPY!’—They say, ‘WE ARE Happy!’—Believe and be Happy as they! Get ye down! &c.

40

What know ye of COMMONS, of KINGS, or of LORDS, But what the dim Light of TAXATION affords? Be contented with that—and no more of your Rout: Or a new Proclamation shall muzzle your Snout! Get ye down! &c. And now for the SUN—or the LIGHT OF THE DAY! ‘It doth not belong to a PITT?’4—You will say. I tell you be silent, and hush all your Jars:5 Or he’ll charge you a Farthing a piece for the Stars. Get ye down! &c.

50

Here’s MYSELF, and His Darkness,6 and Harry Dundas:7 Scotch, English, and Irish, with Fronts made of Brass— A Cord plated Three-fold will stand a good pull, Against SAWNEY,8 and PATRICK, and old Johnny Bull!!! Get ye down! &c. To conclude: Then no more about MAN and his RIGHTS, TOM PAINE, and a Rabble of Liberty Wights; That you are but our ‘SWINE,’ if ye ever forget, We’ll throw you alive to the HORRIBLE PIT!9 Get ye down! down! down!—Keep ye down!

40

60

JOHN THELWALL and DANIEL ISAAC EATON

‘King Chaunticlere; or, The Fate of Tyranny’ (1793)

[First published in Politics for the People; or A Salmagundy for Swine, no. 8, 16 November 1793, pp. 102–07. The rather thinly veiled political allegory ‘King Chaunticlere’, which first appeared in Daniel Isaac Eaton’s (1753–1814; DNB) radical weekly Politics for the People, is certainly one of the Romantic period’s more complicated instances of both heteroglossia and multiple authorship. By all accounts, John Thelwall (1764–1834; DNB) deserves primary credit for turning the Chanticleer fable into an allegory on monarchical government, since it was he who first presented the modernized fable at a 1793 meeting of the Capel Court Debating Society. At the same time, however, Thelwall’s text both mediates centuries-old versions of this fable by other authors and is itself mediated by the various other voices that are present in Eaton’s published version of the text.1 In fact, in Politics for the People, Thelwall’s ‘King Chaunticlere’ is just one act of a three-act drama. Act I is a tale, originally told by an unnamed speaker and filtered through Thelwall, of a runaway slave who allegedly chose a brutal, prolonged death over a mercifully instantaneous one; Act II is Thelwall’s Chaunticlere story; and Act III is Eaton’s chronicling of the brawl that broke out at the conclusion of Thelwall’s speech. If any sense of the text’s authorship is already muddied by this blending of narrational voices, it is even more difficult to pin down because of the long-held assumption that Eaton significantly embellished Thelwall’s speech before including it in his journal.2 Accordingly, some have gone so far as to suggest that primary authorship of the printed text be attributed to Eaton.3 Complicating the issue of authorship even further is the fact that it was Eaton, not Thelwall, who was ultimately held responsible for ‘King Chaunticlere’. A month after publishing ‘King Chaunticlere’ in Politics for the People, Eaton was indicted on grounds of circulating a ‘scandalous, malicious, inflammatory and seditious’ essay. The ensuing treason trial would become one of the landmark court cases of the tumultuous 1790s. According to England’s newly revised libel laws, the burden of proof was on the prosecution to show that George III was unmistakably the ‘gamecock’ of the story.4 This led to a highly comical scene wherein the lead prosecutor, a Mr Fielding, 41

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-7

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

recited the entire fable, inserting phrases such as ‘meaning thereby to denote and represent our said Lord the King’ after each of the many references to the farmyard king. With the rules in their favour, the defence took the relatively easy path of expressing befuddlement over how anyone could read politics into a simple animal fable. ‘Upon the principle of this prosecution …’, Eaton’s lawyer maintained, ‘a book which, I dare say, once afforded us much pleasure and instruction, I mean Aesop’s Fables, is the most seditious book that ever was published’. He went on to argue that, even if ‘King Chaunticlere’ were intended as a political allegory, it would be ridiculous to equate the tyrant gamecock with George III, since even the simplest of readers would recognize the cock as a symbol of France, not England.5 This line of reasoning clearly worked, as after only an hour of deliberation the jury returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict. To celebrate the occasion and further goad the government, Eaton promptly renamed his printing shop ‘The Cock and Swine’. In reality, of course, one would have had to have been a simpleton not to have recognised the bellicose, gluttonous, taxation-fed, ‘haughty old tyrant’ as an explicit satirical portrait of King George. This is the great joke of both the allegory and the trial: Thelwall and, subsequently, Eaton had found a genre that allowed them to utter the most violent threats against the King in public with complete impunity. Beyond this, if the safety of allegory weren’t already enough, Thelwall added another layer of protection by interspersing his images of decapitating the tyrant king with reminders that the topic at hand was science, not politics. As he points out with a wink both at the beginning and conclusion of the Chaunticlere tale, the main aim in telling the story is to show once and for all the ‘difference between mental and muscular action’. As noted above, the farmyard fable is just one part of the complex text Eaton eventually published. The opening section, with its mockery of the cold, scientific philosophising on the mental state of a dismembered and dying slave, extends the discourse of liberty beyond England and to the slave plantations of America. Then, in a remarkably adroit transition back to the domestic scene, Thelwall is able to extrapolate the condition of the slave who instinctively recoils at the blow of a cudgel to the citizens of England, ‘who have been long used to cringe and tremble at the names of kings and lords, for fear they should be clapped up in bastiles’. Equally interesting is the concluding section, where Eaton recounts the scuffle between Thelwall’s supporters and those who would deny his freedom of speech. The implication of Eaton’s account is that the impulse to repress free thought has begun to spread beyond the government into the least likely sectors of the citizenry – in this case, into a society supposedly devoted to the free exchange of ideas. Reflecting on the Capel Court fracas and perhaps anticipating the charges of sedition this text was bound to provoke, Eaton lays down the gauntlet, concluding, ‘There is no power in this country that can openly and legally interfere to prevent the freedom of political discussion, if individuals will have spirit enough to assert it’.]

42

Thelwall and Eaton (‘King Chaunticlere’) 1 See Chaucer’s ‘The Nun’s Tale’ and Caxton’s ‘Reynard the Fox’. 2 Mrs Thelwall, The Life of John Thelwall, London, John Macrone, 1837, p. 110. 3 See, for instance, Marilyn Butler’s edition of the text in Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolu­ tion Controversy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 185–88. 4 The most through account of the King Chaunticlere incident and the ensuing trial comes in Michael Scrivener’s Seditious Allegories: John Thelwall and Jacobin Writing, University Park, Penn State University Press, 2001, pp. 112–18. 5 Eaton’s account of the trial, from which these quotations are taken, was published in pamphlet form as The trial of Daniel Isaac Eaton, for publishing, a supposed libel comparing the King of England to a game cock, in a pamphlet intituled Politics for the people; or Hog’s wash at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey, February twenty-fourth, 1794, London, Eaton, 1794. See especially pp. 30–31.

43

AN A NECDOTE , RELATED BY C ITIZEN T HELWALL , AT THE C APEL COURT S OCIETY , 1 DURING THE DISCUSSION OF A QUESTION, RELATIVE TO THE COMPARATIVE I NFLUENCE OF THE L OVE OF L IFE , OF L IBERTY , AND OF THE F AIR S EX , ON THE A CTIONS OF M ANKIND . WE have been told, Citizen Chairman! by a learned orator, who seems very fond of life, and who has drawn so depraved and contemptible a picture of human nature, that one must almost be ashamed of having lived to witness it, that the love of life must certainly have the strongest influence on the actions of mankind. And to prove this, he tells us a cock and bull story of Caractacus, at Rome;2 who, when he had lost his liberty, thought it was better to have life and love, with a prospect of regain­ ing his liberty, than to die, and have no prospect at all. He has told also another melancholy tale of a poor tortured slave in the West Indies; not remembering, that if this love of life, or rather, the fear of death, for the distinction is evident, which he is such an advocate for, did not rather restrain than influence the actions of mankind, they would soon, by becoming acquainted with the real nature of that principle I am supporting, learn to strike unanimously for liberty, and slavery and torture would be no more. This poor kidnapped negro, we are told, (for there are pressgangs to make men slaves of labour as well as slaves of war) having had his hands and feet chopped off, by order of his tyrant masters, on account of some seditious attempt to regain his freedom, was afterwards put into a large frying pan over the fire, that he might expiate, by his tortures, that impious love of liberty which he had the audacity to entertain. In the midst of his torments, we are told, that one of his companions, more compassionate than the rest, rushed towards him, and, aiming a blow with his cudgel, would have dashed out his brains, had not the poor mutilated wretch conceived, (such is the curious reasoning that is offered to us by the tame advocates of life without liberty) that the tortures of the frying pan were preferable to instant death, and therefore lifted his poor bleeding stumps, with sudden terror, and broke the force of the blow. Now, if this magnanimous advocate for the frying pan of despotism, had happened to have reflected a little on the physical laws of the animal frame, he would have known that this motion of the arms was merely involuntary, and that neither love, nor fear, nor liberty, nor any other preference of the judgment, had any thing at all to do with it—it being natural to all animals, after they had been long used to perform certain actions in consequence of any particular stimulus, applied either to the sight or any other of the senses, to continue those actions, by mere mechanical impulse, whenever the usual objects are presented, without ever reflect44

Thelwall and Eaton (‘King Chaunticlere’)

ing what it is they are doing; just as men of base and abject minds, who have been long used to cringe and tremble at the names of kings and lords, for fear they should be clapped up in bastiles, or turned out of their shops, continue to cringe and tremble, when neither shops nor bastiles happen to be present to their imaginations. But in order to set this difference between mental and muscular action, in a clearer point of view before you, I will tell you, Citizen President, a little anecdote concerning a youthful exploit of my own.—You must know then, that I used, together with a variety of youthful attachments, to be very fond of birds and poultry; and among other things of this kind, I had a very fine majestic kind of animal, a game cock: a haughty, sanguinary tyrant, nursed in blood and slaughter from his infancy — fond of foreign wars and domestic rebellions, into which he would sometimes drive his subjects, by his oppressive obstinacy, in hopes that he might increase his power and glory by their suppression. Now this haughty old tyrant would never let my farm-yard be quiet; for, not content with devouring by far the greater part of the grain that was scattered for the morning and evening repast, and snatching at every little treasure that the toil of more industrious birds might happen to scratch out of the bowels of the earth, the restless despot must be always picking and cuffing at the poor doves and pullets, and little defenceless chickens, so that they could never eat the scanty remnant, which his inordinate taxation left them, in peace and quietness. Now, though there were some aristocratic prejudices hanging about me, from my education, so that I could not help looking with considerable reverence, upon the majestic decorations of the person of the king Chaunticlere — such as his ermine spotted breast, the fine gold trappings about his neck and shoulders, the flowing robe of plumage3 tucked up at his rump, and, above all, that fine ornamented thing upon his head there — (his crown, or coxcomb,4 I believe you call it — however the distinction is not very important) yet I had even, at that time, some lurking principles of aversion to barefaced despotism struggling at my heart, which would sometimes whisper to me, that the best thing one could do, either for cocks and hens, or men and women, was to rid the world of tyrants, whose shrill martial clarions (the provocatives to fame and murder) disturbed the repose and destroyed the happiness of their respective communities. So I believe, if guillotines had been in fashion, I should have certainly guillotined him: being desirous to be merciful, even in the stroke of death, and knowing, that the instant the brain is separated from the heart, (which, with this instrument, is done in a moment,) pain and consciousness are at end—while the lingering torture of the rope may procrastinate the pang for half an hour. However, I managed the business very well; for I caught Mr. Tyrant by the head, and dragging him immediately to the block, with a heavy knife in my hand, separated his neck at a blow: and what will surprise you very much, when his fine trappings were stripped off, I found he was no better than a common tame scratchdunghill pullet:5 no, nor half so good, for he was tough, and oily, and rank with the pollutions of his luxurious vices. But that which it is particularly my duty to dwell upon, as applicable to the story of the poor mutilated negro, is the continuance of the habitual muscular motion after (by means of the loss of his head) he was no longer capable of knowing what he was about. In short, having been long in the 45

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

habit of flying up, and striking with his spurs, and cuffing about with his arms—or his wings, if you please (for anatomists can tell you, that arms are only wings without feathers, and wings are nothing but feathered arms) he still continued the same hostile kind of action, bouncing, and flapping, and spurring, and scuffling about, till the muscular energy (as they call it) was exhausted; so that if the gentleman had been there, with his club stick, attempting to knock the mutilated tyrant down, he might have concluded, every time that he flapped up his wings against the stick, that this effort of King Chaunticlere proceeded from the conviction that life was worth preserving even after he had lost his head: which, in my opinion, would be just about as rational as supposing that it can be worth preserving to that man who is writhing about in the frying pan of despotism. This story was received with almost unanimous applause, as was also the whole speech, till Citizen Thelwall, alluding to the wonderful exertions, which Liberty was stimulating the French to make against the whole united force of Europe, he was interrupted by some of the members of the committee; and though, upon appeal to a shew of hands, five or six to one appeared in his favour, the chairman refused to hear him; declared the society adjourned, and quitted the chair. This produced considerable confusion; and, on the part of the committee, much insolent abuse; and even an attempt from one individual to do personal violence to the speaker,6 by coming behind him, and attempting to fling him down. Notwithstanding which, he continued to harrangue the people; and was at last conducted away with shouts of triumph by the greater part of the company. On the evening of the next debate the following resolutions were unanimously agreed to.—1. That the free discussion of political opinions, in public assemblies, is an invaluable and constitutional right of Britons, which must be defended with the most jealous caution, and transmitted inviolate to our posterity. 2. That in every public Debating Society it is the undoubted right of every individual, paying for his admission, to deliver his sentiments freely; and that it is the duty of every chairman to support such speaker, as much as if he were a member of the committee of such society. 3. That this right was invaded, and this duty violated on the evening of the last debate, both by the chairman and committee of this society. 4. That the charges and insinuations in the posting bill, distributed by the said committee, relative to that debate, are partly false, partly impertinent, and altogether unprincipled, and calculated to promote disturbance, and prevent the public exercise of the right of free and impartial discussion. 5. That the chairman be called upon to make an apology, in the name of the committee, for the indecent violation of the duties of their station, and the respect due from them to the public. The chairman was accordingly compelled to beg pardon publicly of the society before the debate was permitted to proceed. These circumstances are important to be generally known; since they prove, that notwithstanding the false appearances which have been artfully assumed by intriguing and interested individuals, pretending to more authority than they have, there is no power in this country that can openly and legally interfere to prevent the freedom of political discussion, if individuals will have spirit enough to assert it. 46

DANIEL ISAAC EATON (‘ANTITYPE’)

The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing Upon Society, Exposed (c. 1793–94) [First published as The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing Upon Society, Exposed. A Short Essay. Addressed to the Friends of Social Order, London, Eaton, n.d., pp. 3–16. For Daniel Isaac Eaton, the radical London publisher, 1793 was a busy year. During the course of the year, Eaton acquired his first printing press, published the second part of Paine’s Rights of Man, wrote several pamphlets of his own, founded and edited the radical weekly Politics for the People, won two court battles with the government over printing supposedly seditious material, and was indicted a third time for publishing ‘King Chaunticlere; or, The Fate of Tyranny’ (see pp. 44–46 above). Amid this flurry of activity, Eaton somehow found time to write the brilliant Swiftian satire The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing Upon Society, Exposed, which appeared under the pseudonym ‘Antitype’ in late 1793 or early 1794.1 The Pernicious Effects was just one part of Eaton’s ongoing project of pushing the bounds of free speech as far as he could without finding himself on a ship headed for Botany Bay. In fact, at about the time he wrote this pamphlet Eaton moved his shop and home from Bishopsgate Street to Newgate Street, apparently because he anticipated spending a good deal of time in Newgate prison and wished his family to be near him.2 Despite these forebodings over being engaged in a long war with the government, in late 1793 Eaton had reason to feel buoyant about his cause. Twice over the past six months he had prevailed against the government in treason trials, and it seemed sufficiently clear that London juries were disinclined to sentence him for sedition for merely publishing radical materials. With each passing acquittal, Eaton was becoming more and more the folk hero, which only further emboldened his calls for political and social reform. Much of Eaton’s success in his battles against the powers-that-be was owing to his effective use of satire. Whereas writing direct reformist polemic was always risky in the 1790s, satire allowed Eaton to hide his bomb behind his back, shrug sheepishly, and feign complete innocence of malicious intent. In The Pernicious Effects, for instance, Eaton shields himself from prosecution by assuming the voice of an archconservative intent on restoring England to the Golden-Age splendour of the 47

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-8

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

epoch before print. Skillfully mimicking the frenzied tone of the Revolutionary-era church-and-king pamphlet, his narrator nostalgically looks back to simpler, happier times, when the poor enthusiastically embraced their serfdom and felt no need for such luxuries as thought, free speech, or any other so-called ‘rights’. Essentially, what Eaton sets up is the classic conservative-versus-progressive debate, asking whether indeed society is better off for Gutenberg’s invention. In the narrator’s ridiculous attempts to pin the decline of English values on the invention of moveable type, Eaton makes a powerful early case for what cultural historians from Marshall McLuhan forward have been stressing – namely, that the onset of print culture radically reshaped what it meant to be human. Not only did print help the average Briton shake off the physical chains of feudalism, but, more importantly, it introduced him or her to new levels of religious and political thought. Eaton’s pamphlet provides a catalogue of the remarkable ideas then being entertained because of the extension of literacy and the proliferation of print media. In the preceding few years alone, the men and women of England had begun using print technology to question such ages-old abuses as the over-taxation of the poor, the mistreatment of war veterans and their families, the undervaluing of the female intellect, the overworking of domestic labourers, and the enslavement of Africans to support the lavish lifestyles of the aristocracy. In the end, ‘Antitype’s’ frantic plea to ‘let all Printing-presses be committed to the flames’ only accentuates Eaton’s central message that print is making possible the birth of a new England, where all classes of society enjoy such basic rights as free speech, religious choice, and the power to participate in the political process.]

1 The title page of Eaton’s pamphlet bears no date, which leaves the exact date of publication open to conjecture. In his Dictionary of Literary Biography article on Eaton, Michael T. Davis dates The Pernicious Effects to early 1794 (vol. 158, British Reform Writers, 1789–1832, Detroit, Gale, 1996, pp. 94–102). Daniel L. McCue, Jr.’s entry in The Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, Atlantic Highlands, NJ, Humanities Press, 1979, however, dates the pamphlet to late autumn 1793 (vol. 1, p. 149). 2 Davis, ‘Daniel Isaac Eaton’, p. 98.

48

BEFORE this diabolical Art was introduced among men, there was social order; and as the great Locke expresses it, some subordination—man placed an implicit confidence in his temporal and spiritual directors—Princes and Priests—entertained no doubts of their infallibility; or even questioned their unerring wisdom. Indeed, the lower orders, though in other respects immersed in the most profound ignorance, knew full well (their superiors having taken care to inform them) that the existence of society depended upon distinctions of rank, fortune, &c. They therefore chearfully submitted without murmuring, to be the basis upon which the pillar of society was erected, and patiently bore the weight of the shaft, cornice, frieze, and capital; nor ever complained of the expences of supporting this structure, notwithstanding the taxes and contributions necessary for keeping it in repair, reduced them to the most abject poverty and dependence—to toil and labour for their superiors they never thought a hardship, sensible that submission was their duty, they never uttered a wish for a change in the order of things. If their Prince engaged in war, without the least enquiry on their part, as to its justice or necessity, they not only furnished the means of carrying it on, but also at his command quitted the peaceful employment of cultivating the fields, to act a part in the field of battle, and take the chance of war, that they might crown with laurels the hero who led them on—the risk, the danger, and difficulties always theirs—the honour and profit his alone, or those in command under him, whose conduct he graciously condescended to approve and reward. If they returned in safety to their homes, they had recourse to their former means of subsistence, no provision ever being made for them. Those whom the fate of battle doomed to die, found an honourable grave on the field, and their surviving relatives the satisfaction, and a very great satisfaction it undoubtedly was, of their having terminated their existence on the bed of honour, fighting for their king. If they left families behind them, poverty and distress were their inevitable portion, the sovereign being too much engrossed with the weighty affairs of state to attend to such trifles as the sufferings of the lower orders: indeed, the courtiers and great officers of state used every possible precaution to keep the knowledge of such things from him, for fear of wounding that nice sense of feeling, and exquisite sensibility, peculiar to people of the highest rank and most elevated stations. The soldier, whom mutilation rendered incapable of gaining subsistence by labour, turned mendicant or beggar—took his stand at the corner of some street, and lived upon the bounty of passengers. These brave fellows never thought their case hard; on the contrary, they submitted contentedly to a scanty allowance of the coarsest fare, and saw, without repining, their superiors in the full enjoyment of 49

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

every earthly blessing.—The being neglected, &c. by their prince, after having fought his battles, and ventured their lives in his cause, produced no symptoms of discontent in them. The crusade was undertaken with a view to expel the Infidels from the Holy Land, and in which all the princes of Christendom were united, brought millions to the standard of the Cross—a plain proof this, that the people of those days yielded ready submission and obedience to the commands of their sovereign, and implicit faith in the instructions of their clergy. At the head of this grand league was the Pope; and it is to be lamented, that they were not more successful—for had they subdued those enemies of Christ, his religion would have been established, and the Holy Inquisition, with the other salutary measures used by the Romish clergy upon the refractory and unbelievers, might have been the means of insuring salvation to that numerous people—to all those torments with which infidelity will be rewarded they are now doomed. In the times we are speaking of (the Golden Age), the feudal system prevailed— a system replete with blessings—by it the different orders of society were kept perfectly distinct and separate—there were kings, barons, priests, yeomanry, villains or slaves; and they were, I believe, with regard to rank and power, in the order in which I have named them. The villains, or lowest class, were what Mr. Burke so elegantly terms the Swinish Multitude, but of rights or privileges as men they had not an idea; we may with propriety stile them the Jackalls1 of the times; they tilled the earth, and performed all manual labour; but in return, their superiors allowed them sufficient of the produce for subsistence—permitted them to take some rest, in order that they might be strong, to bear hardship and fatigue—took from them the trouble of thinking—indeed, from the very prudent manner in which they were brought up, I will not say educated, they were little capable of thought, of course exempt from the mental fatigues of study and reflections. The Scriptures having declared gold to be the root of every evil, they were very humanely prevented from possessing any. As to religion, the clergy taught them as much as they thought necessary, and they were without doubt the best judges, being in general good scholars. In this beautiful scheme—this happy system of social order—what tender care, and generous concern—what almost parental anxiety and solicitude appears to have actuated the governors in every part of the conduct, in which the lower orders, or vassals, were concerned or interested. In my mind, their situation was equal, if not preferable, to that of the slaves in our West-India islands—notwithstanding the friends of the slave-trade have lately represented the condition of the negroes to be so very enviable.2 Primogenitureship, or the perpetuating families by securing the property to the eldest son, was also a wise regulation of this system; it enables those of the first classes to trace their descent through a long line of illustrious progenitors; and though, upon a superficial view, it may appear unjust to give all to one, and leave the rest unprovided for, yet if we reflect but for a moment, we shall see that this, apparently an evil, was fraught with the most beneficial consequences to society—the younger branches feeling all the dignity of high birth, with the most sovereign con50

Eaton (The Pernicious Effects)

tempt of the lower orders, but possessing no property, were under the necessity of cultivating their understandings, in order that they might be qualified for filling the different offices of state, for commands in the army and navy, and for the high church appointments; all of which ought, most assuredly, to be their exclusive right.—Those who approve the levelling plan condemn this in toto—to men who think privileged orders in society unnecessary—who are not proud of the honour of supporting kings, nobles, and priests, and would not submit, for their sakes, to every hardship, it is vain to offer reason—I shall not attempt it, knowing it would be lost labour. To enumerate all the advantages arising from hereditary distinctions in society would far exceed the bounds I have prescribed to myself; but what will my reader think, when I inform him, that the late government of France was feudal in the extreme; how will he pity and deplore the madness and folly of that deluded nation—no longer blessed with a king, nobles, or priests, but left, like a ship in a storm, without a pilot, to their own guidance—with hands uplifted he will exclaim, What will become of them!—Having briefly shewn a few of the advantages enjoyed before the art of Printing was discovered, or at least generally known, I come now to point out, as is expressed in my title, its Pernicious Effects upon Society. Since Printing has been employed as the medium of diffusing sentiments &c. government has become more difficult—the governors are frequently, and insolently called upon, to give an account of the national treasure, its expenditure, &c.— and if they are in any respect tardy, or should circumstances render evasion necessary, it is astonishing, with what boldness some men will dare to revile and insult them. The lower orders begin to have ideas of rights, as men—to think that one man is as good as another—that society is at present founded upon false principles—that hereditary honours and distinctions are absurd, unjust, and oppressive—that abilities and morals only should recommend to the first officers in a state—that no regard should be paid to rank and titles—that instruction, sufficient to qualify a man for being a member of society, is a debt due to every individual, and that it is the duty of every state to take care that he receive it—that every man has a right to a share in the government, either in his own person, or that of his representative, and that no portion of his property or labour ought to be taxed without his consent, given either by himself, or representative—that every one should contribute to the support of the state in proportion to his ability, and that all partial exactions are oppressive—that laws should be the same to all; and that no one, whatever may be his rank or station, should be allowed to offend them with impunity—that freedom of speech is the equal right of all; and that the rich have no right to dictate to the poor what sentiments they shall adopt on any subject—or in any wise prevent investigation and inquiry. This, with a great deal more such stuff, is called the rights of man—blessed fruits of the art of Printing—the scum of the earth, the swinish multitude, talking of their rights! and insolently claiming, nay, almost demanding, that political liberty shall be the same to all—to the high and the low—the rich and the poor—what audacity!—what unparalleled effrontery!—it ought to meet 51

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

correction.—With similar mistaken notions of liberty, even many women are infatuated; and the press, that grand prolific source of evil—that fruitful mother of mischief, has already favoured the public with several female productions on this very popular subject—one in particular, called Rights of Women,3 and in which, as one of their rights, a share in legislation is claimed and asserted—gracious heaven! to what will this fatal delusion lead, and in what will it terminate! In religion too, new regulations are to take place—to such lengths have some gone, that they talk of examining with their reason, and of admitting only what will bear that test—they have almost ceased to respect the Clergy, and appear to doubt many of the articles and tenets of the church—they talk of the religion of Reason, and Nature, and ridicule faith whenever it is opposed to reason—all the torments of hell, they treat as fabulous, and the power of the devil, they affect to scorn and despise—laugh at it as a bugbear fit only to frighten women and children. In politics, as I before observed, they say they are as much interested as the rich.—What will scarce be credited, those lenient sentences passed by the Justiciary Court of Edinburgh upon seditious persons,4 have been most severely censured by them, and considered as an unwarrantable and despotic stretch of power:—the conviction of Mr. Winterbotham,5 in an English court has also met with severe animadversion; and the case of Mr. Holt, the Newark Printer, they universally reprobate, and for why?—because he only, as they say, re-printed what the Duke of Richmond and Mr. Pitt originally published.6 What stuff and nonsense, as if there was no difference between a Duke, or the son of Chatham,7 and a pitiful low-bred fellow of a Printer, sprung, as I am informed, from the vulgar, plebeian loins of a gardener;—or that a duke, or the son and brother of a peer might not write and publish with impunity that, for which a printer or bookseller would meet the severest punishment. In the conduct of our opposition, in what is reckoned a partial representation, we have, I think, a pretty specimen—a sweet sample of what would be the case were universal suffrage allowed—they would be perpetually haranguing about their duty to their constituents, of the sacredness of their delegation, and would never be brought to grant money to government without being informed, to what purposes it was to be applied. By those, and such like refractory arguments, the King, poor man, would be constantly thwarted when he wanted a little cash for some private munificent purpose or other—for instance, to relieve the necessities of any of those meek and tender-hearted Princes on the Continent, where paternal regard for their own subjects will not allow them to lay burthens beyond what they know they can well bear. The august personages (the German Princes), eminently distinguished for all the amiable qualities of the mind, have not escaped censure—by the friends of insubordination in this country, they are stiled tyrants and despots—if malice dare shoot her envenomed shafts against such pure immaculate characters, how can the generality of men, stained and polluted as they are, hope to escape. This and every enormity to which the frenzy of the times may give birth, is justly chargeable upon the art of Printing. 52

Eaton (The Pernicious Effects)

The trifling bagatelle subsidy granted to the King of Sardinia8—I say trifling, when we consider our great opulence, and the present flourishing state of our manufactures and commerce—has met with as much opposition as if we had been already oppressed by taxation, and at a loss to raise the necessary supplies—the reverse however is well known to be the true state of the case; and should it be necessary in order to the prosecuting to a happy termination the present just and necessary war, in which we are engaged to subsidize all the powers in Europe, I hope and trust our government will not hesitate to do it; for rather than Jacobinism should make any further progress, every real friend to social order and true religion would stake his all. The late motions in the Lower House respecting the legality of Messrs. Muir and Palmer’s sentences9 is another evil arising from the art of Printing; for had it not been for that infernal invention, the Commons most probably would never have existed—the people, happy in their ignorance, would never have had any chimerical notions of liberty, but obedient to their superiors, things would have glided smoothly and calmly on, and the crime of sedition been unknown in this happy land. But for Printing, those two disturbers of the repose of society, and rascally innovators, Calvin and Luther, would never have been able to propagate their doctrines of Reform, as they audaciously called them—rebellion against the spiritual jurisdiction of his Holiness, the Pope, would have been a more proper expression, and to have punished as rebels those enemies to his sacred authority and the Catholic faith, upon the first promulging of their damnable heresies, would have been the only mode of preventing the further progress of opinions subversive of ecclesiastical power, and consequently of social order. Sure religion since that period has been gradually losing ground; and the reluctance with which tithes and church-dues are now paid, shew evidently its declining state, and how little the people respect their spiritual guides. Tolerating of Sectaries, a consequence of the art of Printing, is sapping and undermining, to its very foundations, our established church—it already totters, and if it should fall, to what a deplorable situation shall we all be reduced—no archbishops or bishops—no deans or prebendaries—none of the dignitaries or higher orders of the clergy left—nothing but parish priests or curates, and our own weak endeavours, to trust to for salvation—we shall be in a truly forlorn and hopeless state. Had mankind remained ignorant of the use of types, those outcasts of society, Paine and Barlow,10 would not have been able to publish their wicked inflammatory books—miscreants that treat with ridicule the most antient establishment—Customs of such remote antiquity as to puzzel the deepest antiquaries to have their origin, they have even dared to speak of with levity—privileged orders and every species of hereditary destination (the Corinthian capital of polished society) they consider as encroachments upon the rights of others—nay, even kings and princes, to whom they know we are attached both from duty and interest, they have endeavoured to place in a contemptible and ludicrous point of view. 53

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Prejudices, one of the strongest cements of a well ordered state, and which from the very circumstance of their being prejudices, Mr. Burke would recommend us to venerate and cherish—they would persuade us to get rid of—the knowing scoundrels, could they once accomplish this, our minds would be in a state to receive their seditious doctrines, and what, pray, would be the consequences?—we should become insolent, offend our superiors, and be punished with fine, imprisonment— the pillory, or transportation to Botany Bay. Not a pillar or bullwark of well regulated society, in other words social order, but they have attacked as originally founded in injustice, and supported by fraud and imposition. Our glorious constitution, formed by the progressive wisdom of ages—the wonder and envy of surrounding nations—the ne plus ultra11 in the science of government—the only human institution that ever perhaps was perfect, these sagacious gentlemen tell us, is full of defects and blemishes—that it is a system of deception, calculated to benefit the few at the expense of the many—they would, alas! be wicked enough to add, if it had occured to them, that it was in great measure framed by men who had interests separate from the bulk of the people. For all these, and numberless other evils, the natural consequence of a diffusion of knowledge and science, some remedy must be found; the present administration have made some trifling feeble attempts to check their progress—such as additional duties upon advertisements and newspapers, which almost preclude cheap publications12—of the same nature I suppose the late tax upon paper to be—but these remedies are totally inadequate, at least they will be so exceedingly slow in their operation, that the present race have but little prospect of living to see any of their good effects. To rid ourselves of such a monster, some strong efficient measure must be had recourse to—something that will strike at the root, and have an almost instantaneous effect—such an one, I think, I can point out. Let all Printing-presses be committed to the flames—all letter foundries be destroyed—schools and seminaries of learning abolished—dissenters of every denomination double and treble taxed—all discourse upon government and religion prohibited—political clubs and associations of every kind suppressed, excepting those formed for the express purpose of supporting government; and lastly, issue a proclamation against reading, and burn all private libraries. To carry some part of this plan into execution, it will be necessary to employ spies and informers, which by many (Jacobins and Republicans) are thought to be signs either of a weak or wicked and corrupt government; they say, that governors, conscious of acting for the public good, of having it only in view in all their measures, would scorn using such unworthy and dishonourable means. I cannot be of this opinion, but am confident, that if the measures I have proposed be but speedily adopted, and rigorously pursued, the happiest consequences would soon be experienced; all the wild, idle theories, with which men are at present disturbed, would soon vanish—the lower orders would mind their work, become tractable and docile, and perhaps in less than half a century, that desirable state of ignorance and darkness, which formerly prevailed, might again restore to this Island that happy state of society with which it 54

Eaton (The Pernicious Effects)

once was blessed. Providence has often evinced a partiality for this Isle, and in the circumstance of so many emigrant French having sought refuge amongst us, at the present critical period, we may still, I think, consider ourselves as the object of heaven’s peculiar care;—these men have been educated in the right faith, and might be made the happy instruments of reconciling us to the Pope, and of bringing us once more within the pale of the Church of Rome:—Should such a desirable event take place, the good effects of proper subordination in society would soon be seen and felt—the king, and all in authority under him—princes and nobles—priests and magistrates of every denomination, would meet that reverence and respect which is due from the lower orders to rank, titles, &c. In the hope, that the comforts and blessings of ignorance, and the feudal system, or slavery, as the Anarchists term it, will not be long withheld from us, I shall, for the present, conclude. ANTITYPE.

55

ANON. (attrib. to ROBERT MERRY and JOSEPH JEKYLL)

‘Wonderful Exhibition. Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ (1794) ‘No. II. More Wonderful Wonders!!!’ (1794) ‘Wonderful Exhibition!!! Positively the Last Season of His Performing’ (1795) [‘Wonderful Exhibition. Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ first published in the Courier, 28 November 1794; ‘No. II. More Wonderful Wonders!!!’ first published in the Courier, 15 December 1794; ‘Wonderful Exhibition!!! Positively the Last Season of His Performing’ first published in the Courier, 29 January 1795.1 Of the many satires directed at Pitt the Younger during his two decades as Prime Minister (1783–1801 and 1804–06), few were reprinted as widely or imitated as frequently as the ‘Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ send-ups of 1794 and 1795.2 The probable creator of the ‘Pittachio’ figure was Robert Merry (1755–98; DNB), the one-time leader of the ‘Della Cruscans’ (see Vol. 4) who had since turned his literary energies to championing the ideals of the French Revolution. In the early 1790s, Merry published a number of radical texts, including The Laurel of Liberty (1790; see Vol. 4, pp. 198–215), an ‘Ode on the Fourteenth of July, the day consecrated to Freedom’ (1791; see Vol. 4, pp. 249–52), and a treatise on the ‘Nature of a Free Government’, which he read before France’s National Convention in 1791.3 Merry also took his radical ideals to the stage, writing theatricals such as The Magician, a comic opera staged at Covent Garden in 1792. His libretto tells the story of Talisman, a tyrannical magician who learns through hard experience that true happiness comes not in misusing one’s powers, but through promoting liberty, virtue, and benevolence toward the poor. Produced at the height of the Burke–Paine controversy, The Magician met with strong hostility, resulting in its being immediately cancelled and never published. The legacy of Merry’s opera can be seen, however, in the ‘Pittachio’ satires, which build upon its basic idea of ministers of the state (in this case, quite specifically Pitt) using sleight of hand and other deceptions to rule over the citizenry of their land. 56

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-9

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’)

The first ‘Pittachio’ satire appeared in the Courier, a London oppositionist daily, on 28 November 1794, shortly after Thomas Hardy and Horne Tooke had been acquitted of treason and three days prior to the beginning of the John Thelwall treason trial. The sequels, which appeared respectively in the 15 December 1794 and 29 January 1795 issues of the Courier, expand the satire to include not only Pitt, but his chief ministers and the principal government agents who had presided over the recent round-up of radicals. Merry’s authorship of at least the first of these satires is primarily substantiated by his obituary in the April 1799 Monthly Magazine, which gushes, ‘His Signior Pittachio … must ever be deemed a most happy production of keen satire, unsurpassed by anything in ancient or modern times. No minister of any age had been so ridiculed before’.4 While Merry quite possibly authored the second and third ‘Pittachio’ texts as well, a manuscript copy of ‘No. II. More Wonderful Wonders!!!’ in the Bodleian Library attributes the squib to Joseph Jekyll (d. 1837; DNB), the MP for Calne in Wiltshire, who, like Merry, was a member of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s social circle.5 Several contexts are needed to appreciate these satires fully. First, it is essential to see the ‘Pittachio’ spoofs as responses to the popular culture of the early 1790s. On a general level, these texts acknowledge how thoroughly naturalised advertising had become by the end of the eighteenth century. Quite clearly, the intended audience for these texts would have had presumably internalised the codes of contemporary advertising and would have, thus, been able to appreciate how these texts function as parodies of broadsides advertising magic shows, circuses, and other forms of popular entertainment. More specifically, as John Barrell has pointed out, these texts parody the popular magicians, conjurers, and illusionists of the day. While ‘Pittachio’ displays the qualities of a variety of circus performers, he seems to have been modelled most specifically upon Giuseppe Pinetti (1750–1800), an Italian illusionist who had attracted large crowds during his visits to England in the 1780s.6 Even more complex are the political contexts behind these satires. Most directly, the ‘Pittachio’ texts react to the recent efforts of the Pitt ministry to suppress the fledgling radical movement by building an extensive spy network and restricting basic civil liberties. In May 1794, Pitt suspended habeas corpus, a move that essentially granted authorities the power to arrest anyone on the suspicion of having committed a crime and to hold them without trial indefinitely. At the same time, his ministry hired dozens of spies to infiltrate radical groups such as the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information. The information these spies provided the government ultimately led to what is the second political context for the ‘Pittachio’ satires, the treason trials of November and December 1794. In an era when the loyalist and anti-jacobin factions of the government seemed poised to establish a hegemonic grip on the nation, the acquittals of Hardy and Tooke in November and Thelwall in early December marked an enormous victory for the radical movement and signalled that all hope for resistance was not as yet lost. The original ‘Pittachio’ satire gloats over the acquittals of Hardy and Tooke, announcing, ‘Signor Pittachio is extremely sorry to inform the public, that owing to some unaccountable mismanagement in the persons he 57

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

employed, he has been disappointed of several capital performers whom he had hopes to have brought forward, for the purpose of exhibiting various feats of activity on THE TIGHT ROPE’. Two months later, after Thelwall, too, had been acquitted, the third ‘Pittachio’ satire advertised a ‘Serio-Comico-Dramatico Medley’, in which several of the lead parts would be performed by both the ‘acquitted felons’ and the unsuccessful government prosecutors.7 The third major context for Merry’s mock advertisements was the series of recent blunders made by the Prime Minister who only a few years earlier had been the boy wonder of British politics. Throughout most of his first decade in power, Pitt had seemingly effortlessly navigated the country out of a series of serious economic and diplomatic crises. Since the outbreak of war with France in February 1793, however, he appeared to have lost his golden touch. Not only did he dramatically underestimate the will and might of the French military, but he also overestimated the willingness of Austria and Prussia to help with the war effort. As a result, in 1794 the British forces on the continent suffered several humiliating defeats, and in January 1795, Holland, one of Britain’s closest allies, came under French occupation (a current event alluded to throughout the third ‘Pittachio’ satire). Meanwhile, Pitt also faced serious divisions within his administration. This eventually led to his forming a coalition government with the Portland Whigs and, subsequently, a complete reorganization of his cabinet.8 All told, then, between the government’s failure to win convictions in the recent treason trials, the faltering campaign against France, and the ongoing squabbles within the government, Pitt was more vulnerable to satire in late 1794 and early 1795 than ever before. By depicting the Prime Minister as a showman with a wide array of deceptions and other conjuror’s tricks but little substance and less care for the common man, Merry gave British radicals an image of Pitt they would revive several times in the years to come. And, thus, while Merry’s eulogist may have been overstating the case in claiming that ‘Pittachio’ was ‘unsurpassed by anything in ancient or modern times’, these caricatures of Pitt clearly represent some of the most incisive and influential satire of the Revolutionary era in Britain.]

1 John Barrell’s recently published volume Exhibition Extraordinary!!: Radical Broadsides of the Mid 1790s, Nottingham, Trent, 2001, reproduces broadside editions of all three ‘Pittachio’ texts included here. Unfortunately, I was unable to see Barrell’s text until this edition was nearly completed, and hence most of my research on the ‘Pittachio’ satires duplicates his. Nevertheless, I am indebted to his work for leading me to several references in the notes below I was unable to identify on my own. 2 The first ‘Pittachio’ text was reprinted in the Courier only a month after its initial publication, accompanied by an explanatory note reading, ‘A great demand having been made for the following Jeu d’ Esprit, we only yeild [sic] to the request of many of our Friends in reprinting it from the COURIER of Friday Nov. 28’. The enduring fame of all the ‘Pittachio’ satires is evidenced in the Anti-Gallican’s ‘Invasion of England’ pasquinade of 1804 (pp. 109–11 below) and T. J. Wooler’s adaptation of the original ‘Pittachio’ spoof (substi58

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’) tuting Castlereagh for Pitt) in the 10 February 1819 issue of the Black Dwarf. For references to several other reprintings and imitations of the ‘Pittachio’ satires, see Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, pp. x–xi; Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790– 1832, Oxford, Clarendon, 1994, pp. 82–85; and Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 11 vols, London, British Museum, 1978, vol. 7, pp. 109–10. 3 No book-length biography of Merry has yet been written. For a good overview of his life, see John Rains’s entry in The Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, eds Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Gossman, 2 vols, Atlantic Heights, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1979, vol. 1, pp. 319–22. 4 Monthly Magazine, VII, April 1799, p. 257. 5 Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, pp. xiv, 13. 6 Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, pp. x, 13. 7 ‘Acquitted felons’ was the label William Windham, Pitt’s Secretary of War, notoriously applied to the released radicals. 8 For an insightful analysis of Pitt’s struggles during these years, see Eric J. Evans, William Pitt the Younger, London and New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 44–53.

59

WONDERFUL EXHIBITION. S IGNOR G ULIELMO P ITTACHIO, the Sublime Wonder of the World, condescends to inform the public at large, and his friends in particular, that immediately after Christmas, he will open his Grand Hall of Exhibitions, at Westminster,1 with a grand display of his ASTONISHING AND MAGNIFICENT DECEPTIONS. Which have been approved by all the crowned heads in the universe, and which are unparalleled in the history of mankind. First, The Signor will bring forward A MAGICAL ALARM BELL, At the ringing of which, all the company shall become mad or foolish. Secondly.—He will produce his justly celebrated, CURIOUS SPY GLASSES, Which distort and misrepresent all objects that are looked at through them, and occasion in the company A SUDDEN AND SOCIAL DISMAY; Such as has never before been witnessed in this country. Thirdly.—By means of an enchanted Drum, he will set all the company a fighting, for the avowed purpose of preserving ORDER AND TRANQUILITY. During the battle, Signor Pittachio will convey their money out of their pockets in a new and entertaining manner. Fourthly.— He will produce a most extraordinary effect in the optics of the Spectators, by means of some gold dust, so that they shall not be able to distinguish colours; but shall call, (at the Signor’s command,) BLACK, WHITE, AND WHITE, BLACK, To the edification of all beholders. Fifthly.— He will make some marvellous experiments upon his own MEMORY, 2 By forgetting the most material incidents of his life, with an almost incredible precision. N. B. To remove doubts, these experiments on memory will be made upon oath. Sixthly.— By his oratorical efforts, he will, in the course of a few minutes, persuade the greater part of his audience to salute him a posteriori 3 then to give him three cheers, and nominate him THE HEAVEN-BORN CONJUROR; 60

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’)

with various slight-of-hand performances and whimsical exuberances, too tedious to mention. In the course of the entertainments the Sublime Pittachio will exhibit UPWARDS OF TWO HUNDRED AUTOMOTA , OR

MOVING PUPPETS,4 who will rise up, sit down, say yes, or no, receive money, rake among the cinders, or do any dirty work he may think proper to put them to. N. B. This is a most fascinating Trick. Afterwards Signor Gulielmo Pittachio will discover to the Company the unrivalled treasures of HIS PRIVATE CABINET, formed on a mere mechanical principal, without hinges, joints, dove-tail, or glue. ________ The whole to conclude with a Dramatic Piece in One Act, called THE HUMBUG, OR

JOHN BULL A JACK ASS, In which Signor Pittachio (not having yet engaged any female performers)5 will indulge the Company with A SOLO ON THE VIOL D ’ AMOUR . 6 N. B. The Hall is commodious, but the company will be kept as much in the dark as possible, to give greater effect to the DECEPTIONS. Signor Pittachio is extremely sorry to inform the public, that owing to some unaccountable mismanagement in the persons he employed, he has been disappointed of several capital performers whom he had hoped to have brought forward, for the purpose of exhibiting various feats of activity on THE TIGHT ROPE, This part of the entertainment therefore must be deferred.7 VIVANT REX ET REGINA . 8

61

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

No. II. MORE WONDERFUL WONDERS!!! THE HIGH AND ILLUSTRIOUS SIGNOR

GULIELMO PITTACHIO rejects, with lofty indignation, the absurd insinuations of the vulgar,9 which imply that he means to defer, to a later date than was by himself announced, his awful exhibition AT WESTMINSTER .

No—he here pledges himself, (and, if his memory fail not,10 he will keep his word) that immediately after the meeting of Parliament he will certainly make a general display of ALL HIS TRICKS, as mentioned in the preceding notice which he deigned to give HIS ADORING PUBLIC .

And further, he will produce some extraordinary effects upon the money of his auditors and spectators, of which he will considerably lessen the value, by THE SIMPLE OPERATION OF HIS BREATH .

The GREAT PITTACHIO is no KATTERFELTO,11 no MOUNTEBANK GRAHAM ;12 he has no black cat in his service—no Goddess of Health; but if he derives any assistance from what is not human, it is only FROM THE BLUSHING ROSE,13 OR THE POINTED STEEL . 14

The ILLUSTRIOUS SIGNOR appeals for his character not to the starving manufacturer, or the contemptible poor, but to all the C OURTS OF E UROPE, A SIA, A FRICA, A MERICA , and C ORSICA. They will acknowledge all his titles, his powers, and his pretensions—they know him to be THE SUBLIME WONDER OF THE WORLD ,

F. L. T.—C. E.15 Proudatissimus—Winum guzzleando potentissimus—Prettygirlibus indifferentissimus—Warcarryonissimus Reformationis inimicissimus—& Filius Bitchæ damnatissimus.16 These honourable distinctions THE PITTACHIO brings not forth to boast of, but only TO ANNIHILATE HIS DETRACTORS. 62

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’)

For all other particulars he refers the whole world to his former publication, which has so forcibly operated upon THE MUSCLES OF MANKIND. At this time when BRITISH C HARITY is so conspicuous, THE PITTACHIO will not remain in shade, he therefore may probably be induced in the course of a few months, (having been disappointed of the Rope-dancers he wished to have engaged,) to close his wonderful Performances by exhibiting his own person on THE TIGHT ROPE, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SWINISH MULTITUDE. Vivant Rex & Regina.

WONDERFUL EXHIBITION!!! _________ POSITIVELY THE LAST SEASON OF HIS PERFORMING. SIGNOR

GULIELMO PITTACHIO,

THE SUBLIME WONDER OF THE WORLD ,

Makes known to the Nobility, Gentry, and Swinish Multitude, that, till the expiration of his Licence, he, with the assistance of his celebrated and notorious Company, will continue to display a variety of SINGULAR AND WHIMSICAL DELUSIONS ,

with other Divertissements, AT HIS GRAND THEATRE IN WESTMINSTER ,

to the astonishment of the World. P ART THE FIRST . The SUBLIME PITTACHIO will bring forward in a new light, the miraculous powers of HIS INESTIMABLE FANTOCCINI ; 17

WHICH HAVE ALL BEEN BOUGHT IN THIS COUNTRY, and which can produce the words, War, Treason, Murder, and other popular expressions, as naturally 63

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 AS IF THEY WERE LIVE CHRISTIANS .

The G REAT G ULIELMO will then propose to his Auditors, the following paradoxical Enigmas, which he will afterwards explain in the most incomprehensible manner: Enigma 1. By running backward, we get forward. Enigma 2. To preserve Health, destroy the Constitution. Enigma 3. Absolute Slavery is perfect Freedom. Enigma 4. Reformation is Abomination. Enigma 5. To be defeated is to conquer. Enigma 6. Forgetfulness is the best Memory. Enigma 7. The less we have, the more we can throw away. Enigma 8. The Man who speaks the truth is a damned Liar. Enigma 9. A Part is greater than the Whole. And many others, equally ludicrous and amusing. The famous DON D UNDERASS , 18 commonly called, THE CAPITAL CAMELION ,

will next perform HIS INIMITABLE HORNPIPE :

In which he will cross over, foot it, and figure in, with an enchanting grace, AND ALWAYS PRECISELY IN TIME.

The S IGNOR and the D ON will then drink Success to the present just and necessary War, IN A GALLON OF RIGHT HOLLANDS :19

And will sing the much admired Duet of ‘While we enjoy our jovial glass, We care not what may come to pass.’

PART THE S ECOND. A LECTURE ON THE BRAIN AND HEART OF A MODERN ENGLISHMAN; which will be analized, Physically, Metaphysically, Hierogliphically, Astrologically, Canonically, Politically, 64

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’)

Theatrically, Whimsically, Musically, Algebraically, Nautically, Sympathetically, Systematically, Comically,

Chymically, Tragically, Magically, Oratorically, Mathematically, Poetically, Mechanically, Farcically, and

DIABOLICALLY , BY THE SUBLIME SIGNOR GULIELMO PITTACHIO HIMSELF.

A humorous Dialogue between J ACK K ETCH,20 and A C ROWN L AWYER, on the subject of High Treason, With the favourite Air of ‘Give the Devil his due, For I am as good as you.’

P ART THE T HIRD . The PITTACHIO will address the Auditors with the most laughable assurance, and prove to them by Rhetorical Figures, THAT THEY HAVE NEITHER EYES , EARS , NOR UNDERSTANDINGS.

He will also so alarm them by his skill in THE OCCULT ARTS,

That he shall take them up, knock them down, handcuff them, rummage their pockets, and read their letters, with the MOST CAPTIVATING DECORUM ,

and to their perfect satisfaction. The S IGNOR will then occasion AN INTERESTING OPTICAL DECEPTION ,

During which he will hold a lighted Match over A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER ,

in the middle of the Spectators, who shall not see their danger, 65

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 BUT SHALL SUPPOSE THAT ALL ’ S SAFE .

The renowned Mynheer Van V INDHAM 21 will make sundry experiments on the PASSIONS, particularly Rage, Pride, Cruelty, and Contempt. After which he will gratify the audience with the following excellent Ballad, of his own composing: ‘Perish our Commerce, and perish the Poor; So we may be jolly, and rich, and secure: May Reformers be cut into parts like a Melon, And he that’s acquitted be still call’d A Felon!’ Derry down down, hey derry down.

P ART THE FOURTH . A CURIOUS BLOCK O F SOLID PORTLAND S TONE22 will be exhibited, in the shape of a human head, which will move its eyes, sneeze, yawn, blush, and discover several symptoms OF REAL EXISTENCE ,

though in fact it has no power of action. The S UBLIME P ITTACHIO will then display HIS MASTER TRICK ,

or, ‘ne plus ultra’ of the Art, to the astonishment of all Beholders; for he will actually be IN SIX DIFFERENT PLACES AT ONE AND THE SAME TIME ;

And, however surprising it may appear, Any of his Company will readily perform the same, if requested.

P ART THE FIFTH . A Serio-Comico-Dramatico Medley will be represented, called, THE BURSTING OF THE BUDGET; OR ; JOHN BULL’S GREAT BARGAIN. Sir David Demon, by Signor P ITTACHIO. Lord Wordeater, Mynheer Van VINDHAM .23 Count Snug, Mr. MANSMEAD .24 66

Anon. (‘Wonderful Exhibition …’)

Numbscul, Mr. G RENFIELD .25 Graspall, Mr. L OVEBOROUGH.26 Fatherall, Mr. H ARDINBRASS.27 Dr. Candour, Mr. B LACKMOORE.28 Anyside, Mr. D UNDERASS.29 Captain Scape, Mr. F REDERICK.30 Babies, Master K ANNINTON , and Master F ITZ-J ENKINS.31 Purser, Mr. R OSEBY.32 Slave, Mr. B RITON . Good Genii. Mr. H ARESKIN and Mr. G IBSON.33 Bad Genii. Mr. R EEVELY, and Mr. W HITEHEAD .34 Ghost of a Habeas Corpus, Signor G UILLOTINO. Acquitted Felons, by Mr. H ARDLEATHER,35 Mr. H ORNER,36 Mr. T ELWELL,37 Mr. O LDCROFF,38 Mr. J OY,39 and Others. Savages, by Mr. A IRY,40 Mr. S COTMAN,41 Mr. M IDDLEFORD,42 and Mr. D AER.43 Bet Brandy, by Mrs. GORGON . Lady Hubbub, by Mrs. V ATASS, and Lady Brilliant, by Mrs. LEROY.44 To which will be added a new Pantomime, called, NAY-GO AND PRAY-GO,45 OR

HARLEQUIN IN HOLLAND. To conclude with a splendid, grand, and numerous PROCESSION INTO LONDON , Consisting of French, Spanish, German, Flemish, Italian, and Dutch EMIGRANTS,46

With a striking view in distant Perspective of THE PALACE OF PEACE, AND THE GARDEN OF PLENTY . N. B. As there is a great demand for the first places, the Nobility and Gentry are earnestly requested to apply in time. No Money to be returned. VIVANT REX ET REGINA.

67

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (‘LABERIUS’)

‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter: A War Eclogue’ (1798)

[First published in the Morning Post, 8 January 1798, p. 3. S. T. Coleridge’s (1772–1834; DNB) impassioned attack on Pitt and his ministry’s foreign policy, ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’, first appeared anonymously in the Morning Post on 8 January 1798. In the preceding years this newspaper, under the editorship of Daniel Stuart,1 had become one of London’s leading oppositionist dai­ lies. Evidence of the Post’s anti-Pitt leanings was easy to spot, since the masthead in 1798 groused, 678

Price in 1783, - - 3d. Taxed by Mr. PITT, 3d.

Price 6d.

It was partly this attitude toward the current administration that attracted Col­ eridge to the paper, and in late 1797 he contracted with Stuart to become one of the Post’s regular contributors. Although critics have generally paid little attention to ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaugh­ ter’, one subject that has been widely debated is the dating of the text’s composition.2 Accurate dating is particularly important with this poem, since the date of composition either makes possible or precludes several interpretations of the text’s historical and political referents. Some critics, for instance, have argued that the setting of the poem in La Vendee suggests it was written in 1796, when Col­ eridge was particularly incensed over the Pitt ministry’s bungled financing of the Vendean counter-revolutionaries – a fiasco that indirectly led to thousands of the rebels being massacred by armies of the French Republic.3 The main problem with dating the text to 1796, however, is that it leaves the poem’s references to the burn­ ing of huts in Ireland rather obscure. As a result, the current critical consensus is that the poem must have been written in mid-to-late 1797, after General Gerard Lake’s brutal attacks on the homes of suspected Ulster rebels in March of that year. Dating the poem to 1797 also helps us make some sense of the poem’s final lines, where Pitt is accused of having countenanced the work of Famine and Slaughter for ‘full ninety moons’, or ‘eight years’. Presumably, if the poem were the product of 68

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-10

Coleridge (‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’)

1797, Coleridge here is referring to the events of 1789 and thus opaquely suggesting that Pitt’s reign of terror began with his initial attempts to stop the spread of revolu­ tionary ideals to England following the fall of the Bastille. Even if we have a less than perfect understanding of the poem’s political allu­ sions, its main point—that Pitt was responsible for immeasurable crimes against humanity, vengeance for which would be exacted either by a revolutionary mob or in hell—is perfectly clear. From its moment of publication, readers were apparently shocked at the level of fury the poem achieves. When Coleridge reprinted it in Sibylline Leaves (1817), he attached a lengthy preface that sheds light on both the original reception of the poem and his own attempts to distance himself from it. The most memorable part of Coleridge’s preface is his anecdote of being at a literary dinner party some years earlier when the conversation turned to a recently published anon­ ymous poem entitled ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’. The general sense in the room, as Coleridge recounts it, was that as poetry the piece had many merits, but its art­ istry ‘could not have compensated for that malignity of heart, which could alone have prompted sentiments so atrocious’. Before confessing his authorship of the poem to those gathered, Coleridge responded to these charges with a lengthy dis­ course on how the poem was mere rhetoric, intending no real harm to Pitt. He went on to explain, I do not attempt to justify my past self, young as I then was; but as little as I would now write a similar poem, so far was I even then from imagining, that the lines would be taken as more or less than a sport of fancy. At all events, if I know my own heart, there was never a moment in my existence in which I should have been more ready, had Mr. Pitt’s person been in hazard, to interpose my own body, and defend his life at the risk of my own.4

Coleridge’s claims of latent affection for Pitt notwithstanding, ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’ clearly represents one of the Romantic period’s more striking examples of Juvenalian satire. Drawing heavily from the witches of Macbeth and the rhythms and dialogue patterns of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender, Coleridge crafts a new type of eclogue, specifically a ‘war eclogue’ which replaces the genre’s conventional pastoral images with scenes of desolation and ruin. While Coleridge’s poem may lack the humour or cleverness of other pieces in this collection, few satirical poems of the period make their point more forcefully.]

1 For a history of the newspaper under Stuart, see chapters 5 and 6 of Wilfrid Hindle, The Morning Post 1772–1937: Portrait of a Newspaper, London, Routledge, 1937. 2 One of the most useful readings of ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’ remains that of Carl Woodring in Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1961, pp. 129–33. For discussions of the poem’s dating, see also C. G. Martin, ‘The Dating of S. T. Coleridge’s “Fire, Famine, and Slaughter”’, Notes and Queries, 217, 1972, pp. 289–90; and J. C. C. Mays’s introduction to the poem in his new edition of Coleridge’s Poetical Works, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 428–40. 69

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 3 Another reason for dating the poem to 1796 is that Coleridge listed this as the date of composition in all his collections. Coleridge’s datings, however, are notoriously suspect, since he frequently reconstructed the stories behind his poems to make them seem safer for less radical times. 4 Coleridge’s ‘Apologetic Preface’ is included in Mays’s edition of Coleridge’s Poetical Works. My quotations here come from pp. 430–34.

70

SCENE—A depopulated tract in La Vendee.1 FAMINE is discovered stretched on the ground: to her enter SLAUGHTER and FIRE. FAMINE. Sisters! Sisters! who sent you here? 1 SLAUGHTER. I will name him in your ear. FIRE. No! No! No! Spirits hear what spirits tell: ’Twill make an holiday in hell. No! no! no! Myself I nam’d him once below, And all the souls that damned be, Leap’d up at once in anarchy; Clapp’d their hands and danc’d for glee; 10 They no longer heeded me; But laugh’d to hear hell’s burning rafters Unwillingly re-echo laughters. No! no! no! Spirits hear what spirits tell: ’Twill make an holiday in hell. FAMINE. Then sound it not, yet let me know; Darkly hint it—soft and low! SLAUGHTER. Four letters form his name.2 And who sent you? 20 FAMINE. The same! the same! SLAUGHTER. He came by stealth and unlock’d my den; And I have spill’d the blood since then Of thrice ten hundred thousand men.3 FIRE AND FAMINE. Who bade you do’t? SLAUGHTER. The same! the same! Four letters form his name. 71

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo!4 To him alone the praise is due. FAMINE. Thanks, Sisters, thanks! the men have bled, Their wives and children faint for bread; I stood in a swampy field of battle, With bones and skulls I made a rattle, To frighten the wolf and the carrion crow, And the homeless dog—but they would not go, So off I flew; for how could I bear To see them gorge their dainty fare. I heard a groan, and a peevish squall, And thro’ the chink of a cottage wall, Can you guess what I saw there? SLAUGHTER AND FIRE. Whisper it, Sister! in our ear! FAMINE. A baby beat its dying mother— I had starv’d the one, and was starving the other! SLAUGHTER AND FIRE. Who bade you do’t? FAMINE. The same! the same! Four letters form his name. He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo! To him alone the praise is due. FIRE. Sisters! I from Ireland came—5 Huts and corn-fields all on flame, I triumph’d o’er the setting Sun; And all the while the work was done. As on I strode with mons’trous strides, I flung back my head, and held my sides; It was so rare a piece of fun, To see the swelter’d cattle run, With uncouth gallop, all the night, Scar’d by the red and noisy light! By the light of his own blazing cot, Was many a naked Rebel shot: The house-stream met the fire, and hiss’d While, crash! the roof fell in, I wish On some of those old bed-rid nurses, That deal in discontent and curses! 72

30

40

50

60

Coleridge (‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’)

SLAUGHTER AND FAMINE. Who bad you do’t? FIRE. The same! The same! Four letters form his name He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo! How shall I give him honour due? ALL. He let us loose, and cry’d Halloo! How shall I give him honour due? FAMINE. Wisdom comes with lack of food, I’ll gnaw, I’ll gnaw the multitude, Till the cup of rage o’er brim, They shall seize him of his brood. SLAUGHTER. They shall tear him limb from limb! FIRE. O thankless Beldames,6 and untrue! And is this all that you can do For him that did so much for you? TO SLAUGHTER. For you he turn’d the dust to mud, With his fellow creatures’ blood! TO FAMINE. And hunger scorch’d as many more, To make your cup of joy run o’er. TO BOTH. Full ninety moons, he by my troth, Hath richly cater’d for you both; And in an hour you would repay, An eight years debt, away! away! I alone am faithful, I Cling to him everlastingly! LABERIUS.7

73

70

80

CAROLINA OLIPHANT, LADY NAIRNE

‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’ (c. 1798)

[First published in Thomson’s Collection of the Songs of Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Other Eminent Lyric Poets Ancient and Modern, ed. George Thomson, 6 vols, London, Pres­ ton, 1823, vol. 6, no. 49.1 Though many of the satires in this volume are formally indebted to popular cul­ tural forms (the ballad, the handbill, the patriotic song, the broadside), only ‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’ remains in currency in the genre which inspired it. The ballad remains a standby for Scottish folk musicians, and in the not-too-distant past the poem served as the text for a mass-market children’s book.2 Somewhat ironically, in fact, the poem enjoys wider circulation today than it did in the first two decades fol­ lowing its composition, when it circulated primarily in manuscript or hand-copied editions.3 The poem’s author, Carolina Oliphant (who would go on to become Lady Nairne) (1766–1845; DNB), was born into one of the most prominent Jacobite fam­ ilies of Scotland. Both Oliphant’s paternal grandfather and father had fought for ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ in the uprising of 1745, and her maternal grandfather was the head of one of Scotland’s great clans. Inspired by the Jacobite cause and the recent success of Burns and others in reviving the Scottish folk tradition, Oliphant began writing ballads to be set to traditional tunes in the early 1790s. In 1798, she sent a copy of ‘The Land o’ the Leal’ to a friend, and it is believed that ‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’ dates to this same period.4 It wouldn’t be until the 1820s, however, that ‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’ would be widely disseminated; and authorship of the poem wasn’t definitively attributed to Lady Nairne until the mid-century, when it and sev­ eral other previously anonymous pieces began appearing in posthumous collections of her works.5 Undoubtedly, the poem’s staying power is largely owing to its ability to amuse us two hundred years after its composition. In only twenty-eight lines, Oliphant makes Cockpen a surprisingly fleshed-out character, with a complete set of quirks, manner­ isms, and aristocratic prejudices. It takes just two stanzas, for instance, for us to get a fairly clear idea of why the ‘auld Laird’ remains single, as not only is he so caught up with the ‘the things o’ the State’ that women are an afterthought, but, more 74

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-11

Oliphant (‘The Laird o’ Cockpen’)

importantly, his vision of a wife is limited to someone who keeps the house and ‘looks well’ at the table. Perhaps the most striking section of the ballad is the pen­ ultimate stanza, where in a matter of four lines Cockpen makes his proposal and is summarily dispatched. It is not that Mistress Jean lacks proper respect for her social betters, as in the previous stanza she took some pains to appear before the laird in proper attire. But when the marriage proposal is unexpectedly proffered, she needs all of one line-break to decide that Cockpen is not the laird for her. Unfortunately, most of the cheekiness of Oliphant’s original text was lost after the 1840s, when the Scottish novelist Susan Ferrier inexplicably added two new stanzas to the poem’s conclusion. Ferrier’s new ending, wherein Jean reconsiders and goes on to wed Cockpen, reads, And now that the laird his exit has made, Mistress Jean she reflected on what she had said; ‘Oh, for ane I’ll get better, its waur I’ll get ten, I was daft to refuse the Laird o’ Cockpen.’ Next time that the laird and the lady were seen, They were gaun arm-in-arm to the kirk on the green; Now she sits in the ha’ like a weel-tappit hen, But as yet there’s nae chickens appeared at Cockpen.

For better or worse, many contemporary editions of the poem – including the children’s book version – choose to print Ferrier’s conclusion, oftentimes failing to note that the final two stanzas are not part of Oliphant’s original, much more sub­ versive text.]

1 While this is the earliest published version of the poem I have been able to locate, it is possible that it was published elsewhere prior to 1823. Thomson, the compiler of this 1823 edition, notes that he is printing the poem ‘from a manuscript communicated to the editor by Sir Adam Ferguson’. 2 Sorche Nic Leodhas and Adrienne Adams, The Laird of Cockpen, New York, Holt, Rine­ hart, and Winston, 1969. 3 As I write this, a manuscript edition of the poem with thirteen original watercolors is up for sale on the internet for $600. The rare book dealer selling this edition dates it to 1810–12. 4 Charles Rogers, Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne, 2nd edn, Edinburgh, John Grant, 1905, p. 34 and pp. 283–84. 5 See Lays from Strathearn, London, R. Addison, 1846, and Life and Songs of Baroness Nairne, ed. Rev. Charles Rogers, London, C. Griffin, 1869.

75

THE Laird o’ Cockpen he’s proud and he’s great, His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the State; He wanted a wife now his braw house to keep, But favour wi’ wooing was fashious to seek. Down by the burn side a Lady did dwell, At the head o’ his table he thought she’d look well; Macleish’s ae doughter o’ Clavers-ha’-lee, A penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.

1 brave, splendid bothersome stream only

His wig was well pouther’d, and as gude as new, His waistcoat was red, and his coat it was blue, A ring on his finger, his sword, and cock’d hat, And wha could refuse the auld Laird wi’ a’ that. He mounted his mare, he rode cannilie, And rap’t at the yett o’ Clavers-ha’-lee; ‘Gae tell Mrs. Jean to come speedily ben, She’s wanted to speak wi’ the Laird o’ Cockpen.’ Mrs. Jean she was making the elder-flower wine, ‘And what brings the Laird here at sic a like time?’ She pat aff her apron, and on her silk gown, Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa down. And when she cam in, the Laird boo’d fu’ low, And what was his errand he soon let her know; But, oh! how he stared,—when the Lady said Na! And wi’ a laigh curtsey she then turn’d awa. The Laird was dumfounder’d, nae sigh did he gie, He mounted his mare, he rode cannilie; And often he thought as he gaed through the glen, She is daft to refuse the Laird o’ Cockpen.

76

10

cautiously, leisurely gate inside

bonnet bowed low

20

WILLIAM BLAKE

‘When Klopstock England defied’ (c. 1797–1800)

[In many ways, it is understandable that William Blake’s (1757–1827; DNB) note­ book poem ‘When Klopstock England defied’ has never received a great deal of attention. To begin with, its subject, the late-eighteenth-century German poet Frie­ drich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), is rarely read anymore, having been relegated to the footnotes in histories of German Romanticism.1 Beyond this, it is unclear how polished an effort the poem is. Blake apparently made no efforts to publish it in his lifetime, and the manuscript suggests that the text was never fully revised. Even if a definitive edition of the poem were available, its style and themes would probably ward off many potential readers, as Blake fills his tale with a flatu­ lent god, ritualistic hexes, and juxtapositions of scatology and prophecy. All this aside, however, the poem has many amusing satirical moments, mocking not only Klopstock, but tales of the occult, current debates on the nature of the soul, and, in the end, the poet himself. When Klopstock first emerged in the mid-eighteenth century as the self-pro­ claimed ‘German Milton’, he loudly championed the English literary tradition, suggesting that German literature paid far too much attention to French models and not nearly enough to English ones. In his magnum opus, Der Messias (‘The Mes­ siah’), a twenty-canto epic published between 1748 and 1773, Klopstock borrows heavily from English writers past and present. While in its overall scope the project is most indebted to Paradise Lost, its individual sections draw extensively from con­ temporary English writers such as Richardson, Macpherson, and various members of the Graveyard School. Particularly in the work of the Graveyard poets, Klopstock saw a model of imagination and feeling he hoped to infuse into the German literary tradition. On the surface, then, it would seem that this championing of imagination, combined with Klopstock’s initial enthusiasm for the American and French Revolu­ tions and his conception of the poet as something of a prophet figure, would make him a natural ally of Blake.2 By the end of the eighteenth century, however, Klopstock’s star was rapidly fall­ ing. While he had clearly influenced the work of Goethe and other members of the new school of German poetry, he was increasingly coming to be regarded as 77

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-12

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

something of a has-been. In reaction to his growing insignificance, Klopstock became more and more bombastic in his public declarations. Somewhat inexplica­ bly, after spending much of his career championing England’s literary tradition, in the final decade before his 1803 death Klopstock denounced contemporary English literature, claiming that the English language lacked the epic grandeur of German. After traveling with Wordsworth to visit Klopstock in 1798, Coleridge reported that the German poet feigned limited knowledge of the English tradition and denied having been influenced at any point by Milton. Beyond this, ‘Klopstock talked what appeared to me great nonsense about the superior power which the German Lan­ guage possessed, of concentering meaning’.3 Apparently it was the pro-German, antiEnglish direction of Klopstock’s recent pronouncements such as this that inspired Blake’s poem. Blake, of course, was more than willing to critique contemporary Albion himself; but hearing the German poet’s attacks on his homeland brought out the true-born Englishman in him. So provoked, in fact, is ‘English Blake’ in the poem that he places a magic spell upon Klopstock, causing his bowels to churn and, even more distressingly one imagines, his soul to be locked in his body. This infuriates Nobo­ daddy, Klopstock’s champion and the false God of this world who appears in two other notebook poems.4 After letting out a chorus of crude bodily noises (‘For old Nobodaddy aloft / Farted & Belchd & coughd’), the false God successfully pleads with Blake to ‘ease poor Klopstocks nine fold pain’. Perhaps the satirical highpoint in this generally raucous poem comes in the final couplet, where Blake mocks both the flippancy of his present pursuit and the self-importance of his general poetic project. As Peter Ackroyd has rightfully observed, this concluding couplet ‘marks [Blake] as much a Cockney as an Englishman’.5 Because Blake never published this poem, no authoritative ‘first edition’ of the text exists. The manuscript version in the notebook contains several corrections and is rather difficult to decipher in places. As a result, there are significant discrepancies between many of the published versions of the poem. For this edition, I have tried to reproduce the text Blake seems to have intended in his notebook, making no effort to regularize the spelling and punctuation.6 My dating of this text to 1797– 1800 reflects the current critical consensus, which is based upon the poem’s posi­ tion in the notebook, Klopstock’s increasingly frequent anti-English outbursts in the late 1790s, and the poem’s being set in Lambeth (from which Blake moved in Sep­ tember 1800).]

1 Klopstock’s current obscurity is evidenced in the relative scarcity of English-language sources on his life and his work. Accordingly, much of my information in this introduc­ tion comes from general reference works. See Brigitte Peucker’s entry on Klopstock in European Writers, vol. 4 of Scribner’s Writers Series, New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1984, pp. 511–36, and Beth Bjorklund’s entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 97 (German 78

Blake (‘When Klopstock England defied’)

2

3 4 5 6

Writers from the Enlightenment to Sturm and Drang, 1720–1764), Detroit, Gale, 1990, pp. 148– 59. Most critics have paid little attention to the similarities between Klopstock and Blake. One clear exception to this is Frederick E. Pierce, who goes so far as to argue that Klop­ stock rivaled Milton as the most significant source for Blake’s poetry. See Pierce’s ‘Blake and Klopstock’, Studies in Philology, XXV, 1928, pp. 11–26. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1956, vol. 1, pp. 442–44. See ‘To Nobodaddy’ and ‘Let the brothels of Paris be opened’ from Blake’s notebook. Peter Ackroyd, Blake, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995, p. 228. One source that has proven very helpful in deciphering Blake’s manuscript is David Erd­ man’s The Notebook of William Blake; a Photographic and Typographic Facsimile, Oxford, Clarendon, 1973.

79

When Klopstock England defied Uprose terrible Blake in his pride For old Nobodaddy aloft Farted & Belchd & coughd Then swore a great oath that made heaven quake1 And calld aloud to English Blake Blake was giving his body ease At Lambeth beneath the poplar trees From his seat then started he And turned himself round three times three The Moon at that sight blushd scarlet red2 The stars threw down their cups & fled3 And all the devils that were in hell Answered with a ninefold yell Klopstock felt the intripled turn And all his bowels began to churn And his bowels turned round three times three And lockd in his soul with a ninefold key That from his body it neer could be parted Till to the last trumpet it was farted Then again old nobodaddy swore He neer had seen such a thing before Since Noah was shut in the ark Since Eve first chose her hell fire spark4 Since twas the fashion to go naked Since the old anything was created And so feeling he begd him to turn again And ease poor Klopstocks nine fold pain From pity then he redend round And the removed spell unwound If Blake could do this when he rose up from shite What might he not do if he sat down to write

80

1

10

20

30

MARY ROBINSON

‘The Mistletoe, A Christmas Tale’ (1799) ‘The Confessor, A Sanctified Tale’ (1800)

[‘The Mistletoe’ first published in the Morning Post, 31 December 1799; ‘The Confes­ sor’ first published in the Morning Post, 20 March 1800.1 Over the course of her colourful life, Mary Darby Robinson (1758–1800; DNB) was both the author and subject of a good deal of satire. The peak of Robinson’s notoriety came in the early 1780s, when her affair with the Prince of Wales (later George IV) provided much fodder for the age’s political cartoonists and rumour mongerers. But this was far from her only adventure, as she also had stints as a stu­ dent of Hannah More; the protégé of David Garrick; a rumoured lover of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; ‘Perdita’, the star of the London stage; and ‘Laura Maria’, one of the principal ‘Della Cruscans’. In this latter role, Robinson, along with Robert Merry (see pp. 56–57 above) and Hannah Cowley, was the subject of widespread abuse, most famously in William Gifford’s The Baviad (1791) and The Maeviad (1795).2 The various attacks on her name notwithstanding, Robinson would ultimately become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed authors of the 1790s. Writ­ ing primarily to free herself of gambling debts incurred first by her scoundrel husband, Thomas Robinson, and then by her long-time lover, Colonel Banastre Tar­ leton, Robinson proved incredibly prolific. In the 1790s alone, she published several collections of poetry, a series of novels, and a treatise on women’s rights. From 1797 until her death in 1800, Robinson was also a regular contributor to Daniel Stuart’s Morning Post, the London daily best remembered for three of its other contributors from this era, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey.3 Several of Robinson’s Morning Post poems – including both of those printed below – were eventually revised for Lyrical Tales, an edition of her poetry published on 18 December 1800, eight days prior to her death. Not surprisingly, most studies of this collection have focused on its kinship with Wordsworth and Coleridge’s sim­ ilarly titled Lyrical Ballads, the second edition of which, like Robinson’s volume, was published in 1800 by Thomas Longman. In addition to their overlapping titles and publication histories, these two collections also share many stylistic and thematic 81

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-13

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

similarities. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, for instance, Robinson is interested in common life in the English countryside, and at several moments her Lyrical Tales seem to respond directly to the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads.4 As Stuart Curran has shown, Longman likely encouraged these parallels between the collections in hopes that the success of the one would stimulate interest in the other. Wordsworth, how­ ever, was less than pleased with the similar titles. Wanting neither to share a title nor to compete with the better-known Robinson, he unsuccessfully petitioned his pub­ lisher to re-christen his edition Poems in Two Volumes.5 Despite the intriguing intertextuality of Lyrical Tales and Lyrical Ballads, it would be a mistake to treat these projects as mirror images of one another, since there are several poems in Robinson’s volume that mark a dramatic departure from the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Both the poems included here, for instance, owe more to Chaucerian bawdy and eighteenth-century picaresque than Lake School effusions on the natural goodness of the rural poor. In her later poetry, Rob­ inson regularly drew upon her background in the theatre to construct new authorial personae. One of her favourite alter-egos during this era was Tabitha Bramble, a brusque, saucy, gleefully satirical jade loosely modelled after her namesake in Smol­ lett’s Humphrey Clinker.6 ‘The Confessor, A Sanctified Tale’ is essentially Tabitha’s adaptation of ‘The Miller’s Tale’, Chaucer’s ribald yarn of how the lovely young Alisoun cuckolds her aged husband through her dalliances with the parish clerk and her lusty neighbour, Nicholas. While preserving this basic storyline, Tabitha places added emphasis on the venality and hypocrisy of the clergy. In doing so, she yokes the stock Chaucerian figure with another recognizable literary type, the diabolical Catholic confessor of such Gothic novels as Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) and Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797). Accordingly, Old Father Peter comes off as a volatile mix of the superannuated lecher of traditional comedy and the Gothic villain who abuses his power and position to terrorise susceptible women. Equally transgressive as Tabitha’s overt religious cynicism is her reluctance to condemn Mistress Twyford’s marital infidelity. It is difficult in reading this poem not to hear the voice of Mary Robinson, one of the age’s more notorious ‘fallen women’. Having for two decades watched a series of ex-lovers escape unscathed while she dealt with the social stig­ mas and financial burdens of being a cast-off mistress, Robinson seems to relish the opportunity to dole out punishment, both satirical and physical, to her male charac­ ters, while letting the ‘saintly’ Mistress Twyford escape relatively unscathed. The other ‘lyrical tale’ included below, ‘The Mistletoe’, also casts a satirical glance at the emotional and sexual tensions of a May-December marriage. Here, however, the narrator is not the pert Tabitha, but ‘Laura Maria’, Robinson’s Della Cruscan alter ego who had been brought out of retirement several times throughout the 1790s.7 In Laura Maria’s Christmas tale, the rakish Hodge schemes to meet Mistress Homespun beneath the mistletoe, disregarding the unblinking gaze of her ‘ancient’, leery husband, who monitors the Christmas party from his seat in the corner. In the end, this is a decidedly more innocent tale than ‘The Confessor’; yet, at the same time, Robinson remains relatively uninhibited in contemplating the dilemma that 82

Robinson (‘The Mistletoe’, ‘The Confessor’)

arises when it is someone besides her husband that a young woman is attracted to. As is the case in ‘The Confessor’ and most of the other satirical pieces eventually included in Lyrical Tales, Robinson ends the poem with a tacked-on moral. These axioms, however, rarely seem sufficient to put to rest the many social and moral questions she has raised in the body of the poems.]

1 Most of the differences between the original Morning Post version of ‘The Mistletoe’ and the version published a year later in Robinson’s Lyrical Tales are inconsequential. Hence, with this poem, I have followed the general practice of this edition, using the first printed version (i.e., that printed in the Morning Post of 31 December 1799) as my copy text. In the case of ‘The Confessor’, however, I have departed from this standard, taking my text from the later Lyrical Tales version. My rationale for doing so is that some of the most pointed satirical lines of Robinson’s poem – namely, lines 35–50, which emphasize the venality of Father Peter – were added for the Lyrical Tales edition of the text. 2 See Vol. 4, pp. 1–30 and pp. 31–65, and John Strachan’s entry on The Baviad in Stones and Strachan, Parodies of the Romantic Age, vol. 2, pp. 39–45. 3 Judith Pascoe surveys the poetry of the Morning Post in chapter 6 of her book Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1997. 4 See, for instance, ‘All Alone’ and ‘The Alien Boy’. 5 Stuart Curran, ‘Mary Robinson’s Lyrical Tales in Context’, in Re-Visioning Romanticism, eds Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 17–19. See also Ashley J. Cross, ‘From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales: Mary Rob­ inson’s Reputation and the Problem of Literary Debt’, Studies in Romanticism, 40 (2001), pp. 571–605. 6 For an interesting discussion of Robinson’s various authorial personae and the performa­ tive nature of her poetry, see Pascoe, pp. 173–83. 7 The attribution of these poems to Tabitha Bramble and Laura Maria occurs only in the Morning Post. The pseudonyms were removed in Lyrical Tales.

83

‘THE MISTLETOE, A CHRISTMAS TALE’ A FARMER’s WIFE, both young and gay, And fresh as op’ning morn of May! Had taken to herself a Spouse, And taken many solemn vows, That she a faithful mate wou’d prove, In meekness, duty, and in love; That she, despising joy and wealth, Would be, in sickness and in health, His only comfort, and his friend— But mark the sequel, and attend.

1

10

This FARMER, as the story’s told, Was somewhat cross, and somewhat old; His was the wintry hour of life, While Summer smil’d before his Wife; He was both splenetic and crusty, She, buxom, blooming, blithe, and lusty! A contrast, rather form’d to cloy The zest of matrimonial joy! ’Twas CHRISTMAS TIME, the PEASANT throng Assembled gay, with dance and song, The Farmer’s kitchen long had been Of annual sports the busy scene; The wood-fire blaz’d, the chimney wide Presented seats on either side; Long rows of wooden trenchers,1 clean, Bedeck’d with holly boughs, were seen; The shining tankard’s foamy ale Gave spirits to the goblin tale, While many a rosy cheek grew pale. It happen’d that, some sport to shew, The ceiling held—a MISTLETOE: A magic bough, and well design’d To prove the coyest maiden kind: A magic bough, which DRUIDS old 84

20

30

Robinson (‘The Mistletoe’, ‘The Confessor’)

In sacred mysteries enroll’d;2 And which, or gossip FAME’s a liar, Still warms the soul with vivid fire, Still promises celestial bliss,— While bigots snatch their idol’s kiss.3 The MISTLETOE was doom’d to be The talisman of destiny! Beneath its ample boughs, we’re told, Full many a timid swain grew bold; Full many a roguish eye askance, Beheld it with impatient glance; And many a ruddy cheek confest The triumphs of the beating breast; And many a rustic rover sigh’d, Who ask’d the kiss—and was denied.

40

First MARG’RY smil’d, and gave her lover A kiss—then thank’d her stars, ’twas over! Next KATE, with a reluctant pace, Was led towards the mystic place; Then SUE, a merry laughing jade, A dimpled, yielding blush, display’d; While JOAN, her CHASTITY to shew, Wish’d the ‘bold knaves wou’d serve her so!’ SHE’D ‘TEACH the rogues such wanton play,’ And well she cou’d, she knew the way!

50

The FARMER, mute with jealous care, Sat sullen in his wicker chair; Hating the noisy gamesome host, Yet fearful to resign his post; He envied all their sportive strife, But most he watch’d his blooming wife; And trembled, lest her steps should go, Incautious, near THE MISTLETOE.

60

Now HODGE, a youth of rustic grace, Of form athletic, manly face, On MISTRESS HOMESPUN turn’d his eye, And breath’d a soul-declaring sigh; Old HOMESPUN mark’d his list’ning fair, And nestled in his wicker chair; HODGE swore she might his heart command, The PIPE was dropp’d from HOMESPUN’s hand! 85

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

HODGE prest her slender waist around, The FARMER check’d his draught, and frown’d; And now beneath the MISTLETOE ’Twas MISTRESS HOMESPUN’s turn to go, Old SURLY shook his wicker chair— And sternly utter’d,—‘Let her dare!’ HODGE to the FARMER’s wife declar’d Such husbands never should be spar’d; Swore, they deserv’d the worst disgrace, That lights upon the wedded race; And vow’d, that night, he would not go, Unblest, beneath the MISTLETOE. The merry group all recommend A harmless kiss, the strife to end: ‘Why not?’ says MARG’RY, ‘who would fear ‘A dang’rous moment once a year?’ SUSAN observ’d, that ‘antient folks ‘Were seldom pleas’d by youthful jokes.’ But KATE, who, till that fatal hour, Had held o’er HODGE unrivall’d pow’r, With curving lip and head aside, Look’d down, and smil’d in conscious pride, Then, anxious to conceal her care, She humm’d—WHAT FOOLS SOME WOMEN ARE!

80

90

Now, MISTRESS HOMESPUN, sorely vex’d, By pride and jealous rage perplex’d; And angry, that her peevish spouse Should doubt her matrimonial vows; But, most of all, resolv’d to make, An envious RIVAL’s bosom ache, Commanded Hodge to let her go, Nor lead her to the Mistletoe; ‘Why should you ask it o’er and o’er?’ Cried she, ‘we’ve been there twice before!’

100

’Tis thus, to check a rival’s sway, That Women oft themselves betray; While VANITY, alone, pursuing, They rashly prove, their own undoing.

110

86

Robinson (‘The Mistletoe’, ‘The Confessor’)

‘T HE C ONFESSOR, A S ANCTIFIED T ALE ’ When SUPERSTITION rul’d the land And Priestcraft shackled Reason,4 At GODSTOW5 dwelt a goodly band, Grey monks6 they were, and but to say They were not always giv’n to pray, Would have been construed Treason. Yet some did scoff, and some believ’d That sinners were themselves deceiv’d; And taking Monks for more than men They prov’d themselves, nine out of ten, Mere dupes of these Old Fathers hoary; But read—and mark the story. Near, in a little Farm, there liv’d A buxom Dame of twenty three; And by the neighbours ’twas believ’d A very Saint was She! Yet, ev’ry week, for some transgression, She went to sigh devout confession. For ev’ry trifle seem’d to make Her self-reproving Conscience ache; And Conscience, waken’d, ’tis well known, Will never let the Soul alone. At GODSTOW, ’mid the holy band, Old FATHER PETER held command. And lusty was the pious man, As any of his crafty clan: And rosy was his cheek, and sly The wand’rings of his keen grey eye; Yet all the Farmers’7 wives confest The wond’rous pow’r this Monk possess’d; Pow’r to rub out the score of sin, Which SATAN chalk’d upon his Tally; To give fresh licence to begin,— And for new scenes of frolic, rally. For abstinence was not his way— He lov’d to live—as well as pray; To prove his gratitude to Heav’n By taking freely all its favors,— And keeping his account still even, Still mark’d his best endeavours: 87

1

10

20

30

40

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

That is to say, He took pure Ore For benedictions,—and was known, While Reason op’d her golden store,— Not to unlock his own.— And often to his cell went he With the gay Dame of twenty-three: His Cell was sacred, and the fair8 Well knew, that none could enter there, Who, (such was PETER’s sage decree,) To Paradise ne’er bought a key. It happen’d that this Farmer’s wife (Call MISTRESS TWYFORD—alias BRIDGET,) Led her poor spouse a weary life— Keeping him, in an endless fidget! Yet ev’ry week she sought the cell Where Holy FATHER PETER stay’d, And there did ev’ry secret tell,— And there, at Sun-rise, knelt and pray’d. For near, there liv’d a civil friend, Than FARMER TWYFORD somewhat stouter, And he would oft his counsel lend, And pass the wintry hours away In harmless play; But MISTRESS BRIDGET was so chaste, So much with pious manners grac’d, That none could doubt her! One night, or rather morn, ’tis said The wily neighbour chose to roam, And (FARMER TWYFORD far from home) He thought he might supply his place; And, void of ev’ry spark of grace, Upon HIS pillow rest his head. The night was cold, and FATHER PETER, Sent his young neighbour to entreat her, That she would make confession free— To Him,— his saintly deputy. Now, so it happen’d, to annoy The merry pair, a little boy The only Son of lovely Bridget, And, like his daddy, giv’n to fidget, Enquir’d who this same neighbour was That took the place his father left— 88

50

60

70

80

Robinson (‘The Mistletoe’, ‘The Confessor’)

A most unworthy, shameless theft,— A sacrilege on marriage laws! The dame was somewhat disconcerted— For, all that she could say or do,— The boy his question would renew, Nor from his purpose be diverted. At length, the matter to decide, ‘’Tis FATHER PETER’ she replied. ‘He’s come to pray.’ The child gave o’er, When a loud thumping at the door Proclaim’d the Husband coming! Lo! Where could the wily neighbour go? Where hide his recreant, guilty head— But underneath the Farmer’s bed?— Now MASTER TWYFORD kiss’d his child; And straight the cunning urchin smil’d: ‘Hush, father! hush! ’tis break of day— ‘And FATHER PETER’s come to pray! ‘You must not speak,’ the infant cries— ‘For underneath the bed he lies.’ Now MISTRESS TWYFORD shriek’d, and fainted, And the sly neighbour found, too late, The FARMER, than his wife less sainted, For with his cudgel he repaid— The kindness of his faithless mate, And fiercely on his blows he laid, ’Till her young lover, vanquish’d, swore He’d play THE CONFESSOR no more! Tho’ fraud is ever sure to find Its scorpion in the guilty mind: Yet, PIOUS FRAUD, the DEVIL’s treasure, Is always paid, in TENFOLD MEASURE.

89

90

100

110

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (1800)

[First published in Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 2nd edn, 2 vols, London: T. N. Longman and G. Rees, 1800, vol. 2, pp. 165–68. There is a certain irony in including William Wordsworth (1770–1850; DNB) in an edition of satires from the Romantic age, since the poet of nature and moral sin­ cerity has often been categorized as the person most responsible for satire’s disappearance from the ranks of prestigious poetic genres. As Stephen M. Parrish has amusingly pointed out, any treatment of Wordsworth the satirist seems ‘about as bleakly promising as a celebration of wit and humor in The Excursion, or a study of Wordsworth’s Bawdy’.1 On several occasions in the early nineteenth century, Wordsworth went on record expressing his growing distaste for satire. In the preface to the Poems of 1815, for instance, he ranks philosophical satire at the bottom of his hierarchy of poetic modes and dismisses most personal and occasional satire as unworthy of being ‘dignified with the name of poetry’.2 Some years before this pub­ lic declaration, Wordsworth privately forswore himself of satire, explaining in a November 1806 letter to Francis Wrangham, I have long since come to a fixed resolution to steer clear of personal satire; in fact, I never will have anything to do with it as far as concerns the private vices of individuals on any account; with respect to public delinquents or offenders I will not say the same; though I should be slow to meddle even with these. This is a rule which I have laid down to myself, and shall rigidly adhere to.3

Despite these expressions of antipathy toward the genre, Wordsworth actually gave in to the satiric urge at several points during his career. From his early imitation of Juvenal’s eighth satire, to his attack on industrialisation in Book 7 of The Prelude, to his 1821 epigrams on Byron’s Cain, Wordsworth wrote a number of satirical pieces, some political, others personal. The poem included here, ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’, was written in Germany during 1798–99 and first published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. From the beginning, the poem has tended to puzzle readers, many of whom have found its satire awkward or, worse, ‘un-Wordsworthian’. Charles Lamb, for instance, upon first reading the 1800 Lyrical Ballads, told Wordsworth that every­ thing in the volume was ‘eminently good’ except ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’, which he 90

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-14

Wordsworth (‘A Poet’s Epitaph’)

deemed ‘disfigured, to my taste by the vulgar satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of pin point in the 6th stanza’.4 Many subsequent critics have concurred, dubbing the poem ‘an unsuccessful essay in sarcasm’, a ‘strained effort at public satire’, and generally incompatible with the rest of the Lyrical Ballads.5 Undoubtedly, part of the problem readers have had with ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ is that in many ways it seems incongruous with the Wordsworth we have come to expect. Growing used to the image of Wordsworth writing satire is difficult enough; but equally as jarring is the idea of Wordsworth consciously imitating other poets, as he clearly does here. Not only does the poem derive its tone and structure from Burns’s ‘A Bard’s Epitaph’ and Theocritus’s nineteenth epigram,6 but it also borrows heavily from Thomas Gray, the writer whose ‘poetic diction’ Wordsworth famously scorns in his preface to the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. The rustic youth in the final six stanzas of ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ is instantly recognisable from Gray’s ‘Graveyard’ elegy, where another ‘youth to fortune and fame unknown’ roves the countryside, listening to nature and muttering his ‘wayward fancies’. While it is debatable whether Wordsworth ultimately finds his own voice in a poem so heavily indebted to others, ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ remains interesting for sev­ eral reasons. In the first place, the phrasing and imagery in the poem are quite remarkable throughout. Wordsworth dubs the scientist a ‘fingering slave’ wrapped in ‘sensual fleece’, labels the moral philosopher an ‘intellectual All in All’ with a ‘smooth-rubb’d soul’, and invites the rustic youth to ‘stretch thy body at full length; / Or build thy house upon this grave’. The poem also provides insights into Words­ worth’s antipathy toward natural science and his oppositionist streak, which, given the poem’s blunt rejections of the statesman, lawyer, clergyman, and soldier, seems to have been very much alive in 1800. Most recently, scholars have noted how, con­ trary to convention, the poem’s epitaph says nothing about the deceased. Instead, it focuses exclusively upon readers, and thus functions as something of a reading les­ son. As Susan Edwards Meisenhelder has suggested, the epitaph teaches us that ‘without experience in human love, the selfless attachment to a living human being, no reader can achieve the extension of spirit necessary to enliven the dead physical text’.7 This ability to exercise selfless love and cultivate feeling for the deceased is what separates the men of power and education who are banished from the gravesite from the humble rustic who is invited to make a home of the poet’s grave.]

1 Stephen M. Parrish, ‘Wordsworth as Satirist of His Age’, in The Age of William Wordsworth, eds Kenneth R. Johnston and Gene W. Ruoff, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1987, p. 21. See also Steven E. Jones’s discsussion of Wordsworth as ‘counter-satirist’ in chapter 1 of Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2000. 2 William Wordsworth, Selected Prose, ed. John O. Hayden, New York, Penguin, 1988, p. 374. 3 The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd edn, 8 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1967, vol. 2, p. 89. Wrangham was an old friend of Wordsworth, with 91

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

4 5

6

7

whom he had collaborated on an imitation of Juvenal’s eighth satire in the mid-1790s. This letter was occasioned by Wrangham’s request for permission to publish Words­ worth’s early satirical works. Not altogether surprisingly, Wordsworth denied permission and requested that copies of his satirical verses be destroyed. Lamb to Wordsworth, 30 January 1801. In The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 3 vols, New York, AMS Press, 1968, vol. 1, p. 239. Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography, 2 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1957, vol. 1, p. 429; Willard Spiegelman, Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 33. One critic who resists this trend of dis­ paraging ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ is Parrish, who sees in the poem evidence that Wordsworth could have been ‘a major satiric voice, had he chosen to allow that to happen’ (‘Words­ worth as Satirist’, p. 24). Theocritus’s nineteenth epigram reads, ‘Here lies the poet Hipponax! If thou art a sinner draw not near this tomb, but if thou art a true man, and the son of righteous sires, sit boldly down here, yea, and sleep if thou wilt’. Susan Edwards Meisenhelder, Wordsworth’s Informed Reader, Nashville, Vanderbilt Univer­ sity Press, 1988, p. 232. See also Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1991, pp. 387–91.

92

Art thou a Statesman, in the van Of public business train’d and bred, —First learn to love one living man; Then may’st thou think upon the dead.

1

A Lawyer art thou?—draw not nigh; Go, carry to some other place The hardness of thy coward eye, The falshood of thy sallow face. Art thou a man of purple cheer?1 A rosy man, right plump to see? Approach; yet Doctor, not too near: This grave no cushion is for thee.

10

Art thou a man of gallant pride, A Soldier, and no man of chaff ?2 Welcome!—but lay thy sword aside, And lean upon a Peasant’s staff. Physician3 art thou? One, all eyes, Philosopher! a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave?

20

Wrapp’d closely in thy sensual fleece O turn aside, and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy pin-point of a soul4 away! —A Moralist5 perchance appears; Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod: And He has neither eyes nor ears; Himself his world, and his own God; One to whose smooth-rubb’d soul can cling Nor form nor feeling great nor small, A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All in All! Shut close the door! press down the latch:6 Sleep in thy intellectual crust, 93

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch, Near this unprofitable dust. But who is He with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown?7 He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.

40

He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noonday grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. The outward shews of sky and earth, Of hill and valley he has view’d; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude. In common things that round us lie Some random truths he can impart The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

50

But he is weak, both man and boy, Hath been an idler in the land; Contented if he might enjoy The things which others understand. —Come hither in thy hour of strength, Come, weak as is a breaking wave! Here stretch thy body at full length; Or build thy house upon this grave.—

94

60

ANNA DODSWORTH

‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq. On a Noble Captain’s Declaring that his Finger was Broken by a Gate’ (1802) ‘Badinage. On Recovering from a Bad Fit of Sickness at Bath’ (1802) [First published in Fugitive Pieces, Canterbury, Simmons and Kirkby, 1802, pp. 18–19, 62–65. Prior to her death in the early years of the nineteenth century, Anna Dodsworth (née Barrell) requested that the poems she had been writing for friends and family members over the past five decades be printed posthumously by subscription, with any profits going to a local hospital. After her funeral, however, Dodsworth’s family reviewed the poems and decided it would be more appropriate to print them pri­ vately for only her close friends and relations. As Frank Dodsworth, the poet’s husband of forty-three years, explains in the preface, ‘Upon examination, the sub­ jects appeared not likely to engage the attention of the publick, and the POEMS themselves seemed in too unfinished a state to brave criticism’. Accordingly, in 1802 the Canterbury printers Simmons and Kirkby produced at the family’s behest a pri­ vate edition of thirty-eight Dodsworth poems entitled Fugitive Pieces.1 To some extent, the decision to forego large-scale publication is understandable, since indeed the bulk of the poems in the collection focus on the comings and goings of those in Dodsworth’s rather confined social circle. There are several verse love letters to her husband, occasional poems on the marriages and birthdays of loved ones, and elegies to departed friends and relatives. Yet, for all their attention to inside jokes, family traditions, and personal relationships, many of the poems transcend the close-knit world of Dodsworth and her friends and offer humorous and often cutting insights on society as a whole. In fact, in several respects, Dods­ worth seems an ideal verse companion to Jane Austen, as the two writers share both a common subject (the lifestyles of the rural gentry in Hanoverian England) and an ability to capture the pretentiousness, shallowness, and all-around folly of their social class. The two poems included in this edition show Dodsworth at her satirical best. The first poem, ‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq.’, belongs to a series of verse epistles she wrote to a group of her male friends and family members who were off to the 95

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-15

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Western Islands of Scotland on a hunting and fishing expedition. Matthew Dods­ worth was her brother-in-law, but the poem focuses not on him, but on the actions of one of their mutual friends, ‘Sandy the captain’. Apparently Sandy was travelling with Matthew at the time, and the purpose of the letter is to playfully inform the captain that the true cause of his broken finger had become common knowledge back home. However amusing Dodsworth’s poem may be, what is perhaps most striking about it is how few signs she shows of being scandalized over the forceful advances Sandy had made toward her kitchen-maid. Chronicling an incident that to modern sensibilities seems a fairly clear-cut case of sexual assault, Dodsworth treats the whole affair as something of a lark, ultimately dismissing the captain’s amorous advances as little more than a benign case of interclass flirtation. Thanks to Dods­ worth’s whimsical tone, Sandy – the drunken, gun-wielding officer who attempts to force himself upon an innocent serving maid – comes across as more the loveable rake than a sexual predator who has violated the Dodsworth family’s goodwill. The second poem reprinted here, ‘Badinage’, focuses on a different type of pred­ atory behaviour, the vulturous advances of single women toward a soon-to-be­ widowed gentleman. Alternating between bemusement and disgust, Dodsworth recounts how the ‘maidens and widows’ of Bath reacted to news of her serious ill­ ness by jockeying for position in the race to be the next Mrs Dodsworth. While refusing to name names of the offending women, Dodsworth is not above revealing their identities through implied rhyme (e.g. ‘Mrs. H—–’ becomes Holt when rhymed with ‘jolt’, and ‘N——’ becomes ‘Nell’ when rhymed with ‘well’). At the same time, however, she is careful to protect her husband’s good name. As is the case through­ out Fugitive Verses, Mr Dodsworth comes off as the model of gentility and—as the women of Bath would surely agree—the most desirable husband in England.]

1 To my knowledge, Dodsworth’s life has yet to be thoroughly researched. Jennifer Breen reprints ‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq.’ in the Everyman anthology of Women Romantic Poets, 1785–1832, London, J. M. Dent, 1992, but only provides a few lines of biography. Some basic facts about Dodsworth can be gleaned from Fugitive Pieces. Knowing that she died shortly before the 1802 publication of her poems and that she had been married for forty-three years at the time (something that is revealed in her husband’s preface), we can date her wedding to the late 1750s. One poem in the collection eulogizes her only brother, who died in 1755 at age 17. Given her late 1750s wedding date and her brother’s 1738 birth date, we can assume that Dodsworth was also born sometime in the late 1730s or early 1740s. We also learn in the poems that she was the daughter of Francis Barrell, Esq. While she was apparently quite involved in the lives of her nieces and nephews (to whom she addresses various poems), there is no indication she had any children of her own.

96

TO MATTHEW DODSWORTH, E SQ . ON

A NOBLE

CAPTAIN’ S DECLARING THAT HIS FINGER WAS BROKEN BY A GATE.

THE tale which I send, will, I’m sure, hit your fancy, Of SANDY the captain, and kitchen-maid NANCY; The youth, by friend Colin’s good liquor made gay, Met the damsel, and brimful1 of frolick and play, He romp’d with, and kiss’d her, and tho’ he’d his gun, In vain the poor lassie attempted to run; She pouted and scolded, and lik’d not the joke, And at last, in the struggle, his finger she broke. Ah! who, my dear brother, would ever believe, That a swain with a look so demure could deceive? We ladies, kind creatures, devoid of suspicion, Were each very ready to play the physician; By Mackay,2 his sore finger in spirits was laid, And a bag,3 by my orders, was carefully made. For it neither by one, nor the other was thought That with NANCY, instead of a gate, he had fought. But now the poor maiden has told us the truth, As we cannot ourselves have a laugh at the youth; We intreat that from us, you the hero would tell, In his frolicks he ne’er should forget to bribe well; For had but his kisses been season’d with gold, How he got his lame finger—had never been told.

97

1

10

20

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

BADINAGE 4 ON

RECOVERING FROM A BAD J ULY ,

FIT OF SICKNESS 1794.

AT

BATH,

WHEN I first went to BATH it was thought I should die; So the maidens and widows determin’d to try, To console my poor husband, should that be the case, By shewing he soon might get one in my place; And as nothing had made me so loth to quit life, As knowing how truly he’d miss his old wife, I was pleas’d to behold them exert all their wit, The friendship of good Mr. DODSWORTH to get. The first who began was my friend Mrs. H——, Who desir’d, when I was not dispos’d for a jolt, She in landaulet5 open might sit by his side, As of all men with him she delighted to ride: So up hill and down hill they trotted together, In spite of the dust and the heat of the weather. The pleasing, polite, and the gay widow N——, His equipage prais’d, and thought no one drove so well; And though up the hills she quite trembled to go, If he’d take her no symptoms of fear would she shew; But would strive all she could to enliven his mind, And make him forget, he’d a sick wife confin’d. A lady, who oft had been civil before, Was quite griev’d to behold me afflicted so sore; And though I declar’d that I nothing could eat, Insisted we’d come and partake of her meat; She’d give me a chick—Mr. D. beef and wine, Whenever we’d do her the favour to dine; Her ladyship’s meaning I plainly could see, Was, if Death that grim tyrant should seize upon me, For herself or her daughter to gain Mr. D. Mrs. T——, whose charms he in youth had oft sung, And who thought she’d a chance to obtain him when young, As he came to her brother’s by night and by day, And seem’d happy with her to laugh, prattle and play, Was in hopes, though at that time her art had prov’d vain, As a partner for life the dear man to obtain, If wise heaven decreed, I from earth should depart, That the love he once felt might revive in his heart: So she came ev’ry day, with a ‘How do you do?’ 98

1

10

20

30

Dodsworth (‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq.’, ‘Badinage’)

And flatter’d herself that her hopes would prove true. Mrs. G—— pronounc’d Mr. D. a good man, And her sisters, dear creatures! adopted her plan; They protested they thought him of husbands the best, And that I was a wife, of all wives the most blest. If of parting the pangs I was doom’d to endure, As they’d all make good mates I was perfectly sure, I felt I could die quite contented indeed, Were I certain that one to my place would succeed. The way which they took to accomplish their end, Was by earnestly begging a Doctor to send; To this I unwillingly gave my consent, So themselves they must blame if the deed they repent: For instead of destroying, (strange is it to tell) The doctor at once made me hearty and well; And my husband, God bless and preserve his dear life! Is, I know, so attach’d to his queer, odd, old wife, That so long as I live, I can ne’er be afraid, Of his being caress’d by wife, widow, or maid.

99

40

50

Figure 4: Gillray, ‘Doctor Sangrado Curing John Bull of Repletion’ (1803) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henr y G. Bohn, 1851, plate 274.

Figure 5: Gillray, ‘Physical Aid’ (1803) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plate 275.

GEORGE CANNING

‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’ (1803)

[‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’ first published in the Daily Advertiser and Oracle, 28 April 1803, p. 2. For the modern reader, George Canning’s (1770–1827; DNB) spoofs on ‘Doctor’ Henry Addington, Britain’s Prime Minister from 1801–04, can be rather difficult going. As the superabundance of endnotes below suggests, Canning is dealing with political figures and events that have long since passed from the realm of common knowledge. Such highly topical satire rarely holds up over time; in this case, how­ ever, it is still possible, if possessed with a basic understanding of the text’s background, to not only appreciate its humour, but also to gain through it some sense of the complexity of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century party politics in Britain. Canning held the double distinction of being both one of the great statesmen of his age and one of its best-known satirists. After excelling at Eton and Oxford, in his early twenties he fell under the spell of Pitt the Younger, who converted him to Tory politics and secured for him a seat in the House of Commons. Inspired as well by Edmund Burke’s rhetoric of tradition and order, Canning became one of Eng­ land’s foremost critics of republicanism, eventually collaborating with a group of friends and Tory allies in 1797 and 1798 to found the Anti-Jacobin, one of the most brilliant venues for conservative satire of the French Revolutionary era.1 By the time he turned thirty in 1800, Canning was Pitt’s head of the India Board and one of the rising stars of the Tory party. This meteoric ascent to power came to an abrupt halt, however, in 1801, when Pitt resigned as Prime Minister to protest George III’s refusal to consider Catholic Emancipation. As Pitt’s protégé and himself a vocal proponent of Catholic relief, Canning felt duty-bound to proffer his resignation as well. However noble such a step may have been, in the months that followed Canning grew increasingly bitter over having been forced to leave office. Soon he began lashing out at those mem­ bers of his party who, in his opinion, had usurped his and Pitt’s rightful places at the head of the government.2 The direct target of most of these attacks was Henry Addington (1757–1844; DNB), the mild-mannered, largely unremarkable new prime minister. For years, 102

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-16

Canning (‘Ambubaiarum Collegia’)

Canning and his elitist friends had privately mocked Addington’s middle-class upbringing as the son of a country physician, regularly referring to him in their cor­ respondence as ‘the Doctor’ or ‘Dr A’.3 In the wake of Pitt’s resignation, Canning determined that the best way to restore his mentor (and, by extension, himself) to power was by so thoroughly discrediting the Addington administration that the king would be forced to grovel for Pitt’s return. In early 1802, then, Canning and his friends – the most prominent of whom was James Gillray, the age’s leading political cartoonist – began publicly lampooning Addington and his cabinet. Seizing particu­ larly on Addington’s appointment of several relatives – including his sixteen-year­ old son – to lucrative government posts, the Canning circle produced a series of poems and prints accusing ‘Doctor Addington’ of bleeding the country dry. Taking the metaphor a step further, Gillray frequently depicted Addington with clyster in hand, preparing to perform an enema on John Bull or some other symbol of the state (see Figures 4 and 5).4 To complement Gillray’s images, Canning penned a series of burlesques on ‘Doc­ tor Addington’ for the Daily Advertiser and Oracle. First appearing in March 1803, these spoofs pounced on the Prime Minister’s every false move, casting him as a longwinded, mindless oaf whose only supporters were relatives he had put into office. Even after Addington’s May 1804 resignation, Canning refused to let up, publishing mock eulogies on the fallen administration, advertisements of yard sales at Downing Street, and prognostications of what the ‘Doctor’ would cover in his valedictory address. The poem printed below, ‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’,5 ranks among Canning’s most vicious attacks on Addington’s government. Written as part of the first wave of lampoons on the prime minister, Canning’s poem characterises the ‘Doctor’ and his cronies as political quacks, who, like their brethren in the patent medicine trade and other branches of charlatanry, are more likely to kill their patients than heal them. Sounding in places more like an ardent Whig than a fellow Tory, Canning warns that Addington’s ministry of mountebanks has opened the door for the seemingly imminent invasion of Napoleon and his troops. While he should be working to deter the French invasion, ‘Doctor Addington’ is too busy arranging sinecures for his family and friends to pay heed to the nation’s ailing state. Viewed collectively, Canning’s poems and Gillray’s prints provide an interesting window into the intra-party politics of the early nineteenth century. Beyond this, they remind us that during this era satire was not exclusively the domain of the dis­ enfranchised, as it could be used just as effectively within the ruling classes as against them. Ultimately, Canning’s smear campaign worked, helping to effect not only Addington’s resignation, but the reinstallation of Pitt as Prime Minister and his own promotion to the Secretaryship of the Navy. While a year later Addington would become Viscount Sidmouth, for decades to come he would be known throughout Britain simply as ‘the Doctor’ (see Figure 6).6]

103

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 1 See Graeme Stones’s recent edition of The Anti-Jacobin, which is volume 1 of Parodies of the Romantic Age, London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999. 2 For a detailed history of Canning’s opposition to the Addington ministry, see Peter Dixon, Canning, Politician and Statesman, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976, pp. 67– 81. 3 See, for instance, John Sneyd’s 28 December 1797 letter to James Gillray in George Canning and His Friends, ed. Josceline Bagot, 2 vols, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1909, vol. 1, p. 139. 4 William H. Helfand gives a thorough overview of these prints in ‘Medicine and Pharmacy in British Political Prints—The Example of Lord Sidmouth’, Medical History, 29 (1985), pp. 375–85. 5 In later editions this poem was titled ‘The Grand Consultation’, alluding to Napoleon’s status as the ‘Grand Consul’ of France. 6 Helfand’s article reproduces several cartoons on ‘Doctor’ Sidmouth, including William Hone’s Canning-inspired parody from The Man in the Moon (1820).

104

‘A MBUBAIARUM C OLLEGIA, P HARMOCOPOLÆ’ H OR. S AT . 2. LLS I.1 If the health and the strength, and the pure vital breath, Of Old England, at last, must be doctor’d to death, Oh! why must we die of one Doctor alone? And why must that doctor be just such a one As Doctor H ENRY A DDINGTON ? Oh! where is the great Doctor D OMINICETI ,2 With his Stews,3 and his Flues,4 and his Vapours to sweat ye? Oh! where is that Prince of all Mountebank Fame, With his Baths of hot earth, and his Beds of hot name— Oh! where is Doctor G RAHAM ?5

1

10

Where are Sonmambulé M ESMERS ’ Convulsions Magnetic?6 Where is MEYRESBACH, renowned for his skill diuretic?7 Where is PERKINS, with Tractors of magical skill?8 Where’s the Anodyne Necklace of B ASIL B URCHELL ?9 Oh! where is the great V AN B UTCHELL ?10 While S AM S OLOMON’s Lotion the public absterges,11 * He gives them his gold, as well as his purges;12 But our frugal Doctor, this practice to shun, Gives his Pills to the PUBLIC, the Pells to his S ON !13 Oh! fie! fie! Doctor A DDINGTON ! Oh! Where is Doctor S OLOMON ?

20

Where are all the Doctors, no longer we want This farrago14 of cowardice, courage, and cant; These braggarts! that one moment know not what fear is, And the next moment, trembling, no longer know where is Lord H AWKESBURY ’s March to Paris!15 Then for HOBART ,16 and S ULLIVAN ,17 HAWKEY,18 and H ARVEY—19 For W ALLACE20 and CASTLEREAGH ,21 Y ORKE22 and G LENBERVIE—23 For S ERJEANT ,24 V ANSITTART ,25 and M ARKHAM 26 and S HEE—27 * Vide in Daily Papers, Doctor S OLOMON’s Charitable Subscriptions and Abstringent Lotions.

105

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Give us V ELNO 28 and A NDERSON ,29 L EAKE,30 SPILSBURY —31 Doctor B ALL ,32 Doctors B RODUM 33 and B REE.34

30

So shall G OLDING35 and B OND ,36 the Doctor’s tall yeomen, Dame H ILEY,37 Dame B RAGGE,38 and the other old women, For new Mountebanks changed, their old tricks bid farewell to, And the fam’d Doctor B EEKE 39 his Arithmetic sell to That wonderful wonder, the great KATTERFELTO!40 So shall England, escap’d from her safe Politicians, Such an Army array of her Quacks and Physicians— Such Lotions and Potions, Pills, Lancets, and Leeches, That M ASSENA41 shall tremble, our coast when he reaches And the C ONSUL42 himself p— his breeches.

106

40

Figure 6: Cruikshank/Hone, ‘The Doctor’ from Man in the Moon (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, The Man in the Moon, London, W. Hone, 1820, p. 20–21.

Figure 7: Gillray, ‘The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver’ (1803) Source: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1851, plate 286.

ANON.

Advertisement for ‘A Farce in One Act, Called THE INVASION OF ENGLAND’ (1804) [First published in the Anti-Gallican; or Standard of British Loyalty, Religion and Liberty, no. 1, London, Vernor and Hood, 1804, p. 16. With the brief exception of the Peace of Amiens (March 1802 to May 1803), between 1796 and 1805 the British faced the near constant threat of invasion by Napoleon’s armies. In 1796, bad weather foiled a French attempt to invade Ireland; a year later, a French expeditionary force landed in Wales and Napoleon amassed a huge army within sight of the British coast; and in 1798 French troops unsuccess­ fully tried to unite with Irish Catholics in a war against the British. As harrowing as this first wave of assaults may have been, five years later the nation experienced an even greater level of hysteria over Napoleon’s seemingly imminent arrival on British soil. Between 1803 and 1805, Napoleon devoted most of his energies to devising a strategy to conquer Britain, and, once again, he assembled a massive invasion force in Normandy, where he awaited the right moment to strike. This moment, of course, never came. Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that the ‘French invasion’ of 1803–05 ranks as one of the most consequential non-events of British history. As Linda Colley has shown, the Francophobia that spread through­ out the kingdom during these years led to unprecedented levels of British nationalism, with Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and English subjects of the crown forging a shared national identity through their hatred of ‘Boney’ and all things French.1 Heading the jingoist charge was the reactionary press, which rallied Britons to the support of their nation by reviving images of a swaggering John Bull and a tyranni­ cal pope who salivated at the prospect of crushing British Protestantism. As its title makes plain, the Anti-Gallican; or Standard of British Loyalty, Religion and Liberty ranked among the more virulently Francophobic periodicals of the time. During its short run of twelve issues, all of which were published in 1804, the AntiGallican made available a wide array of original and previously published tracts, speeches, poems, and songs dealing with the threatened invasion. One of its wittiest selections is a mock broadside purporting to advertise a ‘Farce in One Act, Called THE INVASION OF ENGLAND’. What is most remarkable here is how skilfully 109

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-18

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

this ‘advertisement’ appropriates for a reactionary cause what had previously been a favourite form of radical satire. While there are certainly original moments in the Anti-Gallican pasquinade, it essentially takes the radical broadside of the mid-1790s and substitutes Napoleon’s name for Pitt’s.2 One assumes, of course, that faced with the prospect of French soldiers overrunning British towns, the satirist here cared lit­ tle whether his attack on Napoleon might be construed as implicitly paying tribute to the radical satire of years past. At the same time, however, the obvious debt ‘The Invasion of England’ owes to earlier spoofs such as the ‘Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ broadsides (see pp. 56–67 above) suggests that, a decade after the fact, the principal forms of mid-1790s radical satire had entered into the mainstream of British popu­ lar culture.]

1 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, New Haven and London, Yale Univer­ sity Press, 1992, pp. 25, 305–06. 2 See John Barrell’s excellent collection, Exhibition Extraordinary!!: Radical Broadsides of the Mid 1790s, Nottingham, Trent editions, 2001.

110

THEATRE-ROYAL, ENGLAND. In Rehearsal, and meant to be speedily attempted, A FARCE IN ONE ACT, CALLED

THE INVASION OF ENGLAND. Principal Buffo,1 M. BONAPARTE: Being his FIRST (and most likely his Last) Appearance on this Stage.

ANTICIPATED CRITIQUE. THE Structure of this Farce is very loose, and there is moral and radical Defect in the Ground-Work. It boasts however considerable Novelty, for the Characters are ALL MAD. It is probable that it will not be played in the COUNTRY, but will cer­ tainly never be acted in TOWN; whereever it may be represented, we will do it the Justice to say, it will be received with loud and reiterated bursts of——CANNON ! ! ! but we will venture to affirm, will never have the Success of

J O H N BU L L .

2

It is however likely that the Piece may yet be put off on account of the INDIS­ POSITION of the PRINCIPAL PERFORMER, Mr. BONAPARTE. We don’t know exactly what this Gentleman’s Merits may be on the Tragic Boards of France, but he will never succeed here; his Figure is very Diminutive, he Struts a great deal, seems to have no conception of his Character, and treads the Stage very badly; not­ withstanding which Defects, we think if he comes here, he will get an ENGAGEMENT, though it is probable that he will shortly after be reduced to the Situation of a SCENE-SHIFTER. As for the Farce, we recommend the Whole to be Cut down, as it is the Opinion of all good Critics, that it will certainly be

DAM N ’D. Vivant Rex & Regina.3 111

ANON.

‘An Ensorian Essay on Something, Meaning Any Thing, and Proving Nothing’ (1812) [First published in the Scourge, III, 1 March 1812, pp. 183–88. Appearing in 1812 in the satirical monthly the Scourge, ‘An Ensorian Essay on Something’ demonstrates that ours is hardly the first age when satirists have levelled their sights at the stuffy and pedantic prose of academia. In fact, the satirical undressing the Scourge gives George Ensor (1769–1843; DNB) makes most contem­ porary parodies of academic discourse seem relatively restrained. Only a year old in 1812, the Scourge generally positioned itself as a Whig alternative to the Tory Satirist. Despite these leanings, however, its contributors often crossed party lines when selecting subjects for their attacks. Any given issue might include send-ups on public figures as diverse as Castlereagh and Cobbett, Pitt and Hunt, and Southey and Byron.1 If any unifying principle can be found in the satires of the Scourge, it is a strong distaste for anyone or anything that might potentially corrupt English morals. Ostensibly, George Ensor fell into this category.2 In the eyes of the Scourge, Ensor’s crimes against society were twofold. First, the radical vision he laid out in his 1811 treatise On National Education posed a threat to the most basic moral institutions of English society. Central to Ensor’s argument was the notion that the greatest obs­ tacle to educational reform in England was the Church, which had a vested interest in keeping the people ignorant and submissive. Ensor went on to question such basic tenets of orthodox Christianity as the existence of hell, arguing that ‘the inven­ tion of hell was surely the master-piece of these subtle impostors’ running the Church.3 For the editors of the Scourge, such arguments were tantamount to heresy, and, hence, much of the spleen in the ‘Ensorian Essay’ is intended to make the author of these views appear ridiculous. As rendered by the Scourge, Ensor comes off as an arrogant, insolent sophist who is at once lewd, crass, and blasphemous. Ensor’s second great offence, and the source of much of this piece’s satirical humour, is his thoroughgoing pretentiousness. The Scourge was not the first to dis­ parage Ensor’s ostentatiously polyglot, name-dropping style of writing. Just three months earlier, in a review of On National Education, the Quarterly had deemed 112

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-17

Anon. (‘An Ensorian Essay’)

Ensor’s book essentially harmless, since it featured a ‘pedantry so excessive and ridiculous as to surpass all that was ever yet exhibited to mankind of that folly’. The reviewer adds, ‘Every character, we will venture to say, which the fancy of the satirist or caricaturist has endeavoured to pourtray, falls far short of this one authentic spec­ imen of real life’.4 Despite this prior suggestion that Ensor’s was essentially a self-satirizing brand of prose, the Scourge couldn’t resist the temptation to parody it. Perhaps the most brilliant aspect of the satire in the Scourge’s ‘Ensorian Essay’ is its use of Greek. Highlighting Ensor’s propensity for peppering his writing with untranslated Greek quotations, the author of the Scourge piece inserts several Greek passages into the text. Upon closer examination, however, the ‘Greek’ in the ‘Ensorian Essay’ is noth­ ing more than English words transliterated into Greek characters. Beyond this, the transliteration is generally reckless, inconsistently using capitals and employing a variety of Greek letters over the course of the essay to make the same English sound.5 Quite clearly, the implication is that, for all his pedantry, Ensor is a fraud who masquerades as an erudite classicist but, in reality, possesses the learning of the average schoolboy. In the end, Ensor’s densely worded, highly allusive prose seems little more than a desperate attempt to mask his own ignorance. Having excoriated both the lack of virtue and learning in On National Education, the ‘Ensorian Essay’ ends on a cautionary note to all the would-be Ensors of the educated world: ‘To say what has never been said before, is an easy task to the writer who espouses opinions because of their absurdity; to shock the feelings of the devout, requires no qualities more exalted than impiety and impudence’.]

1 See Nathaniel Teich’s entry on the Scourge in British Literary Magazines: The Romantic Age, 1789–1836, ed. Alvin Sullivan, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 1983, pp. 388–91. 2 Although he was prominent enough in the early nineteenth century to elicit the attacks of the Scourge and other periodicals, Ensor has been all but forgotten by history. The brief entry on him in the Dictionary of National Biography is the most detailed chronicle of his life I have been able to locate. 3 George Ensor, On National Education, London, Longman, 1811, p. 243. 4 Review of On National Education, Quarterly Review, VI, December 1811, p. 421. 5 I am indebted to my colleague John Talbot for pointing out the phony Greek in this essay and helping me ‘translate’ it into English.

113

WHEN the great Chrononhotonthologos (see that play written by Fielding) was missing, Aldiborontiphoscophormio, was asked where he might be found. Why this enquiry was made, the reader may discover by refering to Athenæus: it argues that I have a right to make a similar enquiry respecting truth, as Archimedes cried Eureka in the time of Hiero, King of Syracuse. Does the reader wish to know more of kings; I will refer him to the memoirs of πιππιν;1 or does he feel any curiosity respecting queens, let him look at τοµ θυµ Q. A. φηλδινγ;2 ∆ολαλα loquitur.3 Queens indeed are usually queans,4 a proof that in our language there is yet great need of a synonymical dictionary. On the subject of queans I recollect a curious passage in Suidas too long to be quoted. Macrobius says something of a similar nature, but Philoxenus apud Stobaeum is of a different opinion. After this argument it would be a waste of time to contend with the bigots who believe in hell—a place that may be proved by the accounts of the Siamese, to have no existence but in vulgar superstition. Would you wish to learn what the ancients thought of this, refer to Diogen. Laert. or that admi­ rable work, the theme of my constant meditation, Ramanha, written by one of the scribes of Sandracottus, who clearly shews that hell is a corruption of Bel the Dragon, a fit prototype for our Dr. Bell,5 whose impudence astonishes me and the nation, and makes him a fit companion for the Belzebub of the priests. These things smell of the filth out of which they come. Is it your desire to know what I think of such idioms, I shall say in the words of a sublime poet, Θη µωρ Υ κρι Θη λες Υ ΠΙΣ.6

A profound and philosophical observation, displaying an accurate acquaintance with phisiology, not to mention phiz-iology, and betokening an investigation into causes and effects. Not less dangerous, however, on that account to the craft of the priests, and those subtle impostors the bishops and guardians of our church, who should never think of a jordan7 without shame for those predecessors in church juggling8 of ancient time, who persuaded the poor Jews to leave the streets of Jeri­ cho to be drowned in the river. The great Popius indeed calls them Λαις οφ θη Χυρχ;9

but they are in fact ΠΡΗΣΤΣ10 or in still more expressive terms ΡΩΓΣ:11 men who have no objection, bibere as well as mingere,12 and who are never at a loss to think if they do not actually exclaim, Ιφ αι ‘αδ α γυδ συχ αι κυδ ταακ ιτ νου.13

Is there any piety in the clergy? If you are anxious to know, look to the history of Dr. Dodd;14 was he not executed for forgery? a crime which he merely learned from his predecessors, who had practiced it from time immemorial, and given their blun­ 114

Anon. (‘An Ensorian Essay’)

dering forgeries—forgeries that the meanest apprehensions could detect to the world, under the name of the scriptures: are you desirous to know of their sobriety? Does not the Vicar and Moses fully describe their pretensions to that virtue; Was there not great debauchery practised by the ancient priests? as some one relates in a certain passage, though I recollect that his contemporary seemed to suppose that his descriptions were exaggerated, while his commentator boldly supports them. Who has not heard of Ann Brownrigg15 and Dr. Faustus (Annal. Germ. Curios. Ch. 1. Page 976), and John Kemble?16 than whom no stronger proofs can be afforded of the abominable tendency of the christian religion. Did not the first whip her appren­ tices to death; evidently hoping that they would go to heaven, an idea that would never have occurred to her, had it not been for the shocking falsehoods of the chris­ tian priests; nor would Dr. Faustus have preyed on the credulity of the poor Dutchman, but for the notion of a devil; nor Mr. Kemble been called Black Jack, but for some supposed resemblance to Old Nick. As for what the learned have thought of education, there are many ingenious though false maxims contained in the following collectanea, which I have brought together with great industry and research. Ωυαι ισ γοτ ωρ θε ∆εφιλς βακ ισ ςπεντ υνδερ ‘ισ βελε. Κηω ευρ ανδς φροµ πικιγγ ανδ ςτηλιγγ.17

But is it not plain, that if you teach a boy to be honest in early youth, he is honest merely because he has imbibed certain prejudices, and been accustomed to certain actions? There can be no merit in abstaining from theft, if abstinence be involun­ tary. I am therefore of opinion, that to instil any description of morality into the youthful mind is in the highest degree improper and injudicious. Let our youth be left to themselves, and when they grow up their errors are their own, and if they act rightly no one can detract from their merit, by saying that their goodness was invol­ untary. Besides, how can the parent know whether the principles that he instils into his son, if he does instil any, be correct? Have not philosophers of all ages been dis­ puting about virtue, and are not their disputes still undetermined? To avoid doing wrong the safest way is to do nothing. In Otaheite (and why are not the Otaheitans as wise as we?) chastity is considered as a disgrace: among the Spartans (pity that the morals of antiquity are not more duly studied!) theft was regarded as a virtue; and why is not the opinion of that great people, as consistent with the nature of things, and the laws of immutable truth as our own? But I am weary of contention with stupidity: so was Cicero, as may be seen in his writings; but when men pretend to speak of what they have never seen, as things existing: when they tell us of a place called India, and this India containing elephants, and these elephants carrying castles on their backs; and that this India was conquered by Alexander, and that we puny and foolish Eng­ lishmen have actually obtained the empire once governed by the Macedonian: and when they talk of palanquins,18 and not only of palanquins, but of palanquins con­ taining Europeans, and those Europeans carried in those palanquins, of these Europeans the same and at the same time snoring: and heavens and earth! such 115

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

things said of a place that possibly does not exist, and for our glory, is it not enough to make a philosopher mad, and when made to make him make himself ridiculous? P. _____ That the preceding essay of our ingenious correspondent is after an existing model, and does great credit to his imitative talents, our readers will demand no other proof than the following extracts from Ensor’s Essay on National Education. ‘Are kings and their ministers judges of the arts? Was Peter of Medici, who employed Michael Angelo in forming a statue of snow, or &c. &c. &c. or Louis the 14th, who asked the Duke de Louvois, mais a quoi sert de lire, or his minister Louvois, who piqued himself on never opening a book, for which of course he was praised, and particularly by La Bruyere, or Bute, who Cumberland says had a disposition to be a Maecenas, or Maecenas himself ? I suppose not, for on the authority of Seneca, Suetonius and Tacitus, we must repute him a most affected writer. Or to reascend from ministers to potentates, was Hadrian a judge or lover of the arts, or could he foster them? Yet he in fact originated our endowed colleges and academies. I say, he could not. ‘Are you a poet, and would you chuse Charles the Ninth, of France, for a patron. He said poets were to be fed, not fatted; or Dionysius of Syracuse: this man patron­ ized Philoxenus, who censured some of the king’s poetry, for which he was condemned to the quarries. Would you chuse a vice-roy for your patron, and be knighted with John Carr, &c. * * * * Would you have some private but opulent patri­ cian for your patron, as Calvicius, Sabrinius, &c. &c.’ Our correspondent appears in his concluding paragraph to have imitated a para­ graph in Mr. Ensor’s essay respecting devils; but the copy is far surpassed in ludicrous peculiarities by the original. Mr. Ensor is one of those men who dabble in every thing, without understanding any thing. He quotes Stobaeus, yet misconstrues the plainest passages of Homer, and speaks of Quinctilian19 in a page that contains about a dozen instances of ungrammatical construction. He comes forward as a teacher of philosophy, and dis­ plays the dogmatism of the pedant, without the learning of the scholar, or the subtlety of the humble logician: he mistakes a knowledge of names and titles for learning, and supposes that to be obscure is to be profound, and to be quaint is to be original. To say what has never been said before, is an easy task to the writer who espouses opinions because of their absurdity; to shock the feelings of the devout, requires no qualities more exalted than impiety and impudence. The rational and conscientious deist would for his own sake observe the most scrupulous delicacy to what he might consider as the prejudices of mankind: truth itself meets with reluc­ tant reception from the lips of a jester or a bully; the feelings of the community at large are not to be tamely exposed to laceration even by the conscientious enthusi­ asm of an individual who may possibly be right, but to whom even the certainty of being in the right gives no dominion over the sensations of his fellow creatures, and 116

Anon. (‘An Ensorian Essay’)

who, a priori must be regarded as a mistaken zealot. Were we to argue against Maho­ metanism in a Mahometan country, we should treat the prejudices of its adherents with respect, and should not venture to call in the alliance of ridicule, till truth had prepared the way for its reception; till it became a legitimate weapon in the hands of the majority, and those alone who defied its stroke, were insensible to its keenness.

117

ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD

Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem (1812)

[First published in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem, London, J. Johnson, 1812, pp. 1–25. ‘Our old acquaintance Mrs. Barbauld turned satirist! The last thing we should have expected, and now that we have seen her satire, the last thing that we could have desired’. So begins John Wilson Croker’s infamous attack on Barbauld’s Eighteen Hundred and Eleven in the June 1812 issue of the Quarterly Review. Croker was at least in part reacting to the perceived disparity between Barbauld’s dominant public ethos as one of Britain’s most cherished voices on children’s education and the ethos of radical Dissent she projects in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. What Croker fails to acknowledge, though, is that speaking out on political and social issues was hardly new to the famed ‘Mrs. Barbauld’ (1743–1825; DNB). In the forty-four years between her first publication, Corsica: An Ode (1768), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Barbauld had successfully shifted back and forth between didactic, largely apolitical books for children, such as Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) and the Lessons for Children series (1787–88), and pamphlets tackling Britain’s most pressing political and social issues, like her Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790) and her pro-abolitionist Epistle to William Wilberforce (1791). As becomes increasingly obvious as his review progresses, Croker’s disdain for Barbauld’s poem originates not so much from concerns over its literary merit as from two basic prejudices – his strong distaste for the poet’s politics and a deeply held conviction that women have no place participating in discussions of national affairs. In what are now the most frequently cited passages of Croker’s review, he first rants, ‘We had hoped, indeed, that the empire might have been saved without the intervention of a lady-author’, and then scoffs at the idea of Barbauld feeling ‘an irresistible impulse of public duty’ that ‘induced her to dash down her shagreen spectacles and her knitting needles, and to sally forth … in the magnanimous reso­ lution of saving a sinking state’.1 Much of what Croker resists in Eighteen Hundred and Eleven is Barbauld’s refusal to glorify the present war effort. Other than the brief peace of 1802–03, Britain had been constantly at war with France for nearly two decades by 1811. When Barbauld 118

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-19

Barbauld (Eighteen Hundred and Eleven)

picked up her pen, the prospects of Britain winning the war anytime soon looked particularly bleak. In recent years, Russia (1807), Spain (1808), and Austria (1809) had successively buckled under the might of Napoleon’s forces, and, with its econ­ omy in shambles from the prolonged war effort, it appeared increasingly likely at the beginning of the Regency that Britain would fall next.2 Living in London in 1811, then, and being subject to a seemingly endless stream of bad news from both home and abroad, it was only natural for Barbauld to adopt a eulogistic attitude toward European ascendancy and, more specifically, the future of the British Empire. The result is a poem that forcefully indicts European leaders whose pride and lust for war blinds them to both the present suffering of their people and the ultimate con­ sequences of the endgame they have entered. Barbauld resists the urge to wax apocalyptic, however, choosing instead to see the sunset of Britain’s golden age as part of history’s natural progression. As the poem vividly prophesies, what Britain once was, America shall be; and what Greece and Rome are, Britain shall become. Unlike most of the satire in this edition, Barbauld’s poem makes no attempt at humour. Accordingly, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven belongs not to the more popular early-nineteenth-century forms of laughing satire, but to the darker, more sombre side of the Juvenalian tradition. Barbauld’s most immediate models for this form would have been Johnson’s London and Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, the latter of which was an acknowledged favourite of the poet and seems to have particularly influenced the style and mood of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.3 Noting this, an unsympathetic reviewer in the Anti-Jacobin Review called the poem ‘a miserable trav­ estie of Goldsmith’.4 As Barbauld’s poem reminds us, however, time has a remarkable ability to change our perspective. Nearly two hundred years after being cast off as a lesser Goldsmith and a ‘lady author’ with limited understanding of national affairs, Barbauld has been at least in part vindicated. Not only does Eighteen Hundred and Eleven now have an eerily prophetic quality to it, but a growing number of critics are recognising it as one of the most powerful political satires of the early nineteenth century.]

1 John Wilson Croker, review of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Quarterly Review, 7, June 1812, p. 309. 2 For an excellent overview of the poem’s historical contexts, see William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft’s edition of The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1994, pp. 309–17. Several of my endnotes below are indebted to McCarthy and Kraft’s edition of the poem. 3 McCarthy and Kraft, p. 310. 4 Quoted in McCarthy and Kraft, p. 310.

119

STILL the loud death drum, thundering from afar, O’er the vext nations pours the storm of war: To the stern call still Britain bends her ear, Feeds the fierce strife, the alternate hope and fear; Bravely, though vainly, dares to strive with Fate, And seeks by turns to prop each sinking state. Colossal Power1 with overwhelming force Bears down each fort of Freedom in its course; Prostrate she lies beneath the Despot’s sway, While the hushed nations curse him—and obey. Bounteous in vain, with frantic man at strife, Glad Nature pours the means—the joys of life; In vain with orange blossoms scents the gale, The hills with olives clothes, with corn the vale; Man calls to Famine, nor invokes in vain, Disease and Rapine follow in her train; The tramp of marching hosts disturbs the plough, The sword, not sickle, reaps the harvest now, And where the Soldier gleans the scant supply, The helpless Peasant but retires to die; No laws his hut from licensed outrage shield, And war’s least horror is the ensanguined field. Fruitful in vain, the matron counts with pride The blooming youths that grace her honoured side; No son returns to press her widow’d hand, Her fallen blossoms strew a foreign strand. —Fruitful in vain, she boasts her virgin race, Whom cultured arts adorn and gentlest grace; Defrauded of its homage, Beauty mourns, And the rose withers on its virgin thorns. Frequent, some stream obscure, some uncouth name By deeds of blood is lifted into fame; Oft o’er the daily page some soft-one bends To learn the fate of husband, brothers, friends, Or the spread map with anxious eye explores, Its dotted boundaries and penciled shores,

120

1

10

20

30

Barbauld (Eighteen Hundred and Eleven)

Asks where the spot that wrecked her bliss is found, And learns its name but to detest the sound. And think’st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease, An island Queen amidst thy subject seas, While the vext billows, in their distant roar, But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore? To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof, Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof ? So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know, Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe. Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread, And whispered fears, creating what they dread; Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here, There, the heart-witherings of unuttered fear, And that sad death, whence most affection bleeds, Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes. Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away, Like mists that melt before the morning ray: No more on crowded mart or busy street Friends, meeting friends, with cheerful hurry greet; Sad, on the ground thy princely merchants bend Their altered looks, and evil days portend, And fold their arms, and watch with anxious breast The tempest blackening in the distant West.2

40

50

60

Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o’er; The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore, Leaves thee to prove the alternate ills that haunt Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want; Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands, And deal the gifts of Heaven with equal hands. Yet, O my Country, name beloved, revered, By every tie that binds the soul endeared, Whose image to my infant senses came Mixt with Religion’s light and Freedom’s holy flame! If prayers may not avert, if ’tis thy fate To rank amongst the names that once were great, Not like the dim cold Crescent3 shalt thou fade, Thy debt to Science and the Muse unpaid; Thine are the laws surrounding states revere, Thine the full harvest of the mental year, Thine the bright stars in Glory’s sky that shine, And arts that make it life to live are thine. 121

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

If westward streams the light that leaves thy shores, Still from thy lamp the streaming radiance pours. Wide spreads thy race from Ganges to the pole, O’er half the western world thy accents roll: Nations beyond the Apalachian hills Thy hand has planted and thy spirit fills: Soon as their gradual progress shall impart The finer sense of morals and of art, Thy stores of knowledge the new states shall know, And think thy thoughts, and with thy fancy glow; Thy Lockes,4 thy Paleys5 shall instruct their youth, Thy leading star direct their search for truth; Beneath the spreading Platan’s6 tent-like shade, Or by Missouri’s rushing waters laid, ‘Old father Thames’ shall be the Poets’ theme, Of Hagley’s woods7 the enamoured virgin dream, And Milton’s tones the raptured ear enthrall, Mixt with the roar of Niagara’s fall; In Thomson’s8 glass the ingenuous youth shall learn A fairer face of Nature to discern; Nor of the Bards that swept the British lyre Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire. Then, loved Joanna,9 to admiring eyes Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise; Their high soul’d strains and Shakespear’s noble rage Shall with alternate passion shake the stage. Some youthful Basil from thy moral lay With stricter hand his fond desires shall sway; Some Ethwald, as the fleeting shadows pass, Start at his likeness in the mystic glass; The tragic Muse resume her just controul, With pity and with terror purge the soul, While wide o’er transatlantic realms thy name Shall live in light, and gather all its fame. Where wanders Fancy down the lapse of years Shedding o’er imaged woes untimely tears? Fond moody Power! as hopes—as fears prevail, She longs, or dreads, to lift the awful veil, On visions of delight now loves to dwell, Now hears the shriek of woe or Freedom’s knell: Perhaps, she says, long ages past away, And set in western waves our closing day, Night, Gothic night, again may shade the plains 122

80

90

100

110

120

Barbauld (Eighteen Hundred and Eleven)

Where Power is seated, and where Science reigns; England, the seat of arts, be only known By the gray ruin and the mouldering stone; That Time may tear the garland from her brow, And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now. Yet then the ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires With pictured glories of illustrious sires, With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take From the blue mountains, or Ontario’s lake, With fond adoring steps to press the sod By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod; On Isis’ banks10 to draw inspiring air, From Runnymede11 to send the patriot’s prayer; In pensive thought, where Cam’s slow waters12 wind, To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind; In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow, And hang fresh wreaths round Newton’s awful brow. Oft shall they seek some peasant’s homely shed, Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead, To ask where Avon’s winding waters13 stray, And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away; Anxious enquire where Clarkson,14 friend of man, Or all-accomplished Jones15 his race began; If of the modest mansion aught remains Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper’s16 strains; Where Roscoe,17 to whose patriot breast belong The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song, Led Ceres to the black and barren moor Where Ceres never gained a wreath before*: With curious search their pilgrim steps shall rove By many a ruined tower and proud alcove, Shall listen for those strains that soothed of yore Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore;18 Feast with Dun Edin’s classic brow19 their sight, And visit ‘Melross by the pale moonlight.’20 But who their mingled feelings shall pursue When London’s faded glories rise to view? The mighty city, which by every road, In floods of people poured itself abroad; Ungirt by walls, irregularly great,

130

140

150

160

* The Historian of the age of Leo has brought into cultivation the extensive tract of Chatmoss.

123

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate; Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings) Sent forth their mandates to dependant kings; Streets, where the turban’d Moslem, bearded Jew, And woolly Afric, met the brown Hindu; Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed, Where Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed. Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street; Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, By scattered hamlets trace its antient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way. With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread The hallowed mansions of the silent dead, Shall enter the long isle and vaulted dome21 Where Genius and where Valour find a home; Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe, Where all above is still, as all beneath; Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn To clasp with fond delight some sculpted urn, The ponderous mass of Johnson’s form to greet, Or breathe the prayer at Howard’s sainted feet.22 Perhaps some Briton, in whose musing mind Those ages live which Time has cast behind, To every spot shall lead his wondering guests On whose known site the beam of glory rests: Here Chatham’s23 eloquence in thunder broke, Here Fox24 persuaded, or here Garrick25 spoke; Shall boast how Nelson,26 fame and death in view, To wonted victory led his ardent crew, In England’s name enforced, with loftiest tone*, Their duty,—and too well fulfilled his own: How gallant Moore†,27 as ebbing life dissolved, But hoped his country had his fame absolved. Or call up sages whose capacious mind Left in its course a track of light behind;

170

180

190

200

* Every reader will recollect the sublime telegraphic dispatch, ‘England expects every man to do his duty’. † ‘I hope England will be satisfied,’ were the last words of General Moore.

124

Barbauld (Eighteen Hundred and Eleven)

Point where mute crowds on Davy’s28 lips reposed, And Nature’s coyest secrets were disclosed; Join with their Franklin,29 Priestley’s injured name,30 Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim. Oft shall the strangers turn their eager feet The rich remains of antient art to greet, The pictured walls with critic eye explore, And Reynolds31 be what Raphael was before. On spoils from every clime their eyes shall gaze, Ægyptian granites and the Etruscan vase;32 And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander’s ashes lay,33 Shall own with humbled pride the lesson just By Time’s slow finger written in the dust. There walks a Spirit o’er the peopled earth, Secret his progress is, unknown his birth; Moody and viewless as the changing wind, No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind; Where’er he turns, the human brute awakes, And, roused to better life, his sordid hut forsakes: He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires, Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires: Obedient Nature follows where he leads; The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads; The beasts retire from man’s asserted reign, And prove his kingdom was not given in vain. Then from its bed is drawn the ponderous ore, Then Commerce pours her gifts on every shore, Then Babel’s towers and terrassed gardens rise, And pointed obelisks invade the skies; The prince commands, in Tyrian purple34 drest, And Ægypt’s virgins weave the linen vest. Then spans the graceful arch the roaring tide, And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide. Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart, Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art; Saints, Heroes, Sages, who the land adorn, Seem rather to descend than to be born; Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame, With pen of adamant inscribes their name. The Genius now forsakes the favoured shore, And hates, capricious, what he loved before; 125

210

220

230

240

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Then empires fall to dust, then arts decay, And wasted realms enfeebled despots sway; Even Nature’s changed; without his fostering smile Ophir35 no gold, no plenty yields the Nile; The thirsty sand absorbs the useless rill, And spotted plagues from putrid fens distill. In desert solitudes then Tadmor36 sleeps, Stern Marius37 then o’er fallen Carthage weeps; Then with enthusiast love the pilgrim roves To seek his footsteps in forsaken groves, Explores the fractured arch, the ruined tower, Those limbs disjointed of gigantic power; Still at each step he dreads the adder’s sting, The Arab’s javelin, or the tiger’s spring; With doubtful caution treads the echoing ground, And asks where Troy or Babylon is found. And now the vagrant Power no more detains The vale of Tempe,38 or Ausonian39 plains; Northward he throws the animating ray, O’er Celtic nations bursts the mental day: And, as some playful child the mirror turns, Now here now there the moving lustre burns; Now o’er his changeful fancy more prevail Batavia’s dykes40 than Arno’s purple vale,41 And stinted suns, and rivers bound with frost, Than Enna’s plains42 or Baia’s viny coast;43 Venice the Adriatic weds in vain, And Death sits brooding o’er Campania’s plain;44 O’er Baltic shores and through Hercynian groves,45 Stirring the soul, the mighty impulse moves; Art plies his tools, and Commerce spreads her sail, And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale. The sons of Odin46 tread on Persian looms, And Odin’s daughters breathe distilled perfumes; Loud minstrel bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse The Runic rhyme, and ‘build the lofty verse:’47 The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell To the soft breathings of the Æolian shell, Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone, And scarce believes the altered voice her own. And now, where Cæsar saw with proud disdain The wattled hut and skin of azure stain,48 Corinthian columns rear their graceful forms, 126

250

260

270

280

Barbauld (Eighteen Hundred and Eleven)

And light varandas brave the wintry storms, While British tongues the fading fame prolong Of Tully’s49 eloquence and Maro’s50 song. Where once Bonduca51 whirled the scythed car, And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war, Light forms beneath transparent muslins float, And tutored voices swell the artful note. Light-leaved acacias and the shady plane And spreading cedar grace the woodland reign; While crystal walls52 the tenderer plants confine, The fragrant orange and the nectared pine;53 The Syrian grape there hangs her rich festoons, Nor asks for purer air, or brighter noons: Science and Art urge on the useful toil, New mould a climate and create the soil, Subdue the rigour of the northern Bear,54 O’er polar climes shed aromatic air, On yielding Nature urge their new demands, And ask not gifts but tribute at her hands. London exults:—on London Art bestows Her summer ices and her winter rose; Gems of the East her mural crown adorn, And Plenty at her feet pours forth her horn; While even the exiles her just laws disclaim, People a continent, and build a name: August she sits, and with extended hands Holds forth the book of life to distant lands. But fairest flowers expand but to decay; The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away; Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they bring; Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring. Crime walks thy streets, Fraud earns her unblest bread, O’er want and woe thy gorgeous robe is spread, And angel charities in vain oppose: With grandeur’s growth the mass of misery grows. For see,—to other climes the Genius soars, He turns from Europe’s desolated shores; And lo, even now, midst mountains wrapt in storm, On Andes’ heights he shrouds his awful form; On Chimborazo’s summits55 treads sublime, Measuring in lofty thought the march of Time; Sudden he calls:—‘’Tis now the hour!’ he cries, 127

290

300

310

320

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Spreads his broad hand, and bids the nations rise. La Plata56 hears amidst her torrents’ roar; Potosi57 hears it, as she digs the ore: Ardent, the Genius fans the noble strife, And pours through feeble souls a higher life, Shouts to the mingled tribes from sea to sea, And swears—Thy world, Columbus, shall be free.

128

330

Figure 8: Detail from ‘The Prince of Whales’ (1812) Source: The Scourge, III, May 1812, p. 345.

CHARLES LAMB

‘The Triumph of the Whale’ (1812)

[First published in the Examiner, V, 15 March 1812, p. 173. Despite his close friendships with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Godwin, Hunt, and other leading oppositionist writers of his day, Charles Lamb (1775–1834; DNB) generally steered clear of politics in his published writings. That said, he was capable of producing acerbic, albeit infrequent, occasional satire. In June 1801, Lamb – per­ haps upset at being lampooned in the loyalist press as a ‘Jacobin’ because of his friendship with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey – published ‘What is Jacobin­ ism?’ in the Albion.1 And more than a decade later, he returned to politics in ‘The Triumph of the Whale’, a satirical poem that appeared anonymously in the 15 March 1812 issue of Leigh Hunt’s Examiner. As a thoroughly transparent spoof on Prince George, Lamb’s poem participated in Hunt’s ongoing project of using the Examiner to raise serious doubts about the Regent’s fitness to govern. One week prior to the publication of ‘The Triumph of the Whale’, Hunt had printed a scathing catalogue of ‘Princely Qualities’. And a week after Lamb’s piece appeared, Hunt would unflinchingly describe the nation’s acting monarch as ‘a corpulent gentleman of fifty’ who was ‘a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity’. It was this attack that ultimately landed Hunt in jail for two years. Lamb, however, blamed himself for his friend’s imprisonment, feeling that his burlesque on the ‘Prince of Whales’ had contributed to the government’s resolve to crack down on Hunt and his journal. Lamb’s poem is essentially an extended pun on George’s official title, the Prince of Wales, along the way providing a detailed record of his various vices and mis­ deeds. At the heart of the ‘whale/Wales’ joke, of course, is the Prince’s well documented struggles with obesity. George weighed nearly 250 pounds throughout much of his adult life, and by 1812 his complexion had become ‘wax-like’ as the result of his liberal application of expensive oils and creams (hence the punning on his ‘oily qualities’ near the poem’s conclusion).2 As Lamb is quick to point out, the Prince Regent’s addictions were not limited to fine foods and fancy ointments. 130

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-20

Lamb (‘The Triumph of the Whale’)

George was a famed womaniser, a laudanum addict, and a notorious drunk who was known to go through three bottles of wine at the typical dinner.3 Thus, one of the dominant images of Lamb’s whale is of his constant alteration between swilling liquor and spouting it back out. More than just a personal satire, however, ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ is a response to recent political events, specifically George’s startling decision to keep the Tories in power after being declared Prince Regent in 1811. Throughout most of his adult life, the Prince had been closely allied with the Whigs, and thus it was gen­ erally assumed that his rise to power would be accompanied by the replacement of Perceval’s Tory ministry with a Whig regime. Therefore, when George ultimately opted to retain his father’s prime minister, the Whigs were understandably outraged. Soon rumours were circulating throughout London that George’s decision had been heavily influenced by Lady Hertford, his high-Tory mistress.4 Lines 35–42 of Lamb’s poem clearly reference this series of events, as, like the Whigs, the ‘hapless mariners’ of the poem have been rudely sunk by the whale they turned to for safe anchor. Two months after the appearance of Lamb’s poem, George Cruikshank pub­ lished a pictorial rendering of ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ in the Scourge, bringing all the imagery of the poetic original to life (see Figure 8 above). Under the spell of a buxom mermaid (Lady Hertford), Cruikshank’s Regent-like sea beast swamps sev­ eral prominent Whigs with the ‘Liquor of Oblivion’, while showering the Tories with the ‘Dew of Favour’. That Cruikshank would base his print so closely on Lamb’s poem attests to the satirical power of the original.5]

1 See Winifred F. Courtney, ‘New Lamb Texts from The Albion?’, Charles Lamb Bulletin, 17, January 1977, pp. 1–11. For loyalist parodies of Lamb, see ‘New Morality’ from the AntiJacobin and James Gillray’s caricature of the same name where a frog-like Lamb croaks out praise for French liberty. 2 Christopher Hibbert, George IV: Regent and King, 1811–1830, London, Allen Lane, 1973, p. 2. 3 Hibbert, George IV, pp. 7–8, 21. 4 John Wardroper, Kings, Lords and Wicked Libellers, London, John Murray, 1973, p. 185. For a thorough analysis of the Prince Regent’s decision to retain Perceval’s Tory ministry, see E. A. Smith, George IV, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 139–45. 5 So highly regarded was Lamb’s satire that many attributed the anonymous poem to Lord Byron. As late as 1829, in fact, ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ appeared in collections of Byron’s verse. See Charles Lamb: His Life Recorded by his Contemporaries, Edmund Blunden, ed., London, Hogarth Press, 1934, p. 63.

131

Io! Pæan!1 Io! sing To the finny people’s King. Not a mightier Whale than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not a fatter fish than he Flounders round the polar sea. See his blubber—at his gills What a world of drink he swills, From his trunk as from a spout Which next moment he pours out. Such his person—next declare, Muse, who his companions are. Every fish of generous2 kind Scuds3 aside or slinks behind; But about his presence keep All the Monsters of the deep; Mermaids with their tails and singing4 His delighted fancy stinging; Crooked Dolphins they surround him; Dog-like Seals they fawn around him. Following hard the progress mark, Of the intolerant salt sea Shark; For his solace and relief Flat-fish are his courtiers chief; Last and lowest in his train Ink-fish (libellers of the main) Their black liquor shed in spite (Such on earth the things that write.) In his stomach some do say No good thing can ever stay; Had it been the fortune of it To have swallow’d that old Prophet, Three days there he’d not have dwelled,5 But in one have been expelled. Hapless mariners are they, Who beguil’d (as seamen say) Deeming him some rock or island, Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, 132

1

10

20

30

Lamb (‘The Triumph of the Whale’)

Anchor in his scaly rind; Soon the difference they find; Sudden plumb he sinks beneath them; Does to ruthless waves bequeath them. Name or title, what has he? Is he Regent of the Sea? From this difficulty free us, Buffon,6 Banks,7 or sage Linnæus.8 With his wond’rous attributes Say what appellation suits? By his bulk and by his size, By his oily qualities, This (or else my eyesight fails), This should be the Prince of Whales.

133

40

50

JANE TAYLOR

‘Recreation’ (1816)

[First published in Essays in Rhyme on Morals and Manners, London, Taylor and Hes­ sey, 1816, pp. 108–22. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Jane Taylor (1783–1824; DNB) and her sister Ann (1782–1866; DNB) were Britain’s unrivalled giants in the field of children’s poetry. Daughters of an engraver and Dissenting minister, the Taylor sisters moved several times during their formative years, spending the longest periods of time in small towns in Suffolk and Essex. Like their contemporary Jane Austen, they first began writing primarily to entertain their family. In 1799, however, Ann was able to publish a poem in the annual Minor’s Pocket Book, and soon thereaf­ ter both sisters began submitting their verses to various publications and poetry contests. By 1804, they collectively had produced an impressive enough body of work that the London publisher William Darton invited them to compile their poems into a book. This collection, Original Poems for Infant Minds (1804–05), proved an enormous success, going through dozens of editions in both Britain and Amer­ ica. In the ensuing years, the Taylor sisters would have similar success with a series of other volumes of didactic children’s verse, including Rhymes for the Nursery (1806) (a collection that includes the classic ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’), Hymns for Infant Minds (1810), and Original Hymns for Sunday Schools (1812).1 After nearly a decade of producing best-selling children’s books, the Taylor sis­ ters’ collaboration came to an end in 1813, when Ann married the Reverend Joseph Gilbert. Rather than giving up her literary career, Jane used the separation from her sister as an opportunity to explore new genres. In 1815 she published her first novel, Display: A Tale for Young People, and a year later she departed even further from her norm with Essays in Rhyme on Morals and Manners. Not only did this book of poems mark Taylor’s first publication for an adult audience, but it was also her first sustained attempt at social satire. With few exceptions, the critics were impressed, dubbing her a lesser Crabbe or Cowper. The Eclectic Review praised the ‘feminine boldness’ of her style and suggested that classifying the Essays in Rhyme as mere sat­ ires would be an affront to the author, ‘for they exhibit neither the arrogance, nor the exaggeration, nor the splenetic temper of the satirist’.2 Nearly as enthusiastic 134

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-21

Taylor (‘Recreation’)

were the Critical Review, which asserted, ‘Miss Taylor possesses a degree of acuteness, of good-natured shrewdness, and of humorous observation, seldom exceeded’,3 and the Literary Panorama, which credited her with showing a satirical ‘adroitness, not often seen, and very rarely equally felt’.4 The general project of the Essays in Rhyme is to expose the follies of high society while encouraging greater compassion toward the poor. Throughout, the mindset is distinctively that of the middle-class moralist, as the target of scorn more often than not is the member of the leisure class who has allowed the affectations and luxuries of high living to skew his or her moral compass. Such is clearly the case in the sev­ enth poem in the volume and the one printed below, ‘Recreation’. Here Taylor introduces us into the drawing room of the well-to-do Mrs G, the headmistress of the neighbourhood school for scandal. Mrs G gleefully provides her visitors with up-to-the-minute news on the tragedies and transgressions in the lives of their neighbours. While Mrs G’s visitors, the narrator and her mother, clearly see them­ selves as morally superior to their backstabbing hostess, we quickly learn that they are equally corrupt. All three delight in trampling on the reputations of their social rivals, taking particular pleasure in sullying the name of Miss F, their beautiful, wealthy neighbour whose greatest sin, it seems, is devoting much of her time and resources to helping the poor. In the cynical world of high society, such altruism can only be seen as a façade erected to cover the blackest of sins. By the end of the poem, so rich has Mrs G’s fare of gossip been that the narrator and her mother are ‘sated, almost sick’. Interestingly, this is as close as we get to explicit sermonizing in ‘Recreation’, as Taylor, one of the renowned moralists of her age, seems to have sensed that the simple realism of the scene would make her point more effectively than any extended discourse on the damaging effects of gossip.]

1 For biographical studies of the Taylor family, see Doris Mary Armitage, The Taylors of Ongar, Cambridge, W. Heffer, 1939; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987; and Judith A. Overmier’s entry on Ann and Jane Taylor in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 163 (British Children’s Writers, 1800–1880), Detroit, Gale, 1996, pp. 292–96. 2 Eclectic Review, series 2, VI, September 1816, pp. 263–64. 3 Critical Review, series 5, IV, September 1816, p. 270. 4 Literary Panorama, new series, IV, August 1816, p. 763.

135

‘—WE took our work,1 and went, you see, To take an early cup of tea. We did so now and then, to pay The friendly debt, and so did they. Not that our friendship burnt so bright That all the world could see the light; ’Twas of the ordinary genus,2 And little love was lost between us: We lov’d, I think, about as true, As such near neighbours mostly do.

1

10

At first, we all were somewhat dry;— Mamma felt cold, and so did I: Indeed, that room, sit where you will, Has draught enough to turn a mill. ‘I hope you’re warm,’ says Mrs. G. ‘O, quite so,’ says mamma, says she; ‘I’ll take my shawl off by and by.’ ‘This room is always warm,’ says I. At last the tea came up, and so, With that, our tongues began to go. Now, in that house you’re sure of knowing The smallest scrap of news that’s going; We find it there the wisest way, To take some care of what we say. —Says she, ‘there’s dreadful doings still In that affair about the will; For now the folks in Brewer’s Street, Don’t speak to James’s,3 when they meet. Poor Mrs. Sam sits all alone, And frets herself to skin and bone. For months she manag’d, she declares, All the old gentleman’s affairs; And always let him have his way, And never left him night nor day; Waited and watch’d his every look, And gave him every drop he took. 136

20

30

Taylor (‘Recreation’)

Dear Mrs. Sam, it was too bad! He might have left her all he had.’ ‘Pray ma’am,’ says I, ‘has poor Miss A. Been left as handsome as they say?’ ‘My dear,’ says she, ‘’tis no such thing, She’d nothing but a mourning ring.4 But it is not uncommon mean,5 To wear that rusty bombazeen!’6 ‘She had,’ says I, ‘the very same, Three years ago, for—what’s his name?’— ‘The Duke of Brunswick,7 very true, And has not bought a thread of new, I’m positive,’ said Mrs. G.— So then we laugh’d, and drank our tea.

40

50

‘So,’ says mamma, ‘I find it’s true What Captain P. intends to do; To hire that house, or else to buy—’ ‘Close to the tan-yard,8 ma’am,’ says I; ‘Upon my word it’s very strange, I wish they mayn’t repent the change!’ ‘My dear,’ says she, ‘’tis very well You know, if they can bear the smell.’ ‘Miss F.’ says I, ‘is said to be A sweet young woman, Mrs. G.’ ‘O, excellent! I hear,’ she cried; ‘O, truly so!’ mamma replied. ‘How old should you suppose her, pray? She’s older than she looks, they say.’ ‘Really,’ says I, ‘she seems to me Not more than twenty-two or three.’ ‘O, then you’re wrong,’ says Mrs. G. ‘Their upper servant told our Jane,9 She’ll not see twenty-nine again.’ ‘Indeed, so old! I wonder why She does not marry, then,’ says I; ‘So many thousands to bestow, And such a beauty, too, you know.’ ‘A beauty! O my dear Miss B. You must be joking, now,’ says she; Her figure’s rather pretty.’——‘Ah! That’s what I say,’ replied mamma. 137

60

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

‘Miss F.’ says I, ‘I’ve understood, Spends all her time in doing good: The people say her coming down Is quite a blessing to the town.’ At that our hostess fetch’d a sigh, And shook her head; and so, says I, ‘It’s very kind of her, I’m sure, To be so generous to the poor.’ ‘No doubt,’ says she, ‘’tis very true; Perhaps there may be reasons too:— You know some people like to pass For patrons with the lower class.’ And here I break my story’s thread, Just to remark, that what she said, Although I took the other part, Went like a cordial to my heart. Some inuendos more had pass’d, Till out the scandal came at last. ‘Come then, I’ll tell you something more,’ Says she,—‘Eliza,10 shut the door.— I would not trust a creature here, For all the world, but you, my dear. Perhaps it’s false—I wish it may, —But let it go no further, pray!’ ‘O,’ says mamma, ‘You need not fear, We never mention what we hear.’ ‘Indeed we shall not, Mrs. G.’ Says I, again, impatiently: And so, we drew our chairs the nearer, And whispering, lest the child should hear her, She told a tale, at least too long, To be repeated in a song; We, panting every breath between, With curiosity and spleen And how we did enjoy the sport! And echo every faint report, And answer every candid doubt, And turn her motives inside out, And holes in all her virtues pick, Till we were sated, almost sick. —Thus having brought it to a close, In great good humour, we arose. 138

80

90

100

110

Taylor (‘Recreation’)

Indeed, ’twas more than time to go, Our boy had been an hour below. So, warmly pressing Mrs. G. To fix the day to come to tea, We muffled up in cloke and plaid, And trotted home behind the lad.’

139

120

JOHN KEATS

‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ (1817)

[First published in W. Robertson Nicoll and Thomas J. Wise, eds, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century: Contributions Towards a Literary History of the Period, 2 vols, Lon­ don, Hodder and Stoughton, 1896, vol. 2, pp. 277–78. When ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ first appeared in print in the 1896 collection Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, the volume’s editors, W. Robertson Nicoll and Thomas J. Wise, passed it off as a ‘Nonsense Sonnet’ and ‘unquestionably Keats’s, even if in his worst manner’. Throughout the next half century, various crit­ ics tried to make sense of this ‘Nonsense Sonnet’, but few did so convincingly. Amy Lowell suggested it might be a reflection on Keats’s (1795–1821; DNB) decision to forego his medical career for a literary one; M. B. Forman interpreted it as the poet’s response to his critics; and others passed it off as hopelessly muddled and unworthy of any serious or prolonged attention.1 The major turning point in the poem’s critical history came in 1955, when Aileen Ward argued that ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ participates in the tradition of radical satire and was quite possibly written to commemorate the release of William Hone (see pp. 160–70 below) from prison in December 1817. Ward rather convincingly shows that Keats follows the lead of Hone and other well-known oppositionist gad­ flies in employing Biblical allegory or parody to reflect on contemporary politics. Specifically, she suggests that ‘Given the universal interest in parody at that time and Keats’s own political sympathies, it seems wholly probable that in writing “Neb­ uchadnezzar’s Dream” Keats was trying his hand at political parody as a gesture of solidarity with Hone and defiance of the Government’.2 In the Biblical story, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dreams of an image whose ‘head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay’. This image is ultimately crushed by a ‘stone [that] was cut out without hands’. As Daniel explains it, the destruction of the image symbolizes the impending downfall of four succes­ sive kingdoms, each of which is represented by one part of the image’s body. Much to Nebuchadnezzar’s consternation, Daniel reveals that his kingdom, Babylon, is the ‘head of gold’ that is bound for destruction.3 140

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-22

Keats (‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’)

Assuming (as most critics now do) that Keats indeed is using the Biblical tale as a medium for political critique, Nebuchadnezzar represents the ‘loggerheads and Chapmen’ currently ruling England. Consequently, Daniel, the interpreter of dreams, represents Hone, Thomas Wooler, or any of a number of radical seers who haunt the powers-that-be with their prophecies of falling regimes and imminent rev­ olution. As Steven Jones has pointed out, Keats’s endorsement of the radical orators is to some extent tempered by his depiction of them as ‘sots’ who ‘belch out’ their revolutionary rhetoric.4 Overall, though, when contrasted with the Nebuchadnez­ zars of the contemporary political establishment, the modern Daniels come off as little less than heroic visionaries.]

1 For a detailed overview of early-twentieth-century criticism on the poem, see Aileen Ward, ‘Keats’s Sonnet, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream”’, Philological Quarterly, 34, 1955, pp. 177–79. 2 Ward, ‘Keats’s Sonnet’, p. 187. 3 Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is found in chapter two of the Book of Daniel. See specifically verses 31–38. 4 Steven E. Jones, Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s, 2000, pp. 102–03.

141

Before he went to feed with owls and bats Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream, Worse than an Hus’ifs1 when she thinks her cream Made a Naumachia2 for mice and rats. So scared, he sent for that ‘Good King of Cats’3 Young Daniel, who soon did pluck away the beam From out his eye4 and said he did not deem The sceptre worth a straw—his Cushions5 old door-mats. A horrid nightmare similar somewhat Of late has haunted a most motley crew Most loggerheads6 and Chapmen7—we are told That any Daniel tho’ he be a sot Can make the lying lips turn pale of hue By belching out ‘ye are that head of Gold.’

142

1

10

ANON., from The Black Dwarf

‘To Belinda’ (1818) ‘Rights of Women. Answer to Florio’ (1818) ‘An Ode to the Ladies on their Alledged Rights’ (1818) ‘A Scene from the New Tragi-Comedy entitled the “Undebauched Royalists”, or, The reformers Routed’ (1819) ‘The Peterloo Man’ (1819)

[‘To Belinda’ first published in the Black Dwarf, II, 16 September 1818, p. 592; ‘Rights of Women. Answer to Florio’ first published in the Black Dwarf, II, 14 Octo­ ber 1818, p. 656; ‘Ode to the Ladies on their Alledged Rights’ first published in the Black Dwarf, II, 14 October 1818, pp. 655–56; ‘A Scene from the New TragiComedy Entitled The ‘Undebauched Royalists’ first published in the Black Dwarf, III, 8 September 1819, pp. 594–96; ‘The Peterloo Man’ first published in the Black Dwarf, III, 6 October 1819, pp. 659–60. Almost immediately after its January 1817 launch, the Black Dwarf, edited by Thomas Wooler (?1785–1853; DNB), became one of the most widely read political journals in Britain. Undoubtedly, much of Wooler’s success was owing to good tim­ ing, as just two months into the Black Dwarf ’s run, its chief competitor among radical weeklies, the Political Register, lost a large measure of its credibility and reader­ ship when its founder, William Cobbett, fled to America to avoid arrest. Wooler was quick to recruit Cobbett’s estranged readers, and, as a result, the circulation of the Black Dwarf swelled to nearly 12,000 within a year of its establishment.1 In contrast to Cobbett, who generally stuck to prose, Wooler was particularly inclined toward verse satire, and, therefore, most issues of the Black Dwarf feature several poems on current political events.2 Although it is safe to assume that Wooler himself wrote much of the anonymous or pseudonymous poetry that appeared in the Black Dwarf, to date no extensive list of attributions for the journal’s poetry exists. The texts included below show the range of voices and subjects that could be found in the verse satire of the Black Dwarf. The first three poems deal with women’s 143

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-23

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

rights, something that is remarkable primarily because, as Michael Scrivener has pointed out, it indicates ‘much more feminist insurgence within the reform move­ ment than many historians have so far acknowledged’.3 According to most histories of British feminism, public debate over women’s rights essentially ceased between the death of Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and the 1820s, when the campaign to win political representation for women began.4 The hostility toward Wollstonecraftian feminism that lingered throughout the first two decades of the nineteenth century is clearly manifest in two of the poems included here, ‘To Belinda’ and the ‘Ode to the Ladies’, the first of which ends by bluntly ordering Wollstonecraft to ‘go to the devil’. Yet, however much these poems reinforce the standard notion that even rad­ icals remained suspicious of feminism in the late 1810s, the third poem reprinted below, ‘The Rights of Women’, suggests that there was once again room for public discourse over women’s rights by 1818. The author of this poem boldly asserts that men have consistently proven themselves incapable of preserving liberty, and, hence, the time is past due for women to step forward and enter the battle to pro­ tect the rights of humanity. More typical of the satire generally found in the Black Dwarf are ‘The “Unde­ bauched Royalists”’ and ‘The Peterloo Man’, both of which respond to the infamous ‘Peterloo’ massacre of 16 August 1819. One of the low-points of British history, on this day at least eleven people were killed and more than four hundred wounded when the cavalry, acting under the direction of local magistrates, tried to break up a peaceful gathering of workers at St Peter’s Field on the outskirts of Manchester. When the Liverpool administration and the Prince Regent responded by congratu­ lating the attackers and castigating the victims, the national reform movement gained a level of moral authority it had never previously enjoyed.5 Wooler was at his best in political crises such this, and he, along with Richard Carlile, William Hone, George Cruikshank, and other radical satirists, un-leashed a barrage of attacks on the current administration.6 While the two texts reprinted below represent only a small percentage of the Peterloo-related satire that appeared in the Black Dwarf in late 1819, these texts effectively capture the mood of the journal in the dark days that followed the massacre in Manchester.]

1 Richard Hendrix, ‘Popular Humor and “The Black Dwarf ”’, Journal of British Studies, 16, 1976, p. 112. For a thorough analysis of Wooler’s choice of names for his journal, see Ste­ ven E. Jones, Satire and Romanticism, pp. 79–97. 2 For a detailed breakdown of the types of poetry included in the Black Dwarf, see Michael Scrivener, ed., Poetry and Reform: Periodical Verse from the English Democratic Press, 1792–1824, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1992, pp. 249–50. Scrivener’s edition features an excellent sampling of poetry from the Black Dwarf, and I am particularly indebted to his book for pointing me to several of the texts reprinted here. 3 Scrivener, Poetry and Reform, p. 261. 4 Barbara Caine, English Feminism 1780–1980, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 53–55. 144

Anon. (from The Black Dwarf) 5 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York, Vintage, 1966, pp. 678–89. 6 For one of the most powerful radical responses to Peterloo, see Hone and Cruikshank’s The Political House that Jack Built (1819), which is reproduced in vol. 2 of Parodies of the Romantic Age, London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999, pp. 275–96. See also Shelley’s ‘England in 1819’ (p. 157 below) and The Mask of Anarchy.

145

TO BELINDA O say, lovely pleader, while thus you require, For your sex a political station, What more can a lady’s ambition desire, Than to lord o’er us lords of creation?

1

Enthroned in our hearts, you compel us to feel, The force of your regal dominion, Can a soul-beaming glance be resisted by steel? What is reason to woman’s opinion? From our titular sway then why seek to remove us, Not a jot would it boot1 ye, depend on ’t; Since like Trinculo’s2 kings, we have viceroy’s above us, And woman still rules the ascendant.

10

Whatever taste, fancy, or science endears, All qualities rich and uncommon, Nay Britannia herself, dear Britannia appears, In the form of a beautiful woman. A word on your rights—while the principle guides, (And the gravest of sages confess it) That the right most effective in conquest resides, What heart but must feel YOU possess it? In the sweet vale where innocence dwells, in the halls, Where fashion and luxury revel, Still woman’s legitimate power enthrals, So Wolstonecraft3—go to the devil. FLORIO.4

146

20

Anon. (from The Black Dwarf)

RIGHTS OF WOMEN. A NSWER

TO

F LORIO.

Though the rule of the sex you so amply pourtray O’er the milder dominion of life: We had rather, believe me, our characters play In the national drama of strife.

1

No more shall our masculine tyrants prevail, Or laugh at the slaves which they make us, An army we’ll raise, and the despots assail, With arms that will never forsake us. Torn and mangled your rights, you have ours betray’d Or usurped, what your pleasure had lent us; But we will not repose in disgrace, nor degrade The free spirits that heaven hath sent us.

10

Ye traitors, ye cowards, like you, shall we see The birth-right, the freedom of all Trampled down in the dust by corruption’s decree, While knaves mock at liberty’s fall! No! fearless as free, to the field we advance, Our gauntlet is fairly thrown down; To old honesty’s pipe we’ll make all the rogues dance, And silence the fools with a frown.

20

AN ODE TO THE LADIES ON THEIR ALLEDGED RIGHTS Well done, fair votaries of ambition, Proclaim aloud your high commission, Assume a voice in every public measure; Let not proud blustering man alarm ye, Be drilled and raise a standing army, I will, for one, yield to your arms with pleasure. Yours is not quite a novel plan, For faith old women long have ruled us; Such as dame Sid and mother Van,5 Who prettily indeed have school’d us; 147

1

10

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Teaching with system a-la-Turk,6 Us tender babes to read and work; That is, to read the Courier’s lying pages,7 And work, to pay the dirty knave his wages. ’Tis time to ‘push ’em from their stools,’8 And dissipate delusion’s bubble, Come then depose the brainless fools, And save creation’s lord’s the trouble. Then with prompt Robespierrean9 parts, Dispose of heads as dextrously as hearts, And kindly put an end to all their pains; Thus shall we all become your debtors, Gladly put on your Wisdom’s fetters, And glory in ’em as in Beauty’s chains.

20

Oh! happy era! when the busy fair, In courts of law through musty records wade, The pulpit mount, at Lloyd’s10 assume the chair, Fib in the ring,11 and bluster on parade. The rosy loves and graces round her sporting, See, rich phenomenon, a fair chief justice; No slavish doctrines ‘false as hell’12 supporting, But that unbiassed course which Virtue’s trust is.

30

Methinks I see in Lambeth Palace,13 Some prim Right Reverend Kate or Alice, Beauty of holiness supreme in; Or seated by Sir Will,14 an alderwoman, Cracking dull jokes, aye, very coarse and common. Like Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet seeming.15 Our gracious Regent16 too, whose relish Is fond of all that can embellish, We’ll find his taste exactly suited: When from the proud bed-chamber rout,17 Lady-like lords are all kicked out, And lordly ladies substituted. Lo! in your most uncommon House of Commons, Obedient to the lovely speaker’s summons, But hold—a mighty question here appears: One that will cause a most delightful squabble, And sadly agitate this charming rabble, Setting the pretty vixens by the ears:— 148

40

50

Anon. (from The Black Dwarf)

Among so many admirable speakers, Who shall be mistress speaker in the farce; A question like to make ye all peace-breakers, And render female Manners18 rather scarce. If rout, nor ball, nor concert court ye, You’ll have no houses under forty. Careless of public duties, But eager to assume dominion o’er us, A rich divan19 of beauties, A perfect hierarchy of angels glorious St. Stephen’s graceless chapel20 then will grace;— Blest change! for now th’ devil’s in the place. Over the gallery leaning, Admiration Beholds a sparkling firmament of eyes, And spite of privilege enraptured cries,— ‘England exult!’ for never did a nation Boast such bright prospects in her legislature, Enough to change th’ hardest despot’s nature; From pride of empire absolute to shake him: And, (’tis a paradox that somewhat odd is), Though they might go against his stomach, make him Gladly embrace such legislative bodies. RODERICK RANDOM.21

A SCENE FROM THE NEW TRAGI-COMEDY ENTITLED THE ‘UNDEBAUCHED ROYALISTS,’ OR, THE REFORMERS ROUTED

C HARACTERS. Magistrates! or, Preservers of the Peace!! Flinty23 Rev. Dr. Hay-down-derry22 24 Rev. Samuel Scapegrace Gooseacre25 Shallowpate Gobble Lawless Killaway Swallowall. 149

60

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

S CENE.—A superb Apartment. The whole of the Dramatic Personæ are seated at a table, which is covered with a splendid desert and the choicest wines. D OCTOR H AY- DOWN - DERRY. A bumper toast! no day-light must I see, I give you Church and King, with three times three!26 A glorious cause, assembles us this day, Which bids us all without reserve, be gay: The vile reforming people bite the dust, Subdued by our decrees most wise and just. What loyal subject can deny our merit, Decry our zeal, intelligence, and spirit! ’Twas well we met to thank ourselves, ’tis true, For this, no others would have dared to do. S CAPEGRACE. Our R——t’s gracious thanks are all we need,27 To be assured we’ve done a glorious deed. Nor let us at the people’s satires fret, Though headed by that libeller, B—rd—t.28 Thank heaven, the town is now in perfect quiet; We need not fear that H—t29 will breed a riot. ’Tis fit he feel the law’s chastising rod, Who scoffs at powers that are ‘ordained of God!’ This paper underneath my door was thrust; Proclaim it a foul libel each one must. L AWLESS . No doubt—no doubt—yet spite of all our merits, Methinks, my noble friends are out of spirits. So with the leave of our most reverend host, To warm your hearts, I will propose a toast: May all Reformers the disasters share Of those who suffered in the late affair! With three times three—now read their scribbling wares, We’ve made our charge, and now the dogs make theirs. SCAPEGRACE. (reads). You magistrates of M.,30 who ought to have been the Preservers of peace, have been the Breakers of it; and have shamelessly violated the laws you had sworn to maintain! A meeting of the distressed inhabitants of this place was called, in the form and manner prescribed by the laws of the country, with which you were well acquainted. Fifty thousand persons, in consequence, quietly assembled to exercise the right of Seagirtonians,31 to petition the legislature for redress of grievances. All was calm; and we were listening to our leader, who was enforcing the duty of preserv­ ing the peace, when your troops gallopped up to us, and then halted. We received 150

Anon. (from The Black Dwarf)

them with three cheers, considering them as friends, equally anxious as ourselves to promote order; and our several bands struck up the national airs of Rule, Rule great Seagirt, and God save the King.32 Alas, these friendly greetings availed us nothing. In a moment they dashed in among the unarmed and unsuspecting multitude, and cutting their way through them, took our leader, with several of our friends, prison­ ers, without the least resistance on their part or that of the meeting. A dreadful scene of terror and confusion ensued. Several person were murdered, and hundreds of others badly wounded! Thus was our peaceable meeting dispersed by an armed force! Thus was war made, by your orders, upon defenceless men, women and chil­ dren! These are your exploits! They will never be forgotten! You did not prevent the crowd from assembling—you did not order them to disperse after they had assem­ bled, but when quietly congregated together, in a legal way, you let in your executioners among them! Thus it is, you, ye magistrates, who have set the example of a brutal violence to a suffering and famished population. Dangerous proceed­ ings! Impolitic step!—M AY IT NEVER BE IMITATED BY REFORMERS,’ Let the galled Jade wince, Our withers are unwrung!33 O MNES . A monstrous libel! K ILLAWAY. Horrible to hear, For the base writer, nothing’s too severe. What independent, jacobinic fury! LAWLESS . Hang him the wretch without a Judge or Jury! SHALLOWPATE. A senseless dog as e’er Philippic34 penn’d. F LINTY . Upon a rack he ought to make his end. (A long pause.) S WALLOWALL . ’Twas confidently told me t’other day These scoundrels meant to take our lives away; Then fire the town in fifty different places, And ravish all our wives before our faces!!! GOOSE - ACRE. The Lord have mercy! What a dev’lish set! H AY- DOWN - DERRY. Come my good friends, the bottle we forget. A toast I’ll give you of a famed divine; 151

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

I hope you’ll drink it all with nine times nine!35 May the people never trouble themselves with the laws but to obey them. Nor ought about the taxes but to pay them! KILLAWAY. Most nobly we indeed have stood the brunt, Tho’ sadly bothered by that fearful H—t! Thank heaven ’tis past, the examination’s o’er; I never felt so small, I own, before. As to high treason—that we wisely dropt,36 Tho’ here our dignity was sadly lopt! GOOSE - ACRE. Conspiracy, I trust, will do much better, And leave the country very much our debtor. S CAPEGRACE. The Country is against us, I must own; In every form their discontent is shewn. Each day fresh libels inundate the town; The children mock me and the mothers frown. Our poor Courier37 is beaten off his legs, And mercy for us with submission begs. (A long pause.) G OBBLE . The past can’t be recalled—since here we’ve sat, I’m grieved to say—we’ve been confounded flat. If with our Chairman’s cloth I’m not too free, We’ll drink No Popery.38—with three times three! F LINTY. I rise————what’s this? (taking a paper out of his pocket). O MNES . A libel—ten to one. F LINTY. It is. O MNES . Pray read it. F LINTY (reads.) To the illustrious magistrates of M. ‘What actors can your wondrous powers surpass? 152

Anon. (from The Black Dwarf)

‘Equally great in Tragedy and Farce! ‘Nor less at home in all old women’s parts— ‘God bless your learned heads and tender hearts.’ S CAPEGRACE . A precious piece of jacobinic lore— S HALLOWPATE . With your leave gentlemen we’ll hear no more. S CAPEGRACE . ’Tis with regret—but I must take my leave. O MNES . So must we all. H AY- DOWN - DERRY. I most sincerely grieve. (They all rise.) O MNES . Good night— H AY - DOWN- DERRY . Good night. GOBBLE (aside). The Lord have mercy on us! (Exeunt Omnes.) Sept. 3rd. 1819.

W.R.H.

THE PETERLOO MAN You have heard of the far-renown’d Waterloo plains, Where the sun, horror-struck at the slaughter, declin’d; Where courage to frenzy abandoned the reins, And liberty fell ’midst the tears of mankind.

1

But a scene still more dreadful remains to the story, Where the blood of the helpless in wild torrents ran; When women, and children, and grandsires’ hoary, Fell beneath the fierce sword of the Peterloo Man! How brave were the heroes, what muse can relate; On the breast of its mother, he bade the babe bleed! 153

10

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

And the mother herself would in vain shun the fate, That awaited her under the hoofs of his steed. Stained deep with their gore, how he dashed along, Of banditti the first, since fell murder began; How tremble the feeble among the scared throng, When they hear the fierce shout of the Peterloo Man! What groups there assemble, what ferment prevails! ’Tis a nation in search of the savages base; And justice demands, in her still even scales, To balance the wretches who Britain disgrace. Whether Yeomen, or Magistrates, forth be they brought, Their deeds which a nation indignantly scan, Well merit the doom to eternity fraught With the vengeance of God on the Peterloo Man.

154

20

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

‘Sonnet: England in 1819’ (1819) ‘A New National Anthem’ (1819)

[‘Sonnet: England in 1819’ first published in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mary Shelley, 1st edn, 4 vols, London, Edward Moxon, 1839, vol. 3, p. 193; ‘A New National Anthem’ first published in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mary Shelley, 2nd edn, London, C. Daly, 1839, pp. 251–52. In the summer of 1819 the Shelleys were living in Italy, and thus it wasn’t until 5 September, three weeks after the fact, that they learned of the ‘Peterloo massacre’. As might be expected, Percy Shelley (1792–1822; DNB) was outraged as he read the reports out of Manchester. A day after receiving the news he told his publisher, Charles Ollier, ‘the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I await anxiously to hear how the Country will express its sense of this bloody mur­ derous oppression of its destroyers’.1 Over the next few months, Shelley’s unflagging fury over Peterloo would inspire some of the most powerful political sat­ ire of his career, including The Mask of Anarchy, ‘Song to the Men of England’, ‘A New National Anthem’, and ‘Sonnet: England in 1819’. As was often the case with Shelley’s radical poetry, writing the poems was one thing, but getting them published was quite a different matter. In the wake of Peterloo, Richard Carlile, Samuel Bamford, Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, and several other vocal critics of the government had been prosecuted for sedition. And, thus, when in late September 1819 Shelley asked his friend Leigh Hunt to print The Mask of Anarchy in the Examiner, the publisher balked. While sympathetic to Shelley’s cause, Hunt, who had already spent two years in prison for libelling the Prince Regent and whose finances were in no state to bear the expenses of another trial, recognized that, in the poet’s absence, he would be the one held accountable for The Mask’s attacks on the current administration. The following May, Shelley again solic­ ited his friend’s help, this time asking Hunt to find a publisher for a verse collection to be titled Popular Songs. Once again, however, Hunt hesitated, apparently not even bothering this time to show Shelley’s manuscripts to others.2 In the end, it would not be until a decade after Shelley’s 1822 death that The Mask of Anarchy would be 155

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-24

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

published, and another seven years would pass before ‘Song to the Men of England’, ‘England in 1819’, and ‘A New National Anthem’ would appear in Mary Shelley’s 1839 editions of her late husband’s works. Since then, ‘England in 1819’ has become one of Shelley’s most widely antholo­ gised works. Yet, despite its canonical status, Shelley scholars have traditionally paid it little attention, perhaps thinking it a fairly straightforward catalogue of the nation’s ills that requires little further explication. In recent years, however, several promi­ nent Romanticists have suggested new ways of approaching the poem. Susan Wolfson, for instance, has studied its formal complexity, exploring in the process the multiplicity of possible meanings in Shelley’s use of the word ‘may’ in the penul­ timate line.3 And in perhaps the most impressive reading of the sonnet to date, James Chandler has suggested that the various social and political conditions listed in the poem’s first twelve lines ‘are not simple evils and are not simply overcome by the arrival of an enlightening “deus ex machina”’ at the poem’s end. Rather, accord­ ing to Chandler’s reading, the opening twelve lines should be taken as a series of necessary contradictions that facilitate the type of epochal change (the ‘glorious Phantom’) prophesied in the closing couplet.4 In contrast to the popular ‘England in 1819’, the second post-Peterloo poem reprinted below, ‘A New National Anthem’, remains one of Shelley’s more obscure works. As the title implies, this poem offers a new set of lyrics to ‘God Save the Queen’, the most prominent revision being the suggestion that Liberty should be revered as the nation’s true monarch.5 Personifying Liberty as such was a device Shelley had employed two years earlier in his Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (1817). In this pamphlet, Shelley uses the occasion of the nation’s bereavement over the death of Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s daughter and the heir presumptive to the throne, to suggest that even greater grief should be expressed at the death of another Princess, Liberty. ‘A New National Anthem’, then, should be read as a companion piece to both the pamphlet on Charlotte’s death and ‘England in 1819’. While all three texts suggest that Liberty has died, the two poems hold out hope that one day soon Liberty might burst from the grave in a glorious resurrection.]

1 Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974, p. 529. 2 See Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, pp. 539–41, 593. 3 Susan Wolfson, Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism, Stanford, Stan­ ford University Press, 1997, pp. 204–06. 4 James Chandler, England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 23–32. 5 For an earlier instance of Liberty being crowned as Britain’s monarch, see Wolcot’s ‘Ode to Burke’ (pp. 33–36 above).

156

SONNET: E NGLAND

IN

1819

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—1 Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring—2 Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow. A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—3 An army, which liberticide4 and prey5 Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;6 Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;7 A Senate,—Time’s worst statute unrepealed,—8 Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.9

1

10

A N EW NATIONAL ANTHEM I GOD prosper, speed, and save, God raise from England’s grave Her murdered Queen! Pave with swift victory The steps of Liberty, Whom Britons own to be Immortal Queen. II See, she comes throned on high, On swift Eternity! God save the Queen! Millions on millions wait Firm, rapid, and elate, On her majestic state! God save the Queen! 157

1

10

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

III She is thine own pure soul Moulding the mighty whole, God save the Queen! She is thine own deep love Rained down from heaven above, Wherever she rest or move, God save our Queen!

20

IV Wilder10 her enemies In their own dark disguise, God save the Queen! All earthly things that dare Her sacred name to bear, Strip them, as kings are, bare; God save the Queen! V Be her eternal throne Built in our hearts alone, God save the Queen! Let the oppressor hold Canopied seats of gold; She sits enthroned of old O’er our hearts Queen. VI Lips touched by seraphim Breathe out the choral hymn God save the Queen! Sweet as if Angels sang, Loud as that trumpet’s clang Wakening the world’s dead gang, God save the Queen!

158

30

40

Figure 9: George Cruikshank, frontispiece to Non Mi Ricordo! (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, Non Mi Ricordo!, 5th edn, London, W. Hone, 1820

WILLIAM HONE

‘Non Mi Ricordo!’ (1820)

[First published as ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’, London, William Hone, 1820. When George III passed away in January 1820 after six decades on the throne, Britain entered a state of national mourning. At least one group, however, must have privately rejoiced at the changing of monarchs – political satirists. While the sporad­ ically insane and generally eccentric George III had certainly offered humorists plenty of fodder over the years, his successor, George IV, was quite possibly the most enticing satirical target in the history of Britain’s royal family. As Prince of Wales and, later, Prince Regent, he had been a wine-bibbing, lecherous, obese, and dandified spendthrift, and in 1820 it looked as if his ascension to the throne would do little to curb these vices.1 Anticipating the hey-day the wags in the British press would have at the new king’s expense, George IV’s aides worked assiduously to buy off leading caricaturists, allocating over £2,600 between 1819–22 to suppress attacks on the king.2 These efforts, however, were largely ineffectual, as changing titles from Regent to King did little to alter George’s status as the great national punch line. As if to give satirists a glimpse of the golden age to come, just months after suc­ ceeding to the throne George provided his critics with one of the most sensational political farces in the nation’s history. In what came to be known as the ‘Queen Caroline affair’, the king ignored the public’s affection for his estranged wife and attempted to divorce and bar her from the throne. Instantly, the already sympathetic Caroline became a martyr, symbolizing not only the helpless victim of royal tyranny but also the abused wife. Upon returning to England from her Continental exile in June 1820, Caroline was thronged by the crowd; and when she was brought to trial two months later, between ten and twenty thousand supporters attended her. As might be expected, the Queen Caroline affair created an almost insatiable taste for news, rumours, and scandal, and no gadfly of the state was better posi­ tioned to appease the public’s appetite than William Hone (1780–1842; DNB). By 1820 Hone was the acknowledged prince of political satirists, having become some­ thing of a folk hero in December 1817 when he was acquitted of three counts of blasphemous and seditious libel for writing catechetical parodies of the govern­ ment.3 In 1819 he further enhanced his reputation with the wildly popular The 160

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-25

Hone (‘Non Mi Ricordo’)

Political House that Jack Built, a trenchant response to the Peterloo Massacre written in the style of a children’s book and illustrated by George Cruikshank.4 Thus, when in August 1820 George put Caroline on trial in the House of Lords, Hone did what came naturally to him, responding with a series of ten mass-produced pamphlets championing the maligned queen and excoriating her husband. Hone’s most popular satire on the Queen Caroline affair was ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’, another collaboration with Cruikshank that went through over thirty editions in the four months following its August 1820 publication. Hone bases this pamphlet on the most controversial phase of Caroline’s trial, the testimony of her former servant Teodoro Majocchi. Introduced as a government witness, Majocchi offered a devas­ tating account of Caroline’s adulterous affair with Bartolomeo Pergami, a handsome Italian servant whom she had suspiciously promoted to serve as her chamberlain. Coaxed on by the king’s lawyers, Majocchi demonstrated a remarkable ability to recall the most minute details surrounding Caroline’s transgressions. A day later, however, under intense cross-examination from the Queen’s attorney, Lord Brougham, Majocchi mysteriously lost his powers of recollection, responding ‘Non mi ricordo’ (‘I don’t remember’) over eighty times.5 To anyone remotely sympathetic to the Queen, it was a clear-cut case of witness tampering, and soon ‘Non mi ricordo’ became a sarcastic catch-phrase throughout the country.6 However amusing Majocchi’s original testimony may have been, in ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’ Hone adds an extra layer of humour by replacing Majocchi in the witness box with King George himself. Now it is no longer the alleged immorality of Caro­ line that is on trial, but that of her husband and chief accuser. Hone begins with mild jibes directed at the king’s dandified ways, turns next to the decidedly more serious matter of George’s squandering millions of pounds at the taxpayers’ expense, and ultimately lays out the most damning evidence of all in this particular case, the king’s long history of adulterous affairs. In the face of such accusations, George takes the Majocchian defence, retreating into equivocations, half-truths, and the regular repetition of ‘Non mi ricordo’. Along the way, Hone can’t resist the temptation to insert several asides on the pretentiousness and shallow ceremoniousness of the House of Lords. In the end, however, it is George alone that bears the brunt of Hone’s satiric pen. As the king’s day in court comes to a close, he has been morally, intellectually, and socially dis­ credited and left to ponder the rather pointed question, ‘Suppose every man in society were to do as you do, what would become of society; and what right have you to do so, more than any other man?’ The clearly guilty witness, having worn out the ‘Non mi ricordo’ defence, can only respond with a feeble query whether the cross-examination is about to end. Hone closes by granting the king’s request for adjournment, but in doing so he makes it perfectly clear that the new sovereign’s time on ‘THE GRILLERY’ has only just begun.]

161

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 1 For examples of earlier spoofs on George IV, see Lamb’s and Cruikshank’s ‘Prince of Whales’ satires above (pp. 129–33). For an annotated facsimile of Hone and Cruikshank’s The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820), see Vol. 3, pp. 203–34. 2 John Wardroper, Kings, Lords and Wicked Libellers: Satire and Protest, 1760–1837, London, John Murray, 1973, p. 213. 3 See Keats’s ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ (pp. 140–42 above) for a poetic commemoration of Hone’s 1817 release. A partial transcript of Hone’s trial is reprinted in vol. 3 of Parodies of the Romantic Age, ed. Graeme Stones, London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999, pp. 183–251. 4 See John Strachan’s annotated reproduction of The Political House that Jack Built in vol. 2 of Parodies of the Romantic Age. This pamphlet is generally credited with being the great break­ through in Cruikshank’s career. 5 For an excellent account of Queen Caroline’s trial, see Flora Fraser’s The Unruly Queen, New York, Knopf, 1996, pp. 412–44. 6 Majocchi was subsequently convicted of perjury and sentenced to death. In late 1820, Charles Sambroke Ordoyno published a pamphlet entitled The last dying speech, life, character and behaviour of Sig. Majocci, alias Non mi ricordo : Who was hanged and beheaded at Sleaford on Friday last, October 13, 1820, for basely attempting to murder the reputation of our most gracious Queen, Nottingham, C. S. Ordoyno, 1820.

162

C ROSS E XAMINED BY M R. B ESOM . 1 WHO are you? Non mi ricordo. What countryman are you?—a foreigner or an englishman?2 Non mi ricordo. No not at all. Do you understand ENGLISH? Will the Oath you have taken bind you to speak the truth, or do you know of any other Oath more binding? The TURNSTILE G ENERAL3 objected to the question; upon which a discussion arose as to the nature of the Oath likely to bind the Witness, who appeared to be playing with a thread. The Witness was accordingly asked, by way of illustration, to what degree he thought the thread was binding, and whether he knew of any thing else more binding? The Lord P RECEDENT 4 F URTHERMORE said, if the Witness believed the thread he held was binding, that was sufficient. The LORD P RECEDENT ’s opinion gave rise to a long discussion as to whether more binding was binding, and binding was more binding; which ended in a reference to the E RMINIANS,5 who delivered the following solemn opinion:—If the Witness shall answer that he thinks the bit of thread is binding, there is no doubt it is binding; but he cannot be asked if a cord is more binding, because he in fact, says that the thread itself is binding. If the Witness twists the thread around his little finger he is so far bound by it, and it is binding; and having done that, it is unnecessary to inquire whether a cord, round another part of his body, would be more binding. Question over-ruled. CROSS EXAMINATION R ESUMED. You are a master tailor, I think? I was cut out for a tailor.6 You have been a tailor, then? I only follow tailoring as a mere amusement. Fond of Goose7 I suppose—but pray Mr. Mere-amusement what is your business? I was brought up a Cabinet maker. What can you get at it?—are you a good hand? I can’t say I am; I’m badly off; my tools are worn out. What is your place of residence? (Order Order). The TURNSTILE G ENERAL protested against the consequences of this mode of Examination. Lord J URYMAN —Why does not the Interpreter give the Witness’s Answer.

163

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

The Lord P RECEDENT F URTHERMORE —Because the Bench objects to the question. Lord MUDDLEPOOL 8—Does the Turnstile General object to the question. The TURNSTILE G ENERAL . I do object to it, my Lord. This is perhaps the most important question that ever occurred. By this dealing out, the party is placed in such a situation as he never was placed in before. Mr. BESOM —I ask him where he now lives, and the Turnstile General objects to this, because I do not put all the questions I might put, in a single breath. The Lord PRECEDENT FURTHERMORE —I feel great difficulty—I doubt. Lord W HEELBARROW 9 thought there was a great deal in what the noble Lord had said; and he doubted. CROSS EXAMINATION R ESUMED. Non How much money has been expended on you since you were born?10 mi ricordo. What have you done for it in return? More less than more. How do you get your living? I was a waiter for some years at the Hotel de Grand Bretagne,11 and succeeded my father as head waiter at the Crown Inn. What wages have you? Non mi ricordo. Have you any perquisites? Veils. Are you head waiter, or by what other name than head waiter you may be called, at the Crown Inn? I am after building a new place called the Wellington Arms,12 and trying to be Barrack-master; if I dont gain the Trial I shall be glad to remain at the old Crown. This answer appeared to excite considerable sensation, The T WISTER G ENERAL13 thought the meaning was, ‘if I do n’t gain what I attempt to gain.’ [The Short-hand writer was desired to read the answer, and the word Trial was retained as the correct translation.] I do not ask what you are to be hereafter, but whether you are still head waiter at the Crown? The head waiter is dismissed occasionally. Are you married? More yes than no. Do you live with your own wife? No. Is she in the country? Yes. Why did you marry? To pay my debts.14 Then why did you part? Because my debts were paid. Were you not up to the eyes in debt? Si Signor. Are you not bound to manifest some gratitude towards those who have paid your debts? The interpreter said the witness was a mere fanfaron,15 and that he found it diffi­ cult, if not impossible, to explain to the witness’s understanding what was meant by gratitude. 164

Hone (‘Non Mi Ricordo’)

C ROSS E XAMINATION R ESUMED . Did not you write to your wife a licentious letter, called a letter of license?— (Order, order.) I ask you again the cause of your separation? She left me. On what account? I did not like her, and I told her I’d have nothing to do with her any more. After that what did you do? Oh, I rambled about. Where did you go? To Jersey16 and elsewhere. Well, Sir, go on. Non mi ricordo. More yes Do you mean to say that you never went to Manchester Square?17 than no. Were you in the house on the footing of a private friend? No, not as a friend. You mentioned your father just now:—you did not go in your father’s cart, I pre­ sume; in what sort of carriage did you go? In the old yellow chariot. How long did it take you to travel from Manchester Square to Richmond?18 Non mi ricordo. How many other places did you go to? Non mi ricordo. Is the Marquis of C.19 a married man? (Order. Order.) After you parted from your wife, on what terms did you live? I’ve been trying to get rid of her. Matthew? Matthew? (trying to Do you know what Matthew says (c.v.v.32.)?20 recollect)—what Matthew?—he’s no friend of mine. In what light do you consider your oath at the marriage ceremony? A ceremony. If your marriage oath has not bound you, can you expect people to believe you if ever you should take a solemn public oath? More yes than no. By the Roman law, a divorce was granted for Drunkenness, Adultery, and False Keys:21 what is your opinion of that law? The T WISTER G ENERAL said, that it was contrary to common sense to ask the witness’s opinion about any Law. Non mi ricordo. How many Wives does your Church allow you?22 How many have you had since you separated from your own? Non mi ricordo. Yes (with Are you a Member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice?23 great energy). The Cross-examining Counsel said that the Interpreter had materially altered the sense of the last question; he had in fact asked, if the Witness was Member of the Society for the suppression of Wives, (a loud laugh) which Witness had eagerly answered in the affirmative. The Witness’s answer was expunged, and on the question being repeated cor­ rectly, he answered that he was told it was his duty to encourage the Vice Society, because it professed to diminish the influence of bad example. 165

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Have they ever prosecuted you? Me!—(with astonishment)—they like me too well! What do you mean then by Suppression—is your Society to prevent little vice from being committed, or great vice from being found out? More Yes than No. It was here moved by Lord L E C UISINIER, that 4 o’Clock, the hour of dinner, was arrived. Another, in a maiden Speech, said, that during his long silence in that Court he had had leisure to observe, that 4 o’Clock in the morning was a more usual hour of adjournment. Another considered that Lord L E C UISINIER ’s suggestion ought not to be enter­ tained for a moment. We only exist in our formalities. If we suffer ourselves to be put a stop to by the motion, we may find that we are travelling round again into the obsolete usages of our early ancestors; which will be to describe a circle that must be generally considered as nothing less than a revolution! I therefore deprecate the least innovation, and move, as an amendment, that 4 o’Clock is not arrived. The M ASTER G ENERAL of the Black Barracks at Exeter,24 rose without his wig, and declaring, upon the memory of his whiskers, that he had just heard it strike 4, he enquired whether the Clock was in Order. (Loud and continued cries of hear hear.) The Home D OCTOR25 felt his pulse alarmingly quicken one and a fraction in the minute, and nervously said, that the clock was clearly guilty of a barefaced libel, and ought to be instantly held to bail for breach of the peace. The simultaneous action of all the Clocks throughout the nation and their open communication by circulars, was an index to the existence of an organized correspondence and a systematic affil­ iation. He trembled at the ‘positive intelligence’ he had received, that millions at that moment held their hands in an attitude ready to strike; but it was the proudest day of his life that he had so far succeeded by a circular movement of his own, as to ena­ ble his workmen to hold them to the peace for an hour together. Lord BATHOS 26 assured the Black-Barrack Master-General that the Clock was out of Order, and he congratulated the Home Doctor on his efficiency; but he thought they had not sunk low enough into the subject; for he had strong doubts whether the striking might not be construed into an overt act of High Treason, and if he saw any probability of being supported he should conclude with a substantive motion. Did not the Lord Precedent remember a Clock Case, in which, immediately after the chain had been locked up, a principal link suddenly disappeared? and whether, after the most minute inquiry, there was not every reason to believe from the best information that could be obtained at that time, that that link had been prigged?27 (Hear hear.) Take even the very last Clock Case, where the chain was kept together with the greatest pains, and the utmost care. If the smallest link in that chain had been prigged, it would have been fatal to the works, and yet in that very case, two days after the chain was locked up, a link was obtained, which, if sooner discovered, would have lengthened the chain to the necessary extent, and brought home in the most conclusive manner the guilt of the Clock. He therefore moved 166

Hone (‘Non Mi Ricordo’)

that the Clock be examined, and the chain kept in their own custody, with liberty to add to the number of links. Lord R ATSTAIL28 with his usual animation seconded the Motion. Marquiz B OUDOIR moved as an Amendment, that the Clock being in contempt, the Black stick be ordered to walk him in to-morrow. Seconded. Upon this Amendment the following Amendment was moved and seconded, that the word ‘to-morrow’ be expunged, and the word ‘yesterday’ be inserted in its place. Ordered. C ROSS E XAMINATION R ESUMED . Does the Witness recollect whether he was at B———?29 Non mi ricordo. 30 Who usually closed the Pavilion? I did. Was it so close as to exclude any person outside from seeing what passed within, or was it partially open? It was quite closed—When I could not close it with C********31 entirely, I did it with other pieces. What do you mean by saying with other pieces? I mean with other pieces of the same quality. Symptoms of impatience were now expressed, with loud cries of Withdraw, withdraw. Do you remember any thing particular occurring one night? No. Do you not recollect whether a new wing was added during the time you and Non mi ricordo. your mistress were absent?32 Do you know a certain Colonel Q.?33 Yes, he has too little mustachios. Are you a sober man? More no than yes. How many bottles a day do you drink? Non mi ricordo. Do you drink six bottles? Non mi ricordo. Five bottles? Non mi ricordo. How many nights in the week do you go to bed sober? Non mi ricordo. Are you sober now? More no than yes. Where do you spend your mornings? At Curaçao.34 Where do you spend your evenings? At the Cat and Fiddle. What is your favorite dish? Trifle. What is your favorite game? Bag-at-L—35 What is your favorite amusement? The C.36 After Dressing, Drinking, and Dreaming, what time remains for thinking? Non mi ricordo. I hold in my hand a list of immense sums of money that have been advanced to you, how much have you left? None. Well, but you have something to show for it? No. How do you live? I have a doll-shop, and a large stable in the country, and some cow-houses in different parts. Are not your favourite friends horn-boys37 and flash-men?38—(Order, order.) 167

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Can you produce a certificate of good character from those who know you? Yes, from the minister.39 Pho! pho! do n’t trifle; can you from any respectable person? More no than yes. I understand you have the scarlet fever, do you not know that it ends here in a Non mi ricordo. putrid fever?40 You have many companions and advisers, but have you to your knowledge one real friend in the world; and if not, why not? Non mi ricordo. By what acts of your life do you expect you will be remembered hereafter? I shall not answer you any more questions; you put questions to me I never dreamt of. Suppose every man in society were to do as you do, what would become of soci­ ety; and what right have you to do so, more than any other man?—(Witness greatly agitated?) The Witness from the Grillery41 asked whether the Cross Examination was nearly concluded? (Cries of K EEP ON!)—Supposing that the business would close to day at 4 o’clock, he had made a private assignation, although he was quite ready to stop if necessary. The Lord P RECEDENT F URTHERMORE was in favour of adhering to a square rule; he had not entered the Court till five seconds past ten by his stop-watch, in con­ sequence of consulting with his Wife upon a motion-of-course which they had contemplated; and their further deliberation had been postponed until after the adjournment to-day. It was impossible to know what questions might turn out to be doubtful or doubtless; yet adjourning at Five o’Clock would gain a delay of six hours in the Week, and the gaining of any thing he considered very material in the present case. An Adjournment then took place, the Witness remaining on THE GRILLERY.

168

Figure 10: Cruikshank, ‘The Fat in the Fire’ from Non Mi Ricordo (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’, 5th edn, London, W. Hone, 1820, p. 11.

169

Figure 11: Cruikshank, ‘What are you at?’ from Non Mi Ricordo (1820) Source: William Hone and George Cruikshank, ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’, 5th edn, London, W. Hone, 1820, p. 14. 170

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

‘The Irish Avatar’ (1821)

[First published in the Examiner, XV, 28 July 1822, pp. 473–74. On 9 October 1821, Byron (1788–1824; DNB), then living in Italy, sent a copy of his new poem, ‘The Irish Avatar’, to John Murray, asking the publisher to pass it along to Thomas Moore. Since Murray would have had little prior knowledge of the poem, Byron took the opportunity to explain its origins. ‘It is doubtful’, he wrote, ‘whether the poem was written by Felicia Hemans for the prize of Dartmoor Acad­ emy—or by the Revd. W. L. Bowles with a view to the bishopric—your own great discernment will decide between them’.1 The joke here, of course, works on two lev­ els. First, insofar as ‘The Irish Avatar’ is acerbic political satire, it represents the generic antithesis of Hemans’s sentimental portraits of home and hearth and Bow­ les’s overwrought attempts to capture the natural sublime. Secondly, even if the poem had been written by a Hemans or a Bowles, its virulent attacks on George IV and his supporters would disqualify its author from any contest for a poetry prize or a bishopric. The specific occasion for ‘The Irish Avatar’ was George IV’s August 1821 visit to Ireland. As the first sitting monarch since Richard II to make an official state visit to the island, George was mobbed by Irish well-wishers at every turn. The King made the most of the occasion, enthusiastically shaking hands with commoners, wearing a shamrock in his hat, and publicly declaring, ‘My heart has always been Irish. From the day it first beat, I have loved Ireland’. Obviously flattered by such amiable senti­ ments, the Irish responded with an outpouring of affection for their king, flocking in huge numbers to see his carriage, hosting lavish celebrations nearly every night of his visit, and granting him a measure of affection he had never enjoyed on his native isle. Upon reading about this love-fest in newspapers sent to him from London, Byron could hardly contain his repugnance. By his own account, he was so infuri­ ated that he immediately took up his pen to lash out at the way the Irish treated George as some sort of ‘avatar’, or messiah. As he makes clear in the opening stanza, part of this fury grew out of what he and many other Britons perceived as a complete lack of decorum on the King’s part. Just a few days prior to George’s 171

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-26

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

arrival in Ireland, his estranged wife, Caroline, had passed away. Given the King and the Queen’s recent battles (see pp. 160–61 above), no one expected him to show signs of deep bereavement. But for him to engage in a week of bacchanalian revelry while his wife’s body was still en route to its final resting place in Prussia seemed, at the very least, poor taste. Even more galling was the seeming duplicity of the King’s professions of love for Ireland. In his youth – undoubtedly under the spell of his Catholic wife, Maria Fit­ zherbert – George had shown considerable sympathy for the plight of the Irish and had given reformers hope that his ascension to the throne would open the way for Catholic Emancipation. Since coming to power as Prince Regent in 1811, however, George had proven himself yet another Hanoverian with seemingly little sympathy for Irish suffering. Not only had he turned against Catholic Emancipation, but he also supported Castlereagh’s campaign to contain the reform movement in Ireland.2 Given this recent history, then, it was mind-boggling to Byron and other radicals that the Irish could instantly forget how little George had done for their island. As he laments throughout ‘The Irish Avatar’, the willingness of the Irish to ignore their shackles while under the spell of monarchy suggested that it was chimerical to hope for the liberation of Ireland anytime in the near future. While ‘The Irish Avatar’ has its share of powerful moments, Byron himself tended to dismiss the poem. In first presenting it to Moore, for instance, he apolo­ gised that the poem had been written ‘in the greatest hurry and fury, and sent it you the day after; so, doubtless, there will be some awful constructions, and a rather law­ less conscription of rhythmus’. Byron also worried that ‘The Irish Avatar’ was too slanderous for publication, dubbing it ‘as pretty a piece of invective as ever put pub­ lisher in the way to “Botany”’ (the Australian penal colony).3 As a result, he decided in late 1821 to print just twenty copies of the poem, sending it only to those friends who would appreciate its radical sentiments. By the following spring, however, the Examiner deemed it sufficiently safe to print selected stanzas in its 21 April 1822 issue. And three months later, on 28 July 1822, the Examiner made the complete text of ‘The Irish Avatar’ available to the public for the first time, omitting only the author’s name and those descriptions of the King that were likely to land the maga­ zine’s editors in prison. For the sake of readability, the text reproduced below replaces the asterisks from the Examiner text with the original names and word choices (in brackets) from Byron’s manuscript. For a thorough textual history of the poem, see Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, eds Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1991, vol. 6, pp. 600–02.]

1 Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols, London, John Murray, 1978, vol. 8, p. 236. 172

Byron (‘The Irish Avatar’) 2 For the history of George’s attitudes toward Ireland and his 1821 visit to the island, see E. A. Smith, George IV, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 192–97, and Christopher Hibbert, George IV: Regent and King, 1811–1830, 2 vols, London, Allen Lane, 1973, vol. 2, pp. 208–13. 3 Byron’s Letters and Journals, vol. 8, p. 215.

173

1. Ere the Daughter of BRUNSWICK is cold in her grave, And her ashes still float to their home o’er the tide,1 Lo! [George] the Triumphant speeds over the wave, To the long-cherish’d Isle which he loved like his—bride.

1

2. True, the Great of her bright and brief era are gone, The rainbow-like epoch when Freedom could pause For the few little years, out of centuries won, Which betray’d not, or crush’d not, or wept not her cause. 3. True, the chains of the Catholic clank o’er his rags,2 The Castle still stands,3 and the Senate’s no more,4 And the Famine, which dwelt on her freedomless crags, Is extending its steps to her desolate shore.

10

4. To her desolate shore—where the Emigrant stands For a moment to gaze ere he flies from his hearth; Tears fall on his chain, though it drops from his hands, For the dungeon he quits is the place of his birth. 5. But he comes! the Messiah of [Royalty] comes; Like a goodly Leviathan5 rolled from the waves! Then receive him as best such an Advent becomes, With a legion of cooks and an army of slaves! 6. He comes in the promise and bloom of three-score,6 To perform in the pageant the [Sovereign’s] part— But long live the Shamrock which shadows him o’er! Could the green in his hat 7 be transferr’d to his heart! 7. Could that long-wither’d spot but be verdant again, And a new spring of noble affections arise— Then might Freedom forgive thee this dance in thy chain, And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the skies. 174

20

Byron (‘The Irish Avatar’)

8. Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now? Were he God—as he is but the commonest clay, With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow— Such servile devotion might shame him away.

30

9. Aye, roar in his train! let thine Orators lash Their fanciful spirits to pamper his pride— Not thus did thy GRATTAN8 indignantly flash His soul o’er the freedom implored and denied. 10. Ever glorious GRATTAN! the best of the Good! So simple in heart, so sublime in the rest! With all which Demosthenes9 wanted endued, And his rival or victor in all he possess’d.

40

11. Ere Tully10 arose in the zenith of Rome, Though unequall’d, preceded, the task was begun— But GRATTAN sprung up like a God from the tomb Of ages, the first, last, the Saviour, the One! 12. With the skill of an Orpheus to soften the brute; With the fire of Prometheus to kindle mankind; Even Tyranny listening sat melted or mute, And Corruption shrunk scorch’d from the glance of his mind. 13. But back to our theme! Back to despots and slaves! Feasts furnished by Famine! rejoicings by Pain! True Freedom but welcomes, while Slavery still raves, When a week’s Saturnalia11 hath loosen’d her chain.

50

14. Let the poor squalid splendour thy wreck can afford (As the bankrupt’s profusion his ruin would hide) Gild over the Palace, Lo! Erin,12 thy Lord! Kiss his foot with thy blessing for blessings denied! 15. Or if Freedom past hope be extorted at last, If the Idol of Brass find his feet are of clay,13 Must what Terror or Policy wring forth be class’d With what Monarchs ne’er give, but as wolves yield their prey? 175

60

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

16. Each thing*14 hath its nature, a King’s is to reign,— To reign! in that word, see, ye Ages, comprised The cause of the curses all annals contain, From Cæser the Dreaded to [George] the [Despised].†15 17. Wear, FINGAL,16 thy trapping! O’CONNEL,17 proclaim His accomplishments! His!!! and thy country convince Half an age’s contempt was an error of Fame, And that ‘Hal is the rascaliest, sweetest young Prince!’18 18. Will thy yard of blue riband, poor FINGAL, recal The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? Or, has it not bound thee the fastest of all The slaves, who now hail their Betrayer with hymns?

70

19. Aye, ‘build him a dwelling,’ let each give his mite, Till, like Babel, the new [Royal] dome hath arisen;19 Let thy Beggars and Helots20 their pittance unite, And a Palace bestow for a Poor-house and Prison! 20. Spread—spread for VITELLIUS21 the revel repast, Till the [gluttonous Monster] be stuffed to the gorge! And the roar of his Drunkards proclaim him at last The Fourth of the [Fools] and [Oppressors] called [GEORGE].

80

21. Let the tables be loaded with feasts till they groan! Till they groan like thy people, through ages of woe! Let the wine flow around the old Bacchanal’s throne Like their blood which has flow’d, and which yet has to flow. 22. But let not his name be thine Idol alone— On his right hand behold a SEJANUS22 appears! Thy own [CASTLEREAGH]!23 let him still be thine own! A wretch, never named but with curses and jeers,—

* The original here has a word which some of my brethren suppose to begin with a B; but in our doubt and perplexity, it was determined the present reading would be at least comprehensive.—Printer’s Devil. † At this part, a corner of the manuscript was torn off,—I fear, invidiously.—P. D.

176

Byron (‘The Irish Avatar’)

23. Till now, when the Isle which should blush for his birth, Deep, deep, as the gore which he shed on her soil, Seems proud of the Reptile which crawl’d from her earth, And for [murder] repays him with shouts and a smile!

90

24. Without one single ray of her genius, without The fancy, the manhood, the fire of her race— The Miscreant who well might plunge Erin in doubt, If she ever gave birth to a being so base. 25. If she did—let her long boasted proverb be hush’d, Which proclaims that from Erin no reptile can spring,— See the cold-blooded Serpent, with venom full-flush’d, Still warming its folds in the breast of a [King]!

100

26. Shout, drink, feast, and flatter! Oh, Erin! how low Wert thou sunk by Misfortune and Tyranny, till Thy welcome of Tyrants hath plung’d thee below The depth of thy deep in a deeper gulph still. 27. My voice, though but humble, was raised for thy right,24 My vote as a freeman’s still voted thee free, This hand, though but feeble, would arm in thy fight, And this heart, though outworn, had a throb still for thee! 28. Yes, I loved thee and thine, though thou art not my land; I have known noble hearts and great souls in thy sons; And I wept with the world o’er the patriot band Who are gone, but I weep them no longer as once:

110

29. For happy are they now reposing afar, Thy GRATTAN, thy CURRAN,25 thy SHERIDAN,26 all Who, for years, were the Chiefs in the eloquent war, And redeem’d, if they have not retarded, thy fall. 30. Yes, happy are they in their cold English graves! Their shades cannot start at thy shout of to-day,— Nor the steps of enslavers and chain-kissing slaves Be stamp’d in the turf o’er their fetterless clay. 177

120

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

31. Till now, I had envied thy sons and thy shore, Though their virtues were hunted, their liberties fled, There was something so warm and sublime in the core Of an Irishman’s heart, that I envy—thy dead. 32. Or, if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour My contempt for a nation so servile though sore, Which though trod like the worm will not turn upon Power, ’Tis the glory of GRATTAN and genius of MOORE!27 Sept. 16th, 1821.

178

JOHN HUGHES

‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’ (1824)

[First published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XVI, October 1824, pp. 440–42. William Blackwood (1776–1834; DNB), the Scottish publisher who founded Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1817, was anything but coy when it came to declar­ ing a political agenda for his magazine. In issue after issue, Blackwood and his contributors openly exulted in Tory rectitude while thundering out against various Whiggish abominations. Typical of the magazine’s partisan spleen was the preface to the eleventh volume (1822), which takes offence to claims that the satire in Black­ wood’s was neither fair nor civil, asking, What is our offence? It can be told in three words, WE ARE TORIES. ‘Ubi lapsus, quid feci?’1—Ask the WHIGS! We have attacked them, there lies our fault. We have beat them, there lies our glory. They abuse us; that we despise. The Tories, at least the good, the wise, the generous, and the just among them, approve us. In that we triumph.2

Given this ultra-Tory stance, it is little surprise that Blackwood’s would publish ‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’, John Hughes’s (1790–1857) witty satire on middle-class Whigs. Few specifics are known about Hughes other than that he won acclaim as a poet at Oxford, published a travel guide on Provence and the Rhone (1819), and contributed several comical poems to Blackwood’s in 1824 and 1825 under the pseudonym ‘T. Buller’. Besides ‘The Magic Lay’, ‘Buller’s’ other contribu­ tions to Blackwood’s include ‘The Crabstick’, a how-to-poem on dealing with a shrewish wife (November 1824); ‘Momus—or an Hour at Bath’, a satire on Bath society (January 1825); and ‘Promenade de Tivoli’, a loyalist song contrasting John Bull with a Frenchified dandy (April 1825).3 ‘The Magic Lay’ was Hughes’s most celebrated poetic work, eventually being reproduced in broadside form and as the centrepiece of his 1850 collection, Lays of Past Days.4 The poem takes as its main satirical target the pretentiousness of the aspiring middle classes, focusing particularly on the misadventures of a Mr and Mrs Bubb as they attempt to blend into Brighton society. In sketching his protagonists, Hughes draws upon a long tradition of stock middle-class rubes. Mr Bubb is the classic tradesman who develops a sense of self-importance from his prominence in 179

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-27

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

local politics; and Mrs Bubb is the traditional socially ambitious housewife who squanders away her husband’s fortune on the trappings of respectability. While nearly every stanza of ‘The Magic Lay’ exposes some new aspect of the Bubbs’ lack of refinement, Hughes’s most effective satirical device comes in his title and refrain. ‘Chay’ is a vulgarism for ‘chaise’, apparently derived from the mistaken notion that ‘chaise’ is a plural noun. Hence, more than anywhere else, in their repeated boast­ ings about their ‘one-horse chay’, the Bubbs unwittingly betray their philistinism. As noted above, such descriptions of middle-class backwardness are clearly indebted to a long tradition of aristocratic satire. At the same time, however, ‘The Magic Lay’ is also quite topical, lampooning the recent strategy of aristocratic Whigs to ally themselves with the middle classes in the hopes of effecting moderate (as opposed to radical) Parliamentary reform. Much to the mortification of Tories, who tended to have little affection for the nation’s aspiring merchants and manufacturers, Whig leaders had recently taken to calling the middle classes the ‘very sinews of the nation’ and, in Lord Brougham’s words, ‘the wealth and intelligence of the country, the glory of the British name’.5 It is important, then, to see a poem such as this as not merely a timeless satire on bourgeois social climbing, but as a volley in the most significant political debate of the 1820s. Much more is at stake here than whether the Bubbs can blend into polite society. Rather, the ultimate question of this, and many other anti-Whig satires that appeared in Blackwood’s during this era, was whether the middling ranks were indeed fit to govern the nation. To listen to Hughes (and, by extension, Blackwood’s), the answer was certainly in the negative.]

1 Latin for ‘Where is the fault in what I have done?’ 2 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XI, January 1822, p. v. 3 For an attribution study of the early years of Blackwood’s, see Alan Strout Lang, A Bibliogra­ phy of Articles in Blackwood’s Magazine, Volumes I Through XVIII, 1817–1825, Lubbock, Texas Technological College Library, 1959. 4 John Hughes, Lays of Past Days, London, Longman, 1850. 5 David Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 72–77.

180

AIR—E VELEEN ’S B OWER. I. MR BUBB was a Whig orator, also a Soap Laborator, For everything’s new christen’d in the present day;1 He was follow’d and adored, by the Common Council board,2 And lived quite genteel with a one-horse chay.

1

II. Mrs Bubb was gay and free, fair, fat, and forty-three, And blooming as a peony in buxom May; The toast she long had been of Farringdon-Within,3 And fill’d the better-half of the one-horse chay. III. Mrs Bubb said to her Lord, ‘You can well, Bubb, afford, Whate’er a Common Council man in prudence may; We’ve no brats to plague our lives, and the soap concern it thrives, So let’s have a trip to Brighton in the one-horse chay.

10

IV. ‘We’ll view the pier and shipping, and enjoy many a dipping, And walk for a stomach4 in our best array; I longs more nor I can utter, for shrimps and bread and butter, And an airing on the Steyne5 in the one-horse chay. V. ‘We’ve a right to spare for nought that for money can be bought, So to get matters ready, Bubb, do you trudge away; To my dear Lord Mayor I’ll walk, just to get a bit of talk, And an imitation shawl for the one-horse chay.’ VI. Mr Bubb said to his wife, ‘Now I think upon’t, my life, ’Tis three weeks at least to next boiling-day; The dog-days are set in, and London’s growing thin, So I’ll order out old Nobbs and the one-horse chay.’ VII. Now Nobbs, it must be told, was rather fat and old, His colour it was white, and it had been grey; 181

20

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

He was round as a pot, and when soundly whipt would trot Full five miles an hour in the one-horse chay. VIII. When at Brighton they were housed, and had stuft and caroused, O’er a bowl of rack punch,6 Mr Bubb did say, ‘I’ve ascertain’d, my dear, the mode of dipping here From the ostler, who is cleaning up my one-horse chay.

30

IX. ‘You’re shut up in a box, ill convenient as the stocks, And eighteen-pence a-time are obliged for to pay; Court corruption here, say I, makes everything so high,7 And I wish I had come without my one-horse chay.’ X. ‘As I hope,’ says she, ‘to thrive, ’tis flaying folks alive, The King and them extortioners are leagued, I say; ’Tis encouraging of such for to go to pay so much, So we’ll set them at defiance with our one-horse chay.

40

XI. ‘Old Nobbs, I am sartain, may be trusted gig or cart in, He takes every matter in an easy way; He’ll stand like a post, while we dabble on the coast, And return back to dress in our one-horse chay.’ XII. So out they drove, all drest so gaily in their best, And finding, in their rambles, a snug little bay, They uncased at their leisure, paddled out to take their pleasure, And left everything behind in the one-horse chay. XIII. But while, so snugly sure that all things were secure, They flounced about like porpoises or whales at play, Some young unlucky imps, who prowl’d about for shrimps, Stole up to reconnoitre the one-horse chay. XIV. Old Nobbs, in quiet mood, was sleeping as he stood, (He might possibly be dreaming of his corn or hay;) Not a foot did he wag, so they whipt out every rag, And gutted the contents of the one-horse chay. XV. When our pair were soused enough, and returned in their buff, Oh, there was the vengeance and old Nick8 to pay! 182

50

Hughes (‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’)

Madam shriek’d in consternation, Mr Bubb he swore D—mnation! To find the empty state of the one-horse chay.

60

XVI. ‘If I live,’ said she, ‘I swear, I’ll consult my dear Lord Mayor, And a fine on this vagabond town he shall lay; But the gallows thieves, so tricky, hasn’t left me e’en a dicky,9 And I shall catch my death in the one-horse chay.’ XVII. ‘Come, bundle in with me, we must squeeze for once,’ says he, ‘And manage this here business the best we may; We’ve no other step to choose, nor a moment must we lose, Or the tide will float us off in our one-horse chay.’ XVIII. So noses, sides, and knees, all together did they squeeze, And, pack’d in little compass, they trotted it away, 70 As dismal as two dummies,10 head and hands stuck out like mummies, From beneath the little apron of the one-horse chay. XIX. The Steyne was in a throng, as they jogg’d it along, Madam hadn’t been so put to it for many a day; Her pleasure it was damp’d, and her person somewhat cramp’d, Doubled up beneath the apron of the one-horse chay. XX. ‘Oh would that I were laid,’ Mr Bubb in sorrow said, ‘In a broad-wheel’d waggon, well cover’d with hay! I’m sick of sporting smart, and would take a tilted cart In exchange for this bauble of a one-horse chay.

80

XXI. ‘I’d give half my riches for my worst pair of breeches, Or the apron that I wore last boiling day; They would wrap my arms and shoulders from these impudent beholders, And allow me to whip on in my one-horse chay.’ XXII. Mr Bubb ge-hupp’d11 in vain, and strove to jirk the rein, Nobbs felt he had his option to work or play, So he wouldn’t mend his pace, though they’d fain have run a race, To escape the merry gazers at the one-horse chay. XXIII. Now, good people, laugh your fill, and fancy if you will, (For I’m fairly out of breath, and have said my say,) 183

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

The trouble and the rout, to wrap and get them out, When they drove to their lodgings in their one-horse chay. XXIV. The day was swelt’ring warm, so they took no cold or harm, And o’er a smoking lunch soon forgot their dismay; But, fearing Brighton mobs, started off at night with Nobbs, To a snugger watering-place, in the one-horse chay.

184

HORACE SMITH

‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’ (1824–25)

[No. I first published in the New Monthly Magazine, XI, October 1824, pp. 312–16; No. II first published in the New Monthly Magazine, XI, November 1824, pp. 451–54; No. III first published in the New Monthly Magazine, XI, December 1824, pp. 496– 99; No. IV first published in the New Monthly Magazine, XIII, January 1825, pp. 46– 48.1 Although Horace Smith (1779–1849; DNB) is rarely read today, in the first quar­ ter of the nineteenth century he ranked among the most popular comedic writers in Britain. The son of a prominent London attorney, Smith received a broad education before ultimately choosing to become a stockbroker. He proved a natural at this profession, eventually amassing a fortune that enabled him to retire comfortably in his early forties. All the while, though, literature remained his true love, and in the first decade of the nineteenth century he spent his spare time writing novels, review­ ing for literary journals, and forming friendships with a wide range of prominent writers. Smith’s great breakthrough as a writer came in 1812, when he and his brother James wrote Rejected Addresses, a book of parodies that imagines the losing entries in a poetry contest recently held to commemorate the reopening of Drury Lane thea­ tre. The Smith brothers’ spoofs on Scott, Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, and the other leading poets of the age became both an immediate and enduring success, going through five editions in 1812, eight more the following year, and a total of twenty-two by 1851. So famous was this volume that the brothers henceforth became widely known as the ‘Rejected Addressees’.2 The success of Rejected Addresses greatly expanded Smith’s social circle, and by 1816 he was a fixture at Leigh Hunt’s literary gatherings. Here he met Percy Shelley, with whom he became fast friends. By 1820 Smith was managing Shelley’s finances, and a year later he and his wife left England to join the Shelleys in Florence. En route to Italy, however, Mrs Smith grew faint from the warm weather, forcing them to settle instead among other English expatriates in the milder climate of Versailles. Once established in France, Smith busied himself by contributing news items, humorous poems and sketches, and reviews of Parisian cultural events to the New Monthly Magazine, the London Magazine, and the Morning Chronicle.3 185

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-28

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

One of Smith’s more effective satirical projects from the Versailles years is ‘Spec­ imens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’, which appeared in four instalments in the New Monthly Magazine between October 1824 and January 1825. At the time, the New Monthly was flourishing under the editorship of Thomas Campbell, who, after taking over in 1821, had immediately changed the magazine’s reactionary tenor, a move that enabled him to attract Smith and several other leading writers of the age. Smith’s ‘Patent Pocket Dictionary’ is consistent with the new liberal slant of Camp­ bell’s magazine. Thoroughly anti-authoritarian, the ‘Dictionary’ pointedly advocates such core liberal causes as Catholic emancipation, abolishing slavery in the Ameri­ cas, reforming Parliament, and holding military, political, and religious leaders responsible for their crimes against humanity. What is perhaps most interesting, however, about the ideological position Smith stakes out is how casually he alternates between liberal politics and blatant xenopho­ bia. In the ‘C’ entries, for instance, he promotes official religious tolerance in his definitions of Chimæra and Christian, real; but in the adjacent definitions of Cardinal and Celibacy, he dredges up all the conventional stereotypes of continental papists.4 Elsewhere, he juxtaposes Christian love and generosity with entries emphasizing the racial otherness of the Irish (see Brass), Scots (see Pawky), and Turks (see Butcher). While to modern sensibilities, such selective liberalism can be a bit jolting, Smith seems perfectly comfortable with (or oblivious to) the philosophical contradictions between several of his entries. That said, politics is only part of the mission here. In Smith’s hands, the diction­ ary format proves remarkably flexible, as it allows him to jump back and forth between politics, religion, society, the arts, and popular culture. Taken as a whole, the ‘Patent Pocket Dictionary’ functions as something of an exposé on the vanity of human wishes, appropriately (for a dictionary, that is) casting a Johnsonian gaze on the vice and folly that characterize modern society. So wide is Smith’s satirical net, in fact, that he even catches himself, memorably defining Satire in the dictionary’s final instalment as ‘Attacking the vices and follies of others instead of reforming our own’.]

1 The four instalments of the dictionary were reissued as one text in Smith’s 1825 collec­ tion Gaieties and Gravities, London, H. Colburn. 2 John H. Rogers, ‘James and Horatio Smith’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 96 (British Romantic Poets, 1789–1832), Detroit, Gale, 1990, pp. 339–46. 3 For an account of Smith’s years in France, see Stuart Curran, ‘The View from Versailles: Horace Smith on the Literary Scene of 1822’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 40, 1977, pp. 357–71. 4 For other anti-Catholic entries, see those for Episcopacy and Monastery.

186

SPECIMENS OF A PATENT POCKET DICTIONARY For the use of those who wish to understand the meaning of things as well as words. NO. I. 1 A noble standard for language! to depend upon the caprice of every coxcomb, who, because words are the clothing of our thoughts, cuts them out and shapes them as he pleases, and changes them oftener than his dress.—The Tatler.2

Abridgment.—Any thing contracted into a small compass; such, for instance, as the Abridgment of the Statutes, in fifty volumes folio. Absentees.—Certain Irish land-owners, who stand a chance of being knocked on the head if they stay at home, and are sure of getting no rents if they go abroad; thus illustrating the fate of the hippopotamus, which, according to the authority of the showman at Exeter ’Change,3 ‘is a hamphibious hanimal that cannot live upon land and dies in the water.’ Absurdity.—Any thing advanced by our opponents, contrary to our own practice, or above our comprehension. Academician Royal.—One who daubs pictures by privilege, has often the authority of Art for libelling Nature, and if he could paint nothing else, is still entitled to limn the letters R. A. after his name. Accomplishments.—In women, all that can be supplied by the dancing-master, musicmaster, mantua-maker,4 and milliner. In men, tying a cravat, talking nonsense, play­ ing at billiards, dressing like a groom, and driving like a coachman. Achievement or Hatchment.5—Is generally stuck up to commemorate the decease of some of the illustrious obscure, who never achieved any thing worth notice until they died, and would be instantly forgotten if their memory did not secure an immortality of a twelvemonth by being nailed to the front of their houses. Address.—Generally a string of fulsome compliments and professions lavished upon every king or individual in authority indiscriminately, in order to assure him of the particular, personal, and exclusive veneration in which he is held by those who would pay equal homage to Jack Ketch6 if he possessed equal power. Advice.—Almost the only commodity which the world refuses to receive, although it may be had gratis, with an allowance to those who take a quantity. Adulterer.—One who has been guilty of perjury, commonly accompanied with cru­ elty and hypocrisy; softened down by the courtesy of the world into a ‘man of gallantry, a gay person somewhat too fond of an intrigue; or a woman who has had a slip, committed a faux-pas,’ &c. 187

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Agnus-Castus or Chaste-tree.—A shrub which might be advantageously planted in some of our fashionable squares. Air.—In the country an emanation from the pure sky, perfumed by the flowery earth; in London, a noxious compound of fog, smoke, putridity, and villainous exhalations. Alderman.—A ventri-potential7 citizen, into whose Mediterranean mouth good things are perpetually flowing, although none come out. Ambiguity.—A quality deemed essentially necessary in diplomatic writings, acts of parliament, and law proceedings. Ancestry.—The boast of those who have nothing else to boast of. Antiquity.—The youth, nonage,8 and inexperience of the world, invested, by a strange blunder, with the reverence due to the present times, which are its true old age. Antiquity is the young miscreant who massacred prisoners taken in war, sacri­ ficed human beings to idols, burnt them in Smithfield,9 as heretics or witches, believed in astrology, demonology, witchcraft, and every exploded folly and enor­ mity, although his example be still gravely urged as a rule of conduct, and a standing argument against any improvement upon the ‘wisdom of our ancestors!’ Ape.—The author of the fall of man according to Dr. Adam Clarke,10 who informs us that the tempter of our first parents was an ouranoutang, not a serpent. Appetite.—A relish bestowed upon the poorer classes that they may like what they eat, while it is seldom enjoyed by the rich although they may eat what they like. Argument.—With fools, passion, vociferation, or violence; with ministers, a majority; with kings, the sword; with men, of sense, a sound reason. Army.—A collection of human machines, often working as the blind instruments of blind power. Astrology is to Astronomy what alchemy is to chemistry, the ignorant parent of a learned offspring. Avarice.—The mistake of the old, who begin multiplying their attachments to the earth just as they are going to run away from it, and who are thereby increasing the bitterness without protracting the date of their separation. Ay.—A moneysyllable occasionally productive of great benefit to those who utter it. Babies.—Noisy lactivorous animalculæ much desiderated11 by those who never had any. Bachelor.—Plausibly derived by Junius12 from the Greek word for foolish, and by Spelman13 from Baculus,14 a cudgel, because he deserves it. An useless appendage of society: a poltroon who is afraid to marry lest his wife should become his mistress, and generally finishes by converting his mistress into a wife. Backward.—A mode of advancement practiced by Crabs, and recommended to man­ kind in general by the Holy Alliance.15 Bag.—A convenient receptacle for any thing wished to be secreted, and usually car­ ried by people of doubtful character, such as pettifoggers,16 old-clothes-men,17 &c. Bait.—One animal impaled upon a hook in order to torture a second for the amuse­ ment of a third. Baker.—One who gets his own bread by adulterating that of others. 188

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Ball.—An assembly for the ostensible purpose of dancing, where the old ladies shuffle and cut against one another for money, and the young ones do the same for husbands. Bar, The independence of the.—Like a ghost, a thing much talked of and seldom seen. Barrister.—One who sometimes makes his gown a cloak for browbeating and putting down a witness, who but for this protection might occasionally knock down the barrister. Beauty.—An ephemeral flower, the charm of which is destroyed as soon as it is gath­ ered: a common ingredient in matrimonial unhappiness. Bed.—An article in which we are born and pass the happiest portion of our lives, and yet one which we never wish to keep. Beer, Small.—See Water. Bellman’s Verses.—See Vision of Judgment.18 Benefit of Clergy.—See Tithes. Bishop.—The only thing that gains by a translation.19 Blank.20—See every ticket bought by yourself or friends. Blind, The—See—nothing. Blushing.—A practice least used by those who have most occasion for it. Body.—That portion of our system which receives the chief attention of Messrs. Somebody, Anybody, and Everybody, while Nobody cares for the soul. Bonnet.—An article of dress much used by fashionable females for carrying a head in. Book.—A thing formerly put aside to be read, and now read to be put aside. Box, Opera.—A small inclosure wherein the upper classes assemble twice a week for the pleasure of hearing one another, and seeing the music. Brain.—An autographical substance, which, according to the phrenologists, writes its own character upon the exterior skull in legible bumps and bosses. Brass.—An ingredient in the countenances of various individuals, particularly those from a neighbouring island.21 Brewer.—One who deals in deleterious drugs.22 Breath.—Air received into the lungs for the purposes of smoking, whistling, &c. Breech.—The nether extremity by which ships, fishes, and boys are guided and directed. Brief.—The excuse of counsel for their own impertinence. Bubble.—See South-Sea Securities,23 Spanish Bonds,24 &c. Buffoon.—One who plays the fool professionally, whereas a wag is an amateur fool. Bugbear.—That for which reform and improvement are used by those who are inter­ ested in opposing them. Bumper-toasts.—See Drunkenness, Ill-health, and Vice. Butcher.—See Suwarrow, Turkish commander,25 and the history of miscalled heroes, &c. &c. Cabbage.—See Tailor.26 189

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Cage.—An article to the manufacture of which our spinsters would do well to direct their attention, since, according to Voltaire, the reason of so many unhappy mar­ riages is that young ladies employ their time in making nets instead of cages. Calf.—The young John Bull. Cannibal.—A slave-dealer. Cannon.—Military law; very often synonymous with canon, ecclesiastical law. Cant.—The characteristic of Modern England. Canvass.—A linen cloth, of which considerable quantities are annually spoiled by painters, and obliged to be sent to Somerset House27 for sale. Capers.—A remedy for boiled mutton, and low spirits. Carbuncle.—A fiery globule found in the bottom of mines and the face of drunkards. Cardinal.—A governor of the Romish church by whom popes are elected, and the cardinal virtues neglected. Care.—The tax paid by the higher classes for their privileges and possessions. Carnage.—The pastime of kings. Cash.—A very good servant, but a bad master. Celibacy.—A vow by which the priesthood in some countries swear to content them­ selves with the wives of other people. Ceremony.—All that is considered necessary, by many, in friendship and religion. Challenge.—Giving your adversary an opportunity of shooting you through the body, to indemnify you for his having hurt your feelings. Chamberlain, Lord.28—The King’s chambermaid. Chameleon.—See House of Commons Rat, species innumerable. Chaperon.—A married girl of sixteen protecting her maiden aunt of sixty. Chaplain, Military.—One appointed to say grace at mess, and drink wine with the officers. Chicane.—See Law. Chimæra.—The danger of Catholic emancipation. Christian, real.—One who considers his charity towards all other religions the best recommendation of his own. Cider.—See Verjuice.29 Citizen.—A fumivorous30 being, much given to making money and destroying turtle.31 Coffin.—The cradle in which our second childhood is laid to sleep. College.—An institution where young men learn every thing but that which is pro­ fessed to be taught. Columbine.32—A slim young woman, who after dancing for a season or two in a pan­ tomime generally marries a Peer. Comedy.—Obsolete, see Farce. Compliments.—Dust thrown into the eyes of those whom we want to dupe. Corruption.—Vide History of Boroughs.33 Cottage.—Supposed to be the abode of happiness by all except those who live in it. Courage.—The fear of being thought a coward. 190

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Court.—The headquarters of Ennui, where the worst passions are the best-dressed, pleasure most pursued and least found, and industry despised although idleness is felt to be a curse. Cousin.—A periodical bore from the country, who, because you happen to have some of his blood, thinks he may inflict the whole of his body upon you during his stay in town. Cream.—In London, milk and water thickened with chalk and flour. Critic.—One who is incapable of writing books himself, and therefore contents him­ self with condemning those of others. Cunning.—The simplicity by which knaves generally outwit themselves. Cygnet.—A young swan. It may be doubted, however, whether Tom Dibdin was war­ ranted in maintaining that the gentleman who lately addressed some verses to that bird in the Gentleman’s Magazine, must have been a Scotch attorney, inasmuch as he was ‘a writer to the Cygnet.’34

NO. II. ‘These lost the sense their learning to display, And those explain’d the meaning quite away.’—POPE.35

Damme!—An expletive of style, used to fill up vacancies of matter, and therefore of perpetual occurrence in the conversation of the high and low vulgar. Dandy.—A fool who is vain of being the lay-figure of some fashionable tailor, and thinks the wealth of his wardrobe will conceal the poverty of his ideas; though, like his long-eared brother in the lion’s skin, he is betrayed as soon as he opens his mouth.36 Dangler.—An androgynous insect that flutters about ladies’ toilettes, and buzzes impertinently in their ears. Day and Martin.—See ‘Handwriting on the wall.’37 Debt, National.—Mortgaging the property of our posterity that we may be better enabled to destroy our contemporaries. Debates.—An useless wagging of tongues where the noses have been already counted.38 Delay.—See Chancery court.39 Destiny.—The scapegoat which we make responsible for all our crimes and follies; a Necessity which we set down for invincible when we have no wish to strive against it. Dice.—Playthings which the Devil sets in motion when he wants a new supply of knaves, beggars, and suicides. Diplomatist.—A privileged cheat, hired to undermine, overreach, and circumvent his opponent, and rewarded with court dignities in proportion as he is deficient in all the moral ones. 191

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Dinner.—A meal taken at supper-time; formerly considered as a means of enjoying society, and therefore moderate in expense and frequent in occurrence; now given to display yourself, not to see your friends, and inhospitably rare because it is fool­ ishly extravagant. Discipline, military.—That subordination which is maintained upon the Continent by the hope of distinction, in England by the fear of the cat-o-nine-tails.40 Disguise.—That which we all of us wear on our hearts, and many of us on our faces. Doctor.—According to Voltaire, one whose business it is to pour drugs, of which he knows little, into a body of which he knows less. Ditch.—A place in which those who have taken too much wine are apt to take a little water. Dog.—A quadruped of great use in leading bipeds that have lost any of their senses, such as blind beggars, sportsmen, &c. Dowager.—A titled old lady, who sometimes survives herself as well as her husband, and generally sticks to the card-table till she is carried to the coffin. Doze.—A short nap enjoyed by many people after dinner on a week day, and after the text on a Sunday. Dram.—A small quantity taken in immoderate quantities by those who have few grains of sobriety and no scruples of conscience. Drama, modern.—Every thing except comedy and tragedy; such as melodrama, hipp­ odrama,41 &c. Dream.—All those invisible visions to which we are awake in our sleep. Dress.—External gentility, frequently used to disguise internal vulgarity. Drum.—An instrument which Death commands to be played at all his great feasts. Duty.—Financially, a tax which we pay to the public excise and customs; morally, that which we are very apt to excise in our private customs. Dynasty.—Sovereignty, by which a particular family claim a whole people as their property; of which the beneficial effects may be seen in France, Spain, and Naples—the patrimony of the Bourbons.42 Eccentricity, of appearance.—The pleasure of being personally known to those who do not know you by name. Echo.—The shadow of a sound. Edition, third or fourth.—See Title pages of the first.43 Education, dangers of.—See Humbug. Egotism.—Suffering the private I to be too much in the public eye. Elbow.—That part of the body which it is most dangerous to shake. Elopement.—Beginning in disobedience that which commonly ends in misery. Embalming.—Perpetuating the perishable with more pains than we take to save that which is immortal. Enthusiasm.—Spiritual intoxication. Envy.—The way in which we punish ourselves for being inferior to others. Ephemeral.—The whole of modern literature. Epicure.—One who lives to eat instead of eating to live. Episcopacy.—The power, pomp, and vanity of those who have forsworn all three. 192

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Equal.—That which a man of talent will seldom find among his superiors. Errata.—Deathbed confessions of a book. Etymology.—Sending vagrant words back to their own parish.44 Exquisite.—A dandy taken at his own valuation. Extempore.—A premeditated impromptu. Eyeglass.—A toy which enables a coxcomb not to see. Esquire.—A title much in use among the lower orders. Fables, Æsop’s.—Giving human intellects to brutes, in imitation of Nature, who sometimes gives brute intellects to men. Face.—The silent echo of the heart. Facetiousness.—According to Lord Norbury,45 cutting jokes upon the death of a fel­ low-creature, and quoting Joe Miller46 instead of Blackstone47 from the seat of justice. Faction.—Any party out of power. Fame.—Being known by name to those who do not know you personally. Fan.—A plaything, from whose motion a flirt derives her name, and which serves to hide her face when she ought to blush and cannot. Fancy, gentlemen of the.—See Blackguard. Fashion.—The voluntary slavery which leads us to think, act, and dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs. Fee, Doctor’s.—An attempt to purchase health from one who cannot secure his own. See Fee-simple. Felicity.—The horizon of the heart, which is always receding as we advance towards it. Finance.—Legerdemain48 performed by figures. Finger.—An appendage worn in a ring, and of great use in taking snuff. Fishery.—The agriculture of the sea. Flattery.—Throwing dust in people’s eyes, generally for the purpose of picking their pockets. Fool.—What a fop sees in the looking-glass. Fortune, a man of.—One who is so unfortunate as to be released from the necessity of employment for the mind and exercise for the body, the two great constituents of happiness and health; who has every thing to fear and nothing to hope; and who consequently pays in anxiety and ennui more than the value of his money. Forty.—The ne plus ultra of a lady’s age. Foxhunting.—Tossing up for lives with a fox. Friend, fashionable.—One who will dine with you, game with you, walk or ride out with you, borrow money of you, escort your wife to public places if she be hand­ some, stand by and see you fairly shot if you happen to be engaged in a duel, and slink away and see you quietly clapped in prison if you experience a reverse of fortune. Friend, real.—One who will tell you of your faults and follies in prosperity, and assist you with his hand and heart in adversity. See Black Swan.49 Frown.—Writing the confession of a bad passion with an eyebrow. 193

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Funding System.—Saddling posterity, that when the present age is a beggar it may get on horseback and ride to the devil. Funeral.—Posthumous vanity. The pride, pomp, and circumstance of ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust.’ Future.—In this world, the unexecuted copy of the past; in the next, what we are to be, determined by what we have been. Gain.—Losing life to win money. Gallipot.50—An Apothecary’s bank. Gallows.—The remedy which society has provided for roguery; a cure without being a prevention. Gaming.—See Beggar and Suicide. Gastronomy.—The religion of those who make a god of their bellies. Genealogy, the boast of.—Generally, the poor expedient of those who, having nothing to be proud of in their own persons, are obliged to be proud of others. Gentleman.—A name often bestowed upon a well-dressed blackguard, and withheld from the right owner, who only wears its qualifications in his heart. Gewgaw.—See the Pagoda at Brighton.51 Gin.—The worm of the still; the spirituous enemy of mankind. Glory.—Sharing with plague, pestilence, and famine, the honour of destroying your species; and participating with Alexander’s horse the pleasure of transmitting your name to posterity. Gold.—Dead earth, for which many men sacrifice life and lose heaven. Goosequill.—A little tube which, in the hands of modern dramatists, seems to have the power of reproducing its parental hisses. Grandmother’s Review.—See the British.52 Grape.—Nature’s bottle, which the perverse ingenuity of man not unfrequently con­ verts into Pandora’s box. Grave.—The gate through which we pass from the visible into the invisible world. Grub-street garret.—The poetical Parnassus before authors wrote books by the acre, bought land by the mile, and resided upon their own estates.

NO. III. Habit.—The covering worn by the body or mind: in the former case hiding Nature, and in the latter revealing her. Happiness.—The health of the mind, produced by its virtuous exercise. They who would attain it otherwise may search for the word Will-o’-the-wisp.53 Harmony of sentiment.—A much better ingredient in married life than that species of harmony which springs from discord. Hassock.54—Of special service to certain church-goers who like a nap upon their knees; and to poetasters, as affording the only rhime to cassock. 194

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Hunch of venison.—That with which the dæmon of gout and gluttony baits his hook. Head.—A bulbous excrescence, used for hanging a hat on, taking snuff with, shak­ ing, or nodding; or as a target, which they who know its value offer to be shot at for a shilling a day. Health.—Another word for temperance and exercise. Heart.—The seat of feeling, and therefore supposed to be wanting in butchers and critics. According to a French author, those men pass the most comfortably through the world who have a good digestion and a bad heart. Hemp.—The neckcloth, alias nec-quid, which rogues put on when they see company for the last time. Hero.—A wholesale man-butcher. Hearse.—The triumphal car in which bones and dust proceed in state to their final palace—the grave. Heterodoxy.—Has been defined to be another man’s doxy, whereas orthodoxy is our own. History.—The Newgate Calendar of Kings,55 which finds no materials in the happi­ ness or virtue of States, and is therefore a mere record of human crime and misery. Hoax, Hocus-pocus, Humbug.—See Holy Alliance, Constitutional Association,56 and in general all pharisaical pretenders to exclusive loyalty and sanctity. Holidays.—The elysium of our boyhood; perhaps the only one of our life. Of this truth Anaxagoras57 seems to have been aware. Being asked by the people of Lamp­ sacus before his death whether he wished any thing to be done in commemoration of him, ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘let the boys be allowed to play on the anniversary of my death.’ Honour.—Conventional legislation for the correction and government of all those points which the law does not reach. Hope.—A compensation for the realities of life, most enjoyed by those who have the least to lose, since they are generally rendered much happier by expectation than they would be by possession. Hunger.—The universal stimulant of men and beasts: the same which gives the poor man his health and his appetite; the want of which afflicts the rich with disease and satiety. Hypochondria.—The imaginary malady with which those are taxed who have no real one. Idol.—What many worship in their own shape who would be shocked at doing it in any other. Jealousy.—Tormenting yourself for fear you should be tormented by another. Illuminati.58—Men enlightened by nature, and of course particularly obnoxious to the hooded owls, royal bats, and chartered beasts of prey, who thrive best in the deepest darkness. Immortality.—of modern authors.—Drawing in imagination upon the future for that homage which the present age refuses to pay. At best a protracted oblivion. Indigestion, Industry.—Two words which were never before found united. 195

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Infant.—A mysterious meteor sent to us from the invisible world, into which, after performing the evolutions incidental to the seven ages of man, it will finally return. Ink.—The liquid which renders thought visible and reason communicable: and of course the greatest enemy to the Inquisition.—For which see Holy Alliance.59 Judge, Jury—A compound legal machine, somewhat resembling a clock,—the latter exhibiting twelve numbers, and giving warning to the former, before he can strike, or indicate the hour at which a criminal is to die. Ivy.—A vegetable corruptionist, which, for the purpose of its own support, attaches itself with the greatest tenacity to that which is the most antiquated and untenable, and the fullest of holes, flaws, and imperfections. King.—According to modern doctrine, the hereditary proprietor of a nation; accord­ ing to reason, its accountable first magistrate. Kitchen.—The temple for whose consumption hecatombs60 of animals are daily sac­ rificed, who, however, generally wreak a final revenge upon epicures and gluttons. Knowledge.—A molehill removed from the mountain of our ignorance. Laughter.—A faculty bestowed exclusively upon man, and which there is therefore a sort of impiety in not exercising as frequently as we can. We may say with Titus,61 that we have lost a day if it have passed without our laughing. The pilgrims at Mecca consider it so essential a part of their devotion, that they call upon the Prophet62 to preserve them from sad faces. Lark.—The matin63 chorister, that first sets the light of heaven to music. Law.—That in which we are still as far behind some portions of Europe as we are ahead of them in cottons and cutlery, owing principally to the blind obstinacy of its professors, who have in all ages been the last to abandon a legal abuse. Even the statutes against witchcraft were not repealed until after France had set us the exam­ ple, and many of our law-officers strenuously opposed the measure to the last! Labyrinth.—See Law. Learning.—Too often a knowledge of words and an ignorance of things; a mere act of memory which may be exercised without common sense. Licenser (dramatic).—One who attempts to atone for his own licentiousness by over­ acting the puritan and the rigorist towards others. Loan. A means of robbing our successors for the purpose of destroying our contemporaries. Logic.—Substituting sound for sense, and perverting reason by reasoning. Logwood.64—A dye much used in the manufacture of wine. Longevity.—Adding a few years to the wrong end of life, and surviving oneself. Lottery.—The only game of chance where you are certain to lose your money. Lover.—One who in his desire to obtain possession of another has lost possession of himself. Loyalty.—Sometimes a profession, sometimes a trade, sometimes art; generally selflove disguised as a love of the king. Martyr.—That which all faiths have produced in about equal proportions; so much easier is it to die for religion than to live for it. 196

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Marriage.—Taking a yoke-fellow, who may lighten the burden of existence if you pull together, or render it insupportable if you drag different ways. May.—‘I had rather live twenty Mays,’ says Sir Thomas Wotton,65 ‘than forty Novembers,’ and yet in his old age he was anxious to prolong the winter of his days— ‘And from the dregs of life thought to receive What the first sprightly running would not give.’66

Medicine.—Guessing at Nature’s intentions and wishes, and then endeavouring to substitute our own. Melancholy.—Ingratitude to Heaven. Milk, London.—The joint production of the cow and the pump. Misanthrope.—One who is uncharitable enough to judge of others by himself. Money.—May be accused of injustice towards mankind,—inasmuch as there are only a few who make false money, whereas money makes many men false. Monastery.—A house of ill-fame, where men and women are seduced from their public duties, and generally fall into guilt from attempting to preserve an unnatural innocence. Mouth.—An useless instrument to some people,—in as far as it renders ideas audi­ ble, but of special service for rendering victuals invisible. Mummy.—A flesh statue—an immortal of the dead. Muzzle.—A contrivance to prevent biting or barking, put upon the mouths of dogs in England, and upon those of human beings in the dominions of the Holy Alliance. Negro.—A creature treated as a brute, because he is black, by greater brutes who happen to be white. Nightingale.—The musician kindly appointed by Heaven to cheer us in the darkness. Nobleman.—One who is indebted to his ancestors for a name and an estate, and not unfrequently to himself for being unworthy of both. Nose.—See Snuff-box. Nonsense.—Generally applied to any sense that happens to differ from our own. November.—The period at which every Englishman takes leave of the sun for nine months, and not a few of them for ever.

NO. IV. Oak.—A tree celebrated for affording concealment to King Charles,67 and illustra­ tion to Mr. Fitz-Gerald.68 Ode, Birth-day.—See any Poet-Laureate but the present.69 Omen.—The imaginary language of Heaven speaking by signs. Oracle.—The same, speaking by human mouths, but both now become invisible and dumb. Originality.—Undetected imitation. 197

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Ostentation.—The real motive of many who wear the disguise of hospitality, and invite their guests—‘To choke them with envy, not fill them with meat.’ Partridge.—A bird to which the squirearchy are so strangely attached, that they will shoot, trap, and transport their fellow-creatures for the pleasure of destroying it themselves. Pavement.—An old offender, now in the very act of being taken up and knocked on the head by Mr. Macadam,70 who may truly say with Macbeth—‘The very stones prate of my whereabout.’71 Pawky.72—A Scotch word that deserves to be made English, denoting the character of the Scotch nation. Peace.—A cessation of those wholesale murders which prevail during three quarters of every century in this enlightened æra, and which are sanctioned and inculcated by all Christian governments under the name of War. Pedant.—A man so absurdly ignorant as to be vain of his knowledge. Pen.—The silent mouthpiece of the mind, which gives ubiquity and immortality to the evanescent thought of a moment. Party-spirit.—A species of mental vitriol which we keep to squirt against others, but which in the mean time irritates, corrodes, and poisons our own mind. Physiognomy.—The character written upon the face by the hand of the Deity.* Port-wine.—According to Mr. Brummel’s73 definition, ‘a strong intoxicating liquor much drunk by the lower orders.’ Press.—The steam-engine of moral power, which, directed by the spirit of the age, will eventually crush imposture, superstition, and tyranny. Prize.—Do not see Lottery. Prophet.—One who in times past made us a present of the future. Quack.—A man who only wants a diploma to make him a regular physician. Quart.—Rather more than a pint, according to the bottle conjurors of the wine trade. Quaker.—A drab-coloured Christian, who uses the second person in his discourse, but generally takes good care of number one in his practice. Quibble, Quirk, Quiddit, Quillet.74—See Law Proceedings. Reason.—The proud prerogative which confers upon man the exclusive power of acting irrationally. Reform.—An adaptation of institutions to circumstances and knowledge, demanded as a right by all who are suffering wrongs, and only abused by those who are fatten­ ing upon abuse. Renown.—Being known to those who do not know us. Review.—A work that overlooks the publications it professes to look over, and judges of books by their authors, not of authors by their books. Rhyme.—Often a substitute for poetry, and an antithesis to reason. Ring.—A circular link put through the snouts of swine and upon the finger of women, to hold them both in subjection. * Or, of the Devil.—Editor.

198

Smith (‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’)

Romance.—Using men and women instead of birds and beasts for the construction of an improbable fable. Royalty.—Solitary imprisonment in a crowded court—selling yourself for a crown, and subjecting yourself to slavery in order that you may enslave your subjects. Satire.—Attacking the vices and follies of others instead of reforming our own. Saw.75—A sort of dumb alderman, which gets through a great deal by the activity of its teeth. Scandal.—The tattle of fools and malignants, who judge of their neighbours by themselves. Sceptre.—The plaything of an imperial puppet. Sleep.—The death of the living. Speculation.—See Peculation.76 Spinster.—An unprotected female, and of course a fine subject for exercising the courage of cowards and the wit of the witless. Taste.—An imaginary standard, like that of Fashion, on whose capricious changes the most thoughtless bestow the most thought. Tavern.—A house kept for those who are not housekeepers. Tinder.—A thin rag, such for instance as the dresses of modern females, intended to catch the sparks, raise a flame, and light up a match. Tomb.—A house built for a skeleton—a covering of sculptured marble provided for dust and corruption. Tongue.—The mysterious membrane that turns thought into sound, supplying us at the same time with food for the body, refreshment for the mind, and music for the ear. Trustee.—One to whom recent example77 shows us we should have an eye if we mean him to be trusty. Turnpikeman.—Generally a wretch who either robs you on the king’s highway, or makes detected knavery an excuse for brutal insolence. Vanity.—Another word for the whole fleeting pageant of human existence. Vapour.—An impalpable emanation from a simple fluid, which promises to be an eventual substitute for human and animal muscles, and to carry on the whole busi­ ness of the world that depends upon physical power. Ugliness.—An advantageous stimulus to the mind, that it may make up for the defi­ ciencies of the body. Umbrella.—An article which by the morality of society you may steal from friend or foe, and which for the same reason you should not lend to either. Vice.—Miscalculation; obliquity of moral vision; temporary madness. Voice.—Echo is the only instance of a voice without a body, whereas three parts of our unrepresented population are bodies without a voice. Usury, Law of.—Punishing a man for making as much as he can of his money, although he is freely allowed to make as much money as he can. Watchmen.—Old women.

199

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 ‘The fittest they the peace to keep Who have not any power to break it, Who go their rounds, like tops asleep, And bear a staff, but never shake it, Except from palsy or affright, When they somnambulise at night.’

Watering Places.—Sundry barren, shingly,78 chalky spots upon the coast, disfigured with frail lath and plaster bow-windowed tenements, which being supplied with scanty white dimity79 curtains, a few rickety chairs and tables, and some knotty featherless featherbeds, are considered to be furnished. Hither thousands resort during the six weeks of an English summer, to ride in an improved species of wheel­ barrow drawn by jaded donkeys or ponies, to sit on the pebbles and pelt them into the sea, to catch cold by walking on wet sands, to lose money in raffles, and enjoy at least one pleasant morning—that on which they return to London. Wedding.—A tragi-comic meeting, compounded of favours, footmen, faintings, fare­ wells, prayers, parsons, plum-cake, rings, refreshments, bottles, blubberings, God bless ye’s, and gallopings away in a post-chaise and four. Wine.—See British compounds. Yawning.—An infectious sensation of weariness which a writer sometimes catches from the reader, when, if both parties desire to open their mouths leisurely, they cannot do better than shut the book.

200

THOMAS HOOD and JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS

‘Ode to Mr. Graham, The Aeronaut’ (1825) ‘An Address to the Very Reverend John Ireland, D.D.,…the Dean and Chapter of Westminster’ (1825) [First published in Odes and Addresses to Great People, London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1825, pp. 1–13, 125–32. When Thomas Hood (1799–1845; DNB) and John Hamilton Reynolds’s (1794– 1852; DNB) Odes and Addresses to Great People first appeared anonymously in early 1825, it was widely hailed as one of the best collections of comic verse of the past quarter-century. Reviewers were highly complimentary, and it went into a third edition in less than a year. So pleased was Coleridge by the volume that he convinced himself it had to be the work of his friend Charles Lamb. ‘Charles, it is you,’ he wrote Lamb in the spring of 1825. ‘I have read them over again, and I understand why you have anon’d the book. The puns are nine in ten good—many excellent. … And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a volume of personalities, and contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses’.1 Lamb, who had been nearly as impressed with the poems, responded, ‘They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to ’em chearfully, if I could as honestly’.2 It was this ‘hearty good-natured’ quality of the poems that seems to have recommended them to most readers. Overall, the central project of Odes and Addresses is to lampoon the age by playfully ridiculing a wide selection of its most colourful characters. While the volume doesn’t completely shy away from the truly great and powerful (see, for instance, the poems on Sir Walter Scott and the Dean of Westminster), the general pattern is to focus on the unacknowledged ‘greats’ of popular culture. Hence, in quick succession we meet up with an aeronaut, a builder of roads, a prison reformer, a circus entertainer, an Arctic explorer, a theatre manager, and an actress. Nearly all of these figures end up being the target of some punning and raillery, and yet in most poems Hood and Reynolds manage to keep the tone lighthearted enough that few could possibly be offended. That such amiability was an original aim of the satirists is acknowledged in the ‘Advertisement to the Second Edition’, which explains, ‘Many of those who have been be-Oded in the following 201

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-29

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

pages have taken the verse-offerings in good part; and the Author has been given to understand that certain “Great People,” who have been kept “out of situations,” have…looked upon themselves as very ill-used gentlemen’. The first poem in the book – and the first reprinted here – certainly falls into this category of laughing satire. Hood’s ‘Ode to Mr. Graham, the Aeronaut’3 takes as its inspiration George Graham’s ill-fated ballooning experiments of 1823. After failing to get off the ground in his first attempt, Graham’s second effort was foiled when his balloon was badly damaged at take-off, causing him to crash in a flooded gravel pit half a mile from the launching site.4 Quite cleverly, Hood builds his poem around the image of Graham’s unsteady ascent and his eventual crash landing. Soon into the poem, though, the narrator turns his attention from his flying partner, Mr Graham, to the London landmarks and crowds of people he sees below. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, Hood’s speaker looks down on society from above and in the process comes to recognize the smallness of humanity and the inconsequentiality of its grandest pursuits. In particular, the ode focuses on the literary world, scrolling through a list of the most powerful authors and editors of the age and concluding that they too look diminutive from a thousand feet up. Adding another level to this literary satire is the way the poem as a whole subtly parodies Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Specifically, Hood mimics the style and imagery of the ‘Prologue’ to Wordsworth’s poem, wherein the speaker takes an imaginary boat ride through the clouds. Rather seamlessly, Wordsworth’s boat becomes Graham’s balloon, and Hood’s speaker, with his self-centred, didactic musings, becomes the classic Wordsworthian narrator. The second poem included below, Reynolds’s ‘Address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster’, is a marked departure from the ‘Ode to Mr. Graham’ and most of the other poems in Odes and Addresses in its indignant tone and its sincere aims of using satire to bring about reform. Reynolds’s target here is the longstanding practice of charging admission to enter Poets’ Corner and other parts of Westminster Abbey. Building upon previous essays on the subject by Goldsmith and Lamb,5 the poem likens the Abbey’s clergy to circus managers and dubs the tombs of fallen poets and kings the most dependable investment yet discovered. In perhaps the most cutting lines in all the Odes and Addresses, Reynolds storms, ‘Oh, licens’d cannibals, ye eat / Your dinners from your own dead race’. He goes on to imagine the clergymen of Westminster anxiously anticipating the deaths of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and other great authors of the age, as their tombs will only add new attractions to the Abbey’s carnival. In a final barb at the profanation of things sacred, Reynolds suggests that it would only be natural at this point to fix up the exterior of the Abbey as a circus, hire a street-crier to yell ‘All dead! All dead! Walk in! Walk in!’, and bustle throngs of tourists through ‘The Cheapest House for the defunct’. As might be expected, the poem hit a nerve, eventually being singled out as ‘irreverent’ by many of the volume’s readers. Reynolds, however, was unapologetic, explaining in the ‘Advertisement to the Second Edition’ that his address to ‘Dr. Ireland, and his Partners in the Stone Trade’ was merely ‘intended as a kindly advertisement of an exhibition which, although cheaper than the Tower, and nearly as cheap as Mrs. 202

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

Salmon’s Wax-work, the modesty of the Proprietors will not permit them sufficiently to puff ’.]

1 The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 3 vols, New York, AMS, 1968, vol. 3, p. 3. 2 The Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. 3, p. 8. 3 While Hood’s authorship of the ‘Ode to Mr. Graham’ is generally accepted, it is quite possible that he co-wrote it with Reynolds. Late in life, Reynolds claimed to have had a role in composing the poem (J. C. Reid, Thomas Hood, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 61). There are also some internal clues that suggest Reynolds had a hand in its composition. The ode’s subtle caricature of Peter Bell, for instance, harkens back to Reynolds’s famous 1819 parody of Wordsworth’s poem. Even more noteworthy is stanza 25, where the narrator first claims ‘My name is Tims’ (a pseudonym linked to Reynolds— see note 25 to the poem), before announcing ‘I am the very P.A.Z.’ (one of Hood’s aliases). The suggestion here at least seems to be that both participated in the composition of the poem. 4 See L. T. C. Rolt, The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783–1903, New York, Walker, 1966, pp. 112–14. As Rolt recounts, Graham and his wife, Margaret, would have a long series of ballooning mishaps subsequent to the publication of the ‘Ode to Mr. Graham’. 5 Oliver Goldsmith, ‘Letter XIII: A Visit to Westminster Abbey’, in Citizen of the World, ed. Peter Cunningham, 1762, rpt. London, John Murray, 1854; and Charles Lamb, ‘Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esquire’, London Magazine, VIII, October 1823, pp. 400–07.

203

ODE TO MR. GRAHAM, THE AERONAUT.

‘Up with me!—up with me into the sky!’ Wordsworth—on a Lark!1

1. Dear Graham, whilst the busy crowd, The vain, the wealthy, and the proud, Their meaner flights pursue, Let us cast off the foolish ties That bind us to the earth, and rise And take a bird’s-eye view!— 2. A few more whiffs of my segar And then, in Fancy’s airy car, Have with thee for the skies:— How oft this fragrant smoke upcurl’d2 Hath borne me from this little world, And all that in it lies!—

1

10

3. Away!—away!—the bubble fills— Farewell to earth and all its hills!— We seem to cut the wind!—3 So high we mount, so swift we go, The chimney tops are far below, The Eagle’s left behind!— 4. Ah me! my brain begins to swim!— The world is growing rather dim; The steeples and the trees— My wife is getting very small! I cannot see my babe at all!— The Dollond,4 if you please!— 204

20

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

5. Do Graham, let me have a quiz,5 Lord! what a Lilliput it is, That little world of Mog g’s!—6 Are those the London Docks?—that channel, The mighty Thames?—a proper kennel For that small Isle of Dogs!—7

30

6. What is that seeming tea-urn there? That fairy dome, St. Paul’s!—I swear, Wren8 must have been a Wren!— And that small stripe?—it cannot be The City Road!—Good lack! to see The little ways of men! 7. Little, indeed!—my eyeballs ache To find a turnpike.—I must take Their tolls upon my trust!— And where is mortal labour gone? Look, Graham, for a little stone Mac Adamized9 to dust!

40

8. Look at the horses!—less than flies!— Oh, what a waste it was of sighs To wish to be a Mayor! What is the honour?—none at all, One’s honour must be very small For such a civic chair!— 9. And there’s Guildhall!—’tis far aloof— Methinks, I fancy thro’ the roof Its little guardian Gogs,10 Like penny dolls—a tiny show!— Well,—I must say they’re ruled below By very little logs!— 10. Oh! Graham, how the upper air Alters the standards of compare; One of our silken flags Would cover London all about— 205

50

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Nay then—let’s even empty out Another brace of bags!

60

11. Now for a glass of bright champagne Above the clouds!—Come, let us drain A bumper as we go!— But hold!—for God’s sake do not cant The cork away—unless you want To brain your friends below. 12. Think! what a mob of little men Are crawling just within our ken, Like mites upon a cheese!— Pshaw!—how the foolish sight rebukes Ambitious thoughts!—can there be Dukes Of Gloster11 such as these!—

70

13. Oh! what is glory?—what is fame? Hark to the little mob’s acclaim, ’Tis nothing but a hum!—12 A few near gnats would trump as loud As all the shouting of a crowd That has so far to come!— 14. Well—they are wise that choose the near, A few small buzzards in the ear, To organs ages hence!— Ah me, how distance touches all; It makes the true look rather small, But murders poor pretence. 15. ‘The world recedes!—it disappears! Heav’n open on my eyes—my ears With buzzing noises ring!’—13 A fig for Southey’s Laureat lore!—14 What’s Rogers15 here?—Who cares for Moore16 That hears the Angels sing!— 16. A fig for earth, and all its minions!— We are above the world’s opinions, Graham! we’ll have our own!— 206

80

90

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

Look what a vantage height we’ve got!— Now——do you think Sir Walter Scott Is such a Great Unknown?17 17. Speak up,—or hath he hid his name To crawl thro’ ‘subways’ unto fame, Like Williams of Cornhill?—18 Speak up, my lad!—when men run small We’ll show what’s little in them all, Receive it how they will!—

100

18. Think now of Irving!19—shall he preach The princes down,—shall he impeach The potent and the rich, Merely on ethic stilts,—and I Not moralize at two miles high The true didactic pitch! 19. Come:—what d’ye think of Jeffrey,20 sir? Is Gifford21 such a Gulliver In Lilliput’s Review, That like Colossus he should stride Certain small brazen inches wide For poets to pass through? 20. Look down! the world is but a spot. Now say—Is Blackwood’s22 low or not, For all the Scottish tone? It shall not weigh us here—not where The sandy burden’s lost in air— Our lading23—where is’t flown? 21. Now,—like you Croly’s24 verse indeed— In heaven—where one cannot read The ‘Warren’ on a wall?25 What think you here of that man’s fame? Tho’ Jerdan26 magnified his name, To me ’tis very small! 22. And, truly, is there such a spell In those three letters, L. E. L.,27 207

110

120

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

To witch a world with song? On clouds the Byron did not sit, Yet dar’d on Shakespeare’s head to spit, And say the world was wrong!

130

23. And shall not we? Let’s think aloud! Thus being couch’d upon a cloud, Graham, we’ll have our eyes! We felt the great when we were less, But we’ll retort on littleness Now we are in the skies. 24. O Graham, Graham, how I blame The bastard blush,—the petty shame, That used to fret me quite,— The little sores I cover’d then, No sores on earth, nor sorrows when The world is out of sight! 25. My name is Tims.28—I am the man That North’s29 unseen diminish’d clan So scurvily abused! I am the very P. A. Z.30 The London’s Lion’s31 small pin’s head So often hath refused!

140

150

26. Campbell32—(you cannot see him here)— Hath scorn’d my lays:—do his appear Such great eggs from the sky?— And Longman, and his lengthy Co. Long, only, in a little Row,33 Have thrust my poems by! 27. What else?—I’m poor, and much beset With damn’d small duns—that is—in debt Some grains of golden dust! But only worth, above, is worth.— What’s all the credit of the earth? An inch of cloth on trust!

208

160

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

28. What’s Rothschild34 here, that wealthy man! Nay, worlds of wealth?—Oh, if you can Spy out,—the Golden Ball!35 Sure as we rose, all money sank: What’s gold or silver now?—the Bank Is gone—the ’Change and all! 29. What’s all the ground-rent of the globe?— Oh, Graham, it would worry Job To hear its landlords prate! But after this survey, I think I’ll ne’er be bullied more, nor shrink From men of large estate! 30. And less, still less, will I submit To poor mean acres’ worth of wit— I that have heaven’s span— I that like Shakespeare’s self may dream Beyond the very clouds, and seem An Universal Man!

170

180

31. Oh, Graham, mark those gorgeous crowds! Like Birds of Paradise the clouds Are winging on the wind! But what is grander than their range? More lovely than their sun-set change?— The free creative mind! 32. Well! the Adults’ School’s in the air! The greatest men are lesson’d there As well as the Lessee! Oh could Earth’s Ellistons36 thus small Behold the greatest stage of all, How humbled they would be! 33. ‘Oh would some God the giftie gie ’em, To see themselves as others see ’em,’37 ’Twould much abate their fuss! If they could think that from the skies 209

190

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

They are as little in our eyes As they can think of us! 34. Of us! are we gone out of sight? Lessen’d! diminish’d! vanish’d quite! Lost to the tiny town! Beyond the Eagle’s ken—the grope Of Dollond’s longest telescope! Graham! we’re going down! 35. Ah me! I’ve touch’d a string that opes The airy valve!—the gas elopes— Down goes our bright Balloon!— Farewell the skies! the clouds! I smell The lower world! Graham, farewell, Man of the silken moon!

200

210

36. The earth is close! the City nears— Like a burnt paper it appears, Studded with tiny sparks! Methinks I hear the distant rout Of coaches rumbling all about— We’re close above the Parks! 37. I hear the watchmen on their beats, Hawking the hour about the streets. Lord! what a cruel jar It is upon the earth to light! Well—there’s the finish of our flight! I’ve smoked my last segar!

210

220

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

AN ADDRESS TO THE VERY REVEREND JOHN IRELAND, D. D.,38 Charles Fynes Clinton, L.L.D. Thomas Causton, D.D. Howel Holland Edwards, M.A. Joseph Allen, M.A. Lord Henry Fitzroy, M.A. The Bishop of Exeter.

Wm. Harry Edward Bentinck, M.A. James Webber, B.D. William Short, D.D. James Tournay, D.D. Andrew Bell, D.D. George Holcombe, D.D.

The Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

‘Sure the Guardians of the Temple can never think they get enough.’ Citizen of the World.39

1. OH, very reverend Dean and Chapter, Exhibitors of giant men, Hail to each surplice-back’d40 adapter Of England’s dead, in her stone den! Ye teach us properly to prize Two-shilling Grays,41 and Gays,42 and Handels,43 And, to throw light upon our eyes, Deal in Wax Queens like old wax candles. 2. Oh, reverend showmen, rank and file, Call in your shillings, two and two;44 March with them up the middle aisle, And cloister them from public view. Yours surely are the dusty dead, Gladly ye look from bust to bust, And set a price on each great head, And make it come down with the dust. 3. Oh, as I see you walk along In ample sleeves and ample back, A pursy45 and well-order’d throng, 211

1

10

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Thoroughly fed, thoroughly black! In vain I strive me to be dumb,— You keep each bard like fatted kid, Grind bones for bread like Fee faw fum! And drink from sculls as Byron did!46 4. The profitable Abbey is A sacred ’Change for stony stock, Not that a speculation ’tis— The profit’s founded on a rock. Death and the Doctors in each nave Bony investments have inurn’d;47 And hard ’twould be to find a grave From which ‘no money is return’d!’ 5. Here many a pensive pilgrim, brought By reverence for those learned bones, Shall often come and walk your short Two-shilling fare upon the stones.— Ye have that talisman of Wealth, Which puddling48 chemists sought of old Till ruin’d out of hope and health— The Tomb’s the stone that turns to gold!

20

30

40

6. Oh, licens’d cannibals, ye eat Your dinners from your own dead race, Think Gray, preserv’d,—a ‘funeral meat,’ And Dryden,49 devil’d,—after grace, A relish;—and you take your meal From Rare Ben Jonson50 underdone, Or, whet your holy knives on Steele,51 To cut away at Addison!52 7. Oh say, of all this famous age, Whose learned bones your hopes expect, Oh have ye number’d Rydal’s sage,53 Or Moore among your Ghosts elect? Lord Byron was not doom’d to make You richer by his final sleep— Why don’t ye warn the Great to take Their ashes to no other heap! 212

50

Hood and Reynolds (‘Ode to Mr. Graham’, ‘An Address …’)

8. Southey’s reversion have ye got? With Coleridge, for his body, made A bargain?—has Sir Walter Scott, Like Peter Schlemihl, sold his shade?54 Has Rogers haggled hard, or sold His features for your marble shows, Or Campbell barter’d, ere he’s cold, All interest in his ‘bone repose?’55 9. Rare is your show, ye righteous men! Priestly Politos,56—rare, I ween; But should ye not outside the Den Paint up what in it may be seen? A long green Shakspeare, with a deer Grasp’d in the many folds it died in,— A Butler stuff ’d from ear to ear, Wet White Bears weeping o’er a Dryden! 10. Paint Garrick up like Mr. Paap,57 A Giant of some inches high; Paint Handel up, that organ chap, With you, as grinders, in his eye; Depict some plaintive antique thing, And say th’ original may be seen;— Blind Milton with a dog and string May be the Beggar o’ Bethnal Green!58

60

70

80

11. Put up in Poets’ Corner, near The little door, a platform small; Get there a monkey—never fear, You’ll catch the gapers, one and all! Stand each of ye a Body Guard, A Trumpet under either fin, And yell away in Palace Yard ‘All dead! All dead! Walk in! Walk in!’ 12. (But when the people are inside, Their money paid—I pray you, bid The keepers not to mount and ride A race around each coffin lid.— Poor Mrs. Bodkin59 thought, last year, 213

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

That it was hard—the woman clacks— To have so little in her ear— And be so hurried through the Wax!—) 13. ‘Walk in! two shillings only! come! Be not by country grumblers funk’d!—60 Walk in, and see th’ illustrious dumb, The Cheapest House for the defunct!’ Write up, ’twill breed some just reflection, And every rude surmise ’twill stop— Write up, that you have no connexion (In large)—with any other shop! 14. And still, to catch the Clowns the more, With samples of your shows in Wax, Set some old Harry near the door To answer queries with his axe.— Put up some general begging-trunk— Since the last broke by some mishap, You’ve all a bit of General Monk, From the respect you bore his Cap!61

214

100

110

ANON.

‘Discovery of Another Poet’ (1825)1

[Reprinted from The Spirit of the Public Journals, for the Year 1825: Being an Impartial Selection of the Most Exquisite Essays, Jeux d’Esprit, and Tales of Humour, Prose and Verse, with Explanatory Notes, London, Sherwood Gilbert, and Piper, 1826, pp. 159–62. From the Anti-Jacobin to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the spoof review had wide currency in the late Georgian period. However diverting or entertaining the form might be, parodic literary criticism, like more orthodox literary criticism (and, indeed, like more orthodox variants of parody), does not lose sight of its underlying interpretive responsibilities. This anonymous jeu d’esprit offers gentle satire of Wordsworth in its mock eulogy of another defiantly provincial poet, Dr Marshall of Durham, a poetaster whose celebration of the quotidian, repudiation of ornate and gaudy phraseology, and endorsement of the plain language of men is explicitly compared to his contemporary, Mr Wordsworth of Grasmere. The squib, which originally appeared in the Globe and Traveller, is a contribution to a series of contemporary jocularities on the subject of the hapless Marshall. During 1825, some hoaxer had written to the Morning Chronicle claiming that the Durham bard was the author of Charles Wolfe’s ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’, a suggestion which had been seriously refuted by a Mr J. S. Taylor. Taylor’s singular failure to see the joke prompted a number of wags to make ever more elevated claims as to Dr Marshall’s poetic talents.]

1 Edited by John Strachan

215

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-30

The liberty which some rude jester has taken with Dr. Marshall, of Durham, in putting in a claim for him to the Ballad on Sir John Moore, has led many to suppose, that the Doctor has no better claim to the title of poet than he has to the above verse. We confess we were of the number who did this injustice to the Doctor. A friend, however, has transmitted to a contemporary the following lines, which appeared in the Durham Chronicle, of Dec. 8, 1821, which not merely proved that the Doctor is a poet, but warrant us in pronouncing, that one of the greatest poets of this country treads in his footsteps.

LINES ON THE DEATH OF MR JOHN BOLTON (FORMERLY OF CHESTER-LE-STREET), CLOCK AND WATCHMAKER, ELVET, DURHAM. Bolton, the great mechanic, is no more; I hope he’s landed on the Elysian shore. He died on Saturday—collected—sober— The twenty-seventh day of last October; His age was sixty years, though many men Survive, indeed, to threescore years and ten; And buried on the Monday afternoon, Which some were pleased to say was over soon; Yet, notwithstanding, many friends attended; And when the sacred ceremony ended, It might be written for the world to read— This is a Christian funeral indeed. The day was fine, the people all sedate, The hearse mov’d on in solitary state; And more propriety I never saw Observ’d at such a solemn scene of awe. Replete with due decorum was the day On which this man of genius got away, With credit to himself—no more to truck In this vain world, his latest clock had struck The hour of twelve. His morning is begun, Where he may view the never-setting sun. The planetary system he could scan, As well, perhaps, as any other man; He knew astronomy and optics too, 216

Anon. (‘Discovery of Another Poet’)

Could make surprising glasses to look through, As well as clocks of magnitude and size; Could read the signs and wonders of the skies; His various curiosities in store— And now I’ll say but very little more. I held a friendship with this man in life, And I respect his poor old widow’d wife, Whose grief is not a little—that is sure; Her loss of property she must endure, As well as him who merited regard; Her own fidelity has its reward. In death his skill can hardly be diminish’d— Some works of consequence remain unfinish’d, And must remain as lumber on the shelf, Since few, I apprehend, but HIS OWN SELF, Could put together (such his genius ran) What HE invented and what HE began. South-street, Durham, Nov. 1821. Those of our readers who have perused the Excursion of Wordsworth, must remember the distinguished part assigned to a Scotch pedlar in that masterly poem. Now, as the similarity between the Doctor’s style and Mr Wordsworth’s must strike the most superficial critic, we are disposed to hazard the conjecture, that he is the very pedlar with whom Mr Wordsworth was intimate in his youth. That he is a Scotchman, we think is evident from the peculiar phraseology of the above poem; and that a Scotchman should, on seeing a favourable opening, abandon the pack for the pestle, will surprise no one who knows any thing of the general fitness of the natives of that kingdom for all professions, and the peculiar facility with which they fit themselves to every situation. However to return to the point of the resemblance between Wordsworth and Marshall: there is the same simple pathos, the same attention to minute circumstances which an ordinary poet would overlook, the same abandonment of the meretricious language of ordinary poetry for the homely language of common life, the same eagerness to apply the incidents to the improvement of the people. ‘He died on Saturday—collected—sober— The twenty-seventh day of last October; His age was sixty years, though many men Survive, indeed, to threescore years and ten; And buried on the Monday afternoon, Which some were pleas’d to say was over soon.’

Now the death and burial of Mr. Bolton, of which an ordinary poet would have made nothing, become everything in the hands of the Doctor. First the dying sober on the Saturday, clears the memory of a man of genius from the suspicion that 217

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

might otherwise have been excited by the very name of Saturday. Secondly, we have an exemplification of the union of genius and sobriety. Thirdly, the shortness of the space between Saturday and Monday, is very properly dwelt on, hasty burial being but too common with the lower orders. The passage— ‘I held a friendship with this man in life, And I respect his poor old widow’d wife, Whose grief is not a little—that is sure; Her loss of property she must endure, As well as him who merited regard: Her own fidelity has its reward’—

forcibly reminds us of Wordsworth’s lines in ‘The Female Vagrant’— ‘What could I do, unaided and unblest? My father! gone was every friend of thine: And kindred of dead husband are at best Small help; and after marriage such as mine, With little kindness would to me incline, Ill was I then for toil or service fit.’1

We could easily multiply resemblances, by quoting from Alice Fell (the scene of which, by the by, is Durham),2 Andrew Jones,3 &c. but our limits force us to close these observations more abruptly than we could wish.

218

ANON. (attrib. THEODORE HOOK) ‘The March of Intellect. A New Song.’ (1825)

[First published in ‘Noctes Ambrosianae XXIII’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 18, December 1825, pp. 764–65. Between 1825 and 1835, a favourite subject of British satire was the idea of the ‘March of Intellect’ (or, alternately, the ‘March of Mind’), a triumphalist notion holding that the world had never before witnessed an era when so much knowledge was available to so many.1 Champions of the March, the most vocal of whom were the Benthamite utilitarians, imagined a society where even the lowliest of labourers could be schooled in the principles of modern science and technology. Attempting to make this vision a reality, in 1823 George Birkbeck and Henry Brougham founded the London Mechanics’ Institute, one of the first large-scale experiments in adult education for the working classes. Three years later, Archibald Constable ushered in the era of the cheap book with the first volume of his ‘Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications’. And in 1828 the University of London (later University College London) opened its doors, offering the sons of the middle classes training in such pragmatic disciplines as engineering, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics.2 While the Benthamite Westminster Review loudly hailed such developments as the harbingers of a more just and productive society, the old guard of the Church, the Tory Party, and the traditional universities grew increasingly appalled at the spectre of philosophizing footmen and meditative milk-maids neglecting their God-given duties. From the mid-1820s forward, the March of Intellect became an obsession of conservative satirists, who conspired to make it and its proponents the new national laughingstock. In a steady flow of prints, poems, and novels from this era, kitchens go up in flames while oblivious cooks muse over treatises on hydrostatic theory and the nation’s factories go unmanned because their employees are off at ‘Cockney College’ attending lectures on physics and astronomy.3 Not surprisingly, among the March’s most outspoken critics were the editors and writers at the staunchly conservative Blackwood’s Magazine (see pp. 179–80 above). Seemingly every issue of ‘Maga’ from the late 1820s through the early 1830s lampoons the proposals for working men’s colleges, national education, and similar progressive schemes. The ditty printed below, ‘The March of Intellect. A New Song’, was one of the earliest of these satires, appearing in the December 1825 219

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-31

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

instalment of Blackwood’s ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ series. Then in its fourth year, the highly popular ‘Noctes’ purported to be transcripts of conversations that took place at gatherings of the Blackwood circle. Famously free-flowing, these conversations regularly shifted from politics to literature to society to the personal lives of the interlocutors.4 At some point in most episodes, one or more members of the ‘Noctes’ set would burst forth into spontaneous verse or song. Such is the case in this instalment, where with no provocation the character Timothy Tickler belts out his ‘new song’ on ‘The March of Intellect’. While most early episodes of the ‘Noctes’ were written by committee, by 1825 John Wilson (see pp. 255–56 below) had essentially taken full responsibility for the series. One apparent exception, however, is the ‘March of Intellect’, which is generally attributed to Theodore Hook (1788–1841; DNB).5 Born into a highly musical family – his father, the organist at Vauxhall Gardens, wrote over 2,000 songs – Hook made a name for himself with his witty songs, his well publicized pranks, and his pioneering efforts in the genre of the ‘silver-fork’ novel. From the early 1820s forward, he was also widely associated with John Bull, the staunchly Tory newspaper he edited during the Queen Caroline affair.6 Hook’s conservative leanings are on full display in the ‘March of Intellect’, where he invokes the Chain-of-Being tradition to suggest all members of society are best off if they stick to their natural rank. In the decade to come, arguments such as Hook’s would become staples of conservative satires on the March. Thus, while this song may seem a fairly conventional attack on working-class education, it deserves at least some credit for helping to launch one of the Reform era’s most prominent strains of conservative satire.]

1 It is unclear how the ‘March of Intellect’ came to function as the standard label for the advance of knowledge. The phrase begins to show up in letters and journals in the 1810s. In Keats’s 3 May 1818 letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, for instance, he concludes a comparison of Milton and Wordsworth by declaring, ‘It proves there is really a grand march of intellect’. 2 For general histories of the ‘March’, see M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire, New York, Viking, 1967, pp. 177–82; Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1957 (especially chapters 6–12); and Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001. 3 Perhaps the most famous caricature of the March comes in Chapter 2 of Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle, London, T. Hookham, 1831. See also the Seymour and Moncrieff entries below (pp. 224–28 and 237–49), as well as the numerous prints reproduced in George, Hogarth to Cruikshank, pp. 177–82. 4 For a basic history of Blackwood’s in general and the Noctes in specific, see R. Shelton MacKenzie’s introduction to his edition of the Noctes Ambrosianae, 5 vols, New York, W. Middleton, 1872. 5 MacKenzie, ed., Noctes Ambrosianae, vol. 2, p. 147. 6 Louis J. Parascandola, ‘Theodore Hook’, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, 116 (British Romantic Novelists, 1789–1832), ed. Bradford K. Mudge, Detroit, Gale, 1992, pp. 151–56. 220

TUNE , ‘THROUGH ALL THE E MPLOYMENTS OF L IFE .’ Oh! Learning’s a very fine thing, As also is wisdom and knowledge, For a man is as great as a king, If he has but the airs of a college. And now-a-days all must admit, In LEARNING we’re wondrously favour’d, For you scarce o’er your window can spit, But some learned man is beslaver’d!1 Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. We’ll all of us shortly be doom’d To part with our plain understanding, For INTELLECT now has assumed An attitude truly commanding! All ranks are so dreadfully wise, Common sense is set quite at defiance, And the child for its porridge that cries, Must cry in the language of SCIENCE. Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. The WEAVER it surely becomes, To talk of his web’s involution, For doubtless the hero of thrums Is a member of some institution; He speaks of supply and demand, With the airs of a great legislator, And almost can tell you off-hand, That the smaller is less than the greater! Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. The TAILOR, in cutting his cloth, Will speak of the true conic section, And no tailor is now such a Goth2 But he talks of his trade’s genuflection! If you laugh at his bandy-legg’d clan, He calls it unhandsome detraction, And cocks up his chin like a man, 221

1

10

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Though we know that he’s only a fraction! Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. The BLACKSMITH ’midst cinders and smoke, Whose visage is one of the dimmest, His furnace profoundly will poke, With the air of a practical chemist; Poor Vulcan3 has recently got A lingo that’s almost historic, And can tell you that iron is hot, Because it is fill’d with caloric! Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. The MASON, in book-learned tone, Describes in the very best grammar The resistance that dwells in the stone, And the power that resides in the hammer; For the son of the trowel and hod4 Looks as big as the Frog in the Fable,5 While he talks in a jargon as odd As his brethren the builders of Babel!6 Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. The COBBLER who sits at your gate Now pensively points his hog’s bristle, Though the very same cobbler of late O’er his work used to sing and to whistle; But cobbling’s a paltry pursuit For a man of polite education— His works may be trod under foot, Yet he’s one of the Lords of Creation! Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. Oh! learning’s a very fine thing! It almost is treason to doubt it— Yet many of whom I could sing, Perhaps might be as well without it! And without it my days I will pass, For to me it was ne’er worth a dollar, And I don’t wish to look like an Ass By trying to talk like a SCHOLAR! Sing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c. Let schoolmasters bother their brains In their dry and their musty vocation; But what can the rest of us gain 222

40

50

60

70

Hook (‘The March of Intellect’)

By meddling with such botheration? We cannot be very far wrong, If we live like our fathers before us, Whose LEARNING went round in the song, And whose cares were dispelled in the CHORUS. Singing, tol de rol lol, &c. &c.

223

80

ROBERT SEYMOUR

From The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political (1829) [First published as The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London, Thomas M’Lean, 1829. For a man who in his own day ranked among Britain’s most popular and prolific illustrators, Robert Seymour (1798–1836; DNB) is all but forgotten today, attracting a fraction of the scholarly attention afforded to his contemporary George Cruikshank. When Seymour’s name does surface, it is usually in connection with Dickens, with whom, in 1836, he collaborated on the early numbers of the Pickwick Papers. At the time, Dickens was a 23-year-old upstart who thrilled at the chance to work with the much more famous Seymour. The collaboration, however, soon took a tragic turn. Overwhelmed by the heavy demand for his sketches and quite possibly exasperated by Dickens’s insistence on being the controlling partner on the Pickwick series, Seymour committed suicide in the garden behind his Islington home on 20 April 1836.1 The three Seymour images reprinted below date to seven years before the artist’s suicide, a time when he was beginning to establish himself as one of the nation’s great caricaturists. During the years leading up to Reform, Seymour would illustrate just about anything that paid. His ability to satirize all segments of society is evident in The March of Intellect, a collection of thirty sketches that breaks from the tradition of ‘March’ satires (see pp. 219–20 above) by lampooning not just the upwardly mobile labouring classes, but all ranks of British society. Thus, alongside more conventional caricatures of workers dressing and behaving as their social ‘betters’, Seymour spoofs corrupt lawyers, dissolute aristocrats, and technophiles who herald steam power as a panacea for the nation’s social and economic woes.2 Perhaps the collection’s most powerful indictment of modern values, however, comes in the five ‘Philanthropical’ sketches. Here Seymour satirizes a wide range of outrages committed every day across the Empire in the name of economic, religious, or scientific progress. Beginning with depictions of grave robbers in the employ of medical schools and quack doctors bilking the poor, he moves on to ecclesiastical corruption (‘Church Philanthropy’, Figure 12), narrow-minded evan224

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-32

Seymour (The March of Intellect)

gelism (‘Philanthropy in Ireland’, Figure 13), and the brutality of colonial slavery (‘West India Philanthropy’, Figure 14). Images such as these give Seymour’s March of Intellect much broader implications than the standard ‘March’ satires of the late 1820s. Taken collectively, his sketches interrogate the myth of progress and suggest that the nation’s much heralded ‘march’ of intellect might better be seen as a crawl.]

1 In the absence of any detailed, book-length biography, the best sources on Seymour’s life are Frederic G. Kitton, Dickens and His Illustrators, London, George Redway, 1899; Jane R. Collins, Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators, Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1980; and the DNB. 2 For another image from Seymour’s March of Intellect, see ‘Poetry’ (Figure 1), where the artist lampoons the sources of inspiration for Romantic-era verse.

225

Figure 12: Seymour, ‘Church Philanthropy’ from The March of Intellect Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London, Thomas M’Lean, 1829

Figure 13: Seymour, ‘Philanthropy in Ireland’ from The March of Intellect Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanthropical, Professional, Political, London, Thomas M’Lean, 1829

Figure 14: Seymour, ‘West India Philanthropy’ from The March of Intellect Source: Robert Seymour, The March of Intellect: Fashionable, Mechanical, Philosophical, Philanth ropical, Pro­ fessional, Political, London, Thomas M’Lean, 1829

EBENEZER ELLIOTT

‘Song: Child, is thy father dead?’ (1830) ‘Burns, from the Dead’ (1830) ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’ (1830)

[First published in Corn Law Rhymes, Sheffield, Platt and Todd, 1830, pp. 28–29, 34– 37, 65–69. That Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849; DNB) continues to be known primarily as the ‘Corn-Law Rhymer’ attests not only to the popularity his Corn Law Rhymes once enjoyed but also to how narrowly he defined himself both politically and poetically around this single issue. In his poetry Elliott tended to pose as a distressed mechanic brought to the verge of starvation by the Corn Law; but, in reality, his roots and sympathies rested at least as much with the industrial bourgeoisie as with the proletariat. The son of a clerk at a Yorkshire iron foundry, Elliott himself went into the iron business upon coming of age. After experiencing a series of financial setbacks – which he blamed entirely on the Corn Laws – he eventually became a successful iron trader, earning enough to retire with £6,000 in capital and a small estate in 1837. Thus, when reading Elliott’s political and social satire, it is important not to get drawn into the notion that we are experiencing the authentic voice of the oppressed labourer. Rather, as Donald Reiman suggests, it is more accurate to see him as the representative not of ‘philosophical altruism but laissez-faire capitalism at its self-centered purest’.1 This is not to say, though, that Elliott doesn’t accurately reflect the effects the Corn Law had on many of Britain’s labouring poor. Implemented in 1815 amid the economic distress that accompanied the close of the Napoleonic wars, this law dictated that no foreign grain could be imported until the price of domestic grain reached a certain plateau. As might be expected, such a law proved a great boon to British farmers, who were virtually guaranteed a corner on the domestic market and were thus able to charge higher prices for their crops. At the same time, however, the Corn Law had a detrimental effect on groups with less of a voice in Parliament, specifically the labouring, manufacturing, and merchant classes. Simply put, higher prices for bread left workers with less income for other commodities, which, in 229

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-33

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

turn, translated into significantly less demand for the nation’s manufactured goods and, hence, lower profits for industrialists. For a petty bourgeois like Elliott, then, the Corn Law (or ‘Bread Tax’, as he generally called it) represented the worst form of government protectionism and a clear violation of the most basic principles of free-market capitalism. Elliott’s disdain for the Corn Law motivated most of his poetry from the late 1820s onward. He had minor successes with The Village Patriarch (1829) and The Splendid Village (1833), two lengthy poems consciously modelled after Goldsmith and Crabbe which portray a rural economy decimated by the twin evils of enclosure and the bread tax. His greatest critical and popular success, however, came with the Corn Law Rhymes (1830), a collection of short satirical poems that range generically from prophetic jeremiads to sentimental lyrics to rollicking rants.2 The three poems selected for this edition reflect this generic diversity. The first selection, ‘Song: Child is thy father dead?’, is reminiscent of Blake’s Songs of Innocence in both its simple versification and its ironic juxtaposition of sincere religion and hypocritical cant. In contrast to the unabashed sentimentality of the ‘Song’, in ‘Burns, from the Dead’ Elliott combines slightly ribald Burnsian humour with pointed political invective to suggest that the Corn Law is one of the greatest schemes yet devised by the devil to damn the souls of men. The final poem reprinted below, ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’, employs the voice of prophecy to call down the wrath of heaven upon those responsible for the Corn Law, Peterloo, and other atrocities committed against the poor. This poem, perhaps better than any other, showcases Elliott’s willingness to adopt the persona of the victimized proletarian and the language of class warfare to promote the eradication of the ‘bread tax’.]

1 Donald H. Reiman, ‘Introduction’ to The Village Patriarch and Corn Law Rhymes, by Ebenezer Elliott, New York and London, Garland, 1978, pp. iv–ix. 2 For an insightful reading of the Corn Law Rhymes and their relationship to mainstream Romanticism, see Steven E. Jones, Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s, 2000, pp. 199–220.

230

SONG. TUNE—‘R OBIN ADAIR.’ CHILD, is thy father dead? Father is gone! Why did they tax his bread? God’s will be done! Mother has sold her bed; Better to die than wed! Where shall she lay her head? Home we have none. Father clamm’d1 thrice a week, God’s will be done! Long for work did he seek, Work he found none: Tears on his hollow cheek Told what no tongue could speak: Why did his master break?2 God’s will be done! Doctor said air was best, Food we had none; Father, with panting breast, Groan’d to be gone: Now he is with the blest! Mother says death is best! We have no place of rest! Yes, ye have one.

231

1

10

20

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

BURNS, FROM THE DEAD MACLATHER, the radical barber of Perth,3 Was the saddest of all politicians on earth; But his business increased, while his thoughts darker grew, For his shop was a news-shop, and barber’s shop too. One night he lay sleepless, reflecting with awe On the laws of the lawless, and wrongs that are law, When a stranger approach’d, with a voice and a stride That awoke the good woman asleep at his side. Like Tell4 from the torrent, or Burns from the brae,5 Or Cromwell6 in youth, or the Hampden of Gray;7 He came—and around his broad brow, as he spoke, His black locks were curl’d, like the gnarl of the oak. But his voice—oh! its tones were the music of scorn, The laugh of a trumpet, impatient for morn! ‘Come, bring me a pen, boy! and all shall know soon That still I am Bobby, the bard o’ the Doon;8 Yes, bring me a pen, and I’ll write thee an ode On the law that sends tax-eaten Britons abroad.’ ‘Aye, write me,’ said Mac, with a sigh like a rope, ‘An ode on the bread-tax, that banishes hope.’ Mac brought him a pen, and he took it and wrote, Whiles laughing, whiles talking, whiles glooming9 in thought, Whiles glow’ring at Meg, who lay mute as the grave, As he hutch’d up10 his breeches, then scribbled a stave.11 ‘Awake sate the Devil, and felt quite unwell With scheming how best he might send souls to hell, When at last he exclaim’d, as he rose with a spring, “A Bread-tax, a Bread-tax, will just be the thing! To beggar the wealthy, by robbing the poor, To mortgage the meadow, by stealing the moor, To turn into monsters the young and the old, There’s nought like a Bread-tax, with paper or gold. France, once the great nation, held others in scorn; But when could France boast of her kings of dear corn? In the page of her glory bright names may be read, But the ace of all titles is ‘Lord of Dear Bread.’ Rome rose like the sun, but in darkness to set, For her Lords of the Bread-tax Rome never had yet; Her heroes, and Neroes, great names we may call, But Lord of the Bread-tax, is greater than all. A Bread-tax will bring me, all cursing dear corn, 232

1

10

20

30

40

Elliott (‘Song: Child, is thy father dead?’, ‘Burns, from the Dead’, ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’)

The proud and the splendid, the tatter’d and torn, From palace and hovel, from woodland and street, At my table as equals and brothers to meet. There, seated with me, round the broad brimstone bowl, They shall quaff the true blue12 for the health of the soul, And pledge me in bumpers with horror for glee, May the God of the good send all Tories to me! My philosopher’s stone13 is the moral sublime; A Bread-tax will turn all it touches to crime; Then hey for a Bread-tax! hark forward, soho!14 That my halls may be cramm’d with the high and the low.” So saying, he hied to the bought and the sold, And whisper’d the haughty, the base and the cold, Where they lay in their venom, all toad-like and grim, How to damn souls on earth, and fill hell to the brim.’ Thus ended the poet—and fled like a dream, O’er valley, and torrent, and woodland, and stream, Through scenes of his loves, in the morn of his day, When he met the fond lasses among the sweet hay. And the moon and the stars, over mountain and moor, Look’d slyly on Bobby, the honest and poor, While he thought of the sprees o’ the ‘bonny lang syne,’15 When the gloss of his locks was like gold from the mine.

50

60

THE JACOBIN’S PRAYER AVENGE the plunder’d poor, oh Lord! But not with fire, but not with sword, Not as at Peterloo16 they died, Beneath the hoofs of coward pride. Avenge our rags, our chains, our sighs, The famine in our children’s eyes! But not with sword—no, not with fire Chastise Thou Britain’s locustry! Lord, let them feel thy heavier ire; Whip them, oh Lord! with poverty! Then, cold in soul as coffin’d dust, Their hearts as tearless, dead, and dry, Let them in outraged mercy trust, And find that mercy they deny! 233

1

10

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Yon cotton-prince, at Peterloo, Found easy work, and glory, too,17 Corn laws, quoth he, make labour cheap, And famine from our trenches keep; He sees but wealth in want and woe; Men starve, he owns, and justly so; But if they marry and get brats, Must he provide their shirts and hats? Lord, fill his ledger with bad debts! Let him be learn’d in gazettes!18 A beadle’s19 son, a lawyer’s sire, And born the favourite of a squire, Strut20 hath town-acres three or four, Two taverns, and can license more; That street is his, Blue Jobber’s Row:21 He feels no want, he sees no woe; But, having jobb’d another groat,22 Pays Corn-law twopence, as he ought, And still is purchased with his own, Although his god is half-a-crown. Talk not to him of wants and woes; He hates the fool who names his foes. Lord, let his hollow rental fail, And lice instruct him in a jail, When Tories, to diminish votes, For liberal laws strain all their throats, Untaxing deals, too dear to buy, And bricks, and laths,—but tell not why! Yon prigling,23 territorial grown, Sublimely takes his satrap-stride24 On two vast acres, call’d his own, And almost bursts with British pride. ‘Cheap corn is ruin,’ he can show; ‘Let rents be raised, Sir!’ Are they low? ‘They are—despite your liberal cant, And all the pack of growling hounds: The poor, Sir, are extravagant: These eight roods25 cost five hundred pounds!’ He earns with ease his daily bread; But want still quits his door unfed. Let thrice five sons and daughters, Lord, Surround this childless husband’s board, 234

20

30

40

50

Elliott (‘Song: Child, is thy father dead?’, ‘Burns, from the Dead’, ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’)

Till wisdom from his trencher26 preach, And back and belly learn and teach. Yon yeoman27 used, in better days, When ‘D—n the French’ was pray’r and praise, To teach us thrice a year or so, From tory-rule what blessings flow. He back’d his war-horse through the panes Of quiet people who had brains; And when pale freedom’s champions fell, He three-times-three’d28 his carnage yell, Till awe-struck fiends turn’d pale in hell. For wool-tax now, and parish pay,29 He prays in curses every day, And bans30 the liberals and the peace. Lord, let him take his farm on lease! That he may feel the growing pain Which they endure, who toil in vain; The sinking soul, the dark distress, The sting of this world’s hopelessness; Till down his cheek of lemon-peel A selfish tear, at least, may steal, And wondering sceptics gladly own His heart is human, though of bone! See, how yon thane of corn laws31 scowls, Picking our pockets, while he growls; Lord, shall his law, untaxing rent, Become his order’s monument? A beacon, bidding future times, Avoid his fate, abhor his crimes? When ruin yells, and havock goads, And long-prepared, his mine explodes, Oh, may the wretch outlive the shock Of shaken earth, and shatter’d rock! Whip him, O Lord! with want and woe! Lord, teach him what his victims know! And when, with toil and trouble worn, He rests beneath a blasted thorn, Let him behold, with grief and ire, While sets the sun in pomp of fire, The palace of his patriot sire, Who fed the poor, that feed the proud, And plunder’d not the toiling crowd!32 235

60

70

80

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

But if, when chastening years are past, His sorrows try to smile at last, And in his plot of garden-ground, The wire-edged cottage flower be found, Or rose, or pink, whose glowing rays Remind him of departed days; Let no mean worm’s despotic power Envy that fallen man his flower! O let no little tyrant dare To rend the hope of his despair, The solace of his closing day, His friend—his garden-plot away; Nor upstart pride, with scornful tone, The poor man’s claim to taste disown, And turn affronted tears to stone!

236

100

110

W[ILLIAM] T[HOMAS] MONCRIEFF

The March of Intellect, A Comic Poem (1830)

[First published as The March of Intellect, A Comic Poem, London, William Kidd, 1830. By 1830, when W. T. Moncrieff (1794–1857; DNB) decided to weigh in on the ‘March of Intellect’, the idea of lampooning philosophizing labourers was hardly a fresh one (see pp. 219–28 above). Moncrieff, however, was never one to shy away from a topic merely because it was lacking in novelty. In fact, few early-nineteenthcentury writers could rival his ability to cash in on literary fads. Over the course of his lengthy theatrical career, Moncrieff wrote some 170 plays, regularly drawing his inspiration from the previous season’s most fashionable productions.1 The March of Intellect, A Comic Poem marks one of Moncrieff ’s few forays into a literary genre besides drama. As is made abundantly clear in the first fourteen stanzas, the inspiration here is Thomas Hood, who by 1830 had established himself as England’s premier comic poet with volumes such as Odes and Addresses to Great People (see pp. 201–14 above), Whims and Oddities, and The Epping Hunt. Hood was best known for reviving the pun, a satirical device that had been frowned upon for well over a century before his arrival. With Hood’s success, almost overnight the nation’s wits felt liberated to indulge themselves in the puns they had been repressing their entire careers, leading one writer to declare in 1830, ‘Punning is now the order of the day’.2 Few poems of this era relish the freedom to pun as thoroughly as Moncrieff ’s March of Intellect, which not only describes kitchens smelling of ‘classic Greece’ and warehousemen practising ‘crane-iology’, but goes out of its way to italicize its puns lest we fail to properly savour their cleverness. In terms of content, most of the images Moncrieff gives of studious menials were relatively hackneyed by the time he wrote. As a companion piece to the Hook and Seymour satires included above, however, Moncrieff ’s poem shows both the endurance of march of intellect satire and the lengths to which a writer could go to parody working-class education. One of the great ironies here is that, despite his conspicuous class snobbery, Moncrieff himself was a beneficiary of the ‘March’, having risen from his roots as a tradesman’s son and a solicitor’s clerk to his eventual position as one of the most influential figures in the London theatre scene. Such, it seems, was the momentum of the ‘March of Intellect’, which allowed most of its 237

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-34

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

critics to forget that they too were participating in systems of knowledge that until recently had been the exclusive domain of their social ‘betters’.]

1 Despite Moncrieff ’s prolific output, few specifics on his life are readily available. For basic overviews of his literary career, see the DNB and Great Writers of the English Language, ed. James Vinson, vol. 3, London, Macmillan, 1979, pp. 411–15. 2 Quoted in Gary Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 158. See also pp. 159–66.

238

I. OH Intellect! thou wondrous power! Let me, in manner arch, Diversify a weary hour, And versify thy march.

1

II. Thy march, that has such wonders done, And made such striding shoots, That it would seem thou hadst put on The Ogre’s seven leagued boots!1 III. And come, Tom Hood,2 thou man of pun, On merry-thoughts still lunching, Quaffing huge draughts of spirits rum, From humour’s favorite Pun-cheon.

10

IV. Thou funny lexicographer, In folly’s pastures gleaning, That can on every word confer, At will, a double meaning! V. Ere I my Pun-ic war begin, Impart thy happiest mood; For once, let our two faces grin, Oh, Tom! beneath one Hood! VI. Gruff Doctor Johnson, dearest Tom, Ere grim death struck his docket,3 Declared, he who could make a pun Would also pick a pocket!4 VII. And truly thou hast proved it true, For many a pun thou’st made, And pick’d the publick’s pockets too, All in the way of trade! 239

20

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

VIII. To wit, with Whims and Oddities!5 No felony that latter, For hanging—though a ticklish—is We know no laughing matter!

30

IX. Thy Hunt,6 too, where thou didst run down The muse, and found her supple! I’d fain share with thee half a crown; Then let us hunt in couple! X. ‘Laugh and grow fat,’ the adage says,7 If that, Tom, is the case, We must to thee yield tons of praise, Great fattener of thy race!

40

XI. A portion of that fatness give, Deign my support to be; Most lean of all by verse that live, Oh, let me lean on thee. XII. Yes, bid me still as young Tom reign, Thou’lt honor gain therefrom; For gin-uine spirit thou’lt remain, Par excellence, Old Tom! XIII. I but aspire to copy you, To catch your manner terse; Then let me pen a verse or two, And be not you a-verse.

50

XIV. But to my ‘March of Intellect,’ Which thoughts of you have cross’d, Should I neglect, folks would suspect My intellects I’d lost. XV. This is, indeed, a wondrous age, Most rare of all we’ve had; Improvement now is all the rage, Folks are improving mad. 240

60

Moncrieff (The March of Intellect)

XVI. We have had England’s olden days, When fought and bled her sons; We too have had her golden days, These are her learned ones. XVII. And could our ancestors arise, Each soon would hide his head; Our intellect would so surprise They’d glad be they were dead. XVIII. Its march now travels each highway, On every plain and green, In town and country, night and day, It takes steps to be seen.

70

XIX. Short stages8 now are all cut short, Too long they’ve had their day; From Paris (all the world they court) The OMNIBUS bears sway.9 XX. Cads10 now are to Conducteurs turn’d, To intellect they bow; St. Giles’s Greek11 by all is spurn’d, They parlez Français now.

80

XXI. Inviting you to take a spell, Lest ennui chance to bore, They put inside, with you to ride, Scott, Byron, Crabbe, and Moore. XXII. Shakspeare and Milton they supply, That those who run may read; A circulating library It may be call’d indeed. XXIII. No more of reading by the hour, We at such limits smile; Now intellect has three horse power, ’Tis reading by the mile. 241

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

XXIV. Says Mrs. Fubs to Billy Stubbs, Her grandson, ‘By what rule Are these machines call’d Omnibus? You must have learnt at school.’ XXV. ‘Why, grandma, omni stands for all, And buss, you know, means kiss; So great or small we must kiss all, The meaning not to miss.’

100

XXVI. ‘Psha, boy!—you’re like your uncle Tom, You’re of the selfsame rank; Tell me where Omnibus comes from’— ‘It comes, Ma, from the Bank!’12 XXVII. ‘Hey! here’s the guard, he jabbers French, Your larning now boy show; Put to the blush that giggling wench! Come, Billy, parley woo! XXVIII. ‘You’ve been brought up in mode polite,’ ‘Lord, Ma, you’re such a fool!’ ‘In my young days, to read and write, Was all we learnt at school.

110

XXIX. ‘But you’ve larnt Latin, French, and Greek, ‘So speak to him, boy, do.’ ‘Well, Ma! if I in French must speak, Commong gy potty woo?’13 XXX. ‘Monsieur! Je ne vous comprends pas,’14 ‘What does he say, boy? tell.’ ‘Why, Ma! I ask’d him how he was,’ And he said, “Pretty well.”’ XXXI. ‘Well, what a thing is learning! zounds! But I was sure you knew: I wouldn’t grudge a hundred pounds If I spoke French like you.’ 242

120

Moncrieff (The March of Intellect)

XXXII. Our guards now musical have grown; Key’d bugles15 and Rossini16 Have made French horns resign their throne, Haydn, Mozart, Piccini.17 XXXIII. Di Piacer18 no peace allows, Di tanti palpiti19 ‘Moll in the Wad’20 now bids repose, All, Intellect! through thee.

130

XXXIV. Our common carriers, now o’days, Deserve no such cognomen, Maps of their ways each one displays, They’re carriers uncommon. XXXV. So much does intellect increase, In manner systematic,— Our kitchens smell of classic Greece, Our garrets all are attic!

140

XXXVI. In the domestic offices (For kitchen’s vulgar now) The march of mind steps by degrees, And reaches all below. XXXVII. The cook skims now in science’ dream, Alive to all that passes; She her potatoes boils by steam, And lights her fire by gasses. XXXVIII. My lady’s maid learns by the card21 All Mr. Payne’s quadrilles;—22 The groom he tries the gallop hard, As powerful mind still wills. XXXIX. The footman, voting work a bore, Will, as time quickly by shoots, O’er Meyerbeer23 and Weber24 pore, And whistle o’er the Freischutz.25 243

150

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

XL. Meanwhile the butler, worthy man, So snug o’er his o-port-o,26 Enjoys the ‘Life of Sherry-dan,’27 Appropriately in quart-o.

160

XLI. Housekeepers (bless their learned heads!) Know what is by each art meant; In short the march of knowledge spreads, All through the home department. XLII. The dinner à-la-mode Paris We now find christened wholly; A stew is styled a fricassee, Boil’d beef is now term’d bouilli. XLIII. Old Mrs. Glass28 has given place To Kitchener29 and Ude;30 To take soup twice is quite disgrace, To malt with cheese, is rude.

170

XLIV. Deep skill’d in gastronomic ways Ude aids the cooks manœuvres; He regulates the entremets,31 And directs the hors d’ouvres. XLV. The scullion32 acts by mental rule, Soars ’bove her situation,— Boasts, brought up at the parish school, A liberal education. XLVI. What more can intellect desire, Of poets she can prate, And sighs o’er, as she lights the fire, The ashes of the grate. XLVII. Learning’s by poverty unchill’d, Each workhouse is a college, And paupers, deep in science skill’d, Prove they’re not poor in knowledge. 244

180

Moncrieff (The March of Intellect)

XLVIII. They sadly sigh o’er former days, Superior to their station, Rail at the sums the red book33 pays, And seek to save the nation.

190

XLIX. Yearning to raise their country higher, The ministry to stir; They’d rather go without a fire, Than Cobbett’s Register.34 L. With novels they beguile the hours, With poems cure the vapours; Watch warily the parish powers, And club to read the papers.

200

LI. Abuses anxious to reform, And lop corruption’s tree, They daily at the beadle35 storm, The overseer o’ersee. LII. They loudly talk of equal rights, With solemn physiognomy, And settle in their wards at night, Political economy. LIII. One forc’d at fortune’s frown to stoop, In chemic art well read, Begins to analyze the soup And decompose the bread.

210

LIV. The baker proves a rogue in grain, By well-bred persons hated; The butcher of the self same vein His beef adulterated. LV. The soup not of the proper strength, But lowered most unfairly, (Can peculation go such length!) Supporting life but barely. 245

220

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

LVI. Another rails against the bill For anatomy’s addition;36 A skeleton prepare he will, Direct, of a petition. LVII. Cut up like dogs’ meat! no, not he, ’Twould make a martyr rave: No, kings as well may subjects be; All’s equal in the grave. LVIII. Words now grow high—reform! reform! All’s uproar and disquiet; The beadle hears the rising storm, And comes to quell the riot.

230

LIX. True member he of the select, He speaks like a recorder; Begs they will church and state respect, And keep up social order. LX. The vestry37 will the poor maintain, That they may not grow thinner; Their state they will discuss again, And meet, and have a dinner.

240

LXI. The vestry meet—a rate is made To pay the current quarter; The March of Intellect’s display’d In champagne and rose water. LXII. Mister Churchwarden in the chair, Each side the overseers; The worthy rector too is there, The sight his bosom cheers. LXIII. While venison, turtle, game, and fish Each hungry palate blesses, They on the table with each dish Digest the poor’s distresses. 246

250

Moncrieff (The March of Intellect)

LXIV. ‘We must allow them some more bread,— Bring the champagne here, waiter!— And, that they may be better fed, The poor rates must be greater. LXV. ‘They can’t be starv’d,—mock turtle here,— Distress with all now grapples, Each article’s so very dear, Bring, waiter, some pineapples.’

260

LXVI. Thus in the vestry, intellect Its rapid march makes known; Nor stand nor stall does it neglect, It every where is shown. LXVII. Plain speaking dare not show its face, All patter metaphorical; Each dirty COURT is called a Place, In manner alley-gorical. LXVIII. Masters no more, tyrannical, Improvement’s course can stop; For intellect mechanical Now marches in each shop.

270

LXIX. For science’ honors yearning still, Mechanics gladly pay; And operative learning will Securely work its way. LXX. Mechanics’ Institutions38 At each second step we meet; And Birkbeck’s resolutions39 Stare us in every street. LXXI. The barber takes you by the nose, And talks about nosology;40 And Thames Street warehousemen disclose, Their art in crane-iology. 247

280

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

LXXII. Last-dying speeches beggars sell, And prate about buy-ography; While journeymen take walks and well Improve them in toe-pography. LXXIII. And mendicants and paupers still, Consistent in their actions, Break stones upon the road, their skill To show in vulgar fractions.

290

LXXIV. The milkman who turns pale each day, While studying astronomy; Calls pouring on the milky way, Political economy. LXXV. Our waggoners that up hill go, Can tell you of highdraw-lics;— They taste the luxury of ‘woh!’ And drag through lectures prolix.

300

LXXVI. Now gardeners extract their roots By science, till they’ve not any; And costermongers taste the fruits (While selling greens) of Botany. LXXVII. Innkeepers double entry learn, And wisely calculate; While carpenters those sawyers spurn, That log-arithms hate. LXXVIII. The march of intellect all love, All wish to have a hand in; E’en cobblers labour to improve The human understanding. LXXIX. Such is the general thirst of knowledge, So little is its scarcity; Soon Tooley Street41 will have its College, St. Giles its University. 248

310

Moncrieff (The March of Intellect)

LXXX. Now Mister Cobbett all our fellows Delights to make grammatical; And cats’ meat sellers, from their cellars, Answer most dog-matical.

320

LXXXI. The press is pressing through each street Its rapid march—if willing, You now may purchase forty feet Of knowledge for a shilling!!* LXXXII. By puffs† our papers rise and fall, The mighty march of mind (’Tis plainly evident in all) Is but to raise the wind. LXXXIII. Else would the Times be out of joint, The Atlas would decline, The Star would be without a point, The Sun would never shine.

330

LXXXIV. The Courier would make no way, No one would mind the Post, The Herald would no art display, The Globe itself be lost! LXXXV. But now to end this march of mine, Kind friends, a bard protect, Nor science with grave scorn decline, Our March of Intellect.

340

* The Atlas Newspaper of March 14, 1829, contained forty feet of printed matter. † This alludes to a circumstance which took place about two months since in Berners Street:— A newsman was passing through the street on a very windy day, when the whole of his papers, by a violent gust of wind, were carried up into the air.

249

ANON.

‘A Notabil Ballad of ye Downefall of Kynges’ (1831)1

[First published in The Prompter, no. 9, 8 January 1831, pp. 147–49. The Prompter was established in late 1830. It was one of the many literary ven­ tures of the tireless radical pressman Richard Carlile (1790–1843; DNB). Like William Gifford, Carlile was a Devonian from Ashburton, and it is remarkable that the most notable ultra-Tory and ultra-radical editors of the late Georgian period were both educated at the same village free school. The Prompter was a vehicle for the propagation of its editor’s political and spiritual preoccupations: republicanism, democracy and religious free thought. Most notoriously, and, ultimately, most unfortunately for Carlile, it was fearless in the expression of his forthright republi­ can views. In the third number of The Prompter, he declared that ‘A constitutional monarchy is the most ridiculous state of government, more than mimicking abso­ lute monarchy, and perpetuating all ancient follies and abuses. Everything conspires against a king, to tell him he is something more than man; and all that sort of flat­ tery is calculated to unman him, and to make him less than man. We want no mummeries and nonsense, wherewith to please savages and fools, in the present day’.2 The British people, he goes on, are in the thrall of ‘The worst and most degrading form of government that has ever been devised for a people’.3 For this Carlile was sentenced to pay a ‘fine of £200 to the King [and] be imprisoned in the Compter of the City for the term of two years’4 (Carlile spent over nine of his fiftythree years in prison). ‘A Notabil Ballad of ye Downefall of Kynges’, an anonymous satirical squib pub­ lished in the ninth number of The Prompter, echoes Carlile’s antimonarchialism. A mock-medieval ballad in the manner familiar in Romantic period satirical writing from the Anti-Jacobin onwards, the poem laments the increasing spread of unrest throughout Europe in the light of the second French Revolution of 1830 (by impli­ cation, anyone who supports kings, priest and soldiers is mired in a feudal mentality). From Russia to Spain, the kings of Europe tremble in the face of popular revolt: ‘From ye kynge of ye Northe to ye Grande Seignor, / Theye be alle affrayed by the tricolore’. Carlile had argued that monarchy ‘perpetuat[ed] all ancient follies

250

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-35

Anon. (‘A Notabil Ballad’)

and abuses’, and this satire imitates an ancient literary form in ironic celebration of the outdated foolishness of kingship.]

1 2 3 4

Edited by John Strachan. The Prompter, no. 3, 27 November 1831, p. 34. Ibid., p. 35. DNB.

251

Oute, alas! quhat a grefe is thys That princes’ subjects cannot be trew, But still the devyl hath some of hys Will play thir part whatsoevere ensew; Forgetting quhat a grevous thynge It is to offend an anointede kynge. Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wo! That it shoulde be so - that it shoulde be so. It is doing alle over Europe anowe; Thare is noe kynge that wears a crowne Dare stampe his fote on ye grounde belowe, Least he may shake hys owne throne downe; From ye kynge of ye Northe1 to ye Grande Seignor,2 Theye be alle affrayed by the tricolore.3 Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wo! Why it shoulde be so - why it shoulde be so. Charles the Xth is at Holie-Rode,4 Louis Philippe5 will still be going; Ferdinand wise,6 and Miguel good,7 Mourne o’er the dedes their people are doing; And ye kynge of Great Britain,8 whom God defende, Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wo! That it shoulde be so – that it shoulde be so. Quhat will ye ende of these thynges be? Who shall know and who shall tell? Heaven help them, poore Royaltie! Earthe has heard thy funeral knell; When menne canne look on a kynglie throne, As tho it wer set by menne alone! Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! for woe! for woe! That it shoulde be so – that it shoulde be so. Whereas Godde, we know, who is paramount Kynge, Did give to Adame at hys birthe, Dominion of everich earthlie thynge; And they who now be kynges on earthe, Be alle right-heires of Adame’s line, 252

1

10

20

30

Anon. (‘A Notabil Ballad’)

And therefor rule by Right Divine. Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wo! Is thys not so – is this not so? Wherfor considere, I doe you praye, How ye Godde’s giftes abuse, ye menne, Least he sholde take that quite awaie Was given you for your owne gaine; If ye wolde not paye Godde his honoure dew, And pay unto Cæsar hys pennie too Alacke! alacke! heigh-ho! heigh-ho! If it should be so – if it should be so. Oh! then considere youre state of dreade, When kynges by your neglect shall cease, How must ye soldier and priestes be payde, To save your soules and to keep the peace? Discord will rayne, and Hell be loos’d, Tythes abolysh’d, and taxes reduc’d! Alacke! alacke! heigh-ho! heigh-ho! If it should be so – if it should be so. Englande! Englande! merrie Englande! Quhair will thy dukes and nobles be, Who rule thee so welle with a gentil hande, And keepe thee from want and from miserie? Alacke! alacke! thou wilt lose them all, As ever thou lette thy monarchie falle! Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! for woe! for woe! If it should be so – if it should be so. Scotlande! Scotlande! bonnie Scotlande! Well-a-wae! for your ancient house,9 Quhair kynges and queenes frae foreign land, Shelter sae cannie and live sae crouse.10 Woe! for the last of the royall race, That all should hide in that sousie dwelling place; Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for woe! That is suld be sae – that it should be sae. There’s a mauning o’ ghaists i’ Holie-Rode hais, Nae mair brothers sall evir cum thair; There’s a’ soughing of winds thro’ the ruin’d wa’s, They shall never look down upon Majestie mair, The vera wormes, puir crepynge thynges, Grete10 for the loss of thae daintie kynges. 253

40

50

60

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wae! That it shoulde be sae – that it shoulde be sae. Irelande! Irelande! poore Irelande! Never contended, and never to be! All the comfort thy sonnes have founde Is to tell the worlde of thier miseries: Shoulde kynges be taken awaie from menne, Quhat will thou have to complaine of thennne? Alacke! alacke! heigh-ho! heigh-ho! Should it ever be so – should it ever be so? Up! children alle of a prosperous lande, Who love the mitre, the crowne, the sworde; If ye lend them not sone a helping hand, They must come down – beleve thys word: The tricolore flag will not be furl’d Till kynges, priestes, and souldiers be wip’d from the world Heigh-ho! heigh-ho! alacke for wo! It may soon be so – it may soon be so.

254

80

90

JOHN WILSON (‘CHRISTOPHER NORTH’)

‘A New Song, to be Sung by All Loyal and True Subjects’ (1832)

[First published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XXXI, February 1832, pp. 286– 88. For William Blackwood and his associates at Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the early 1830s were both exhilarating and trying times. On the one hand, Blackwood’s enjoyed unprecedented levels of popularity during the Reform Crisis, as its conserv­ ative readership craved the type of staunchly partisan polemic they were sure to find in the average issue of ‘Maga’ (as Blackwood’s was affectionately dubbed).1 At the same time, Blackwood’s was also proving remarkably successful in its other central mission: getting under the skin of Whigs and radicals. That the front window of his Edinburgh shop was smashed several times during 1831–32 was seen by Blackwood as something of a badge of honour, as it provided tangible proof that his attacks on the Reformers were hitting close to home.2 Yet, however invigorated Blackwood and his staff were by their leading role in the debates over Reform, they also had much to lament about the direction in which the nation was heading. The late 1820s and early 1830s saw in rapid succession the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1828), the passage of the Catholic Relief Act (1829), and the installation of Lord Grey as the first Whig Prime Minister since Pitt the Younger took office in 1783. On the heels of these disappointments, the Tories were able to take some solace from the House of Lords’ steadfast refusal to pass the Reform Bill of 1831. But these hopes were quickly dashed when, in January 1832, King William IV agreed to appoint new peers who would ensure the passage of future reform bills. If Parliamentary reform seemed all but inevitable, then, in early 1832, Blackwood’s was prepared to go down fighting. Among the many anti-Reform pieces that appeared in Maga during these months, one of the most pointed was ‘A New Song, to be Sung by All Loyal and True Subjects’, which was included in the February 1832 instalment of Blackwood’s famous ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ series.3 In this song, Christopher North (John Wilson’s alter ego and the magazine’s fic­ tional editor) and Timothy Tickler (one of North’s regular companions) engage in a game of duelling stanzas, taking turns damning the Whigs and rallying all loyal 255

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-36

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Tories. Consciously Burkean in their reasoning – they even go so far as to echo Burke’s infamous ‘swinish multitude’ remark in line 23 – North and Tickler predict that Reform will bring the same lawlessness to Britain that the Revolution has to France. To escape this fate, brave men must stand up for church, king, and the ‘laws of Old England’ and against the Whig tyrants who would foist their ‘Regicide Bill’ upon the nation. Clearly, the central intent here is to win the King back to the Tory cause, something that is apparent in the concluding stanzas, where William is urged to ‘stand forth from your radical rout, / And trust your old Peers, that will stand you about’. In the months that followed the publication of ‘A New Song’, the hopes of the Blackwood’s crowd would be raised when William vacillated in his support for Reform. But ultimately, of course, the Reform Bill of 1832 proved yet another in a long string of disappointments for conservatives, as on 4 June it was approved in the House of Lords and three days later King William signed it into law.]

1 See the introduction to ‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’ (pp. 179–84 above) for more on the politics of William Blackwood and his magazine. 2 See Margaret Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and his Sons, Their Magazine and Friends, 3 vols, Edinburgh and London, Blackwood, 1898, vol. 2, pp. 103–04. 3 For a basic history of Blackwood’s in general and the Noctes in specific, see R. Shelton Mac­ Kenzie’s introductory material in his edition of the Noctes Ambrosianae, 5 vols, New York, W. Middleton, 1872. See also pp. 219–20 above.

256

NORTH. Ye good honest Englishmen, loyal and true, That, born in Old England, look not for a New, And your fathers’ old principles love to pursue, Join, join in our chorus, while yet we may sing, Spite of treason and blasphemy—‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Priests, Prelates, and Churchmen, who honour the creed For which martyrs have bled, for which martyrs may bleed, When Atheists and Papists your flocks shall mislead; Join, join in our chorus, and loyally sing, From fiendish conspiracy—‘God save the King!’

1

10

NORTH. Ye that mean to stand firm by a Protestant throne, Nor would see Church or King be deprived of their own; Nor for bread to the poor would but give them a stone;1 Join, join in our chorus, and resolute sing, With the true love of loyalty—‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Ye that know well the plots of fool, knave, and profane, That the very first act of the Devil’s own reign Would episcopize Cobbett,2 and canonize Paine;3 Join, join in our chorus defiance to fling At their blasphemous rage, and cry—‘God save the King!’

20

NORTH. Ye that know when Whig Radical Orators shine, And bewilder the mobs whom they urge to combine, What mischievous devils get into the swine;4 Join, join in our chorus, and give them a ring, To keep them from delving—so, ‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Ye that honour the laws that our forefathers made, And would not see the laurels they twined for us fade, Nor would yield up your wealth to the cant of ‘free trade,’5 Join, join in our chorus, and let the world ring With our commerce and glory—and ‘God save the King!’ 257

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

NORTH. All ye that are foes to mean quibbles and quirks, And twopenny statesmen,6 well known by their works, That have used the poor Greeks ten times worse than the Turks;7 Join, join in our chorus, and manfully sing, With good English honesty—‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Defend us from hypocrites, save us from quacks, From saintly Macauleys,8 and some other Macs, And from white sugar said to be made by free blacks;9 Join, join in our chorus, and still let us cling To our ships and our colonies—‘God save the King!’

40

NORTH. From, of all the vile humbugs that ever was known, That vilest and direst, Sierra Leone,10 That makes savages howl, and poor Englishmen groan; Join, join in our chorus, the downfall to sing Of malice and slander—and ‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Ye nobles, stand forth, and defend us, ye great, From political sophists, their jargon and prate, Defend Church and King, and keep both in their state; Join, join in our chorus, a blessing to bring On the land of our fathers—and ‘God save the King!’

50

NORTH. Defend us once more from the Regicide Bill, And the Bedlamite Whigs,11 that have caused so much ill, And would bind our bold King to their absolute will; Join, join in our chorus, and still let us cling To the laws of Old England—and ‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. From Lord Chancellors save us, who flop on their knees, And pretend to give up, while they bargain for fees, And sneer about Bishops, and envy their sees;12 Join, join in our chorus, and loyally sing, From scheming hypocrisy—‘God save the King!’ NORTH. That give friendly advice to the Lords they should shun, That keep the King’s conscience, and let him have none, And strip him of all his tried friends one by one; 258

60

Wilson (‘A New Song’)

Join, join in our chorus, and faithfully sing, From evil advisers all—‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. From a new House of Peers, that shall put the old down, And recruit from the Tinkers of Brummagem town,13 And set a mobility over the Crown; And, join in the chorus, and let the rogues swing, And thus be exalted—so ‘God save the King!’

70

NORTH. From national robbers, call’d ‘National Guards,’14 That for pike and for gun quit their thimbles and yards, To hunt down the gentry, proscribed in placards; Join, join in our chorus, and roar as we sing, From Frenchified villainy—‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. From a Citizen King, and a new La Fayette,15 With his sword in the scales to weigh down a just debt, And beggar the world for the whims of Burdett;16 Join, join in our chorus—all ready to spring To the rescue from tyranny—‘God save the King!’

80

NORTH. From a dastardly Ministry, cringing and mean To their sovereign mob, and reserving their spleen To insult and to bully—a woman—a Queen!17 Join, join in our chorus—true homage we bring To the wife of our Monarch18—and ‘God save the King!’ TICKLER. Emancipate Ireland once more from the thirst Of rapine and murder, with which she is cursed, From Prime-Minister Sheil,19 and O’Connell the First;20 Join, join in our chorus, and spurn all who wring From the beggar his pittance—here’s ‘God save the King!’ NORTH. From defiance of law, and from Catholic rent, On open sedition by demagogues spent, And from Parliaments held without England’s consent; Join, join in our chorus—a downfall we sing To all turbulent scoundrels—so ‘God save the King!’

259

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

TICKLER. Brave William, stand forth from your radical rout, And trust your old Peers, that still stand you about; And, oh! above all, kick your Ministers out! And hark to our chorus—for that’s the true thing, Hurrah for our country—and ‘God save the King!’ NORTH. And if they cling fast, wrest them off like a winch, Though they bully and storm with their mobs, never flinch, Be the King of Old England, ay, every inch; And fear not, your people will thankfully sing With true hearts and harmony—‘God save the King!’

260

100

MARIA ABDY

‘My Very Particular Friend’ (1834) ‘A Governess Wanted’ (1838)

[‘My Very Particular Friend’ first published in The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth, for 1834, ed. Louisa Henrietta Sheridan, London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1834, pp. 12–14; ‘A Governess Wanted’ first published in Maria Abdy, Poetry, 8 vols, London, J. and W. Robins, 1838, vol. 2, pp. 21–23.1 Upon her death in 1867, Maria Abdy’s (b. 1797; DNB) bibliography included an eight-volume collection of her poetry and a lengthy list of poems published in some of the leading magazines, annuals, and gift-books of the early Victorian era.2 Yet, however prolific she may have been, relatively little is known about her life. What we do know is that Abdy was born in London to Richard Smith, a solicitor, and Maria Smith, a sister to the famous humorists James and Horace Smith.3 In 1821, Maria married the Reverend John Channing Abdy, curate of St George the Martyr in Southwark. A few years later, the Reverend Abdy replaced his father as rector at St John’s, Horsleydown, also in Southwark. Although it is known that Abdy outlived her husband by several decades, there is significant disagreement over exactly when the Reverend Abdy died, with listed dates of his death ranging from 1826 to the early 1830s to 1845.4 In most instances, Abdy’s verse conforms to the basic conventions of feminine sensibility and didacticism modelled in the works of her popular contemporaries Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (‘L.E.L.’). Elsewhere, however, she draws upon her family heritage of comic verse and makes clever attacks on the social codes of her time. While Abdy often focuses her satire on the foibles of her own sex, she is also quick to point out that much of the perceived shallowness and pettiness in women is brought on by the unrealistic expectations of men. Such is the case in the first poem reprinted below, ‘My Very Particular Friend’, a piece that belongs to a long tradition in women’s writing of parodying the viciousness of female gossip.5 More than just a send-up on women’s duplicity, though, this poem subtly suggests that such fierce competitiveness among the ‘gentler sex’ is a natural outgrowth of a marriage market that requires near perfection in a potential bride. 261

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-37

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Another poem based on society’s unrealistic expectations for women is ‘A Gov­ erness Wanted’, an early exploration of a social problem that a decade later would receive its most famous treatment in the novels of the Brontë sisters.6 Here Abdy highlights the liminal status of the governess figure, a woman whose training and accomplishments are comparable to those of high society’s most desirable young women but whose lack of a fortune relegates her to the status of an educated serv­ ant. Abdy’s advocacy for governesses would continue well beyond the 1830s, as nearly twenty years after publishing ‘A Governess Wanted’ she would win a prize for her lengthy poem ‘An Appeal on Behalf of Governesses’ (1856).]

1 It is possible that ‘A Governess Wanted’ was published in a gift-book, magazine, or annual prior to its inclusion in the 1838 edition of Abdy’s Poetry. My extensive searches for earlier printings of the poem, however, have been fruitless. 2 See Maria Abdy, Poetry, 8 vols, London, J. and W. Robins, 1838. As is noted on the title pages of each of these volumes, the collection was produced for private circulation and consists primarily of poems previously published elsewhere. 3 For basic background on the Smith brothers, see the headnote to ‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’ (pp. 185–86 above). 4 These respective dates of death are given in Arthur H. Beavan, James and Horace Smith … A Family Narrative Based Upon Hitherto Unpublished Diaries, Letters and Other Documents, Lon­ don, Hurst and Blackett, 1899, pp. 180–82; Paula R. Feldman, ed., British Women Poets of the Romantic Era: An Anthology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 1; and Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 1. These books, along with the brief entry on Abdy in the DNB, continue to be the best sources on her life. 5 Other poems in this volume that touch on the theme of women’s gossip include Eliza­ beth Hands’s ‘Supposition’ poems (pp. 26–29 above) and Jane Taylor’s ‘Recreation’ (pp. 134–39 above). 6 For an even earlier treatment of the trials of governessing, see Helen Leigh’s ‘Specimen of Modern Female Education’ (pp. 11–14 above).

262

MY VERY P ARTICULAR F RIEND ARE you struck with her figure and face? How lucky you happened to meet With none of the gossipping race, Who dwell in this horrible street! They of slanderous hints never tire; I love to approve and commend, And the lady you so much admire, Is my very particular friend! How charming she looks—her dark curls Really float with a natural air, And the beads might be taken for pearls, That are twined in that beautiful hair: Then what tints her fair features o’erspread— That she uses white paint, some pretend; But believe me, she only wears red,— She’s my very particular friend! Then her voice, how divine it appears While carolling ‘Rise gentle moon;’1 Lord Crotchet last night stopped his ears, And declared that she sung out of tune; For my part, I think that her lay Might to Malibran’s2 sweetness pretend; But people won’t mind what I say,— I’m her very particular friend! Then her writings—her exquisite rhyme To posterity surely must reach, (I wonder she finds so much time, With four little sisters to teach!) A critic in Blackwood,3 indeed, Abused the last poem she penned, The article made my heart bleed,— She’s my very particular friend! Her brother despatched with a sword, His friend in a duel last June; 263

1

10

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

And her cousin eloped from her lord, With a handsome and whiskered dragoon: Her father with duns4 is beset, Yet continues to dash and to spend,— She’s too good for so worthless a set, She’s my very particular friend!

40

All her chance of a portion is lost, And I fear she’ll be single for life; Wise people will count up the cost Of a gay and extravagant wife. But ’tis odious to marry for pelf,5 (Though the times are not likely to mend,) She’s a fortune besides, in herself,— She’s my very particular friend! That she’s somewhat sarcastic and pert, It were useless and vain to deny, She’s a little too much of a flirt, And a slattern6 when no one is nigh: From her servants she constantly parts, Before they have reached the year’s end;— But her heart is the kindest of hearts, She’s my very particular friend! Oh! never have pencil or pen, A creature more exquisite traced; That her style does not take with the men, Proves a sad want of judgment and taste; And if to the sketch I give now, Some flattering touches I lend, Do for partial affection allow— She’s my very particular friend!

50

60

A GOVERNESS W ANTED ‘Our governess left us, dear brother, Last night, in a strange fit of pique, Will you kindly seek out for another? We want her at latest next week: But I’ll give you a few plain credentials, The bargain with speed to complete; 264

1

Abdy (‘My Very Particular Friend’, ‘A Governess Wanted’)

Take a pen—just set down the essentials, And begin at the top of the sheet! ‘With easy and modest decision, She ever must move, act, and speak; She must understand French with precision, Italian, and Latin, and Greek: She must play the piano divinely, Excel on the harp and the lute, Do all sorts of needle-work finely, And make feather-flowers, and wax-fruit. ‘She must answer all queries directly, And all sciences well understand, Paint in oils, sketch from nature correctly, And write German text, and short-hand: She must sing with power, science, and sweetness, Yet for concerts must sigh not at all, She must dance with ethereal fleetness; Yet never must go to a ball. ‘She must not have needy relations, Her dress must be tasteful yet plain, Her discourse must abound in quotations, Her memory all dates must retain: She must point out each author’s chief beauties, She must manage dull natures with skill, Her pleasures must lie in her duties, She must never be nervous or ill! ‘If she write essays, odes, themes, and sonnets, Yet be not pedantic or pert; If she wear none but deep cottage bonnets, If she deem it high treason to flirt, If to mildness she add sense and spirit, Engage her at once without fear; I love to reward modest merit, And I give—forty guineas a year.’7 ‘I accept, my good sister, your mission, To-morrow, my search I’ll begin,— In all circles, in every condition, I’ll strive such a treasure to win; And, if after years of probation, My eyes on the wonder should rest, 265

10

20

30

40

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

I’ll engage her without hesitation, But not on the terms you suggest. ‘Of a bride I have ne’er made selection, For my bachelor thoughts would still dwell On an object so near to perfection, That I blushed half my fancies to tell; Now this list that you kindly have granted, I’ll quote and refer to through life, But just blot out—“A Governess Wanted”, And head it with—“Wanted a Wife!”’

266

50

GEORGE CRUIKSHANK and ANON.

‘The Wonderful Pill’ (1837)1

[First published in The Comic Almanack, for 1837. An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, containing “All Things Fitting for Such a Work” by Rigdum Funnidos, Gent. Adorned with a Dozen of “Righte Merrie” cuts, pertaining to the months and an Hierogliphic, London, C. Tilt, 1837, p. 11. ‘The Wonderful Pill’, a satire on the misfortunes of the quack James Morison, the manufacturer of a noted contemporary proprietarial medicine, is part of a gleeful satirical blood-letting over the scandals which had engulfed Morison in the mid­ 1830s. Morison (1770–1840),2 self-styled founder of the ‘British College of Health’, was a highly successful entrepeneur who claimed to have recovered from sustained and recurrent bouts of ill-health through the use of a pill of his own invention, made from vegetable extracts and washed down with lemonade. After the Damascene recovery afforded by the vegetable pills, Morison launched his ‘Hygeian’ medicine as ‘Morison’s Pills’ (‘Hygeian’, meaning ‘healthy’, is Morison’s coinage, and his product was often described as the ‘Hygeian Pill’). Morison’s Pills were a cure-all (the ‘Uni­ versal Medicine’), and patients were encouraged to take them in huge quantities. The Pills were extensively advertised during the 1820s and 1830s and achieved great success, with Morison’s directions for use boosting trade volumes by instructing customers to consume as many as twenty or thirty pills a day. Morison also dignified himself by assuming the role of a man of letters, publishing his Morisoniana in 1831, a thinly-veiled book-length advertisement in which he detailed his mastery of ‘the Hygeian art’ . Contemporary satirists were not slow to engage with Morison’s panacea and with the exaggerated claims of his advertising. For instance, ‘The Vegetable Pills’, an anonymous 1830s broadside, contains rough and ready satire on the Hygeian tablets: In battle what a charming thing for all who have to go, That they may cut and slash away, nor loss of limb can know, For should they lose a leg or arm, the cure is at their will, They’ll grow again if they but take the Vegetable Pills ... 267

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-38

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 In short the blind may gain their sight, they dumb may find a tongue, The lame may quickly run a race, the old again be young, One dose will make you laugh or cry, the hungry belly fills, In fact, if you would never die, take the Vegetable Pills.3

Similarly, the cover illustration for ‘Dr Morison’s Pills’, a song published in the early 1830s parodies the ‘before’ and ‘after’ convention not infrequently used in display advertisements. This caricature draws a contrast between a scraggly and emaciated ‘before’ figure, who is dwarfed in comparison with a huge and elephantine ‘after’ character, who is enthusiastically wolfing down Morison’s pills, doubtless at the rate suggested on the label packaging (once ‘every 1/4 of an hour’). The cartoon levels the charge of mercantile greed against Morison; the manufactory in the background sees the British College of Health transformed into the ‘British College of Wealth’. Unfortunately for Morison, his medicinal business empire took a severe jolt in 1836, with the prosecution of the London apothecary Robert Salmon for man­ slaughter caused by the use of Morison’s Pills. The case is recorded in the Newgate Calendar: ROBERT SALMON Convicted of Manslaughter, in administering ‘Morison’s Pills,’ and fined Two Hundred Pounds, 4th of April, 1836. At the Central Criminal Court sessions which commenced on Monday, the 4th of April, 1836, Mr Robert Salmon, a medicine vendor in Farringdon Street, was indicted for the manslaughter of Mr John M’Kenzie, by administering to him certain large and excessive quantities of pills composed of gamboge, cream of tartar and other noxious and deleterious ingredients. The deceased was the master of a vessel, and lived in the neighbourhood of Commercial Road. He was induced to take some of ‘Morison’s Pills’ as a purgative, upon the representations of a Mrs Lane, a woman who was employed by his wife as a sempstress, and who sold the Hygeian medicines. Subsequently Mr Salmon’s aid was claimed, on account of his suffering from rheumatism in the knee, and he recommended increased and still-increasing doses, until at length the deceased became so ill that his life was placed in jeopardy. Medical aid was now called in, but it was too late, and death soon put an end to his sufferings. A post-mortem examination left no doubt that the medicine prescribed by the prisoner had been the cause of this termination of the case, and the present indictment was in consequence preferred.4

A large part of Salmon’s defence involved the calling of witnesses who were pre­ pared to swear to the efficacious qualities of Morison’s panacea: ‘On the part of the defendant a great many persons were called from all parts of the kingdom, who stated that they had taken large quantities of these pills, with the very best results, as a means of cure for almost every species of malady to which the human frame was subject’.5 Most notable of all was an individual who had supposedly consumed an average of nearly thirty pills a day over a sustained period of time: ‘One person stated that he had taken no fewer than twenty thousand of them in two years, and had found infinite relief from swallowing them in very large doses.’6 However, despite this personage’s almost heroic devotion to the Hygeian Pills, sadly for 268

Cruikshank and Anon. (‘The Wonderful Pill’)

Salmon and, indeed, for Morison (who, on the face of the judge’s summing up was lucky not to have been in court), such testimony was in vain: Mr Justice Patteson left the case to the jury, who had to decide upon the facts which had been proved; and after about half-an-hour’s consideration they found a verdict of guilty, with a recommendation to mercy – upon the ground that the defendant was not the compounder, but only the vendor, of the medicines. On the following Saturday, the 9th of April, the defendant was brought up to receive judgment. The learned judge sentenced him to pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and added : ‘I think it right to cau­ tion you that, in the event of your being again found guilty of conduct of a similar description, the character of your offence will be materially altered. I hope that the punishment which is now inflicted on you will deter others from rashly administering medicines, with the nature of which they are unacquainted, in large quantities, as the result may be fatal.’7

Unfortunate though the demise of Mr M’Kenzie was, the shaming of James Mori­ son was greeted with undisguised glee in satirical circles. The poem below, taken from The Comic Almanack, for 1837 (the annual is generally referred to as Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack), shows a parodic trade card by George Cruikshank for James Mori­ son and Co., here in the new guise of undertakers: ‘Funerals Furnished’ with ‘Corpse Included’. The accompanying satirical song, ‘The Wonderful Pill’, forth­ rightly condemns Morison as a demonic figure, a heartless and implacable charlatan who trades on the ‘folly, stupidity [and] weakness’ of his clients. Morison was a familiar target for the Almanack’s satirists (who included Gilbert à Becket, the broth­ ers Mayhew, Albert Smith and W. M. Thackeray), but here the ground has changed and the tone darkened. Previously, before the Salmon case, the attack, though sys­ tematic, had been less acerbically ad hominen, focusing upon the avarice of the venders of the Pills and the credulity of their purchasers rather than the homicidal results of over-consumption. For instance, two years earlier, in a parodic advertise­ ment for the ‘Brutish Humbug College of Health’, the Almanack had used spoof quack advertising copy to condemn the money-grubbing reality behind the vegeta­ ble pills: The wonderful efficacy of the MORNING PILLS becomes every day more perspicu­ ous. The discerning public swallows ’em ‘like winking;’ and we defies all opposition … We tells those as calls us quacks, that … we have found a sovereign remedy for our­ selves; having, for a long while, been afflicted with an emptiness of the chest, and a great deficiency of the yellow-stuff, all of which terrible symptoms have disappeared’.8

The puff goes on ‘to prove the never-to-be-enough-wondered-at wonderful efficacy of the Hy-gee-wo-ian Medicines’, and features several testimonials by grateful cus­ tomers (Gregory Gudgeon, Giles Gosling, and Giles Gammon). This, for example: SIR, I BEG to inform you that a poor man was blown to atoms by the explosion of the Powder Mills on Hounslow Heath. His affectionate wife, who happened to be passing at the time, carefully picked up the fragments, and placed them together; and, 269

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1 by administering a dose of the Universal Medicine, he was able to walk home, and eat a hearty dinner of beef and cabbage ... Your obedient Servant, GILES GAMMON

The satire also features a letter from a Morisonian sales agent, one Francis Fleece’em, in a passage which exploits and condemns Morison’s well-known disdain for the medical profession and, again, implies that a business, rather than a medical, rationale underpins Morison’s trade: MOST RESPECTED SIR, BEING clearly convinced, from a proper use of my reasoning faculties, that it is perfectly consistent with probability and good sense to believe that one medicine, made of I of don’t know what, by I don’t know who, is certain to cure every disorder, and is equally efficacious in all ages and constitutions, from the infant of a week old, to the old man of eighty; and being, moreover, equally well convinced that it is quite unreasonable to place any sort of trust or dependence on the prescriptions of men of scientific education, who have merely devoted their whole lives to the medical profes­ sion; – and, further, being struck with the astounding fact, and exceeding likelihood, that an universal panacea could only be reserved for those who are quite innocent of all medical knowledge, and whose perfect disinterestedness is manifested by their being contented with the trifling remuneration derived from the credulity of the British pub­ lic; I say, Sir, for all these reasons I have become a zealous advocate of the Hy-gee-wo­ ian medicines. … Yours ever to command, FRANCIS FLEECE’EM. P.S. Please to send me a dozen wagon loads of No. 1 Pills, and the same of No. 2 Pills, as early as possible.9

The Almanack satirist also takes aim at the over-prescription of the Hygeian Pills: ‘I make it a point to recommend them … in sufficiently large doses … for does it not follow … that if six pills do a certain quantity of good, six thousand, must, as a nat­ ural consequence, do six thousand times as much good’.10 Nonetheless, Fleece’em protests his lack of self-interest in dispensing in such large numbers: ‘There are some censorious folks who insinuate that the more pills I sell the more money I get by them; but I need not assure you that, in this respect, my motives are quite as dis­ interested as your own’.11]

1 Edited by John Strachan. 2 For an account of Morison’s career, see William H. Helfand, ‘James Morison and His Pills’, Transactions of the British Society for the History of Pharmacy, vol. 1, 3, 1974, pp. 101–35. 3 ‘The Vegetable Pills’ , Preston, John Harkness, undated. 4 Newgate Calendar, vol. V, pp. 282–83. 5 Though there is no direct evidence to prove this, it is probable that Morison was involved in the preparation of the defence case and in the calling of sympathetic testimony. 6 Newgate Calendar, vol. V, pp. 282–83. 270

Cruikshank and Anon. (‘The Wonderful Pill’) 7 Newgate Calendar, vol. V, p. 283. 8 The Comic Almanack, for 1835, p. 33. 9 The Comic Almanack for 1835, p. 33–34. Compare John Morgan’s ‘The Wonderful Pills, or, a Cure for the World’, London, Hill, c. 1830, a broadside satire on Morison: Take thirty-six of No. 1, To-night to banish sorrow, Then take one hundred and twenty-eight Of No. 2 to-morrow. 10 The Comic Almanack for 1835, p. 33. 11 Ibid., p. 33–34.

271

Take gamboge, as you find it, for better or worse, And aloes, – the strongest, – a drug for a horse; A few peppermint drops, a few turns of a mill, And you get the contents of the Wonderful Pill. Take the head of a monkey, be-whiskered & frizzl’d, The eyes of a tiger, be-demon’d and devill’d; Add a magpie, a fox, and a vulture in one, And a heart with less blood than a pillar of stone; – Take of folly, stupidity, weakness – enough: – Of credulity, ignorance, fear – quantum suff: – These ingredients, combin’d with discernment & skill, Give the knave and the dupe of the Wonderful Pill.

272

1

10

CHARLES DICKENS

‘The Fine Old English Gentleman. New Version. To be Said or Sung at All Conservative Dinners’ (1841) [First published in the Examiner, 7 August 1841, p. 500. Technically, Charles Dickens’s (1812–70; DNB) ‘The Fine Old English Gentle­ man’ doesn’t belong in a volume of British satires spanning from 1785 to 1840, since it was neither written nor published until 1841. But there is perhaps no text from the early Victorian period that better warrants inclusion here than Dickens’s poem, since in his reminiscences on the past half-century of Tory rule, we hear ech­ oes of nearly all the radical satirists included earlier in this collection. In Dickens’s reflections on the good old days when ‘ev’ry English peasant had his good old Eng­ lish spies’, we hear the voices of Spence, Thelwall, Merry, and Eaton decrying the Pitt ministry’s spy networks and systematic repression of reformers. In his flash­ backs to the era of ‘war’s infernal din’, we hear Coleridge and Barbauld lamenting the military campaigns that sent thousands of soldiers and citizens to their deaths and dealt a heavy blow to the nation’s economy. In his recollections on how ‘the good old Yeomanry’ of Manchester stopped the ‘peevish cries’ of the people, we hear the outrage of Shelley, Wooler, and Elliott in the aftermath of Peterloo. And in his allusions to men being cast in prison ‘because they didn’t think the Prince was altogether thin’, we hear Lamb, Hunt, Cruikshank, Hone, and Byron gleefully taunt­ ing the treason police with their incessant jokes about ‘the Prince of Whales’. Yet, however useful Dickens’s poem may be as a primer on three generations of radical grievances, the text’s primary aim was to address the present rather than the past. Specifically, he wrote ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’ in response to the recent replacement of Melbourne’s Whig ministry with the Conservative govern­ ment of Robert Peel (1788–1850; DNB). For Dickens and most other liberals, this marked a definite step backwards for a nation that during the past decade had at last escaped the half-century-long Tory stranglehold that had stretched from Pitt’s rise in 1783 to Wellington’s fall in 1830. Particularly galling was the prospect of being led by the staunchly conservative Peel, who, with his history of unwavering enthusiasm for war and equally unwavering resistance to Reform, seemed little more than the modern incarnation of Pitt.1 273

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348143-39

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

Therefore, after Peel officially became Prime Minister in late July 1841, Dickens responded with a series of three anti-Tory satires, all of which were published anon­ ymously in the Examiner.2 Of these, ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’ attracted the most attention, largely owing to Dickens’s effectiveness in parodying Henry Rus­ sell’s popular song from 1835 of the same name. During the 1830s, the Englishborn Russell (1812–1900; DNB), who was then living in Rochester, New York, penned several songs that were widely admired on both sides of the Atlantic. Partic­ ularly popular was ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’, which, through a series of highly sentimentalised scenes, chronicles the death of a much-loved country squire. Russell’s song begins, I’ll sing you an old ballad that was made by an old pate, Of a poor old English Gentleman who had an old estate, He kept a brave mansion at a bountiful old rate, With a good old porter to relieve the old poor at his gate, Like a fine old English gentleman, All of the olden time.3

As a comparison of the two songs will suggest, Dickens closely adhered to Rus­ sell’s form and style, in some instances only changing one or two words in a line. The effect of these changes, however, is to completely invert the message of the original. If Russell’s song is a conventional nostalgic ode to the gentry of a bygone golden age, Dickens’s parody is a sharp reminder that the ‘good ol’ days’ were not always so good. Reviving such an age, Dickens warns, risks resurrecting not just the mythical security and prosperity of the past, but its tyranny, violence, and inequality as well.]

1 For a good overview of Peel’s Pittite politics, see Paul Adelman, Peel and the Conservative Party, 1830–1850, London and New York, Longman, 1989, pp. 1–28. 2 Attribution of these poems to Dickens first came in John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens (1872–74), 2 vols, London, Dent, 1980, vol. 1, pp. 163–65. 3 Henry Russell, The Fine Old English Gentleman: A Song of the Olden Times, New York, Firth and Hall, 1835. For a parody of Russell that preceded Dickens’s poem by three years, see Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley’s ‘Parody on the Fine Old English Gentleman’ in Queen Berengaria’s Courtesy, and Other Poems, London, J. Rickerby, 1838.

274

I’ll sing you a new ballad, and I’ll warrant it first-rate, Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate; When they spent the public money at a bountiful old rate On ev’ry mistress, pimp, and scamp,1 at ev’ry noble gate, In the fine old English Tory2 times; Soon may they come again!

1

The good old laws were garnished well with gibbets,3 whips, and chains, With fine old English penalties, and fine old English pains, With rebel heads and seas of blood once hot in rebel veins; For all these things were requisite to guard the rich old gains 10 Of the fine old English Tory times; Soon may they come again! This brave old code, like Argus,4 had a hundred watchful eyes, And ev’ry English peasant had his good old English spies, To tempt his starving discontent with fine old English lies,5 Then call the good old Yeomanry to stop his peevish cries,6 In the fine old English Tory times; Soon may they come again. The good old times for cutting throats that cried out in their need, The good old times for hunting men who held their fathers’ creed,7 The good old times when William Pitt, as all good men agreed, Came down direct from Paradise at more than railroad speed …8 Oh the fine old English Tory times; When will they come again! In those rare days, the press was seldom known to snarl or bark, But sweetly sang of men in pow’r, like any tuneful lark;9 Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark; And not a man in twenty score knew how to make his mark. Oh the fine old English Tory times; Soon may they come again! Those were the days for taxes,10 and for war’s infernal din;11 For scarcity of bread, that fine old dowagers might win; For shutting men of letters up, through iron bars to grin, Because they didn’t think the Prince was altogether thin,12

275

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 1

In the fine old English Tory times; Soon may they come again! But Tolerance,13 though slow in flight, is strong-wing’d in the main; That night must come on these fine days, in course of time was plain; The pure old spirit struggled, but its struggles were in vain; A nation’s grip was on it, and it died in choking pain, With the fine old English Tory days, All of the olden time. The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, In England there shall be dear bread14—in Ireland, sword and brand;15 And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand. So rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, Of the fine old English Tory days; Hail to the coming time! W.

276

40

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Robert Burns, ‘The Holy Fair’ (1786) 1 2 3 4 5 6

From Tom Brown’s The Stage Beaux toss’d in a Blanket; or, Hypocrisie Alamode (1704). ‘I’m gaun to *********] Mauchline. plate] Collection plate. black-bonnet] An elder who wears the black bonnet of a Covenanter. K*******ck] Kilmarnock. For ****** speels] Moodie: Rev. Alexander Moodie (1728–99), minister at Riccarton and one of the subjects of Burns’s early satire ‘The Twa Herds’. 7 s*lv*t**n] Salvation. Changed to ‘tidings o’ damnation’ in later versions at the sug­ gestion of Hugh Blair. 8 The vera sight o’ ******’s] Moodie’s. 9 cantharidian plaisters] Plasters of cantharides, or ‘Spanish fly’, which functions as a blistering agent if applied externally and an aphrodisiac if taken internally. An early symbolic hint of the poem’s central juxtaposition of damnation and fornication. 10 its] Corrected from ‘it’s’ in the Kilmarnock edition. 11 ***** opens] Smith: Rev. George Smith (d. 1823), the moderate, ‘New Licht’ minister at Galston. 12 To give the jars … lift that day] The sense here is that the enthusiasts for hellfire-and­ damnation preaching could not bear Smith’s gentler talk of morals and good works, and thus retreated to public houses during his sermon. In this and the stanzas that follow, Burns obviously shows himself an advocate of Smith’s moderate brand of religion. 13 Antonine] Antonius Pius (reigned AD 138–161) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–180) are generally classified as the Antonine emperors of Rome. The label is also often extended to Lucius Verus (AD 161–169) and Commodus (AD 176–192). 14 For *******] Peebles: Rev. William Peebles (d. 1825) of Newton-upon-Ayr. 15 While Common-Sense…up the Cowgate] ‘Common-Sense’ was a pseudonym of Burns’s friend Dr John Mackenzie, and the Cowgate was a street in Mauchline. This is apparently an inside joke, referring to an actual occasion when Mackenzie abruptly left in the middle of the preaching at the ‘holy fair’. See Robert Chambers, The Life and Works of Burns, 4 vols, W. and R. Chambers, 1896, vol. 1, p. 363. 16 Wee ******] Miller: Rev. Alexander Miller (d. 1804), the unusually short and stout assistant minister at St. Michael’s. 17 butt an’ ben] Kitchen and parlour, implying that the entire house was filled.

277

Explanatory notes to pages 9–21

18 Black *******] Russell: Rev. John Russell (d. 1817), the dark-featured, thunderous minister of Kilmarnock whose squabbles with Moodie were the subject of Burns’s 1784 poem ‘The Twa Herds’. 19 His piercin words … joints an’ marrow] Cf. Hebrews 4: 12. 20 ‘souls does harrow’] Hamlet, I. v. 16. 21 The auld Guidmen … they bother] Several successive patriarchs decline the honour of saying grace. 22 Clinkumbell] The town bell-ringer. 23 At slaps … halt a blink] At gaps in the fence the young men wait a moment.

Helen Leigh, ‘A Specimen of Modern Female Education’ (1788) 1 trimming] In this context, ‘trimming’ seems to imply both ‘ornamental’ and ‘censorious’.

Helen Leigh, ‘The Lady and the Doctor; an Anecdote’ (1788) 2 Punctilio] Petty formality.

William Cowper, ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’ (1788) 1 ‘Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce’] The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, Oxford, Claren­ don, 1970, lists several uses of the aphorism ‘Sweet meat will have sour sauce’ dating back to 1400. 2 electrical knock] Although Cowper presents ‘electrical knock’ as common slang for being jolted, this is the only known text that uses the phrase. 3 regales] Entertainments, treats. In this context, the word could either be sarcastically suggesting that the torturing of slaves is a form of entertainment or alluding to the difficulty involved in coercing slaves to eat during the Middle Passage. 4 supple-jack … rat-tan] Pliable West Indian woods. 5 comfits] Sweetmeats. 6 sprats] Small sea-fish. 7 awl] A sharp tool used for poking holes. 8 Cæsars and Pompeys] Slaves were frequently given classical names upon arriving in America.

William Cowper, ‘Pity for the Poor Africans’ (1788) 9 My Mind … loves] Adapted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 7. 20–21. More literally, the epigram translates, ‘I see and approve what is good, but I follow what is worse’. 10 French, Dutch and Danes] The other European powers with a foothold in the West Indies. 11 go Snacks] To ‘go snacks’ is to have a share of something.

278

Explanatory notes to pages 25–33

Elizabeth Hands, ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of an Advertisement …’ (1789) 1 Dishclout] A dishcloth. 2 May-Fair] The fair held each May in Brook Fields, near Hyde Park Corner. 3 the Duty of Man] Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man, a book of sermons first published in 1658 but still in wide circulation during the late eighteenth century. 4 Betty] A stock name for a female domestic servant. 5 receipt] A recipe. 6 ragou] A highly seasoned meat and vegetable stew. 7 Mrs. Routella] A ‘rout’ was a highly fashionable gathering often centring around card games.

Elizabeth Hands, ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read’ (1789) 8 rout] See n. 7 above. 9 one piece, whose subject’s a Rape] ‘The Death of Amnon’, the poem from which Hands’s volume of poetry took its name. Based on the Biblical tale of Amnon (see II Samuel 13), Hands’s lengthy blank verse poem recounts how David’s son Amnon raped his sister Tamar and was consequently murdered by a group of servants acting under the orders of his brother Absalom. 10 Sir Charles Grandison] Samuel Richardson’s 1753 novel. 11 haricoes] A ‘haricot,’ or type of mutton stew. 12 receipt] See n. 5 above. 13 mad cow] Hands’s poem ‘Written extempore, on seeing a mad heifer run through the Village where the Author lives’. 14 Coquettella] Spelled ‘Coquettilla’ in the previous poem. 15 gauze] A ‘gauze’ might be any article of clothing made from thin, transparent mate­ rial. In this instance, it is probably a veil.

John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’), ‘Song, by Mr. Paine’ (1791) 1 ‘Song, by Mr. Paine’] The immediate occasion of this poem was the celebration of the two-year anniversary of the fall of the Bastille by radicals throughout Britain. 2 Club] Pindar here conflates two definitions of the word ‘club’, which can mean both a group or association and a thick stick used as a weapon. Obviously, the implica­ tion is that Paine and his band of rogues are intent on establishing ‘club-law’, whereby he who holds the weapon determines the law. 3 Gordon] Lord George Gordon (1751–93; DNB), putative leader of the anti-Catholic ‘Gordon Riots’ of 1780. 4 Catilines] Lucius Sergius Catiline (108–62 BC), Roman politician who died while leading an ill-fated coup attempt against Cicero’s government.

279

Explanatory notes to pages 34–45

John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’), ‘Ode to Burke’ (1792) 5 Has Madness fir’d thy brain?] Most likely a suggestion that all the time Burke has recently spent at court has led to his contracting a case of madness from the King. 6 in sackcloth and in ashes mourn] Cf. Jeremiah 6: 26 and Daniel 9: 3. 7 wash thee white] Cf. Psalms 51: 7 and Isaiah 1: 18. 8 the Portland Junto] The Rockingham Whigs, which included most prominently Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB), Lord Frederick North (1732–92; DNB), and William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, the Duke of Portland (1738–1809; DNB). 9 Tr——ry] Treasury.

Thomas Spence, ‘Burke’s Address to the “Swinish Multitude”’ (1793) 1 Patrick] A dig at Burke’s Irish heritage. 2 work;] Silently corrected: original has ‘work?’ 3 corrupt] In arguing in his Reflections for the safeguarding of traditional government in England, Burke conceded that the present form of government was not without flaw. 4 Pitt] William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806; DNB), England’s Tory prime minister from 1783–1801 and 1804–06. 5 hush all your Jars] I.e., ‘Stop your complaining’. 6 His Darkness] A pun on Pitt, implying the darkness of a pit. 7 Harry Dundas] Henry Dundas (1742–1811; DNB), the Scotsman who was the Home Secretary and one of Pitt’s closest allies during the early 1790s. 8 Sawney] A somewhat derisive nickname for a Scotsman. 9 Horrible Pit] As if the pun weren’t already sufficiently clear, Spence changed ‘PIT’ to ‘PITT’ in later editions.

John Thelwall and Daniel Isaac Eaton, ‘King Chaunticlere’ (1793) 1 Capel Court Society] In a time when the government, as Thelwall put it, forbade the people ‘to open their mouths for other purposes than eating’, the Capel Court Debating Society was allowed to meet only on condition that they avoided discuss­ ing political subjects. See Charles Cestre, John Thelwall: A Pioneer of Democracy and Social Reform in England During the French Revolution, New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1906, p. 76. 2 Caractacus, at Rome] The British king and son of Cymbeline who in AD 50 led an ineffectual uprising against the Roman forces occupying Britain. After his capture, he was transported to Rome, where Claudius I paraded him through the streets before granting him his freedom. 3 plumage] Cf. Paine’s famous description of Burke in The Rights of Man: ‘He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird’. 4 coxcomb] An obvious pun, suggesting at once the word’s literal derivation (‘cock’s comb’) and the common slang for ‘fool’. 5 common tame scratch-dunghill pullet] Referring to the king as a ‘common tame scratchdunghill pullet’ cuts at several levels. First, as a pullet is technically a young hen, it 280

Explanatory notes to pages 46–53

might be read as an assault on George III’s masculinity. Second, it alludes to the proverb, ‘Every cock is king of his dunghill’. And, third, in the late eighteenth cen­ tury, a ‘dunghill’ was slang for a coward. 6 the speaker] Thelwall.

Daniel Isaac Eaton, The Pernicious Effects (c. 1793–94) 1 jackall] One who drudges for another. 2 condition of the Negroes … very enviable] For perhaps the best example of this anti-aboli­ tionist literature, see Thomas Bellamy’s short play The Benevolent Planters, London, J. Debrett, 1789, which was performed in 1789 at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. 3 Rights of Women] Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). 4 sentences … upon seditious persons] In the early 1790s, Scottish courts were notorious for passing down harsh sentences upon radicals. See n. 9 below on Muir and Palmer. 5 Mr. Winterbotham] In July 1793, the Reverend Dr William Winterbotham of Exeter (1763–1829; DNB) was found guilty on two counts of sedition for sermons he had recently preached and sentenced to four years in prison. Had not the trial been held in strongly loyalist Exeter, Winterbotham most likely would have been exonerated, since the prosecution’s case against him was tenuous at best. See Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins, New York, Scribner’s Sons, 1968, pp. 152–53. 6 Mr. Holt … Mr. Pitt originally published] Daniel Holt (fl. 1790s), ‘the Newark Printer,’ had recently been convicted for publishing two seditious pamphlets, Paine’s Letter Addressed to the Addressers (an edition of which Eaton himself had also published) and An Address to the Tradesmen, Mechanics, Labourers, and other Inhabitants of the town of Newark, on the subject of Parliamentary Reform. See Thomas Matthews Blagg, Newark as Publishing Town, Newark, S. Whiles, 1898, p. 57. Referring to Holt’s reformist pam­ phlet, Eaton reminds readers that during the 1780s the Duke of Richmond and Pitt had both advocated Parliamentary reform without facing similar charges of sedition. 7 son of Chatham] ‘Chatham’ was William Pitt the Elder (1708–78; DNB), and, hence, the ‘son of Chatham’ is Pitt the Younger. 8 bagatelle subsidy granted to the King of Sardinia] Parliament had recently allocated the ‘bagatelle’ (i.e. inconsequential) sum of £500,000 to bribe the King of Sardinia into entering a strategic alliance with Austria. See Dorothy Marshall, Eighteenth-Century England, London, Longman, 1974. 9 Muir and Palmer’s sentences] In August and September of 1793, Scottish courts found Thomas Muir (1765–98; DNB) and the Reverend Thomas Fyshe Palmer (1747– 1802; DNB) guilty of sedition and sentenced them to fourteen and seven years respectively in Botany Bay. The government’s cases against both had been weak, and soon the public outcry against these sentences led the House of Commons to reconsider the cases. Subsequent to Eaton’s pamphlet, however, Parliament rejected the appeal on Muir’s and Palmer’s behalf and upheld their sentences (Cone, The Eng­ lish Jacobins, pp. 172–75, 190).

281

Explanatory notes to pages 53–62

10 Barlow] Joel Barlow (1754–1812), American author of the republican tract Advice to the Privileged Orders, London, J. Johnson, 1792–95. 11 ne plus ultra] The pinnacle. 12 duties … almost preclude cheap publications] As a means of raising prices and thereby lim­ iting the circulation of reformist papers, in 1789 the government raised the stamp duty from 1½d. to 2d. per sheet and the advertisement duty from 2s. 6d. to 3s.

Anon. (Robert Merry), ‘Wonderful Exhibition. Signor Gulielmo Pittachio’ (1794) 1 after Christmas … Exhibitions, at Westminster] Parliament would be opened on 30 December 1794. 2 marvelous experiments upon his own Memory] At the Horne Tooke treason trial, Pitt was called to the stand, where he steadfastly claimed to have no recollection of his ear­ lier enthusiasm for Parliamentary reform. 3 to salute him a posteriori] In Barrell’s translation, ‘To kiss his arse’ (Exhibition Extraor­ dinary!!, p. 11). 4 Two Hundred Automota, or Moving Puppets] Pitt’s power base was so solid in the early 1790s that he generally could count on at least 200 votes (a clear majority) support­ ing any legislation he put before Parliament. 5 not having yet engaged any female performers] Pitt never married and was rarely known to show significant interest in women. From the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (1785) onwards, oppositionist satires had hinted that the Prime Minister was homosexual. 6 a solo on the Viol d’ Amour] I.e., masturbation. 7 Signor Pittachio is extremely sorry … must be deferred.] An allusion to the Pitt ministry’s recent failures to win ‘capital’ convictions against Hardy, Tooke, Holcroft, and other radicals. 8 Vivant Rex et Regina] ‘Long live the King and Queen’.

Anon. (Joseph Jekyll?), ‘No. II. More Wonderful Wonders’ (1794) 9 the absurd insinuations of the vulgar] Following the acquittals of Hardy, Tooke, and Thel­ wall, it was rumoured that Pitt would delay the opening of Parliament so he wouldn’t have to be seen in public until the embarrassment over the trials had sub­ sided (Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, p. 13). 10 if his memory fail not] See n. 2 above. 11 Katterfelto] Gustavus Katterfelto (d. 1799), Prussian quack who claimed he had ren­ dered his medical services to the King of Prussia, the Empress of Russia, and the Queen of Hungary. Barrell notes that he ‘relied much on the assistance of his famous “Morocco” black cat, an animal of such extraordinary powers—it could shed and recover its tail as its owner commanded—that Katerfelto was obliged to place an advertisement in the newspapers denying that his assistant was a devil’ (Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, p. 13).

282

Explanatory notes to pages 62–67

12 Mountebank Graham] James Graham (1745–94; DNB), Scottish quack doctor notori­ ous for his electrical therapies and his employment of scantily dressed ‘Goddesses of Health’. 13 the blushing rose] George Rose (1744–1818; DNB), Pitt’s Secretary of the Treasury. 14 the pointed steel] Thomas Steele (1753–1823), Pitt’s Privy Councillor and a member of the Board of Control. 15 F. L. T.—C. E.] ‘Pittachio’s list of “honourable distinctions” begins with Pitt’s own offices, prudently abbreviated to avoid a charge of libel: “First Lord of the Treasury; Chancellor of the Exchequer”’ (Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, p. 15). 16 Proudatissimus … damnatissimus] ‘The proudest—The most capable wine guzzler— The most indifferent to pretty girls—The greatest war-mongerer and the most hos­ tile to reform—and The damnedest son of a bitch’.

Anon. (Robert Merry?), ‘Wonderful Exhibition!!! Positively the Last Season’ (1795) 17 Fantoccini] ‘Puppets made to go through certain evolutions by means of concealed strings or wires’ (OED). 18 Don Dunderass] Henry Dundas (1742–1811; DNB), Scottish politician who was one of Pitt’s most trusted allies, serving as his Home Secretary from 1791–94 and then as his Secretary of War, an office he held from 1794–1801. 19 Gallon of Right Hollands] ‘A grain spirit manufactured in Holland’ (OED). An allusion to both the recent French occupation of Holland and Pitt’s reputation for occa­ sional drunkenness. 20 Jack Ketch] Common parlance for the hangman, deriving from John Ketch (d. 1686; DNB), the notorious seventeenth-century executioner. 21 Mynheer Van Vindham] William Windham (1750–1810; DNB), Secretary at War under Pitt. 22 Solid Portland Stone] William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, third Duke of Portland (1738–1809; DNB), Prime Minister in 1783 (and again from 1807–09), Home Sec­ retary from 1794–1801, and head of the Portland Whigs, the powerful conservative wing of the party that had recently negotiated with Pitt to form a coalition government. 23 Lord Wordeater, Mynheer Van Vindham] See n. 21 above. 24 Count Snug, Mr. Mansmead] David Murray, Earl of Mansfield (1727–96; DNB), Presi­ dent of the Council in 1794. 25 Numbscul, Mr. Grenfield] William Wyndham Grenville (1759–1834; DNB), Pitt’s cousin and the Foreign Secretary from 1791–1801. 26 Graspall, Mr. Loveborough] Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough (1733– 1805), Lord Chancellor under Pitt and a ‘lover of boroughs’ (i.e. an opponent of Parliamentary reform). 27 Fatherall, Mr. Hardinbrass] George Hardinge (1743–1816; DNB), MP for Old Sarum and Solicitor General for the Queen. 28 Dr. Candour, Mr. Blackmoore] Dr John Moore (1730–1805; DNB), the Archbishop of Canterbury who in 1787 had discouraged Pitt from repealing the Test and Corpora­ tion Act. More recently, he had taken a stand against the abolition of African slaves. 283

Explanatory notes to page 67

29 Anyside, Mr. Dunderass] See n. 18 above. 30 Captain Scape, Mr. Frederick: Frederick Augustus, son of George III and the Duke of York (1763–1827; DNB), Pitt’s ‘scapegoat’ for the army’s recent defeat at Dunkirk, after which he was removed from his post as commander of the British forces in Flanders. 31 Babies, Master Kanninton and Master Fitz-Jenkins] Composite names of four leading Tories, two of whom were still quite young: George Canning (1779–1827; DNB) and Henry Addington (1757–1844; DNB) and William Wentworth Fitzwilliam (1748–1833; DNB) and Robert Jenkinson (1779–1828; DNB). 32 Purser, Mr. Roseby] See n. 13 above. 33 Good Genii. Mr. Hareskin and Mr. Gibson] Thomas Erskine (1750–1823; DNB) and Samuel Gibbs (1751–1820; DNB), attorneys who became folk heroes after success­ fully defending Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall. After one of the trials, John Scott, the lead prosecutor, allegedly passed Gibbs a note reading, ‘I say from my heart that you did yourself great credit as a good man, and great credit as an excellent citizen, not sacrificing any valuable public principle; I say from my judgment that no lawyer ever did himself more credit, or his client more service; so help me God!’ (DNB entry on Gibbs). 34 Bad Genii. Mr. Reevely, and Mr. Whitehead] John Reeves (1752–1829; DNB), King’s printer and leading reactionary who founded the Loyalist Crown and Anchor Asso­ ciation in November 1792, and Mr White, a prosecutor for the crown. 35 Mr. Hardleather] Thomas Hardy (1752–1832; DNB), Scottish shoemaker and founder of the London Corresponding Society, who was acquitted of treason on 5 November 1794. 36 Mr. Horner] John Horne Tooke (1736–1812; DNB), leader of the radical Society for Constitutional Information who was acquitted of treason on 23 November 1794. 37 Mr. Telwell] John Thelwall (1764–1834; DNB), author (see pp. 41–46 above) and member of the London Corresponding Society who was acquitted of treason on 5 December 1794. 38 Mr. Oldcroff] Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809; DNB), radical actor, playwright, and novelist who was arrested in the 1794 round-up of radicals but released before being brought to trial. 39 Mr. Joy] Jeremiah Joyce (1763–1816; DNB), a London radical indicted for treason with Hardy and Tooke in 1794. Released after spending twenty-three weeks in prison. 40 Mr. Airy] Sir James Eyre (1734–99; DNB), Lord Chief Justice who presided over the treason trials of 1794. 41 Mr. Scotman] Sir John Scott (1751–1838; DNB), Attorney General and lead prosecu­ tor at the 1794 treason trials. 42 Mr. Middleford] John Freeman Mitford (1748–1830; DNB), MP for Beeralston and counsel for the crown at the treason trials. 43 Mr. Daer] James Adair (?1743–98; DNB), MP for Higham Ferrers and counsel for the crown at the treason trials. 44 Lady Brilliant, by Mrs. Leroy] Queen Charlotte.

284

Explanatory notes to pages 67–87

45 Nay-Go and Pray-Go] ‘A play on Mark Lonsdale’s new pantomime Mago and Drago: or, Harlequin the Hero, which had opened at Covent Garden on 26 December 1794’ (Barrell, Exhibition Extraordinary!!, p. 19). 46 Emigrants] An allusion to the many aristocrats who fled to Britain to escape war and other distresses on the Continent.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’ (1798) 1 La Vendee] The site of the Vendean Rebellion and the subsequent massacring of the counter-revolutionary forces by armies of the French Republic. 2 his name] William Pitt. 3 thrice ten hundred thousand men] Later versions of the poem reduced the number slaughtered under Pitt’s orders to ‘thrice three hundred thousand men’, still an obvi­ ous exaggeration but significantly less inflated than the three million figure used in the original Morning Post version of the poem. 4 Halloo!] A hunting call used when dogs are let loose on their game. 5 I from Ireland came] Presumably, General Lake’s burning of homes in Ulster to flush out Irish rebels in March 1797. 6 Beldames] Hags. 7 LABERIUS] A pseudonym Coleridge used for several of his Morning Post poems.

William Blake, ‘When Klopstock England defied’ (c. 1797–1800) 1 For old Nobodaddy … made heaven quake] Lines 3–5 here are copied almost verbatim from ll. 5–6 and 9 of ‘Let the brothels of Paris be opened’. 2 The Moon at that sight blushd scarlet red] Cf. ‘The Angel’ (from Songs of Experience), l. 10, and The Everlasting Gospel, f, l. 3. 3 The stars threw down their cups] Cf. ‘The Tyger’ (from Songs of Experience), l. 17, and The Four Zoas, v, l. 224. 4 her hell fire spark] A pun implying both a flash of fire and a dashing young suitor (i.e. Satan woos Eve in the Garden).

Mary Robinson, ‘The Mistletoe. A Christmas Tale’ (1799) 1 trenchers] Plates. 2 A magic bough … sacred mysteries enroll’d] Belief in mistletoe’s magical powers dates to the Druids of ancient Britain. 3 bigots snatch their idol’s kiss] I.e., overzealous beaus kiss the objects of their worship.

Mary Robinson, ‘The Confessor, A Sanctified Tale’ (1800) 4 When Superstition … shackled Reason] Most English monasteries were disbanded fol­ lowing the establishment of the Church of England in the 1530s. 5 Godstow] Godstow Abbey, the twelfth-century nunnery just north of Oxford. 6 Grey monks] A common label for Cistercian monks. 285

Explanatory notes to pages 87–105

7 Farmers’] Silently corrected; original text has ‘Farmers’. 8 the fair] I.e., the ‘fair sex’, or women.

William Wordsworth, ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (1800) 1 man of purple cheer] This stanza addresses a doctor of divinity, or a clergyman. 2 man of chaff] Most likely intended as the colloquial sense of ‘chaff ’, meaning banter or raillery. 3 Physician] Natural scientist. 4 pin-point of a soul] After Lamb criticised this phrase, Wordsworth changed ‘pin-point of a soul’ to ‘ever-dwindling soul’. 5 Moralist] Moral philosopher. 6 Shut close the door! press down the latch] Cf. the opening lines of Pope’s ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’. 7 homely russet brown] The coarse woollen cloth traditionally worn by peasants.

Anna Dodsworth , ‘To Matthew Dodsworth, Esq.’ (1802) 1 brimful] Overflowing. 2 Mackay] It is unclear from the contextual clues in this and other poems whether Mackay was a family friend or a servant. 3 bag] A poultice.

Anna Dodsworth, ‘Badinage’ (1802) 4 Badinage] Playful raillery. 5 landaulet] A small four-wheeled carriage with a fold-down top.

George Canning, ‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’ (1803) 1 ‘Ambubaiarum Collegia, Pharmocopolæ’ …] The title, taken from the opening line of Horace’s First Satire, Book Two, translates, ‘The flutists’ guilds, the drug quacks …’. 2 Doctor Dominiceti] Dominiceti (fl. 1760s),Venetian nobleman and physician who operated hot baths at Chelsea, Bath, and Bristol, where he ‘sweated’ his patients into good health. 3 Stews] Heated rooms used for hot baths. 4 Flues] Chimneys. 5 Doctor Graham] James Graham (see p. 283, n. 12 above). 6 Sonmambulé Mesmers’ Convulsions Magnetic] Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), Ger­ man doctor and namesake of ‘mesmerism’, who first came to fame in 1770s France with his methods of curing patients via ‘animal magnetism’. 7 Meyresbach, renowned for his skill diuretic] Theodor Myersbach (fl. 1770s), German quack ‘uroscopist’ who claimed the ability to diagnose the most complex of illnesses by simply examining a patient’s urine. 286

Explanatory notes to page 105

8 Perkins, with Tractors of magical skill] Benjamin Perkins (fl. 1801), American inventor whose patent Metallic Tractors, sold at five guineas a set, promised to cure tumours, inflammations, and various nervous disorders. 9 the Anodyne Necklace of Basil Burchell] Basil Burchell (fl. 1790s), English medicine dealer best known for his anodyne necklaces for teething infants and his sugar plums for those with worms. 10 Van Butchell] Martin Van Butchell (1735–1812?; DNB), English quack doctor and dentist famed for large-scale advertising campaigns and exhibiting his embalmed wife at his home. 11 absterges] Cleanses. 12 Sam Solomon’s Lotion … as well as his purges] Sam Solomon (d. 1819), Jewish quack from Liverpool who claimed his ‘Cordial Balm of Gold’ was derived from the philo­ sopher’s stone which had long been sought after by alchemists. 13 the Pells to his Son] In September 1802 Addington appointed his sixteen-year-old son, Henry, Clerk of the Pells, a position worth £3,000 per year. This move, com­ bined with his conferral of several other posts upon family members, led to his being widely reviled in the press for nepotism. 14 farrago] ‘A confused group; a medley, mixture, hotchpotch’ (OED). 15 Hawkesbury’s march to Paris] Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury (1770–1828; DNB), Addington’s Foreign Secretary who famously declared that ‘marching to Paris was practicable and he for one should recommend it’. Canning and Hawkes­ bury had been rivals at Oxford. 16 Hobart] Robert, Lord Hobart (1760–1816; DNB), Addington’s Secretary of State for the Colonial and War Department and one of Canning’s chief antagonists. 17 Sullivan] John Sullivan (1749–1839), Addington’s Under-Secretary of State for War and Colonies. 18 Hawkey] Probably intended as a nickname for Lord Hawkesbury (see n. 15 above). 19 Harvey] Frederick Augustus, Lord Hervey (1730–1803; DNB), Addington’s Parlia­ mentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 20 Wallace] Baron Thomas Wallace (1768–1814; DNB), politician who rose under Pitt and stayed on in the Addington administration as a privy councillor to the Prime Minister. 21 Castlereagh] Robert Stewart, second Marquis of Londonderry and Viscount Castle­ reagh (1769–1822; DNB), English politician who originally resigned with Pitt in 1801 but a year later joined Addington’s cabinet as President of the Board of Con­ trol. Canning’s feud with Castlereagh would only intensify in the ensuing years, reaching its peak in 1807, when Castlereagh shot Canning in the thigh during a duel. 22 Yorke] Charles Phillip Yorke (1764–1834; DNB), Addington’s former schoolmate and his Secretary of State for the Home Department. 23 Glenbervie] Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie (1743–1823; DNB), Scottish politi­ cian who served as Paymaster-General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade under Addington. 24 Serjeant] John Sargent (1750–1831), Junior Secretary of the Treasury until 1802. 25 Vansittart] Nicholas Vansittart (1766–1851; DNB), Addington’s former schoolmate and his Secretary of the Treasury. 287

Explanatory notes to pages 105–11

26 Markham] John Markham (1761–1827), MP for Portsmouth and member of the Admiralty Board during the Addington administration. 27 Shee] Martin Archer Shee (1769–1850; DNB), Irish portrait painter and poet who in 1803 visited Addington at Downing Street to discuss raising a volunteer corps of artists to help thwart Napoleon’s invasion. 28 Velno] Isaac Swainson (fl. 1790s) reportedly sold 20,000 bottles of his ‘Velno’s Vege­ table Syrup’ per year, bringing in an estimated £5,000. 29 Anderson] Doctor Patrick Anderson (fl. 1630s), inventor of ‘Anderson’s Scots Pills’ for curing venereal disease, a remedy still popular nearly two centuries after its invention. 30 Leake] Walter Leake (fl. 1790s), inventor of Leake’s Diet Pill. 31 Spilsbury] Francis Spilsbury (fl. 1780–1800), proprietor of Spilsbury’s Patent Antiscorbutic Drops and author of pamphlets on treating venereal disease. 32 Doctor Ball] Possibly John Ball (fl. 1790s), advocate of increasing home production of opium. 33 Brodum] William Brodum (fl. 1790s), Germanic Jew famed for his ‘Botanic Syrup’, which promised to cure ‘all Evils, Scurvy, Cancers, Leprosy, Scrophulous Com­ plaints, and debilitated constitutions’. 34 Bree] In several turn-of-the-century advertisements, a Mr Bree offers ‘a speedy and permanent Cure for every stage of that disorder which is contracted in a moment of intoxication, and for every class of the debility which is the consequence of juvenile indiscretions’. 35 Golding] Edward Golding (1746–1818), member of the Treasury Board under Addington. 36 Bond] Nathaniel Bond (1754–1823), a leading ‘Addingtonian’ in the House of Commons. 37 Dame Hiley] John Hiley Addington, brother of the Prime Minister, MP for Harwich, and Joint Paymaster-General during his brother’s ministry. 38 Dame Bragge] Charles Bragge (1754–1831), MP for Bristol who was both brother-in­ law and Secretary of War to Addington. 39 Doctor Beeke] Henry Beeke, DD (1751–1837; DNB), Dean of Bristol and a renowned expert on the income tax, a subject upon which he had advised both Pitt and Addington. 40 the great Katterfelto] See p. 282, n. 11 above. 41 Massena] Andre Massena (1758–1817), one of the French army’s most successful generals. 42 the Consul] Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), the ‘First Consul’ of France who in March 1803 was reportedly preparing to invade Great Britain.

Anon., ‘The Invasion of England’ (1804) 1 Buffo] A comic actor or singer. 2 the Success of John Bull] George Colman the Younger’s (1762–1836; DNB) nationalis­ tic play John Bull, or the Englishman’s Fireside opened on 5 March 1803 and enjoyed a remarkably long run of forty-eight showings. 288

Explanatory notes to pages 111–22

3 Vivant Rex and Regina] ‘Long live the King & Queen’.

Anon., ‘An Ensorian Essay’ (1812) 1 πιππιν] ‘Pippin’: most likely the Carolingian king Pepin III (714–68). 2 τοµ θυµ Q. A. ] ‘Tom Thumb … Fielding’: Henry Fielding’s Tom Thumb: A Tragedy (1830). 3 ∆ολαλα loquitur] ‘Dolala speaks’. 4 queans] Harlots. 5 Dr. Bell] Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell (1753–1832; DNB), author of The Madras School, or Elements of Tuition (1808). In On National Education, Ensor calls Bell’s book ‘a work of infinite pedantry, pretension, tautology, conceit, and disorder of all kinds’ (179). 6 Θη µωρ Υ κρι Θη λες Υ ΠΙΣ] ‘The more I cry the less I PISS’. 7 jordan] A chamber pot. 8 juggling] Trickery or deception. 9 Λαιτς οφ τη Χυρχ] ‘Lights of the Church’. 10 ΠΡΗΣΤΣ] ‘Priests’. 11 ΡΩΓΣ] ‘Rogues’. 12 bibere as well as mingere] ‘To drink as well as to urinate’. 13 Ιφ αι ‘αδ α γυδ συχ …] ‘If I had a good suck I could take it now’: ‘Suck’ here is a swig of strong drink. 14 Dr. Dodd] William Dodd (1729–77; DNB), the popular but rakish mid-eighteenth­ century preacher who was hanged for forgery in 1777. 15 Ann Brownrigg] A misnomer for Elizabeth Brownrigg (d. 1767; DNB), the notorious London midwife who in 1767 was hanged for brutally killing her apprentice. 16 John Kemble] John Kemble (1757–1823; DNB), famous actor and dramatist of the Romantic era. 17 Ωυατ ισ γοτ ωρ θε ∆εφιλς βακ …] ‘What is got o’er the Devil’s back is spent under his belly. / Keep your hands from picking and stealing’. 18 palanquins] A South Asian litter, usually holding one person and carried on the shoulders of two or more others. 19 Quinctilian] Quintilian (AD 35–95), the Roman rhetorician.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812) 1 Colossal Power] Napoleon. 2 The tempest blackening in the distant West] The tensions rising between Britain and the United States would come to a head a year later with the outbreak of the War of 1812. 3 the dim cold Crescent] The Ottoman Empire. 4 Thy Lockes] John Locke (1632–1704; DNB), seventeenth-century empiricist philoso­ pher and author of Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). 5 thy Paleys] William Paley (1743–1805; DNB), philosopher, theologian, and Christian apologist who authored View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) and Natural Theol­ ogy; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). 289

Explanatory notes to pages 122–25

6 Platan’s] The Oriental plane-tree. 7 Hagley’s woods] Lord Lyttelton’s Worcestershire estate, which was one of the most widely admired English landscape gardens of the eighteenth century. 8 Thomson’s] James Thomson (1700–48; DNB), Scottish poet whose The Seasons (1730) remained a model for nature poetry in the early nineteenth century. 9 loved Joanna] Joanna Baillie (1762–1851; DNB), Scottish poet and playwright who authored the widely admired Plays on the Passions (1798–1812). The lines that follow reference the title characters from Baillie’s Count Basil (1798) and Ethwald (1802). 10 On Isis’ banks] In Oxford, the Thames is referred to as Isis. 11 Runnymede] King John signed the Magna Charta at Runnymede in 1215. 12 Cam’s slow waters] The river Cam runs through Cambridge. 13 Avon’s winding waters] The river Avon, which flows through Stratford, Shakespeare’s birthplace. 14 Clarkson] Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), leading abolitionist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 15 Jones] Sir William Jones (1746–94; DNB), linguist and orientalist widely considered one of late-eighteenth-century Britain’s finest minds. 16 Cowper’s] William Cowper (1731–1800; DNB), leading poet and hymnist of the late eighteenth century. 17 Roscoe] William Roscoe (1753–1831), poet, historian, and agriculturalist who suc­ cessfully converted moor-land to high-yield farmland (see McCarthy and Kraft, p. 314). Barbauld’s footnote on Roscoe alludes to both his agricultural experiments at Chatmoss and his History of the Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth (1805). 18 Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore] A mountain and a waterfall in the Lake District. 19 Dun Edin’s classic brow] Arthur’s Seat, the peak that overlooks ‘Dun Edin’ (or Edinburgh). 20 ‘Melross by the pale moonlight’] See Walter Scott’s lines on Melrose Abbey in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, II. i. 21 the long isle and vaulted dome] St Paul’s Cathedral. 22 The ponderous mass…Howard’s sainted feet] Statues of the author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1708–84; DNB) and the prison reformer John Howard (1726?–90; DNB) are located in the nave at St Paul’s. 23 Chatham’s] William Pitt the Elder, first Earl of Chatham (1708–78; DNB), Prime Minister from 1766–68. 24 Fox] Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB), leading spokesman for the Whig oppo­ sition during the ministries of Pitt the Younger. 25 Garrick] David Garrick (1717–79; DNB), the most famous actor of the eighteenth century. 26 Nelson] Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758–1805; DNB), naval commander who gave his life in the victory over the French at Trafalgar in 1805. Barbauld’s note to line 196 quotes an order Nelson supposedly gave his troops prior to Trafalgar. 27 Moore] General John Moore (1761–1809; DNB), army commander who failed to keep Napoleon from capturing Madrid and died while retreating from the battle. 28 Davy’s] Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829; DNB), English chemist who regularly lec­ tured on his discoveries before large audiences. 29 Franklin] Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), American writer, statesman, and inventor. 290

Explanatory notes to pages 125–28

30 Priestley’s injured name] Joseph Priestley (1733–1804; DNB), British chemist whose vocal support of the French Revolution led to a mob attack on his home in 1791 and his eventual emigration to America. 31 Reynolds] Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92; DNB), President of the Royal Academy and the most highly regarded painter of the late eighteenth century. 32 Ægyptian granites and the Etruscan vase] Alluding to the ancient treasures on display at the British Museum. 33 The stone where Alexander’s ashes lay] ‘A granite sarcophagus was among the antiquities brought from the Mediterranean in 1802 for permanent display at the British Museum. The most famous of these treasures was the Rosetta stone, but in [Bar­ bauld’s] time the sarcophagus was thought to be that of Alexander the Great’ (McCarthy and Kraft, p. 315). 34 Tyrian purple] ‘In reference or allusion to the purple or crimson dye anciently made at Tyre from certain molluscs’ (OED). 35 Ophir] ‘The name of a place or region mentioned in the Old Testament, whence fine gold was obtained, the locality of which is still uncertain’ (OED). 36 Tadmor] The ancient Syrian city Palmyra (also ‘Tadmur’ and ‘Tidmur’). 37 Stern Marius] From Plutarch’s Lives, where Caius Marius responds to an official for­ bidding his entry into Africa, ‘Tell him, then, that thou hast seen Marius a fugitive, seated amid the ruins of Carthage’ (McCarthy and Kraft, p. 316). 38 The vale of Tempe] Specifically, the valley of Tempe in Thessaly. More generally, poetic language for ‘any delightful rural spot’ (OED). 39 Ausonian] Italian. 40 Batavia’s dykes] The dykes of Holland. Napoleon renamed Holland the ‘Batavian Republic’ following his occupation of the country. 41 Arno’s purple vale] Italy’s Arno River. 42 Enna’s plains] A valley in Sicily. 43 Baia’s viny coast] A Roman resort on the Bay of Naples. 44 Campania’s plain] A region of southern Italy. 45 Hercynian groves] The Black Forest of Germany. 46 The sons of Odin] Norsemen. 47 ‘build the lofty verse’] Milton, ‘Lycidas’, l. 11. 48 where Cæsar saw … azure stain] ‘Julius Caesar’s account of the ancient Scots, who painted themselves blue for battle, is in his Bellum Gallicum’ (McCarthy and Kraft, p. 316). 49 Tully’s] Cicero. 50 Maro’s] Virgil. 51 Bonduca] The Saxon queen Boadicea. 52 crystal walls] I.e. the walls of greenhouses. 53 the nectared pine] The pineapple. 54 the northern Bear] Ursa Minor, the constellation containing the North Star. 55 Chimborazo’s summits] A mountain in Ecuador. 56 La Plata] The Rio de la Plata, which runs between Argentina and Uruguay. 57 Potosi] A Bolivian city famed for its silver.

291

Explanatory notes to pages 132–42

Charles Lamb, ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ (1812) 1 Io! Pæan!] An exclamation of triumph or thanksgiving. 2 generous] A pun, suggesting both lineage (i.e., ‘high-born’) and taxonomy (i.e., ‘belonging to a genus or class’). 3 Scuds] Another pun, meaning either to ‘move swiftly’ or ‘drink liberally’. 4 Mermaids with their tails and singing] The Prince Regent’s numerous mistresses, espe­ cially Lady Hertford. For another satire on George’s womanising, see ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’ (pp. 160–70 below). 5 that old Prophet … not have dwelled] The Old Testament prophet Jonah, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of a fish before being vomited out. 6 Buffon] George Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707–88), French innovator in theoretical biology and one of the age’s leading naturalists. 7 Banks] Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820; DNB), President of the Royal Society who helped establish botany as an academic discipline. 8 Linnæus] Carolus Linnæus (1707–78), Swedish botanist who established the modern taxonomic system of categorizing life forms by their genus and species.

Jane Taylor, ‘Recreation’ (1816) 1 our work] Needlework, sewing. 2 genus] Kind or class. 3 the folks in Brewer’s Street / Don’t speak to James’s] Brewer Street intersects with James Street in London’s Soho district. 4 mourning ring] The suggestion here is that Miss A.’s only inheritance was this ring, which she was to wear in remembrance of the deceased. 5 mean] Undignified. 6 bombazeen] Variation of ‘bombasine’, which is ‘a twilled or corded dress-material, composed of silk and worsted; sometimes also of cotton and worsted, or of worsted alone. In black the material is much used in mourning’ (OED). 7 The Duke of Brunswick] Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick (1771–1815), Ger­ man military hero who liberated Brunswick from Napoleon’s army in 1809 and again in 1813 before dying two years later at Waterloo. 8 tan-yard] A tannery. 9 our Jane] Presumably Mrs G.’s upper servant. 10 Eliza] From the context, Eliza seems to be Mrs G.’s daughter and the ‘child’ men­ tioned in l. 107.

John Keats, ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream’ (1817) 1 Hus’ifs] A housewife’s. 2 Naumachia] A mock sea-fight. Such a spectacle had been staged in London as part of the peace celebrations of 1814. 3 ‘Good King of Cats’] Romeo and Juliet, III. i. 77. 4 did pluck…out his eye] Cf. Matthew 7: 3–5. 5 Cushions] Here a ‘cushion’ is specifically the seat of a judge or ruler. 292

Explanatory notes to pages 142–49

6 loggerheads] Blockheads. 7 Chapmen] Pedlars.

Anon., ‘To Belinda’ (1818) 1 boot] Profit. 2 Trinculo’s] The jester in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 3 Wolstonecraft] Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97; DNB), author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). 4 Florio] Conventional name for the love-sick swain of pastoral poetry.

Anon., ‘Ode to the Ladies on their Alledged Rights’ (1818) 5 dame Sid and mother Van] Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, the Home Secretary (see pp. 102–03); and Nicholas Vansittart (1766–1851; DNB), the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Both were widely reviled in the radical press for their efforts to suppress reform. 6 system a-la-Turk] The Turkish government was notoriously repressive. 7 the Courier’s lying pages] The Courier was the age’s leading Tory newspaper and a vocal critic of reform. 8 ‘push ’em from their stools’] Macbeth, III. iv. 81. 9 Robespierrean] Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758–94), French Jacobin who presided over the Reign of Terror before being guillotined himself in 1794. 10 Lloyd’s] Edward Lloyd, whose eighteenth-century London coffee-house was a popu­ lar gathering place for insurance men, shipowners, and merchants. Lloyd eventually became the namesake for the insurance company Lloyd’s of London. 11 Fib in the ring] ‘To strike or beat, to deliver blows in quick succession upon, as in pugilism’ (OED). 12 ‘false as hell’] Othello, IV. ii. 39. 13 Lambeth Palace] The London mansion of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chief bishop of the Church of England. 14 Sir Will, an alderwoman] Sir William Curtis (1752–1829; DNB), a wealthy Tory MP and friend of the King. 15 Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet] Two of the riotous characters in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. 16 Our gracious Regent] The Prince Regent (later George IV), a renowned dandy and rake (see Lamb’s ‘Triumph of the Whale’, pp. 130–33 above and Hone’s ‘Non Mi Ricordo’, pp. 160–70 below). 17 rout] A fashionable social gathering. 18 Manners] ‘Pun on the name of Charles Manners-Sutton, Speaker of the House of Commons (1817–35)’ (Scrivener, Poetry and Reform, p. 261). 19 divan] A Turkish council of state. 20 St. Stephen’s graceless chapel] St Stephen’s Chapel at the Houses of Parliament was the traditional meeting chamber for the House of Commons. 293

Explanatory notes to pages 149–57

21 Roderick Random] The scoundrel-hero of Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748).

Anon., ‘The “Undebauched Royalists”’ (1819) 22 Rev. Dr. Hay-down-derry] Rev. William Robert Hay (1761–1839), Manchester’s senior magistrate who became one of the chief apologists for the government’s actions at Peterloo. 23 Flinty] Unfeeling, hardhearted. 24 Rev. Samuel Scapegrace] Probably Rev. Charles Wicksted Ethelston (1767–1830), Man­ chester’s other leading clerical magistrate. The ‘Scapegrace’ tag seems to reference the Reverend Ethelston’s notorious lack of Christian mercy in dealing with sus­ pected radicals. 25 Gooseacre] Probably intended as a contraction of ‘goose’ and ‘wiseacre’, both of which are slang for ‘fool’. 26 three times three!] A toast comparable to ‘cheers’. 27 Our R——t’s gracious thanks] In the immediate aftermath of Peterloo, the Prince Regent thanked the Manchester magistrates and military ‘for their prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for the preservation of the public peace’. See E. P. Thomp­ son, The Making of the English Working Class, New York, Vintage, 1966, p. 684. 28 that libeller, B—rd—t] Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844; DNB), popular radical politi­ cian who was ultimately imprisoned for his pointed criticism of the government’s involvement in the Peterloo massacre. 29 H—t] ‘Orator’ Henry Hunt (1773–1835; DNB), one of the reform movement’s most influential figures and the featured speaker at the meeting at St Peter’s Field. 30 M.] Manchester. 31 Seagirtonians] I.e., Britons. 32 Rule, Rule … God save the King] The British national anthems ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the King’. 33 Let the galled … withers are unwrung!] Hamlet, III. ii. 242–43. 34 Philippic] A bitter verbal attack. 35 nine times time] Presumably tripling the zeal of the ‘three times three’ toast (cf. n. 26 above). 36 high treason—that we wisely dropt] Following Peterloo, ‘State prosecutions were com­ menced, not against the perpetrators, but against the victims of the day—Hunt, Saxton, Bamford, and others—and the first intention of charging them with high treason was only abandoned with reluctance’ (Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, p. 684). 37 Our poor Courier] See n. 7 above. 38 We’ll drink No Popery] An attack on Catholic Emancipation, a leading reformist cause.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Sonnet: England in 1819’ (1819) 1 An old, mad … dying king] George III (1738–1820; DNB), the octogenarian king whose legendary ‘madness’ (actually the kidney disorder porphyria) had led to his 294

Explanatory notes to pages 157–63

retirement from government in 1811. Shelley patterned this line after King Lear, III. iii. 20 (‘a poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man’). 2 Princes, the dregs … muddy spring] Most of George III’s nine sons were renowned for their profligacy and extravagance. The Prince Regent (soon to be George IV) was particularly culpable. Cf. Lamb’s ‘The Triumph of the Whale’ (pp. 130–33 above), Byron’s ‘The Irish Avatar’ (pp. 171–78 above), and Hone’s ‘Non Mi Ricordo’ (pp. 160–70 above). 3 starved and stabbed in the untilled field] The Peterloo massacre. 4 liberticide] The destruction of liberty. 5 prey] ‘That which is taken in war, or by pillage or violence; booty, spoil, plunder’ (OED). 6 Golden and sanguine … tempt and slay] Laws bought with gold that eventually result in the shedding of blood. 7 a book sealed] Cf. Revelation 5: 1. 8 A Senate … statute unrepealed] Generally interpreted as referencing Parliament’s reluc­ tance to pass legislation that would afford civil liberties to Dissenters and Catholics. Chandler, however, reads ‘A Senate’ and ‘Time’s worst statute’ as appositives and thus sees the line as a call for the reformation, if not the outright abolition, of Par­ liament (England in 1819, pp. 29–30). 9 glorious Phantom … our tempestuous day] Cf. the final lines of Shelley’s Address to the Peo­ ple on the Death of the Princess Charlotte (1817): ‘Let us follow the corpse of British Liberty slowly and reverentially to its tomb: and if some glorious Phantom should appear, and make its throne of broken swords and sceptres and royal crowns tram­ pled in the dust, let us say that the Spirit of Liberty has arisen from its grave and left all that was gross and mortal there, and kneel down and worship it as our Queen’.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A New National Anthem’ (1819) 10 Wilder] Bewilder.

William Hone, ‘Non Mi Ricordo!’ (1820) 1 Mr. Besom] Henry, Lord Brougham (1778–1868; DNB), the lawyer and social reformer who defended Caroline at her trial. 2 a foreigner or an englishman?] A revival of the old taunt that Britain’s Hanoverian kings were Germans first and Englishmen second. 3 Turnstile General] The Attorney General, Robert Gifford (1779–1826; DNB), who served as lead prosecutor in the Queen’s trial. 4 Lord Precedent] The Lord President of the Council, Dudley Ryder, first Earl of Har­ rowby (1762–1847; DNB). 5 Erminians] Obscure, but probably alludes to judges whose robes are trimmed with ermine. 6 tailor] While this obviously plays upon George IV’s reputation as a dandy, it might also invoke alternate meanings of ‘tailor’. According to the OED, in the early nine­ teenth century a ‘tailor’ was not only a clothier, but also a caterpillar and a type of fish. 295

Explanatory notes to pages 163–66

7 Goose] A ‘goose’ is a tailor’s smoothing-iron. Accordingly, a common joke of the times held that ‘a taylor, be he ever so poor, is always sure to have a goose at his fire’ (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, London, C. Chappel, 1811). Here ‘goose’ might also function as a pun for a prostitute or a type of venereal disease (OED). 8 Lord Muddlepool] Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool (1770–1828; DNB), the Prime Minister from 1812–27. 9 Lord Wheelbarrow] Edward Law, first Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818; DNB), the Lord Chief Justice who oversaw the investigation of the Queen’s adultery. 10 How much money … since you were born?] At his marriage in 1795, George IV’s annuity was set at £138,000, with nearly £100,000 more being set aside for incidental expenses (E. A. Smith, George IV, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 78). By the time he inherited the crown in 1820, several million more pounds would have been expended to support George’s extravagant lifestyle. 11 Hotel de Grand Bretagne] The Hotel of Great Britain. 12 Wellington Arms] Five years removed from his heroism at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852; DNB) was hissed by the crowd in 1820 for his conservative politics and his role in orchestrating Queen Caroline’s trial. 13 Twister General] The Solicitor General, John Singleton Copley (1772–1863; DNB), who assisted Gifford in the prosecution of the Queen. 14 debts] Despite his royal income, George had accrued over £400,000 in debts prior to his marriage to Caroline. 15 fanfaron] Braggart. 16 Jersey] Lady Jersey, George’s mistress at the time of his marriage. 17 Manchester Square] The home of Lady Isabella Hertford (1760–1834), one of George’s reputed mistresses. 18 to Richmond] Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837; DNB), the Catholic widow whom George illegally married in 1785, had a summer house on Richmond Hill. 19 Marquis of C.] The Marquis of Conyngham (1766–1832), husband to George’s present mistress, Lady Conyngham (b. 1770). 20 Matthew] In Matthew 5: 32, Christ decrees, ‘But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery’. 21 False Keys] Probably a reference to marrying someone without the proper ‘keys’, or authority. 22 How many Wives … allow you] An obvious allusion to George’s adultery, but also an insinuation that, having been previously married to Maria Fitzherbert, George was guilty of bigamy when he wed Caroline. 23 the Society for the Suppression of Vice] An evangelical group organized by William Wilberforce in 1802. 24 Master General of the Black Barracks at Exeter] Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Welling­ ton (1769–1852; DNB), who in his capacity as Master-General of the Ordnance oversaw supplying the army and navy with munitions. Exeter was home to one of the army’s principal artillery units. 25 The Home Doctor] The Home Secretary, Henry Addington (first Viscount Sidmouth), who had long been nicknamed the ‘doctor’ because of his roots as a doctor’s son. See Canning’s and Gillray’s ‘Doctor Addington’ satires (pp. 100–08 above). During 296

Explanatory notes to pages 166–74

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

his time as Home Secretary, Addington was renowned among radicals for his zeal in rooting out ‘conspiracies’, something that Hone mocks in this passage. Lord Bathos] Henry Bathurst, the third Earl of Bathurst (1762–1834; DNB), Secre­ tary for War and the Colonies from 1812–27. prigged] Stolen. Lord Ratstail] John Freeman Mitford, first Baron Redesdale (1748–1830; DNB). B———?] Brighton, George’s favorite retreat. the Pavilion] The Royal Pavilion at Brighton C********] Lady Conyngham, whose stockiness was a favorite target of caricaturists. new wing] In his testimony at Caroline’s trial, Majocchi was able to recall the exact arrangement of Caroline’s bedroom but quite astonishingly had no memory whether a new wing had been added to his employer’s residence during one of her journeys. Colonel Q.] Col. George Quintin of the 10th Hussars, who was allegedly promoted for looking the other way while George carried on an affair with his wife. Curaçao] A type of liqueur, named after the island in the Caribbean. Bag-at-L—] A ‘bagatelle’ is a trifle. The C.] Lady Conyngham. horn-boys] An obscure term, possibly referring to those who make cuckolds of other men. flash-men] Sporting men, or hipsters. the minister] See n. 8 above. putrid fever] ‘Putrid fever’ is another name for typhoid fever. Apparently, the pun here is that the love of pomp and ceremony (‘scarlet fever’) ultimately ends in cor­ ruption (‘putrid fever’). Grillery] I.e., George is being grilled.

Lord Byron, ‘The Irish Avatar’ (1822) 1 Daughter of Brunswick … home o’er the tide] Queen Caroline (1768–1821; DNB), daugh­ ter to the Prussian Duke of Brunswick, died on 7 August 1821. Her body was returned to Prussia for burial. 2 True, the chains … o’er his rags] While over the past half-century the government had granted new liberties to Catholics, it would not be until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 that they would be allowed any official voice in government. 3 The Castle still stands] Literally, Dublin Castle, but this might also be read as a pun on ‘Castlereagh’ (see n. 23 below). 4 the Senate’s no more] With the Act of Union of 1801, the Irish Parliament was sub­ sumed into the British Parliament located in Westminster. 5 Leviathan] Comparing King George to a leviathan (literally, a sea monster) follows the lead of Charles Lamb’s ‘Triumph of the Whale’ (see pp. 130–33 above) and Tho­ mas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), where the monarch is the symbolic head of the sea monster who represents the commonwealth. 6 three-score] King George was fifty-nine years old in 1821.

297

Explanatory notes to pages 174–77

7 the green in his hat] An allusion to George’s ostentatious display of shamrocks in his hat during his Irish visit. 8 Grattan] Henry Grattan (1746–1820; DNB), Irish statesman who devoted much of his political energies to resisting British rule. Grattan died a year before this poem was written, which explains the elegiac tone Byron adopts towards him. 9 Demosthenes] Demosthenes (385?–322 BC), Greek orator whose greatest speeches were directed against the Macedonian invaders of his country. 10 Tully] Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), Roman statesman and orator. 11 a week’s Saturnalia] The Saturnalia was the Roman festival in which slaves and mas­ ters temporarily changed roles. George IV’s Irish ‘Saturnalia’ lasted a week (17–24 August). 12 Erin] The archaic name of Ireland. 13 Idol of Brass … of clay] Cf. Daniel 2: 31–38. See also the introduction to Keats’s ‘Neb­ uchadnezzar’s Dream’ (pp. 140–41 above). 14 each thing] As alluded to in the Examiner’s footnote, Byron’s manuscript reads ‘each brute’ rather than ‘each thing’. 15 George the Despised] Cf. the first line of Shelley’s ‘England in 1819’ (p. 157 above). 16 Fingal] Arthur James Plunkett, eighth Earl of Fingall (1759–1836), a leading Catholic politician whom George was supposedly planning to dub a Knight of St Patrick (McGann and Weller, Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, vol. 6, p. 602). 17 O’Connel] Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847; DNB), Irish nationalist widely known as ‘The Liberator’ and the leading champion of Catholic Emancipation in the 1820s. While Byron and O’Connell embraced many of the same political causes, the poet ‘was appalled to read that O’Connell and a group of other Irish patriots presented the King with a laurel crown on the day of his departure from Ireland’ (McGann and Weller, Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, vol. 6, pp. 602–03). 18 ‘Hal is the rascaliest, sweetest young Prince!’] I Henry IV, I. ii. 90. 19 Aye, ‘build him…dome hath arisen’] During George’s visit, O’Connell proposed that the Irish should construct a palace for the King, ‘to the erection of which every peasant could from his cottage contribute his humble mite’ (Morning Chronicle, 18 August 1821). 20 Helots] Serfs or slaves. 21 Vitellius] Aulus Vitellius (15–69), extravagant, incompetent Roman emperor who was overthrown and murdered less than a year after coming to power. 22 Sejanus] Lucius Aelius Sejanus (d. 31), conspiring counsellor to the Roman emperor Tiberius who was eventually put to death for his alleged plotting. 23 Castlereagh] Robert Stewart, first Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822; DNB), Irishborn foreign secretary who was loathed by British radicals for his central role in suppressing the reform movement and curtailing civil liberties. The Morning Chroni­ cle of 18 August 1821 reported that Castlereagh was widely cheered by the Irish crowd during George’s visit despite the fact that he was ‘the instrument of Ireland’s degradation’. 24 My voice … raised for thy right] Byron devoted one of his few Parliamentary speeches, delivered on 21 April 1812, to Catholic Emancipation. 25 Curran] John Philpot Curran (1750–1817; DNB), Irish lawyer and statesman who was one of the most vigorous advocates of Catholic Emancipation. 298

Explanatory notes to pages 177–88

26 Sheridan] Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816; DNB), Irish playwright and politi­ cian. In 1816 Byron commemorated the famous dramatist’s recent passing with ‘Monody on the Death of Sheridan’, a poem that was recited from the stage at Drury Lane. 27 Moore] Thomas Moore (1779–1852; DNB), Irish poet and one of Byron’s closest friends, for whom see Vol. 5, The Satires of Thomas Moore.

John Hughes, ‘The Magic Lay of the One-Horse Chay’ (1824) 1 Soap Laborator … the present day] ‘Laborator’ is Hughes’s coinage. That Bubb would abandon the standard professional labels ‘soap-boiler’ or ‘soap-maker’ hints at his social ambitions. 2 the Common Council board] The city council. 3 Farringdon-Within] Farringdon is a neighbourhood in the northern part of the City of London. ‘Within’ here merely implies that the Bubbs lived within the city walls or boundaries. 4 walk for a stomach] I.e., exercise to work up an appetite. 5 the Steyne] An open area that was the social centre of Regency Brighton. 6 rack punch] Punch made from arrack, the fermented sap of the coco-palm. 7 Court corruption … makes everything so high] Given Brighton’s reputation as the favour­ ite retreat of King George IV, the Whiggish Bubbs are quick to blame any of the town’s deficiencies on the monarch. 8 old Nick] The devil. 9 dicky] An under petticoat. 10 dummies] Either dumb persons or blockheads. 11 ge-hupp’d] Called out to the horse to quicken his pace.

Horace Smith, ‘Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary’ (1824–25) 1 No. I] In the first number of the ‘Patent Pocket Dictionary’, Smith used alphabetic headings (e.g., ‘B.’ or ‘C.’) to separate the entries for specific letters. He discontinued this, however, in the later instalments. For the sake of consistency, I have omitted the headings for all letters. 2 ‘A noble standard … than his dress.—The Tatler] Jonathan Swift, Tatler 230, 26–28 Sep­ tember 1710. 3 Exeter ’Change] The Exeter Change Royal Menagerie in the Strand, which was demolished in 1829. 4 mantua-maker] The maker of loose gowns for women. 5 Achievement or Hatchment] In this sense of the word, ‘achievement’ is synony­ mous with ‘hatchment’, meaning ‘an escutcheon or ensign armorial, granted in memory of some achievement, or distinguished feat’ (OED). 6 Jack Ketch] The hangman. 7 ventri-potential] ‘Having great capacity of stomach; gluttonous’ (OED). 8 nonage] ‘The condition of being under age; the period of legal infancy; minority’ (OED). 299

Explanatory notes to pages 188–90

9 burnt them in Smithfield] Smithfield is a neighbourhood in the northwest corner of the old City of London and the site of public executions during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. 10 Dr. Adam Clarke] Adam Clarke, LLD (1762–1832; DNB), Wesleyan preacher, theo­ logian, and natural scientist who suggested in his widely read commentary on the Bible that a baboon, not a snake, tempted Eve in the Garden. 11 desiderated] Desired. 12 Junius] Franciscus Junius (1591–1677), German-born Dutch philologist. 13 Spelman] Sir Henry Spelman (1562–1641; DNB), famous English antiquary. 14 Baculus] As Smith suggests, this is Latin for ‘cudgel’. 15 the Holy Alliance] The alliance entered into by Russia, Austria, and Prussia after the fall of Napoleon in 1815, by which all agreed to rule in accordance with the laws of Christianity. Eventually Naples, Sardinia, France, and Spain joined as well, but Brit­ ain remained steadfast in its refusal to participate. Accordingly, the British press regularly characterised the Holy Alliance as a league of despots and papists. 16 pettifoggers] Rascally attorneys. 17 old-clothes-men] Dealers in second-hand clothes. 18 Bellman’s Verses.—See Vision of Judgment] In 1821 the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, published A Vision of Judgment, a poem that would be much maligned by Byron and others for its affectations of prophecy and its shameless pandering to the royal family. The joke here is that Southey ended up sounding more like a towncrier (a ‘bellman’) than either a prophet or a poet laureate. 19 translation] ‘The removal of a bishop from one see to another’ (OED). 20 Blank] ‘A lottery ticket which does not gain a prize’ (OED). 21 Brass … neighbouring island] A gibe at the Irish. The figurative sense of brass implied here connotes ‘a type of insensibility to shame: hence, effrontery, impudence, unblushingness’ (OED). 22 Brewer … deleterious drugs] Early-nineteenth-century brewers were notorious for watering down and drugging their beer. 23 South-Sea Securities] In 1720, hundreds of British speculators lost huge amounts of money in the over-inflated stock of the South Sea Company, a government-spon­ sored entity established to relieve the national debt. 24 Spanish Bonds] In May 1824, the value of Spanish bonds plummeted when the nation’s constitutional government gave way to the absolute monarchy of King Fer­ dinand VII. 25 Suwarrow, Turkish commander] Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov (1729–1800), Russian general who won several key victories versus Napoleon’s army before suffering a humiliating defeat in Switzerland in 1799. Smith uses ‘Turkish’ here as a synonym for ‘ruthless’. 26 Cabbage.—See Tailor] An alternate definition for cabbage is ‘shreds (or larger pieces) of cloth cut off by tailors in the process of cutting out clothes, and appropriated by them as a perquisite’ (OED). 27 Somerset House] Home to the Royal Academy from 1771–1836. 28 Chamberlain, Lord] ‘A hereditary office, the main duties of which now consist in attending upon and attiring the sovereign at his coronation, the care of the ancient Palace of Westminster, the furnishing of Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parlia­ 300

Explanatory notes to pages 190–93

ment on state occasions, and attending upon peers and bishops at their creation or doing of homage’ (OED). 29 Verjuice] ‘The acid juice of green or unripe grapes, crab-apples, or other sour fruit, expressed and formed into a liquor; formerly much used in cooking, as a condi­ ment, or for medicinal purposes’ (OED). 30 fumivorous] ‘Feeding or living on smoke’ (OED). 31 turtle] Turtle meat and turtle-soup were popular delicacies at nineteenth-century banquets. 32 Columbine] ‘A character in Italian Comedy, the mistress of Harlequin, transferred to our Pantomime or Harlequinade’ (OED). 33 Boroughs] ‘Rotten’ or ‘pocket’ boroughs, the elimination of which was a major goal of reformists. 34 Tom Dibdin … to the Cygnet’] An elaborate pun. In Scotland a ‘writer to the Signet’ is ‘one of an ancient society of law-agents who conduct cases before the Court of Ses­ sion, and have the exclusive privilege of preparing crown writs, charters, precepts, etc.’ (OED). Tom Dibdin is Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847; DNB), the famed book collector who was renowned for making hasty attributions in his bibliographic studies. Hence, the joke here is that Dibdin has misread a poem about a swan (or ‘cygnet’) as an ode to official seals (or ‘signets’). 35 ‘These lost … quite away.’—Pope] Lines 116–117 of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism. 36 long-eared brother…opens his mouth] An allusion to Aesop’s fable of the ass who dresses in a lion’s skin, only to be discovered by his braying. 37 Day and Martin … on the wall’] The Day and Martin blacking company was one of the age’s most prolific advertisers, earning particular notoriety for the large-print advertisements it pasted on walls throughout London. ‘Handwriting on the wall’ alludes to Daniel 5: 5–10. 38 the noses have been already counted] I.e., the outcome of the vote has already been estimated. 39 Chancery court] The highest court of justice in Britain. 40 the cat-o-nine-tails] ‘A whip with nine knotted lashes; till 1881 an authorized instru­ ment of punishment in the British navy and army’ (OED). 41 hippodrama] I.e., a hippodrome, or circus. 42 the Bourbons] The dynasty which had placed monarchs on the thrones of France, Spain, and Italy. 43 Edition, third … of the first] Rogue publishers who wished to give the appearance of popularity for one of their books were known to inflate the edition number on the title page. Hence, as Smith points out, some ‘fourth’ editions were in reality first or second editions. 44 Etymology … their own parish] A jab at the poor law, which required paupers to return to their native home to receive poor relief. 45 Lord Norbury] John Toler, first Earl of Norbury (1745–1832; DNB), chief justice of the court of common pleas in Ireland whose notorious indifference to human suf­ fering was manifest in his frequent jocularity when condemning prisoners to death. 46 Joe Miller] Joseph Miller (1684–1738; DNB), actor and humorist whose comic obser­ vations were posthumously compiled in the bestselling book Joe Miller’s Jests (1739). 301

Explanatory notes to pages 193–97

47 Blackstone] Sir William Blackstone (1723–80; DNB), British law scholar whose Com­ mentary on the Laws of England was the standard legal textbook in Britain and the United States throughout the nineteenth century. 48 Legerdemain] Sleight of hand. 49 Black Swan] ‘A proverbial phrase (after Juvenal Sat. vi. 164) for something extremely rare (or non-existent)’ (OED). 50 Gallipot] The pot used by apothecaries to mix ointments and medicines. 51 Gewgaw.—See the Pagoda at Brighton] A ‘gewgaw’ is a gaudy trifle or plaything. George IV had gone to considerable expense remodelling and decorating the Pavil­ ion at Brighton. 52 the British] The British Review, the literary journal of the evangelical wing of the Church of England. In 1824, the British was almost exclusively noticing religious titles. 53 Will-o’-the-wisp] ‘A thing (rarely a person) that deludes or misleads by means of fugi­ tive appearances’ (OED). 54 Hassock] A kneeling cushion used in church services. 55 The Newgate Calendar of Kings] One of the most popular books of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, The Newgate Calendar recounted the misdeeds of Brit­ ain’s most notorious felons. 56 Constitutional Association] The Constitutional Association for Opposing the Progress of Disloyal and Seditious Principles, founded in 1820 by leading members of the aristocracy and clergy for the purpose of prosecuting booksellers who sold ‘treason­ ous’ texts. 57 Anaxagoras] Anaxagoras (500?–428 BC), Greek philosopher who is reputed to have been the mentor of Pericles and Socrates. 58 Illuminati] The group of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish mystics who apostatised from mainstream Catholicism and were consequently relentlessly perse­ cuted by the Inquisition. 59 Inquisition.—For which see Holy Alliance] The Inquisition was not officially discontin­ ued in Spain until 1834. 60 hecatombs] ‘A great public sacrifice (properly of a hundred oxen) among the ancient Greeks and Romans’ (OED). 61 Titus] Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus (AD 39–81), Roman emperor from 79–81 who completed the Colosseum and endeared himself to his subjects through his generosity and leniency. 62 the Prophet] Muhammad (570–632), founder of Islam. 63 matin] A morning devotional service. 64 Logwood] ‘The heartwood of an American tree (Hæmatoxylon Campechianum) used in dyeing …. The alleged use of logwood in colouring spurious or adulterated port wine was at one time a frequent subject of jocular allusion’ (OED). 65 Sir Thomas Wotton] Thomas Wotton (d. 1766), compiler and publisher of The English Baronetage, Being a Genealogical and Historical Account of their Families (1727). 66 ‘And from … running would not give.’] Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe: A Tragedy, IV. 41–42. 67 concealment to King Charles] In 1651, the future King Charles II concealed himself from Cromwell’s men by hiding in an oak tree. 302

Explanatory notes to pages 197–205

68 Mr. Fitz-Gerald] William Thomas Fitzgerald (1759?–1829; DNB), poetaster who was mocked in the Smith brothers’ Rejected Addresses. 69 Ode, Birthday … but the present] A sarcastic reference to the poems Southey (Poet Laureate from 1814–43) had recently written to commemorate George III’s ascen­ sion to heaven (A Vision of Judgment) and George IV’s visits to Ireland and Scotland. 70 Mr. Macadam] John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836; DNB), the Surveyor General of British Roads who revolutionized road-building with his invention of the macadam surface. 71 ‘The very stones prate of my whereabout.’] Macbeth, II. i. 58. 72 Pawky] ‘Tricky, artful, sly, cunning, crafty, shrewd’ (OED). 73 Mr. Brummel’s] George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummel (1778–1840; DNB), the age’s most famous dandy. 74 Quibble, Quirk, Quiddit, Quillet] A series of synonyms, all suggesting ‘verbal nicety or subtlety of distinction’ (OED). 75 Saw] ‘A sententious saying; a traditional maxim, a proverb’ (OED). 76 Peculation] Embezzlement. 77 Trustee … recent example] Possibly an allusion to George IV’s functioning as trustee for his father during his term as Prince Regent. 78 shingly] Covered with shingles. 79 dimity] A stout cotton fabric, woven with raised stripes or fancy figures (OED).

Thomas Hood, ‘Ode to Mr. Graham, the Aeronaut’ (1825) 1 Up with me! … Wordsworth—on a Lark] Hood misquotes both Wordsworth’s title and his wording. The quotation, which is the first line of ‘To a Sky-Lark’, should read ‘Up with me! up with me into the clouds!’ 2 fragrant smoke upcurl’d] Early ballooning experiments were notoriously foul-smelling. Ballooning pioneers were known to inflate their balloons by burning a mixture of old shoes, straw, and decaying meat. See L. T. C. Rolt, The Aeronauts: A History of Bal­ looning, 1783–1903, New York, Walker, 1966, pp. 28–29. 3 cut the wind] Both a flatulence pun and another reference to the noxious odour of early balloons. 4 Dollond] A high-end telescope manufactured by the famed opticians John and Peter Dollond. 5 quiz] To ‘quiz’, in this sense, might be either to look or to mock. 6 Mogg’s] Edward Mogg (fl. 1810s), a renowned British map-maker. 7 Isle of Dogs] A small island in the Thames in East London. 8 Wren] Christopher Wren (1632–1723; DNB), the architect who rebuilt St Paul’s fol­ lowing the fire of 1666. 9 Mac Adamized] John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836; DNB), the Surveyor General of British Roads who revolutionized road-building with his invention of the macadam surface. See the ‘Ode to Mr. M’Adam’ elsewhere in Odes and Addresses. 10 Gogs] ‘Magog and Gog were statues guarding the entrance to the council chamber of the Guildhall’ (David A. Kent and D. R. Ewen, Romantic Parodies, 1797–1831, Lon­ don, Associated University Presses, 1992, p. 400). 303

Explanatory notes to pages 206–08

11 Dukes of Gloster] An allusion to King Lear, where Edgar leads the blind Gloucester to the edge of a ‘cliff ’ and helps him imagine all that can be seen below. 12 a hum] A humbug. 13 buzzing noises ring] From Alexander Pope’s ode ‘The Dying Christian to his Soul’. Hood has altered the third line of the quotation, replacing ‘sounds seraphic ring’ with ‘buzzing noises ring’. 14 Southey’s Laureat lore!] Robert Southey (1774–1843; DNB), Britain’s poet laureate from 1813-43. 15 Rogers] Samuel Rogers (1763–1855; DNB), author of The Pleasures of Memory (1792) and one of the leading poets of the age. 16 Moore] Thomas Moore (1779–1852; DNB), popular Irish poet widely hailed as the national bard of his native isle. 17 Great Unknown] Owing to his anonymous authorship of the Waverley novels, Scott was often called ‘The Great Unknown’. Elsewhere in Odes and Addresses Hood dedi­ cated an entire poem ‘To the Great Unknown’. 18 Williams of Cornhill] John Williams (fl. 1820s), leading proponent of building under­ ground passages for water and gas pipes. 19 Irving] Edward Irving (1792–1834; DNB), popular London preacher renowned for his radicalism. 20 Jeffrey] Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850; DNB), editor of the Edinburgh Review. 21 Gifford] William Gifford (1756–1826; DNB), editor of the Quarterly Review. 22 Blackwood’s] Blackwood’s Magazine (see pp. 179–80 above). 23 lading] Cargo. 24 Croly] George Croly (1780–1860; DNB), author and divine who was a regular con­ tributor to the Literary Gazette and Blackwood’s Magazine. 25 ‘Warren’ on a wall] Robert Warren (fl. early nineteenth century), whose Warren’s blacking shoe polish was possibly the best advertised product of the age. Warren’s enormous advertisements were conspicuous throughout London, and it was often joked that the traveller knew he or she was approaching London by the increased frequency of walls being covered with Warren’s ads. 26 Jerdan] William Jerdan (1782–1869; DNB), editor of the Literary Gazette. 27 L. E. L.] Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38; DNB), the ‘angel muse’ of British poetry in the 1820s. Landon also wrote novels and worked as a reviewer for the Lit­ erary Gazette. 28 Tims] In vol. 2 of Parodies of the Romantic Age (London, Pickering & Chatto, 1999), John Strachan explains this allusion to ‘Tims’: ‘This is a complex satirical moment which needs some contextualisation. Though ‘Tims’ was Blackwood’s usual nick­ name for P. G. Patmore, in June 1824 it had, probably intentionally, attributed Rey­ nolds’s article for (Taylor and Hessey’s) London Magazine, ‘“A Pen and Ink Sketch of a Trial for Murder”, to Tims’ (p. 331). 29 North] Christopher North, pseudonym for John Wilson, the editor of Blackwood’s Magazine (see pp. 255–56 below). 30 P. A. Z.] One of Hood’s pseudonyms. 31 London’s Lion’s] For several years the London Magazine ran a column entitled ‘The Lion’s Head’ in which it commented on rejected contributions. 304

Explanatory notes to pages 208–12

32 Campbell] Thomas Campbell (1777–1844; DNB), poet and editor of the New Monthly Magazine. 33 Longman … in a little Row] The publishing house of Longman had recently expanded its official name to ‘Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green’. The ‘Row’ here is Paternoster Row, centre of the London publishing industry. 34 Rothschild] Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836; DNB), a prominent German banker and financier operating in Britain. 35 Golden Ball] Kent and Ewen identify the ‘Golden Ball’ as ‘an apparent reference to the ornamental sign outside the House of Rothschild in London’ (Romantic Parodies, p. 401). 36 the Adults’ School’s … Elliston] Robert William Elliston (1774–1831; DNB), lessee and manager of Drury Lane theater. Hence, the ‘Adults’ School’ at the beginning of the stanza refers to Drury Lane, where adults received their education in the ways of society. 37 ‘Oh would some God … others see ’em] From Burns’s ‘To a Louse’, where these lines read, ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’

John Hamilton Reynolds, ‘Address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster’ (1825) 38 John Ireland, D.D.] The son of a Devonshire butcher, John Ireland (1761–1842; DNB) steadily worked his way up through the Church until 1816, when he was appointed Dean of Westminster Abbey. 39 ‘Sure the Guardians … Citizen of the World] Citizen of the World (1762) is a collection of the letters Oliver Goldsmith wrote for the Public Ledger under the guise of a Chi­ nese traveller named Lien Chi Altangi. This quotation comes from Letter XIII, which condemns the practice of charging admission to see parts of Westminster Abbey. 40 surplice-back’d] Wearing a surplice, or a clergyman’s loose, white outer vestment. 41 Grays] Thomas Gray (1716–71; DNB), mid-eighteenth-century poet best known for his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’. 42 Gays] John Gay (1685–1732; DNB), early eighteenth-century wit and author of The Beggar’s Opera. 43 Handels] George Friederic Handel (1685–1759; DNB), German-born composer who spent most of his adult life in London, where he served as court composer. 44 shillings, two and two] Two shillings was the price of admission at the Abbey in 1825. 45 pursy] In this context, ‘pursy’ seems to imply both ‘corpulent’ and ‘wealthy’. 46 drink from sculls as Byron did] See Byron’s ‘Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull’. 47 inurn’d] Entombed. 48 puddling] To ‘puddle’, in this sense, is a gold-mining term for separating ore from dirt. Hence, the ‘puddling chemists’ are alchemists. 49 Dryden] John Dryden (1631–1700; DNB), leading British poet and dramatist of the Restoration period. 50 Ben Jonson] Ben Jonson (?1572–1637; DNB), leading British writer of the early six­ teenth century. 305

Explanatory notes to pages 212–18

51 Steele] Richard Steele (1672–1729; DNB), essayist best known for his collaboration with Addison on The Tatler and The Spectator. 52 Addison] Joseph Addison (1672–1719; DNB), the famous essayist. 53 Rydal’s sage] Wordsworth, whose Lake District residence was Rydal Mount. 54 Peter Schlemihl, sold his shade] Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl’s wundersame Ges­ chichte (1814) tells of a man who sold his shadow for a never-ending supply of gold coins. John Bowring translated the tale into English (as Peter Schlemihl) in 1823. 55 bone repose] A pun meaning both ‘good rest’ and the resting place of one’s bones. 56 Priestly Politos] The circus performer Polito was one of early-nineteenth-century England’s most renowned animal trainers. 57 Mr. Paap] Mr. Paap was apparently a famous circus midget. In a discussion of the circus in Peter Simple, London, Saunders and Otley, 1834, Frederick Marryat identi­ fies Mr. Paap as ‘the smallest dwarf in the world’ (vol. 1, p. 109). 58 Beggar o’ Bethnal Green] An allusion to Robert Dodsley’s 1741 ballad opera The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. 59 Mrs. Bodkin] The reference here is obscure. ‘Mrs. Bodkin’ is possibly the wife of ‘H. Bodkin, Esq.’, who was the subject of a separate poem in Odes and Addresses. Bodkin was Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, and hence instru­ mental in clearing beggars from the streets of London. 60 funk’d] Frightened. 61 General Monk] George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle (1608–70; DNB), famed for his military exploits in the English Civil War and his instrumental role in bringing about the restoration of Charles II. In Citizen of the World, Goldsmith’s narrator is outraged when a guide ends his tour of the Abbey at General Monk’s tomb, where he suggests tips can be left in the general’s cap.

Anon., ‘Discovery of Another Poet’ (1825) 1 What could I do … toil or service fit.] Wordsworth, ‘The Female Vagrant’, ll. 244–49. 2 Alice Fell … is Durham] Amusing, but not accurate: ‘And whither are you going, child. To-night along these lonesome ways?’ ‘To Durham’, answered she, half wild— ‘Then come with me into the chaise’. … ‘And I to Durham, Sir, belong’, Again as if the thought would choke Her very heart, her grief grew strong; And all was for her tattered cloak! (Wordsworth, ‘Alice Fell’, ll. 25–48).

3 Andrew Jones] Wordsworth’s ‘Andrew Jones’, first published in the 1800 edition of the Lyrical Ballads.

306

Explanatory notes to pages 221–33

Anon. (attrib. Theodore Hook), The March of Intellect. A New Song (1825) 1 2 3 4 5

beslaver’d] Spat upon. Goth] Barbarian, brute. Vulcan] The god of fire and metal-working, hence, by association, the blacksmith. hod] The receptacle masons use to carry mortar. as big as the Frog in the Fable] In Aesop’s fable of ‘The Frog and the Ox’, a frog attempting to swell himself to the size of an ox inhales so much air that he bursts. The moral: ‘self-conceit may lead to self-destruction’. 6 jargon as odd…builders of Babel] In Genesis 11, the citizens of Babel have their lan­ guage confounded as a punishment for trying to build a tower to heaven.

Ebenezer Elliott, ‘Song: Child, is thy father dead?’ (1830) 1 clamm’d] A variant of ‘clem’, which is to go hungry. 2 break] To ‘break’ in this sense is to either temporarily stop operations or go bankrupt.

Ebenezer Elliott, ‘Burns, from the Dead’ (1830) 3 Perth] A city in central Scotland. 4 Tell] William Tell (fl. fourteenth century), Swiss patriot whose punishment for defy­ ing Austrian rule was being forced to shoot an arrow through an apple resting on his son’s head. 5 brae] A small hill. See Burns’s poem ‘Ye Banks and braes o’ bonie Doon’. 6 Cromwell] Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; DNB), leader of the Parliamentary faction in the English Civil Wars and Lord Protector of England from 1653–58. 7 Hampden of Gray] See Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, ll. 57–58. These lines speak of ‘Some village-Hampden’, alluding to John Hampden (1594–1643; DNB), a Parliamentary general in the English Civil Wars. 8 the Doon] The River Doon in Burns’s native Ayrshire. 9 glooming] Looking sullen. 10 hutch’d up] Hunched up. 11 stave] ‘A verse or stanza of a poem, song, etc.’ (OED). 12 the true blue] Traditionally ‘the true blue’ were Scottish Presbyterians, but by the mid-nineteenth century the term was regularly used as a label for staunch Tories. 13 philosopher’s stone] ‘The reputed solid substance or preparation supposed by the alche­ mists to possess the property of changing other metals into gold or silver, the discovery of which was the supreme object of alchemy’ (OED). 14 soho!] A huntsman’s call used at the start of a chase. 15 the ‘bonny lang syne’] The beautiful days of old.

307

Explanatory notes to pages 233–39

Ebenezer Elliott, ‘The Jacobin’s Prayer’ (1830) 16 Peterloo] The so-called ‘Peterloo Massacre’ of 16 August 1819, when cavalrymen working at the behest of local magistrates killed eleven and wounded over four hun­ dred at a peaceful gathering of commoners. See pp. 144 and 149–58 above. 17 Yon cotton-prince … glory, too] The suggestion here is that the ‘cotton prince’ was among the cavalrymen who were heartily congratulated by the Liverpool ministry and the Prince Regent for their role in ‘dispersing’ the crowd at Peterloo. 18 learn’d in gazettes] I.e., aware of the widespread suffering reported regularly in English newspapers. 19 beadle’s] A minor parish officer in the Church of England. 20 Strut] I.e., the proper name of the upwardly mobile man described in this stanza. 21 Blue Jobber’s Row] The color blue was generally associated with conservatives during this time. A ‘jobber’ in this sense is a landlord who charges exorbitant rents. 22 groat] A medieval coin worth four pence. 23 prigling] A nonce-word, suggesting a young dandy or fop. 24 satrap-stride] In this sense, ‘satrap’ denotes ‘a subordinate ruler; often suggesting an imputation of tyranny or ostentatious splendour’ (OED). 25 roods] While usually a crucifix, in this case the primary sense of ‘rood’ is ‘a superficial measure of land, properly containing 40 square poles or perches, but varying locally’ (OED). 26 trencher] Dinner plate. 27 yeoman] Technically, any small landowner. In this instance, however, Elliott seems to be specifically alluding to the yeomanry of Manchester, who were guilty of many of the worst atrocities at Peterloo. 28 three-times-three’d] A drinking toast or shout of exultation. Cf. ‘The Undebauch’d Roy­ alists’ (pp. 149–53 above). 29 parish pay] A tax paid for the relief of the poor. 30 bans] Curses. 31 yon thane of corn laws] The tax collector, who is a retainer of the personified Corn Laws. 32 The palace … the toiling crowd] Elliott here reflects nostalgically on the ‘golden age’ of paternalism, when the rich felt some measure of social responsibility toward the poor.

W[illiam] T[homas] Moncrieff, The March of Intellect (1830) 1 The Ogre’s seven leagued boots] The fairy-tale ‘Hop o’ My Thumb’ features an ogre whose magical boots allow the wearer to cover seven leagues in a single step. 2 Tom Hood] Thomas Hood, the age’s leading comic writer (see pp. 201–03 above). 3 struck his docket] Nineteenth-century legal jargon for when a creditor proved a debtor to be bankrupt. Hence, in this case, ‘grim death’ metaphorically declares Johnson a bankrupt and proceeds to repossess his soul. 4 he who could…pick a pocket] As Moncrieff suggests, this quotation is generally attrib­ uted to Johnson. To catch the pun here, one needs to understand that in the 308

Explanatory notes to pages 240–44

5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

eighteenth century a ‘pocket’ was a unit of agricultural measure. Hence, field work­ ers were expected to pick so many pockets of hops in an hour. Whims and Oddities] The title of Hood’s 1826 collection of comic prose and verse. Thy Hunt] Hood’s 1829 poem The Epping Hunt, which lampoons a London busi­ nessman who bumbles his way through the annual hunt in Epping Forest. ‘Laugh and grow fat,’ the adage says] A traditional English proverb dating to the late six­ teenth century. Short stages] Stage coaches that stopped at frequent intervals. From Paris … The OMNIBUS bears sway] In 1829 George Shillibeer (1797–1866; DNB) established London’s first omnibus service, running a three-horse carriage between Paddington and the Bank. Shillibeer’s scheme took its inspiration from the Frenchman Jacques Lafitte, who for several years had been experimenting with ‘omnibus’ (a term Lafitte coined) transportation in Nantes. Cads] Slang for ‘coachmen’. St. Giles’s Greek] St Giles was a Greek hermit of the seventh century who became the namesake for a twelfth-century hospital for lepers in north London and the par­ ish church St Giles Cripplegate. In the nineteenth century, the St Giles neighbourhood was synonymous with poverty, crime, and Irish immigrants. Accordingly, the notion here that the denizens of St Giles would be speaking French is meant to represent the height of absurdity. ‘It comes, Ma, from the Bank!’] See n. 9 above. ‘Commong gy potty woo?’] A nonsensical ‘pig-French’ sentence. ‘Monsieur! Je ne vous comprends pas’] ‘Mister! I do not understand you’. Key’d bugles] The key-bugle was a standard bugle fitted with keys, which allowed a greater range of sounds. It first appeared in the mid-1810s. Rossini] Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (1792–1868), famous Italian operatic composer. Piccini] Niccolò Piccini (1728–1800), leading figure in the late-eighteenth-century Italian and French opera scene. Di Piacer] The song ‘Di piacer mi balza il cor’ begins the second scene of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra (‘The Thieving Magpie’). Di tanti palpiti] The aria from Rossini’s Tancredi. ‘Moll in the Wad’] A popular eighteenth-century ballad. the card] ‘An implement for raising a nap on cloth, consisting of teasel-heads set in a frame’ (OED). Mr. Payne’s quadrilles] James Paine’s (fl. 1810s) quadrilles ranked among the most popular high-society dances of the early nineteenth century. Meyerbeer] ‘Giacomo Meyerbeer’ (Jakob Liebman Beer) (1791–1864), German oper­ atic composer. Weber] Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), German composer, pianist, and conductor. the Freischutz] Weber’s 1821 opera Der Freischütz (‘The Free Shooter’). o-port-o] Oporto is port wine, a distinctively upper-class drink. the ‘Life of Sherry-dan] Thomas Moore’s Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Rich­ ard Brinsley Sheridan, which appeared in 1825, nine years after Sheridan’s death.

309

Explanatory notes to pages 244–57

28 Old Mrs. Glass] Hannah Glasse’s (1708–70; DNB) The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) remained one of England’s most popular cookbooks until well into the nineteenth century. 29 Kitchener] William Kitchiner (1775?–1827; DNB), whose Apicius Redivivus: or, The Cook’s Oracle (1817) made him a household name in nineteenth-century Britain. 30 Ude] Louis Eustache Ude’s popular cookbook, The French Cook: A System of Fashiona­ ble and Economical Cookery, Adapted to the Use of English Families, first appeared in 1813. 31 entremets] Side dishes. 32 scullion] The kitchen maid, the lowest-ranking member of a household staff. 33 the red book] ‘A book containing the names of all persons holding office under the State or receiving pensions from it’ (OED). 34 Cobbett’s Register] William Cobbett’s Political Register, the flagship of radical political journals. 35 beadle] A parish constable. 36 the bill for anatomy’s addition] Eventually passed as the Anatomy Act of 1832, this bill offered medical schools the cadavers of dead paupers in hopes that doing so would curb the theft of freshly buried corpses from graveyards. 37 vestry] The legislative body of a parish. 38 Mechanics’ Institutions] Schools for adult education, the most prominent of which was Henry Brougham and George Birkbeck’s London Mechanics’ Institution, founded in 1824. 39 Birkbeck’s resolutions] George Birkbeck (1776–1841; DNB), champion of workingclass education and founder of the London Mechanics’ Institution. 40 nosology] The study of diseases. 41 Tooley Street] A street in the slums of Southwark.

Anon., ‘A Notabil Ballad of ye Downefall of Kynges’ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

ye kynge of ye Northe] Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia. Grande Seignor] The King of Spain. the tricolore] The colours of the flag of the French Republic. Charles the Xth is at Holie-Rode] Charles X of France stayed at Holyrood House in Edinburgh during his exile after the 1830 Revolution. Louis Philippe] The King of France. Ferdinand wise] Ferdinand VIII, the King of Spain. Miguel good] The King of Portugal. And ye kynge of Great Britain] William IV. your ancient house] Holyrood. crouse] In high spirits. Grete] Cry.

John Wilson (‘Christopher North’), ‘A New Song, to be Sung’ (1832) 1 Nor for bread … give them a stone] Cf. Matthew 7: 9. 310

Explanatory notes to pages 257–59

2 Cobbett] William Cobbett (1763–1835; DNB), Britain’s most popular radical journal­ ist during the Reform Age. 3 Paine] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB), the leading radical writer in Britain and America during the late eighteenth century. 4 mischievous devils get into the swine] An allusion both to Burke’s notorious description of labourers as the ‘swinish multitude’ and Jesus’s transference of evil spirits from men’s bodies to those of swine (Matthew 8: 28–32). 5 the cant of ‘free trade’] Free trade was a favourite Whig cause during this era. The Corn Law was viewed as a particularly egregious example of misguided protectionism. See Elliott’s Corn Law Rhymes above (pp. 229–36). 6 twopenny statesmen] The publishers of inexpensive radical periodicals. 7 the poor Greeks … the Turks] According to the terms of the London Protocol of 1830, a treaty brokered by Britain, France, and Russia, the Greeks were liberated from Turkish occupation but forced to accept a much smaller homeland than expected. 8 saintly Macauleys] Zachary Macaulay (1768–1838; DNB), one of the leaders (along with Wilberforce) of the campaign against slavery, and his son, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59; DNB), then a rising Whig politician. 9 white sugar … made by free blacks] A threat that, should slavery be abolished (which it was in 1833), conservatives would implement reverse boycotts – refusing to use sugar made by freed slaves. 10 Sierra Leone] The British colony in West Africa established in 1787 as a homeland for slaves repatriated from England and the United States. As MacKenzie points out, ‘Blackwood’s Magazine always contended that the British settlement, at SierraLeone, was a mere job, to benefit Macaulay, by opening a new market for his mer­ cantile house of Macaulay and Babington’ (vol. 5, p. 39n.). 11 the Bedlamite Whigs] A pun on the ‘Benthamite Whigs’, whose leader, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832; DNB), was one of the progenitors of utilitarianism in Britain. ‘Bedlam’ was a famous asylum in London. 12 Lord Chancellors … envy their sees] An allusion to Henry Brougham (1778–1868; DNB), the one-time defender of Queen Caroline (see pp. 160–70 above) who was now Lord Chancellor. MacKenzie records that in 1831 Brougham ‘concluded his speech on the Reform Bill, when it came before the Lords, by entreating them, “Yea, even on bended knee,” to pause before they rejected a measure which the British nation were resolved to have. He also recommended the Bishops, if they meant to vote against the Bill, “to set their house in order”’ (MacKenzie, vol. 5, p. 40n.). 13 Tinkers of Brummagem town] ‘Brummagem’ is a corruption of ‘Birmingham’. Tickler here raises the spectre of a type of extremist reform that would replace traditional peers with common workers from the industrial north. 14 ‘National Guards’] The National Guard was formed by the French people on 13 July 1789, the day before the storming of the Bastille. According to the lore of British royalists, this army was notoriously lawless and corrupt. 15 La Fayette] Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), French general who fought with the colonists during the American Revolution and led the National Guard during the French Revolution. 311

Explanatory notes to pages 259–75

16 Burdett] Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844; DNB), long-time leader of Parliamentary radicals. 17 to bully—a woman—a Queen] An echo from Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791), where Burke attempts to evoke strong pity for Marie Antoinette, claiming that her imprisonment at the hands of a band of ruffians signaled that the ‘age of chivalry is gone’ and ‘the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever’. 18 the wife of our Monarch] William IV’s wife, Queen Adelaide, was a staunch Tory who steadfastly opposed the Reform Bill. 19 Prime-Minister Sheil] Richard Lalor Sheil (1791–1851; DNB), Irish writer and politi­ cian who served as O’Connell’s right-hand man during the latter stages of the campaign for Catholic Emancipation. 20 O’Connell the First] Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847; DNB), leading Irish nationalist of the 1820s.

Maria Abdy, ‘My Very Particular Friend’ (1834) 1 ‘Rise gentle moon’] A song from J. R. Planché and John Barnett’s historical opera Charles the Twelfth (1827). 2 Malibran’s] Maria Malibran (1808–36), Spanish opera star who performed in London on several occasions in the late 1820s and early 1830s. 3 Blackwood] Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, one of the age’s most influential literary reviews. 4 duns] Demands for the payment of debts. 5 pelf] ‘Money, wealth, riches; now depreciatory’ (OED). 6 a slattern] A slob.

Maria Abdy, ‘A Governess Wanted’ (1838) 7 forty guineas a year] A relatively paltry income, particularly for someone raised in the middle or upper classes, as most governesses were.

Charles Dickens, ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’ (1841) 1 scamp] A rascal or ne’er-do-well. 2 Tory] Dickens’s repetition of the label ‘Tory’ is worth noting, since the term had become slightly archaic by the late 1830s, when Tories had used their status as the opposition as an opportunity to rechristen themselves the Conservative Party. Dick­ ens is therefore purposely calling up all the negative connotations associated with the recently jettisoned party name. 3 gibbets] ‘Originally synonymous with gallows, but in later use signifying an upright post with projecting arm from which the bodies of criminals were hung in chains or irons after execution’ (OED). 4 Argus] The figure in myth who had one hundred eyes. 5 This brave old code … fine old English lies] From the 1790s forward, the government organized extensive spy networks to monitor the activities of reformers and radi­ 312

Explanatory notes to pages 275–76

cals. As Dickens suggests, these spies were known to bait working-class radicals into making ‘seditious’ or ‘unpatriotic’ comments, for which they would subsequently be arrested. 6 good old Yeomanry to stop his peevish cries] An allusion to the Manchester Yeomanry, who were notorious for committing some of the worst atrocities at Peterloo (see p. 308, notes 16 and 27 above). 7 hunting men who held their fathers’ creed] Catholics and Dissenters were systematically persecuted during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Not until the late 1820s, with the passage of the Catholic Relief Act and the repeal of the Corpo­ ration and Test Acts, could non-Anglicans hold government offices. 8 William Pitt … more than railroad speed] William Pitt the Younger, Tory Prime Minister from 1783–1801 and 1804–06. Obviously, the ‘railroad speed’ analogy is an anach­ ronism, but the idea here is that Pitt, who became Prime Minister in his midtwenties, was at the time widely hailed by the Tory faithful as a heaven-sent prodigy. 9 the press … any tuneful lark] Several late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century newspapers were either owned by government officials or received bribes to puff the current administration. 10 the days for taxes] Faced with war-time deficits, Pitt created the income tax in 1799. Other burdensome taxes of the era were the stamp, advertisement, and paper duties, which were increased on several occasions during the late eighteenth and early nine­ teenth centuries in the name of curtailing the radical press. 11 war’s infernal din] Britain was at war with France almost constantly between 1793 and 1815. See the introduction to Barbauld’s Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (pp. 118–29 above). 12 For shutting men … Prince was altogether thin] Leigh Hunt, the editor of the Examiner, was convicted of seditious libel in 1812 for publishing attacks on the Prince Regent. Dickens is probably thinking here of Charles Lamb’s ‘Triumph of the Whale’ (see pp. 130–33 above), which was part of the Examiner’s campaign to discredit Prince George. 13 Tolerance] As embodied in the repeal of the Test Act (1828), Catholic Emancipation (1829), the Reform Act (1832), and the emancipation of slaves (1833). 14 dear bread] It was during Liverpool’s Tory administration that the Corn Law was originally passed. This statute was widely blamed for increasing the price of bread. See Elliott’s Corn Law Rhymes (pp. 229–36 above). 15 brand] ‘Brand’ here might be taken to mean either a sword, a torch, or the branding of slaves. For satires on the repression of the Irish under Tory rule, see Coleridge’s ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’ (pp. 68–73 above) and Byron’s ‘The Irish Avatar’ (pp. 171–78 above).

313

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 2 Collected Satires II: Extracts from Longer Satires

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 General Editor: John Strachan Consultant Editor: Steven E. Jones Volume Editors: Nicholas Mason David Walker Benjamin Colbert John Strachan Jane Moore

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 2 Collected Satires II: Extracts from Longer Satires

Edited by David Walker

First published 2003 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2003 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

British Satire, 1785–1840 1. Verse satire, English 2. English poetry – 19th century 3. English poetry – 18th century I. Strachan, John (John R.) II. Jones, Steven E. (Steven Edward), 1959– III. Gifford, William, 1756–1826 IV. Moore, Thomas, 1779–1852. Satires of Thomas Moore V. Shorter Satires VI. Extracts from longer satires VII. Complete longer satires 821’.07’0807 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

British Satire, 1785–1840 / general editor, John Strachan p. cm Includes bibliographical references. Contents: v. 1. Shorter satires / edited by Nicholas Mason – v. 2. Extracts from longer satires / edited by David Walker – v. 3. Complete longer satires/ edited by Benjamin Colbert – v. 4. Satires of William Gifford / edited by John Strachan – v. 5. Satires of Thomas Moore edited by Jane Moore. 1. Verse satire, English. 2. English poetry – 19th century. 3. English poetry – 18th century. I. Strachan, John (John R.) PR1195.S3 B75 2002 821’.708–dc21 2002066203 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-729-2 (set)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services

CONTENTS List of Short Titles

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction by David Walker

xi

George Ellis From Criticisms on the Rolliad (1784–85)

1

Thomas James Mathias From The Pursuits of Literature (1794–97; 1798)

8

Richard Polwhele The Unsex’d Females (1798)

33

Eaton Stannard Barrett From All the Talents; A Satirical Poem (1807)

48

Lady Anne Hamilton From The Epics of the Ton (1807)

65

Richard Mant From The Simpliciad (1808)

83

Lord Byron From English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809)

100

George Daniel From The Modern Dunciad, A Satire (1814)

106

Thomas Love Peacock From Sir Proteus: A Satirical Ballad (1814)

115

‘S. T. Colebritche’ From Christabess (1816)

134

Percy Bysshe Shelley From Oedipus Tyrannus, or, Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820) From Peter Bell the Third (1819)

152 163

Henry Luttrell From Letters to Julia, in Rhyme (1820; 1822)

180

v

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

John Keats From The Cap and Bells, or The Jealousies (1819)

189

Lord Byron From Don Juan (1819–24)

200

Anon. From Khouli Khan (1820)

209

Lord Byron The Vision of Judgment (1821)

217

William Combe From The Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of a Wife (1821)

229

Sir Charles and Lady Morgan From The Mohawks: A Satirical Poem with Notes (1822)

244

Robert Montgomery From The Age Reviewed (1827)

255

Explanatory Notes

269

vi

LIST OF SHORT TITLES Butler and Green eds, Cornell Wordsworth

James Butler and Karen Green, eds, Lyrical Ballads, and Other Poems, 1797–1800, by William Wordsworth, Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press, 1992.

Curtis ed., Cornell Wordsworth

Jared Curtis ed., Poems in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800–1807, by William Wordsworth, Ithaca, NY and Lon­ don, Cornell University Press, 1983.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 volumes, ed. David Womersley, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1995.

McGann ed., BCPW

Jerome J. McGann, (ed.), Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, 7 volumes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980–93.

Marchand ed., BLJ

Leslie A. Marchand, (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals, 13 vol­ umes, London, John Murray, 1973–94.

Woof ed., The Critical Heritage

Robert Woof (ed.), The Critical Heritage: William Wordsworth, London, Routledge, 2001.

vii

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://tayl ora ndfra nci s.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank John Strachan for giving me the opportunity to edit this vol­ ume and Marian Olney at Pickering & Chatto for applying the necessary pressure to complete it. John saved me from some appalling howlers at the proof-reading stage. Doubtless there are others lying in wait: for these I accept full responsibility. Thanks too are due to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for setting the text, to Jill Britton for help with word-processing, and to Dan Jackson for last-minute copying. Howard Wickes carried out the Latin translations, for which I am very grateful. For translations from the Greek, I would like to thank Tom Dawkes. Northumbria University granted me a timely sabbatical in the first semester of 2002–03. For listening to my interminable complaints about finishing this volume I would like to thank the following: David Amigoni, Victoria Bazin, John Burnett, Dermot Cav­ anagh, Don MacRaild, Stuart Sim, and Richard Terry.

ix

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://tayl ora ndfra nci s.com

INTRODUCTION

The years between 1785 and 1840 witnessed a veritable industry of satirical writing, much of which, with the exception of the major canonical writers, is little read today. Recent scholarship in this area has tried to redress this relative neglect and situate satirical writing in the period in relation to its political, cultural and socio-economic moment.1 This is an absolute necessity given the highly topical nature of satirical writing in this period. Contemporary readers would have needed little in the way of guidance to pick up on the savagery of Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus, or, Swellfoot the Tyrant with its barely disguised allegory of the Queen Caroline scandal of 1820–21. Nor would the literary establishment have needed similar guidance to read Byron’s barbed response to Southey’s sycophantic eulogy to George III upon the latter’s death in 1820. Byron and Shelley, of course, have never lacked for critical admiration and the secondary bibliography on both of these writers is extensive. For much of the verse in this volume, however, the opposite is true. Who now reads Mathias, the Morgans, Mant, or Eaton Stannard Barrett? Yet satire, as Steven Jones has recently argued, ‘is the dominant generic construct, the modal anvil over and against which early-nineteenth-century literature gets clustered, hammered out, formed, and hard­ ened into a recognizable poetic movement, to be ensconced in literary history as uniquely representative of the spirit of the age’.2 The satirical works in this volume cannot now easily be read without reference to extensive footnotes. The revolutions in America and France, the domestic political repression of the 1790s, the Napoleonic wars, fears of female cries for equality on the part of the male establishment, and the lower class radicalism of the period in general, have rightly attracted a very large number of studies by scholars of literature and history.3 Other strongly represented concerns include Catholic emancipation, the scandalous behaviour of the Prince Regent – especially in his relations with his wife – and the often vituperative attacks on poetry that in its day was innovative and that we now recognise as central to the canon of Romanticism. Similarly, literary scholars of Romanticism have mapped to a very significant extent the relationship between poetry and political behaviour. Nowhere is this more apparent than in works concerned with the 1790s, where Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake, in par­ ticular have come in for intense critical scrutiny. Wordsworth’s reputation in the period is one of the key themes in this anthology. Vilified by Mant and Mathias, and by many others in the 1790s for his radicalism, Wordsworth and his so-called ‘Lake­ land’ colleagues – Coleridge and Southey – was similarly the butt of much satire in xi

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

the Regency period for his perceived conservatism. In the eyes of the ‘younger gen­ eration’ of Romantic writers, the members of the Lakeland school betrayed the ideals of radical reform that they espoused in their youth. Wordsworth and Col­ eridge have defied their detractors and are considered representative of the best poetry written, not just in the period, but also in the entirety of English literary history.4 Richard Mant’s The Simpliciad is an extended attack on Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes (1807) and is based upon the latter’s revolutionary turn away from the established models of poetic diction associated primarily with English neo-Augus­ tan poetry and its greatest practitioners, Dryden and Pope.5 In Mant’s view Wordsworth in 1807 had learned nothing from the travesty, which was Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1800).6 Arguing that Wordsworth was guilty of offences against poetic art, the deeply conservative Mant would find surprising allies some ten years later in the radical aristocratic republicans Byron and Shelley, and in The Examiner, a periodical edited by Leigh and John Hunt. Given that Wordsworth was attracting vitriolic comments from all points on the political and critical spectrum for most of the period under consideration in this volume, then this in itself is indicative of the extent to which he was radicalising the language of English poetry. Yet radicalism in the Romantic period is very much in the eyes of the beholder. Satirical writing in the period came from, and attacked, all points on the political and cultural spectrum. The emphasis changed from one decade to the next. The defin­ ing political events of the period up until the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, was the Revolution in France, and the almost twenty years of war with the French that followed. These events were looked at in England from widely disparate points of view. For many conservatives the revolution meant republican­ ism, and an attack upon English liberties enshrined in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For reformers and radicals the French Revolution provided a beacon for those who believed the government was intent upon depriving the population of those self-same liberties in defence of ‘an unfair system of parliamentary representa­ tion’, and the denial of basic rights of equality to Catholics and Dissenters.7 Throughout, Napoleon enjoyed a highly ambivalent reputation with Romantic writ­ ers.8 When the Government acted in what seemed like a panic-driven fashion and introduced extremely repressive legislation to suspend Habeus Corpus, and ban all but the smallest of public gatherings, this view seemed to be confirmed. The writings of Rousseau, both fictional and non-fictional, the works of Thomas Paine, Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s, and the activities of the London Correspond­ ing Society, set the radical agenda for the Tory backlash that scarred the politics of the age until the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832 temporarily took the sting out of contemporary political agitation. In the political literature of the period it is Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), that sets the conservative and Tory schema, ironically given Burke’s lifelong adherence to Whig political prin­ ciples. As Jonathan Clark has pointed out, ‘After the publication of the Reflections Burke was rightly indignant that Dissenting propagandists tried to pin the label “Tory” on himself. He rightly knew its earlier meanings’.9 Moreover, Burke was fully xii

Introduction

aware that reform in France was well overdue: it was the means by which it pro­ ceeded that aroused his indignation. Accordingly Burke is prominently and positively featured in one of the most politically reactionary satires of the 1790s, Mathias’s The Pursuits of Literature, which along with Gifford’s The Baeviad, is perhaps the most important book length Tory classical satire of the decade.10 Burke’s views were badly misrepresented or misunderstood by Tory satirists in the period. Insofar as religion is concerned Mathias’s extended rants in The Pursuits against French Catholic émigrés would find little intellectual support in Burke’s Reflections. Burke believed wholeheartedly in religious toleration, and although he had no time whatsoever for believers in Catholic dogma, he saw no reason to per­ secute them for their beliefs. He felt exactly the same about Dissenters, though Tom Paulin has pointed out in his work on Hazlitt that Burke’s toleration of Dissent did not extend to Unitarians.11 Anti-Catholicism, however, is a powerful discourse in the period. In The Age Reviewed, for instance, Robert Montgomery launches a blistering attack on popery that is separated from Mathias’s Pursuits by thirty years, something that signifies the strength and staying power of anticatholicism in these islands. In the late 1820s when toleration for Catholics was about to be enshrined in parlia­ mentary legislation, feelings of hatred for the Roman church, and all that it was perceived to stand for by the Protestant establishment, was running very high. Polit­ ical and religious reform was at the heart of public debate in the period: they were inevitably discussed in conjunction with one another. Just as inevitably the discus­ sion was heated in the extreme. Divisions within Protestantism occurred vertically and horizontally on whether Catholic Emancipation ought to be realised or not.12 Indeed, a spirited defence of the Church of England was considered a necessity given the godless Gallicism that was being infiltrated into the country throughout the 1790s by domestic disciples of French Revolutionary principles. It was common, for instance, in the satirical writings of the conservative at the end of the eighteenth century to link various forms of radicalism (women’s rights, lower class agitation, republicanism) with at best anti-clericalism, and at worst, atheism, again one of the widely perceived beliefs ascribed to French revolutionary thought.13 Yet in the first instance English reaction to the French Revolution was overwhelmingly positive. The French, it was assumed, would follow the English model of 1688 and inaugu­ rate a constitutional monarchy. Such optimism extended even to Pitt, who believed that the French Revolution would bring about much needed reform and that a pre­ occupation with domestic affairs would distract the French from following an aggressive and bellicose foreign policy: ‘So far as the British Government was con­ cerned, sympathy for the cause of reform in France was tinged with condescension and complacency’.14 Such an attitude was to change very quickly. By the mid-1790s William Pitt felt himself besieged by radicalism. He was fight­ ing ‘a war on two fronts’: against the godless forces of republicanism in France, and against indigenous radicals organised into popular societies at home. ‘Convinced, or claiming to be, that the popular movement for parliamentary reform was in fact a revolutionary republican movement, on 12 May 1794 the Government began arrest­ ing and interrogating the leaders of the two leading radical societies in London, the xiii

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

more polite Society for Constitutional Information and the more popular London Corresponding Society’.15 The London Corresponding Society (LCS) was the flag­ ship organisation of a network of societies spread throughout the country. Its leaders were among the most celebrated (or notorious) radicals of the 1790s. Tho­ mas Hardy and John Thelwall were the central figures in the Government’s botched attempt to create showcase trials for treason in 1794. The acquittal of Hardy whose trial began on 25 October 1794 took place against the backdrop of celebrations that began three days before the verdict was announced. Huge crowds greeted Hardy upon his emergence from the Old Bailey as a free man. Had a verdict of guilty been returned, ‘then this would have undoubtedly provoked a riot’. In December Thel­ wall was acquitted and the charges against the remaining prisoners arrested in the sweep of the LCS earlier in 1794, were dropped. One of the consequences of Hardy’s acquittal for William Pitt was that it was now possible to ridicule him, ‘to represent [Pitt] as a figure of fun’.16 Hardy’s attorney in the 1794 trial was the bril­ liant Whig barrister Thomas Erskine, who defended successfully Thomas Paine against charges of seditious libel in 1792. Erskine was also a member of the socalled ‘Talents Ministry’, where he came in for his own fair share of ridicule at the hands of Eaton Stannard Barrett in his satire of 1807, All the Talents. A prominent figure in the trials as well as the politics of the period, both cultural and otherwise, was the radical philosopher William Godwin. Godwin’s Cursory Stric­ tures on the Charge delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre to the Grand Jury, October 2, 1794 was a literary sensation when it appeared. Indeed, according to Hazlitt in his The Spirit of the Age, Godwin’s pamphleteering skills greatly assisted the defendants’ acquittal at the treason trials in 1794. Of Godwin’s Remarks on Judge Eyre’s Charge to the Jury, Hazlitt wrote that ‘it gave a turn to the trials … and possibly saved the lives of twelve innocent individuals marked out as political victims to the Moloch of Legiti­ macy, which then skulked behind a British throne’.17 As such Godwin was the darling of the radical intellectual left. This was far from being the case with the Gov­ ernment, and its apologists, however. In The Pursuits Mathias savagely attacks Godwin, both in the text of the poem proper, and also in its footnotes. Mathias refers with contempt to Godwin’s celebrated and notorious Enquiry Concerning Politi­ cal Justice (1793). In an extensive footnote that in the 1798 edition stretches across seven pages, Mathias excoriates Godwin for producing a work that demonstrates ‘a certain cold-blooded indifference to all the mild, pious, and honourable feelings of our common nature, like all the philosophers of the new sect’.18 Mathias goes on to refer the reader to Burke’s Reflections for a rebuttal of the new philosophy. Insofar as his impact upon a wide range of literary radicals in the Romantic period is concerned, Godwin’s influence can hardly be overstated. The lover, then husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the father of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and the father-in-law of the godless republican poet, Percy Shelley, an enormous influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge in the early to mid-1790s, Godwin can be seen at the centre of the period’s cultural politics.19 Godwin’s reputation in this period was immense: to contemporaries he was either famous or notorious according to their political beliefs. As the Romantic period’s greatest literary and cultural critic has xiv

Introduction

observed, ‘Godwin blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice, was the theme, his name was not far off ’.20 This was the case in his personal as well as professional life. When Godwin published Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft in 1798 he provided a focal point for conservative outrage at the growing demand for equality for women of which Wollstonecraft’s was the most prominent voice. Judged by the standards of the time Wollstonecraft led a scandalous life. While she was in Paris witnessing at first hand the revolution, Wollstonecraft had an affair with the American land speculator and occasional man of letters, Gilbert Imlay, leading to the birth of an illegitimate daughter, Fanny Imlay in May 1794. Imlay promptly deserted her and Wollstonecraft found herself (reluctantly) back in England, and eventually in tandem with Godwin. The savagery of Polwhele’s attack on Wollstonecraft in The Unsex’d Females testi­ fies to the strength of her opinions and the attention that they were attracting. The quality of The Vindication of the Rights of Women as a work of art is far greater than Pol­ whele’s vituperative satire. Posterity, therefore, has given Wollstonecraft the last word. Polwhele’s argument has little in the way of logic and rests instead upon per­ sonal insult that sometimes verges on hysteria. Nevertheless, the poem appealed to those who saw female calls for equality as yet another manifestation of a world being turned upside down. The sexual double standard is, as in much of the period’s literature, alive and well in The Unsex’d Females. Given the concentrated vituperation and relative brevity of Polwhele’s poem it has been included in its entirety in this volume. In Letters to Julia (1822), Henry Luttrell, a member of the Holland House circle of aristocratic Whigs, similarly subscribes, though in a more urbane and sophisticated manner to the dangers represented by female sexuality. The poet’s ‘cousin’ Julia, a beautiful young widow, is taken roundly to task for leading on his friend Charles. Luttrell uses the remonstrance to Julia that opens each of the four letters comprising the poem, as a vehicle to comment upon high society in the early 1820s. Given Luttrell’s friendship with Byron and the general atmosphere of Regency libertinism, the poet’s comments upon Julia’s morals are little short of rank hypocrisy. As the reviewer for Blackwood’s magazine was quick to point out, in the world of the poem Julia is nothing more than a kept woman, and as such she attracts the reviewer’s opprobrium. Attacks upon women and their place in society were by no means confined to men. Included also in this volume, therefore, is a significant extract from Lady Anne Hamilton’s Epics of the Ton (1807), a poem in two books, concerned with Regency high society, written from within by a woman appalled at the amorality of men and women from her own class. As the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton Lady Anne was in a particularly good position to comment on the aristocracy and on the liber­ tinism of prominent members of the ton, a cant term for those at the top of the social ladder. This involves a series of pen portraits of prominent figures and con­ temporary scandal such as Maria Fitzherbert’s affair with the Prince of Wales, and the latter’s relations with Lady Jersey, the wife of the Duke of Dorset, amongst many other vituperative sketches of aristocratic, usually married women with little in the xv

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

way of moral rectitude. Indeed, amorality amongst the highest ranks of society was deemed by many sectors of society to be pervasive. Not since the age of Charles II in the later seventeenth century had such dissolution been evident at court and among the aristocracy, a factor referred to explicitly by Hamilton in her poem.21 The satellite around which this operated was the court of the Prince of Wales. Book one of the poem ends with a thinly disguised attack on the recently deceased Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, the most celebrated and brilliant Whig politi­ cal hostess of the late eighteenth century. This latter point deserves attention as the subjects of attack in the Epics of the Ton, ostensibly chosen because of their loose sex­ ual morals, are invariably Whig in their political orientation. A poem that similarly follows the tack of giving advice to women is William Combe’s Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife (1821). Syntax’s perambulations around his rural living and his visit to London consist to a very large extent of him offering advice to women on how they best may satisfy their husbands by being obedient. The extract from Dr Syntax, in its concentration on country bumptiousness and plain values provides a rural context that complements and contrasts with the urbane and sophisticated world of London club life rendered by Luttrell. Combe’s characters, as the headnote to the extract elaborates in more detail, are Fieldingesque in their characterisation. The condescension with which Combe treats his characters panders to stereotypes current in the period regarding the uncultivated simplicity of life in the country. The deference with which he is treat by those he meets and advises on their marital condition is indicative of the an old fashioned Tory patriarchalism that was under siege in the industrialised parts of the country at large. The focal point for much radical satire in the early nineteenth century continued to be George, Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent. His profligacy, the corruption of his court, and his marriage was a touchstone of radical dissent. The scandalous affair of George’s treatment of Caroline of Brunswick had entertained and outraged the country almost from its beginning in 1795. George’s repeated adultery, his indif­ ference and then cruelty to his wife were notorious. Between 1815 and 1820 what came to be known as the Queen Caroline crisis gathered momentum. This was exacerbated by the hardship being undergone by the poorer elements in society caused by the Corn Law of 1815 prohibiting the sale of imported corn, therefore maintaining an artificially high price for bread. Added to this there was punitive tax­ ation in the wake of the end of the Napoleonic wars, and the massacre at St Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819. These years marked the heyday of the radical press in the period. The ‘mass-circulation of working class journals such as William Cob­ bett’s Political Register,’ Thomas Wooler’s Black Dwarf, and William Sherwin’s Weekly Political Register – ‘taken over by Richard Carlile in 1819 – ’ were highly critical of the Establishment.22 An example of popular pandering to the extremely negative image in the country of the Prince Regent occurs in 1819–20 when the radical press sati­ rises the Regent, soon to be George IV, as a tyrannical husband and a tyrannical king. Kouli Khan (1820) is one such example of literary popular culture written in the form of a pamphlet in verse allegorising the attempts of a Persian tyrant trying desxvi

Introduction

perately, and without success, to divorce his wife in the face of his subjects’ disapproval. Texts that are similarly concerned with the marriage of the Regent include Lady Ann Hamilton’s Epics of the Ton, Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus, or, Swellfoot the Tyrant, and Keats’s The Cap and the Bells. British satire between 1785 and 1840 is a highly diverse literary form that investi­ gates a bewildering array of events, political processes, religious and political ideologies, and personalities. In its topicality and in its often trenchant critique of contemporary society satire in the period is demonstrative of how committed Romantic writers were to voicing their dissatisfaction with their leaders, their betters and their peers.

1 Steven E. Jones, Satire and Romanticism, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2000. Gary Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790–1820, Oxford, Clarendon, 1994. 2 Jones, Satire and Romanticism, p. 5. 3 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, Penguin, revised edition, 1980. Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988. Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornogra­ phers in London, 1795–1840, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988. John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000. Rich­ ard Cronin, The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth, London, Macmillan, 2000. 4 Southey is a notable exception, although his reputation is currently undergoing some­ thing of a reassessment. 5 See the ‘preface’ to Lyrical Ballads. 6 See below, The Simpliciad, pp. 83–99; Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, pp. 100–05; ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan, pp. 202–05. 7 Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 40. 8 The most recent book-length treatment of this subject is Simon Bainbridge, Napoleon and English Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 9 Clark, ed. Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 24. 10 For The Baviad see Vol. 4, pp. 1–30. 11 Tom Paulin, The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt’s Radical Style, London, Faber, 1998, p. 9. 12 Jonathan Clark, English Society, 1660–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 518. 13 See Mathias, The Pursuits of Literature, pp. 8–32; Polwhele, The Unsex’d Females, pp. 33–47. 14 John W. Derry, Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt and Liverpool, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001, p. 53 15 Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death, p. 29. 16 Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death, p. 365; Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, p. 148–49. 17 Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age; quoted by Paulin, The Day-Star of Liberty, p. 13. 18 See below, p. 20. xvii

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 19 Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1984. Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988. Richard Cronin, The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000. Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death. Janet Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life, London, Phoenix, 2001. 20 William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age, ed. E. D. Mackerness, London, Northcote House, 1991, pp. 35–36. 21 See Hamilton’s footnote, below, p. 67. 22 Frank O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History 1688–1832, London, Arnold, 1997, p. 252. See also McCalman, Radical Underworld, passim.

xviii

GEORGE ELLIS

From Criticisms on the Rolliad (1785) [First published in Criticisms on the Rolliad, London, James Ridgeway, 1785, pp. 27–31, 39–44, 47–51. Criticisms on the Rolliad is a fictional review of a mock epic. It derives its name from its principal target, John Rolle (1750–1842; DNB), an avid Tory member for parliament and zealous supporter of William Pitt (1759–1806; DNB). The Rolliad purports to relate the adventures of Duke Rolle, the MP’s imaginary medieval ances­ tor, in a form that parodies Virgil’s Aeneid. The impetus of the poem’s content derives from the formation of the Pitt administration in late 1783 and the election of 1784, which saw Pitt’s confirmation as Prime Minister. No opportunity is lost to satirise the new Tory government’s actions in both houses of parliament. The work’s initial place of publication was in the Morning Herald and the Daily Advertiser, where it was serialised during 1784–85. When it appeared in book form Criticisms on the Rol­ liad went through twenty-two editions. Authorship of the volume derives from the members of the Whig political club, Esto Perpetua which included such figures as the antiquarian, George Ellis (1753–1815; DNB), who was later to switch political alle­ giance and became a leading satirical light in the high Tory Anti-Jacobin (1797–98), the Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, French Laurence (1757–1809; DNB), and General Richard Fitzpatrick (1747–1813; DNB), the friend of the brilliant Whig orator Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB). Of these Ellis is the chief contributor. In terms of tone Criticisms on the Rolliad is often vituperative and Juvenalian, with every opportunity taken to lampoon William Pitt and member of the board of con­ trol for India, Henry Dundas (1742–1811; DNB), the former for his youth and precocity and the latter for his dissolute behaviour. Represented below are Numbers II and IV in their entirety, and a substantial extract from Number V.]

1

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-1

NUMBER II. Our author, after giving an account of the immediate descendants of Rollo, finds himself considerably embarrassed by the three unfortunate Rollos,* whom history relates to have been hanged. From this difficulty, however, he relieves himself, by a contrivance equally new and arduous, viz. by verifying the bill of indictment, and inserting in it a flaw, by which they are saved from condemnation. But in the transac­ tions of those early times, however dignified the phraseology, and enlivened by fancy, there is little to amaze and less to interest; let us hasten, therefore, to those characters about whom, not to be solicitous, is to want curiosity, and whom not to admire, is to want gratitude—to those characters, in short, whose splendour illumi­ nates the present House of Commons. Of these, our author’s principal favourite appears to be that amiable young Noble­ man, whose †Diary we have all perused with so much pleasure, Of him he says,— —superior to abuse, He nobly glories in the name of GOOSE; Such Geese at Rome from the perfidious Gaul, Preserv’d the Treas’ry-Bench and Capitol, &c. &c.2

In the description of Lord Mahon,3 our author departs a little from his wonted gravity,— —This Quixote of the Nation, Beats his own Windmills in gesticulation, To strike, not please, his utmost force he bends, And all his sense is at his fingers end, &c. &c.

But the most beautiful effort of our author’s genius, (if we except only the char­ acter of Mr Rolle himself) is contained in the description of Mr Pitt.4 Pert without fire, without experience sage, Young with more art that Sh—ne5 glean’d from age, Too proud from pilfer’d greatness to descend, Too humble not to call Dundas6 his friend, In solemn dignity and sullen state, This new Octavius7rises to debate! Mild and more mild he sees each placid row Of Country Gentlemen with rapture glow; He sees, convuls’d with sympathetic throbs, * See the Genealogy, pp. 21, 22.1 † The Diary is inserted among the Miscellaneous pieces at the end of this Pamphlet.

2

Ellis (from The Rolliad) Apprentice Peers, and deputy—Nabobs! Nor Rum Contractors think his speech too long, While words, like treacle, trickle from his Tongue! O Soul congenial to the Souls of Rolles! Whether you tax the luxury of Coals, Or vote some necessary millions more, To feed an Indian friend’s exhausted store. Fain would I praise (if I like thee could praise) Thy matchless virtues in congenial lays, But Ah! too weak, &c. &c.

This apology, however, is like the ‘nolo episcopari’8 of Bishops; for our author con­ tinues his panegyric during about one hundred and fifty lines more, after which he proceeds to a task (as he says) more congenial to his abilities, and paints ——in smooth confectionary stile, The simpering sadness of his Mulgrave’s9 smile.

From the character of this nobleman we shall only select a part of one couplet, which tends to elucidate our author’s astonishing powers in imitative harmony, —— ‘within his lab’ring throat The shrill shriek struggles with the harsh hoarse note’.

As we mean to excite, and not to satisfy at once the curiosity of our readers, we shall here put a period to our extracts for the present. We cannot, however, con­ clude this essay, without observing, that there are very few lines in the whole work which are at all inferior to those we have selected for the entertainment of our readers.

NUMBER IV. A New edition (being the nineteenth) of this universally admired poem, having been recently published, the ingenious author has taken that opportunity to introduce some new lines on an occasion perfectly congenial to his muse, and in the highest degree interesting to the public, namely, the late Fast and Thanksgiving; together with the famous discourse preached in celebration of that day by that illustrious orator and divine, the Reverend* Mr Secretary Prettyman.11—This episode, which is emphati­ cally termed by himself, in his prefatory address to this last edition, his Episode Parsonic, seems to have been written perfectly con amore,12 and is considered by critics as one of the happiest effusions of the distinguished genius from whose highrapped fancy it originated. It consists of nine-and-forty lines, of which, without * Dr Prettyman having particularly distinguished himself by a late transaction with Mr Wedgewood,10 some EPIGRAMS have appeared on the subject, which we have thought worthy of a place among the Miscellaneous Pieces in our Appendix.

3

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

farther exordium, we shall submit the following extracts to the inspection, or, more properly speaking, the admiration of our readers. He sets out with a most spirited compliment to Dr Prettyman. The two first lines are considered by critics as the most successful example of the alliterative ornament upon record. Prim Preacher, Prince of Priests, and* Prince’s Priest; Pembroke’s pale pride-in Pitt’s praecordia plac’d. —Thy merits all shall future ages scan And PRINCE be lost in PARSON Prettyman.

The beauty of the historical allusion to Prince Prettyman, need not be pointed out to our readers; and the presage that the fame of this Royal personage shall be lost and absorbed in the rising reputation of the ingenious divine, is peculiarly ingenious and well turned. The celebrated passage of Virgil, ‘Tu Marcellus eris’.13

is supposed to have been in the Poet’s recollection at the moment of his conceiving the passage, not that the ‘Oh miserande puer!’14

in the preceding line, is imagined to have excited any idea of Mr Pitt. Our author now pursues his Hero to the pulpit, and there, in imitation of Homer, who always takes the opportunity for giving a minute description of his personæ, when they are on the very verge of entering upon an engagement, he gives a laboured, but animated detail of the Doctor’s personal manners and deportment. Speaking of the penetrating countenance for which the Doctor is distinguished, he says, Argus15 could boast an hundred eyes, ’tis true, The Doctor looks an hundred ways with two: Gimlets they are, and bore you through and through.

This is a very elegant and classic compliment, and shews clearly what a decided advantage our Reverend Hero possesses over the celebrated ȅij șĮ ȜμĮįȠȣȜȠȢ of antiquity. Addison16 is justly famous in the literary world, for the judgment with which he selects and applies familiar words to great occasions, as in the instances: ——‘The great, the important day, Big with the fate of Cato and of Rome—— ‘The fun grows dim with age, &c. &’.

This is a very great beauty, for it fares with ideas, as with individuals; we are the more interested in their fate, the better we are acquainted with them. But how infe­ rior is Addison in this respect to our author? Gim’ets they are, &c.

* The Doctor is Chaplain to his Majesty.—He was bred at Pembroke-hall, in Cambridge.

4

Ellis (from The Rolliad)

There is not such a word in all Cato! How well-known and domestic the image! How specific and forcible the application!—Our author proceeds: Having described very accurately the stile of the Doctor’s hair-dressing, and devoted ten beautiful lines to an eulogy upon the brilliant on the little finger of his right hand, of which he emphatically says: No veal putrescent, no dead whiting’s eye, Is the true water with this ring could vie;

he breaks out into the following most inspirited and vigorous apostrophe— Oh! had you seen his lily, lily hand, Strike his spare cheek, and coax his snow-white band: That adding force to all his pow’rs of speech, This the protector of his sacred breech; That point the way to Heav’n’s cœlestial grace, This keep his small-clothes in their proper place. Oh! how the comely preacher you had prais’d, As now the right, and now the left he rais’d!!!

Who does not perceive, in this description, as if before their eyes, the thin figure of emaciated divinity, divided between religion and decorum; anxious to produce some truths, and conceal others; at once concerned for fundamental points of various kinds; ever at the bottom of things.—Who does not see this, and seeing who does not admire? The notes that accompany this excellent episode, contain admirable instances of our author’s profound knowledge in all the literature of our established religion; and we are sorry that our plan will not suffer us to produce them, as a full and decisive proof that his learning is perfectly on a level with his genius, and his divinity quite equal to his poetry.

NUMBER V. On Monday last, the twentieth edition of this incomparable poem made its appear­ ance: and we may safely venture to predict, that should it be followed by an hundred more while the fertile and inexhaustible genius of the author continues to enrich every new edition with new beauties, they will not fail to run through, with the same rapidity that the former have done; so universal is the enthusiasm prevailing among the genuine lovers of poetry, and all persons of acknowledged taste, with respect to this wonderful and unparalleled production. What chiefly distinguishes this edition, and renders it peculiarly interesting at the present moment, is the admirable description contained in it of the newly-appointed India Board;17 in which the characters of the members composing it are most happily, though perhaps somewhat severely, contrasted with those to whom the same high office had been allotted by a former administration. ... 5

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

The next character is most ingeniously described, but like a former one, containing some personal allusions, requires in order to be fully understood, a more intimate acquaintance with the exterior qualifications of the gentleman in question, than can have fallen to the lot of every reader. All who have had the pleasure of seeing him, however, will immediately acknowledge the resemblance of the portrait. ... What plenteous stores of knowledge may contain The spacious tenement of Grenville’s18 brain! Nature, in all her dispensations wise, Who form’d his head-piece of so vast a size, Hath not, ’tis true, neglected to bestow Its due proportion to the part below; And hence we reason, that, to servve the state, His top and bottom may have equal weight.

Every reader will naturally conceive, that in the description of the principal per­ son of the board, the author has exerted the whole force of his genius, and he will not find his expectations disappointed; he has reserved him for the last, and has judiciously evaded disgracing him by a comparison with any other, upon the princi­ ple, no doubt, quoted from Mr Theobald, by that excellent critic, Martinus Scriblerus.19 ‘None but himself can be his parallel’. DOUBLE FALSEHOOD.

As he has drawn this character at considerable length, we shall content ourselves with selecting some few of the most striking passages, whatever may be the diffi­ culty of selecting where almost the whole is equally beautiful. The grandeur of the opening prepares the mind for the sublime sensations suitable to the dignity of a subject so exalted. Above the rest, majestically great, Behold the infant Atlas of the state, The matchless miracle of modern days, In whom Britannia to the world displays A fight to make surrounding nations stare; A kingdom trusted to a school-boy’s care.

It is to be observed to the credit of our author, that although his political prin­ ciples are unquestionably favourable to the present happy government, he does not scruple, with that boldness which ever characterises real genius, to animadvert with freedom on persons of the most elevated rank and station; and he has accordingly interspersed his commendations of our favourite young Minister with much excel­ lent and reasonable counsel, fore-warning him of the dangers to which he is by his situation exposed. After having mentioned his introduction into public life, and concurred in that admirable panegyric of his immaculate virtues, made in the House of Commons by a noble Lord already celebrated in the poem, upon which he has the following observation: 6

Ellis (from The Rolliad) —As Mulgrave, who so fit, To chaunt the praises of ingenious Pitt? This nymph unhackney’d and unknown abroad, Is thus commended by the hackney’d bawd.20 The dupe enrapture’d views her fancied charms. And clasps the maiden mischief to his arms, Till dire disease reveals the truth too late: O grant my country, Heav’n, a milder fate!

He attends him to the high and distinguished station he now so ably fills, and in a nervous strain of manly eloquence, describes the defects of character and conduct to which his situation and the means by which he came to it, render him peculiarly liable. The spirit of the following lines is remarkable: Oft in one bosom may be found allied, Excess of meanness, and excess of pride: Oft may the statesman, in St Stephen’s brave, Sink in St James’s to an abject slave; Erect and proud at Westminster, may fall Prostrate and pitiful at Leadenhall; In word a giant, though a dwarf in deed, Be led by others while he seems to lead.

He afterwards with great force describes the lamentable state of humiliation into which he may fall from his present pinnacle of greatness, by too great a subservi­ ency to those from whom he has derived it, and appeals to his pride in the following beautiful exclamation; Shall Chatham’s21 offspring basely beg support, Now from the India, now St James’s court; With pow’r admiring Senates to bewitch, Now kiss a Monarch’s—now a Merchant’s breech; And prove a pupil of St Omer’s school, Of either kinson, At.or Jen. the tool?

Though cold and cautious criticism may perhaps stare at the boldness of the con­ cluding line, we will venture to pronounce it the most masterly stroke of the sublime to be met with in this, or any other poem. It may be justly said, as Mr Pope has so happily expressed it— ‘To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art’. Essay on Criticism.22

As we despair of offering any thing equal to this lofty flight of genius to the reader of true taste, we shall conclude with recommending to him the immediate perusal of the whole poem, and in the name of an admiring public, returning our heart-felt thanks to the wonderful author of this invaluable work.

7

THOMAS JAMES MATHIAS

From The Pursuits of Literature (1794–97; 1798) [First published collectively in The Pursuits of Literature, London, T. Becket, 1798. The fifth edition with corrections and revisions by the author is the copy text, pp. 20–27, 68–73, 151–56, 166–75, 231–41, 293–305. The poem has been published from 1794 onwards; Mathias himself informs us in the preface to the 1798 edition, ‘The First Dialogue was first published in May 1794, the Second and Third in June 1796, and the Fourth in July 1797’.1 Thomas James Mathias (?1754–1835; DNB), was a classicist, scholar of Italian language and literature and a satirist in the Juvenalian tradition. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won a prize for the best dissertation in Latin prose and rose to the position of first sublector in 1780. The Pursuits of Liter­ ature, whether published as individual dialogues or together as a collection, appeared as the work of an anonymous author. For a long time authorship of the poem remained unknown, though it seems there were many that were privy to the writer’s identity. Other satirical works by Mathias include an attack on the playwright and Whig politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan entitled The Political Dramatist (1795), reprinted in 1796 with a prose postscript that was also published separately under the title of Remarks on the Declaration of the Whig Club, 23 Jan. 1796. Mathias’s politics remained firmly Tory throughout his life. The Pursuits of Literature, in four dialogues, is a developing and increasingly irasci­ ble Juvenalian satire on politics and culture in the 1790s. Taken in its entirety, Mathias’s poem is a profoundly polemical text. What we are presented with in the collected and revised edition of 1798 is a deeply conservative running commentary on the current (and parlous) state of literary culture as Mathias sees it, and the con­ dition of European politics in the decade since the French Revolution. In a discursive essay that precedes the text proper Mathias, in the manner of Burke, makes clear that ‘the political constitutions of Europe’ are ‘crumbling into dust, under the tyrannical Republick of France’. Insofar as literature is concerned Mathias deems that it is intimately related to government. Satire is an extremely serious busi­ ness and the satirist himself serves a distinct and important purpose: ‘In my opinion, the office of a Satirist is by no means a pleasant or a desirable office; but it is necessary’. The satirist in Mathias’s view is not malign merely for the sake of 8

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-2

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

malignity; on the contrary, he is the disinterested and impersonal guardian of ‘pub­ lick order, morality, religion, literature and good manners’ and The Pursuits of Literature is ‘delivered to the publick in this spirit’.2 The Pursuits stimulated many responses in kind. Among these were: The Egotist, or Sacred Scroll. A Familiar Dialogue between the Author of ‘The Pursuits of Literature’ and Octavius (1798); The Progress of Satire, an Essay in Verse. With Notes containing Remarks on the ‘Pursuit of Literature’ (1798), and Edward Jerningham’s ‘Lines on “The Baviad” and “The Pursuits of Literature”’ (1797; 1806) (see Vol. 4, pp. 120–25). To render a public service then, is Mathias’s raison d’être. He describes his purpose in exactly these terms: ‘the Poem itself ’ is ‘A Conversation on the various subjects of Literature, in a very extended sense, as it effects publick order, regulated govern­ ment and polished society. Nothing is introduced which is not, directly or indirectly, to that main purpose’. Mathias here is working clearly within the vein of satire in the long eighteenth century. Like Byron, he greatly admires Dryden and Pope and offers The Pursuits of Literature ‘to those who are conversant with the strength, simplicity, and dignity … of them alone’.3 In its defence of high culture against the barbarians at the gate – gothic novelists are one such instance – The Pursuits of Literature owes a debt to works such as The Dunciad. In its defence of the state against those who bow at the altar of radicalism, foreign or domestic, Mathias’s poem offers a trenchant critique.]

1 Mathias, Pursuits, p. iii. 2 Ibid. pp. v–vii. 3 Ibid. pp. ix–xi.

9

DIALOGUE ONE AUTHOR To pen with garreteers obscure and shabby, Inscriptive nonsense in a fancied Abbey;* Or some Warkworthian hermit tale endite, Such ditties as our gossip spinsters write?

1

Or must I tempt some Novel’s lulling theme, Bid the bright eye o’er Celestina† stream; With fabled knights, and tales of slighted love, Such as our Spanish Cato‡ might approve? In Travels for the Heart,§ and not the head, From post to pillar, and from board to bed, Through climes of various woe the pilgrim lead, ’Till Charlotte droops, and master misses bleed.

10

OCTAVIUS. If these disgust, to serious cares attend, And make serene Philosophy your friend. * Such trash as a vile pamphlet called Kilhampton Abbey &c. &c. &c. in short, the whole mugitus labrynthi.—Every age produces similar trash, and this name serves as well as any other to mark my meaning in this place. † Put for almost any modern novel. Mrs Charlotte Smith, Mrs Inchbald, Mrs Mary Robinson, Mrs &c. &c., though all of them are ingenious ladies, yet they are too frequently whining or frisking in novels, till our girls’ heads turn wild with impossible adventures, and now and then are tainted with democracy.—Not so the mighty magician of THE M YSTERIES OF UDOLPHO,a bred and nourished by the Florentine Muses in their sacred solitary caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of inchantment: a poetess whom Ariosto would with rapture have acknowledged, as the La nudrita Damigella Trifulzia AL SACRO SPECO. O. F. c. 46.1 ‡ The late venerable Earl Camden (once Lord High Chancellor of England) is said to have learned Spanish very late in life, to read the romances in that language, having exhausted those written in English, French and Italian. All the world knows that Cato learned Greek at sixty years of age, to read the romances in that tongue’. § All such works as abound in what is called in modern jargon, The sublime instinct of sentiment.

a

M RS A NNE R ADCLIFFE .

10

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Pen some choice Fragment* in the genuine taste, Each pow’r combin’d of wit and learning waste; Smart and concise, with deepest meaning fraught, Neat be the types, and the vignettes high wrought, With frontispiece to catch the gazer’s eye, Treason, the pile; the basis blasphemy:†

20

* Alluding to the swarm of free thinking and democratical pamphlets with which the publick have been pestered. It is hoped that the interference of the legislature and the constitutional exertions of private societies have either lessened their number, or deprived them of their malignant intentions. The time for discrimination seems to be come. Toleration is fully granted to all opinions subject to the controul of the legislature after their publication, in the open courts of law by the verdict of a jury, in which true liberty consists. Good order and just authority must be maintained with vigour and decision. But he is chiefly to be consulted, who, if I may be allowed to use the language a little metaphorically, hath stood between the dead and the living, and stayed the plague,a E DMUND B URKE; greater and brighter in the decline than in the noon day of his life and vigour. It would almost be an injury to name the worksb whereof all Europe rings; but to his countryment they speak with a force not to be resisted. OMNES

Admonet, et MAGNA testatur VOCE per umbras, D ISCITE JUSTITIAM MONITI, ET NON TEMNERE DIVOS.c (1796)3 † The basis, blasphemy.—This is the progress of modern Republicanism. The dissolution or rejection of all religious principle prepares the mind for breaking every bond of established government, however just or reasonable, to introduce into practice some new theory of general good: so very general, as to have nothing to do with the good of the individual. For the nature of this GENERAL GOOD consult the National Assembly and Convention of France: ‘Agri edificia, loca, possessiones (COELUM ET MARE prætermiserunt, cætera complexi sunt) publice data ASSIGNATA , vendita.!’ Cic. De Leg. Agr. Orat. 3.4—Mirabeau began with these memorable words: ‘Si vous voulez une R EVOLUTION , il faut commencer par decatholicer la France.’ a i.e. by his masterly, vigorous, and formidable exposition of the modern French principles in all the fulness of their deformity, and in the terrors of their operation. This is what I mean by staying the plague. Whoever warns the living against a mortal disease, and shews the causes of it, and the mode of prevention, and the final remedy, may then be said to stand, as a Guardian Angel, between the dead and the living in a metaphorical sense. Such was EDMUND B URKE ! The spear of Ithuriel discovered and displayed Satan in his proper shape b On a second consideration (1796.) I think it right to name them. 1. Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London relative to that event. (1790.) 2. A letter to a Member of the National Assembly. (1791.) 3. An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in consequence of some discussions in Parliament relative to the Reflections o the French Revolution (1791.) 4. A Letter on the Attack made on him in the H. of L. by the D. of Bedford and the E. of Lauderdale (1796.) 5. Two Letters on the proposal for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France (1796.) 6. (Posthumous in 1797,) Letters on the Conduct of our domestick Parties with regard to French Politicks, including Observations on the Conduct of the Minority in the Session of 1793. 7. Memorials on French affairs, 1791, 92, and 93. The remainder of Mr Burke’s posthumous writings may be expected, from the exemplary zeal and honourable attention of his executors, Dr Laurence and Dr King. ‘Sunt adhoc curae hominibus fides et officium; sunt qui defunctorum quoque amicos agant.’ Pli. Ep.2 c Virg. Æn. 6. b. 18

11

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Free from dull order decency and rule, With dogmas fresh from the Sans Souci school, With definitions vague and terms unknown, With seeming candour, but imperious tone, Mankind’s meek friend, and Nature’s gentle Sage, The Priest of Reason in her chosen age;* * One of the most extraordinary treatises of this kind, is a work in French, intitled, ‘THE R UINS : or, a Meditation on the Revolution of Empires by M R V OLNEY, Deputy to the National Assembly in 1789.’ It is written with some spirit, and not without eloquence in some parts, and abounds with what is now called Philosophy. The intent of this book is to attack every principle of religion in the heart, even the principles of the religion now termed natural. Mr Volney wishes to convince mankind, that every pretence to religion, in every age and in every country, is equally false and equally unfounded; and by a jargon of language, and antiquity, and mythology, and philosophy, he labours to confound and blend them all in uncertain tradition and astronomical allusions. And all this is attempted to be done, that the world may be prepared for the French Revolution, and the principles upon which it was effected. In this point he seems to act not without reason, as the principles of this revolution are laid in the rejection of all religion, and were so from the beginning of it; though we may be surprised when we are assured, that it is ‘An age of DELIVERANCE for a great people and, OF HOPE FOR ALL THE EARTH !!’ p. 88a. The real ignorance of this man, on the subject of true religion, is as conspicuous as the puny literature which appears to support his strange doctrines and foolish opinions. Upon the subject of what he calls the Filiation of religions (for the French must have their new jargon of words in every subject) he says; ‘We acknowledge in one word, that all the theological doctrines on the origin of the world, on the nature of God, on the revelation of his laws, and the appearance of his person, are nothing more than recitals of astronomical facts, and figurative and emblematical stories of the play of the constellations!!!’ (du jeus des constellàtions.) p. 167. I cannot but acknowledge the superstition and credulity of mankind in many parts of the world; but what Mr Volney would impose upon us for the truth, exceeds the bounds of any credulity ever yet required. Then he introduces the systems of idolatry, the worship of the stars, the two principles or dualism (a little more French jargon) the monde animé,, and the monde machine, Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Brama: and last comes Christianity. The chapter on this subject is the strangest of all, for he declares, that CHRISTIANITY consists in the allegorical worship of the sun under the cabalistical names of Chris-en, or Yes-us or Jesus!!! ‘Chritianisme ou culte allegorique, du Soleil, sous les noms cabalistiques de Cris-en ou Yes-us or Jesus!!’ And this is a formidable opponent! this is one of the guides to whom we are to give up our prejudices! Read any of the four Evangelists and give your own answer. The impudence of Mr Volney is at least equal to any other power he possesses, for he requires of his reader only the surrender of his common sense, and common understanding, and the common principles, of any knowledge. Yet he demands the admission of all his allegories and mystical meanings, (of which in the true French stile, no doubt is to be entertained,) and then the world is to be emancipated and delivered. From what?— From credulity and superstition. Q.E.D. Upon this Mr Volney observes, the priests murmur. I think the laity will at least do as much, at the words of this apostle of nonsense, blasphemy, folly, and—the rights of mankind, which the French never fail to introduce, when they have laid them all prostrate, civil, moral and mental. This is but a specimen of such writers to whom we are to bow as the deliverers of mankind from superstition, and the directors of our mind in the ways of truth. Professing themselves wise they become fools!—The best men are indeed convinced, that the ways and works of Providence are inscrutable, and the nature of GOD incomprehensible; and they lament their own insufficiency. Yet they feel themselves bound by the laws of reasoning, and of the specific evidence in every great question divine and human. They are a

I refer to the pages of the French original.

12

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Then bending low, with equal reverence search The storied portico, and sainted church, Till, wheedling round with metaphysic art, You steal Religion from th’ unguarded heart, And in the see-saw undulating play, The moral chorus dies in words away. Thence careless saunt’ring in Vacuna’s vale, Tune to your listless lyre some Crazy Tale;*8 Dash for applause, nor seek a poet’s name, Content with scribbling and ambiguous fame, From laws of metre free, (which idly serve To curb strong genius and it’s swelling nerve,) In verse half veil’d raise titillating lust, Like girls that deck with flowers Priapus’ bust.†9

30

40

the best prepared to acknowledge the depth and height of eternal wisdom and mercy, and the difficulties of attaining to this knowledge. They assent to the words of a man of no vulgar eruditiona or mediocrity of talents, when he declares, ‘Quantus suspirus et gemitibus fiat, ut quantulacunque ex parte possit intelligi D EUS!’5—Before I close this note, I cannot help reminding, not informing, every reader, that even Tacitus, (the favourite author off many free thinkers, though I know not why) has borne testimony to the existence and last sufferings of JESUS C HRIST , under the procurator Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. ‘Auctor nominus ejus CHRISTUS, qui Tiberio empiritante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum, supplicio affectus erat. Annal. 15 S. 44.6 Yet we are assured, with an effrontery without a parallel, that C HRIST , or Cris-en is only a cabalistical name of the Sun. So is the name of Cæsar, of Socrates, or of Plato. Are we not ashamed of listening to such writers as Mr Volney, who addresses us so unworthily? Yet this is the manner in which Mr Volney, and such as Mr Volney, treat the whole human race, men and women, learned and unlearned. The general character of of all these writers may be expressed, in language at once awful and true: ‘Non est qui judicat vere; confidunt, in nihilo, loquuntur vanitates; conceperunt laborem, peperunt ‘iniquitatem.’7 * See Crazy tales, &c. and the whole school of La Fontaine. † See A NGELICA KAUFFMAN’s elegant print; but it is to be remembered that the subject is purely classical. N. B. A friend of mine would insist upon my perusing a long disquisition in quarto, ON THE W ORSHIP OF P RIAPUS (printed in 1786) with numerous and most disgusting plates. It has not been published, but distributed liberally,b without any injunction of secrecy, to the emeriti in a

Augustus. By the Dilettanti Society. The solemnity with which the Dilettanti meet and present their valuable works to the chosen few, and the inscription in the blank leaf of each book, are rather ludicrous. The president (of the day) is invested with a Roman toga in a sort of consular pomp. Before the vote for printing Mr —’s Priapus had passed, I should have said with Roman sternness, had I been present, I lictor, colliga manus.§10— This Roman farce would (and perhaps may) form the subject of a legitimate Satire. (1796.) The Dilettanti Society best know what emblem, modelled in wax, is laid upon their table at their solemn meetings. b

‘Græcè Discumbant; nec velari PICTURAI jubetur: Forsitan expectes, Gaditana canoro Incipat prurire choro. JUV.11 §

Liv. Lib. i. c. 26.

13

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

DIALOGUE 2 Of France* enough: go bend before that tomb, Where other palms and other laurels bloom, Where Maro13 sleeps; or in the Sabine shade, Or in severe Aquinum’s inmost glade, Fast by Volterra’s† dark Etrurian grove, With Boileau’s‡ art and Dryden’s rapture rove.14 Be wise betimes, and in resistless prose Leave Burke ALONE to thunder on our foes:15 Let Wakefield rant,§16 and pallid Thelwall bawl,19

1

speculative Priapism, as one would think. As I hope the treatise may be forgotten I shall not name the author,a but observe all the ordure and filth, all the antique pictures, and all the representations of the generative organs, in their most odious and degrading protrusion, have been raked together and copulated (for no other idea seems to be in the mind of the author) and copulated, I say, with a new species of blasphemy. Such are, what I would call, the records of the stews and bordellos of Grecian and Roman antiquity, exhibited for the recreation of antiquaries, and the obscene revellings of Greek scholars in their private studies, Surely this is to dwell mentally in lust and darkness in the loathsome and polluted chamber at Capreae. Esssays on Landscape and Gardening may, I hope, purify the mind: and as the author is conversant with Greek writers and is now at a certain time of life, I recommend to him a sentence from an author, who perhaps is not in his catalogue, though Mr —— would be thought a philosopher: ȈȠijȚĮ ʌȡȦIJȠȞ ’ĮȖȞȘİıIJȚȞ , İʌİȚIJĮİȚȡȘȞȚțȘ .12 * I can mention no lines so expressive of the state of France, as the following adapted from Boileau. ‘Dechirans á l’envi le propre Republique, Lions contre Lions, parens contra parens, Combetent follemont POUR LE CHOIX DES TYRANS !’ Sat. 8. V. 132 (1796) † Juvenal was born at Aquinum, and Persius at Volterra, in Italy. ‡ Boileau.—The most perfect of all modern writers in true taste and judgment. His sagacity was unerring; he combined every ancient excellence, and appears original even in the adoption of acknowledged thoughts and allusions. He is the just and adequate representative of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius united, without one indecent blemish; and for my own part I have always considered him as the most finished gentleman that ever wrote. I have spoken more at large of this poet in another place. § Wakefield. Whenever I think of the name of Gilbert Wakefield, and look at the list of his works, (for I would not undertake to read them all,) I feel alternately, sorrow and indignation. His learning and sagacity are indeed sufficient to earn him some patronage, and to the removal of every want. But his spirit is so restless, his temper is so overbearing and tyrannical, (I speak from the consideration of his works alone) his contempt for others is so great, and his personal vanity so conspicuous, that even literature begins to be wary of him. But when I return to his religious and political opinions, I find all the virulence and asperity of the reformer, all the insolence and even impudence of the assertors of equality, a want of decent, or even of common respect to dignified characters, and a mind (naturally designed for better exertions, and cultivated in the groves of an university) hostile and a The author afterwards named himself, and was very angry without any reason. I only did my duty to the publick. — See P. of L. Part 2. V. 57. Note (o) (Added Aug. 1797.)

14

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Lords of misrule in anarchy’s wild hall, Such prophets as ere long Horne Tooke20 may save, And hide and feed by fifties* in a cave:21 Let such call Pitt or Grenville22 meanly bold, Who calm’d the terror of Burke’s claws in gold.†23 You read perchance a minister in books,‡ And know an honest statesman by his looks; Think in debates the spirit may be seen, In Thurlow just, in Wedderburne, serene;26 In Grenville, firmness; majesty, in Pitt; And in Dundas,27 the courage to submit. Proud of your keen discernment you retire,

10

20

implacable to every establishment, and with a strong tendency even toa sanguinary persecution. I speak of him as a publick man; I have no contempt of his attainments. But I will never suffer him, or any other man, who obtrudes himself and his political principles and measures upon the publick, to pass me without notice; or as the poet strongly expresses it, Glomerare sub antro Fumiferem noctem, commixtis igne tenebris, b Without the reprehension he deserves. (1796.)17 * By fifties.— ‘Obadiah took the prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water’. Kings B. 1. Ch. 18. v. 24. In the provisions of that most important, and I wish I could say, perpetual act, (passed in 1795) for preventing seditioius assemplies, &c. &c. &c. it is specified that none of these prophets, or lecturers, or diviners in democracy, shall meet in greater numbers than by fifty in a cave, or elsewhere: and considering the inflammatory nature of their disorders it is devoutly to be wished, that they may be kept upon the same cooling diet. † ‘Summos auro mansueverant ungues’. Statius.24 A beautiful periphrasis for giving a pension? but it is a pension nobly merited. I wish however most sincerely, for the dignity of Mr Burke’s character in the present age and to all posterity, that it had not been accepted. ȆȠȜȜȠȣ ĮȞ ʌȡȚĮȚμȘȞ. (1796.)25 ‡ I allude to the profound knowledge which busy men acquire of the most secret designs of the British, or even of foreign cabinets,—from the news-papers. Nothing is so pleasant as to hear men assert without the least hesitation what they know of the intention of Ministers. I really envy the satisfaction they feel, when they communicate their discoveries to such unenlightened and ignorant men as myself. a See (if its worth while) Gilbert Wakefield’s pamphlet entitled ‘Remarks on the General Orders given by the Duke of York to his army, July 7, 1794, respecting the decree of the French Convention to give no quarter to the British and Hanoverians, 1794’. I only mention this or any of Mr Wakefield’s writings for their spirit and tendency, as the compositions are worth little notice. I shall not at present wander through his Silva Critica, ‘Ubi passim palantes Error recto de tramite pellit’.§18 His ravages on Virgil and Horace in his late editions of them, are often as shocking to taste as to truth. Bentley’s hook (I beg pardon for coupling the names) was nothing to the levelling axe of Gil. Wakefield. If Mr Wakefield does not write with greater care and ability than he has hitherto shewn, neither men, nor gods, nor columns will permit his works to be extant very long. b Virg. Æn. 8. V. 254. §

Hor. L. 2, Sat. 3. V. 48.

15

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Smit with the fame of Rollo’s bard* and squire,28 You’d print (poor man!) your satire and your song, Correct as Gifford, or as Cowper, strong. 29 AUTHOR. Yes: to my country’s justice I appeal, Nor dread the press, the guillotine, nor wheel, Nor fulsome praise, nor coldness of neglect, Nor all that poets meet, but scarce expect; And since the question I shall never fear, A rhyming culprit’s bold confession hear.

30

DIALOGUE 3 OCTAVIUS The rights of nature barr’d, by heav’n resign’d To vile affections, in corruption blind, While, in the terrors of the world beneath, Permitted fiends of darkness round them breathe; Britain securely fix’d, invites from high With charity’s sedate, unalter’d eye. The sacred, exil’d, melancholy band, Passing from death and France, revere the land, Where streams of inexhausted bounty pour, And C HRIST still reigns, and bigots are no more.

1

10

AUTHOR. Blest be the voice of mercy, and the hand Stretch’d o’er affliction’s wounds with healing bland, In holiest sympathy! our best of man Gave us to tears, ere misery well began. Still, still I pause: good nature’s oft a fool, Now slave to party, and now faction’s tool: Attend, nor heedless slight a poet’s name: Poet and prophet once were deem’d the same. * The Rolliad, &c.—D R LAWRENCE has just informed the House of Commons, (who are prodigiously interested about the Doctor) that HE is of the old school, and that HE intends to ‘bring forward A MOTION to silence that declamation so commonly used in the House &c. &c.’ This is modest indeed, and if he effects his purpose, I hope the universal thanks of the House, Dinner-troops, Family-men and all, will be voted to him, Nem. Con.— ‘Talk of a Coronation?’— See The Farce of Peeping Tom. (Note Dec. 31. 1796.) N. B. The Doctor never made the motion. Paturiunt montes, &c. &c.— (added August 1797.)

16

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Say, are these fertile streams thus largely spread A filial tribute o’er a mother bed? Say, are these streams (think, while avails the thought) To Rome through Gallick channels subtly brought?* R OME touches, tastes, and takes; and nothing loth: But have we virtues? yes, of pagan growth.† Ask where R OME’s church is founded? on a steep, Which heresy’s wild winds in vain may sweep, Alone where sinners may have rest secure, One only undefil’d, one only pure. Blame you her cumbrous pomp, her iron rod, Or trumpery relicks of her saints half-shod? Lo Cònfessors, in every hamlet found, With sacred sisters walk their cloister’d round: There read the list:‡ and calm the fate expect,

20

30

* This is one of the most important points in the present situation of England and of Europe, in regard to national policy. I propose these questions. 1. How far, are ministers of the publick treasure of any Protestant kingdom justified in issuing large sums of money, for the express purpose of maintaining emigrant Catholick priests AS A BODY? 2. If they are justified in issuing any sums, in what manner and under what control should this publick money be expended and distributed? 3. Whether in England at this time there are not peculiar and paramount considerations which call for wisdom and prudence, to regulate and restrain the first natural and honourable impetuosity of mercy and humanity, to the end that THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND , IN HER CHURCH AND STATE, be preserved inviolate from open attacks , or from insidious attempts?— These questions are proposed for the publick security, with sobriety, seriousness, and charity to all, as of common importance. (1796.) † It is well known that rigid Catholicks hold, that the virtues of hereticks, or protestants, are to be considered in the light of pagan virtues. I think the bishop of St Pol de Leon would areee to this opinion. ‡ See ‘T HE LAITY’ S D IRECTORY for 1796, (printed for J. P. Coghlan, Duke street, Grosvenor square) to which is added ‘T HE C OLOURS OF THE CHURCH ; words rather ominous. It is a pamphlet at the low price of sixpence, which I recommend to publick notice, and to which I refer the reader. It is a matter of some surprise and concern, to read the list of the almost incredible number of little books and tracts at the smallest prices, published and to be published, calculated for the general dissemination of POPERY in these realms;— the fatal display of all the existing and rising Romish seminaries, Romish boarding houses, and Romish schools for youth; the plenary indulgences (for one another;)—and the settlement of Nuns Professed in monasteries erected in this kingdom, Clares, Benedictines, Sepulcharins, pulcharins, Austins, and Dominicanesses. Then, in this very same pamphlet, as if by a strange fatality and in the blunder of papal metaphor, they advertise even their drugs. The very medicine, it seems, is papal. Behold their ‘Laxative sulphurated pills (once exhibited in another form in these realms,) ‘The Medicated Snuff , a Cephalic of many virtues, prepared from the original recipe found in the Jesuit’s Library’;—‘The Jesuit’s nervous pill’,—‘The Jesuit’s Balsamic cordial’. In short, decernunt quodcunque volunt DE CORPORE NOSTRO ;30 body and soul, fortune and state. I understand them but too well. They know their hour, THEIR PROTECTORS OF NOBLE RANK , their opportunity, their advantages, their revenue from the state. They advance by approaches, not desultory, but regular. The papal genius never sleeps, no, not for a moment; but directs, and animates, and acts, uniformly and constantly, at home and abroad, in cities, in towns, in villages; it takes aid from stupidity and from ability, from above and from beneath. Their bishops, as yet, are but titular, but depend upon it,

17

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

When crafty, meddling, thankless priests direct. Think you, their hate unquench’d can ere expire? The torch not tipt with sleeping sulphurous fire? Their doctrines round a careless land are blown; They blast the cottage, and would sap the throne. What? are my words too warm?—I love my King, My Country, and my God! the sounds shall ring Ceaseless, till P ITT (with all his host awake) I N OUR GREAT CAUSE a nation’s inquest take. Look from that vale what tribes the fortress* fill! Then frown indignant o’er the opprobrious Hill.†

40

Per solis radios, TARPEIAQUE FULMINA jurant, Quiquid habent telorum armentaria cæli,a31 Depend upon it, I say, they swear: but what the oath is, I shall not take upon me to describe. It may well be understood, and for ought I know, it is already registered.—I have compassion for the unfortunate; I have charity for plundered exiles; I have pity, and would wish and would give relief to the wretched and the suffering; I have veneration for the truly pious of every persuasion in the Christian faith. ‘There is ONE Lord!’ But I have, and it is an Englishman’s duty to have, a watchful eye upon the insinuating or domineering spirit of the Romish church. I have no opinion of the sincerity of their attachment to us, or of their gratitude for our favours. I insist upon it, they regard THEMSELVES as the original and rightful inheritors of our land. I call upon the guardians of our church and state to be watchful, and to regard with attention the proceedings of ALL THE EMIGRANTS. If they refuse to hear, I wish most fervently, that Great Britain may never, in the anguish of an inconsiderate spirit, say of these numerous emigrant priests, and of all the rest sacred or profane; Ejectum, litore, egentem Excepi, et regni DEMENS in parte locavi! b32 I send THIS NOTE into the world, whatever be its fate, with the famous papal inscription, but without the spirit, of Sixtus the Fourth to the Florentine Synod under Lorenzo the Magnificent, ‘IN F UTURAM REI MEMORIAM!’33 and the Bishop of St Pol de Leon, and his Consistory, resident and acting in England, may reply to it, if they think proper.— (Written in the year 1796.) * T HE GREAT C OLLEGE OF P RIESTS , AND H EAD Q UARTERS OF THE C ATHOLIC C AUSE in the Castle or King’s House at Winchester, tenanted by priests emigrant and non-emigrant, publickly maintained at the expence of the state. Read the preceding note. I am not speaking to those, who are indifferent about all or any religion; but to those, who from their station, political or sacred, should understand the importance of the cause, the interests of Christianity and its purity, the evidence of history, the nature and the essential and unaltered spirit of the Romish priesthood, and their subtilty and peculiar arts by persuasion, or by terror over weak consciences. I am speaking to the governors of Great Britain, to the ministers of the crown, who should guard, and who I trust will guard, against the revival of the Romish Church now working in secret; as well as against the more open and more terrible democracy of some descriptions of the Dissenters. What is said to us all, is said at this hour to ministers and rulers of states with a more important and a more sacred emphasis, ‘WATCH , for ye know not THE HOUR when destruction cometh.’— (1796.) † Finally: I have to propose one plain and significant question to MR PITT, or to any great minister of state: it is this: ‘Is there a single instance in the records of any modern history of a b

Juv. Sat. 13. v. 78. Virg. Æn. 4. v. 373.

18

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

... Though Abram Jones* and Jasper Wilson preach, With names uncouth, but not unpolish’d speech. Few mark the Journals of the dubious MOORE,†34 We scent the tainted gale from Gallia’s shore; Through England as his Various Views advance, We smile, but trace the Mannerist of France.

50

Europe, where the governing and directing power of the state ever authorised, patronised, and supported with the publick money, under any circumstances whatsoever, A COLLEGE OF PRIESTS, in the heart of a kingdom, whose tenets and principles were not only different from the established religion of the country, but were in direct opposition and avowed hostility to it? — And particularly, when it was the original and fundamental purpose and constitution of that established church, to discountenance and extinguish the superstitious doctrines, and the political ecclesiastical tenets of that College of Priests, so authorised, patronised, and supported by the publick money, AS A BODY ?’ If this question must be answered, as I apprehend it must, in the negative, I maintain, (and if necessary will maintain more solemnly, if possible, and more at large,) that T HE C OLLEGE OF P RIESTS IN THE K ING ’S H OUSE AT W INCHESTER SHOULD BE IIMMEDIATELY DISPERSED ,a and not suffered to stand in that offensive, conspicuous, and opprobrious light in the face of the country. I am really speaking in mercy to them, and to us all, if I am rightly understood. I would support and preserve them from every want, privately, and in detached situations; but I would not suffer the ministry of a Catholick Bishop to direct the expenditure of that publick money so granted, for merely Catholick purposes; but with the most perfect toleration of all persuasions in religion, the Governors of the state should defend and exclusively support their own. This is prudence, this is policy, this it is to remember the beginning and progress of all great events.b (May, 1796.) * Two assumed names of political writers, instead of Cato, Brutus, &c. but it is a foolish custom and should cease. Of Abram Jones I have no conjecture; but I think I more than suspect the celebrated Mr Roscoe of Liverpool in Jasper Wilson. † John Moore, M. D. the celebrated author of Travels into France and Italy, of Zeleuco, of Edward, or various views of life and manners in England, &c. &c, &c. I speak of him only as a publick author. He is a sensible and entertaining companion. His style is easy, always agreeable and pleasing, and his wit is playful. His pleasantry on physicians is little inferior to Moliere. Vineta cædit sua.c35 But I dislike the tendency of various parts of his writings when he speaks of the French affairs, I mean of the principles of the first Revolution, which led to the cruelties, miseries and distress, which have been since felt by France and by all Europe. It is impossible that Dr Moore or any other man of sense, can be an advocate for their present system. I dislike the perpetual ridicule which Dr Moore throws upon hereditary honour, at a time like the present. (1796.) a

This was effected in December 1796. Though the French priests were removed, by order of the Government, from the King’s House at Winchester, at the close of the year 1796, yet I have strong and important reasons for leaving this whole passage, in poetry and prose, text and comment, unaltered upon record to posterity. — N. B. I refer the reader with much earnestness, (for the times demand all our faculties and all our circumspection) and I request his attention to a short tract entitled, ‘A Letter to the Lord Marquis of Buckingham, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. chiefly on the numerous Emigrant French Priests of the Church of Rome, resident and maintained in England at the publick expence: and on the spirit and principles of that church sacred and political.’ BY A LAYMAN . (First printed in October, 1796.) c Hor. Ep. ad Aug. v. 220. b

19

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

G ODWIN’s dry page* no statesman e’er believ’d,41 Though fiction aids, what sophistry conceiv’d; * I have given some attention to Mr Godwin’s work, on ‘Political Justice’,a as conceiving it to be the CODE of improved modern ethicks, morality and legislation. I confess I looked not for the republick of Plato, or even for the Oceana of Harrington, but for something different from them all. I looked indeed for a superstructure raised on the revolutionary ground of equality, watered with blood from the guillotine; and such I found it. I cannot discuss a work in two large volumes in a note, (although some would dispatch it with a single word) but in general I can speak as much of it, as it deserves, in a short compass; I mean, as it appears to me.—The first trait of the work is, a certain cold-blooded indifference to all the mild, pious, and honourable feelings of our common nature, like all the Philosophers of the new sect, which I would describe, if Mr Burke had not done it already. The next thing observable, is, a most affectionate concern and regard for the welfare of mankind, who are to exist some centuries hence, when the endless perfectibility of the human species (for such is their jargon) shall receive it’s completion on earth; when the disciples of Dr Darwin have learned to manage the winds, and direct their currents at pleasure, and the descendants of Abbè Sieyes36 have calmed the waves of a stormy people with the essential oil of democracy. Another trait is, that all political justice is essentially founded upon injustice; if plunder, robbery, and spoliation of all property in the outset may be termed injustice;b though to be sure the latter end of his commonwealth rather forgets the beginning. But I must say, he is not without some kind apprehension, that the population of states may be too great under the blessings of equal diffusion of property under the proposed government, for which he provides a remedy; though, for my own part, I think such a government, like Saturn of old will be reduced to the necessity of eating up its children. Again: another discovery seems to be, that as hitherto we have had recourse to the agency and interference of the Deity and his unalterable laws, to account even for the fall of a stone to the ground, the germination of a blade of grass, or the propagation of the meanest insect; we are now to discard the superintendence of God in human and terrestrial affairs, and to believe in no providence but our own, and to re-make ourselves and our faculties. He seems to realise a modern fiction I once read, which supposes an assembly of certain Philosophers before the Deity, when some of them are said to whisper in HIS ear, ‘Between friends, we do not suppose that you exist at all’. Further: as to suppose a divine sanction without a divinity would be absurd, therefore, every institution such as marriage, which in all civilised nations has been hallowed for the great end for which it was ordained, is to be vilified, ridiculed, argued away, and abolished. The tender sex, deprived of the support, comfort and protection of their natural guardian, is to be delivered over to fancied freedom, and wild independence, but in reality to misery and destitution beyond all calculation. Then by way of corollary, a few vulgar virtues and once honourable affections, as piety to parents and love to children, as such, are to be erased from the breast. Gratitude for kindness and tears for the unfortunate are but weakness; there is nothing soothing in compassion, and friendship has no consolation. It would seem, that a well of water, an apple-tree, or any thing productive, is more valuable than man to man, abstracted from the mere use which one man can derive from another. ‘These are thy gods, O Israel, and this the worship to which you are called!’ — Nevertheless I shall still venture to mention with reverence and humility THE GREAT MORAL CODE , intended for all mankind, once delivered and ratified by HIM , who knew what was in man. In that code all is practicable, all virtue is founded in mercy, kindness, benevolence, and comfort, alike to him that gives and him that takes. There man plants, and God, not man, gives the increase; there a

First published in 2 vols. 4to. and since in 2 vols. 8vo. i. e. If Mr G’s principles are to be adopted in any country, where property is now secured by the laws.. b

20

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Genius may droop o’er Falkland’s funeral cry; No patriot weeps, when gifted villains die.42 we find no wild supposition of an interest which cannot be described, as it does not exist; no actions without a motive direct and reflected. I speak here of perhaps the least part of the Gospel Code, even of that Revelation that was given unto men in a manner at once clear and perspicuous, pure and unmixed, uniform and consistent, persuasive and convincing, powerful and authoritative, in the name and in the majesty of HIM who is everlasting to everlasting, T HE ALMIGHTY !— But if we regard mere human institutions; if a man wishes to see a practicable system of policy and government, founded and confirmed in the experience of ages, let him, if he has been awhile led astray by the meteors of Godwin, walk for a season in the steady light which Blackstone has diffused. Let him study the Commentaries on the English Laws, as they exist and uphold all that is valuable, or perhaps attainable, in a rational and civilised nation; and them let him consider the Theories of Godwin on political justice, and contemplate the government which would be raised on his principles. To me there seems to be no more comparison than between light and darkness. What the great Burnet affirmsa of the Deist and the Atheist, considered merely as two sects in philosophy, is, I am convinced, not wholly inapplicable to the two political sects in question. ‘The hypothesis of the Deist reaches from top to bottom, both through the intellectual and material world, with a clear and distinct light every where; is genuine, comprehensive, satisfactory; has nothing forced, nothing confused, nothing precarious. Whereas the hypothesis of the Atheist is strained and broken; dark and uneasy to the mind, commonly precarious, often incongruous and irrational, and sometimes plainly ridiculous’.—I can allow Mr Godwin and other speculative writers on government to be ingenious. They must, in the course of their investigation, now and then throw out a new idea, but in general the greatest part of their ideas consist of very old ideas, which have been discussed again and again. They astonish by paradoxes and allure the imagination by prospects without a limit; and when they have alternately heated and confounded the minds of men, they call them to the great work, namely, the subversion of, what they call, prejudices, and the overthrow of the government, which is. ‘IN NOSTROS FABRICATA EST MACHINA MUROS ’.37 I can laugh at their metaphysics, and even be amused by their pantomime fancies, as such. But when I know that their theories are designed to be brought into action, and when they tell us, that they hate violence, bloodshed, revolution, and misery, and that truth and happiness are their objects; I open my eyes to see, and my ears to hear; and having honestly exerted both faculties, I declare, from private conviction and from public experience, I oppose the admission of their doctrines, whether recommended by Thomas Paine or William Godwin.—Yet a moment; take Mr Godwin as a natural philosopher, and from his doctrines let the reader consider the state of his understanding. Let him also consider, how such a man is qualified not merely to reform, but first to overthrow and then to rebuild, the whole system of government, morality, and religion in such a kingdom as Great Britain. What opinion of can we entertain of a man who seriously thinks that, at some future period, the necessity of sleep in an animal body may be superseded:— that men die merely by their own fault and mismanagement, but, that the immorality of the organised human body, as it is now formed, might be attained by proper attention and care:— or who thinks ‘that hereafter it is by no means clear, that the most extensive operations may not be within the reach of one man, or to make use of a familiar instance, that a plough may not be turned into a field, and perform its office without the need of superintendence!!!’ and then adds, ‘It was in this sense that the celebrated Franklin conjectured, that Mind would one day become omnipotent over matter!!!b Surely we may say with the poet Epicurus: a

Burnet’s Theory of the earth. b. 2. ch. 10.—See the tenth and eleventh chapters of that great man’s work; ‘On the Author of Nature, and on Natural Providence;’—a master treatise of reason and eloquence. I wish these two chapters were published in a separate pamphlet. b Godwin, v. 2. p. 494. Ed. 8vo.

21

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Who now reads P ARR ?43 whose title who shall give? Naturäi Peturbatur ibi totem sic corpus, et omnes Commutantur ibi POSITURÆ PRINCIPIORUM.a38 I have quoted from the last edition of Mr Godwin’s work, as he has corrected or omitted many passages which were in the 4to edition. If he will but go on with more last thoughts, I think he will shortly reduce it to a very little pamphlet. I could make such a collection of Beauties (or what Rabelais might call, ‘Antidoted Conundrums’) from this work, as would dazzle even a modern philosopher, whose ‘mind is omnipotent over matter’, in Mr Godwin’s and Dr Franklin’s sense. I think these Beauties would form an assemblage of the most curious and incongruous ideas ever exhibited, fully sufficient, (as Mr, Godwin expresses it) to ‘rouse (any man) from the ‘lethargick OBLIVIOUS POOL , out of which every finite intellect originally rose!’ (vol. 2 p. 88. 8vo. ed.) Good heavens! what can Mr Godwin mean by such ideas, and such words! except he seriously believes that human souls are dipped in the river of oblivion, or drink of that stream as described by Virgil. Yet even this will not help or explain Mr Godwin’s words, for he says that they ‘ORIGINALLY rose from the oblivious pool’. Into what whirlpools of desolating nonsense are we to be hurried, as the sport, the scorn, the ludibria, the puppets of these New Creators of the moral world? Alas for man! wherever they lead us and themselves, methinks it is deeper and deeper, confusion worse confounded! The further I proceed, the more I learn to distrust swelling men and swelling words and swelling ideas, but above all in political subjects, from which most is to be dreaded. Political writers of this class are not to be considered as the speculators of former times. The lucubrations of Montesquieu and Locke were given as the result of long experience and continued meditation; and were not designed to produce subversion, but slow and gradual reformations, as the various states of Europe would admit The writers of these days on the contrary, throw out their ideas at a heat, and intend they should be brought into immediate action. They are not friends ‘to the world, or the world’s law’. For I would inculcate it again and again, that whatever may be held forth to us, or disguised, by these philosophers, neither their plans, nor their reforms, nor their systems, can ever be erected or established IN THE KINGDOM OF G REAT B RITAIN, but upon the overthrow of the Christian Religion, upon the annihilation or the disturbance of all orders and ranks in society, as they now exist. And this cannot be effected, but through the necessary and unavoidable medium of plunder, confiscation, revolutionary diurnal murders, and in the insurrection of the enterprising talents of gifted, bold, and bad men upon UPON ALL PROPERTY, publick and private, upon which all modern Revolutionists rest as their corner stone, and their final hope.b N. B. If this note is too long, I have no inclination to make any apology for it. My conviction and my fears on this most awful subject, (while it may yet avail us to consider it) sometimes overpower me, a

Lucret. L. 4. v. 670. To such of my readers as are conversant in those authors of antiquity, whose precision of thought and language, has conferred dignity and stability on those principles by which all that is sacred, or venerable, or useful, or necessary to well-being is maintained, I would offer the words of an ancient Christian Philosopher in the early ages. The uncertainty and weakness, and futility of modern and revived doctrines were never better exposed or expressed. ‘ǾįȘ ȖĮȡ μȠȚıț ȠIJȠȢ ĮȖȞȠȚĮȢ ‘ĮʌĮȞIJĮ, țĮ ȚĮʌĮ IJȘμİȜĮȚȞĮ, țĮ ȚĮʌİȚȡȠȢʌȜĮȞȘ, țĮ ȚĮIJİȜȘȢijĮ ȞIJĮıȚĮ, țĮ ȚĮț ĮIJĮȜȘʌIJȠȢĮȖȞȠȚ Į. ȉĮ ȣIJĮ IJȠȚȞȣȞ įȚİȟȘȜșȠȞ , ȕȠȣȜȠμİȞȠȢįİȚȟĮȚ IJȘȞ İȞ IJȠȚȢ įȠȖμĮı ȚȞȠȣıĮȞ Įȣ IJȦȞ İȞĮȞIJȚȠIJȘIJĮ , țĮ ȚȦȢİȚȢĮʌİȚȡȠȞĮȣ IJȠȚ; țĮ ȚĮȠȡȚıIJȠȞ ʌȡȠİȚıȚȞ‘Ș ȗȘIJȘı ȚȢ IJȦȞʌȡĮȖμĮIJȦȞ, țĮ ȚIJȠIJİȜȠȢĮȣIJȦȞ ĮIJİț μĮȡIJȠȞțĮ ȚĮȤȡȘıIJȠȞ, İȡȖȦμȘįİȞȚʌȡȠįȘȜȦ țĮȚ ȜȠȖ Ȧ ıĮ ijİ ȚȕİȕĮ ȚȠȣμİȞȠȞ .’ Hermiæ ǻȚĮıȣ ȡμȠȢ(sive Irrisio)IJȦȞİȟȦ ĭȚȜȠıȠijȦȞ.39 Pag. 175.—Sub fin. Ed. Paris Justin. Martyris Op. 1636. b

22

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Doctor Sententious hight, or Positive?* From Greek, or French, or any Roman ground, In mazy progress and eternal round Quotations dance, and wonder at their place, Buzz through his wig, and give the bush more grace. But on the mitred oath that Tucker† swore46 Parr wisely ponder’d, and that oath forbore. He prints a Sermon:‡ Hurd with judging eye Reads, and rejects with critick dignity:48 Words upon words! and most against their will, And honied globules dribble through his quill.

60

DIALOGUE 4 AUTHOR. OH, for that sabbath’s dawn ere Britain wept, And France before THE CROSS believ’d and slept! (Rest to the state, and slumber to the soul!) Ere yet the brooding storm was heard to roll In fancy’s ear o’er many an Alpine rock, Or Europe trembled at the fated shock; Ere by his lake G ENEVA ’s ANGEL stood, And wav’d his scroll prophetick§ o’er the flood,

1

till I absolutely sink under them. It is written, I hope we all know where, ‘īİȞȠμİȞȠȢİȞ ĮȖȦȞȚĮ ǼȀȉǼȃǼȈȉ Ǽȇȅȃ ʌȡȠıȘȣȤİIJȠ!’.40 * Though the reader may possibly have a very good idea of a sententious or positive Doctor, in general; yet my specifick allusion is to the theology of the twelfth century, when the Doctors were divided into Doctores Dogmatici et Positivi, and the Doctors Sententiarii, or expounders of the famous Book of Sentences by Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris.—At present Bishop Gregoire and Bishop Sieyes at PARIS, give their Doctors some famous books of sentences to expound, notis et commentariis perpetuis D OCTORIS G UILLOTINI,44 who causes great unanimity of sentiment among the Doctors, and arranges their several heads with admirable precision. (1796.) † Josiah Tucker, D.D. Dean of Gloucester, ‘Ƞ ʌĮȞȣ45 once took an oath in a pamphlet that he would refuse a bishoprick. ‡ The unfortunate Education Sermon, which Bishop Hurd happened to dislike. Hinc illæ lacrymæ!47 This produced the re-publication of Warburton’s and Hurd’s tracts with the splendid and astonishing dedication by Dr Parr. See the first dialogue of the P. of L. See also Rabelais’s great Chapter, ‘How Gargantua spent his time in rainy weather,’ and the comment by Du Chat. § It is remarkable that in Switzerland appeared THE THREE PERSONS whose principles, doctrines, and practice, (as it seems to me) have primarily and ultimately effected the great change and downfal of regal and of lawful power in Europe. Calvin, in religion; Rousseau, in politicks; and Neckar by his administration. Calvin and his disciples were never friends to monarchy and episcopacy. I shall not here contend politically or theologically with Bishop Horsley concerning Calvin. Indeed I never yet stood gaping on that copper oracle. A poet’s words are better for a poet. I

23

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

With names (as yet unheard) and symbols drear, Calvin in front, and Neckar in the rear;

10

have looked into history and, as I think, have found them true. Dryden speaks of Calvin thus, and remarkably enough; The last of all the litter scap’d by chance, ‘And from Geneva first infested France’. (Hind and Panther. B. I. v. 172) R OUSSEAU , (I speak of him only as a political writer) by the unjustifiable, arbitrary, and cruel proceedings against him, his writings and his person, in France, (where he was a stranger and to whose tribunals he was not amenable) was stimulated to pursue his researches into the origin and expedience of such government, and of such oppression, which, otherwise, he probably never would have discussed; till he reasoned himself into the desperate doctrine of political equality, and gave to the world his fatal present, ‘The Social Contract’. Of this work, the French, since the Revolution, have never once lost sight. With them it is first, and last, and midst, and without end in all their thoughts and publick actions. Rousseau, is, I believe, the only man to whom they have paid an implicit and undeviating reverence; and, without a figure, have worshipped in the pantheon of their new idolatry, like another Chemos, ‘the obscene dread of Gallia’s sons’.—Different from these came NECKAR. With intentions, as I am still inclined to think, upright, pure, and just, but with a mind impotent and unequal to the great work, and with principles foreign to the nature of the government he was called to regulate, reform and conduct, a fatal stranger for France. He oppressed every subject sacred and civil with too much verbiage. He was sanctioned by popular prejudice, and marked by aristocratical hatred; a sort of ‘Arpinas Volscorum ammonte’. He came to lay open and disclose (and he did lay them open to the very bottom) the mystery and iniquity of French finances and French treasuries. But he brought with him to the concerns of a great and tottering empire, (which perhaps might have been maintained and consolidated) the little mind of a provincial banker, and the vanity inseparable from human nature, when elevated beyond hope or expectation. What a consequence? for a while indeed, Hic Cimbros et summa pericula rerum Excipit et SOLUS trepidantem protegit Urbem.a49 But the general leaven in his political composition was popular; and that leavened the whole lump. We know the rest. His advice, first in the calling together (at all) of the States General, and afterwards in the formation and distribution of them, gave the devoted King to the scaffold, and the monarchy of France to irreversible dissolution. I speak this independently of the grand conspiracy against Christianity, regal power, and social order, which has been so awfully and so convincingly disclosed by the Abbè Barruel,b and Professor Robison; since I first wrote the preceding reflections.—For my own part when I contemplate the convulsions of Europe, and the final desolation which attends republican principles, wherever they are introduced, I cannot but rest with a momentary pleasure on the picture, which Plato in his imaginary republick (the only one I ever could bear) has drawn of a man fatigued with the view of publick affairs and retiring from them in the hope of tranquillity: the sentiments are such as the French formerly would have called ‘Les Delassemens de l’homme sensible’. The words are these: ‘ȉĮ ȣIJĮ ʌĮȞIJĮ ȜȠȖȚı μȦ ȜĮȕȦȞ, ‘ȘıȣȤȚĮȞ İȤȦȞ țĮ Ț IJĮ Įȣ IJȠȣ ʌȡĮIJIJȦȞ , ‘ȠȚȠȞİȞ ȤİȚμȦȞȚ țȠȞȚȠȡIJȠȣ țĮ ȚȗĮ ȜȘȢ ‘ȣʌȠ ʌȞİȣμĮIJȠȢijİ ȡȠμİȞĮ ȣʌȠ IJİȚȤ ȚȠȞ Įʌ Ƞı IJĮȢ, ‘ȠȡȦȞIJȠȣȢĮȜȜȠȣȢ țĮ IJĮ ʌȚμʌȜĮ μİȞȠȣȢĮȞȠμȚĮȢ, ĮȖĮʌĮ İȚ ʌȘ ĮȣIJȠȢțĮ șĮ ȡȠȢ ĮįȚțȚĮȢ IJİ țĮ ȚĮȞȠıȚȦȞİȡȖȦȞ , a b

Juv. Sat. 8. v. 249. The Reader will find more on this subject in a future note.

24

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

But chief Equality’s vain priest, Rousseau,51 A sage in sorrow nurs’d, and gaunt with woe, By persecution train’d and popish zeal, Ripe with his wrongs to frame the dire* appeal, What time his work THE C ITIZEN began, And gave to France the social savage, Man.52 Was it for this, in Leo’s fost’ring reign Learning uprose with tempests in her train; Was every gleam deceitful, every ray But idle splendor from the orb of day? Say, were the victims mark’d from earliest time, The Flamens conscious of a nation’s crime? Why smoak’d the altars with the new perfume, If heav’n’s own fire descends but to consume? Alas, proud Gallia’s fabrick to the ground What arm shall level, or what might confound!

20

Oh for that hand, which o’er the walls of Troy† His lightning brandish’d with a furious joy, IJȠȞIJİ İȞșĮįİ ȕȚȠȞȕȚȦıİIJĮȚ , țĮȚ IJȘȞĮʌĮȜȜĮ ȖȘȞĮȣ IJȠȣ μİIJĮ țĮ ȜȘȢ İȜʌȚįȠȢ‘ȚȜİȦȢ IJİ țĮ Ț İȣμİȞȘȢ ĮʌĮȜȜĮ ȟİIJĮȚ.’50 Plato de Repub. L. 6 p. 496, Op. vol. 2. Ed. Serrani * ‘Le Contrat Social, par J. J. Rousseau, C ITOYEN de Geneve. † It certainly would be convenient (if we can for a moment trifle with such a subject as the present F RENCH war) to march to Paris, ‘and like another (Bryant) fire another Troy’. We have little hope but from such assistance.—See ‘a Dissertation concerning the war of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer; shewing, that no such expedition was undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed’. Published in 1796, but there is no date to the title page. I find it difficult to give an opinion on this ingenious treatise. Whatever comes from the author of ‘The Analysis of ancient Mythology’ should be treated with very great respect. His character isa venerable, and his erudition, as I think, without an equal. Of all subjects, I should have thought this subject was one, on which an enquiry might have been instituted without offence. Yet this has not been the case. The offence has been considered as deep and wide, and the influence of the principle, in some respects, dangerous and alarming. The faith of history has been represented as attacked in its strongest fortress, and even the sacred writings, as matter of historical faith, implicated in the discussion. Some persons have even declared that Mr Bryant had no right to touch the subject. That nothing can be more contrary to reason than to suppose that the existence of a city, and a war, of which we have read with delight from our boyish days, should be called in question. That their pleasure is snatched from them: and such a poem, without an historical fact for a basis, cannot be interesting. They allow the amplification of poetry, and its embellishments, and even the anachronism of Homer. But Troy did exist, and the Grecians did once besiege it, and Hector, and Achilles, Agamemnon, and Diomede were as real heroes, as the Archduke Charles, Buonaparte, Lord Cornwallis, or Tipoo Saib in modern wars. I should really smile at many of these objections, if a

See Mr Bryant’s character delineated in the Pursuits of Literature, Dialogue II. v. 189, &c.

25

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Her state, her arms, her fleets, her very name Gave, as in mock’ry, to poetick fame, And with the fire of Philip’s son,55 unfurl’d His classick standard o’er a wond’ring world, Till ‘Homer’s sprite did tremble all for grief, And curs’d th'access of that celestial thief ’.* Oh, for a Bryant’s hand!56

30

OCTAVIUS. Methinks you smile, And fain would land me on the wand’ring isle, Where the learn’d drain Acrasia’s foaming bowl,57

they did not frequently come from persons of consequence and of learning. Most certainly however I will quarrel with no man ‘about Sir Archy’s great Grandmother’. They who are acquainted with the science and subject of probabilities will best decide that question for themselves, and I will not intrude my judgment. It is a question of probability, and not of proof. I am equally pleased with a poem on the metamorphosis of Apuleius or on any modern fiction, if all the essential and integral parts of a poem are preserved: if the characters, manners, and actions are human, and consistent with the supposed situations of the personages. This to me is sufficient; and perhaps poetry, as such, may be a gainer by Mr Bryant’s interpretation. I rather hail the omen in these times of poetical sterility. But nothing can be further from the dignity of Mr B’s character, than the imputation of having attacked the faith and credibility of ancient, or of any, history. It is scarcely entitled to notice. What was Troy? with what part of history is it connected? Is not the Trojan war an insulated solitary fact? If it were done away, is any historical event whatever made to fall with it? When it is stated that four hundred and thirty ships (no matter of what size) were employed by the Grecians in the Trojan war in the twelfth century, and only eighty-nine in the Peloponnesian war in the fifth century before Christ, is this matter of serious history? Is not the whole allowed to pass even the bounds of any probability, but the poet’s? I remember hearing a gentleman state similar questions to these with much earnestness and apparent conviction, but without warmth. He seemed to understand something of the subject; and though I thought some points were pressed indiscreetly and unnecessarily by Mr Bryant, I replied that I thought nearly as he did, and I said with most good-natured ǼʌȠȤȘ53 of the Academicks, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Bryantian’.—I think they who are the strongest in opposition to Mr Bryant, if they were even inquisitors,a and could force him to hold a lighted torch in his hand, and make a retraction of his errors and the amende honourable in the Eglise de notre Dame de C YBELE Mere de tous les Dieux Païens, would be contented with the Catholick form of words: Questi erano gli sherzi d’una penna poetica, non gli sentimenti d’un animo catolico! Yet considering all that I have heard, and the quarter from which it came, Curius quid sentit et AMBO Scipiadæ,54 and the insignificance of the question itself, but as a matter of amusement; though in common with many others, I should have lost much individual gratification and instruction, yet I wish this Dissertation on the war of Troy had never been written at all. * Two lines from Sir Walter Raleigh’s Sonnet prefixed to Spenser’s Fairy Queen. a I am sure Gilbert Wakefield is even more than an Inquisitor in all his principles literary, civil, and religious. See his independent letter to Mr Bryant on the war of Troy. But above all, see his Letter to Mr Wilberforce. The Secretary to the Duke of Alva under Philip II or the Publick Accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, under Robespierre, never exhibited such a paper. There is no deceit in Gilbert Wakefield: He is, just what he seems. It is plain to see what he expects, and why he writes.

26

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Till round the Sun their heads with Gebelin’s*58 roll; Nor heed the pause of† Douglas,59 Wakefield’s rage, Nor Hallam‡60 trembling for the sacred page, Nor Gillies§61 crying, what shall we peruse? What is my work? mere records of the Muse; And trust to Buonaparte’s iron pen,¶62 The tale of Rome may be Troy’s tale again …

40

* Gebelin.—If many of the unlearned world have thought Mr Bryant unadvised in the discussion of the war of Troy in the twelfth century A. C. what must we say to Mr Court de Gebelin, who has actually endeavoured to reason us into a belief, that the founders of the Roman State ROMULUS and R EMUS, were only allegorical personages, and were in reality representatives of the Sun and worshipped as such. Mr Gebelin is a man of the most various erudition, and if he were as well known as Mr Bryant, his attempt would have been noticed. But few people perhaps have had the curiosity to look into nine volumes in 4to of the ‘Monde Primitif analysé et comparé avec le Monde Moderne par M. Court de Gebelin’. It may be entertaining to some persons if I give a few particulars of this singular question. The Fourth volume of Mr Gebelin’s work consists of the ‘Histoire Religieux du Calendrier, ou des Fêtes Anciennes’. The fifth Chapter of the second Book (Vol. 4) is the Histoire de Gemeaux Romaines Romulus et Remus’. Mr G. says, ‘Les Romaines, eurent, aussi leurs Allegories sur le double Soleil succesif de l’année; ils l’appliquerent à leur Remus et Romulus. Les noms sont allegoriques, et tous relatifs à l’anée’. p. 264. Remus, it seems, signified THE S UN in the winter, and Romulus, in the summer! By an easy proof, he says, ‘Ils en firent la fête des lemures pour Remures, c. p. 263. In the sixth chapter of the same book, we read: Nous avons vu dans le chapitre précédent, que R OMULUS etoit LE SOLEIL; que tout le prouvoit:—And what is the proof ? Truly this: ‘Le nom de sa mere, celui de son pere, son frere, le mort de son frere (Remus), son propre nom, &c. &c’. Q. E. D.—Mr Gebelin has not yet done, nor is Mr Gebelin yet satisfied. He next converts, by means of his solar microscope, Romulus into Hercules! Hear his words. ‘Ce qu ’exprimoient à cet ègard les Grecs par l’Apothéose d’ Hercule les Romaines l’experiment par l’Apothéose de Romulus’. But when he speaks of Quirinus, another name of Romulus, the force of art and of proof can go no further. La voici. ‘Quirinus (nom de Romulus) la traduction litérale de Melcarthe, on Melicerte, que portoit Hercule chez les Tyriens, EST UNE AUTRE PREUVE, qu’on regardoit R OMULUS comme LE SOLEIL ’. p. 269!!!!!!— I cannot help observing that in this same 4th Vol. p. 242. Mr Gebelin informs us that, ‘Sur le 18 Fevrier on célébroit la Fête de Romulus, (and at the same time, rather inauspiciously to be sure) on célébroit LA FETE DE FOUX ’. I suppose on the celebration of LA F ETE DE F OUX , cards of invitation were sent round by the Pontifex Maximus to the Antiquaries of those days, and I really think, if Mr Gebelin had been produced at that time he would not have been without his card, with a few others, to be distributed among his friends.—Indeed these deliramenta doctrinæ are sometimes amusing, but in reality they are rather a subject of serious regret from their consequences on the public mind. There is no end of the absurdities from this source, when we resolve all ancient persons and events into allegories and Egyptian mysteries; till as we have just seen, ROMULUS AND R EMUS, the Founders of the Roman Empire, become (according to Monsieur Gebelin’s Order of Firing after a grand Escopetterie, or volley, of serpents and stars) transformed into the R OMAN S UNS; Remus in the Winter, and Romulus in the Summer!—See the proofs above † The Right Rev. Dr JOHN D OUGLAS, the present Bishop of Salisbury, (1797.) Author of the Criterion, and of other acute pieces of reasoning, which will be long remembered and admired. ‡ Dr Hallam, the present Dean of Bristol. (1797.) § Author of a History of Greece; but I shall say no more than that Dr Gillies’s solicitude is groundless, when he fears that it will be mistaken for the work of the Muses. ¶ The tremendous conquests of Buonaparte in Italy and in Germany remind us too much of the words of the Roman Historian, Si C APTIVOS aspiceres, Molossi, Thessali Macedones, Bruttius, Apulius; si POMPAS, auram, pupuræ, signa tabulæ, Tarentinæque deliciæ’. Flor. Lib. I. C. 18. (1797.)

27

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

But though that Garden-God63 forsaken dies; Another Cleland* see in LEWIS † rise.65 Why sleep the ministers of truth and law? Has the State no controul, no decent awe, While each with each in madd’ning orgies vie, Pandars to lust and licens’d blasphemy? Can Senates hear without a kindred rage? Oh may a poet’s light’ning blast the page, Nor with the bolt of Nemesis in vain Supply the laws, that wake not to restrain.

50

Is ignorance the plea? since Blackstone66 drew The lucid chart, each labyrinth has a clue, Each law an index: students aptly turn * John Cleland, author of ‘The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’. † M. Lewis, Esq. M. P. author of ‘The Monk a Romance in 3 Vol. (Vol. 2. Ch. 6. And 7.) See my observations at length in the preface to this Fourth Dial. Of the P.L. pag. ii. and iii.—The publication of this volume by a Member of Parliament is in itself so serious an offence to the publick, that I know not how the author can repair this breach of publick decency, but by suppressing it himself. Or he might omit the indecent and blasphemous passages in another edition; there is neither genius nor wit in them, and the work as a composition would receive great advantage. I wish he may at least take this advice. I will give Mr LEWIS an extract from the ninth Book of the History of Procopius, called the Historia Arcana of the Emperor Justinian and the infamous Theòdora. The words are these. ‘ǹȜȜȠ IJİ μȠȚİȞįİȚȞȘșĮȢȘșĮ Ȣ ʌİȡȚμȞȘμȠȞȠȣ ıĮȚ IJȠȣįİ IJȠȣ ǹ ȞșȡȦʌȠȣ Ƞȣį’ ‘ȠIJȚȠȣȞ ȠȚμĮȚ. ‘ǹʌ Į ȞIJĮ ȖĮȡ ĮșİIJĮ IJĮ IJȘȢȥȣ ȤȘȢ ʌĮșȘ ‘ȠȣIJȠȢ ĮȞ ĮȟȚȠȤȡİȦȢ ıȘ μȘȞĮȚįĮȚȡț ȦȢ İȚȘ. ǼʌİȚ‘ȠıIJȚȢ ĮȜȠȖȘıĮȢ IJȘȞ‘ȣʌİȡ IJȦȞʌİʌȡĮȖμİȞȦȞIJȘȞĮȚıȤȣȞȘȞ , Ƞȣț ĮʌĮȟȚȠȚIJȠȚȢ İȞIJȣȖȤĮȞȠȣıȚȕįİȜ ȣȡȠȢ ijĮȚȞİıșĮȚ, IJȠȣIJȦ įȘ Ƞȣįİ μȚĮ ʌĮȡĮȞȠμȚĮȢĮIJȡĮʌ ȠȢ ĮȕĮIJȠȢ ĮȜȜĮ IJȘȞĮȞĮȚįİȚĮȞ ĮİȚ IJĮ μİIJȦʌĮ ʌȡȠȕİȕȜȘμİȞȠȢ‘ȡĮıIJĮ IJİ țĮ ȚȠȣįİȞȚʌȠȞȦİȢ IJȦȞʌȡĮȟ İȦȞ IJȠȣȢμȚĮȡȦIJĮIJȠȣȢ ȤȦȡİȚ.’ Procop. Histor. Arcan. Lib. 9. p. 46. Ed. Fol. Lugdun. 1623.64—I wish Mr Lewis may read and profit from this passage. (July 1797.) Novels of this seductive and libidinous tendency excite disgust, fear and horror, in every man and woman, who reflect upon those virtues which alone give support, comfort and continuance to human Society. The interests of Society and the essential welfare, and even the very existence of this kingdom authorise any man, though conscious of manifold frailties, to speak in the manner I have done. For we cannot long deceive ourselves. Poetical men, of loose and ungoverned morals, can offer to us or themselves but feeble consolations from wit and imagery, when we are left to solitary reflection and the agony of remorse. I never found this subject so well represented, and so unanswerably enforced to every understanding, capable of recalling itself from vicious conduct and irregular inclinations, as in this short sentence: ‘Whoever WHOLLY give themselves up to Lust, will soon found it to the least fault they are guilty of ’. Whatever I have said on the subject of this novel, called THE M ONK , I shall leave as a matter of record, whether the novel is altered or not. The tenor of the whole is reprehensible. I leave it as a protest against such a work, published in such a manner, by a Gentleman in the high, honourable, and responsible station of a Member of Parliament. It is hoped and expected that no similar work will ever again be given to this country. (Added Nov. 1797).

28

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

To Williams, Hale, judicious* Cox, and Burn;67 Obscenity has now her code and priest, While anarchy prepares the dire Digest. Methinks as in a theatre I stand, Where vice and folly saunter hand in hand, With each strange form in motley masquerade; Featur’d grimace, and impudence pourtray’d; While virtue, hov’ring o’er th’unhallow’d room, Seems a dim speck through Sin’s surrounding gloom. As through the smoak-soil’d glass† we spy from far The circling radiance of the Sirian Star, Faint wax the beams, if strong the fumy tint, Till the star fades, a mathematick point. Sure from the womb I was untimely torn,68 Or in some rude inclement season born; The State turns harsh on fortune’s grating hinge, And I untaught to beg, or crouch, or cringe. For me the fates no golden texture weave, Though happier far to give than to receive: Yet with unvaulting sober wishes blest, Ambition fled with envy from my breast; For friendship form’d, in yon starr’d fields above, My Saturn’s temper’d by the beam of Jove. I cannot, will not, stoop with boys to rise, And seize on Pitt, like Canning,‡69 by surprise, Be led through Treasury vaults in airy dance, And flatter’d into insignificance.§ I cannot, will not, in a college gown, Vent my first nonsense on a patient town, Quit the dull Cam, and ponder in the park

60

70

80

* Samuel Cox, Esq. of the Court of Chancery, the Editor (at his leisure hours) of the Reports of Peere Williams. I am not very conversant with professional law books, but a learned person shewed me Mr Coxe’s mode of illustration, and desired me to consider it. I really think, it seems as a model for all future Editors of Reports of former years. This plan is evidently the mode of a most judicious understanding and of a well-read Lawyer. Transeat in exemplum! † ‘If the glass be tincted faintly with the smoke of a lamp or torch to obscure the light of the star, the fainter light in the circumference of the star ceases to be visible, and the star (if the glass be sufficiently soiled with smoke) appears something more like a mathematick point’. Newton’s Opticks. Prop. 7. Theor. 6. ‡ As posterity may know little of this young Gentleman, I shall add, that Mr Canning was first an Eton boy, then wrote a little book of Essays, then went to college, was then made M. P. and after some tuition and instruction from the accomplished George Rose, Esq. &c. &c. &c. made one of the Under Secretaries of State. (1797.) § ‘Pessimum genus inimicorum Laudantes’. Tacit.70 I know no man more qualified to be a Commentator on Tacitus than Mr William Pitt.

29

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

A six-weeks Epick,* or a Joan of Arc.71 I leave these early transports, and the calm Complacence, and the softly trickling balm Self-consolation sheds! more sweet than all Burke felt in senates, or Impeachment’s Hall; Borne to that course, where thund’ring from afar The Great Auruncian†72 drove his primal car.

90

E’en now, when all I view afflicts my sight, All that Horne Tooke‡ can plot, or Godwin§ write; * Robert Southey, author of many ingenious pieces of poetry of great promise, if the young gentleman would recollect what old Chaucer says of poetry, ‘’Tis every dele A rock of ice and not of steel’. He gave the public a long quarto volume of epick verses, J OAN OF A RC, written as he says, in the preface, in six weeks. Had he meant to write well, he should have kept it at least six years.—I mention this, because I have been much pleased with many of the young gentleman’s little copies of verses. I wish also that he would review some of his principles. † Lucilius. ‡ Mr H ORNE T OOK , in the conclusion of his ‘Diversions of Purley’, makes an apology for applying himself to subjects so trivial as grammatical discussions, in the year 1786. He uses the words of an Italian poet, which are very remarkable, though they never have been much noticed. ‘Perche altrove non have Dove voltare il viso, Che gli è stato interciso Mostrar CON ALTRE IMPRESE altra virtude’. The hour was however approaching, when his countenance was turned to other thoughts, and he was to display other talents which had almost slept since the time of Junius. At the blast of the French Revolution he awoke from grammatical slumber, and found that other enterprises awaited him. We have traced his proceedings till his trial at the Old Bailey for high treason, Nov. 4, 1794. His plans were UNFOLDED , and though he was acquitted, and ‘Execution was not done on Cawdor’, yet it is not impossible that hereafter, (after his decease,) some honest chronicler may be found, ‘Who will report (in private) That very frankly he confessed his treasons, Implor’d his country’s pardon, and set forth A deep repentance’. (Macbeth.) Till that hour arrives, I shall wait for the continuance of his grammatical researches, which are promised to the world, with the celebrated wish of the Satirist, Ut vellem his potius nugis illa dedisset T EMPORA SÆVITIÆ 73 From the abilities and uncommon erudition of Mr Horne Tooke I dread much, and from the calmness and mildness of his conversation I should perhaps apprehend more. But as I think THE WHOLE K INGDOM is fully, and deeply, and solemnly, and unalterably impressed with the nature, the malignity, the extent, the influence, and the terror of the grand Revolutionary Principle, and the desperate fury of Reforming societies and embodied factions, I trust Great Britain and her Ministers will never suffer the arm of justice and vigilance to remit or to relax its energies. § See my account of this weak and contemptible writer, William Godwin, and his Political Justice, in Dialogue III. of the P. of L.—Se also a future note in this part of the Poem.

30

Mathias (from The Pursuits of Literature)

Now when Translation to a pest is grown, And Holcroft*74 to French treason adds his own; When Gallick Diderot76 in vain we shun, His blasted pencil, Fatalist,† and Nun; When St Pol‡ sounds the sacring bell, that calls His Priests en masse from Charles’s ruin’d walls; When Thelwall,§77 for the season, quits the Strand To organize revolt by sea and land; When Barristers¶ turn authors; authors** prate;79 C HARLES F OX 80 allegiance dares to calculate, And with his sulph’rous torch relumes the pile With unaverted†† face, and ghastly smile; When Transatlantick Emigrants can roam,

100

110

* Thomas Holcroft.—Late of Newmarket; now an Author and would-be directing Statesman from that great seminary of politics and government. He is also one of the Clair-voyans, and of the Chevaliers des Lunettes in the meridian of Hyde Park. Horne Tooke cannot be much pleased with this compeer. Scurra degrunnit prior.75 See the fable. † The names of his posthumous novels, translated for the benefit of Great Britain. ‡ The Bishop of St Pol. De Leon, to whom the care of the French Emigrant priests is committed en masse. The reader may recollect they were maintained in the old mansion built by Charles II at Winchester.—The reader may be surprised, but he will find by the papers laid on the table of the House of Commons, on the 21st of December, 1796, that no less a sum than 540,000l. was issued in one year for French priests and Emigrants, sacred and profane.—See the Preface to the P. of L. Dialogue IV. § This indefatigable incendiary and missionary of the French Propaganda, John Thelwall, has now his Schools of Reason in country towns, &c. &c. ȆİȡȚııȦ Ȣ İμμĮȚȞȠ μİȞȠȢ .78 ¶ Mr Barrister Erskine.—See more of him and his pamphlet on the French war in a future note. ** I refer to the House of Commons. †† In ancient times among the Romans, when the publick ministers of funeral obsequies set fire to the pile, they turned aside their faces. Triste ministerium, subjectam more parentum Aversi tenuere facem. (Virg. Æn. 6.)81 Not so the Right Honourable C HARLES JAMES FOX ! As Mr Fox loves Greek, I will give my opinion of Mr Fox’s tongue and eloquence in Greek. I shall then say of it; Ǿ ȖȜȦııĮ ʌȣȡ, ‘Ș ijȜȠȖȚȗ ȠȣıĮ IJȠȞIJȡȠȤ ȠȞIJȘȢȖİȞİıİȦȢ, țĮ ȚijȜȠȖȚȗ ȠμȞİȞȘ‘ȣʌȠ IJȘȢīİİȞȞȘȢ, Įț ĮIJĮı ȤİIJȠȞ țĮ ț ȠȞ, μİıIJȘ IJĮ șĮ ȞĮIJȘijĮȡĮ. If Mr Fox would attend to THIS Greek author, he might learn the țĮȜ Ș ĮȞĮı IJȡȠijȘ, and ʌȡĮȣIJȘȢıȠijȚĮȢ.82 Even Mr Fox may possibly read what I say.—As Mr Fox is now (June 1797) studying Mr Gibbon’s History, he will find many an instructive lesson for his publick conduct. Mr Fox, I know cannot always construe Mr G.’s English, and is in the habit of consulting his friends on the meaning of many passages and sentences; but without much success. His friends can confirm what I say, if they think proper.a I always feel an interest in Mr Fox’s studies, whether he is reading Gibbon, or culling simples on St Ann’s Hill with a Perhaps Mr Fox may understand and construe the following sentence from the luminous Historian. ‘An aspiring candidate may be tempted to build his gretness on the publick confusion, but it is the interest as well as the duty of THE S OVEREIGN to maintian the authority of the laws.’ Gibbon, Vol 7. p. 80. Ed. 8vo.

31

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

But to return, and praise our* English home;85 Now, when the French defend us† in disgrace, French swords, French fraud, French priests, and French grimace; When England changes arms—at such a view Must I find method, verse, and patience too? My verse, the thunder of a Patriot’s voice, Cries loud to ALL who ENGLAND make their choice, ‘Throw wide that portal; let no Roman wait, But march with Priestley through the dextral gate’.‡

Aspasia, or poring on the Odyssey, in lamentation over his departed friends in the H. of C. in the old Bard’s language ǹȡ ȞȣμİȞȠȢ‘ȘȞIJİȥȣȤȘȞțĮ ȚȃȠıIJȠȞǼIJĮȚȡȦȞ , ǹȜ Ȝ’Ƞȣį’ ‘ȦȢǼIJ Įȡ ȠȣȢİ’ȡȡȣıĮIJȠ ‘ , ‘ȚİμİȞȠȢʌİȡ. Od. L. I.83 But his ǼIJĮȚȡȠȚ or Friends are said to have left him only on one account; his good humour and ability having never forsaken him. The account is this, deep, short, and full: ‘ǼʌİȚȉȡȠȚȘȢ‘ȚİȡȠȞʌIJȠȜ ȚİșȡȠȞİʌİȡıİ .’ Od. 1. I.V.2.84 * See Mr Cooper of Manchester’s Account on his return from America, and the Letters of some wandering journeyman Weaver or Carpenter, I forget which, &c. &c. ‘Impudens liqui patrios Penates, &c’. † I allude to the French Emigrant Regiments, enrolled in the British army. Surely this is a measure of government unwise, and unaccountable on any sound principle, a project of desperation, one would think. Is this a time for Englishmen to say, Mutemus clypeos, Danaumque insignia NOBIS Aptemus. (Virg. Æn. 2.)86 ‡ ‘Through the dextral gate!’—My allusion is this: In ancient times, the most frequented roads to the city of Rome had double gates. They who came into the city passed through the left-hand gate; and they who went OUT OF THE CITY took the right-hand gate. See Nardini Roma Antica, L. 10. c. 9. When Pliny, in his Natural History, in the Chapter de Roma, Lib. 3. c. 5, speaking of the gates of the city, says, ‘that twelve of the thirty-seven gates should only be numbered once (semel numerari)’. The expression is odd, but it alludes to such of those gates as were double in this sense. This was not unknown in other Italian cities. The Porta de’ Borsari at Verona (in the opinion of the Marquese Scipio Maffei, Verona Illustrata, Part 3,) was in reality a twin or double gate, though it has been mistaken by some antiquaries for an arch of triumph.—N. B. In times like the present, I would never shut those double gates in any city, when the turbulent discontented, and factious wish to retire into foreign parts. We all remember, that Sir Arthur Hazelrig, John Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell, being ready to sail for America, were STOPPED by order of Council! Hume’s words are very strong and remarkable in this lecturing age. ‘They (i. e. Hampden, Hazelrig, and Cromwell) had resolved for ever ‘to abandon their native country, and fly to the other extremity of the globe, where they might enjoy lectures and discourses of any length or form that pleased them’. Mr Hume adds, very significantly, ‘The King had afterwards full leisure to repent this exercise of his authority’. Hume’s Hist. Vol. 6. p. 311, Ed. 8vo. 1773. i.e. If Mr G’s principles are to be adopted in any country, where property is now secured by the laws.

32

RICHARD POLWHELE

The Unsex’d Females: A Poem Addressed to the Author of The Pursuits of Literature (1798) [First published in The Unsex’d Females, London, Cadell and Davies, 1798. Richard Polwhele (1760–1838; DNB) spent all of his adult life as a High Church clergyman in the West Country, primarily in the counties of Devon and Cornwall. His childhood tutor was the prolific satirist John Wolcot, better known by his liter­ ary alias, ‘Peter Pindar’. Apart from his clerical duties Polwhele was an author of prodigious energy: he translated the Greek poetry of Theocritus, Bion and Mos­ chus, in an edition that was published in 1786, to significant acclaim. He was also the author of a history of Devonshire between 1793–1806 and was a regular con­ tributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review.1 The Unsex’d Females appeared in 1798 and tapped into contemporary patriarchal fears about female radicalism in perhaps the most tempestuous decade in English politics since the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. The epigraph that precedes the poem is drawn from T. J. Mathias’s The Pur­ suits of Literature,2 a poem much admired by Polwhele for its ultra-Tory politics: Our unsex’d female writers now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy’. The Pursuits of Literature, Edit. 7. p. 238.

Although The Unsex’d Females has nothing like the range of Mathias’s much longer work, like his predecessor, Polwhele is advocating an extremely conservative agenda that links domestic and cultural change to political turmoil. Whereas Mathias ranges broadly in cultural politics, religious affairs and revolutionary events both at home and abroad, Polwhele’s much narrower concentration is upon what he sees as ‘unnatural’ female radicals. Though he ranges across much of contemporary women’s writing, it is Mary Wollstonecraft who personifies in Polwhele’s view the modern female radical’s attack on what he describes as ‘nature’: ‘See Wollstonecraft, whom no decorum, checks’ / Arise, the intrepid champion of her sex’.3 Woll­ stonecraft was a contentious figure in her own time, revered in some quarters but (more frequently) reviled in others. The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine regularly printed insulting epigrams that focussed, like Polwhele, on her unnatural usurpation 33

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-3

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

of the male sphere: ‘For Mary verily would wear the breeches / God help poor silly men from such usurping b[itche]s’.4 Similarly, Polwhele concentrates upon the well known salacious aspects of Wollstonecraft’s private life made public by Godwin’s publication of Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), Pol­ whele’s primary source. Though the poem was originally published as a separate volume, it is relatively brief and is given in full below.]

1 2 3 4

DNB. For Mathias see the headnote to The Pursuits of Literature, above, pp. 8–9 Polwhele, The Unsex’d Females, ll. 63–64. Cited in Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Miriam Brody, Har­ mondsworth, Penguin, 1992, p. 1.

34

THOU, who with all the poet’s* genuine rage, Thy ‘fine eye rolling’ o’er ‘this aweful age’, Where polish’d life unfolds its various views, Hast mark’d the magic influence of the muse;† Sever’d, with nice precision, from her beam‡

1

* In my opinion, the Author of ‘The Pursuits of Literature has discovered, in his animated Satire a true poetical genius. And (as a writer, who had very little pretensions to that character himself, observes) ‘a true poet is a public good’. The satire in question, seems to have produced effects, resembling those which distinguished the poetry of Greece and Rome. For I can assert, on the best authorities, that many in this country, whose politics and religion have long been wavering, are now fixed in their principles by ‘The Pursuits of Literature’. † By the muse, I mean literature in general. ‡ I agree with the author of ‘The Pursuits’, both in his praises and in his censures of the writers in this country, with a few exceptions only. To his eulogia, indeed, I heartily assent: but, I think, his animadversions on Darwin and Hayley,1 in particular, are unmerited. In composing his Botanic Garden, Dr Darwin was aware, that though imagination refuse to enlist under the banner of science, yet may sometimes be brought forward, not unhappily, under the conduct of imagination: and of the latter, if I am in any way a judge, we are presented with a complete specimen in that admirable poem. With respect to the structure of the poem, we have been told, that it wants connexion—that there is a reciprocal repulsion between the scientific and imaginative particles, and so little affinity between the latter, that they cannot possibly cohere. But on this topic, let us hear the Author himself; who invites us to contemplate, in his poem, ‘a great variety of little pictures, connected only by a slight festoon of ribbons’. And they are pictures glowing in the richest colours—the most beautiful, in short, that were ever delineated by the poetic pencil. I defy anyone of Dr Darwin’s censures, to point out a single picture, which is not finished with touches the most exquisite—‘with all the magic charms of light and shade’. I had intended to examine the style, the versification, the poetry; but rather let me desire my reader to open either of the volumes, at a venture, and take the first description that presents itself: and he will find painting sublime as Fuseli’s, or beautiful as Emma Crewe’s.2 It is easy to run over the changes of ‘artificial glitter’—‘glaring varnish’—‘deliciousness’ that ‘cloys’. Thus was Gibbon3 treated. Gibbon, forsooth, was required to bring down the haughtiness of his style to a level with that of vulgar ‘prosers’. And Darwin must lower his eagle wing, to silence the clamour of the poetic sparrow-hawks., that, whilst they arraign his flights, are pining at their imbecility. —Of the other poet, Mr Hayley,4 whose merit has been much appreciated by the Author of ‘The Pursuits’, I have always entertained the highest opinion. In graceful negligence, and in harmony of numbers, he surely stands unrivalled. He has all that lucid imagery, and that chaste elegance which characterise the poet of Eloisa:5 and his imagery is his own. Pope’s was borrowed. In copiousness of expression, he is vastly superior to Pope. But from his command of language, he is sometimes tempted to riot in redundancies, or to expand a sentiment where he ought to compress it. I need not enumerate his various productions, both in verse and prose; all of which will probably descend to posterity, with honour to his name. But his ‘Triumph of Temper’ is a poem, in which the invention of Spenser is blended with the perspicuity and melody of Pope.— I might mention other names which the Author of ‘The Pursuits’ seems to have slighted—but I shall hint only, that he has entirely omitted several names of literary respectability—particularly in the west of England. What does he think of Whitaker?6 Doubtless, a gentleman of such high eminence as the historian of Manchester, the memorialist of Mary Queen of Scots, &c &c. must have his share in ‘affecting public order, regulated government and published society’.

35

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Of genial power, her false and feeble gleam; Expos’d the Sciolist’s7 vain-glorious claim, And boldly thwarted Innovation’s aim, Where witlings wildly think, or madly dare,* With Honor, Virtue, Truth, announcing war; Survey with me, what ne’er our fathers saw, A female band despising NATURE’s law,† As ‘proud defiance’‡ flashes from their arms, And vengeance smothers all their softer charms. I shudder at the new unpictur’d scene, Where unsex’d woman vaunts the imperious mien; Where girls, affecting to dismiss the heart, Invoke the Proteus of petrific art;12 With equal ease, in body or in mind, To Gallic freaks or Gallic faiths13 resign’d, The crane-like neck, as Fashion bids, lay bare, Or frizzle, bold in front, their borrow’d hair; Scarce by a gossamery film carest, Sport,§ in full view, the meretricious breast;¶ Loose the chaste cincture, where the graces shone, And languish’d all the Loves, the ambrosial zone; As lordly domes inspire dramatic rage, Court prurient Fancy to the private stage;

10

20

* ‘Greatly think, or nobly die’. Pope.8 † Nature is the grand basis of all laws human and divine: and the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon ‘walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government’.9 ‡ ‘A troop came next, who crowns and armours wore, And proud defiance in their looks they bore’. Pope. The Amazonian band—the female Quixotes of the new philosophy, are, here, too justly characterised. Nor could they read, I suspect, some passages in the sixth satire of Juvenal without an uneasy sensation: Quam praestare protest muliere galeata pudorem?10 I have seen Mr Gifford’s masterly translation of this satire. Our expectations, I hope, will soon be gratifies by his entire version of Juvenal.11 § To ‘sport a face’, is a cant phrase in one of our Universities, by which is meant an impudent obtrusion of a man’s person in company. It is not inapplicable, perhaps to the open bosom—a fashion which we have never invited or sanctioned. ¶ The fashions of France, which have been always imitated by the English, were, heretofore, unexceptionable in a moral point of view; since, however ridiculous or absurd, they were innocent. But they have now their source among prostitutes—among women of the most abandoned character. ‘See Madam Tallien14 come into the theatre, and other beautiful women, laying aside all modesty, and presenting themselves to the public view, with bared limbs, a la sauvage, as the alluring objects of desire’. Robinson’s Proofs of a Conspiracy, &c. &c. Edit. 2. p. 252.

36

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

With bliss botanic* as their bosoms heave, Still pluck forbidden fruit, with mother Eve, For puberty in signing florets15 pant, Or point the prostitution of a plant; Dissect† its organ of unhallow’d lust, And fondly gaze the titillating‡ dust;§ With liberty’s sublimer views expand,¶ And o’er the wreck of kingdoms** sternly stand; And, frantic, midst the democratic storm, Pursue, Philosophy! thy phantom-form.††

30

* Botany has lately become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the sexual systems of plants can accord with female modesty, I am not able to comprehend. See note from Darwin’s Botanic Garden. I had, at first, written: More eager for more illicit knowledge pant, With lustful boys anatomise a plant; The virtues of its dust prolific speak, Or point its pistil with unblushing cheek. I have at several times seen boys and girls botanising together. † Miss Wollstonecraft does not blush to say, in an introduction to a book designed for the use of young ladies, that ‘in order to lay the axe at the root of corruption, it would be proper to familiarise the sexes to an unreserved discussion of these topics, which are generally avoided in conversation from a principle of false delicacy; and that it would be right to speak of the organs of generation as freely as we mention our eyes or our hands’.16 To such language our botanising girls are doubtless familiarised: and they are in a fair way of becoming worthy disciples of Miss W. If they do not take heed to their ways, they will soon exchange the blush of modesty for the bronze of impudence. ‡ ‘Each pungent grain of titillating dust’. Pope.17 § ‘The prolific dust’—of the botanist. ¶ Non vultus, non color unus, Non comptæ mansere comæ: sed pectus anhelum, Et rabie fera corda tument; majorque videri, &c.18 Except the non color unus, Virgil’s Sibyll seems to be an exact portrait of a female fashionist, both in dress and philosophism.19 After all, it is Christianity, which has given women their appropriate rank in Society. See Robison’s Proofs, &c. pp. 262–271. See also, p. 457 ** The female advocates of Democracy in this country, though they have had no opportunity of imitating the French ladies, in their atrocious acts of cruelty; have yet assumed a stern serenity in the contemplation of those savage excesses. ‘To express the abhorrence of royalty, they (the French ladies) threw away the character of their sex, and bit the amputated limbs of their murdered countrymen.—I am sorry to add, that the relation, accompanied with looks of horror and disgust, only provoked a contemptuous smile from an illuminated British fair one’. See Robinson— p. 251. †† Philosophism, the false image of philosophy. See the pseudo Eneas of the Eneid, 10.b. imitated from the Iliad, 15.b. … Nuba cava tenuem sine viribus umbram … … Dat inania verba Dat sine mente sonum …

37

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Far other is the female shape and mind, By modest luxury heighten’d and refin’d; Those limbs, that figure, tho’ by Fashion* grac’d, By Beauty polish’d, and adorn’d by Taste; That soul, whose harmony perennial flows, In Music trembles, and in Color glows; Which bids sweet Poesy reclaim the praise With faery light to gild fastidious days, From sullen clouds relieve domestic care, And melt in smiles the withering frown of war. Ah! once the female Muse, to NATURE true, The unvalued store from FANCY, FEELING drew; Won, from the grasp of woe, the roseate hours, Cheer’d life’s dim vale, and strew’d the grave with flowers. But lo! where, pale amidst the wild,† she draws Each precept cold from sceptic Reason’s‡ vase; Pours with rash arm the turbid stream along, And in the foaming torrent whelms the throng.§ Alas! her pride sophistic flings a gloom, To chase, sweet Innocence! thy vernal bloom, Of each light joy to damp the genial glow, And with new terrors clothe the groupe of woe, Quench the pure daystar¶ in oblivion deep, And, Death! restore thy ‘long, unbroken sleep’.** See Wollstonecraft, whom no decorum checks,

40

50

60

A true description of Philosophism; a phantom which heretofore appeared not in open day, though it now attempts the loftiest flights in the face of the sun. I trust, however, to English eyes, it is almost lost in the ‘black cloud’ to which it owed its birth. —Laevis haud ultra latebras jam quaerit imago, Sed, sublime volans, nubi se immiscuit atrae.20 * I admit that we are quickly reconciled to the fashion of the day, and often consider it as graceful, if it not offend against delicacy. † ‘A wild where flowers and weeds promiscuous shoot; A garden tempting with forbidden fruit’. Pope.21 ‡ A troubled stream only, can proceed from the vase of scepticism; if it be not ‘the broken cistern that holds no water’. § ‘Raging waves foaming out their own shame’.—St Jude.22 Such were those infamous publications of Paine23 and others, which like the torrents of December, threatened to sweep all before them—to overwhelm the multitude. ¶ Alluding to that beautiful passage: ‘Ere the day dawn or the daystar arise in your hearts’. ** ‘… We, the great, the valiant and the wise, When once the seal of death hath closed our eyes, Shut in the hollow tomb obscure and deep, Slumber to wake no more, one long unbroken sleep’. Moschus

38

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

Arise, the intrepid champion of her sex; O’er humbled man assert the sovereign claim, And slight the timid blush* of virgin fame. ‘Go, go (she cries) ye tribes of melting maids, Go, screen your softness in sequester’d shades; With plaintive whispers woo the unconscious grove, And feebly perish, as depis’d ye love. What tho’ the fine Romances of Rousseau Bid the flame flutter, and the bosom glow; Tho’ the rapt Bard, your empire fond to own, Fall prostrate and adore your living throne, The living throne his hands presum’d to rear, Its seat a simper, and its base a tear;† Soon shall the sex disdain the illusive sway, And wield the sceptre in yon blaze of day;‡ Ere long, each little artifice discard, No more by weakness§ winning fond regard; Nor eyes, that sparkle from their blushes, roll, Nor catch the languors of the sick’ning soul, Nor the quick flutter, nor the coy reserve, But nobly boast the firm gymnastic nerve;¶ Nor more affect with Delicacy’s fan To hide the emotion from congenial man; To the bold heights where glory beams, aspire, Blend mental energy with Passion’s fire, Surpass their rivals in the powers of mind And vindicate the Rights of womankind’.**26

70

80

* That Miss Wollstonecraft was a sworn enemy to blushes, I need not remark. But many of my readers, perhaps, will be astonished to hear, that at several of our boarding-schools for young ladies, a blush incurs a penalty. † According to Rousseau,24 the empire of women is the empire of softness—of address: their commands, are caresses; their menaces, are tears. ‡ Her visual nerve was purged with euphrasy: she could see the illumination fast approaching, unperceived as it was by common mortals. § ‘Like monarchs, we have been flattered into imbecility, by those who wish to take advantage of our weakness’; says Mary Hays (Essays and Letters, p. 92). But, whether flattered or not, women were always weak: and female weakness hath accomplished, what the force of arms could not affect. ‘Mulieres urbem quam armis vire defendere non possent, precibus lacrymisque defenderunt’— Liv.25 ¶ Miss Wollstonecraft seriously laments the neglect of all muscular exercises at our boarding schools ** Here, and at the conclusion of the poem, I have formed a group of female writers; whose productions have been appreciated by the public as works of learning or genius – though not praised with that extravagance of panegyric, which was once a customary tribute to the literary compositions of women. In this country, a female author was formerly esteemed a Phenomenon in Literature: and she was sure of a favourable reception among the critics, in consideration of her

39

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

She spoke: and veteran BARBAULD caught the strain,31 And deem’d her songs of Love, her Lyrics vain; And ROBINSON* to Gaul her Fancy gave, And trac’d the picture of a Deist’s grave! And charming SMITH† resign’d her power to please, Poetic feeling and poetic ease; sex. This species of gallantry, however, conveyed no compliment to her understanding. It implied such an inferiority of woman in the scale of intellect as was justly humiliating: and critical forbearance was mortifying to female vanity. At the present day, indeed, our literary women are so numerous, that their judges, waiving all complimentary civilities, decide upon their merits with the same rigid impartiality as it seems right to exercise towards the men. The tribunal of criticism is no longer charmed into complacence by the blushes of modest apprehension. It no longer imagines the pleading eye of feminine diffidence that speaks a consciousness of comparative imbecility, or a fearfulness of having offended by intrusion. Experience hath drawn aside the flimsy veil of affected timidity, that only served to hide the smile of complacency; the glow of self-gratulation. Yet, alas! the crimsoning blush of modesty, will be always more attractive, than the sparkle of confident intelligence. Mrs Barbauld stands the most conspicuous figure in the group. She is a veteran in literature. I shall notice her poetry, in comparison with Mrs Carter’s: it is, certainly, chaste and elegant. Si sic omnia dixisset!27 I was sorry to find Mrs B. (among the gods, Miss Aikin28) classed with such females as a Wollstonecraft or a Jebb.29 ‘The most sensible women (says Mr Dyer30) are more uniformly on the side of Liberty, than the other sex—witness a Macaulay, a Wollstonecraft, a Barbauld, a Jebb, a Williams, a Smith’. Dyer’s Poems, pp. 36, 37. But though Mrs B. has lately published several political tracts which, if not discreditable to her talents and virtues, can by no means add to her reputation, yet I am sure, she must reprobate, with me, the alarming eccentricities of Miss Wollstonecraft. Of Mrs Jebb’s publications I received the first intelligence in the notes to Mr Dyer’s Poems, (p. 36): and I have named her here, only as an obscure writer, when compared with Miss Aikin, the favourite of my earlier years, when first ‘I lisp’d in numbers’. * In Mrs Robinson’s32 poetry there is a peculiar delicacy: but her novels, as literary compositions, have no great claim to approbation. As containing the doctrines of Philosophism, they merit the severest censure. Would that, for the sake of herself and her beautiful daughter (whose personal charms are only equalled by the elegance of her mind) would that for the sake of public morality, Mrs Robinson were persuaded to dismiss the gloomy phantasm of annihilation; to think seriously of a future retribution; and to communicate to the world, a recantation of errors that originated in levity, and have been nursed by pleasure! I have seen her ‘glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour and joy’. Such, and more glorious, may I meet her again, when ‘the just ‘shall shine forth as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever’. † The Sonnets of Charlotte Smith,33 have a pensiveness peculiarly their own: it is not the monotonous plaintiveness of Shenstone,34 the gloomy melancholy of Gray,35 or the meek subdued spirit of Collins.36 It is a strain of wild, yet softened sorrow, that breathes a romantic air, without losing, for a moment, its mellowness. Her images, often original, are drawn from nature: the most familiar, have a new and charming aspect. Sweetly picturesque, she creates with the pencil of a Gilpin,37 and infuses her own soul into the landscape. There is so uncommon a variety in her expression, that I could read a thousand of such Sonnets without lassitude. In general, a very few Sonnets fatigue attention, partly owing to the sameness of their construction. Petrarch,38 indeed, I can relish for a considerable time: but Spenser and Milton will soon produce somnolence. As a novel-writer her Ethelinde and Emmeline place her above all her contemporaries, except Mrs D’Arblay39 and Mrs Radcliffe. But why does she suffer her mind to be infected with the Gallic mania? I hope, ere this, she is completely recovered from a disorder, of which, indeed, I observed only a few slight symptoms.

40

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

And HELEN,* fir’d by Freedom, bade adieu To all the broken visions of Peru; And YEARSELEY,† who had warbled, Nature’s child, Midst twilight dews, her minstrel ditties wild, (Tho’ soon a wanderer from her meads and milk, She long’d to rustle, like her sex, in silk) Now stole the modish grin, the sapient sneer, And flippant HAYS‡ assum’d a cynic leer; While classic KAUFFMAN§ her Priapus drew, And linger’d a sweet blush with EMMA CREWE.¶ Yet say, ye Fair, with man’s tyrannic host, Say, where the battles ye so proudly boast,

100

* Miss Helen Williams40 is, doubtless, a true poet. But is it not extraordinary, that such a genius, a female and so young, should have become a politician—that the fair Helen, whose notes of love have charmed the moonlight vallies, should stand forward, an intemperate advocate for Gallic licentiousness—that such a woman should import with her, a blast more pestilential than that of Avernus,41 though she has so often delighted us with melodies soft as the sighs of the Zephyr, delicious as the airs of Paradise? † Mrs Yearsley’s42 Poems, as the product of an untutored milk-woman, certainly entitled her to patronage; and patronage she received from Miss H. Moore, liberal beyond example. Yet, such is the depravity of the human heart, that this milk-woman had no sooner her hut cheered by the warmth of benevolence, than she spurned her benefactor from her door. Perhaps, she had read, when a poor labourer’s child at a charity-school, the Fable of ‘the Adder and Traveller’; the moral application of which to herself, at this crisis of her life, might have done her more essential service, than all her poetical reveries. But she has since pursued her literary career, with an ardour by no means damped by the sense of ingratitude. Self-love, indeed, seems to have thrown over her conduct a delusive colouring. In the preface to her romantic novel, ‘the Royal Captives’, Mrs Y. has plainly an eye to her worthy patroness. ‘Nature herself drew delusion in the desart, where I was beloved by Fancy before I was alive to fame, and tasted more delight than I have since found in the midst of proud society, where favour falls heavily on the heart from the hand of arrogance’. My business, however, with Mrs Y. is to recall her, if possible, from her Gallic wanderings—if an appeal to native ingenuousness be not too late; if the fatal example of the Arch-priestess of female Libertinism, have any influence on a mind once stored with the finest moral sentiment. ‡ Mary Hays,43 I believe, is little known: but from her ‘Letters and Essays’, she is evidently a Wollstonecraftian. ‘I cannot mention (says she) the admirable advocate for the rights of women, without pausing to pay tribute of grateful respect, in the name of my sex, to the virtue and talents of a writer, who with courage and ability, hath endeavoured to rescue the female mind from those prejudices which have been the canker of genuine virtue’. Preface to her ‘Letters and Essays’, p. 6. ‘The rights of woman and the rights of Wollstonecraft, will go down to posterity with reverence’. ‘Letters and Essays’, p. 31. Mary Hays ridicules the good lady who studied her Bible, and obliged her children to say their prayers, and go statedly to church’. p. 34. Her expressions respecting the European Governments are, in a high degree, inflammatory. See pages 14, 15, 17, 18, 19. § Angelica Kauffman’s44 print, should accompany Miss Wollstonecraft’s Instructions in Priapism, already noticed, by way of illustration. This, and a little plant-adultery, would go great lengths, in producing among girls, the consummation so devoutly wished. ¶ There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her ‘Flora at play with Cupid’,45 (the frontispiece to the Second Part of the Botanic Garden) she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait the air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting.

41

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

While, urg’d to triumph by the Spartan fife,* Corporeal struggles mix’d with mental strife? Where, the plum’d chieftain of your chosen train, To fabricate your laws, and fix your reign? Say, hath her eye its lightnings flash’d to scath The bloom young Pleasure sheds on Glory’s path; Her ear, indignant as she march’d along, Scorn’d every charm of soft lascivious song? Say, hath she view’d, if pass’d the mourner by, The drooping form, nor heav’d one female sigh; Arm’d with proud intellect, at fortune laugh’d,† Mock’d the vain threat, and brav’d the envenom’d shaft? Say, hath your chief the ideal depths explor’d,‡ Amid the flaming tracts of spirit soar’d, And from base earth, by Reason’s vigor borne, Hail’d the fair beams of Mind’s expanding morn? Alas! in every aspiration bold, I saw the creature of a mortal mould: Yes! not untrembling (tho’ I half ador’d A mind by Genius fraught, by Science stor’d) I saw the Heroine mount the dazzling dome Where Shakspeare’s spirit kindled, to illume

110

120

* Our new philosophical system (particularly that part of it which confounds the distinction of the sexes) bears a strong resemblance to the boasted institutions of Lycurgus.46 In Sparta, young women went abroad without veils; and married women could have entertained no very exalted idea of the matrimonial connexion, since they were often lent or let out by their husbands, to unmarried men, for the good of the community. As to the gymnastic exercises alluded to above, it is well known, that Lycurgus obliged the young women to run, wrestle, throw quoits, &c &c. and to appear naked, as well as the men, and dance naked at their solemn feasts and sacrifices, singing appropriate songs; whilst the young men made a ring around them, spectators of the exhibition. Though, at first, true modesty (it seems) was observed; yet the women, in process of time, converted those solemnities into instruments of libertinism; insomuch, that they were censured by ancient writers for their excessive wantonness. See Plutarch, in his Lives of Lycurgus and Numa.47 The Spartan women were considered by Lycurgus, as mere state-breeders: and such are they considered by the French, at the present hour. It was declared by a decree of the Convention (June 6th, 1794) that there was nothing criminal in the promiscuous commerce of the sexes. But that abominable farce in the Church of Notre Dame (which) is in every one’s recollection) was an exhibition truly Spartan. ‘We do not’, said the High-Priest to the populace) ‘call you to the worship of inanimate idols. Behold a masterpiece of nature’ (lifting up the veil which concealed the naked charms of the beautiful Madms. Barbier). ‘This sacred image shall influence all hearts’. And it did so. The people shouted: ‘No more altars; no more priests—no God, but the God of nature’. See Robinson, p. 252. † Miss Wollstonecraft ‘possessed a firmness of mind, and unconquerable greatness of soul; by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed to rise above difficulties and suffering’. Godwin’s Memoirs, p. 38. ‡ Flammantia maenia mundi.—I here allude, also, to the spiritus intus alit, and the mens agitat molem48 of the Platonists: for I conceive Philosophism has reduced the God of the Universe, to this pervading mind or spirit.

42

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

His favourite FUSELI,* 49 and with magic might To earthly sense unlock’d a world of light! Full soon, amid the high pictorial blaze, I saw a Sibyl-transport in her gaze: To the great Artist, from his wondrous Art, I saw transferr’d the whole enraptur’d Heart; Till, mingling soul with soul, in airy trance, Enlighten’d and inspir’d at every glance, And from the dross of appetite refin’d,† And, grasping at angelic food, all mind, Down from the empyreal heights she sunk, betray’d To poor Philosophy—a love-sick maid! But hark! lascivious murmurs melt around; And pleasure trembles in each dying sound. A myrtle bower, in fairest bloom array’d, To laughing Venus streams the silver shade: Thrill’d with fine ardors Collinsonias glow,‡ And, bending, breathe their loose desires below. Each gentle air a swelling anther heaves, Wafts its full sweets, and shivers thro’ the leaves. Bath’d in new bliss, the Fair-one greets the bower, And ravishes a flame from every flower; Low at her feet inhales the master’s sighs, And darts voluptuous from her eyes. Yet, while each heart-pulse, in the Paphian grove, Beats quick to IMLAY and licentious love,§

130

140

150

* Miss Wollstonecraft used often to meet Mr Fuseli at the house of a common friend, where she was so charmed with his talents, and the tout ensemble, that she suffered herself to fall in love with him, though a married man’. See Godwin’s Memoirs. † ‘However gross indeed the food might be, to taste Think not she would be nice for what redounds transpires Thro’ spirits with ease!’ Paradise Lost, b.5.l.432 ‡ ‘The vegetable passion of love is agreeably seen in the flower of the Parnassia, in which males alternately approach and recede from the female, and in the flower of Nigella, or Devil in the Bush, in which the tall females bend down to their dwarf husbands. But I was this morning, surprised to observe, among Sir Brooke Boothby’s valuable collection of plants at Asbourn, the manifest adultery of several females of the plant Collinsonia,50 who had bent themselves into contact with the males of other flowers of the same plant, in their vicinity, neglectful of their own’. Botanic Garden, Part the First, p. 197, 3d. Edit. § To smother in dissipation her passion for Fuseli, Miss W. had fled to France. There she met with a paramour responsive to her sighs, Mr Imlay:51 with him she formed a connexion, though not a matrimonial one; being always of opinion with Eloisa, that Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies’.52

43

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

A sudden gloom the gathering tempest spreads; The floral arch-work withers o’er their heads; Whirlwinds the paramours asunder tear; And wisdom falls, the victim of despair.* And dost thou rove, with no internal light,† Poor maniac! Thro’ the stormy waste of night? Hast thou no sense of guilt to be forgiv’n, No comforter on earth, no hope in Heaven? Stay, stay—thine impious arrogance restrain— What tho’ the flood may quench thy burning brain, Rash woman! can its whelming wave bestow Oblivion, to blot out eternal woe? ‘O come (a voice seraphic seems to say) Fly that pale form—come sisters! come away. Come, from those livid limbs withdraw your gaze, Those limbs which Virtue views in mute amaze; Nor deem, that Genius lends a veil, to hide The dire apostate, the fell suicide.—‡ Come, join, with wonted smiles, a kindred train,

160

70

* Imlay soon left his lady to her ‘own imaginations’. Thus abandoned, she returned to London; and driven to desperation, attempted to put an end to her life, but was recovered. She soon, however, made a second effort to plunge into eternity. In a dark and tempestuous night, she repaired to Putney Bridge; where, determined to throw herself into the river, she walked up and down, for half an hour, through the rain, that her clothes, being thoroughly drenched and heavy, might facilitate her descent into the water. She then leaped from the top of the bridge; but finding still a difficulty in sinking, tried to press her clothes closely around her, and at last became insensible; but at this moment she was discovered and brought back to life. † ‘I do not think my sister so to seek, Or so unprincipled in Virtue’s book, And the sweet peace that Goodness bosoms ever, As that the single want of light and noise Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts’. See Milton’s Comus, l. 370, &c. &c. ‡ I know nothing of Miss Wollstonecraft’s character or conduct, but from the Memoirs of Godwin, with whom this lady was afterwards connected. ‘We did not marry’, says Godwin: but during her pregnancy by G. they married. She died in consequence of child-birth, in 1797. A woman who has broken through all religious restraints, will commonly be found ripe for every species of licentiousness. Miss W. had been bred to the established Church; but from her intimacy with the late Dr Price,53 was induced, occasionally, to attend the sectarian worship. Thus ‘halting between two opinions’, she at length regarded both as the mere prejudices of education, and became equally averse from the church and the conventicle. And, accordingly, for the last ten years of her life, she frequented no place of public worship at all. How far a woman of such principles, was qualified to superintend the education of young ladies, is a point which I shall leave, to be discussed and determined by the circles of fashion and gallantry—intimating only that Miss W. was a governess of the daughter of Lord Viscount Kingsborough.—Her meditated suicide, we shall contemplate with fresh horror, when we consider that, at the time of the desperate act, she was a

44

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

Who court, like you, the Muse; nor court in vain. Mark, where the sex have oft, in ancient days,* To modest Virtue, claim’d a nation’s praise; Chas’d from the public scene the fiend of strife, And shed a radiance o’er luxurious life; In silken fetters bound the obedient throng, And softened despots by the power of song Yet woman owns a more extensive sway Where Heaven’s own graces pour the living ray:

180

mother deserting a poor helpless offspring. But burst the ties of religion; and the bands of nature will snap asunder! Sentiments of religion, may, doubtless, exist in the heart, without the external profession of it: but, that this woman was neither a Christian, nor a Mahometan, nor even a Deist, is sufficiently evident from the triumphant report of Godwin. Godwin, then her husband, boasts that during her last illness (which continued ten days) not a word of a religious tendency dropped from her lips.—I cannot but think, that the Hand of providence is visible, in her life, her death, and in the Memoirs themselves. As she was given up to her ‘heart’s lusts’, and left ‘to follow her own imaginations’, that the fallacy of her doctrines and the effects of an irreligious conduct, might be manifested to the world; and as she died a death that strongly marked the distinction of the sexes, by pointing out the destiny of women, and the diseases to which they are liable; so her husband was permitted, in writing her Memoirs, to labour under a temporary infatuation, that every incident might be without a gloss—every fact exposed without an apology. * I need not remind my readers of Lucretia,54 Portia,55 Arria,56 Zenobia;57 or attempt to display the virtues of Cornelia, Aurelia or Attia, whose attention to the education of their children, is particularly noticed by the author of the beautiful Dialogue of Eloquence. Quintilian,58 indeed, tells us, that in the age immediately preceding his own, ladies of rank were accustomed to superintend the moral education both of their sons and daughters. That the ancients entertained notions of female delicacy not very dissimilar from our own, may be inferred from the sentiments of Pericles,59 who ‘advises the Athenian women to aspire only to those virtues that are peculiar to their sex, and to follow their natural modesty’; from Seneca’s60 high opinion of the talents and virtues of women, and even from the imaginary portraits of a Panthea, a Penelope,61 an Andromache,62 a Lavinia.63—though the last personage, indeed, is generally regarded, as no favourite of the poet. To digress a moment from the main subject, I would observe, that Virgil has given us, in a line which has been little understood, a delicate picture of Lavinia: ‘Causa mali tanti, atque oculos dejecta decoros’. Lavinia is here painted, as casting her lovely eyes to the ground, from the consciousness of her being so great a calamity, but still preserving the serenity of her mind, from the consciousness that she is but the innocent cause of it. They are beautiful eyes from the pensiveness of thought, and the complacency of innocence: they are beautiful, from the characteristic propriety of their expression. The English reader can conceive no notion of the portrait, from the following versions of that inimitable verse: ‘… at her side With downcast eyes appears the fatal bride’. Dryden, b. xi. v. 723 ‘Lavinia grac’d her side, the royal fair, The guiltless cause of this destructive war: To earth her streaming eyes the maid inclin’d’ Pitt, v. 674

45

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And vast its influence o’er the social ties, By Heaven inform’d, if female genius rise* Its power how vast, in critic wisdom sage, If MONTAGUE† refine a letter’d age; And CARTER,‡ with a milder air, diffuse The moral precepts of the Grecian Muse; And listening girls perceive a charm unknown In grave advice, as utter’d by CHAPONE;§ If SEWARD¶ sting with rapture every vein, Or gay PIOZZI** sport in lighter strain; If BURNEY†† mix with sparkling humour chaste Delicious feelings and the purest taste, Or RADCLIFFE‡‡ wrap in necromantic gloom The impervious forest and the mystic dome;72 If BEAUCLERK§§ paint Lenora’s spectre-horse,

190

* It is no trivial praise to say, that Mrs Montague64 is the best female critic, ever produced in any country. Mad. Dacier,65 compared with Mrs M. is all affectation. † Though I have alluded to Carter’s Epictetus,66 yet I prefer her poetry to her translation. Mrs Carter and Mrs Barbauld closely resemble each other, in their style of poetry. There is a calm equability in their numbers. There diction is perspicuous and pure. But Mrs B. is more correct. Nor is Mrs Carter equal to her poetic sister, in descriptive powers. Warrington Academy is finely coloured: we meet with no such painting in Mrs Carter. They both wrote odes: but I cannot say much for their lyric talents. The Ode to Melancholy and the Ode to Content, written in the same agreeable stanza, flowing with same melodious sweetness, breathing the same placid air, may be both admitted as specimens of a lively fancy; though they have little of the vivida vis animi.67 ‡ Chapone’s Letters on the Improvement of the Mind,68 are incontestable proofs of her ingenuity, and the goodness of her heart. Mrs C. lately made an effort on the harp; an instrument, which (she ought to have considered) requires gracefulness and ease. She was deficient in both: and her notes were weak and harsh. I was sorry to see so excellent an instructor of youth, expose herself by an affectation of things beyond her reach. But I was more concerned to see her sanctioned by the example of Fordyce. § ‘Poetry’ (says and excellent writer) ‘is passion’. Miss Seward’s69 poems are ‘thoughts that breathe, and words that burn’. And he, who hesitates to allow this lady the very first place among the female Poets of this country, must be grossly deficient in taste. Her ‘Cooke’, her ‘Andre’, her ‘Louisa’, are, all, first-rate performances: either of these enchanting Poems would be sufficient to immortalise the name of Seward. ¶ Mrs Piozzi70 is distinguished by a lively imagination. Both in her Verse and Prose, we have numerous felicities of thought and expression. ** The united merits of Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla, place Mrs D’Arblay,71 above all the Novelwriters that have existed since the first invention of this delightful species of composition. †† Her Muse (as Gray, after a Greek writer, said of Ossian’s) is ‘the very demon of poetry’. In her Mysteries of Udolpho, we have all that is wild, magnificent and beautiful, combined by the genius of Shakespeare and the taste of Mason. ‡‡ The Tale of Leonora has been finely illustrated by the pencil of lady Diana Beauclerk.73 §§ The designs with which the princess Elizabeth furnished Sir James Bland Burgess, for ‘The Birth and Triumph of Love’, are exquisitely beautiful. The princess Elizabeth, indeed, is eminently accomplished, as well as her royal sisters. Nor is it the voice of flattery which says, that the elegance of their persons, heightened by all the lustre of the fashionable acquirements, must yield to those

46

Polwhele (The Unsex’d Females)

The uplifted lance of death, the grisly corse; And e’en a Princess lend poetic grace The pencil’s charm, and breathe in every trace.*74 She ceas’d and round their MORE the sisters sigh’d! Soft on each tongue repentant murmurs died; And sweetly scatter’d (as they glanc’d away) Their conscious ‘blushes spoke a brighter day’.

mental graces which they could only have attained from a virtuous education. For such they are indebted to a mother who is thoroughly skilled in the cultivation of the heart; and whose high example must surely have a benignant influence on the British ladies; unless the example of the great hath ceased to attract imitation. * Miss Hannah More75 may justly be esteemed, as a character, in all points, diametrically opposite to Miss Wollstonecraft; excepting, indeed, her genius and literary attainments. To the great natural endowments of Miss W. Miss M has added the learning of lady Jane Grey76 without the pedantry, and the Christian graces of Mrs Rowe,77 without the enthusiasm. Her ‘Percy’, her ‘Sacred Dramas’, her ‘Essays’, and her ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Great’ will be read, as long as sensibility and good taste shall exist among us. From her Essays I shall make an extract or two, which will throw light on the subject before us. Talking of the distinction of the sexes, ‘Women’, says Miss More, ‘have generally quicker perceptions; men have juster sentiments. Women consider how things may be prettily said; men, how they may be properly said. Women speak, to shine or please; men, to convince or confute. Women admire what is brilliant; men, what is solid. Women prefer a sparkling effusion of fancy, to the most laborious investigation of facts. In literary composition, women are pleased with antithesis; men, with observation and a just deduction of effects from their causes.—In Romance and Novel-writing, the women cannot be excelled. To amuse, rather than to instruct, or to instruct indirectly, by short inferences drawn from a long concatenation of circumstances, is at once, business of this sort of composition, and one of the characteristics of female genius. In short, it appears, that the mind, in each sex, has some natural kind of bias, which constitutes a distinction of character, and that the happiness of both depends, in a great measure, on the preservation and observance of this distinction’. ‘Essays’, pp. 9–13. I may add, that we have upon record, many literary female characters in ancient Greece and Rome, in Spain, in France, modern Italy, Germany, and England. But we meet with one or two philosophers only, among them all, and those of an amphibious nature—such, for instance, as Laura Cereti,78 who taught philosophy at Brescia, at the age of eighteen. In this country, there are few ladies who have written history with a Macaulay,79 or composed treatises on astronomy, with a Bryan.80 I might point out numerous femalities, indeed, in Mrs Macaulay’s history; and in the ‘Compendious system of Astronomy’, I am rather pleased with elegant illustration than instructed by science.

47

EATON STANNARD BARRETT

From All The Talents (1807) [First published in All the Talents, London, John Joseph Stockdale, 1807, pp. 1–35. Eaton Stannard Barrett (1786–1820), who trained initially as a lawyer and entered the Middle Temple (though he was apparently not called to the bar) was better known amongst his contemporaries as a Tory satirist and enthusiastic literary parti­ san of William Pitt. His works include The Comet: A Satire (1808), Woman and other Poems (1810) and Talents run Mad, or Eighteen Hundred and Sixteen, a Satirical Poem (1816), but it was his All The Talents, a satire in three dialogues on the short-lived coalition government of the day known as the Ministry of All the Talents (1806–07) which was his most significant work. On 23 January 1806, the Tory Prime Minister, William Pitt died, bringing to an end a series of Tory administrations stretching back over twenty years. The new ministry formed in its place was a coalition led by Wil­ liam Wyndham, Lord Grenville (1759–1834; DNB) and included the brilliant Whig politician Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB), who was ensconced as Foreign Secretary. As well as Fox, other notable Whigs included Charles Grey (1764–1845; DNB) and Thomas Erskine (1750–1823; DNB). Although the administration came to be known as the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, it became as narrowly based as those led by Pitt due to the inclination amongst Fox and his followers to form a united front against other coalition members. The Foxites, says J. Steven Watson, ‘clung closely together against the rest of the political world’. The Talents Ministry had the characteristic of many coalitions: it was weakened from the outset by the inevitability of compromise. ‘Grenville and Fox favoured Catholic Emancipation’; the Tory cabinet member Sidmouth opposed it. On the other hand, Sidmouth agreed with Fox that Napoleon ‘could be brought to peaceable ways, whereas Gren­ ville doubted it’.1 Perhaps the greatest drawback of the Talents Ministry, however, was George III’s unremitting hatred for Fox and everything he stood for. Despite his intermittent illness the king still exercised a forbidding power in the political life of the nation: ‘As late as 27 January 1806’ the king was still adamant that Fox would not enter the government. ‘No one could be under any doubt that the royal curse on Fox’s career was still very much in place’.2 In this respect the ministry was bound to be short-lived. 48

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-4

Barrett (from All the Talents)

Barrett disingenuously claims in his preface to All the Talents that he is a disinter­ ested observer of political events, writing ‘without any motives whatever of party, private resentment, or personal interest’. He is a dispassionate satirist, seeking ‘to repress folly and to reform abuse’.3 That said, All the Talents is engaged and vituperative in its condemnation of the government’s actions and is not above personal attacks on Fox and his followers. Grey is by turns a rabid ‘dog’ and ‘viper’ ‘spit[ting] forth slaver as he fails to bite’. Pitt, on the other hand, is a Godlike genius’. The poem consists of three dialogues between Polypus and Scriblerus, who debate the current political state of the nation. Included below is the whole of Dia­ logue the First and ll. 1–128 of Dialogue the Second. Dialogue the First maps out in general terms what Barrett thinks of the Talents Ministry, while the first section of Dialogue the Second focuses predominantly upon Napoleon and the Talents’ inten­ tions with regard to war with the French. Also included here is Barrett’s view of the manner in which the Prince of Wales’s wife was being treated. It is an early indica­ tion of what would be a much more scandalous affair in 1820–21.4 Whilst Caroline is a heroine to the Whigs and radicals in 1820, here, before the Regents’ tergiversa­ tion, she is celebrated by an ultra-Tory.]

1 J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George the Third, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 435; Dennis Grey, Spencer Percival, the Evangelical Prime Minister, 1762–1812, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1963, p. 58. 2 L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 224–25. 3 All the Talents, p. ix. 4 See below, Khouli Khan, Oedipus Tyrannus, pp. 209–16, pp. 152–62 and above, General Introduction.

49

Dialogue the First Vidi ego lætantes, popularia nomina, Drusos, Legibus immodicos, ausosque ingentia Gracchos. LUCAN’S PHAR.1

SCRIBLERUS. Vain is the task in these degen’rate times, To lash the statesman with a rod of rhimes;* Make Verse, fair vixen, musically scold, And uncouth politics to metre mold. Themes more secure the feeble Muse befit; Better preserve one’s ears than prove one’s wit. Fly party, and attend the truth I teach; A foe to neither makes a friend of each.

1

POLYPUS. Nay, this mild pianl et R---† yet pursue. * to lash the statesman]—Were my friend Scriblerus acquainted with the sort of Ministry Heaven hath blessed us with, he would not think the task of correcting them a vain one. They are of late become so admirably pliant, that the fact is, I begin to look on them as a set of very hopeful gentlemen. They have already abandoned many of their old pranks; and thus by proving themselves men of no principle, afford us some hope that the country might yet be saved. Had they been sincere, we were undone forever. But now, forsaking their old nests, they come hopping over Conscience to perch upon Interest; and, like the saucy robin, to venture any thing for a crumb of bread. The lex talionis is fair, however; so having sacrificed character to come into power, they come into power to sacrifice character. On this head consult Sir H. P-ph-m, old Edition. If this brave officer did not receive secret orders to make a descent on Buenos Ayres; if, Non HÆC tibi littora suasit, Delius, aut Cretæ jussit considere Apollo—[Virgil]2 Then, I certainly will not attempt to palliate so rash an enterprise. But, at all events, nothing can excuse the petulant, predetermined hostility of Ministers towards him. ______________ I wish Polypus to know that he mistakes ministers grossly. Thank Heaven they were never made of malleable materials; but, on the contrary are as tough a collection of talents as ever England witnessed. Is it not this quality of toughness that has carried them thro’? Did they not always continue tough to the principles they set out upon, tho’ deserted and despised by three-fourths of the nation? Did they ever coincide with a single measure of the old Party – even measures the most beneficial? If this be pliability, I want to know what is toughness? —Scriblerus. † R——.]—I do not wish to specify this personage too particularly. He will, I daresay, recognise himself.

50

Barrett (from All the Talents)

Whose saint-like meekness wou’d a world undo: Who hates all broils, yet when he interferes, With sad good-nature sets men by the ears. But times like these for manly candour call, And whom Laws scare not, Poets may appal. For me, ’twas ne’er my nature, or my boast, To sit demure and see my country lost. SCRIBLERUS. Yet the reverse may prove as foolish quite: Must ev’ry man who loves his country, write? All love their country in some slight degree; (Small diff ’rence there, perhaps, ’twixt you and me.) Ev’n Thieves are Patriots, Traitors feel remorse; And L—— may love his country— next his horse. POLYPUS. What! shall my muse in silent slumber bound, Rest undisturb’d while nations rage around? Or, rous’d to writing, make her dainty theme A rose, a mistress, or a purling stream? Like *Party-prints, steal caustic from her lays, And oint with unguents of ignoble praise? Calm shall she see the fever’d placeman rave, Knaves act the fool and fools enact the knave, Old men grow boys, and boys (t’excel the type) Turn, like a medlar, rotten while unripe? No. For my country let me draw my pen, Tho’ C-bb-tt† rage and P-nd-r‡ rise again;4 That pert divine, who, graceless in his scroll, Lampoon’d his King, and dubb’d his God a droll. Truth is my trust—let L-wr-nce deal in fiction,5 And run full tilt against his own conviction. I ne’er paid court to pow’r, or high degree— If Pitt was haughty, I was proud as he: Superior to his smiles, approv’d his plan; Friend to the Minister, and not the man.

10

20

30

40

* Party-prints]—Such as a paper called the ‘Oracle and True Briton’, or some such name. The thing, however, is not worth abusing † C-bb-tt.]—This man had once a sort of asinine sturdiness about him, that used to pass off for honesty. Poor Peter! they talked too much of his fine writing… But perituræ parcite charta.3 ‡ P-nd-r.]—P. P-nd-r dropped his pen while in the act of snatching at a pension. Mr C-lm-n has, it seems, picked it out of the mud; but alas! the mud has clung to it ever since. Rarely, and very rarely, it is a limum felicem.

51

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

SCRIBLERUS. O for a thund’ring tongue, like Fox’s own,6 To stun perverse opinion into stone! Fox! at that name how throbs my swelling breast, Mourns thy sad fall and bids thy spirit rest. Yet H-w-ck* lives—a firm, unblemish’d soul, True to the state, as needle to the pole; Who ne’er to wav’ring weakness wou’d descend, But kept on snarling ’till he gain’d his end.

50

POLYPUS. So at some door, a dog, with desp’rate din, Scrapes, scratches, howls, and barks—till he gets in. Yes, there I blame him. H-w-ck never stood The candid champion of his country’s good. * Yet H-w-ck lives.]—The public will better recognise this noble Lord as plaina Mr Gr-y;8 new titles, new principles, and new places having so totally metamorphosed him, that some of his old friends have actually ceased to know him. I am credibly informed he is growing gay. And yet I remember him a moody, melancholy gentleman, whom you would have thought time nor tide could change.— A positive bit of blood, that always came cantering at the heels of Fox and Sh-r-d­ n. Did Fox protest against war?—Gr-y quickly set his face against hostilities. Did Fox declare that the kingdom was ruined?—Gr-y instantly found out that the nation was undone. Skilful in the analogies of the language, he seemed only to forget that Truth and Servility are never synonymous. Servility, however, is not easily got rid of; and Gr-y, while first Lord of the Admiralty, used to trot at St V-nc­ nt’sb heels just as contentedly as at Fox’s. As to what Lord H-w-ck is, there may possibly be some doubt; as to what he was, there can be no doubt at all. If his name shall survive the injuries his country has suffered from him, he will be remembered as one of those unhappy beings, who, during that long and dreadful struggle for all that Englishmen held dear upon earth, stood aloof with a small, but desperate band, watching the favourable moments for incursion, and involving us in a predatory war at home, while the most terrible of enemies was assailing us from abroad. But since his political promotion we have heard no more of his political principles. Let us then cheerfully submit to the smaller misfortune. The friendship of a reformed libertine is preferable to the enmity of a professed one. At least they will wonder at our having escaped out of such hands; while the names of a F—, a Sh-r-d-n and a H-w-ck will be abhorred by the gentle nature and adopted by the severe. ______ I do not approve of Polypus’s comparing my Lord H-w-ck with a beast of burden; and yet I am informed by those who know French, (for I do not), that the following description of a horse is applicable to him. Un esprit pesant, lourd, sans subflité, ni gentilesse—UN GROS CHEVAL D’ALLEMANDE. I am delighted with the stately grandeur of the words, and guess that they contain a magnificent eulogium.— Scribl a

Mutato nominee, de te, Fabula narratur.7

b By the bye, St V-nc-nt always trod aukwardly enough on terra firma. He is not an amphibious animal, and has more of the shark than the sea-horse in his composition. Some say he has more of the crocodile than of either.

52

Barrett (from All the Talents)

When perils urg’d all bosoms truly great, To turn from faction and to save the state, Still he kept hissing with a viper’s spite, And spit forth slaver as he fail’d to bite: Nurs’d us with curds of patriotic spleen, And put a drag upon the slow machine.

60

SCRIBLERUS. The gentle soul of H-w-ck long’d for peace, And so he clogg’d the war to make it cease. POLYPUS. Then ought the Doctor (if I take it true), To crush the fever, kill the patient too. SCRIBLERUS. Gr-y with the war, the mouthing and grimace, Was out of humour— POLYPUS. True, and out of place. SCRIBLERUS. He wanted scope to give his genius wings; In* place and out of place are diff ’rent things. POLYPUS. So diff ’rent, that a frog and ape, no doubt, Have more similitude than in and out.

70

* In place and out of place are diff ’rent things]—The Talents have proved the truth of this assertion to a miracle; by adopting, as Ministers, almost every measure, which as Oppositionists, they had reprobated—melius, perjus, prosit, obsit. I doubt if their new recantation be not more disgusting than their ancient bigotry. But their conduct immediately on coming into power was more than disgusting. It was a tissue of absurdity, indecency, and arrogance, equalled only by the nauseous mummery of Buonaparte’s bulletins. One Minister took particular pains to convince us that we were ona the very verge of ruin, and that nothing but the Talents could save us. Sh-r-d-n,9 too, seemed to lament our desperate situation with a plausible face enough; and Twilight GREY, Had in her sober liv’ry all things clad; When, on a sudden, up rose the sun, the mists melted away, and the Talents assured us we were in a more flourishing condition than ever! Now for my life I could never see how they made it out. But taking their word for it, to whom do we stand indebted? Certainly not the Talents; for they have been failing in every project. Yet this is no proof. The Talents have been failing in every project for these last twenty years, and the country has prospered accordingly. a All that can be said in their favour is, that they spoke of ‘dilapidated hopes and resources’, when they did not know one atom about the matter; and that they candidly recanted as soon as they began to learn their business.

53

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Gr-y, like a frog, while out of office croak’d; An ape in place, he copied, not revok’d. Extremes he seeks, and scorns his native mean; Not firm, but stubborn; sullen not serene: Means to be proud, but only pompous proves, And sometimes stuns our reason, never moves. SCRIBLERUS. Gr-y is an honest patriot— POLYPUS. How d’ye know? SCRIBLERUS. Half his harangues assure the Commons so; And, trust me, patriotism is just like powder; Useless while mute, and stronger as ’tis louder. POLYPUS. In truth, th’ allusion is a luckless one, For sure as powder makes a noise—’tis gone! AMBITION is his bane; a Demon dire, Dropping with gory dews and fluid fire; Whose hundred heads bright diadems embrace, Whose hundred hands extend in empty space; High to the skies his ardent orbs are thrown; He strides—and stumbles at the meanest stone.

80

90

SCRIBLERUS. Pitt had Ambition— POLYPUS. Yes—of noble kind. But Pitt’s full merits if you wish to find, * Ask Buonaparte, read the needy News; † Whig, Bankrupt, Spendthrift, Traitor—all abuse. * Ask Buonaparte,]—The little Corsican could never abide Mr Pitt, whom he justly considered as the saviour of his country. By the bye, I think ministers would do well to cease boasting of the tender esteem and admiration, which, (they tell us) the first of all ruffians entertained for Mr Fox. They had better be silent on that statesman altogether, than by calumniating his memory by allotting such a friend to him. It is in itself an outrageous satire, and all who wish well to his character ought to contradict it. † Whig, Bankrupt, Spendthrift, Traitor—all abuse]—It is a fact well worth attending to, that the industrious and enlightened classes of the nation went almost universally with Mr Pitt. Exceptions there certainly were, but these exceptions usually betrayed in their conduct thro’ life, either hollow hearts or weak understandings. ______

54

Barrett (from All the Talents)

SCRIBLERUS. ’Tis strange, I’ll own, and quite beyond my wit, That not a Traitor e’er spoke well of Pitt. POLYPUS. Yet ’tis a fact as strange, and just as true, Gr-y is by Traitors prais’d and Patriots too. W-nd-m’s10 a patriot (as some wise ones say,) ’Connor, 11 a rebel—both are fond of Gr-y. Nor is it quite so difficult, I deem, To learn the cause connecting each extreme. For, as to form a bow’r we must incline, Th’ opposing trees to make their tops entwine; So where such men unite, since wide by nature, The Patriot must be crooked as the Traitor! Yet tho’ vile traitors honest Gr-y approve, Far be from him to feel a mutual love; Angelic Gr-y is like the Dev’l in hell, Who hates the sinful souls that love him well.

100

110

SCRIBLERUS. In patriot love, can Pitt with Gr-y compare? POLYPUS. Let H-w-ck rest—to pass him is to spare. SCRIBLERUS. At least, my friend, you’ll not affirm that Pitt, Excell’d my H-w-ck in worth, words, or wit.

*

POLYPUS. WITH TWO SMALL BLESSINGS PITT PERFORM ’ D HIS PART ; A GODLIKE GENIUS AND AN HONEST HEART . †

Need I say more? to amplify were vain,

This last assertion is a sidelong glance at me. I know Polypus thinks I have weak head. With all my heart. At all events I’ll teach him I have a bitter tongue; and he shall rue my resentment in the acerbity of my comments.—Scribl. * At least, my friend, &c.]—I would not insult Mr Pitt’s memory by comparing him with Lord Hw-ck. Besides, in such a case, the noble Lord himself would have far more reason to complain. Happy may he esteem himself, if the future historian shall disdain to record either his character or his life. † Need I say more? to amplify were vain]—To enlarge on the character of this immortal Statesman would probably vex the Talents, and of course do them no service. But I will exhibit a portrait of an opposite nature, with the hope that ministers may avoid a bad example, tho’ they may not imitate a good one.

55

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Since these alone all human good contain. Yet will I praise him, when from toils retir’d, * Nor wealth he took, nor recompense desir’d; But while the share his tranquil acres turn’d, Still with a Patriot’s noble ardor burn’d; Saw there remain’d more duties to fulfil, And grasp’d the sword to save his country still! More awful with one boy to tend his meal, Than serv’d by senates following at his heel. Yet will I praise him, at his latest breath. When firm, serene, a patriot ev’n in death, Not for himself the parting hero sigh’d, But† on his C OUNTRY fondly calling, died.13 O then how tears stole down each honest face! ‡ O then how Faction, shouting, rush’d to place!

120

130

Let me then imagine a man prodigally gifted with every blessing under the sun—birth, fortune, wit, wisdom, eloquence. With a soul that can pierce into the brightest recesses of fancy, and a tongue that can embody the visions she beholds. Let me suppose him marking his entrance into the service of his country by a breach of her constitution; while distorting the best of passions to the worst of purposes, he calls treason patriotism, and covers desperate doctrines with a decorous indecency of words. Laughing at subjection, yet himself a slave to party, he lords it over a rancorous faction; while boys disconcert the cabals of his manhood, and striplings repress the excesses of his age. In persecuting his country he is uniform and sincere; his principles alone are virtuous and treacherous. The revolutionary mob, and the sanguinary despot, are alternate objects of his admiration. At length he tramples down the barriers of decorum, and allows not even an appeal from his heart to his head; from inherent atrocity to adventitious error. Thinking men are alarmed and desert him; fools adhere to his cause and are undone. Once found dangerous, he soon becomes flagitious; and his last act exhibits him vanquished by his own arts, and a dupe to the basest of mankind. Let this portrait be as a beacon to all ministers. Wise men will read it and say nothing.—It is for the fool to assert its justice by uniting it with a name. * Nor wealth he took, nor recompense desir’d;]—I cannot contemplate this period of Mr Pitt’s life without the highest emotions of admiration. I had thought the days of Roman magnanimity gone for ever, and in these times scarcely expected to see another Cincinnatus.—Te sulco, Serrane, serrentum.12 † On his country fondly calling, died.]—Let none now be so rash as to talk of Mr Pitt’s inordinate ambition, or assert that he preferred his own elevation to his country’s welfare. If the words of the dying are accounted sincere, who will deny that patriotism was the ruling passion of this incomparable character? Pope says, ‘And thou my Cobham, to thy latest breath, Shalt feel the ruling passion strong in death; Such in these moments as in all the past, O save my country, Heaven! shall be thy last’. Pitt realized what Pope only supposed. ‡ O then how Faction, shouting rush’d to place!]—Often, I dare say, (were I to judge by their after conduct) did the jaded Oppositionists exclaim, during Mr Pitt’s illness,

56

Barrett (from All the Talents)

SCRIBLERUS. Let us with Pitt illustrious Fox compare. Pass we the heart, to judge the head is fair. POLYPUS. If then ’tis just, as Fox declar’d express, * To measure merit merely by success;16 Since Fox in vain with constant struggle toil’d, To pull down Pitt, still tript himself and foil’d, Say, of the two, shou’d Pitt or Fox inherit, (By Fox’s rule) the larger share of merit? More must I say?—

140

SCRIBLERUS. Enough, enough is said. A gen’rous Briton wars not with the dead. POLYPUS. A faithful Muse disdains a partial pen; And if Historians touch departed men, Why may not Poets? SCRIBLERUS. In some years they may, When the world wipes its world of tears away. For think how mean to sting his tender friends— a

150

Di precor, a nobis omen REMOVETE sinistrum.14

ȅȚȦȞȠȢĮȡȚıIJȠȢ , say I, however; and I believe three-fourths of the nation say so too. After the death of that Minister they did not behave with common decency. The greediness with which they seized upon all places of profit,—those which pride, and those which delicacy should have deterred them from appropriating—was odious in the extreme. I can almost fancy I see them, like a set of vultures, hovering over the Minister’s dying moments, and with gross black wing brushing across his radiant spirit as it mounts into the skies. * To measure merit merely by success;]—Mr Fox asserted, that success should be the criterion of talent, on the night when he so resolutely set his face against some honours which were proposed to his rival’s memory. I do not adopt his criterion, I only apply it to himself; and is it not fair to convict a man on his own argument? 15

———— By no means. Such mode of procedure, if generally practised, would ruin the country. For were men always to be convicted by their own arguments, they would always take care to talk sense. And if men were always to talk sense, there would be no difference of opinion. But without difference of opinion there would be no conversation; without conversation no society; without society no government; and without a government all would be warfare, anarchy and no poet. Did I not promise you, Mr Polypus, that I would be severe?— Scribl. a

Ovid

57

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

POLYPUS. Nay, ’tis to these, to these my Satire tends. Still in these friends his latent spirit lives, And to weak heads a dang’rous bias gives. They love his merits, but his faults pursue, And run a muck at Social Order too. Peace to his shade, be sacred all who weep; * With his cold ashes may his errors sleep; Yet, yet, his vot’ries let no censor spare, ’Till they desert his tenets in despair; ’Till without pow’r to prop the falling cause, And †left at length by popular applause, Apostates from his faith the zealots fly— So my glad muse shall bless ’em ere they die; Offer long pray’rs that they may die forgiv’n, And odds in favour of their reaching heav’n!

160

Dialogue the Second Il y en a plus de la moitié qui meritoient de porter Le havrosac LE SAGE

POLYPUS. BEHOLD , my friend, o’er Europe’s hapless land, Almighty Vengeance stretch its iron hand; Its impious agent ev’ry realm enthral, And with wide-wasting carnage cover all.

1

* With his cold ashes may his errors sleep]—I have not the least desire to disturb Mr Fox’s repose. Not because I feel that in enlarging on his character I should overleap any boundaries of propriety; but because little advantage could now arise out of it. I leave the full development of his aims to the historian. In another century there will be but one opinion upon the subject. † Left at length by popular applause.]—It is allowed on all hands that the Foxites are falling into disrepute: and the reason is as evident as the fact is notorious. THE FOXITES ARE IN POWER. No longer champions in the mighty cause of nonsense, they have now degenerated into the mere men of business. The fiery war-horse is lopped of his flowing mane, and ends his honours under a waggon. However paradoxical the thing may seem, it cannot be denied, that the Talents have forfeited importance by coming into power, and that in proportion to their rise in the world, they have managed to fall in its estimation. Mais c’estassez parlé. Prenons un peu d’haleine. Ma main pour cette fois commence à se lasser. Finissons—Mais demain, Muse, à recommonceer D ESPREAUX

58

Barrett (from All the Talents) *

The human fiend,18 each day, each hour he lives, Still to the world some baleful evil gives. Oh, when he dies, what shouts shall shake the sphere! New suns shall shine and double moons appear; Death thro’ the world one holiday shall make, And hell get drunk with sulphur for his sake! His throne a pile of human sculls sustains, And bones that fell on those unhappy plains, Where pale Toulon lay prest beneath her dead, Where Lodi fought and fell Marengo bled.19 Professing ev’ry faith he mocks his God, And Virtue trembles underneath his nod; The nations crouching round, his pomp adorn; Britannia sits apart, and smiles in scorn; Calm and unharm’d amidst his impious ire, While trembling millions from the strife retire. So round some cliff when now the tempest roars, And the weak Linnet downward turns her oars, The royal Eagle from his craggy throne, Mounts the loud storm majestic and alone; And steers his plumes athwart the dark profound,

10

20

* The human fiend.]—One hardly knows in what terms to speak of this little monster. The character is, perhaps, unparalleled in the annals of human nature. It is beyond a Caliban; and he who would attempt to describe it must unite attributes which nature had always held asunder; exhibiting at once the most terrible and most contemptible animal upon earth. Meanness and magnanimity must go hand in hand; and the conqueror of mankind must be coupled with the private assassin. He must shew him possessed of the highest folly in attempting desperate enterprises, and of the highest wisdom in accomplishing them.—Calm in conducting a mighty battle, and petulant in affairs of little import.—Never candid but on a principle of treachery, and adhering to truth only when he promises misfortune. Capricious in small matters, yet constant to ruling principles; and capable of reconciling the most headstrong stubbornness with the most artful pliability. Celerity is the great architect of his fortune: Dans la scene en jour il renferme des années;a And, like woman, he will be lost when he hesitates. As to peace with England, he will never make it, except in the hope of effecting her final destruction. Delenda est Carthago,17 is his professed motto, and he will never alter it. However, on taking a survey of all possible chances, I feel convinced he will never succeed, so long as we retain the sovereignty of the seas. England indeed may be made a bankrupt, but Europe must be beggared before her. As to conquering these countries, vi et armis (even supposing a French Army transported to our shores), the thing is impossible, and Buonaparte knows it. No.—he must deprive us of our East Indies, before he can effect our downfal; and to this end, much march an army across the Asiatic continent; after having conquered Russia, and so totally subjugated all Europe, as to be sure of its tranquillity during his absence. He will never do it. a

Boileau

59

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

While roaring thunders replicate around! But now, rous’d slowly from her opiate bed, * Lethargic Europe lifts the heavy head; Feels round her heart the creeping torpor close, And starts with horror from her dire repose. † Favour’d by Heav’n, let Britons bend the knee, And thank that awful Pow’r who keeps us free; Own Him our strength, on H IM repose our all, Sedate in triumph and resign’d to fall. And thou fair E RIN,‡ plaintive in the lay,21

30

* Lethargic Europe lifts a heavy head.]—Europe as yet has only begun to move her extremities. The body still remains inactive; but I think it will soon make a struggle, and the first attempt, if strenuous, will restore it. Tacitus has supplied us with an exact picture of European politics at present: Rarus duabus tribusque civitatibus ad propulsandum commune periculum conventus. Ita singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur.—Jul. Agric.20 † Favour’d by Heav’n, let Britons bend the knee.]—I think I may say, (but meekly let me say it, and with awful reverence) that Providence watches over this empire with an eye of peculiar regard. E NGLAND SEEMS TO BE SOLEMNLY SELECTED AND DELEGATED TO INTERPOSE A BARRIER BETWEEN PARTIAL SUBVERSION AND UNIVERSAL ANARCHY : TO PUNISH THE PUNISHERS OF NATIONS ; TO HEAL THE WOUNDS OF AGONIZING EUROPE , AND TO SIT LIKE A WAKEFUL NURSE , WATCHING AT HER SIDE , AND ADMINISTERING TO HER LIPS THE MEDICINE OF SALVATION . We stand on a noble, but a dreadful elevation; responsible in ourselves for the future happiness of the human race. We have a spirit, a constitution, and a religion: unrivalled, unparalleled, unprecedented. From these sources I draw my politics, and these tell me shall triumph. Persevere then, Britons, in the mighty task before you. To recede from it were ruin. Be firm and you triumph—fear, and you fall. ———— I do not know what Polypus means by his Papal Extirpation. I see no signs of any such matter. I grant that the catholic countries of Europe are daily dropping into degeneracy, and that the Pope is discovered to be neither infallible nor supreme. But then if we look to Ireland, we shall still see the spirit of that religion flourishing in full luxuriance under the invigorating auspices of Gr-tt-n and Co. And yet I fear these worthies are employing much pains to little purpose. Absolutely all hope is at an end, and Catholic Emancipation now goes begging from door to door, like a decayed gentlewoman. But if Gr-tt-n and Co. wish to give full scope to their talents, and serve these kingdoms effectually, by making converts elsewhere,—I would humbly advise them to take trip to the black empire of Hayti, for instance: or visit the Aborigines of America. To be sure Ireland would weep at losing them, but then tears always bring relief. And even supposing the natives of Hayti or America so stupid as to suspend them upon a tree—still they might thank heaven such an accident never happened to them before. Besides, I dare say there is a pleasure in being hanged for the good of one’s country, which many sufferers may have felt indeed, but from the physical nature of the case have never been able to describe. ‡ And thou, fair Erin.]—I speak of Ireland as a nation only; and as a nation she has not done her duty. As individuals I think the Irish merit much esteem. The profligate and idle, in general, come over to this country; and we seem to judge of the number by the more unworthy few. Literature is erecting her head in the capital; and some productions of much merit have appeared there of late. In particular, a satire on the players, entitled Familiar Epistles; which, in point of wit, elegance and apt delineation, is not inferior to many productions in our language. It is said to be written by Mr Cr-k-r, a young barrister of considerable talent.

60

Barrett (from All the Talents)

Who steep’st thy limbs afront the falling day; Nymph, on whose lap the odour-dropping Spring, Delights to lavish all his sweetest wing; Play’d on by priests, a sweet, ill-finger’d lute; An ill-train’d tree, but vig’rous at the root; Like nettles, harmless to the grasping hand, But quick to sting, if delicately spann’d; Cease to complain; imagin’d wrongs dismiss, And greet thy sister with a holy kiss; Unite, unite, the common foe to quell; Thy native temper is not to rebel. For now,* what hope of heav’nly Peace remains, Whom young Wars follow, and more rigid chains? We fight for V IRTUE —ceaseless, ’till the Gaul, Shall bite his native dust, or England fall. Yet shall the Despot threat her fall in vain, While British oaks supremacy maintain;22 And our vast vessels, sheath’d in tawny ore, Convey rich commerce to the shouting shore,

40

50

* For now what hope of heav’nly peace remains?]—And yet there is just as much chance of peace at this moment, as at the time of the late glorious negotiation—as the Talents would have us believe it. The Talents however were more dreadfully duped in that affair—Credulity on the one side, and duplicity on the other, leaving us little else to admire than a series of polished sentences, and some logical small-sword. However, Talleyrand effected many purposes by protracting the farce; and amongst others, the neglect of Buenos Ayres. No pretext upon earth should have prevented Ministers from reinforcing that settlement at least two months before they thought proper to do so. The Talents, indeed, triumphantly tell us, that it was retaken before succours could have arrived. But these succours were sent to hinder its being retaken; and therefore the Talents must have conjectured that it would not be retaken till after the arrival of these succours—that is to say, till January. Now the place was retaken in August. So here, at all events, the Talents were grossly erroneous; and it follows, that the earliness of the recapture (the plea upon which they excuse themselves) is the very circumstance which condemns them most! Tho’ we lost the place before reinforcements could have arrived, yet reinforcements could have arrived before we might have lost it. The place might have been retaken on the first of November. The reinforcements could have arrived on the last of October. But if we must always determine the merits of a cause by consequences, not probabilities, why then B-r-s-f-rd and P-ph-m acted perfectly right in having taken Buenos Ayres— because the event justified them; and began to act wrong in having taken it, only from the moment they surrendered. This is the precious conclusion All the Talents would bring us to! The fact is, however, that the Talents were too busy about themselves all the summer to remember an American town, taken by a Pittite. I am sure I can make every reasonable allowance for a new­ fangled, merry set of poor devils, tumbling heels over head into places and pensions. I can pardon the ludicrous delirium attending a new title; the gambols of mutual congratulation—here a wink and there a squeeze: all the Talents exerted in purchasing coats, hats, hatbands, and services of plate; and I can even hear of the long laborious eating at cabinet-dinners, with the pity of a man who has felt hunger himself. Yet still, amidst gambols and hatbands, services of plate and haunches of venison, a map of Buenos Ayres might have lain on the table.

61

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Where Thames, exulting in his golden cares, On his broad breast a tossing forest bears. SCRIBLERUS. Well, since the war must clatter round our sides, Thanks to the stars, we* want not able guides; Themselves long time by Fortune tost about— A twelvemonth in, and twenty twelvemonths out. Methinks I see them, like a vessel, driv’n Low thro’ the waves, ’till, wak’d by wintry heav’n, To the pale stars† some mighty billow rolls, And bears upon its back a hundred souls!

60

POLYPUS. Defence of folly room to rail supplies, Take counsel, friend; be silent, and be wise. SCRIBLERUS. Sir, I’ll speak out— POLYPUS. And I’ll be candid too, Tho’ B-df-rd‡23 and fat N-rf-lk§24 clap the crew. * We want not able guides.]—I cannot coincide with my friend Scriblerus. As yet the new-born Ministry have only begun to crawl. But I suppose he judges of the future butterfly by the present worm; and sees in its extreme ugliness the promise of much beauty hereafter. I think, however, the transmutation has more to do with metals than animals; and am able only to perceive, that men who were Brass in a bad cause, are become Lead in a good one. A few rockets let off at Boulogne,— a fresh-water armament,—a mock negotiation,—late succours,—premature bulletins,—a Parliament new-modelled for a very good reason, and an army new-modelled for no reason at all;—this is what All the Talents have accomplished for us! This is the blaze that hath emanated from the Galaxy of political Geniuses! Yet it is but fair to confess that their speeches are sometimes very pretty; and at present abound with admirable squibs let off at poor P-ph-m. Indeed it is highly proper that those who begin with sky-rockets should end with squibs. ———— I could offer a hundred sharp things in refutation of Polypus, but am so angry that somehow I cannot collect my ideas. Silence, they say, is often expressive; and I think it cannot now do better than express all my arguments.—Scribl. † Some mighty billow rolls.]—The learned Scriblerus is pleased to place All the Talents on the summit of a wave raised by a tempest. Perhaps in nature he could not have chosen a more hazardous and untenablea elevation for these charming men. ‡ B-df-rd.]—The present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland carried with him the hearts of that nation. § N-rf-lk.]—This nobleman is disappointed of the blue ribbon.—It was well observed of him, that he was fitter for the blue apron! a I do not think the present Ministry will hold long. They have private as well as public politics— a motion round their own axis as well as round the state; and its obliquity must be the cause of many political changes.

62

Barrett (from All the Talents)

The down-hill road to Heav’n see N-rf-lk take. Lord, what a chubby Angel he will make! If, as I trust, by miracle of fate, The portly Duke can pass the narrow gate!

70

SCRIBLERUS. No venom sure at Gr-nv-lle*25 you will dart, A Pitt in blood, and after Pitt’s own heart. Firm, ardent, zealous, faithful to his trust, He copies Pitt and draws the portrait just. POLYPUS. Ev’n Party’s self in noble Gr-nv-lle see, Worth, wisdom, wit and talents, all agree. O firm in honour, and unaw’d by fear, Bid him stand forth the strenuous and severe: Cast o’er the state a parent’s anxious eye, Make Party join and feeble Counsel fly. This he may do; and this if Gr-nv-lle will, Love, hope and joy shall dictate to my quill. Yes, in high Gr-nv-lle centers all my trust, To steer the state, and hold the balance just. In his firm bosom gen’rous sparks abide, And no low passions impotently hide. Enough of Pitt is harbour’d in his breast, To see our rights preserv’d, our wrongs redrest.

80

90

SCRIBLERUS. Alas! our rights are fled.—No Whigs avow The M AJESTY † OF MOBS and turmoils now; Or at the Club, with wine and anger warm, Tip off a glass to RADICAL ‡ R EFORM ; Make ev’ry man a Monarch—but a King, Or talk to some such end of no such thing. * Gr-nv-lle.]—I have a high respect for the virtues and abilities of this nobleman, and wish to see them exerted in a more decisive manner. He is connected with men who require controul, and who will not (if possible) allow him to remain on his present eminence. He must make many vigorous sallies, or they will undermine him. † The majesty of mobs.]—In other words, the sovereignty of the people. A sort of technical term among the Whigs; perfectly harmless, I fancy, and signifying social life, as observable among wolves, savages and other animals. Some, however, assert that it is a pet name for the guillotine.—Scribl. ‡ Radical reform.]—Many say that radical reform (quasi radix et forma) signifies digging up an old tree, and making snuffboxes out of its roots; and adduce Shakespeare’s mulberry-tree as an instance. Others again derive it from rado, to shave, and formico, to rise in pimples; and say that it refers to Packwood’s razor-strops, not Shakespeare’s mulberry-tree. What far-fetched derivations are here! To me ’tis clear as the sun, that radical reform merely means change of administration.—Scribl.

63

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

POLYPUS. The change of tenet proves the heart untrue. Who knows what system they may next pursue? The beardless and the bald Administration, May shew us hell and swear it is salvation. Men faithless once are always faithless men; Give ’em but scope, they soon will turn again. Yet groundless be my fears, as vain the aim, To soil the honour of a royal Dame; Well-natur’d sland’rers! ye but serv’d to prove, A fair* one’s virtues, and a nation’s love.26 For shame, for shame! that one so fair, so good, A beauteous Alien, sever’d from her blood; Whom heav’n with ev’ry winning grace design’d, The noble nature and the feeling mind; Lost to all love and all domestic bliss, The parent’s care, the tender husband’s kiss; With not a friend to meliorate her doom; With not a joy to sparkle thro’ the gloom; Save the fair Hope of whom her heart is proud, The youthful idol of the wond’ring crowd— For shame that she, so long by slander stain’d, Who tedious months unjustified remain’d; Clear’d at the last, shou’d harshly be deny’d, To vindicate her virtues and her pride. Such were the wrongs, so piercing and so sore, That hapless Antoinette27 endur’d before: When a base rabble, anxious to remove, ‘A fair one’s virtues and a nation’s love’, The royal wife industriously defame, And with impure reproaches blot her name. O T HOU , who shrink’st, all-conscious, from my song, Time may be still when Heav’n shall wreak the wrong!

100

110

120

* A fair one’s virtues, and a nation’s love.]—The lady to whom I allude owes less to the efforts of her friends than of her enemies. Her former popularity has increased tenfold since the late attempt to diminish it. ȍ ȖȣȞĮȚȣț Į ȞIJȚȢ ıİ ǺȡȠIJȠȞ İʌ’ ĮʌİȚȡȠȞĮțĮ ȚĮ Ȟ ȃİ Țț İȩȢ Odyss. It is said that the commission for investigating into her Majesty’s conduct was not countersigned by the king. Of course, the commission was self-nominated, and the entire proceeding illegal. But formalities are only made for fools, and administering oaths or taking evidence unlawfully are mere trifles to men of talent. Thus then, this calumny lived and died in the true faith of its original church. The mysterious motives which gave it birth were admirably supported by the illegality which examined it, and by the cruel delicacy which suffered it to die unexposed.

64

LADY ANNE HAMILTON

The Epics of the Ton (1807) [First published in The Epics of the Ton, London, C and R. Baldwin, 1807, pp. 3–39. Lady Anne Hamilton (1766–1846; DNB) was the eldest daughter of Archibald, ninth Duke of Hamilton and Harriet Stewart, fifth daughter of the sixth Earl of Galloway. She was also the brother of Lord Archibald Hamilton (1770–1827), youngest son of the duke, a supporter of Queen Caroline, and political opponent of Pitt and Addington. In 1804 Lord Archibald published Thoughts on the Formation of the Late and Present Administrations, ‘in which he contended that Addington’s and Pitt’s second administration was formed “upon principles fundamentally opposite to the spirit of the constitution and subversive of its dearest interests”’.1 Lady Anne’s chief claim to notice is her close association with, and as lady-in-waiting to, Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV, both as Princess of Wales and, briefly, as queen. Hamilton held the position of lady-in-waiting until Caroline’s departure abroad in 1813; upon Caroline’s return in 1820, Lady Anne travelled into London with her in the same carriage. Indeed, Hamilton’s association with Caroline was close through­ out the latter’s adult life. Caroline stayed with Hamilton in her house in Portman Square. When the Bill for Pains and Penalties (an attempt to pass legislation in Par­ liament to facilitate George’s divorce) was abandoned, Hamilton accompanied the queen to St Paul’s ‘to return thanks for her acquittal’.2 When the queen died on 7 August 1821, Hamilton accompanied the body to Brunswick for its internment in the family vault. There appears to have been little economic benefit in Hamilton’s association with Caroline as ‘the only legacy left her by the queen was a picture of herself ’.3 Though Hamilton’s poem is principally concerned with the mores of fashionable women, The Epics of the Ton also contains significant literary satire. As with much of the satirical verse in the period, Wordsworth and Southey come in for more than their fair share of abuse, though in Wordsworth’s case this is tempered by significant amount of praise. Southey’s Joan of Arc, Wat Tyler and his epic poem Thalaba the Destroyer are roundly abused for their lack of literary merit. Indeed, a host of writers in the period, both major and minor, suffer at Hamilton’s hands, with Smollett, Scott, Rogers and Campbell vilified in one context or another.4 Unlike Henry Lut­ trell’s predominantly Horatian Letters to Julia (1822) (see pp. 180–88 below), with 65

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-5

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

which The Epics of the Ton has affinities in relation to its concern with fashionable manners amongst the upper classes, Hamilton attacks her targets with decidedly Juvenalian vituperation. Whereas Luttrell paints a panoramic picture of London’s high society, Hamilton is much narrower in her focus and concentrates upon the immorality of the aristocracy. Given Hamilton’s association with Caroline and the reputation for immorality that the latter was burdened with by her husband, it might come as something of a surprise to see in this poem an overt concern with moral probity amongst the upper classes. Hamilton reserves her disgust for those women who cannot or will not gov­ ern their morals in a fashion that becomes their status as aristocrats. This is particularly the case with regard to married women. The French, it appears, as with much else in the Romantic period, are to blame for the current lapse in monogamy and the concurrent rise in adulterous behaviour by women who should know better: ‘Though this loose age, by French example wise, / The sacred rites of wedded love despise’.5]

1 2 3 4 5

DNB. Ibid. Ibid. See below, lines 21–48 See below, lines 97–8

66

While dull historians only sing of wars, Of hood-wink’d treaties hatching keen-ey’d jars; Of wily statesmen splitting hairs asunder, Of hills and orators who belch and thunder;* Of grinding taxes, and of tott’ring thrones, Of him who eats up states, and picks the bones:† Say shall the brightest glories of our age, Who best adorn the cut, and grace the page, Who on the top of fashion’s Ida dwell,1 And gold in showers produce to either Bell;‡ O shall these, who just so bright have shone, Escape remembrance when they quit the Ton? Their laurels wither’d, and their name forgot, As dog on dunghill has been said to rot? Forbid it honour! and forbid it shame! The love of glory, and the love of game! Forbid it, Muse, who oft with glowing strains Have rais’d sensations in high ladies veins; You who, with Ethredge, roved in royal stores,§ When beauties, like hobnails, were told by scores;¶

1

10

20

* The eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, Dr Lawrence, &c. † This mode of expression, when we consider the dimensions and isophagical capacity of the little great man, seems rather more appropriate than the celebrated figure swallowing us up quick. ‡ It is needless to inform my fashionable readers that La Belle Assemblée, that ornament of every ladies toilet, is published by Bell2 the father; while Le Beau Monde, that inseparable companion of every man of fashion, is given to the world by Bell the son. But it is necessary to state that a promise on the part of these gentlemen is the cause why this volume is not adorned with plates. As they have advertised their intention of giving the subjects of my song to the public in a series of engravings, of which the first will appear in an early number of their valuable repositories, I thought it unnecessary to increase the price of my publication by embellishing it with plates. The fashionable world may depend upon it that the elegance of the execution will correspond with their highest expectations; and I would recommend to all lovers of this volume to secure good impressions, by early ordering Le Belle Assemblée and Le Beau Monde for the next two or three years. Had it not been for this undertaking of Messrs. Bell, each of the following epics would have been adorned with a cut, exhibiting a striking likeness of the hero or heroine. Note by the Author. § Every one knows the author of the ‘Fop in Fashion’.3 His writings were a lesson to the bagnios; his conduct an improvement on his precepts. At the licentious court of Charles the Second, his voluptuous plays gave a zest to the languid intervals of debauchery; and his Dorimant taught the youth of both sexes to mingle wit with wine, and address with profligacy. Half a century afterwards, the elegant pen of Addison could scarcely banish his lewd ribaldry from the toilet. ¶ It is needless to tell the knowing reader of those rows of female figures, with stiff necks and wry heads, which are usually seen suspended in old galleries, and which are known by the name of King Charles’s Beauties.

67

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Or with poor Smollett,4 fain for gold to tickle,* Wrought up with liquorish gust the feats of Pickle; Or, sinning deeper, like repentant Punk,5 Call’d gloating females to abhor the Monk;† Or with young Teius sung of am’rous blisses, With one eternal round of hugs and kisses:‡ * Poor Smollett! It is lamentable to recollect that the author of Roderick Random and Humphrey Clinker should have prostituted his pen to delineate the debaucheries of Peregrine Pickle. Does the latter display genius? so much the worse. The prostitute, who hunts the way-side in rags, only disgusts the loathing eye: it is she, whose voluptuous limbs shine through the transparent muslin, that lures us to our ruin. Peregrine Pickle adorns many a toilet, where Aristotle’s Master-piece would be thought to carry indelible pollution. It is said that my Lord —–, on entering her ladyship’s apartment one morning, perceived the third volume of Peregrine Pickle under her pillow. As she was asleep, he gently withdrew it, and substituted in its room a Common Prayer Book. One may imagine her ladyship’s surprise, when, on awaking, and resorting to dear morning treat, she found the amours of Lady —— converted by magic art into the Litany. † It was a good moral thought, to create a general abhorrence of Vice, by producing her stark naked before the world. But unfortunately, so tempting, so piquant did the fiend appear, that the daughters as well as the sons of Jerusalem began to long after strange flesh. In short, the development produced, if it was not intended to produce, the same effect as when Alcibiades bared the bosom of the Athenian courtesan before the judges. The dread of the pillory, however, on this, as on other occasions, proved an admirable corrector of the press; and the second edition of the Monk, issued forth a very harmless and a very insipid performance. The spirit was fled; and it has left its author only a name. His end corresponded with his life. After having wasted his fortune and his nose in the service of Bacchus and Venus, he tumbled down stairs, as he rose from one of his debauches, and broke his neck in the very article of drunkeness. ‡ Such are his never-ending themes; as the everlasting joys of love and wine were sung by the elder Teïan. Yet, it must be owned, that if he seldom expresses more than hugs and kisses, he often comes very near something more substantial. Witness the Wedding Ring—‘And now,—O Heaven!’ I am not apt to dread much from bad books, but I must own I was startled when I discovered these salacious lays on a lady’s dressing table. Thanks to my happy stars! neither she, nor Mrs T. is my wife. There is a considerable adaptation to the subject in the following stanzas, which appeared in the Morning Herald of the 25th of last October: ‘On certain Licentious Poems lately Published’. ‘O listen to the voice of love Wild boars of Westphaly! Your pretty hearts let music move ’Tis Mauro’s harmony. Your ear incline, ye gentle swine, While he extols your loves; For though from you he learnt to whine Yet he the song improves. Listen each bristly beau and belle And leave the genial tray; You’ll find the poet’s song excel Fresh acorns and sweet whey. O listen to the voice of love, Ram cats on moonlight tiles,

68

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

… Or feign a Welshman o’er the Atlantic flown Or tell of Thalaba the wondrous matter, Or with clown Wordsworth chatter, chatter, chatter;* Still Rogers6 bland his imitations twine,† The minstrel of the lemon grove Records your Cyprian wiles. Ye goats that ply your nimble shanks On ancient Penmanmaur, Bleat him your thanks, who sing your pranks, While satyrs cry encore. And all ye Incubi that ride The nightmare through the gloom, The chorus swell.—Your poet’s shell Is strung from Circe’s loom. * Everyone knows how meritoriously Wordsworth has laboured to back our poetry to the simplicity of nature. In his unsophisticated pages we discover no gaudy trappings, no blazing metaphors, no affected attempts at poetic diction. Every thing is pure from the hand of untutored nature; nor do we discover a single thought or phrase that might not have been uttered by a promising child of six years old. What an improvement is this on the laboured conceits of Pope! on the learned lumber of Milton! Yet I will aver, that there may be found, in Wordsworth, beauties which these poets never reached, nor even dreamt of. Produce me from all their writings anything to match the simply affecting tale of Goody Blake and Harry Gill; or a line in which the sound so well corresponds with the sense, as in the following description of Harry’s doom— —— His teeth went chatter, chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter, still. What renders the beautiful superiority of this mode of expression still more striking, is the facility with which it may be employed, with equal effect, on a thousand different occasions. For example, it might be said of Goody Blake, who now wanted the teeth: Her gums went mumble, mumble, Mumble, mumble, mumble still. Or of ladies on pattens— Their feet went clatter, clatter, Clatter, clatter, clatter, still. Or of the persevering efforts of a dog at a furze-bush— Here Lighfoot he made water, water, Water, water, water, still. † There is much in the title of a book; and if there is nothing else for which an author deserves praise, still his ingenuity ought to be applauded if he has devised a happy appellation for his work. Every one feels the pleasures of memory: the very words excite a thousand agreeable associations; and miserable must the minstrel be, who cannot chime in a few notes that will please, when the soul is so fully prepared to enjoy them. On such an occasion, the unoffending strains of Rogers,—soft, delicate, polished, sympathetic youth! could not fail to be interesting; but we thank the blessed poetic powers of former years that Goldsmith lived, and that the Traveller and the Deserted Village were written.

69

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And strain his memory for another line; Good-natured Scott rehearse in well-paid Lays*7 The marv’lous chiefs and elves of other days; Or lazy Campbell spin his golden strains,†8 And have the Hope he nurtures,for his pains—‡ Thou shouldst triumphant mount to distant times, And bear aloft thy heroes on thy rhymes; Well known to all that soar, and all that crawl, On every dressing-table, every stall, Thy circulation should thy worth bespeak, And thousands still be sold through many a week; While tomes thrice learn’d, that piles in warehouse groan, Would but to snuff-shops have their merits known. Then, Muse of Ton, begin; and while thy song In no meaning eddies strays along;§ With blank most eloquent, and hint that flames, Unfolds redoubted chiefs, and high-bred dames; Bids a whole epic upon each attend, With quaint beginning, middle, and smart end;¶

40

50

* In former days, poets, we are told, could not make a bare livelihood of the fruits of their brains. They might sing like Syrens, and beg like gypsies, and yet after all they could scarcely make a shift to dine on one dish, and drink small beer. Times, it would appear, are altered. Scott, by producing before us the lays of our ancient minstrels, and by himself bringing up the rear, enjoys large prices of copy-rights, and a couple of good offices. To his honour be it said, few men deserve better to thrive in the world. † The first poetical genius of our age; but, unfortunately, more a wit than discreet. With such lagging steps were his first efforts, his Pleasures of Hope, followed up, that we began to look upon it as one of the bright rays which the sun of genius sometimes darts forth at his rising, and afterwards plunges his head in impenetrable clouds, which never leave him till he sets. But the Battle of Hohenlinden proved that the genius of Campbell was still to shine, and to exceed in his noon the promise of his morn. Alas! how men neglect the talents by which they are destined to excel! how they waste their efforts in what they can never achieve! Campbell must needs be a politician, and write a history.—He that could soar to the empyreal regions, must needs lay aside his wings, and attempt, at the imminent danger of his neck, to dance on the slack rope. ‡ It is now said he has got a pension. This may relieve his wants, but not retrieve his reputation. It is miserable to see the man, whose talents may procure him opulence with fame, hold out his suppliant hand, and fawn on a courtier for a morsel of bread. § Surely it would be far more gratifying to see the streams of poetry distributed in all the fantastic shapes known two centuries ago; spouted from the mouths of Tritons or Naiads, dashed over cataracts ten feet high, and tossed by jetties over the surface of a yard-wide pool:—than to behold them after the present fashion, meandering through a smooth shaven lawn, in a channel cut out of the sod, and just so many inches broad in every quarter, without a single solitary pebble to give a little play to the ever-glassy surface. ¶ This admirable and ancient definition of an epic poem (to which the following epics correspond as completely as any that have ever been written) appears, as is usual with beauties of antiquity, to have a reference to certain striking analogies in nature; such, for instance, as that of all quadrupeds and many bipeds, each of which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, or in other words, a head, a belly, and a tail.

70

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

I, in my buggie, thine advent’rous Knight,* Through Rotten Row will tend upon thy flight; What’er thy Sybil voice shall utter, save, And now and then myself indite a stave. Ye female glories! Be it first your turn, Who shine the brightest as ye fiercest burn.

60

M——F——9 Whom shalt thou, ’midst this full blown garden choose, To form thy first bright wreathe, discerning muse? Say, are not her’s the most exalted charms, Who lures an H—A——10 to her arms? And hopes to shine the first of r-y— l——,11 Nell Gwyns unnoticed then, and Pompadours?†12 What though drear wrinkles’ on her brow be seen, And fat alone remains where fair has been?‡ What though a duskier hue, and flaccid frame, All out of season speak the rancid game? Though all that’s gross must now be born to please, And love be lured by its excessive ease? Though toilsome arts and ever-varied charms Must back entice her lover to her arms? (Some swains will stray in closure, or in common, Where’er their scent detects a fat old woman, As late hoar J——13 felt her power to fix, And wiser H——14 scorn’d at fifty-six:—) What though around her sneer her seeming slaves?

70

* Thus Pope: I, in my little bark attandant sail’, &c. † Madame Pompadour: one of the most insolent, unprincipled, profligate, and revengeful, of those harlots who, in France, trampled all decency and virtue underfoot; and by showing how much morals and religion were despised in the palace of the sovereign, loosened the hold of these ties over the minds of the people, and precipitated the throne of France to its ruin. How blind are Princes, how criminal, when they endanger their own destruction, and the good order, virtue, and happiness of their people, for such sensual gratifications as would appear despicable in the lowest debauchee! Will no warning voice be heard? no repetition of examples strike? The profligacy of Louis the Fifteenth, was followed by the death of his successor on the scaffold. Happy Britain! thy virtuous King has set a far different example; and amidst all the temptations of a court, has never once deviated from the wife of his youth. ‡ The reader will readily recollect the celebrated toast, fat, fair, and forty.

71

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And loud and fierce the man of Diamond raves?* What though deep groans foreboding parents breathe, And turn their eyes indignant to Blackheath? In her barouche while r—l——15 will roll, Or love between her mountain breasts to loll;† While round the course, or through the shining Steine, Train’d to her side a p——y17 prize is seen To catch, with smiles, her glances as they fly, And search for lustre in her hollow’d eye— Still crouds will gaze, still Bright helmstone will shout, Still title ladies throng her envied rout: By sires who kneel before the rising sun, By mothers who no shame for courts would shun, Still blooming daughters to her levees led, Shall learn betimes to stain the marriage bed.‡ O Britain’s Queen! accept the tribute due§ To virtue, Honour, Modesty, and You: Though this loose age, by French example wise, The sacred rites of wedded love despise; Though matrons shine, when lost their honest name, And with th’ adult’rer proudly flaunts the dame; Yet her I honour to whose single court, Chaste maids may still without a blush resort; Even if the lewd should come, they come unknown, And Vice itself must here its name disown!

80

90

100

* When an honest unsuspecting man has been deceived by warm professions of friendship, entrapped by specious promises, and at length deserted by those who caused his ruin, I detest his betrayers, I pity his misfortunes, I would stand forth to proclaim his wrongs to the world, and assert his right to redress. But when a very sycophant, after having licked the footsteps of a patron and his——, whose character he well knew, is at length cast off, and begins in a half-whining, halfangry tone, to remonstrate thus before the world:—‘Was I not the most assiduous of your slaves? Did I not do all your dirty jobs without a murmur? Would I not still have done so, had you not kicked me, spit upon me, left me sprawling in the dirt? When I listen to a scene of this sort, I only moralise to myself, that spaniels who snarl deserve to have their ears pulled. † Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes.16 V IRGIL . ‡ —Et incestos amores De tenero mediatur ungui.18 § Here the author himself speaks; for the Muse of the Ton is plainly silent.

72

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

M—of A—— 19 But quit, my Muse, oh quit these humble scenes, Nor stoop to queens, from feats surpassing queens. A would-be princess thee provokes to scan Her flight from King to Emp’ror, Czar, Sultan; To bound with her where Rhone and Danube glide, Or pant for glory by Neva’s side; By Dnieper’s stream, or rude Crimean height, To prune thy wing, and emulate her flight; Then at the Haram’s door her watch to keep, Blest haunt! where virgins ne’er were known to peep.* Or see her thence return’d, with bolder fame, That spurs the vulgar tongue, and treads on shame, Try kings in vain, and after all miscarriage, Entrap a pur-blind M—g——e20 into marriage. An easier task now, Hymen,21 thou hast got, A prince may fix her, though a peer could not; A royal Lord may rein her peccant part,† Who, from his foot, picks up her bleeding heart:‡ Sooth she’ll not part, nor he to snarl begin, Good Germans care not for small slips a pin.§ With radiant honours will she deck his head, And strew rich flowers around his grave when dead; In writing epitaphs her talent shew¶ And virtues nature ne’er bestowed, bestow.

110

120

* We are assured that no lady is ever allowed to enter the Seraglio, without sharing in the honours of the place. This is no more to be dispensed with than the oaths at Highgate. † Peccant part means her head. ‡ About nineteen the beautiful dame was led to the altar, and became the mother of several children; by whom, it is not to be questioned, since her husband was within the narrow seas. Unfortunately, however, she in time discovered that there existed between herself and her spouse that great cause of mental divorce, incompatibility of temper. He was not the being with whom her soul had panted to shine through life, and her eager fancy began to long after brighter visions. In this frame of mind, as she one night lay by the side of her sleeping lord, she fell into a sort of rapturous slumber, and dreamed that lo! her heart lay bleeding at her feet! All night long she ruminated on this remarkable vision, and towards day concluded its interpretation must be that ‘he who should at length pick up her bleeding heart would be a personage so great, that it must needs roll in the dust before him’. Is it to be wondered at that this bright prospect should tempt her to quit a foolish husband, and a bevy of clamorous children, after having drawled through this fatiguing scene (not wholly barren of other pleasures) for fourteen years? § See the play of the Stranger, and various fashionable German novels, which teach husbands to bear, with perfect good humour, certain accidents hitherto accounted grievous mishaps ¶ One would imagine, on reading this epitaph, that Arria had consented to survive her Pætus, till she should celebrate his virtues on his tomb.

73

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Hail love of glory! passion great and blest! But triply noble in a female breast! Rapt bards have sung thy feats, in days of yore, With Spartan matrons, and with hundreds more; How thou could’st make gay damsels fire the trenches, And generalissimos of ostler wenches:* Yet sure thy power exceeds what poets feign, If e’er thy force such wondrous feats attain, To Jove’s imperial bird convert the raven, And Lady Mary make of Lady ——.† Nor these bright trophies sate the kindling dame, She grasps the lyre, and pants for deathless fame; Erects a stage, where her own scenes appear,‡ The poet she, and she the actor here; Here far above all vulgar flight she soars, Spouts what she dreams, inditing what she roars; Of all inglorious rivals makes a riddance, And shines at once a Centlivre and Siddons.24 Hail rapt’rous moments! hail ingenious dame! Her pleasures doubled, as her doubled fame! She hugs in fancy, as the scene she plies; And acting it, she hugs in solid guise.

130

140

150

—— —— Peace to such venial faults! But were it told A woman lived still profligate though old; One who, from youth, at each unhallow’d fire, Had glow’d and batten’d to her heart’s desire; * Such was the invigorating occupation of the Maid of Arc,22 whom Southey has transformed into a moon-struck shepherdess. † Such was the secret spring of all the wonderful movements which we have mentioned. To be another Lady M—ry W—rt—y M—nt—gue!23 To shine in the eyes of the present generation, and be equally admired by the next! Hence the banks of the Hellespont were attained by the circuitous route of Weimar, Paris, Venice, Vienna, Warsaw, Petersburg, Moscow, Crim Tartary, and the Bosphorus!!! Hence Paris, and Constantinople, and Athens, were be-written in letters, and beprinted in narratives. Luckily, at the very moment of return, the forsaken peer kindly quitted this nether world, and left the heroine free and unconfined to mount aloft to her high destiny. ‡ In the name of old Father Thames, I thank her h——s for erecting this antique Gothic Thespian barn on his banks, to the great delight and edification of his holiday votaries. Some persons have said (what will not envy say?) that it is a curious contradiction in taste to imprint false marks of antiquity so zealously upon this pile, while she effaces the real ones with no less industry from her own person.

74

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

As dead to shame, to every generous thought, As Mother Win,25 who long has sold and bought; A hacknied gamester26 who has driven the trade To snare each unfledg’d youth and artless maid; In passion nurtur’d, to indulgence bred, And blest in any but her husband’s bed; While Virtue shudder’d, and Repentance wept, A wife, a mother, keeping oft and kept; Known to ‘the general camp, pioneers and all’,* My lord above-stairs, Thomas28 in the hall; No sin abridged as life’s dark close draws near, And quite a wanton in her sixtieth year— Is English air defil’d by such a hag? Haste, shut her up with cat, snake, ape, in bag!† Nay, lady, frown not at these random hitsBut let her take it whom the bonnet fits.‡

160

170

D——of G——. 29 Bawl not so loud! nor shake the muse’s nerves; She hastes to sing thee as thy worth deserves. O destined by the fates, in happiest hour, To shew the triumphs of the love of power; And teach the world against what fearful odds, A girl of Scotland may approach the Gods!§ Few nymphs, new-fledged, with eagle-eye could trace The sudden frailties of his am’rous Grace; *

What though the general camp, pioneers and all, Had tasted her sweet body. SHAKESPEARE.27 † By a law among the Romans, persons guilty of certain atrocious crimes were shut up in a bag with a cat, an ape, and a serpent, and so thrown into the Tiber. It is difficult to say what reformation an example or two of this kind might work in the present day. ‡ Our author, to make the real vices of the age appear trivial, seems to have drawn, from his imagination, a fictitious character of a peculiarly deformed aspect. This is an innocent artifice to transmit to posterity as favourable an impression of his own times as possible. Whether he had in his eye any noted character of ancient days I am unable to determine, since he has not even afforded room for conjecture, by prefixing any mysterious capitals to the delineation. But certain it is, that no personage of this description can have existed since the days of Messalina, unless perhaps that fair Borgia, whose knight-errant Roscoe has so gallantly declared himself. § Not those of Olympus, or the Upper Gallery.

75

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Or move a griping draper with the pledge,* In one short night to set the peer on edge. Few, in a ten-foot parlour taught to shine, Where captains sometimes flirt, and parsons dine, Could set the winter circles in a blaze, While dowagers with double vision gaze:† First at the rout, the ring, the masque, the ball, Where dice-box rattles, or Signoras squall; At Faro’s30 orgies famed with bolder flight, To win or lose a fortune in a night: A politician who, with equal ease, Can twine a courtier, or a parson please: Shine to the one, the gay, the gallant duchess, Whose passions fly, whose virtue limps on crutches; While t’other, edified by looks so holy, Thanks Heaven that greatness now’s divorced from folly!‡ With mind too noble for her rustic dear, She takes his tame four thousand pounds a year; In fashion’s circles keeps alive his name, And makes him shine (his all) with borrow’d fame; Destin’d the glory of his house to prove, And but withhold that trifling thing - her love. Thus Hanover’s bold sons, in mighty power,! Wear our red jerkins, and our beef devour; Shake the parade, or make th’ exchequer light, And any thing for Britain do—but fight. And yet a loftier note the muse might swell, Of peers led captive by her magic spell; Drawn to the altar with a wond’ring heart, While passion blows upon the stem of art. See mushroom princess pluck’d at, as they shoot, Yet for her vigour prove too firm at root;— (’Twas not a Roman matron’s high-born pride, No Roman virgin would be thus allied;)§

180

190

200

210

* Such according to report, was the manner in which the finery was procured for the ball at which this gallant feat was achieved. His grace danced with the enchanting Miss M—— and from that lucky moment conceived an irresistible propensity to conduct her to the altar. † I wonder that none of our ingenious caricaturists have caught this idea:— a dowager shifting around her chair from the card-table, adjusting her spectacles, and then intently employing her double vision to criticise the young thing just produced in public. ‡ It is the current opinion among the worthy parsons in a northern province, that there is not such another theologian in petticoats § In the days of Republican Rome the daughter of a Patrician family would have scorned to match with the highest foreign king, and still more with a prince of Corsica! Rome had fallen to the dust before even ancient royalty could tempt her high-born daughters into the arms of a barbarian.

76

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

See her the puppet’s humbling scorn repair, And find a nobler match in R—l’s31 heir. Thus o’er the realm her soaring kindred spreads,! And fair offspring mount the loftiest beds; Ambition bends him from his air-built shrine, His vot’ry cheers, and hails her half divine! While distanced rivals at her glories peep, And seem to rally while in truth they weep. So when Burdett32 aloft in civic car, From Piccadilly pass’d to Temple-bar; While glad Plebeians their proud voices raised, And cheering thousands on his triumph gazed: From half-shut windows, much like rat from hole, Both ins and outs were seen to edge the poll; Laugh at the rabble, spurn such vulgar state, And burst with spleen that they were not Burdett.

220

L— M—P; D— of R—; M—C—; D— of M—; D— of B—.33 But come, my muse, a votive anthem raise, We gain no patron if we give no praise; Of high-born virtues let us wisely dream, And find or make black cygnets for our theme.* From vale, from garden, where the lily grows, O bring its sweets, my muse, and join the rose; The loveliest wreathes around their temples bind, And hold them forth a pattern to their kind. Though in the giddy rounds of fashion bred, Through all its follies by example led; With every beauty which the bosom warms, With every talent which the fancy charms; Though from the cradle to the altar blest, Admir’d and follow’d, flatter’d and carest; Yet them no reigning folly e’er has claim’d , No rampant vice amidst her vot’ries named; No tongue, in this licentious age, has shed Its pois’ning slander round their marriage bed: But meekly shrinking from the public gaze, *

Rara avis in terries nigroque simillima cygno JUVENAL .34

77

230

240

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

They court alone the modest matron’s praise; And placed in scenes of glare, of noise, and strife, Seek for no fame that misbecomes a wife. In vain the very mother’s sought in these, One half retrench’d, and t’other purged of less. So have I seen a mountain torrent pour With troubled waters, and with angry roar: Though noisy cat’racts tumble down amain, And rush with threat’ning billows on the plain; But there arrived, its blust’ring waves divide, And o’er the mead, in gentlest riv’lets glide, Upon whose verdant banks sweet violets grow, And on their surface water-lilies blow; Soothed by their gentle murmurs, shepherds dream, Or love to sip from their pellucid stream.*

250

260

L——L——M——.35 From thy fair stem, what tempting fruits have grown, Like thee, to every gazing trav’ler known! In fashion’s hot-bed mellow’d into prime, One lovely peach has dropt before its time; Yet still its sister fruits, from golden stalks, Their fragrance scatter o’er the courtly walks; While, with sweet smiles that might inflame a stone, The d—h—ss36 kindly warms her apple-John. O happy mother! once a blessed wife! O cheery widow in the vale of life! Some card for fashion, and some dice for fame, But wiser he who mingled wit with game; E’en kept the table, pander’d to the fun, And turn’d the penny, whoso lost or won. Hence his full coffers pond’rous guineas strain Hence his bright honours flourish with his gain; Hence stands his name inscribed mid courtly gods,

270

* The reader will observe that the author, with infinite good nature, and an anxious wish to give unmingled praise, has here said nothing of the scandalous reports of C——d Row, the prodigious sum lost in one night, the wrath of his G—e, the intended sale of plate, equipage, &c &c.; with several other little matters among the gossips. But let it be remembered, that as deserved praise is the choicest meed of virtue, so unqualified applause, where censure is due, becomes the most bitter satire.

78

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

For teaching English nobles Captain modes;* Hence shine his daughters in the foremost place, For who outvies my Lady, or her Grace? Hence his gay widow in her chariot wheels, And counts six tall stout footmen at her heels; Glad to behold her offspring like herself, As gay, as painted, and as full of pelf;37 Still hovering round her former fields of fame, The ball, the masque, the concert, and the game:— So ghosts their former scenes of pleasure haunt, With eye deep-hollow’d, and with aspect gaunt; Intrude on human sight at close of day, And fright the younglings at their moonlight play. Go finish out thy course as it began, Nor break at sixty thy consistent plan:

280

290

* A description of the Neapolitan nobles, which will no doubt be very edifying to our imitating higher ranks, I shall extract from the celebrated Kotzebue, who, two years ago, visited them: ‘The higher classes of Naples are the savages of Europe. They eat, sleep, drink, and game. They neither have nor want any occupation but this last. The states of Europe are overthrown; they game not the less. Pompeii comes forth from his grave; still they game. The earth shakes; Vesuvius vomits forth flames; yet the gaming table is not forsaken. The splendid ruins of Pæstum, a few miles distant, so glorious a spectacle, are discovered only by strangers; for the Neapolitans are gaming. The greatest dukes and princes are keepers of gaming tables. A Prince Rufando, one of the most considerable noblemen of the country, keeps the first gaming-house in Naples: and besides his, there are twenty others of the same description. Thither all the great world are seen driving at the approach of evening. Strangers must be presented by some acquaintance; yet this is only a form. The stranger makes a slight inclination to the host, who as slightly returns it: but it is a rule that not a word is uttered. In other respects it is like being at a coffee-house, for there one can have what he chuses for money; but here are no refreshments, except perhaps a glass of water, after having ordered it ten times of the servant. A large but ill furnished drawing room is the rendezvous of rouge et noir and faro. A pile of chairs heaped up in the corner of the room proves that a numerous company is expected. Scarcely have the gaudy throng pushed in, when they seat themselves, with greedy eyes fixed on the heaps of gold which glitter on the table. These meetings are called conversaziones, but no one here must attempt to converse. We hardly dare whisper a single word: if anything more is attempted, an universal hiss commands deep silence and attention to the mysteries of the game. Old women, particularly, sit either gathering up money with their long bony fingers; or with their green out-stretched eyes fixed on the rouge et noir table, lamenting the capricious decrees of fortune. Even handsome young women here degrade the dignity of their sex, setting beauty and the graces at defiance. The princess N., for example, is a professed gamester. Many others come to make new conquests, or to secure the old; in both which businesses they lay no restraint upon themselves. A stranger is, at the first look, apprized of each lady’s favourite. The husbands are either absent, or concern themselves not the least about the women; for of the execrated Italian jealousy here is not a single vestige. Even divines and children game: for example, the daughter of the Marquis Berio, who is not more than eight years old. The Marquis is one of the most enlightened noblemen. Some maintain that this degrading traffic brings the Prince Rufando five thousand ducats a year. Others say that he receives not more than twelve ducats a day for converting his palace into a gaming house!’.

79

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

For thy keen brows the muse shall holly bring, To suit the verdure of thy latter spring.

D—— of S—A——38 Haste, clear the pavement, call the crowd to stare! Her swan-leg’d footmen, and bright lacquered chair,* And hoop to nose, proclaim S—A—— there! Say who shall more adorn the courtly scene? Or turn aside more gazers from the queen? More through the rooms the general buz create, Or more confound the gapers at the gate? More catch the town, or in the Post next day Engross more lines, more wond’rous things display?† Nor be her glories to the world unknown, These brilliant charms are fairly all her own: She has poor nature veil’d with skilful art, Thrown rich amendments o’ereach faulty part; And colours not vouchsafed the human face Cull’d from the shrub, the mine, and strow’d with grace. So nicely touch’d her frame from top to bottom, And all her charms so alter’d since she got em, That with the knowing ’tisan event bet, If she or nature’s most in other’s debt.

300

310

D—— of D———.39 Such moons may shine, when thy bright sun is down, O born to grace the vale, and gild the town! On Chiswick’s banks, a flower that woos the sight, In London’s throngs, a dazzling blaze of light. No servile rhymester now begins the lay, And sings, like Tom, for favour, or for pay;

320

* Every one must be convinced of the propriety of this metaphorical allusion to the legs of swans, unless indeed that these bipeds have not yellow clocks to their black silk hose. † The attractions of a newspaper containing the dresses, both to those who have been, and those who have not been to this scene, are indescribable. A beau might win his mistress by being the first, next morning, to bring her this epitome of every thing charming.

80

Hamilton (The Epics of the Ton)

No rich rewards come glitt’ring from the tomb, No gaping flatt’rers seek to pierce its gloom.* Hadst thou still bask’d the wing in fashion’s beam The muse had flapp’d thee in thy golden dream, Or sung a second to some yelping cur, And raked for gold, perhaps, the dirt of S—r;†40 Or wept that virtues, form’d to be bless mankind, Should lose the kernel, and retain the rind; That a heart, warm with charity and love, A prey to sycophants and knaves should prove; That nature’s softest feelings should be lost, Amidst the waves of whirling folly tost; Keen though they were to sorrow or delight, And sweetly warbled from the Alpine height:‡ That talents dear to genius, mark’d for fame, Should still be wasted at the midnight game; Or rack’d, next day, to find some new supply, And bilk a tradesman with a shew to buy:§

330

* It is rather mortifying to the love of posthumous fame, to observe how much more a person of great celebrity in the fashionable world is greeted with complimentary poems while alive than by elegies after death. A Nelson, whose praises every one is for a season ready to hear; A Pitt, who has left behind him a party that may yet be in power, is indeed more fortunate, and bespattered with nauseous applauses in many thousand-hobbling couplets. But the unhappy fashionables, when laid in the dust, are seldom capable of producing more than a single Della Crusca sonnet in a newspaper. For the benefit and warning of my readers of this class, it may not be unseasonable to mention an anecdote of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a famous courtier in the days of Queen Elizabeth. He had, in his life-time, erected his own tomb, and caused a long inscription, containing a summary of all his transactions, to be engraved upon it; omitting only the date of his death, which it was impossible for him to divine. So well did this courtier understand mankind, that he foretold his heirs would neglect to make even this small addition to the inscription: and so it happened; for the space which should contain the date of his death remains a blank to this day! † A report was industriously circulated that this mawkish piece of would-be scandal had actually killed the illustrious personage it attempted to expose. Surely her thread of life must have been reduced to a single hair, if the flap of this moth’s wing could snap it asunder! But the report had the desired effect; and several editions of this apology for a novel were sold off on the strength of an imaginary lady-slaughter. ‡ Re-echoed from the harp of Delille, those strains have rendered the genius of their author not less known and admired on the Continent than at home. § How indispensable are laws! What a poor security would mankind derive either from generosity, or from shame, if the authority of the magistrate did not come in aid of these uncertain restraints! How strongly is this evinced by the example of those orders who, in various countries, are privileged to cheat their creditors, without being subject either to have their estates seized or their persons imprisoned! One should imagine that the proud feelings of birth, the dread of staining a title derived from illustrious ancestors, the consciousness of being so prominently placed in the eye of mankind, would prevent a noble from acting the part of a mean, paltry, sordid knave. Yet what is more common than to see a titled swindler pledge his faith and his honour for the payment of debts, which it has never entered his head to discharge. The industrious tradesman is

81

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

That she, of softness, past her sex, possest, Felt the mad passions of the gamester’s breast;41 Or urged by faction midst the rabble tribe, Should kiss a greasy butcher with a bribe;* Unskill’d discretion with her warmth to blend, Nor lose herself through zeal to serve a friend.

340

robbed of his property and ruined; while his plunderer, secure in the privileges of a peer, laughs at the misfortune, continues his course of swindling, revels in the most expensive debauchery, and transmits his estate unimpaired to prosperity. For the sake of justice, for the sake of their own honour, the worthier part of the peerage ought loudly to demand the abolition of this privilege. To the honourable it is useless; it is worse than useless, for it enables knaves to bring on their unmerited disgrace. While I thus address the peers, it may not be amiss to hint to the peeresses, that it is inconsistent with common honesty to give, in exchange for valuable goods, their note of hand, which they know to be not worth a farthing. It is quite as bad as passing a bit of waste paper for a bank-note. Still more disgraceful and worthy of Botany Bay it is to purchase goods of an honest tradesman, and carry them, unpaid for, to the auctioneer, to procure a sum for the discharge of a gambling debt! * It was certainly an ingenious device to heighten the value of a guinea, to place it between the ruby lips of a lady of high fashion, and thus let it drop, in the act of kissing, into the liquorish mouth of the chuckling voter. The gentlemen of Newport-market like it hugely; and would not have been without such a kiss for twenty guineas.

82

RICHARD MANT

From The Simpliciad: A Satirico-Didactic Poem (1808) [First published in The Simpliciad, London: Joseph Stockdale, (1808), pp. 11–35, 39– 45, 50–51. Richard Mant (1776–1848; DNB), was born in Southampton. He was a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, between 1798 and 1804 when he was ordained an Anglican priest, rising eventually to the bishopric of Down, Connor and Dromore. Mant was a prolific writer, mainly in the field of Anglican polemics where he wrote vigorously against methodism. Mant’s best work, according to the DNB, is his History of the Church of Ireland (1840), though he also wrote poetry such as Verses to the Memory of Joseph Warton, D. D. (1800), The Country Curate (1804), A Collection of Miscellaneous Poems (1806), and of course, The Simpliciad (1808) Like Mathias’s The Pursuits of Literature, The Simpliciad is a defence of poetic literary standards against innovation. The main target of the poem is the so-called Lake school, of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. In his prefatory remarks, Mant makes it clear that his intention is the preservation of the ‘Rules’ of poetry ‘which were founded by Homer and Sophocles, and of which Virgil and Horace, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, did not disdain to be disciples’.1 The deviation of the Lake poets, labelled pejoratively by Mant as the ‘Anti-classical School’, from the principles laid down by the Greek and Roman masters and then followed by the best English poets, represents an unwelcome, subversive departure from literary tradition. Throughout the poem Mant satirises in particular Wordsworth’s poetry in Lyrical Ballads (1798) and Poems in Two Volumes (1807).2 Mant’s concentration upon the sup­ posed puerilities of Wordsworth, and his inane preoccupation with the commonplace and bathetic is typical of the satirical reception of the poet before the appearance of The Excursion in 1814 (after which he is lampooned as an opaque metaphysician). Unlike Mathias, however, Mant is not seeking to make personal attacks on his poetic adversaries. His criticism is of their poetry: ‘At the same time that I amuse myself, I trust without malignity, at the expence of your poems’, he writes, ‘I wish to assure you that as far as I have any knowledge of your personal characters, I feel for them a high respect’.3 The Simpliciad is an Horatian satire in the form of a dialogue between P and F and is divided into four sections, two of which are generously represented below. Mant 83

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-6

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

throughout adheres to Horatian principles: he quotes at the beginning of his poem from Ars Poetica and makes generous citations of Horace’s text across the length of the poem. Mant’s sustained attack on the Lake school is framed within the poem by a eulogy of classical poetics at the beginning and a peroration at the end that cele­ brates Milton, Dryden and Pope. In this respect, if in this respect only, Mant shares affinities with Byron for whom Milton, Dryden and Pope were the benchmark of English poetic excellence.4]

1 Mant, ‘Preface’, p. iii. 2 For contemporary critical reaction to Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes, see Robert Woof, ed. Wordsworth: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge, 2001, vol. 1, pp. 235–347. 3 Mant, ‘Preface’, p. 5. 4 See English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, below, pp. 100–05.

84

O, that thou ever should’st forego thy claim, Sweet child of Genius, to thy father’s fame, Renounce the glory of thine elder song, And ape the whimper of a beldame’s tongue! When smiling mild the glorious chief of Troy Unlac’d his helmet, and caress’d his boy; Amid the roaring of th’ Ægean deep When Danae cried, ‘O sleep, my infant, sleep;’ When her fond spouse o’er Heliodora shed The tender tear and gave her to the dead, Thine was the song:— thine is the song that wakes Echo, who sleeps by Albion’s northern lakes, * Echo, whose birth the cuckoo cannot tell, Tho’ that ’tis sound the bird must know full well;1 † Where Poets, dozing in lethargic dream, Such as may Fancy’s wayward sons beseem, Entwine each random weed, that charms their eye, To hang on wildly-staring Poesy: * Echo, whose birth, &c. P.11. Yes! full surely ’twas the Echo, Solitary, clear, profound, Answering to Thee, shouting Cuckoo! Giving to thee sound for sound. Whence the voice, from air of earth? This the Cuckoo cannot tell; But a startling sound had birth, As the bird must know full well. Poems by W. W. vol. ii p. 123 † Where Poets dozing in lethargic dream, &c. Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, Conversing as I may, I sit upon this old gray stone, And dream my time away. Lyrical Ballads by W. W. I. 3. And as beseem’d the wayward Fancy’s child Entwin’d each random weed that pleas’d mine eye Poems by R. S. Dedicatory Sonnet. Dear native brook! where first young Poesy Star’d wildly-eager in her noontide dream Poems by S. T. C. p. 39

85

80

90

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 *

Poets, who fix their visionary sight On Sparrow’s eggs in prospect of delight,2 † With fervent welcome greet the glow-worm’s flame, Put it to bed and bless it by its name;3 ‡ Hunt waterfalls, that gallop down the hills:4 § And dance with dancing laughing daffodills;5

* Poets who fix their visionary sight, &c. Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there! Few visions have I seen more fair, Nor many prospects of delight, More pleasing than that simple sight! Poems by W. W., II. 53. † With fervent welcome greet, &c.—These lines require some explanation The poet tell us that, ‘Among all lovely things his Love had been’, but had never had the good fortune to see a Glow­ worm. Judge of his emotions When riding near her home one stormy night A single Glow-worm did I chance to espy; I gave a fervent welcome to the sight, And from my horse I leapt; great joy had I. He then laid the Glow-worm on a leaf, and carried it away with him: thereupon what followed, Musa rogata refer: When to the dwelling of my Love I came, I went into the orchard quietly: And left the Glow-worm, blessing it by name, Laid safely by itself, beneath a tree. The whole next day I hoped, and hoped with fear, At night the Glow-worm shone beneath the tree I led my Lucy to the spot, ‘Look here!’ Oh! joy it was for her, and joy for me! Poems by W. W. I. 66. ‡ Hunt waterfalls, that gather down the hills, &c. When up she winds among the brook To hunt the waterfalls. Poems by W. W. I. 8. What more he said I cannot tell. The stream came thund’ring down the dell, And galloped loud and fast. Lyrical Ballads by the same. II. 57. § And dance with dancing laughing daffodills, &c. I wander’d lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of dancing daffodills. ****** A poet could not but be gay In such a laughing company.

86

Mant (from The Simpliciad) *

Or measure muddy ponds from side to side, And find them three feet long and two feet wide:6 Poets† with brother donkey in the dell7 Of mild equality who fain would dwell With brother‡ lark or brother robin fly, And flutter with half-brother butterfly;8

100

******* And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodills. Poems by W. W. II. 49. The whole poem, consisting of eighteen lines is exquisite. * Or measure muddy ponds from side to side, &c. This Thorn you on your left espy, And to the left, three yards beyond You see a little muddy pond Of water never dry; I’ve measured it from side to side: ’Tis three feet long and two feet wide. Lyrical Ballads by W. W. I. 37. † With brother donkey in the dell, &c. —The following lines are taken from a an address to a Young Ass by S. T. C. Innocent foal! thou poor despis’d forlorn! I hail thee BROTHER, spite of the fool’s scorn! And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell, Of peace and mild equality to dwell. p. 53 ‡ With brother lark or brother robin fly, &c. Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me! up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing, With all the heavens about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me, till I find The spot which seems so to thy mind! And so forth, through another page: after which, Hearing thee, or else some other, As merry a brother, &c. Poems by W. W. I. 81. Of the Robin Redbreast, the same Poet singeth sweetly, that he is The bird, who by some name or other, All men who know him, call him brother. Ibid. p. 16. The relationship of the Butterfly is not so clearly settled: but in virtue of his being brother to the Robin Redbreast, A brother he seems of thine own, I have ventured to give his genealogy as above.

87

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 *

To woodland shades with liberty repair, And scorn with pious sneer the House of Pray’r: † Of apostolic daisies9 learn to think, Draughts from their urns of true devotion drink: ‡ Woo with fond languishment their chymic maids,10

110

* To woodland shades, &c. Go thou and seek the House of Prayer! I to the woodlands bend my way, And meet Religion there! She needs not haunt the high-arched dome to pray, &c. With Liberty she loves to rove. Poems by R. S. I. 59. I transcribe the passage as I find it. It was written, as appears by the date subjoined, in 1795. It is to be hoped that thirteen years have wrought a change in the author’s sentiments. † Of apostolic daisies learn to think, &c.— The daisy is a favourite with one of our poets; and with reason: for it is fitting that the flower which is ‘Nature’s favourite’, should be also ‘the Poet’s darling’. I select one or two passages from ‘the overflowings of his mind’, in praise of that ‘sweet silent creature’. Thou breath’st with me in sun and air, Do thou as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature! Again: If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to thee should turn, I drink out of and humbler urn A lovelier pleasure. Again: At dusk I’ve seldom mark’d thee press The ground, as if in thankfulness, Without some feeling more or less, Of true devotion. But I know not whether a more perfect instance of silliness is to be detected in the whole farrago of the school, than the following stanza; mark ye! addressed as well as the foregoing, to the daisy: Thou wander’st the wide world about, Uncheck’d by pride or scrupulous doubt, With friends to greet thee, or without, Yet pleased and willing; Meek, yielding to occasion’s call And all things suffering from all, T HY FUNCTION APOSTOLICAL IN PEACE FULFILLING I may be pardoned for exclaiming with Cowper, From such apostles O ye mitred heads Preserve the church! ‡ Woo with fond languishment their chymic maids, &c. Spirits of Love— Or with fond languishment around my fair

88

Mant (from The Simpliciad)

Pray for their* Spaniels; †consecrate their spades;11 ‡ Whine over tatter’d cloaks and ragged breeches, And moralize with gatherers of leeches. Boast of New Bond-street, and St Paul’s Churchyard, With ‘Lyric Ballads’ many a gentle Bard, Sigh in the loose luxuriance of her hair— Spirits! To you the infant maid was given, Form’d by the wand’rous alchemy of Heaven. Poems by S. T. C. 37. * Pray for their spaniels, &c. — Such a practice is not very common, I apprehend, but we have the poet’s own words for it, that it was even so: I PRAY’D FOR THEE, and that thy end were past, And willingly have laid thee here at last. Poems by W. W. II. 103 But then ‘little Music’, was not a common dog: it was not for the usual canine qualities that Both man and woman wept when she was dead. But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee Found scarcely any where in like degree! For love, that comes to all, the holy sense, Best gift of God, in thee was most intense; A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind, A tender sympathy which did thee bind Not only to us men, but to thy kind; Yea for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw The soul of Love, Love’s intellectual law. Now if the Poet’s partiality for his friend’s dog did not obscure his understanding, she certainly was a wonderful creature; and were all such, we might be disposed to adopt the practice of one of our bards and pray for dogs in this world, and the creed of his friend, with respect to their existence in another. —Fare thee well! mine is no narrow creed; Is his valedictory adress to a favourite old Spaniel: —There is another world For all that live and move—a better one! Poems by R. S. I. 142 Surely this is being wise above what is written. † Consecrate their spades, &c, —From lines to the Spade of a Friend: And when thou are past service, worn away, Thee a surviving soul shall consecrate. Poems by W. W. II. 127. ‡ Whine over tatter’d cloaks, &c.— Of the pitiable tales of the tatter’d cloak and the leech-gatherer, I shall have more to say anon. For the circumstance of the ragged breeches, I refer to a poem communicated to the Anti-Jacobin Newspaper by a Mr Higgins: and take this opportunity of recommending to Mr W. the next time he shall have occasion to request the assistance of a friend, to apply to this gentleman; as I am convinced that the poems of Mr W. ‘will in great measure have the same tendency as his own, and that, though there may be found a difference, there will be found no discordance in the colours of their style; as their opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide’. See Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

89

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Proud of gilt cover, with engravings grac’d, Courts of mammas and aunts the curious taste. ’Tis their’s with greater than the Doctor’s skill, To make by night the screaming infant still; Or, welcoming day with some melodious air, Wash his nice hands, and comb his shining hair, To story told of Gaffer Grumble’s wig, Dame Hubbard’s dog, and Betty Pringle’s pig.12 A simple tale these artless bards rehearse; The ditty simple, simple is the verse; But ah! in vain—for know a simpler lay Wrests from their grasp the nursery prize away! Bards of the lakes! in sickly thoughts sublime, The vulgar image, and the doggrel rhime, Less worthy far of go-cart, pap, and bib, Your brethren of the cradle and the crib. What tho’ they dare, when Autumn winds are sobbing, To chaunt a funeral stave o’er poor Cock Robin, They* cannot sing how by some name or other, All men who know him call Cock Robin brother, Then bid old Father Adam ope his eyes, And shudd’ring see this sight beneath the skies, How Redbreasts hunt and feed on Butterflies.13 What though in simple rhimes to nature true, They sing of roses red and violets blue, ‘Tis not for them to hymn the spring-day praises

120

130

140

* They cannot sing, &c.— It was some time before I could discover the cause of the appeal made to Father Adam, and referred to above. But after two or three diligent perusals of the poem, the opening of which follows, I perceived it was the indignation of the bard at seeing (eloquar an sileam?) a robin redbreast chasing a butterfly. Fill’d with horror at the spectacle, the poet bursts forth in this animated and pertinent remonstrance: Art thou the bird whom man loves best? The pious bird with the scarlet breast, Our little English Robin; The bird that comes about our doors When autumn winds are sobbing? Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors? Their Thomas in Finland, And Russia far inland? The bird, whom by some name or other All men who know thee call their brother, The darling of children and men? Could Father Adam open his eyes, And see this sight beneath the skies, He’d wish to close them again. Poems by W. W. I. 16.

90

Mant (from The Simpliciad) *

Of patient primroses and †dauntless daisies;14 Indignant show’r in fiddle-faddle verses Blessings on celandines, on king-cups curses; * Of patient primroses, &c.— To the Small Celandine: Comfort have thou of thy merit Kindly, unassuming spirit! Careless of thy neighbourhood Thou dost show thy pleasant face On the moor and in the wood, In the lane—there’s not a place, Howsoever mean it be, But ’tis good enough for thee. Ill befal the yellow flowers, Children of the flaring hours! Butter-cups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no; Others too of lofty mien; They have done as worldlings do, Taken praise that should be thine, Little, humble Celandine. The poet having expressed his admiration of this little flower through seven stanzas of this spirit, and having set it on a footing with the apostolical daisy, by finally saluting it, Prophet of delight and mirth, Scorned and slighted upon earth, concludes with declaring his resolution of being more just to its merits, I will sing as doth behove, Hymns in praise of what I love! Poems by W. W. I. 26. The reader perhaps would exclaim, Ohe jam satis est! Not so the poet, who is not contented without supplying another address of six stanzas in the same gentle strain to the same little flower: having regretted that he could so long overlook ‘Her arch and wily ways And her store of other praise’, he continues Blithe of heart from week to week Thou dost play at hide and seek, While the patient Primrose sits Like a Beggar in the cold, Thou, a Flower of wiser wits, Slip’st into thy shelter’d hold, &c. p. 29. † —dauntless daisies, &c.—The reader is already acquainted with some of the daisy’s amiable and Christian virtues; its meekness and humility; its long-suffering and thankfulness; but its resolution and courage are not less worthy of admiration, as the following lines may testify: In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Thou greet’st the Traveller in the lane; If welcome once thou count’st it gain; Thou art not daunted, Nor car’st if thou be set at nought— Poems by W. W. I. 2.

91

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

To scold tall flow’rs, which do as worldlings do, And will be seen, whether we’ll see or no; While others blithe of heart from week to week More arch and wily play at hide-and-seek; To bless* mysterious cuckoos;15 and to sing, With †fancy tether’d to a Linnet’s wing,16 In numbers shilly-shally, shally-shilly, So very feeling and so very silly, That wondering Nonsense proud to see a son Of Science prate in phrase so like her own, Dwells on the meagre verse with sparkling cyes, While o’er degraded Genius Reason sighs. Sad is the triumph of the simple Bard! Her limbs all fetter’d and her cheeks all marr’d, Nature her violated kingdom feels, And sense and judgment blur his chariot wheels. But would ye wish, ye nursery bards, to know The sources, whence your rivals’ glories flow, Hear, while no brother-mason I impart The precious mysteries of the sinking art, And not disposed to dive beneath the flood, Strip off the buoyant cork from those who wou’d. 1. First choose your theme: not one, whose view supplies Visions of beauty to poetic eyes, * To bless mysterious cuckoos, &c. — O blithe new-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice: O cuckoo shall I call thee bird Or but a wandering voice? **** Thrice welcome darling of the spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird; but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery. **** O blessed bird, &c. &c. † With fancy tether’d to a Linnet’s wing, &c. A whispering leaf is now my joy, And then a bird will be the toy, That doth my fancy tether. Hail to thee, far above the rest, In joy of voice and pinion Thou, Linnet, in thy green array. Poems by W. W. ii. 79.

92

150

160

Mant (from The Simpliciad)

Charms the rapt soul with scenes of other years, Or ‘opes the source of sympathetic tears.’ Such was the theme, when Southey’s feeling song Invok’d revenge for bleeding Afric’s wrong; And such when Wordsworth bade the Minstrel raise His festal strain to ‘Good Lord Clifford’s’ praise.17 For why to distant lands and ages roam? Less hackney’d themes invite you nearer home; Congenial themes, which yield more tasteful food * To poets musing in their fitful mood. See! with impassion’d flow’rs each bank is teeming; See! with blue sparrow’s eggs each hedge is gleaming; † Ecstatic birds, whose thoughts no bard can measure; Blossoms that breathe, and twigs that pant with pleasure.19 Heaths bloom with cups, ‡the darlings of the eye;20 § Green fields with grass, that drinks a sense of joy;21

170

180

* To poets musing in their fitful mood.—‘Musings’, and ‘Moods of my own mind’ are the titles prefixed by our poets to some of their effusions. ‘And madness laughing in his ireful mood’, is a noble line from Dryden.18 † Ecstatic birds, whose thoughts no bard can measure Blossoms that breathe, and twigs that pant with pleasure. Upon yon tuft of hazel trees That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perch’d in ecstasies. Poems by W. W. II. 81. And ’tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopp’d and play’d; Their thoughts I cannot measure: But the least motion which they made, It was a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air, And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there. Lyrical Ballads by the same, I. 82 ‡ the darlings of the eye, &c. And cups, the darlings of the eye, So deep is their vermilion die. Lyrical Ballads by W. W. I. 37. § Green fields with grass, that drinks a sense of joy, &c. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees and mountains bare And grass in the green field. Ibid. p. 61.

93

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 *

Hills have their thorns with clasping mosses hung; Thorns now so old, you’d say they ne’er were young, Mosses, so close, you’d say that they were bent With wicked plain and manifest intent, As if they all had joined in one endeavour, To kill and bury the poor thorn for ever. The village boasts its busy,† busy bees; ‡ Old road-menders who dine on bread and cheese; § Poachers, who go, when trade in England fails,

190

* Hills have their thorns, with clasping mosses hung, &c. There is a thorn,—it looks so old, In truth you’d find it hard to say, How it could ever have been young It looks so old and grey. Up from the earth these mosses creep, And this poor thorn they clasp it round So close, you’d say that they were bent With plain and manifest intent To drag it to the ground; And all had joined in one endeavour To bury this poor thorn forever Lyrical Ballads, I. 35, 36. † Its busy, busy bees, &c. See Poems by R. S. I. 74 Thou wert out betimes, thou busy, busy bee. The appellation is a favourite with the author; it occurs twice four times in four six-line stanzas. ‡ Old road-menders who dine on bread and cheese, &c. There was an old man breaking stones To mend the turnpike way; He sate him down beside a brook, And out his bread and cheese he took, For now it was mid-day. Poems by R. S. II. 91. The old turnpike mender is presently joined by a soldier, with his knapsack on, who enquires ‘how far to Bristol town’; and having received a full and particular answer, about the road and the foot­ path, The soldier took his knapsack off For he was hot and dry; And out his bread and cheese he took, And he sat down beside the brook To dine in company. After such an introduction as this, with what follows about the soldier begging his companion to let him lean his back against the post, for that In such a sweltering day as this A knapsack is the devil; few readers, it is to be presumes, would have much desire to know more. § Poachers who go, &c.— See Botany Bay Eclogues; by R. S. Poems, Vol. 1 p. 93 and 101.

94

Mant (from The Simpliciad)

To drink their grog and curse in New South Wales; * Goodies who boil their pottage one and one By the same fire; and some, who dwell alone; Beggars, on lies and impudence who thrive, And cottage girls, who don't know seven from five. If from such arduous tasks you shrink dismay’d, Play with your cat, apostrophize your spade: Or† should some donkey cross you on the way, (Not such as wends with crimson housing gay,

200

* Goodies who boil their pottage one and one, &c. By the same fire to boil their pottage Two poor old dames as I have known, Will often live in one small cottage; But she poor woman! dwelt alone. Lyrical Ballads, I. 11. † Or should some donkey cross you on the way, &c.— For the four subjects alluded to in the two foregoing couplets, I refer to the Lyrical Ballads and Poems of W. W. This gentleman, who is (I believe) the founder of the simple school, supplies us with the most copious catalogue of illustrations of its merit. But I know not that he has any one composition, so prolific of beauty, as the poem to which allusion is here made: so much so indeed, and written withal in a style so different from the other poems by the same author, of which simplicity is by no means the characteristic, that could I believe him capable of such treachery, I should very strongly suspect that his object was to quiz his brethren. The allusions above keep so close to the original, that my readers may be spared the trouble of perusing the annexed extract, which however I transcribe for my own justification. TO A YOUNG ASS, Its Mother being tethered near it. Poor little fool of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face. And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread, And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head. But what thy dulled spirit hath dismay’d, &c.? Do thy prophetic fears anticipate Meek Child of Misery! thy future fate? The starving meal and all the thousand aches Which patient merit of the unworthy takes? Or is thy sad heart thrill’d with filial pain, To see thy wretched mother’s shorten’d chain? How ASKINGLY its footsteps hither bend? It seems to say, And have I then one friend? Innocent Foal! thou poor despis’d forlorn! I HAIL THEE BROTHER—SPITE OF THE FOOL’S SCORN And fain would take thee with me, &c. Yea! and more musically sweet to me Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be Than warbled melodies, &c. Poems by S. T. C. p. 52

95

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

The conscious palfrey of a high-born lass, But a poor, half-starv’d, plodding, vulgar ass) ’Tis but with gentle hand to give him bread, And clap his ragged coat, and pat his head, Lament his sad prophetic fears, approve His patient merit, and his filial love, Converse a little with his asking feet, And praise his hoarse bray, musically sweet; Then in despite of scornful folly’s pother, Ask him to live with you, and hail him Brother! Such subjects are original, ’tis true; But then they're very poor and paltry too. And thro’ the frame so swiftly venom speeds, So hard it is to purge a field from weeds, ’Tis chance but themes like these infect your style, Debase your thoughts, and make your language vile. … 4. With loftiest numbers, uncontrol’d by rhime,22 In epic glory Milton stands sublime; Such Thomson chose, and Cowper,23 to array In moral beauty the descriptive lay. The finished couplet Pope’s smooth rhimes approve, For precept terse, or tender tale of love. While Nature owns the elegiac strains, In solemn quatrain pensive Gray complains,24 Or strikes to loftier verse the varying lyre, Divides the crown, and rivals Dryden’s fire. But* ye for metre rummage Percy’s Reliques;25 In sapphics limp, or amble in dactylics;26 Trip it in Ambrose Philips’s trochaics;27 In dithyrambics28 vault; or hobble in prosaics. Yours† be the linnet’s note, teem’d forth in gushes;29 And yours the drunken lark’s, as up he rushes;30

210

270

280

* But ye for metre, &c.— See Lyrical Ballads, and Poems by W. W. and Poems by R. S. passim. ‘Dithyrambic, a song in honour of Bacchus, in which anciently, and now among the Italians, the distraction of ebriety is imitated’. (See Johnson’s Dictionary.) I know term equally fit to describe that undefinable measure which spurns all rules and betrays a total alienation of mind, as in Vol. I. p. 80, and Vol. II. 147, of Poems by W. W. In the former place the reader will find ‘The drunken lark’. † Your’s be the linnet’s note, teem’d forth in rushes, &c. While thus before my eyes he gleams, A brother of the leaves he seems, When in a moment forth he teems, His little song in gushes. Ibid. 81.

96

Mant (from The Simpliciad) *

And yours the fiery nightingale’s, that sings31 With skirmish and capricious passagings. Why fetter Genius? But as e’er you hope To shun the praise of Dryden and of Pope, The graceful ease, the stately march decline, And manly vigour of a classic line. Thus subject, image, language, metre cull, Spite of resisting genius, you’ll be dull: But to th’ abyss of bathos would you creep, Unfailing source of ridicule or sleep, For themes of sorrow marshal all your art, And plant your whole artillery at the heart. † Now the gruff farmer’s dozing conscience wake, With tale of Harry Gill and Goody Blake. Poor Goody Blake, and cruel Harry Gill! She stole his hedges, and he used her ill, And now his teeth they chatter, chatter, still. Now rouse maternal fears for Betty Foy,‡32 Her lamblike pony, and her idiot boy; Who went to fetch the Doctor, but he staid Beside the water, while the pony fed,

290

300

* And your’s the fiery nightingale’s, &c. O nightingale, thou surely art, A creature of a fiery heart. Poems by W. W. I. 42. They answer and provoke each other’s songs, With skirmish and capricious passagings. Ballads, I. 93. † Now the gruff farmer’s dozing conscience wake, &c.—See Goody Blake and Harry Gill, a True Story, by W. W. which begins thus: O what’s the matter, what’s the matter? What is’t that ails young Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Ballads I. 9. ‡ Betty Foy—Her history, whether true or not does not appear, occupies thirty pages of the same volume. Johnny’s answer to his mother’s question where he had been all night, what he had heard, and what he had seen, is contained in the following lines, which may serve as a sample for their four hundred and fifty brethren: And thus to Betty’s question, he Made answer like a traveller bold, (His very words I give to you) ‘The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold’. —Thus answer’d Johnny in his glory, And that was all his travel’s story. p. 129

97

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Took the pale moon-beam for the sun, nor knew The cock’s shrill clarion from the owl’s to-whoo! Let Pity now the *one-eyed huntsman wail, Whose legs are witherd, and whose ancles swell, Plumb-coated, cherry-cheek’d Old Simon Lee! Or the blind †Highland Boy who went to sea, High land ’tis called, because it is not low, And land because it is not sea, I trow; He went, and how? in Household Tub, like those Which washer-women use to wash their clothes.33 …

310

Now shame to genius, learning, feeling, sense! Poets of old to Nature made pretence, Yet did they not for naked Nature scorn Art that refines, and graces that adorn, The fancy bright, the eloquence divine, * The one-eyed huntsman’s wail, &c. A long blue livery coat has he That’s fair behind and fair before; Full five-and-twenty years he lived A running huntsman merry; And though he has but one eye left, His cheek is like a cherry. And he is lean, and he is sick, His dwindled body’s half awry; His ancles they are swoln and thick, His legs are thin and dry. And again; —Still the more he works, the more His poor old ancles swell. Ibid. 84. † Or the blind Highland Boy who went to sea, &c. A Highland Boy! why call him so? Because, my darlings, ye must know, In land where many a mountain towers, Far higherhkills than these of ours! He from his life had liv’d. This Blind Boy, it seems, lived near a lake, and having heard strange tales of mariners, conceived an invincible desire for going to sea, which he at length took an opportunity of effecting in such a vessel, as ‘n’er before, did human creature leave the shore’. But say, what was it? Thought of fear! Well may ye tremble when ye hear! A HOUSEHOLD TUB LIKE ONE OF THOSE, WHICH WOMEN USE TO WASH THEIR CLOTHES, This carried the Blind Boy. Poems by W. W. II. 66

98

Mant (from The Simpliciad)

And soul that lives along the breathing line. But when this itch for simpleness can blind The sight, and quell the vigour of the mind, Shades of the Sosii! can we fondly hope To draw admiring crowds to Longman’s shop, Bound in gilt calf thro’ Britain’s shires to speed, And bring home laurels from beyond the Tweed?

99

350

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

From English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) [First published in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, London, James Cawthorne, 1809, pp. 1–7, 18–20. In January 1808 Byron’s collection of lyrics, Hours of Idleness, received a scathing reading from Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868; DNB), in the The Edinburgh Review. Brougham, a lawyer, politician and journalist, was the co-founder in 1802, along with Francis Jeffrey, Sidney Smith and Francis Horner, of the Edinburgh. His notice of Hours of Idleness castigated the poet for flat lines that ‘can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stag­ nant water’. Brougham goes on to state that in writing inferior verse Byron should not fall back on his minority or his title as a lord to justify what is very bad poetry. All in all, Brougham counsels Byron to give up poetry entirely ‘and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account’.1 Though Hours of Idleness suffered from more than one negative review, because the Edinburgh was the most influential periodical of the day, Brougham’s notice was par­ ticularly devastating to Byron. In response, he expanded a poem originally entitled British Bards into English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, first published in 1809 and greatly expanded over the next three years. The final version appeared in 1812. Much of Byron’s satire is aimed at the Lake poets, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, but also at Sir Walter Scott, and the contributors to The Edinburgh Review. More than this, however, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is a pen-sketch of the contemporary liter­ ary scene as Byron saw it. He compares the cultural and intellectual poverty of modern poets with the great English poets of the past, notably Milton, Dryden and Pope. In this respect Byron was doing no more than aligning himself with the tenor of much contemporary satire. As we have seen with Mathias in The Pursuits of Litera­ ture, and also in Mant’s The Simpliciad, for instance, assaults upon avant garde poetry were the norm rather than the exception. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is far from being Byron’s best poetic satire and he later repudiated the formal constraints of classical satire; nevertheless, in its ruthless pursuit of the Lakers in particular, it is consistent with Byron’s critical opinions up to and including Don Juan (1819–24).]

100

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-7

Byron (from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers) 1 Donald H. Reiman, ed. The Romantics Reviewed, 8 vols, New York, Garland Publishing, 1972, vol. 2, Part B, pp. 833–35; pp. 833–34. The original source is The Edinburgh Review, XI, January 1808. 2 Hewson Clarke writing in The Satirist ascribed the publication of the volume to its author’s vanity: ‘There certainly must be a wonderful charm in the name of author, and a prodigious desire in men to see their own name in print, or what could have induced “George Gordon, Lord Byron, a minor” to have favoured the world with this collection’. Clarke was nothing if not blunt: ‘His preface, like his book, is stupid; but it is dull stupid­ ity’ (Reiman, ed. Romantics Reviewed 5, Part B. p. 2102). Clarke and Byron were students together at Cambridge, where their enmity originated. Byron was to respond to Clarke’s criticism with characteristic ill humour, writing though not sending a challenge: ‘Sir, ­ Report universally attributes to your pen, passages in the Satirist of this, & last month alluding to me [in so?] marked & unjustifiable a manner, that I can no longer delay requir­ ing an explanation. – I shall expect (if you are not the author) an immediate & unequivocal disavowal. – In case this proposal should not meet your approbation, my friend Mr Hobhouse is instructed how to act’, Marchand, ed. Byron’s Letters and Journals, I, p. 167.

101

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise, When Sense and Wit with poesy allied, No fabled Graces, flourished side by side, From the same fount their inspiration drew, And, reared by Taste, bloomed fairer as they grew. Then, in this happy Isle, a POPE’s pure strain Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain; A polished nation’s praise aspired to claim, And rais’d the people’s as the poet’s fame.1 Like him great D RYDEN poured the tide of song, In stream less smooth indeed, yet doubly strong. Then CONGREVE’s scenes could cheer, or OTWAY ’s melt;2 For Nature then an English audience felt— But why these names, or greater still, retrace, When all to feebler Bards resign their place? Yet to such times out lingering looks are cast, When taste and reason with those times are past. Now look around, and turn each trifling page, Survey the precious works that please the age; This truth at least let Satire’s self allow, No dearth of Bards can be complained of now: The loaded Press beneath her labour groans, And printer’s devils shake their weary bones, While SOUTHEY’s Epics3 cram the creaking shelves, And L ITTLE ’s Lyrics4 shine in hot-pressed twelves. Behold! In various throngs the scribbling crew, For notice eager, pass in long review: Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace, And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race; Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode; And Tales of Terror5 jostle on the road; Immeasurable measures move along, For simpering Folly leaves a varied song, To strange, mysterious Dullness still the friend, Admires the measure she cannot comprehend. 102

1

10

20

30

Byron (from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)

Thus Lays of Minstrels*6 —may they be the last!— On half-strung harps, whine mournful to the blast While mountain spirits prate to river sprites, That dames may listen to the sound at nights; And goblin brats of Gilpin Horner’s brood Decoy young Border-nobles through the wood, And skip at every step, Lord knows how high, And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why, While high-born ladies in their magic cell, Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell, Dispatch a courtier to a wizard’s grave, And fight with honest men to shield a knave. Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, The gold-crested haughty Marmion,7 Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, Not quite a Felon yet, but half a Knight, The gibbet or the field prepared to grace; A mighty mixture of the great and base. And think’st thou SCOTT ! By vain conceit perchance On public taste to foist thy stale romance, Though M URRAY with his M ILLER8 may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?9 No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade. Let such forego the poet’s sacred name, Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame: Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!

40

50

60

* See the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’, passim. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the ground-work of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning prologuising to Bayes’ tragedy, unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, ‘a stark moss-trooper’, videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady’s injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although to use his own elegant phrase, ‘’twas his neck-verse at hairibee’, i.e. the gallows. The biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master’s horse, without the aid of seven leagued boots, are chef d’œvres in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing, box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay. Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read and write. The Poem was manufactured for Messrs. C ONSTABLE , M URRAY AND M ILLER, worshipful booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money, and truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If M R S COTT will write for hire, let him do his best for his paymasters, but not disgrace his genius, which is undoubtedly great, by a repetition of Black letter Ballad imitations.

103

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And sadly gaze on Gold they cannot gain! Such be their meed, such still the just reward Of prostituted muse, and hireling bard! For this we spurn Apollo’s venal son, And bid a long, ‘good night to Marmion’.*10 These are the themes that claim our plaudits now; These are the Bards to whom the muse must bow: While M ILTON , D RYDEN, P OPE, alike forgot, Resign their hallow’d bays to W ALTER SCOTT .

70

… Next comes the dull disciple of thy school, That mild apostate from poetic rule, The simple W ORDSWORTH , framer of a lay As soft as evening in his favourite May; Who warns his friend ‘to shake off toil and trouble, And quit his books for fear of growing double’;† Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose,11 Convincing all by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose insane; And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme, Contain the essence of the true sublime: Thus when he tells the tale of Betty Foy, The idiot mother of an ‘idiot Boy’;12 A moon-struck silly lad who lost his way, And, like his bard, confounded night with day,‡ So close on each pathetic part he dwells, And each adventure so sublimely tells,

230

240

* ‘Good night to Marmion’ - the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of H ENRY B LOUNT , Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion. † Lyrical ballads, page 4.—‘The tables turned’. Stanza 1 ‘Up, up my friend, and clear your looks, Why all this toil and trouble? Up, up my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you’ll grow double’ ‡ Mr W. in his preface labours hard to prove that prose and verse are much the same, and certainly his precepts and practice are strictly conformable. And thus to Betty’s question he Made answer, like a traveller bold, The cock did crow, to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold, etc. etc.

104

Byron (from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)

That all who view the ‘idiot in his glory’, Conceive the Bard the hero of the story. Shall gentle C OLERIDGE pass unnoticed here, To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear? Though themes of innocence amuse him best, Yet still obscurity’s a welcome guest.13 If inspiration should her aid refuse, To him who takes a Pixy for a Muse,14 Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass The bard who soars to elegize an ass: So well the subject suits his noble mind, He brays the Laureat of the long-ear’d kind!

105

250

GEORGE DANIEL

The Modern Dunciad (1814; 1835) [First published in The Modern Dunciad, London, William Pickering, 1814; revised edition in 1835 with notes biographical and critical, pp. 3–11, 99–103. George Daniel (1789–1864; DNB) was born in London and was ‘a miscellaneous writer and book collector’.1 In his youth he became a clerk to a stockbroker and was engaged in commercial activity for most of his life. Daniel was, however, devoted to literature: ‘He was always very proud to remember that Cowper the poet had patted him on the head when he visited the Deveralls and Derham in 1799’.2 In 1805 Dan­ iel published ‘Stanzas on Nelson’s Victory and Death’, and in 1811 there appeared a mild satire entitled The Times, reprinted in an enlarged edition in 1813 and collected in the 1835 edition of The Modern Dunciad. Daniel also published anonymously Dick Distich (1813) a novel concerned with the attempts by a Grub Street author to make a living. The DNB describes Daniel at this point in his career trying desperately to emulate Charles Churchill and ‘Peter Pindar’, finding his opportunity in the scandal­ ous rumour then current of Lord Yarmouth and the Regent. Yarmouth allegedly horsewhipped the Prince Regent at the Duke of York’s country house, Oatlands, when the future George IV made improper advances towards Yarmouth’s mother­ in-law, the Marchioness of Hertford. ‘On this incident Daniel wrote a sprightly squib in verse, which he called “R[o]y[a]l Stripes: or a Kick from Yar[mou]th to W[ale]s; with the particulars of an Expedition to Oat[lan]ds and the Sprained Ancle; a Poem by P— P— , Poet Laureate”’.3 At Yarmouth’s instigation, however, the poem was suppressed in 1812 before it could be published. Nevertheless, Daniel was encouraged and for a period after this incident he continued to write satirically on royal scandals. Daniel made his mark on the period’s literary culture, not as a poet, but as a drama critic. In 1823 John Cumberland published Daniel’s British Theatre with Remarks Critical and Biographical to great success. In 1831, British Theatre was in its thirty-ninth (and final) edition. Daniel’s edition contained over three hundred works in their entirety: all of eighteenth century drama and most of Shakespeare. ‘In 1831 and 1832 he prepared an appendix of future volumes, which was known as Cumber­ land’s “Minor Theatre”, and in 1838 and in later years these two series were republished consecutively in sixty four volumes’.4 106

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-8

Daniel (from The Modern Dunciad)

George Daniel’s review of the period’s literary culture, as the title of The Modern Dunciad suggests, is written after Pope, whom along with Milton and Dryden he reveres above all other poets. The Modern Dunciad is a poem that rambles over 340 pages, covering the arts – poetry, the novel, and drama – high society, politics, and fashion. Daniel is rarely complimentary to his contemporaries. His appreciation of his own time and its literature given his admiration for Robert Montgomery, insofar as poetry is concerned, leaves a considerable question mark over his judgement.5 This is further borne out when he damns with faint praise the verse of Southey and Byron, and the novels and poetry of Scott.6 Although he speaks well of Burns, Crabbe and Cowper, in poetry, and Wycherley, Farquhar, and Etherege, in drama— and naturally, Shakespeare too, Daniel has little that is positive to say of the native genius in his own time. His principal target is Grub Street. Accordingly: In vain in arts Britania’s sons excel, Since Britain proves, through prejudice alone, A friend to ev’ry genius, but her own. O were the good old times again restor’d.7

From this point Daniel proceeds in a xenophobic vein, blaming foreigners for the poverty of British culture. Instead of nurturing local talent, British culture has become a dumping ground for the literary and musical dregs of Europe. ‘Fiddlers from France, and mountebanks from Spain’, are accompanied by ‘warbling slaves’ from Italy, and the Dutch ‘Mynhers’, described by Daniel as ‘egregious knaves’. Sim­ ilar short shrift is given to jugglers from India and Prussian street entertainers. Worst of all are the Germans: ‘Counts, gamesters, princes, jostling side by side, / Thy low-born offal, and thy high-dutch pride, / All who for wit or want their coun­ try leave’.8 The native penchant for ‘scribbling women’ in the mould of Mrs Radcliffe and Lady Morgan is similarly dismissed by Daniel in scathing terms. Although he spreads his net wide, Daniel has little to say in The Modern Dunciad that has not been said with more wit and eloquence by Mathias, and even by Mant.]

1 2 3 4 5

DNB. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Montgomery’s strain to taste and feeling true, / That speaks the poet and the Christian too’ (Daniel, The Modern Dunciad, p. 40). 6 Daniel, The Modern Dunciad, pp. 36–39. 7 Ibid., p. 86. 8 Ibid., pp. 98–99

107

P I must speak or burst. There was a time when Churchill,1 bold and coarse, Gave wit its point, and satire all its force; When Pope, immortal Sat’rist! made his prey The Herveys and the Gildons of the day;2 Dragg’d into light th’ abandon’d scribbling crew, And boldly scourg’d them in the public view: But now, so cheap is praise, there scarce remains One fool to flatter in our courtly strains. Had they but liv’d to witness present times, What sins, what dulness had provok’d their rhymes; Satire unaw’d would then have dar’d to speak, Till deep conviction glow’d on H--df--t’s3 cheek; And Manners!*4 Brainless blockhead! stood confest The public nuisance, and the public jest. Once more forbear —thy proper medium know:—

40

50

F Degraded names! can Satire stoop so low? When H--df--t ambles in a courtier’s guise, * Mr Thomas Agg, a sometime Bristol bookseller, and now an auctioneer, has long been the hired scribe of a deceased publication, called ‘Town Talk’. He writes under the assumed names of Humphrey Hedgehog, and Jeremiah Juvenal; and has recently adopted that of Peter Pindar, hoping to confound his spurious trash with the productions of Dr Walcot. The original Peter is too often profane, but never dull. One of Mr Agg’s latest productions is a poem called ‘Waterloo’, which he modestly informs us, is ‘full of blunders’; in consideration of which he charges only the trifling sum of twenty-five shillings; being twenty for the paper, and five for the poetry. The following stanza is moderately intelligible: ‘Bold is the bard that grasps the thong of war, Drives his wing’d steeds, and guides his thund’ring car, Where havoc stalks a hydra multiform, That, while the whirlwind of the field is high, Of such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise, Twelve starveling bards of those degenerate days’. And rival lightnings redden to the sky, Surveys the horrors with poetic eye, And models there the echo of the storm!!! Dauntless the blast that skims the blasted heath And marks the steady orb the gluttony of death’. ‘Hissing hot, Master Brook!’—‘Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind’.

108

Daniel (from The Modern Dunciad)

All know the hoary pimp, and all despise. Does credence wait on each prepost’rous tale? Who cares a jot when Agg,*5 and Manners rail? They dare vexatious suits, as well they may, Who have nor shame, nor wherewithal to pay. Let them enjoy in secret, dirty souls, Their miserable bread, and peck of coals; ’Twere cowardice to drag them from their holes. What can provoke thy muse? scarce thrice a year Matilda’s† woeful madrigals appear; Lewis7 no more the tender maid affrights With incantations, ravishments, and sprites: Crusca, (to Gifford thanks!) is fairly fled,8 And heavy Wharton‡ sleeps among the dead: E’en Walcott’s10 impious blasphemies are o’er, And Andrews’ Prologues11 are the vogue no more. What can provoke thy Muse?—the blinded school, Whose greatest boast was that it err’d by rule, That philosophic horde of fools and knaves Has fallen – nor Paine blasphemes, nor Priestley raves.12 Repentant bigots bow and kiss the rod, And prostrate nations own the name of God. Reason, that dang’rous pride of human kind, For ever soaring, and for ever blind; Prone to distrust when tardy to discern, Too weak to compass, yet too proud to learn; With shame reviews each ill-digested plan, And turns from horror from ‘The Rights of Man’.13 What can provoke thy Muse? – in silence deep Tooke14 rests – but not in everlasting sleep:§ Another scene awaits his trembling sight,

60

70

80

* Mr Manners, late editor of the ‘Satirist’, was renowned for throwing as much dirt as any of his libellers. In person, he resembles the ‘Phantom Moore’— † Rosa Matilda,6 as she poetically styles herself, is the daughter of the notorious Jew King; and the writer of innumerable Odes, Elegies, Sonnets, and sundry volumes of ‘Horrors’; very terrrible and meritorious productions. ‡ Mr Wharton9 has presented the world with an Epic, known by the name of ‘Roncesvalles’. § During the French Revolution, a law passed, decreeing the sleep of death to be eternal. To such philosophers I reply in the sublime language of Tully: ‘Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credam, libenter error; nec mihi hunc errorem, quo delector dum vivo, extorqueri volo; sin mortuus, ut quidam, minuti philosophi censent, nihil sentiam; non vereor, ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi irideant’.

109

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

A gloom more awful, or a blaze more bright! The veil is rent, the Sceptic’s hateful name* Stands justly branded with contempt and shame; The Christian banner is again unfurl’d, And truth once more illumes a falling world. P. All this is true—but still enough remains, Enough in conscience to provoke my strains. See Thelwall,† void of decency and sense, Erect, God wot! a school of eloquence; The newest style of rhetoric to teach, And full-grown gentlemen their parts of speech: While from his tub, Gale Jones,17 sedition’s sprite, Nonsense from sense confounds, and wrong with right; Rants, bounces, capers, a fantastic show! To scare the shilling orators below. Prolific Pasquin18 plies th’ eternal quill, Fitzgerald rhymes, and Cobbett proses still;19 Hoarse Clio Rickman’s‡ sonnets bay the moon,20 Clio, a poet, patriot, and buffoon. Godwin pursues his philosophic schemes,21 And rapt in trance, Joanna Southcott dreams;22 Jeffrey turns critic, but betrays his trust,23 And hot-press’d Little breathes the soul of lust; Whilst chaste Minerva kindly lends her aid To calm the scruples of each wishful maid.24

90

100

110

* It has become popular to inveigh against the avarice, pride, and intolerance of the Church; and those have joined loudest in the cry who possessed the largest share of the sacrilegious plunder wrested from her by a sensual and ferocious tyrant, and lavished on his pimps, of whom these ingrate railers are the right honourable (!) representatives and successors. Fanatics of every variety of creed, hating, persecuting, and reviling each other, have held a temporary truce, and welcomed into their ranks the notoriously profligate and profane to make head against their common enemy. How-itt15 happens that a mountebank in Quaker masquerade should presume to charge any set of men with hypocrisy and fraud, is a question that the impudent impostor who babbles so much about priests and priest-craft can best answer. It is surely enough for this low buffoon to be the scandal of one sect, without craving the additional infamy of lifting his hoof against a faith, that while it deplores his errors, despises his animosity. † Mr Thelwall,16 continues ‘tuning his voice and balancing his hands’,— Preacher at once, and zany of the age. ‡ A citizen of the world! for in this character he has the effrontery to parade the streets, to the no small entertainment of the mob; and display his ludicrous figure (rendered still more ridiculous by the affectation of a whimsical costume,) in the print shops. Clio is a contributor of Odes and Sonnets to the Monthly Magazine; an avowed admirer of the new French school of philosophy; and a staunch advocate for ‘The Rights of Man’.

110

Daniel (from The Modern Dunciad)

Lo, mad enthusiasts,* would-be saints, stand forth, Sworn foes to god-like genius, private worth, With furious zeal attack e’en Shakespeare’s fame, And hurl their pois’nous darts at Garrick’s name; And while they talk of Truth, of Candour rave, Insult the dead and violate the grave. In magazines vile anecdotes appear, And deal out dirty scandal through the year; For des’prate libellers, when duns assail, Dare lawsuits, whips, the pill’ry, and the jail. This Hewson Clarke† can tell, misguided youth, What demon lur’d him from the path of truth, With low ambition fill’d his canker’d mind, To entertain the basest of mankind? O! may he late for all his sins atone, And while he gains their ears, preserve his own! Behold yon gorgeous Sign that swings in air

120

130

* The following criticism is taken from the third volume of the Eclectic Review, Part 1, p. 76. Art. Twiss’s ‘Verbal Index of Shakespeare’.25 ‘He (Shakespeare) has been called, and justly too, the poet of nature; a slight acquaintance with the religion of the Bible will show, however, that it is of human nature in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and agitated by the most vicious propensities, that the poet became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar of his goodness still continues to spread its poisonous fumes over the hearts of his countrymen, till the memory of his works is extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands yet to increase the number, will everlastingly look back with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which the plays of Shakespeare ministered to their guilty delights’. … And again, ‘What Christian can pass through the most venerable pile of sacred architecture which our metropolis can boast, without having his best feelings insulted by observing within a few yards of the spot from which prayers and praises are daily offered to the Most High, the absurd and impious epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of his impurities! Our readers who are acquainted with London, will discover that it is the inscription upon David Garrick, in Westminster Abbey, to which we refer’. † Now stop you noses, readers all, and some, For here’s a tun of midnight work to come! The ‘pertinacious, and never-enough quoted’ Mr Hewson Clarke,26 according to his own statement, (for Mr Clarke had favoured the public with his autobiography in the third number of the ‘Scourge’, written, it would seem, by a third person, but in reality penned by himself;) is the author of numerous and successful writings, chiefly anonymous. But of what these numerous and successful writings consist, it were impossible to say, except I name a lamentable production in rhyme called ‘The Art of Pleasing’, and the spiritual part of the scurrility that has appeared in the Satirist, Scourge, and Theatrical Inquisitor.27 ‘Every one of his (Mr Clarke’s) productions has been composed in haste, and sent to the press without revision; his sonnets have not been ushered into the world after undergoing the ordeal of private criticism, nor his Essays assisted in their circulation by the officiousness of honourable friends, and the puffs of dependant critics’. Let Mr Clarke remember that the trade of a libeller is a dangerous one: —What street, what lane, but knows His purgings, pumpings, blankettings, and blows? And take the advice of honest Stephano, —‘While thou liv’st, keep a good tongue in thy head’.28

111

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

(A well-known refuge for the sons of Care,) There meets a piebald race,29 who cautious creep From garrets high, or in night cellars sleep; The courtier bland, the opposition churl, To taste the sweets of politics and purl. … P Although, in raising spirits and the rest, Lewis30 without a rival stands confest. Though sprites appear obedient at his will, Ghosts are but ghosts; and demons, demons still; Alike in matter, and in form the same: Hobgoblins differ only - in the name: Yet Lewis trembles lest his fame be won, And Mistress Radcliffe fears herself outdone.31 But these are harmless, Satire must confess, To the loose novels of Minerva’s press;32 Such melting tales as Meeke and Rosa tell;33 For pious Lane34 who knows his readers well, Can suit all palates with their diff ’rent food, Love for the hoyden,35 morals for the prude! Behold, with reams of nonsense newly born, Th’ industrious pack who scribble night and morn; Five pounds per volume! An enormous bribe, Enough methinks to tempt a hungry scribe. First Lady Morgan,* Amazonian Fair! (Ye gods, what will not Lady Morgan dare?)36 With four octavo volumes shocks the sight; For who can read as fast as she can write? Next fair Llewellyn,†37 modestly indeed, Would have us name her works, as well as read; Which to perform, in language just and brief, Let ‘bawdry’ be inscribed on every leaf. Matilda toils the promis’d boon to win,

960

970

980

* Innumerable are the caterers for the Minerva Library: Lady Morgan, Mrs Meek, Rosa Matilda, Bridget Bluemantle, Ann of Swansea, Honoria Scott, Captain Hewitsone, Captain Williamson, Cervantes Hogg, Theodore Melville, Francis Lathom, ‘A Native Officer’, and a whole tribe of ‘single and double pinks’, who live upon the bad taste of the public; for Dullness all her children viewing, Kindly bounteous, cares for all. † ‘Read and give it a name’, a novel in four volumes, by Mrs Llewellyn.

112

Daniel (from The Modern Dunciad)

And Ann of Swansea wades through thick and thin;38 While Bridget Bluemantle’s eternal scrawl39 Makes truly more waste paper than them all. Would you with blushes tinge the virgin cheek, Read ‘Midnight Weddings’40 penn’d by Mrs Meeke: Soft amorous stories by Honoria Scott,*41 Of ravishments, seductions, and what not:† Or Gunning’s tales, for Gunning, to my taste, Is sprightly, witty, anything – but chaste:42 Or ‘Rival Princes’, anger’s latest spark, Pride of them all, and worthy Mrs Clarke.43 I pass in silence, authors not a few; Cervantes Hogg,‡ and all the Grub Street Crew:44 Alas! more worthy of contempt than rage, Their worthless names would but defile my page: The muse shall never gibbet them on high, Obscurely as they liv’d, so let them die.

990

1000

F ’Tis pitiful—but why indulge your spleen? Will all this harsh invective mend the scene? Your satire is too pointed, too severe,§ * ‘Amatory Tales of Spain, France, Switzerland, and the Meditteranean’; by Honoria Scott. † I thought that my catalogue of dull authors had been nearly complete, when I accidentally lighted on ‘The Amatory Works of Tom Shuttleton’. The writer of this volume (a profligate scribbler, one John Gwilliam,) would make the public believe that his trash is from the pen of Thomas Moore, he therefore dates from Dublin instead of Grub Street! It is impossible to conceive of a more abject performance; such a gallimauffrey of obscene dullness has seldom issued from the Press. ‡ Cervantes Hogg, Esq. author of the Rising Sun’, and the ‘Barouche Driver and his Wife’,— despicable catch-penny trash. § ‘Ah Bozzy, I smell you in the dark!’ whispered Dr Johnson to his friend James Boswell,45 as they waded by night through the streets of Auld Reikie, not inaptly denominated the Spice Islands! And I odiferously nose Mr Hewson Calrke in the following lines, on the author of ‘The Modern Dunciad’, raked up from the fœtid dunghill of the ‘Theatrical Inquisitor’. Just wise enough to play the fool, Just lear’d enough to err by rule, With vanity of monstrous size, That struts and swells, and would be wise; Instead of wit, with venom fraught, With owl-like mien that looks like thought; Our sapient author rushes forth, Like the pale critics of the north, And vainly tries with idle rhyme, That flows in one poor ding-dong chime, To blast the high unsullied name Of all the dearest sons of Fame!

113

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And little suited to the public ear. My Lord, who now and then, to serve his ends, Invites some score of literary friends, Will meet you at his table with an air That plainly tells you have no bus’ness there. ‘Ye Gods!’ he cries, ‘shall I, who think sublime Matilda’s motley hash of prose and rhyme, By one who begs a dinner at my door, Be schooled—and play ‘Sir Oracle’ no more?

114

1010

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

From Sir Proteus: A Satirical Ballad: By P. M. O’Donovan, Esq. (1814) [First published in Sir Proteus, London, T. Hookham and E. T. Hookham, 1814, pp. 1–50, 65–72. Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866; DNB) was a critic, poet, novelist and civil servant in the employ of the East India Company. He was a self-taught classicist of considerable skill and was also fluent in Italian and French. Peacock remained unemployed until 1819, when he was appointed to an administrative post in the East India Company, where he rose to the position of chief examiner, until he retired from the position in 1856. John Stuart Mill, the son of Peacock’s predeces­ sor, James Mill, succeeded Peacock in this position. Peacock’s true literary forte is in the satirical novel. Headlong Hall (1816), Melincourt (1817), and Nightmare Abbey (1818) are significant works in the canon of Romantic fiction. Peacock was also a critic of no little accomplishment. His attack on contemporary verse, The Four Ages of Poetry, is more famous, however, for prompting Shelley’s Defence of Poetry; or, Remarks Suggested by an Essay Entitled ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’, written in 1821 though not published until 1840. In 1814 Sir Proteus was published under the pseudonym of P. M. O’Donovan. Sir Proteus is a satirical attack on Robert Southey’s elevated style with the hero of the poem, Johnny Raw, being a partial caricature of Southey himself. The poem was prompted by Southey’s appointment to the poet laureateship and the publication of his Carmen Triumphale, for the Commencement of the Year 1814. Southey’s acceptance of this post after it was turned down by Sir Walter Scott left him open to a good deal of ridicule, particularly as Scott had, partially at least, turned down the post because of its lack of status. Kenneth Curry has remarked that Southey’s acceptance of the lau­ reateship conferred respectability upon it once more, although it certainly did not one seem so in the eyes of Southey’s critics. Nevertheless, after Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson deemed the laureateship worthy, and even Leigh Hunt felt it worth the effort to ‘pull strings in order to secure the post for himself ’.1 But the roots of the attacks on the new laureate were political; by 1814 Southey’s politics had changed dramatically from the days of his radical youth. By 1813 the incendiary poet of the 1790s had become a Tory pensioner. It is this tergiversation that made him, along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, a figure of opprobrium to the younger 115

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-9

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

generation of writers who came to maturity in the first decades of the nineteenth century. It is with this in mind that Peacock takes as his controlling theme Southey’s seemingly protean ability to change his politics to suit the prevailing wind. Although the main target in Sir Proteus is the Lake school, Peacock was no unequivocal supporter of the age’s new literary lion, Lord Byron. The dedication to Byron that prefaces Sir Proteus, included below, is couched in ironic terms. Nor did it go unnoticed. In a letter to Samuel Rogers dated 27 February 1814, Byron writes: ‘I return you Sir Proteus, and shall merely add in return, as Johnson said of, and to, somebody or other, “Are we alive after all this censure”?’.2 However, as Carl Daw­ son has noted, ‘Peacock’s judgement of Childe Harold and Byron’s youthful verse was severe. But he thought Don Juan the finest poem of his time’.3

1 See Kenneth Curry, Southey, London, Routledge, 1975, p. 50. 2 Marchand, ed. Byron’s Letters and Journals, vol. 4. 3 Carl Dawson, His Fine Wit: A Study of Thomas Love Peacock, London, Routledge, 1970, p. 23.

116

This ballad is inscribed to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, with that deep convic­ tion of the high value of his praise and of the fatal import of his censure, which must necessarily be impressed by the profound judgement with which his opinions are conceived, the calm deliberation with which they are promulgated, the Protean consistency with which they are maintained, and the total absence of all undue bias on their formation from private partiality or personal resentment: with that admira­ tion of his poetical talents, which must be universally and inevitably felt for versification undecorated with the meretricious fascinations of harmony, for senti­ ments unsophisticated by the delusive ardour of philanthropy, for narrative enveloped in all the Cimmerian sublimity of the impenetrable obscure.

SIR PROTEUS I. ILLE EGO 1

Oh! list to me: for I’m about To catch the fire of Chaucer, And spin in doleful measure out The tale of Johnny Raw, sir;*

1

Who, bent upon a desperate plan To make the people stare, Set off full speed for Hindoostan3 Upon Old Poulter’s mare.† Tramp! tramp! across the land he went; Splash! splash! across the sea;

10

* Our hero appears to have been ‘all naked feeling and raw life’, like Arvalan in the Curse of Kehama.2 † This is the Pegasa of the Cumberland school of poetry. Old Poulter’s Mare is the heroine ‘of one of our old ballads, so full of beauty’. A modern bard ‘whose works will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten’, was at infinite trouble to procure an imperfect copy of this precious piece of antiquity, and has rescued it from oblivion, si dîs placet, in the pages of Thalaba.4

117

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And then he gave his bragging* vent5 – ‘Pray who can ride like me? For I’m the man, who sallied forth To rout the classic forces, And swore this mare was far more worth Than both fierce Hector’s horses. Old Homer from his throne I struck, To Virgil gave a punch,

* After all, perhaps, there is not much bragging in the speech of our hero. He has classical authority for self-panegyric, and what is still better, the authority of Mr Southey: Come listen to a tale of times of old: Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung The Maid of Arc; and I am he who framed Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear How Madoc, &c. And again Most righteously thy soul Loathes the black catalogue of human crimes And human misery: let that spirit fill Thy song, and it shall teach thee, boy, to raise, Strains such as Cato might have deigned to hear. What degree of pleasure Cato would have derived from the Carmen Triumphale for the year 1814, is a point that remains to be decided. Ranarian minstrels of all ages and all nations have entertained a high opinion of their own melody. The muses of Styx, the ȆȚİʌȚįİȢȀĮ IJĮȤșȠȞȚ Į Ț, have transferred their seat in modern days to the banks of the Northern Lakes, where they inflate their tuneful votaries with inspiration and egotism. O dolce concento! when, to the philosophic wanderer on the twilight shore, ascends from the depths of Winander the choral modulation: Ǻȡİț İț İț İȟ, țȠĮ ȟ, țȠĮ ȟ. Ǻȡİț İț İț İȟ, țȠĮ ȟ, țȠĮ ȟ. ȁȚμȞĮȚĮțȡȘȞȦȞIJİțȞĮ ȄȣȞĮȣȜȠȞ‘ȣμȞȦȞȕȠĮ Ȟ ĭșİ ȖȟȦμȠș’, ǼȊ īǾȇȊȃ ǼȂǹȃ ǹȅ ǿǻ ǹ ȃ , ǹȡȚıIJȠijĮȞȠȣȢǺĮIJȡĮȤȠȚ. Brek-ek-ek-ex! ko-ax! ko-ax! Our lay’s harmonious burden be: In vain yon critic owl attacks Our blithe and full-voiced minstrelsy. Still shall our lips the strain prolong With strength of lung that never slacks; Still wake the wild and wondrous song: Ko-ax! ko-ax! ko-ax! ko-ax! Chorus in the Frogs of Aristophanes.

118

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

And in the place of both I stuck The doughty Mother Bunch.

20

To France I galloped on my roan, Whose mettle nought can quail; There squatted on the tomb of Joan, And piped a dismal tale. A wild and wondrous stave I sung, To make my hearers weep: But when I looked, and held my tongue, I found them fast asleep!* Oh! then, a furious oath I swore, Some dire revenge to seek; And conjured up, to make them roar, Stout Taffy and his leek.

30

To Heaven and Hell I rode away, In spite of wind and weather: Trumped up a diabolic lay; And cursed them all together. Now, Proteus! rise, thou changeful seer! To spirit up my mare:† In every shape but those appear, Which Taste and Nature wear.’

40

*

ȍ ijȚȜȠȞ ‘Ȋ Ȇȃȅ Ȋ șİȜȖȘIJȡȠȞ , ǼȆǿȀȅ Ȋ ȇȅȃ ȃȅȈ ȅ Ȋ , ‘ȍȈ ‘Ǿǻ Ȋ μȠȚʌȡȠıȘȜșİȢ İȞ ǻǼȅȃȉǿ Ȗİ! † This seems to be an imitation of two lines in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, selected by Mr Southey as the motto to the Curse of Kehama: ȈIJȘı Į IJİ μȠȚȆȡ ȦIJȘĮ ʌȠȜȣIJȡȠʌȠȞ, ȠijȡĮ ijĮ ȞİȚȘ ȆȠȚțȚȜȠȞİȚįȠȢİȤȦȞ, ‘ȠIJİ ʌȠȚțȚȜȠȞ ‘ȣμȞȠȞĮȡĮ ııȦ . Let me the many-changing Proteus see, To aid my many-changing melody. It is not at all surprising, that a man, under a process of moral and political metamorphosis, should desire the patronage of this multiform god, who may be regarded as the tutelary saint of the numerous and thriving sect of Anythingarians. Perhaps the message would have been more applicable to himself, though less so to his poem, if he had read, suo periculo: Ȉ IJȘıĮIJİ μȠȚʌȡȦIJȘĮ ʌȠȜȣIJȡȠʌȠȞ , ȠijȡĮ ijĮȞİȚȞ ȆȠȚțȚȜȠȞİȚįȠȢİȤȦȞ, ‘ȅȉ ’ ǹȂǼǿǺȍ Ȇȅ ǿȀȅ ȁ ȅȃ ‘ǼǿȂǹ ! Before my eyes let changeful Proteus float, When now I change my many-coloured coat.

119

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

II DIVERSE LINGUE , ORRIBILE FAVELLE 6

Even while he sung Sir Proteus rose, That wight7 of ancient fun, With salmon-scales instead of clothes, And fifty shapes in one. He first appeared a folio thick, A glossary so stout, Of modern language politic,* Where conscience was left out. He next appeared in civic guise, Which C—s could not flout,† With forced-meat balls instead of eyes, And, for a nose, a snout.

50

And then he seemed a patriot braw,9 Who, o’er a pot of froth, Was very busy, stewing straw, To make the people broth. * This language was not much known to our ancestors; but it is now pretty well understood by the majority of the H— of C—, by the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly vendors of panegyric and defamation, and by the quondam republicans of the Northern Lakes. The echoes of Grasmere and Derwentwater have responded to its melodious vocables. The borderers of Tweed and Teviot, and the ‘braw, braw lads of Edinbroo’, are well versed in its tangible eloquence. Specimens of its use in composition may be seen in the Courier newspaper, in the Quarterly Review, in the Edinburgh Annual Register, and in the receipts of the stamp-commissioners for the county of Westmoreland. † C—s: This is a learned man, ‘who does not want instruction’: an independent man, ‘who always votes according to his conscience’, which has a singular habit of finding the minister invariably right: a free man, who always ‘takes the liberty’ to do that which is most profitable to himself: a man, in short, of the first magnitude, that ‘don’t care nothing for nobody’ who he cannot turn a penny by: Rarum ac memorabile magni Gutturis exemplum, conducendusque magister:8 who will be inexhaustible food for laughter while he lives; and, though not witty himself, be the cause of wit in others: and who, when he shall have been found, cum capite in lasano, dead of a surfeit after a civic feast, shall be entombed in some mighty culinary utensil, vast as the patina of Vitellius, or the fish-kettle of Domitian, which shall be erected in the centre of the salle des gourmands, with this Homeric inscription, to transmit his virtues to posterity: ȂǼȉǼȆȇ ǼȆǼ· īǹ Ȉ ȉ Ǽȇ ǿ · ȂǹȇĭǾǿ · ǹǽǾȋǼȈ · ĭǹ ī ǼȂ Ǽȃ · Ȁǹǿ · ȆǼǿȂǼȃ · ȅȊ ǻ Ǽ· ȅǿ · Ǿȃ · ǿȈ · ȅȊ ǻ Ǽ· ǺǿǾ · Ǽǿǻȅ Ȉ · ǻǼ ·Ȃǹȁ ǹ · ȂǼī ǹ Ȉ · Ǿȃ · ȅȆ ǹǹȈ Ĭ ǹǿ. Great was his skill, insatiable to dine On pounds of flesh and copious floods of wine: No mental strength his heavy form inspired, Bur hooting crowds the portly mass admired.

120

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

In robes collegiate, loosely spread, His form he seemed to wrap: Much Johnny mused to see no head Between the gown and cap.*

60

Like grave logician, next he drew A tube from garment mystic; And bubbles blew, which Johnny knew Were anti-hyloistic.†10 * This must have been something which had finished its education, as the saying is, at one of our learned universities. † There is a modern bubble-blower of this description, whose philosophical career it is agreeable to trace. First, we discover him up to his neck in fluids and crystallizations, labouring to build a geological system, in all respects conformable to the very scientific narrative of that most enlightened astronomer and profound cosmogonist, Moses. Emerging from his ‘primitive ocean’, he soars into the opaque atmosphere of scholastic dialectics, whence he comes forth the doughty champion of that egregious engine of the difficiles nugæ and labor ineptiarum, syllogism. Armed with this formidable weapon, he rushes into the metaphysical arena, in the most consistent character of a dogmatising antihyloist, insanire parans certa ratione modoque:11 maintaining the existence of three distinct substances, that of God, that of angels, and that of the souls of men and annihilating in toto the sun, moon, and stars, and all ‘the visible diurnal sphere’; denying the evidence of his senses, and asserting the reality of chimæras. Man, according to him, is a being spiritual, intelligent, and immortal, while all other animals are insentient machines; a proposition which must be amply established in the mind of every one, who will take the trouble of comparing a man-milliner with a lion, an alderman with an elephant, or a Bond Street lounger with a Newfoundland dog.—See the Geological, Logical, and Metaphysical Essays of Richard Kirwan, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S. P.R.I.A., &c. &c. &c. Metaphysical science in the hands of a Locke, a Berkeley, an Hume, or a Drummond, demands and receives my utmost respect and admiration; but I must confess when there are moments, when after having fatigued my understanding with the lucubrations of such a systematical déraissoneur as this, I am tempted to exclaim with Anacreon: ȉȚ μİ IJȠȣȢȞȠμȠȣȢįȚįĮıțİȚ Ȣ, ȀĮ Ț‘ȡȘIJȠȡȦȞĮȞĮȖțĮȢ; ȉȚ įİ μȠȚȜȠȖȦȞIJȠıȠȣIJȦȞ , ȉȦ ȞμȘįİȞ ȦijİȜȠȣȞIJȦȞ ; Why tease me with pedantic themes, Predicaments and enthymemes My mental storehouse vainly stowing With heaps of knowledge not worth knowing? The third part of the Metaphysical Essays will aford a delectable treat to the observer of phænomena, who may be desirous of contemplating a meteorosophistical spider completely entangled in his own cobweb; and I can scarcely help thinking it was to some such paradoxographical philsophaster that Virgil alluded, when he said: Invisa Minervæ Laxos in foribus suspendit arenæ casses. The subtle spider, sage Minerva’s hate, Hangs his loose webs in Wisdom’s temple-gate.

121

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Like doughty critic next he sped, Of fragrant Edinbroo’: A yellow cap was on his head; His jacket was sky-blue:

70

He wore a cauliflower wig, With bubble filled, and squeak;12 Where hung behind, like tail of pig, Small lollypop of Greek.*13 With rusty knife he seemed prepared Poor poet’s blood to fetch: In speechless horror Johnny stared Upon the ruthless wretch.† Like washing-tub he next appeared O’er W—’s sea‡ that scuds; Where poor John Bull stood all besmeared, Up to the neck in suds.§

80

It is mush to be lamented, that, before Sir Proteus quitted his metaphysical shape, it did not occur to our hero to propound to him the celebrated philosophical question: Utrum, Protée omniforme se faisant cigale, et musicalement exerç sa vois éjours caniculaires, pourroit, d’une rosée matutine soigneusement embalée au mois de Mai, faire une tierce concotion devant le cours entier d’une escharpe zodiacale?—Perhaps Mr Kirwan himself will undertake the solution: I know no man so well qualified. * ‘Small skill in Latin, and still less in Greek, Is more than adequate to all we seek!’ Cowper. † The severity of this blue-jacketed gentleman has been productive. on many occasions, of very salutary effects. He is much more reprehensible for having condescended to play the part of Justice Midas to Mr Wordsworth, Mrs Opie, Mr Wilson, &c, &c., &c., while superior claimants have been treated with harshness or contempt. If praise be withheld from Moore, comparative justice requires that it should not be given to Bloomfield. The philosophical enemy of idolatry may tear the laurel wreath from the brow of Apollo; but he must not transfer it to the statue of Pan. ‡ Mare Australe Incognitum.14 For a satisfactory account of this undiscovered sea, consult the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth, Esq. § John Bull is here alluded to in his domestic capacity. He is a sturdy wight, but the arch-fiend Corruption has proved too strong for him. Let not the temporary elation of triumph over his most inveterate foreign foe blind him to the insidious inroads of that more formidable enemy, which has already plunged him so deep in the alkaline ebullitions mentioned in the text. Among the causes which have contributed to his submersion may be enumerated the selfish and the mercenary apostacy of his quondam literary champions. Where is now ‘the eye that sees, the heart that feels, the voice that in these evil times, Amid these evil tongues, exalts itself, And cries aloud against iniquity’? Let the Edinburgh Annual Register answer the question. Where are ‘the skirts of the departing year’? Waving like those of a Courier’s jacket, in the withering gales of ministerial influence.—The antique enemies of ‘the monster Pitt’ are now the panegyrists of the immaculate

122

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

Then three wise men he seemed to be, Still sailing in the tub; Whose white wigs looked upon the sea, Like bowl of syllabub.* The first he chattered, chattered still, With meaning none at all, Of Jack and Jill, and Harry Gill, And Alice Fell so small.†16

90

The second of three graves did sing, And in such doggrel strains, You might have deemed the Elfin King Had charmed away his brains.‡ Loud sang the third of Palmy Isle, Mid oceans vast and wild, Where he had won a mermaid’s smile, And got a fairy child.§ Castlereagh. The spell which Armida breathed over her captives was not magically mighty in the operation of change, than are the golden precepts of the language politic, when presented in a compendious and tangible shape to the ‘sons of little men’. Terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos; Ergo Deus, quicumque adspexit, ridet et odit.15 * These three wiseacres go to sea in their tub, as their prototypes of Gotham did in their bowl, not to fish for the moon, but to write nonsense about her. † Who knows not Alice Fell? the little orphan Alice Fell? with her coat of duffel grey? and Harry Gill, whose teeth they chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter still? and Jack and Jill that climbed the hill, to fetch a pail of water; when Jack fell down, and cracked his crown, and Jill came tumbling after? ‡ Surely this cannot allude to Mr ǼȈȉǾ ȈǼ17 Coleridge, the profound transcendental metaphysician of the Friend, the consistent panegyrical politician of the Courier, the self-elected laureate of the asinine king, the compounder of the divinist narcotic under the shape of a tragedy that ever bugged the beaux of Drury-Lane, the author of that irresistibly comic ballad, the Ancient Mariner, and of a very exquisite piece of tragical mirth, also in the form of a ballad, entitled the Three Graves, which read—‘if you can!’ § The adventures of this worthy are narrated in a rhapsodical congeries of limping verse, entitled the Isle of Palms, very loftily extolled by the Edinburgh Reviewers, and very peremptorily condemned by the tribunal of common sense. The whining cant and drivelling affectation of this author, with his ‘dear God’, his ‘blessed creatures’, and his ‘happy living things’, which would be insufferable in a spinster half-dying with megrim, become trebly disgusting in the mouth of a man, who has no such fine sympathies with the animal creation, and is not only an indefatigable angler, but a cock-fighter of the first notoriety. It is a curious fact, as one day he was going to a match, accompanied by a man who carried two bags of fighting cocks, he unexpectedly met his friend Wordsworth (who was coming to visit him), and immediately caused the man to secrete himself and the cocks behind the hedge; an anecdote that redounds greatly to the credit of Mr Wordsworth’s better feelings, and makes me strongly inclined to forgive his Idiot Boy and the Moods of his own mind, and even Harry Gill.

123

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Like rueful wanderer next he shewed, Much posed with pious qualm; And first he roared a frantic ode, And then he sung a psalm.*

100

Like farmer’s man, he seemed to rear His form in smock-frock dight;18 And screeched in poor Apollo’s ear, Who ran with all his might. And, even while Apollo ran, Arose the Bellman there, And clapped the crack-voiced farmer’s man Into his vacant chair.†

110

Next, like Tom Thumb, he skipped along In merry Irish jig: And now he whined an amorous song, And now he pulled a wig,‡ Whose frizzles, firing at his rage, Like Indian crackers flew,

*

Wanderer! Whither dost thou roam? Weary wanderer old and grey! Wherefore hast thou left thy home, In the twilight of thy day? Montgomery’s Wanderer of Switzerland. The twilight of this wanderer’s day is a dim morning twilight, on which no sun will rise. The day-beams of genius are quenched in the mists of fanaticism. † In media duo signa, Conon … et quis fuit alter?190 Conon was a farmer’s boy, a minstrel of cows and cow-sheds, and cow-dung, and cow-pock; yet nevertheless a considerable favourite with the delicate and fashionable fair-ones of his day: et quis fuit alter? scil. The bellman: THE bellman, țĮ IJ’ İȟȠȤȘȞ . He was a character very ridiculously remarkable in the annals of rural perfumery, who most ludicrously mistook himself for a poet and philosopher, passed much of his time in star-gazing, wrote some dismal jargon, which he christened Sonnets on the Petrarchan Model, kept a journal of the rain and wind, and rang many a peal of nonsense in praise of his friend Conon, the farmer’s boy, who was indeed, tali dignus amico. Discedo Alcæus puncto illius: ille meo quis? Quis, nisi Callimachus?20 ‡ Note, by Professor Nodus-in-Scirpo, of the University of Cambridge.—It is well known that a certain LITTLE poet challenged a certain great critic to the deadly arbitrament of powder and wadding. Of this circumstance the multiform Proteus seems to make himself here symbolical. The wig seems to typify the body corporate of criticism, which, being roughly handled in one of its sidecurls, opens fire from all its frizzles on the daring assailant in a volley of Indian crackers, the different colours of which are composed of the party-colours supposed to be worn by the different critics militant.

124

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

Each wrapped in party-coloured page Of some profound review.* In jaunting car,†21 like tourist brave, Full speed he seemed to rush;

120

* Of reviews in the present day we have satis superque. We have the Edinburgh Review, already eulogised; and the Monthly Review, which I believe is tolerably impartial, though not very remarkable either for learning or philosophy; and the Quarterly Review, a distinguished vehicle of compositions in the language politic; and the British Critic, which proceeds on the enlightened principle that nothing can possibly be good coming from an heretic or a republican; and the Antijacobin Review, of which I can say nothing, never having read a single page of it; and the Eclectic Review, an exquisite focus of evangelical illumination; and the New Review, which promises to be an useful Notitia Literaria; and the Critical Review, which I am very reluctant to mention at all, as I can only dismiss it in the words of Captain Bombadil:—‘It is to gentlemen I speak: I talk to no scavenger’. † A wooden car, perpetuo revolubile22 gyro, may rumble through Ireland, Scotland, France, and the Netherlands, and annoy the ears of the English metropolis with the heavy echoes of its wheels; but it must not pretend to be the vehicle of poetic inspiration, unless the inutile lignum be mechanically impelled to the proclamation of its own emptiness. To illustrate this proposition by a case in point. A minute inspection of the varieties of human absurdity brings us acquainted with the existence of a certain knight, who has travelled rapidly, profited sparingly, and published enormously. Sublimed into extraordinary daring by the garlands of dwarf-laurel, torn from the bogs of the Shannon and the shores of the Caledonian lakes, he has actually made a profane excursion on the boundaries of Parnassus, and presented the public with a curious collection of weeds, under the facetious title of Poems, by Sir John Carr! Among these is one on a paper-mill. The knight has been so good a friend to the paper-mill, that had his benefactions stopped with his custom, he would have merited the eternal gratitude of all that band of mechanics who begin, what other mechanics like himself conclude, the process of writing a book. But his bounty does not stop so short. Not satisfied with having raised the price of rags and the wages of the paper-millers, he has actually favoured the world with a poem on the subject, written, as he says, en badinage. We ought to be much obliged to him for the information, as it shews, by contradistinction, that some of his works have been written in sober sadness; though I believe the greater part of those indefatigable devourers of new publications, who, by the aid of snuff and coffee, have contrived to keep themselves awake over his lucubrations, have imagined all his works to have been designed for badinage, from the burlesque solemnity and grave no-meaning of his statistical, political, and topographical discussions, to the very tragical merriment of his retailed puns and right pleasant conceits. But here is a poem written professedly en badinage. Therefore badinons un peu with the worthy cavalier errante ‘LINES Written en badinage, after visiting a paper-mill near Tunbridge Wells, in consequence of the lovely Miss W., who excels in drawing, requesting the author to describe the process of making paper in verse’. I should imagine from the young lady’s requesting Sir John to employ his grey quill on a papermill, that the lovely Miss W. excels in quizzing as she does in drawing ‘Reader! I do not wish to brag, But, to display Eliza’s skill, I’d proudly be the vilest rag, That ever went to paper-mill’. Or that ever came from it, Sir John might have added. ‘Content in pieces to be cut’—

125

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And chaunted many a clumsy stave, Might make the Bellman blush. Sir John has been cut up so often, that he must be well used to the operation: it is unsatisfactory to find him so well pleased with it. Nature indeed seems to have formed him for the express purpose of being cut in pieces. He is true literary polypus and multiplies under the knife of dissection. ‘Content in pieces to be cut, Though sultry were the summer skies, Pleased between flannel I’d be put, And after bathed in jellied size’. ‘Though to be squeezed and hanged I hate’— This line lets us into an extraordinary piece of taste on the part of the Knight. He does not like to be hanged. Non porrigit ora capistro.23 ‘For thee sweet girl, upon my word’— Vivide et İȞĮȡȖȦȢ ‘When the stout press had forced me flat’— ‘The stout press’:—Stout, indeed, when even Sir John’s quartos have not broken it down.—‘Had forced me flat’:—Sir John, we see, is of opinion, that great force should be requisite to make him flat. For my part, I think that he is quite flat enough already, and that he has rather communicated his own flatness to the press, than derived that quality from it. ‘I’d be suspended on a cord’. This is gallantry indeed: for the sake of the lovely Miss W. Sir John would even suffer the suspension of his outward man, notwithstanding his singular antipathy to the process. ‘And then when dried’. Cut first, sir, and then dried after, like one of his own cut and dried anecdotes, introduced so very apropos, as ‘a curious circumstance that happened to me’. —‘And fit for to use’ — By dint of cutting up and hanging Sir John is made useful. Presently he will be ornamental. ‘Eliza! I would pray to thee’.— We see that Sir John does not think of praying until after he has been hanged, contrary to the usual process on similar occasions. ‘If with thy pen thou wouldest amuse, That thou wouldest deign to write on me’. Nay, nay, Sir John, not on you. ‘Verse must be dull on subjects so d—d dry’. ‘Gad’s bud!’— A classical exclamation, equivalent to the medius-fedius of Petronius, the Ædepol of Terence, and the ȞȘIJȠȞȠȣȡĮȞȠȞof Aristophanes. ‘Gad’s bud! how pleasant it would prove Her pretty chit-chat to convey’: The world is well aware of Sir John’s talent for conveying the pretty chit-chat of his acquaintance into his dapper quartos; but how pleasant the operation has proved to any one but himself, I am not prepared to decide. ‘P’rhaps—’

126

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

Like grizzly monk, on spectral harp Deep dole he did betoken; And strummed one strain, ’twixt flat and sharp, Till all the strings were broken. Like modish bard, intent to please The sentimental fair, He strung conceits and similes, Where feeling had no share.*

130

An Attic contraction. ‘P’rhaps be the record of her love, Told in some coy enchanting way’. If this should ever be the case, I can furnish the young lady with a suitable exordium from an old Italian poet: Scrivend’ io già mio forsennato amore Su duro foglio d’ asinina pelle. ‘Or if her pencil she would try On me, oh may she still imprint Those forms that fix the admiring eye, Each graceful line, each glowing tint’. I know not what success the lovely Miss W. might have in making Sir John ornamental. Gillray, we all know, tried his pencil on him very successfully, and fixed a glowing tint (of anger, not of shame) on the cheek of the exasperated Sir John. ‘Then shall I reason have to brag, For thus, to high importance grown, The world will see a simple rag Become a treasure rarely known’. So ends this miserable shred of what Sir John calls badinage. ‘Away! thou rag! thou quantity! thou remnant!’ And so much for the Poems of Sir John Carr. ‘ ȚȢįȚİ Ƞ ĮȜ ‘ ȚĮȜ ȜĮ ‘İțȘȜȠȢ ’ ‘İIJȦ· İț ȖĮȡ ȠȚ ‘ ijȡİ ȞĮȢ İ‘ȚȜİIJȠμȘIJȚİIJĮ ǽİȣȢ. Ǽȡȡ Let him in peace the depths of Lethe gain, Since all-wise Jove hath robbed his sconce of brain. § Non multum abludit imago from Mr W. R. Spenser, a writer of fantastical nambie-pambies and epigramitico-sentimental madrigals, on the clasp of a waist or the tie of a garter, on the ancle of Lady H—k, or the bosom of Lady J—y, &c. &c. &c. Mr S. trespasses so often on forbidden ground, that the reader begins to anticipate strange things, and is almost ready to exclaim, Quos agor in specus? The fashionable world has its own luminaries of taste and genius. Solum suum sidera norunt. But they have more of the meteor than the star, and even of the meteor more of its transience than its lustre. The little lustre they possess is indeed meteoric, for it shines within a narrow circle, and only a feeble report of its existence passes the limits of its sphere. Ad nox vix tenuis famæ perlabitur aura. The solitary philosopher reads in some critical ephemeris that such a meteor has bee observed: he notices the subject for a moment, and returns to the contemplation of those stars, which have shone and will continue to shine for ages.

127

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

At last, in cap with border red, A Minstrel seemed to stand, There are no results of human art, in which fluxum atque caducum is so strikingly exemplified as in those productions which constitute what may be denominated fashionable literature. This is one of the affairs of men in which there is no tide. There is no refluence in fashionable taste. It is an overflowing stream, which rolls on its inexhaustible store of new poems, new romances, new biography, new criticism, new morality,—to that obvious gulph, from which a very few are redeemed by the swans of renown. The few so redeeemed cease to be fashionable, and to the really literary part of mankind they scarcely begin to be known, when to the soi-disant literati of the fashionable world they are already numbered with the things that were; with Dryden, and Drayton, and Spenser, and other obsolete worthies; of every one of whom the fashionable reader may exclaim: Notus mihi nomine tantum! and who have been rudely thrust aside to make way for these new-comers, as the choicest productions of Greek and Roman waste were trampled into the dust on the irruption of the Goths and Vandals, or as the statues of Apollo, Venus, and the Graces were thrown down and demolished by the more barbaric fanatics of the dark ages, in order that St Benedict, and St Dominic, and St Anthropophagos might be placed upon their pedestals. The great desideratum in fashionable literature is novelty. The last publications which have issued from the press in the department of the belles lettres must cooperate with last princely fête, the last elegant affair of crim. con., the last semivir imported from Italy, in filling up that portion of fashionable conversation, which is not engrossed by pure no-meaning, by party, or by scandal. These publications are caught up wet from the press, and thrown carelessly on the table, the sofa, or the ottoman, to furnish a ready answer to the certain questions of the lounging visitor: Is this Mr S.’s new poem? Have you seen Mr L.’s romance? Have you met with Miss M.’s puritanical novel? Have you fallen asleep as I did over the last Battle? till some newer effusion of fancy dispossess them of their post of honour, and send them to a private station on the shelves of the library, to sleep with those that have been mighty in their day, with the Tales of Wonder and the Botanic Garden, with the flowery Wreath of Della Crusca and the barren Landscape of Knight, with the Travels of Sir John Carr, the Biography of Mr Shepherd, and the Criticism of Dr Drake. This undistinguishing passion for literary novelty seems to involve nothing less than a total extinction of every thing like discrimination in taste and nature in imagination: and it would be rendering no slight service to the cause of sound criticism and philosophical literature, to hold up Banquo’s mirror to the readers of the fashionable world, and shew them, at one view, the phantoms of those productions which they have successfully admired and forgotten, from the days of love-sick marygolds and sentimental daffydowndillies, to these of pathetic ruffians, poetical bandits, and ‘maids that love the moon’. If, in the execution of this office, it should sometimes be necessary to perform the part of a resurrection-man in criticism, and compel the canonized form of many a would-be poet and pilferer of old romances to burst the cerements of his literary sepulchre, the operation would not be wholly without its use. The audible memento which these spectres would thunder in the ears of the indefatigable scribblers of the day would operate in terrorem on the side of common sense, and by stifling in its birth many a crude embryo of nonsense, save many a groan to the press, many a head-ache to the critic, and much perversion of intellect to the rising generation. Praise, when well deserved, should be freely given: but in cases so desperate as the present, the severity of justice should not be tempered by the least degree of unmerited mercy.—Common sense and taste can scarcely stem the torrent of doggrel and bufoonery, which is daily poured forth by the press, ‘Even as Fleet Ditch, with disemgoguing streams, Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames’.

128

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

With heather bell upon his head, And fiddle in his hand; And such a shrill and piercing scrape Of hideous discord gave, That none but Johnny’s ear could scape Unfractured by the stave. Old Poulter’s mare, in sudden fright, Forgot all John had taught her; And up she reared, a furious height, And soused him in the water.

140

III OR CHI SE TU 25

Ten thousand thousand fathoms down Beneath the sea he popped: At last a coral cracked his crown, And Johnny Raw was stopped.* Sir Proteus came, and picked him up, With grim and ghastly smile; And asked him to walk in and sup, And fiddled all the while.†

150

So up he got, and felt his head, And feared his brain was diddled; The gardens of Parnassus are over-run with weeds, which have been suffered to fatten in obscurity by the mistaken lenity of contempt. To bruise their heads is useless: they must be torn up by the roots before any wholesome plant can have room to flourish in the soil.—If we desire that philosophy may re-enter the temple of Apollo, we must not hesitate to throw down the Corycian Cave the rubbish that defiles its courts and chokes its vestibule. I would apply to the subject of taste the severe morality of Sophocles: ȋȡȘȞ į ’ İȣșȣȢ İȚȞĮȚIJȘȞįİIJȠȚȢ ʌĮıȚȞ įȚțȘȞ, ‘ȅı IJȚȢ ʌİȡĮ ʌȡĮıı İȚȞIJȚIJȦȞȞȠμȦȞșİȜİȚ Ȁȉ Ǽǿȃ Ǽǿȃ · ȉȅ īǹ ȇ Ȇǹȃ ȅ Ȋ ȇīȅȃ ȅȊ Ȁ ǹȃ Ǿȃ Ȇȅ ȁ Ȋ .24 *

‘Ten thousand thousand fathoms down he dropped; Till in an ice-rift in the eternal snow, Foul Arvalan is stopped’. Southey’s Curse of Kehama. † Sir Proteus, having fixed himself in the shape most peculiarly remote from taste and nature, that of a minstrel of the Scottish border, continues to act up to the full spirit of the character he has assumed, by fiddling with indefatigable pertinacity to the fall of the curtain.

129

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

While still the ocean o’er him spread, And still Sir Proteus fiddled. And much surprised he was to be Beneath the ocean’s root;* Which then he found was one great tree, Where grew odd fish for fruit. And there were fish both young and old, And fish both great and small; And some of them had heads of gold, And some no heads at all.

160

And now they came, where Neptune sate, With beard like any Jew, With all his Tritons round in state, And all his Nereids too:27 And when poor Johnny’s bleeding sconce The moody king did view,† He stoutly bellowed, all at once: ‘Pray who the deuce are you?

170

‘That thus dare stalk, and walk, and talk, Beneath my tree, the sea, sir, And break your head on coral bed, Without the leave of me, sir?’ …

VI COLÀ DOVE È IL FINIMONDO

Though Johnny prized the Jew’s-harp twang Beyond old Homer’s harp,‡ * For a particular description of the roots of the ocean, see Mr Southey’s Thalaba. † ‘Up starts the moody Elfin King,’ &c. &c. &c. Lady of the Lake 26 ‡ Our hero is not singular. The harp of Israel is exalted above the lyre of Greece by the poetical orthodoxy of the bards of the lakes: Mæonium qui jam soliti contemnere carmen, Judaicos discunt numeros, servantque, coluntque, Tradidit arcano quoscumque volumine Moses!28 Which accounts for the air of conscious superiority and dignified contempt they assume towards those perverted disciples of Homer and Sophocles, who are insensible to the primitive mellifluence

130

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

He little loved the barbarous clang Of fiddle cracked and sharp:

270

And when the names Sir Proteus said Of Murray, Kerr, and Scott; The sound went crashing through his head, Like Van Tromp’s famous shot,*29 Which, like some adamantine rock, By Hector thrown in sport, Plumped headlong into Sheerness dock,30 And battered down a fort. Like one astound, John stared around, And watched his time to fly; And quickly spied, amid the tide, A dolphin sailing by; –

280

And jumped upon him in a crack, And touched him in the fin, And rose triumphant, on his back, Through ocean’s roaring din: While Proteus, on his fiddle bent, Still scraped his feudal jig; Nor marked, as on his ballad went, His bird had hopped the twig.

290

So Johnny rose mid ocean’s roar, And landed was full soon, Upon a wild and lonely shore, Beneath the waning moon. He sate him down, beside a cave As black as hell itself, And heard the breakers roar and rave, A melancholy elf: But when he wanted to proceed, And advertise his mare,

300

of patriarchal modulation. It is not less creditable to the soundness of their theology than to the purity of their taste, that they herein differ toto cælo from the profane Frenchman, who concludes his poem with a treaty between the principal personages of the ancient and modern religions of Europe, by which it is stipulated, that the latter shall continue throned in glory on Mount Sinai, while the former shall retain the exclusive and undisturbed possession of Mount Parnassus. * This shot, I am informed, is still to be seen at Sheerness.

131

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

In vain he struggled to be freed, Such magic fixed him there. Then came a voice of thrilling force: ‘In vain my power you brave, For here must end your earthly course, And here’s Oblivion’s cave. Far, far within its deep recess, Descends the winding road, By which forgotten minstrels press To Pluto’s drear abode.

310

Here Cr—k—r31 fights his battles o’er, And doubly kills the slain, Where Y... no more can nod or snore In concert to the strain. Here to psalm tunes thy C—l—r—dge sets His serio-comic lay: Here his grey Pegasus curvets, Where none can hear him bray. Here dreaming W—rds—th wanders lost, Since Jove hath cleft his deck:* Lo! on these rocks his tub is tost,†33 A shattered, shapeless wreck.

320

Here shall Corruption’s laureate wreath, By ancient Dullness twined With flowers that courtly influence breathe, Thy votive temples bind. Amid the thick Lethean34 fen The dull dwarf-laurel springs,‡ To bind the brows of venal men, The tuneful slaves of kings. *

—— ȃǾ ǹ Ĭ ȅǾȃ ĮȡȖȘIJȚ țİ ȡĮ ȣȞȦ ǽǼȊȈ İȜıĮȢ İț İĮı ıİ μİı Ȧ İȞȚȠȚȞȠʌ ȚʌȠȞIJȦ .33

† See p. 289, sqq. In such a vessel ne’er before Did human creature leave the shore. But say what was it?—Thought of fear! Well may ye tremble when ye hear! A household tub, like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes! Wordsworth’s Poems, vol. ii. p. 72.

132

330

Love Peacock (from Sir Proteus)

Come then, and join the apostate train Of thy poetic stamp, That vent for gain the loyal strain, Mid Stygian35 vapours damp, While far below, where Lethe creeps, The ghost of Freedom sits, and weeps O’er Truth’s extinguished lamp.’

‡ The dwarf-laurel is a little stunted plant, growing in ditches and bogs, and very dissimilar to that Parnassian shrub ‘which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore’; as in the Carmen Triumphale for the year 1814, mellifluously singeth the Protean bard, Robert Southey, Esquire, Poet Laureate !!!’ ȋĮȚȡİ μȠȚ,Ȧ Ȇȇ ȍȉ ǼȊ · ıȘ į ’ ȠȣțİIJȚIJİȡȥİĮȚ ȠȚȠȢ ȉİ ȤȞȘ · ȂǿȈĬȅĭȅȇǼǿ īǹ ȇ ‘ȅ Ȇȅ ǿȀǿȁȅȂȅ ȇ ĭ ȅ Ȉ ǹȆȅ ȁȁȍȃ

133

36

‘S. T. COLEBRITCHE’

From Christabess (1816) [First published in Christabess, by S. T. Colebritche, Esq. A right woeful poem, translated from the doggerel by Sir Vinegar Sponge, London, John Duncombe, 1816, pp. 7–23; 27– 44. Christabess is a parody of Coleridge’s unfinished Gothic poem ‘Christabel’, and was published anonymously under the pseudonym ‘S. T. Colebritche’ in 1816. Col­ eridge’s poem had been in circulation in manuscript long before its first publication in Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pain of Sleep (1816), and is thought to have been an influence on Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). Byron similarly admired ‘Christabel’. Indeed ‘Christabel’ was a sensation when it was first published, generat­ ing reviews that were for the most part negative and derisive.1 As Chris KoenigWoodyard has written, Christabess was far from the only parody spawned by Col­ eridge’s poem: ‘Between 1816 and 1832, no less than seven verse parodies of “Christabel” were published. The parodies, considered in combination with the 15 “Christabel” continuations published between 1815 and 1909, position the poem as one of Coleridge’s most often emulated works in the nineteenth century’. KoenigWoodyard goes on to state that the most incisive of these parodies is unquestionably Christabess.2 Christabess echoes ‘Christabel’ at every opportunity – from its preface through to the structure of the poem itself. In terms of content Christabess makes ordinary the high Gothic constituents of Coleridge’s poem. Rather than castles and aristo­ crats Christabess reduces the characters of the poem to the lower orders of society. The suffix ‘Bess’ points the way immediately. ‘Bess’ is suggestive of milkmaids, a generic assignation in English literature by 1816, and of prostitutes.3 The Sir Leoline character in Christabess is not a knight, but a tinker renamed as Tom Bottomly. Whereas Coleridge states in his preface that he wrote the first part of the poem in Stowey, Somerset, in 1797, the preface to Christabess relocates the creative impulse and also the action of the poem to Diot Street, in the notorious parish of St Giles, an urban area of much crime and poverty.]

134

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-10

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess) 1 See J. R. de J. Jackson, ed. Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970, pp. 199–247. 2 Chris Koenig Woodyard, ‘“Christabel” and the Christabelliads’, Romanticism on the Net, 15 (August 1999), pp. 1–40; p. 3. Much of the information in this headnote is indebted to Koenig-Woodyard’s sharp and learned article. 3 Ibid., p. 3.

135

Preface The beginning of this exquisite Poem was written in the year of our Lord one thou­ sand seven hundred and ninety-seven, in Diot Street; in the parish of St Giles; the latter part, after my return from the Hulks at Woolwich, in the year one thousand eight hundred and four, in Lion Court, St George’s Fields – the intermediate seven years having been devoted to a different kind of Literature; and I may without vanity assert – and defy the professors of that University to contradict me, that I have studied so hard as to have been frequently under the necessity of divesting myself of my shirt; and (to use an elegant expression) ‘hard study hath been frequently known to make a man become crack’d’, and indeed, ‘since the latter date, my poetic powers have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation’. Yet, at the time of my conception of the darling C HRISTABESS, I was so forcibly struck with an allover­ someness of its plot, that I doubt not but I shall be able to bring forth the three parts yet to come in the course of the present year. I have said thus much to prove that I am no plagiarist; indeed, I should not have been put to this trouble had I pub­ lished these two parts of the Poem previous to the year one thousand eight hundred, as was my original intention; but in the legislation of this country, there is an invariable rule of sending Students to the floating Colleges off Woolwich, for certain trifling mistakes; – to this rule, therefore, and not to my indolence, must the Public charge the delay of this singularly wild, and beautifully romantic poem. And let this information teach those shock-dogs of the devil – called Critics – to allow the originality of this Work; and while they respect the Supremacy of my Genius, at their peril let them dare to insinuate their suspicions of any other Poet of immortal fame having ever intentionally imitated my style, and we swear that we will form a solemn league, and hunt the mongrels down to the very lowest depths of perdition – That never more may they (with venom’d tooth, And rankling malice in their wither’d hearts) Into the sacred fold skulk slily, And bite the muse’s sheep. –

I have now only to insist that the metre of Christabess is perfectly regular, although I am aware not one of my readers will be able to find it so; but they will instantly attribute it to their own shallowness of intellect, when they are informed that I have, out of my profundity of genius, entirely created a new system of my own, – namely, that of measuring the lines by length, rather than by their harmony of syllables, and the different lengths are intended to display the degree of force which I would give to the expression of the passion therein contained. S.T.C. 136

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Part 1 ’Tis a quarter past twelve by the brat that blairs, And the donkey hath waken’d the girl up stairs; Ee-eau! – Ee-eau! Hark! – and the puppy that sleeps down stairs, Oh! – what a drowsy snore!1 Tom Bottomly, the Tinker fat, Hath a one-eyed she grey cat,2 That, from a hole beneath the stairs, Answers to the children’s blairs; Squall for squall, and howl for howl, Alternate squall and caterwaul, In duet grim, so harsh and loud, ’Twould make the dead kick off a shroud. ‘Does it rain to-night? – are you asleep’ ‘It does not rain, but I’m asleep;’ ‘This horse-rug is so short and thin, I scarce can keep my honxes3 in; The moon shines in the room; I doubt That large black cloud will shut it out.’ ‘I’m devilish cold, Nan – hug me, pray; March comes about a month ere May, And then comes spring.’ – ‘Go to sleep, I say.’ That blooming Sphinx,4 Miss Christabess, Whom her daddy loves to kiss, Hath she not yet come home to bed? – What whim is in the numbscull’s head? She dreamt, last night, some stuff, perhap, About that gawky soldier chap, Something that made her kick and leap, And hug the bolster in her sleep; And that’s what keeps her up so late, I think, For love I wot5 won’t let her sleep a wink. Along she wends her silent way, The winds has ceas’d to breathe, She reach’d at length, an old oak tree, All lonely standing on the heath; Then musing, sat her at the foot Upon an old grey naked root. 137

1

10

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Up suddenly the maiden sprung, The lovely trembling Christabess! A squeak is heard to pass along, But what it is she cannot guess.– Now all is hush’d – O gemini!6 Perhaps some rogue is up the Old Oak tree! She looks about – no rogue is there – I’d bet a penny t’was the wind! – ‘There is not wind enough in the air’ To blow away a nasty smell From the lovely maid behind, Which chanced in her fright, poor girl! There’s a last year’s leaf on the topmost twig, That has danced all alone full many a jig, Now still as the moon, tho’ hanging so high, You would fancy almost that it stuck to the sky.

40

50

Now hold your tongue – observe the maid, Cautious creeping, half afraid; She pops her head beneath her cloak, And slowly creeps around the oak, Hollo! What now? A damsel there stood all alone, With nothing save her chemise on, With heaving breasts, and tearful eyes, And shift but half way down her thighs; Oh! had the finder been a he! Gentle reader, you, or me! – Vexing; an’t it? – ‘damnably.’ –

60

Lud-a-mercy! Who are you? Said Christabess, as back she drew. Laying her palms upon her neck, Sweetly thus the damsel spake – First looking round, as still afraid, ‘Oh! have compassion on a maid.’ – Christabess stared, and thus began – ‘Indeed, sweet maid, I’m not a man, But tell me whence you are, and who?’ – Her tale then did the sylph pursue. My Father is a sweep by trade, And my name is Adelaide, 138

70

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Five ragamuffins yestermorn, Seiz’d me a helpless maid forlorn; And if I spoke they swore they’d stick me, And so they tied me on a Dickey; And I was nation vex’d to find Some walk’d before, and some behind; One stuck a pin into a stick, With which he oft would Neddy prick; We travell’d on all night and day, Nor can I even guess the way, Nor who they were, nor how long ’tis, ‘(For I have lain in fits I wis7)’ Since one, the lankest of the gang, Took me from the Dickey’s rump, When Neddy giving such a flang,8 Kick’d him in the breeches plump, So sprawling down he threw me thump, And swore he’d go and get some gin, And his companions, too, should booze, And quickly he would come again, And swing me in a hempen nooze;9 So lend your hand, and do not blush, To help a wretched maiden brush. Then Christabess stretch’d forth her fist, And lifted up fair Adelaide, Saying many a thing I wist, Of comfort to the wretched maid; How, safely (as a body-louse) Should she be in her father’s house. Away they went, and as they flew, They kick’d the moon-beams from the dew; Joy warm’d the naked maiden’s breast, And Christabess she softly said, ‘All our folks are gone to rest, Six at least in every bed: My father has the belly-ache, So be as quiet as you can, For he would hear us, should we wake, And then he’d shoot you for a man.’ They cross’d the ditch – and Christabess, Who knew the way i’the dark I guess, From the wicket took the pin, 139

80

90

100

110

120

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Which let a brace of maidens in: – This wicket had lately been broke by the hogs While clumsily scudding away from the dogs. The stranger, feeling wearily, Tumbled down and cut her knee, The other maiden took her in, And set her on her legs ag’in, And wiped the bleeding knee, but which Was but a little tiny scratch. They listen’d – all were fast asleep, Which made their little hearts to leap. Making the bolts and bars all tight, ‘You mus’n’t say your prayers to night,’ (Said Christabess unto the maid) ‘Lest my father you should wake.’ – ‘I never do,’ (says Adelaide) ‘God send away his belly ache!’ They listen’d – all were fast asleep, Which made their little hearts to leap.

130

Beneath the stairs grimalkin grey. Was purring, as asleep she lay, And all was silent ’neath their feet; All – save their flutt’ring hearts that beat, When pussy gave a sudden squeal, (Whether or no she was asleep, Egad she made the damsel leap;) Perhaps she, dreaming, bit her tail, Else, what the devil can she ail?

140

They shut the door, that creaking still – Shut it as softly as you will; The sticks were out, the embers dying, All scatter’d ’tween the cob-irons lying. And when they near the fire-place came, There flash’d a little flit of flame, And Christabess saw the maiden’s thigh, But nothing else saw she thereby, Save a handkerchief red of Tom Bottomly tall, Which hung like a dirty old clout on the wall. Said Christabess, ‘O softly tread, I heard the creaking of a bed.’ 140

150

160

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Now Christabess took off her shoes, And crept up stairs upon her toes; The other maiden held her gown, Lest she might in the dark fall down – And at the door they heard a snore. – Convinced at length her father was asleep – More eagerly towards their room With less of caution now they creep. ‘The moon shines dim in the open air’, But they’ve a mite of rushlight there; And by its glimmer they can see The pictures stuck so curiously:– Dying speeches, lots of songs, All placed in order on the wall; Ditties sweet of maidens wrongs, Of ravishment, and rape, and all That to Love’s catalogue belongs. The rushlight in the socket lingers, And Christabess snuff ’d it with her fingers;– It stuck – she swang it to and fro, At length she flung it in the po’10 – And as the taper burnt more bright, The stranger sank in weary plight.

170

180

‘Poor creature! – in your fits again? Or are you faint from thirst or pain? Come, sit upon this ban-box11 – come, And take a drop of gin or rum.’ ‘O dear, what will your mother say To me, a maiden all forlorn?’ – Christabess sigh’d – ‘a-lack a-day! My mother died when I was born; And I have heard my grandmother tell, How she did on her death-bed say, She should hear the bell that toll’d her knell, Again upon my wedding-day: I wish that she were here ag’in, She us’d to like a drop of gin.’ The stranger rose with fixed eye, Contracted brows and sinews strung, ‘Off, grisly ghost! I bid thee fly! An hour at last from fate I’ve wrung,’ 141

190

200

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Alas, what ails poor Adelaide? Can she espy the shadowy dead? What means she by the hollow cries – ‘Off; take your ashy limbs away, This hour is mine by stronger ties Than fate can break – so off I say.’ – Then Christabess held by the damsel’s smock, And twitch’d her once, then twitch’d her again, But listless she, as any stock, So reckless seemed her brain. At length she stamp’d and blew her nose, And cried exulting, ‘Off she goes.’

210

Again another dram she drank, Whereby I guess the gin was good, And by the bed-post where she sank, Upon her snow white legs she stood, Oh, she was lovely, sweet, and plump, Egad – and such a noble rump! And then she smiled, and thus she spake To lovely Christa’ Bottomly: ‘My pretty little virgin bright, I love you for your kindness sake And, Oh! how we will hug to night.

220

With all the skill I have I’ll try To yield your little heart delight, And I’ll unlace your stays, she said, For I’m in haste to be in bed’. With that she help’d her to undress, And naked soon was Christabess, Then nimbly ’twixt the sheets jumpt she, In spotless, pure virginity.

230

The other sylphid tore a song, To curl her hair so black and long; Nor did she seem, as first she said, So much in haste to come to bed; And Christabess almost began To fancy t’other was a man. So up she sat upon her bum, And peep’d behind the curtain sly; And in the corner of the room, 142

240

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

There she saw the maid untie A piece of hempen cord, that bound Her alabaster belly round! Down dropt her shift, and – O dear me! She’s naked! – naked!! – naked!!! – see! – But, reader, turn away your view, She’s not to sleep with me nor you. Two skips she took and then a straddle, And tumbled lengthways in the middle; When in her arms she took the maid, – O look-a-daisy! And these words she wildly said, Like one that’s crazy:– ‘In the tip of this titty there dwelleth a charm, Which can put out thy senses, or shield thee from harm. If thou knowest to night, two to one but to morrow, Thou’lt remember this mark of my shame and my sorrow. But vainly thou kick’st, And vain is thy speaking, I’ll just tell thee this – Thou wert properly fix’d, When thou heardest a squeaking, And found’st a fair maid in nature’s best blandishment, And did’st bring her home with nought else but her smock on, To shield and protect her from rape and from ravishment.’ …

250

260

Part 2 ‘This hammer’s sound,’ the Tinker said, ‘That stuns, and almost cracks my head, Altho’ on tin or copper sheet With all one’s force and might ’tis beat, Till one is stupid with the strife, No, never more will wake my wife. – Well, let her rest in peace,’ quoth he, ‘’Tis more than e’er she did with me! And well, at weddings, custom owns The rite of Love’s discordant tones, By cleavers beat with marrow-bones;– Ah, presage sad! – they chased our heels From Edgeware Road to Tothill Fields.’ 143

320

330

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Saith Billy, a wight, surnamed Brown, A harmless soul that ballads sung, And gained the love of maidens young, And eke a favourite with the old, He ancient virgins fortunes told, ‘In Pancras Church, and Bethnal Green, And Bermondsey, so far away – With sacks and cords of dead men’s skin, And spades of blade-bone – witches say, Three troubled ghosts have each a den, Grim ghosts of resurrection men, Who oft dig up a woman’s shade, And carry to her husband’s bed, When the devil, of sadness to bereave us, Sends the marrow-bones and cleavers.’ The Tinker lists! as if to find That peal upon the billowing wind, But, ’twas fair Adelaide who sung The ballads in the room that hung. She out of paper takes her curls, And puts on cloaths of t’other girls, Full certain of her charms’ success, She wakens lovely Christabess, ‘O slept you sweetly, Christabess?’ Who fluttering answered ‘no – yes, yes!’ Then Christabess got up, and when The damsel tied her garters on, She saw her fair round knee so white, Which had been wounded over night. But, ah! How lovely now she seemed, Her coal black curls, with careless grace She comb’d – and when she’d washed her face, Oh, how that face with beauty teem’d! Not such, alas, as Christa’ dreamed. Sweet Christabess now something said, I thought she swore – perhaps she pray’d, And then, in trembling tones so sweet, Did she the other damsel greet, ‘Heigh ho! – well, how d’ye do? – O lork, As I’m alive, ’tis nine o’Clock!’– 144

340

350

360

370

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Then nimbly she jumped from out of her nest, And was in a brace of minutes drest; She listens soft upon the stairs, Nor hammers sound nor bellows hear. Then Adelaide she forward led, Down Stairs to breakfast with her dad. Sweet Christabess hung down her head, As forward she the maiden led: What ails her heart she cannot tell, Yet seems half conscious of the spell. Her father rose and kindly kiss’d His lovely darling daughter Crist, And with a cheerftul won’dring stare, Ask’d – ‘who d’ye call that ooman there?’ A chair – you’d like to sit, mayhap; Aye, do, and help us take a snap.’ But when the damsel told her tale, Who her father, and where his home, Why turns Tom Bottomly so pale? Murmuring to himself alone, Bob Carey the sweep of St Mary-le-bone!12 Alas! these blades had cronies been, From childhood until near nineteen; But jealousy hath a jaundiced eye, And love is hot, and youth is warm, And busy women often lie, And thus it chanced most certainly With Robert and Tom Bottomly. They met one night at the Sprat and Puss, Where angry words soon came to blows; I can’t tell how, but so it was, The Tinker broke Bob Carey’s nose. And ever since that fatal blunder, These youthful friends have been asunder: In fury torn, like Highgate Hill, Where weary wagons roll between; And yet, though far asunder, still It ne’er can be forgot, I ween,13 That closely join’d they once had been. Tom Bottomly a moment’s space, Sat staring in the damsel’s face; 145

380

390

400

410

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And the youthful sweep of Mary’bone, Was pictured to his heart alone. O then the Tinker forgot his tea, He slapt his hand upon his knee; And for a moment fix’d his eye On nothing – save on vacancy At length he rose, and firmly strode Unto the injured maiden’s side; Then grasp’d her hand, and swore, by God! He’d search the country far and wide; And he would find the rascals’ skins That held such damn’d unmanly sins! – Then to his tinker’s shop he rush’d, And presently came back again; I wot, a noble tear-drop gush’d, For his eye-lids round were clean: The Fair maiden wept as brave Bottomly kenn’d14 In the innocent girl the sweet child of his fiend!

420

430

The Tinker’s heart – too full to speak, Pump’d from out each eye a tear; He kiss’d the maid, and black’d her cheek, And she return’d the kiss sincere. Now Christabess let fall her tea, All boiling hot, and scalt her knee; And when she swoon’d away with pain, The spell came o’er her soul again. Alas! what woeful sights were there, Whilst she lay senseless in the chair! She saw again that nipple red! Again she felt that bosom dead! And she utter’d a shriek, and she uttered a groan. Tho’ loud the shriek, ’twas heard by none; And no eye saw the swooning maid, But the bright eye of Adelaide. And when away the vision flew, The Maid had neither spilt her tea, Nor had she either scalt her knee, And thoughts right merry came anew. Such merry thoughts as well mote15 she Suspect the working of the spell, 146

440

450

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Which made her weep! – ‘What arn’t you well!’ ‘Come, have a little drop of gin,’ The Tinker said. – His daughter then, Made answer: ‘O dear lork a day! I’m pretty well I thank ye,’ aye! I ween, that more she could not say. And yet to see this Adelaide, You’d lay your life she was a maid; So innocent she looks, as tho’ To kiss a man she don’t know how; And O! how sweet to see her press A glass of gin on Christabess. And now she vows she means to go Home to her Father Carey’s’ – ‘No! No, by the law!’ said Bottomly, ‘Ho! Billy, my lad, first you shall fly, With your ballads fine, and your music sweet, And panel two dickeys strong and fleet, And take my prentice boy along, To carry your fiddle and learn your song; But both put on your Sunday clothes And stick in your waistcoats a full blown rose; Nor stay to rest till you come to town, Or if any one stops you – knock ’em down!

460

470

480

And when he cross’d the Roding flood, My Billy Brown – see – see him fly! Through Chigwell Row, by Hainhault Wood, And reaches Wanstead House so good, Where trembling stands a Long Pole high. Billy Brown, Billy Brown, your donkeys are fleet, You must walk up the hills, but may ride in the street, While merrily playing your fiddle so sweet, And bawl to Bob Carey without longer stir, Your daughter is safe at Ongar, Sir. Your innocent Addy is safe and free, At the house of your friend Tom Bottomly; Who, forgetting all former squabbles, Hopes that you can leave your troubles, To fetch your bonny daughter back. And in the while he’d lead her on 147

490

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

To the Red Lion tap at Laytonstone.– For, truth to say, she’s mammy sick! By the living jingo, – say I cried, – I repeat that e’er I thrash’d the hide, Or broke the snout, or treated with scorn, Bob Carey, the sweep of St Mary-le-bone.– For many a crony since, I’ve had, But never treated one so bad; Yet ’mongst them all, I ne’er found none Like Carey, the sweep of St Mary-le-bone.’ The damsel now set down her cup, For from her nose-tip tears were dropping, When scratching his jowl, Phil Brown got up, Making the wench a congee, – hoping – As master Bottomly had some snack – Pointing to the bacon on the rack, She wou’dn’t hurry herself away, – (Ergo! He only meant to say He’d other fish to fry to-day.) And now he brought the matter short, In a long speech, as it would seem, About a comical sort of dream; ‘And I,’ says he, ‘be’t good or evil, Have swore this day to lay the devil. For by my dream I know full well, He’s somewhere here, and not in Hell. Friend Tom! You know I wish you luck! Say, don’t you call your girl your duck? – You do! – why then tis plain ’twas she, Whom the devil got hold of, beneath the old tree.’ ‘My dream’, says he, ‘ran somehow thus: I thought a spirit came to me, Saying, Billy, run, for Christabess Lies murder’d ’neath the old oak tree. O then I flew as swift as wind, But could nothing near it find; I thrice went round, and then was struck,– With the piteous eye of a dying duck! And when I stoop’d the duck to take, All round its neck was wound a snake; And when I tried the snake to wound, Snake, duck, and all sunk in the ground! 148

500

510

520

530

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

The came a voice, – (and all turn’d dark,) Saying, ‘Billy, mark the place, O mark!’ To mark the spot where stood my foot; ’Twas dark as pitch, I cou’dn’t do’t! – But now a thought came in my head, And so I thought I mark’d the spot. I woke – but found I’d mark’d the bed, – And that is good luck, is it not? – O then did I swear with oath and prayer, That I this day would find the evil, Or sore torment, and plague the devil’. The Tinker grinn’d for he (it seems,) Had no faith in foolish dreams; Then turn’d to lovely Adelaide, And chuck’d the sphinx under her pretty chin; And then I saw him kiss the maid, But cannot swear on oath she kiss’d agin; And now, says he, right bonnily, ‘Your dad and I can kill a snake,’ – Again he kiss’d her as he spake; Ah! Had you seen this Adelaide, Oh! – what a lovely blushing maid! With cheek of crimson modesty, She turn’d her from Tom Bottomly; And taking up her apron hem, She fumbling, let it fall again; Then, slowly folding up her arms, And resting her elbows on her hams, With face reclined from others view, She look’d at Christabess askew. A snake, as sly as you or I, Can look at the face of a pretty maid. But how could Adelaide? – or why? Transfix two serpents’ eyes into her head? For shrunken to so small a size – With a serpent’s malice, and a woman’s dread. On Christabess she fix’d those eyes One moment, – and with thrilling shriek, With senses dizzy – sinews weak, She fell – and more she could not speak. Now Adelaide turn’d round again, Like one that felt with grief and pain, 149

540

550

560

570

580

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And roll’d her modest large blue eye, Wildly on Tom Bottomly. Poor Christabess! See, there she lays, Come lift her up, and loose her stays: Alack, sweet wench! (e’en I could weep,) So young, so modest, yet so wise! O! she had drunken in so deep, The look from those fierce serpent eyes, That on her senses so it wrought, Her features form’d to match her thought, For still she sat, still in her trance, And crouch’d her head, and look’d askance, Unclos’d her lips, her teeth firm shut, Her brows forc’d o’er her eyeballs, yet That side-turn’d eye beneath look’d keen; Tho’ fixed on nothing save the wall! But, ah! those eyeballs were, I ween, Unconscious that they look’d at all. But when her senses came again, Her body writhed, as tho’ in pain; Then clasping round her Father’s neck, ‘Send, O send, that woman back: O Father send her quick away,’ And that was all the maid could say; For more she would, but could not tell, Tongue bound by the mystic spell. O why do you look so fierce and blue, Tom Bottomly, you rascal, you? To spurn your child – your child in pain! Your only child, I say again. The child for whom you lost your wife. – Come, come – be mild, nor look so evil, That sour, black phiz,16 upon my life, Is quite enough to scare the devil! I’ve heard you say, you lov’d poor Nan, Remember what she pray’d for, man, And then look savage if you can: That prayer which her death-pang beguil’d, Tom Bottomly, And then blow up your only child, Her child by thee! 150

590

600

610

620

‘Colebritche’ (from Christabess)

Within the Tinker’s brazen jowl, If thoughts like these had any corner, They made him whisper, bless her soul! But made him bellow, fie upon her; His very pluck was in a move, His brains would even heat cold water, Dishonour’d by his only love, – Confusion! – by his only daughter; Disgraced, his hospitality, To a very pretty little injured maid, By a foolish wench’s jealousy. Friend Carey once more knock’d o’the head! He turn’d, as fierce as any maggot, Upon the trembling Billy Brown, Still foaming – ’od-fire – burn the faggot! – Hollo! you strain-gut, get you gone, – Bounce off, I say.’– So Billy hopp’d, Kiss’d Christabess, – and off he popp’d; And Adelaide and Bottomly Toddled off another way.

151

630

640

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

from Oedipus Tyrannus, or, Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820) [First published in Oedipus Tyrannus, or, Swellfoot the Tyrant, London, Joseph Johnson, 1820, pp. 5–6, 18–23, 36–39. Shortly after completing A Philosophical View of Reform, Shelley contacted Leigh Hunt concerning the possibility of publishing a volume of his political poems. Don­ ald Neill Cameron writes that ‘Shelley never completed his plans for the book, probably because of the difficulty of finding a publisher.’1 Shelley did, however, complete seven of the poems that the volume was intended to contain: The Mask of Anarchy; Song to the Men of England; An Ode to the Assertors of Liberty; Lines Written Dur­ ing the Castlereagh Administration; To Sidmouth and Castlereagh; Sonnet: England in 1819, and A New National Anthem. Simultaneously, Shelley was working on two equally political extended book-length satires: Peter Bell the Third and Oedipus Tyrannus. Of the topical political satires written by Shelley between 1819–20 Oedipus Tyrannus takes its place as but one of a series of radical satires prompted by the Queen Caroline affair.2 The Prince of Wales’s ill-fated 1795 marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, con­ tracted more for financial than for amatory reasons, quickly broke down in the face of George’s repeated infidelities. Caroline was persuaded into European exile in 1814, where the Regent’s agents, eager to obtain or to falsify evidence of Caroline’s alleged adultery with Bartolomeo Bergami, spied upon her. The leading figures of the Milan Commission, formed in 1818 to gather evidence against the princess, were the Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Leach, William Cooke, and Major James Browne, respectively, the Leech, Gadfly and Rat of Shelley’s satire.3 The resulting introduc­ tion into the House of Lords, in the summer of 1820, of the Bill of Pains and Penalties providing for the dissolution of the royal marriage on the grounds of Caroline’s adultery, polarised English opinion. The government was determined to support George, while those in opposition, whether Whig or radical, were equally as determined to support the Queen.4 Reformist publications such as Hunt’s Examiner and, Cobbett’s Political Register agitated for George’s recognition of Caroline’s status.5 Radical pressmen were at the forefront of Queen Caroline’s supporters. The Republi­ can for 25 February 1820 juxtaposes George’s perceived political tyranny with its domestic equivalent, accuses the king of ‘despotism’ and describes Caroline as ‘this 152

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-11

Shelley (from Oedipus Tyrannus)

injured woman – this victim to unbridled lust’, betrayed by a man ‘who is daily rev­ elling in adulterous harlotry’.6 Oedipus Tyrannus is a scathing allegorical satire containing thinly veiled portraits of all of the main participants in the scandal. Shelley takes the side of Caroline in her domestic differences with George and uses the characters to make a trenchant case for liberty and reform. In truth, however, Shelley had little time for Caroline. In a letter to the Gisbornes, 30 June 1820, he wrote: ‘How can the English endure the mountains of cant which are cast upon them by this vulgar cook-maid they call a Queen?’7 Swellfoot (George IV) and Iona Taurina (Queen Caroline) are locked in a battle for control of the state and its future development. As well as drawing out what radical opinion perceived as George’s disgusting behaviour to his wife, Shelley also points to the appalling state of the nation’s poor and a government and mon­ arch that cares nothing for their welfare. The correlation between domestic warfare and political warfare is pointedly referred to in the epigram that appears on the title page of the play. Choose Reform or Civil War, When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.8

Taurina’s eventual triumph inspired by the figure of Liberty leads to a civil revolt that cleans out the public sty and points to a brave new world. The authorities immediately suppressed Oedipus Tyrannus when it was published in 1820.]

1 Donald Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years, Cambridge, MS, Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 342. 2 For an example by George Cruikshank and William Hone, see Vol 3, and in this volume Kouli Khan, pp. 209–16. 3 E. A. Smith, George IV, p. 177; Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years, p. 358. See the Introduc­ tion to this volume for a fuller context. 4 In George IV Smith makes it apparent that scandalous information on Caroline was only forthcoming from ex-servants at a price (p. 177). 5 In Radical Underworld McCalman writes: ‘English political caricature was already register­ ing a shift in popular perceptions by depicting the prince as the bloated, lecherous and whiskered old dandy so familiar in the post-war works of William Hone and others’ (p. 163). 6 Cited by Smith, George IV, p. 173. 7 Cited in Jones, Shelley’s Satire. Jones argues rightly that Shelley had nothing but contempt for Caroline. She serves merely as a symbol around which he focuses his attack on the Regent and Lord Liverpool. Jones also points, however, to the uncomfortable domestic parallels between Shelley’s personal situation of exile and marital scandal and the events he was satirising, ‘which may have served in part to mask an uncomfortable realization that he shared something with the whole affair’ (p. 125). 153

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 8 In a speech at the trial the Queen’s Solicitor-General, Thomas Denman, referred to the consequences should the Bill of Pains and Penalties be passed against Caroline. It would ‘perhaps be provocative of the greatest calamity which can befall a nation – I would say of a civil war resulting from a dispute as to the succession of the Crown’ (cited Jones, Shelley’s Satire, p. 125).

154

From Act 1, scene I.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes. Iona Taurina, his Queen. Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine. Purganax Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. Dakry Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. Laoctonos Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot. The Gadfly. The Leech. The Rat. Moses, the Sow-gelder. Solomon, the Porkman. Zephaniah, Pig-butcher. The Minotaur. Chorus of the Swinish Multitude.1 Guards, Attendants, Priests, etc., etc. Scene – Thebes

A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death’s-heads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars, Sows, and SuckingPigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple. Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, without perceiv­ ing the Pigs. Swellfoot.2 Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine 1 These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction]. Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch 155

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze, And these most sacred nether promontories Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt’s pyramid, (Nor with less toil were their foundations laid,)3 Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing! Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors, Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army Of those fat martyrs to the persecution Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils, Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres Of their Eleusis, hail!

10

… Enter Swellfoot. Swellfoot. She is returned! Taurina4 is in Thebes, When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell! Oh, Hymen,5 clothed in yellow jealousy, And waving o’er the couch of wedded kings The torch of Discord with its fiery hair; This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens! Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea, The very name of wife had conjugal rights; Her cursèd image ate, drank, slept with me, And in the arms of Adiposa oft Her memory has received a husband’s—

320

[A loud tumult, and cries of ‘Iona for ever! – No Swellfoot!’] Hark! How the Swine cry Iona Taurina; I suffer the real presence; Purganax,6 Off with her head! Purganax. But I must first impanel A jury of the Pigs. Swellfoot. Pack them then.7 Purganax. Or fattening some few in two separate sties, 156

Shelley (from Oedipus Tyrannus)

And giving them clean straw, tying some bits Of ribbon round their legs—giving their Sows Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass, And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers Between the ears of the old ones; and when They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs, Good Lord! They’d rip each other’s bellies up, Not to say, help us in destroying her.

330

Swellfoot. This plan might be tried too; – where’s General Laoctonos? Enter Laoctonos and Dakry.8 It is my royal pleasure 340 That you, Lord General, bring the head and body, If separate it would please me better, hither Of Queen Iona. Laoctonos. That pleasure I well knew, And made a charge with those battalions bold, Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes, Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square Enclosed her, and received the first attack Like so many rhinoceroses, and then Retreating in good order, with bare tusks And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe, Bore her in triumph to the public sty. What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin, And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry, ‘Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!’

350

Purganax. Hark! The Swine (without). Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot! Dakry. I Went to the garret of the swineherd’s tower, Which overlooks the sty, and made a long Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine, Of delicacy, mercy, judgement, law, 157

360

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Morals, and precedents, and purity, Adultery, destitution, and divorce, Piety, faith, and state necessity, And how I loved the Queen! – and then I wept With the pathos of my own eloquence, And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made A slough of blood and brains upon the place, Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up, And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air, With dust and stones.—

370

Enter Mammon.9 Mammon. I wonder that gray wizards Like you should be so beardless in their schemes; It had been but a point of policy To keep Iona and the Swine apart. Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction Between two parties who will govern you But for my art.—Behold this BAG ! it is The poison B AG of that Green Spider huge,10 On which our spies skulked in ovation through The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: A bane so much the deadlier fills it now As calumny is worse than death, – for here The Gadfly’s11 venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,12 In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat,13 who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch; – All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil’s Lord High Chancellor,14 And over it the Primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism:– ‘Be thou called The G REEN BAG ;15 and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. Let all baptized by thy infernal dew Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch! No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Court Journal or legitimate Review! – 158

380

390

400

Shelley (from Oedipus Tyrannus)

Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover Of other wives and husbands than their own – The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps! Wither they to a ghastly caricature Of what was human! – let not man or beast Behold their face with unaverted eyes! Or hear their names with ears that tingle not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!’ – This is a perilous liquor; – good my Lords. – [Swellfoot approaches to touch the Green Bag]. Beware! for God’s sake, beware! – if you should break 410 The seal, and touch the fatal liquor – Purganax. There, Give it to me. I have been used to handle All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty Only desires to see the colour of it. Mammon. Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test of guilt or innocence. And that, if she be guilty, ’twill transform her To manifest deformity like guilt. If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is; And they will see her flying through the air, So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. I’ll wager you will see them Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties, With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another’s ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o’ the gab, Make them a solemn speech to this effect: I go to put in readiness the feast 159

420

430

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the uglification of the Queen.

440

Dakry [to Swellfoot]. I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, Humbly remind your Majesty that the care Of your high office, as Man-milliner To red Bellona,16 should not be deferred. Purganax. All part, in happier plight to meet again. [Exeunt].

… From Act 2, scene2 Dakry In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen, Upon her trial without delay. Mammon. THE BAG Is here. Purganax. I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater, On Lady P – it cannot fail. (Taking up the Bag.) Your Majesty 730 [To Swellfoot.] In such a filthy business had better Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. A spot or two on me would do no harm, Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius Of the Green Isle17 has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my brow – which would stain all its seas, But which those seas could never wash away! Iona Taurina. My Lord, I am ready – nay, I am impatient To undergo the test. [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple; the word L IB ­ ERTY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead. Its words are almost 160

Shelley (from Oedipus Tyrannus)

drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder and louder. Mighty Empress! Death’s white wife! Ghastly mother-in-law of Life! By the God who made thee such, By the magic of thy touch, By the starving and the cramming Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine! I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. The earth did never mean her foison For those who crown life’s cup with poison Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge – But for those radiant spirits, who are still The standard-bearers in the van of Change. Be they th’ appointed stewards, to fill The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age! – Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low FREEDOM calls Famine, – her eternal foe, To brief alliance, hollow truce. – Rise now!18

740

750

[Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chanting this strophe, Mammon, Dakry, Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in per­ fect confidence of her innocence. Purganax, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over Swellfoot and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises.] Minotaur. I am the Ionian Minotaur,19 the mightiest Of all Europa’s taurine progeny20 – I am the old traditional Man-Bull; And from my ancestors having been Ionian, I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name’s John Bull;21 I am a famous hunter, And can leap any gate in all Boeotia, Even the palings of the royal park, 161

760

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Or double ditch about the new enclosures; And if your Majesty will deign to mount me, At least till you have hunted down your game, I will not throw you.

770

Iona Taurina. [During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back.]22 Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho! Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Hey, for a whipper-in!23 my loyal Pigs, Now let your noses be as keen as beagles’, Your steps as swift as greyhounds’, and your cries More dulcet and symphonious than the bells Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?) But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho! Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!

780

[Full Chorus of Iona and the Swine]. Tallyho! tallyho! Through rain, hail, and snow, Through brake, gorse, and briar, Through fen, flood, and mire, We go! we go! Tallyho! tallyho! Through pond, ditch, and slough, Wind them, and find them, Like the Devil behind them, Tallyho! tallyho! [Exeunt, in full cry; Iona driving on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag.]

162

790

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Peter Bell the Third (1819; 1840) [First published in Mary Shelley ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, London, Edward Moxon, 1840, pp. 240–45. Peter Bell the Third is an occasional poem prompted by the appearance on 21 April 1819 of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Shelley’s parody demonstrates how he had come to regard Wordsworth as a renegade – one who had sold out his revolutionary and rad­ ical principles to make a place for himself within the establishment. Wordsworth’s poem has as its central premise the eventual redemption of the eponymous rogue who mends his ways when confronted by a series of mystical events centred upon an ass that remains inexplicably faithful to its dead master. Predictably, the poem was attacked viciously by the radical press. Leigh Hunt savaged it in The Examiner, with his opening sentence being indicative of the tone maintained throughout: ‘This is another didactic little horror of Mr Wordsworth’s, founded on the bewitching principles of fear, bigotry, and diseased impulse’.1 In order fully to follow Hunt’s suit, Shelley takes religious dogma as his overarching theme. As Steven E. Jones has written, the entire tone and shape of the poem was influenced to a very significant extent by Hunt, and also by John Hamilton Reynolds who preceded Shelley (and Wordsworth too) into verse with Peter Bell: A Lyrical Ballad. Reynolds’s poem was published anonymously a week before Wordsworth’s on 15 April 1819. In the ‘Pref­ ace’ to the poem Reynolds – in the persona of Wordsworth – is scathing: ‘My heart hath been right and powerful all its years. I never thought an evil or a weak thought in my life’. The entire tone of the preface portrays Wordsworth as pompous, arro­ gant, and critically unreflective. Ironically, when Wordsworth’s poem was published a week later prefaced by a dedicatory letter to Southey, and two epigrams from Shakespeare, Reynolds’s charges appear to have been borne out. Wordsworth seemed to be making grand claims for the poem, which had been in a process of constant revision since 1798: ‘During this long interval pains have been taken at dif­ ferent times to make the production less unworthy of an favourable reception; or, rather, to fit for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of our country’.2 It is with some justice then that Steven E. Jones can state: ‘Peter Bell the Third was therefore Shelley’s response to Wordsworth’s work in general, but it was directed by 163

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-12

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Reynolds’s and Leigh Hunt’s responses to target especially Peter Bell’s supposed reli­ gious cant and metaphysical supernaturalism’.3 In terms of structure Peter Bell the Third is divided in to seven sections preceded by a ‘Prologue’: 1. Death; 2. the Devil; 3. Hell; 4. Sin; 5. Grace; 6. Damnation; 7. Double Damnation. In the process of satirising Wordsworth Shelley also ridicules Methodism and nonconformist doctrines of predestination. The extracts below include parts 3, 4, 5, and 6 to illustrate Shelley’s primary concerns in the poem: Eng­ lish religious, social, political and cultural life.]

1 Leigh Hunt, The Examiner, 2 May 1819, p. 282. 2 Peter Bell: Cornell Wordsworth, ed. John E. Jordan, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 41. 3 Steven Jones, Shelley’s Satire, p. 50.

164

Part Third Hell Hell is a city much like London – A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity.

150

There is a Castles and a Canning, A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;1 All sorts of caitiff corpses planning All sorts of cozening for trepanning2 Corpses less corrupt than they. There is a * * *,3 who has lost His wits, or sold them, none knows which; He walks about a double ghost, And though as thin as Fraud almost – Ever grows more grim and rich.

160

There is a Chancery Court,4 a King, A manufacturing mob; a set Of thieves who by themselves are sent Similar thieves to represent; An Army; – and a public debt.5 Which last is a scheme of Paper money, And means – being interpreted – ‘Bees, keep your wax – give us the honey And we will plant while skies are sunny Flowers which in winter serve instead’. There is a great talk of Revolution – And a great chance of despotism – German soldiers – camps – confusion – Tumults – lotteries – rage – delusion – Gin – suicide and methodism;6 165

170

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Taxes too, on wine and bread, And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,7 From which those patriots pure are fed Who gorge before they reel to bed The tenfold essence of all these.

180

There are mincing women, mewing, (Like cats, who amant misere,*) Of their own virtue, and pursuing Their gentler sisters to that ruin, Without which – what were chastity.† Lawyers – judges – old hobnobbers8 Are there – Bailiffs – Chancellors – Bishops – great and little robbers – Rhymesters – pamphleteers – stock-jobbers9 – Men of glory in the wars, –

190

Things whose trade is, over ladies To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, Till all that is divine in woman Grows cruel, courteous,10 smooth, inhuman, Crucified ’twixt a smile and whimper. Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,11 Frowning, preaching – such a riot! Each with never ceasing labour Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour Cheating his own heart of quiet.

200

And all these meet at levees;12 – Dinners convivial and political; – Suppers of epic poets; – teas, Where small talk dies in agonies; – Breakfasts professional and critical; Lunches and snacks so aldermanic That one would furnish forth ten dinners, * One of the attributes in Linnæus’s description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus is to be referred:– except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with those of others. † ‘What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association, like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be called the ‘King, Church and Constitution’ of their order. But this subject is almost too horrible for a joke’.

166

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

Where reigns a Cretan-tongued13 panic Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic14 Should make some losers and some winners

210

At conversazioni15 – balls – Conventicles16 and drawing rooms. Courts of law – committees – calls Of a morning – clubs – book stalls – Churches – masquerades and tombs. And this is Hell – and in this smother All are damnable and damned; Each one damning damns the other; They are damned by one another, By none other are they damned.

220

’Tis a lie to say ‘God damns!’* Where was Heaven’s Attorney General When they first gave out such flams?17 Let there be an end of shams, They are mines of poisonous mineral. Statesmen damn themselves to be Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls To the auction of a fee; Churchmen damn themselves to see God’s sweet love in burning coals.

230

The rich are damned beyond all cure To taunt, and starve, and trample on The weak and wretched: and the poor Damn their broken hearts to endure Stripe on stripe,18 with groan on groan. Sometimes the poor are damned indeed To take, – not means for being blessed, – But Cobbett’s snuff, revenge;19 that weed From which the worms that it doth feed Squeeze less than they before possessed.

240

And some few, like we know who, Damned – but God alone knows why – To believe their minds are given * This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that here alluded to.

167

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; In which faith they20 live and die. Thus, as in a Town, plague-stricken, Each man may be sound or no Must indifferently sicken; As when day begins to thicken None knows a pigeon from a crow, –

250

So good and bad, sane and mad, The oppressor and the oppressed; Those who weep to see what others Smile to inflict upon their brothers; Lovers, haters, worst and best; All are damned – they breathe an air, Thick, infected, joy-dispelling: Each pursues what seems most fair, Mining like moles, through mind, and there Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care In throned state is ever dwelling.

260

Part Fourth Sin Lo, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor Square,21 A footman in the devil’s service! And the misjudging world would swear That every man in service there To virtue would prefer vice. But Peter, though now damned, was not What Peter was before damnation. Men oftentimes prepare a lot Which ere it finds them, is not what Suits with their genuine station. All things that Peter saw and felt Had a peculiar aspect to him; And when they came within the belt Of his own nature, seemed to melt, Like cloud to cloud, into him. 168

270

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

And so the outward world uniting To that within him, he became Considerably uninviting To those who, meditation slighting, Were moulded in a different frame.

280

And he scorned them, and they scorned him; And he scorned all they did; and they Did all that men of their own trim Are wont to do to please their whim, Drinking, lying, swearing, play. Such were his fellow-servants; thus His virtue, like our own, was built Too much on that indignant fuss Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us To bully one another’s guilt.

290

He had a mind which was somehow22 At once circumference and centre Of all he might or feel or know; Nothing went ever out, although Something did ever enter. He had as much imagination As a pint-pot; – he never could Fancy another situation, From which to dart his contemplation, Than that wherein he stood.

300

Yet his was individual mind, And new created all he saw In a new manner, and refined Those new creations, and combined Them, by a master-spirit’s law. Thus – though unimaginative – An apprehension clear, intense, Of his mind’s work, had made alive The things it wrought on; I believe Wakening a sort of thought in sense. But from the first ’twas Peter’s drift To be a kind of moral eunuch, He touched the hem of Nature’s shift, Felt faint – and never dared uplift The closest, all-concealing tunic. 169

310

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

She laughed the while, with an arch smile, And kissed him with a sister’s kiss, And said – ‘My best Diogenes,23 I love you well – but, if you please, Tempt not again my deepest bliss.

320

‘’Tis you are cold – for I, not coy, Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true; And Burns,24 a Scottish peasant boy – His errors prove it – knew my joy More, learned friend, than you. ‘Bocca bacciata non perde ventura, Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:–25 So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.’

330

Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe, And smoothed his spacious forehead down With his broad palm; – ’twixt love and fear, He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer, And in his dream sate down. The Devil was no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief – just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; A toad-like lump of limb and feature,26 With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.

340

He was that heavy, dull, cold thing, The spirit of evil well may be: A drone too base to have a sting;27 Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing, And calls lust, luxury. Now he was quite the kind of wight28 Round whom collect, at a fixed æra, Venison, turtle, hock, and claret, – Good cheer – and those who come to share it – And best East Indian madeira! It was his fancy to invite Men of science, wit, and learning, Who came to lend each other light; 170

350

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

He proudly thought that his gold’s might Had set those spirits burning. And men of learning, science, wit, Considered him as you and I Think of some rotten tree, and sit Lounging and dining under it, Exposed to the wide sky.

360

And all the while, with loose fat smile, The willing wretch sat winking there, Believing ’twas his power that made That jovial scene – and that all paid Homage to his unnoticed chair. Though to be sure this place was Hell; He was the Devil – and all they – What though the claret circled well, And wit, like ocean, rose and fell? – Were damned eternally.

370

Part Fifth Grace Among the guests who often stayed Till the Devil’s petits-soupers,29 A man there came,30 fair as a maid, And Peter noted what he said, Standing behind his master’s chair. He was a mighty poet – and A subtle-souled psychologist; All things he seemed to understand, Of old or new – of sea or land – But his own mind – which was a mist.31 This was a man who might have turned Hell into Heaven – and so in gladness A Heaven unto himself have earned; But he in shadows undiscerned Trusted, – and damned himself to madness. 171

380

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

He spoke of poetry, and how ‘Divine it was – a light – a love – A spirit which like wind doth blow As it listeth, to and fro; A dew rained down from God above;

390

‘A power which comes and goes like dream, And which none can ever trace – Heaven’s light on earth – Truth’s brightest beam.’ And when he ceased there lay the gleam Of those words upon his face. Now Peter, when he heard such talk, Would, heedless of a broken pate, Stand like a man asleep, or baulk Some wishing guest of knife or fork, Or drop and break his master’s plate.

400

At night he oft would start and wake Like a lover, and began In a wild measure songs to make On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, And on the heart of man. And on the universal sky – And the wide earth’s bosom green, – And the sweet, strange mystery Of what beyond these things may lie, And yet remain unseen.

410

For in his thought he visited The spots in which, ere dead and damned, He his wayward life had led; Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed Which thus his fancy crammed. And these obscure remembrances Stirred such harmony in Peter, That, whensoever he should please, He could speak of rocks and trees In poetic metre. For though it was without a sense Of memory, yet he remembered well Many a ditch and quick-set fence; Of lakes he had intelligence, He knew something of heath and fell. 172

420

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

He had also dim recollections Of pedlars tramping on their rounds; Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections Old parsons make in burying-grounds.

430

But Peter’s verse was clear, and came Announcing from the frozen hearth Of a cold age, that none might tame The soul of that diviner flame It augured to the Earth: Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, Making that green which late was grey, Or like the sudden moon, that stains Some gloomy chamber’s window-panes With a broad light like day.

440

For language was in Peter’s hand, Like clay while he was yet a potter; And he made songs for all the land, Sweet both to feel and understand, As pipkins late to mountain Cotter. And Mr—— , the bookseller,32 Gave twenty pounds for some; – then scorning A footman’s yellow coat to wear, Peter, too proud of heart, I fear, Instantly gave the Devil warning.

450

Whereat the Devil took offence, And swore in his soul a great oath then, ‘That for his damned impertinence He’d bring him to a proper sense Of what was due to gentlemen!’

Part Sixth Damnation ‘O that mine enemy had written A book! – cried Job:33 – a fearful curse, If to the Arab, as the Briton, 173

460

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

’Twas galling to be critic-bitten: – The Devil to Peter wished no worse. When Peter’s next new book found vent, The Devil to all the first Reviews A copy of it slyly sent, With five-pound note as compliment, And this short notice – ‘Pray abuse.’34 Then seriatim,35 month and quarter, Appeared such mad tirades. – One said – ‘Peter seduced Mrs Foy’s daughter,36 Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,37 The last thing as he went to bed.’

470

Another – ‘Let him shave his head! Where’s Dr Willis?38 – Or is he joking? What does the rascal mean or hope, No longer imitating Pope, In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’ One more, ‘Is incest not enough? And must there be adultery too? Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire Is twenty times too good for you.

480

‘By that last book of yours WE think You’ve double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink You stood. From your black name will shrink The babe that is unborn.’ All these Reviews the Devil made Up in a parcel, which he had Safely to Peter’s house conveyed. For carriage, ten-pence Peter paid – Untied them – read them – went half mad. ‘What!’ cried he, ‘this is my reward For nights of thought, and days of toil? Do poets, but to be abhorred By men of whom they never heard, Consume their spirits’ oil? ‘What have I done to them? – and who Is Mrs Foy? ’Tis very cruel 174

490

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

To speak of me and Betty so! Adultery! God defend me! Oh! I’ve half a mind to fight a duel.

500

‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting, ‘Is it my genius, like the moon, Sets those who stand her face inspecting, That face within their brain reflecting, Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?’ For Peter did not know the town, But thought, as country readers do, For half a guinea or a crown, He bought oblivion or renown From God’s own voice* in a review.

510

All Peter did on this occasion Was, writing some sad stuff in prose. It is a dangerous invasion When poets criticize; their station Is to delight, not pose. The Devil then sent to Leipsic39 fair For Born’s translation of Kant’s book;40 A world of words, tail foremost, where Right – wrong – false – true – and foul – and fair As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

520

Five thousand crammed octavo pages Of German psychologics, – he Who his furor verborum41 assuages Thereon, deserves just seven months’ wages More than will e’er be due to me. I looked on them nine several days, And then I saw that they were bad; A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, – He never read them;– with amaze I found Sir William Drummond43 had.

530

When the book came, the Devil sent It to P. Verbovale, Esquire,† * Vox populi, vox dei.42 † Quasi, Qui valet verba: – i.e. all the words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this History. Peter’s progenitor, who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his posterity.

175

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

With a brief note of compliment, By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went, And set his soul on fire. Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,44 Made him beyond the bottom see Of truth’s clear well – when I and you, Ma’am, Go, as we shall do, subter humum,45 We may know more than he.

540

Now Peter ran to seed in soul Into a walking paradox; For he was neither part nor whole, Nor good, nor bad – nor knave nor fool; – Among the woods and rocks Furious he rode, where late he ran, Lashing and spurring his tame hobby; Turned to a formal puritan, A solemn and unsexual man, – He half believed White Obi.46

550

This steed in vision he would ride, High trotting over nine-inch bridges, With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, Mocking and mowing by his side – A mad-brained goblin for a guide – Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges. After these ghastly rides, he came Home to his heart, and found from thence Much stolen of its accustomed flame; His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame Of their intelligence.

560

To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue; He was no Whig, he was no Tory; No Deist47 and no Christian he; – He got so subtle, that to be Nothing, was all his glory. One single point in his belief From his organization sprung, The heart-enrooted faith, the chief Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf, That ‘Happiness is wrong;’ 176

570

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

So thought Calvin and Dominic;48 So think their fierce successors, who Even now would neither stint nor stick Our flesh from off our bones to pick, If they might ‘do their do.’ His morals thus were undermined: – The old Peter – the hard, old Potter – Was born anew within his mind; He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined, As when he tramped beside the Otter.*

580

In the death hues of agony Lambently flashing from a fish,† Now Peter felt amused to see Shades like a rainbow’s rise and flee, Mixed with a certain hungry wish. So in his Country’s dying face He looked – and, lovely as she lay, Seeking in vain his last embrace, Wailing her own abandoned case, With hardened sneer he turned away:

590

And coolly to his own soul said; — ‘Do you not think that we might make A poem on her when she’s dead: – Or, no – a thought is in my head – Her shroud for a new sheet I’ll take: ‘My wife wants one. – Let who will bury This mangled corpse! And I and you, My dearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with Sherry, –’ ‘Ay – and at last desert me too.’

600

And so his Soul would not be gay, But moaned within him; like a fawn Moaning within a cave, it lay Wounded and wasting, day by day, Till all its life of life was gone. * A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophilic Pantisocratists.49 † See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonising death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse published within a few years.50

177

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

As troubled skies stain waters clear, The storm in Peter’s heart and mind Now made his verses dark and queer: They were the ghosts of what they were, Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

610

For he now raved enormous folly, Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, ’Twould make George Colman51 melancholy To have heard him, like a male Molly,52 Chanting those stupid staves. Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse On Peter while he wrote for freedom, So soon as in his song they spy The folly which soothes tyranny, Praise him, for those who feed ’em.

620

He was a man, too great to scan; – A planet lost in truth’s keen rays: – His virtue, awful and prodigious; – He was the most sublime, religious, Pure-minded Poet of these days.’ As soon as he read that, cried Peter, ‘Eureka! I have found the way To make a better thing of metre Than e’er was made by living creature Up to this blessèd day.’ Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;— In one of which he meekly said: ‘May Carnage and Slaughter, Thy niece and thy daughter, May Rapine and Famine, Thy gorge ever cramming, Glut thee with living and dead! ‘May Death and Damnation, And Consternation, Flit up from Hell with pure intent! Slash them at Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester; Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent. ‘Let thy body-guard yeomen Hew down babes and women, 178

630

640

Shelley (from Peter Bell the Third)

And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent! When Moloch in Jewry Munched children with fury, It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.’

179

650

HENRY LUTTRELL

from Letters to Julia, in Rhyme (1820; 1822) [First published in ‘Advice to Julia, a Letter in Rhyme’ (1820); the source of the present text is the revised and expanded edition of 1822 which Luttrell renamed Let­ ters to Julia, in Rhyme. The volume consists of four letters in all. Included below are extracts from Letters 1 and 2 from the third edition, pp. 3–7; 53–56, 64–71. Henry Luttrell (1765?–1851; DNB) was born the illegitimate son of Henry Lawes, Lord Carhampton (1743–1821; DNB), a soldier and politician. He rose to be one of the most well known figures in London high society. Through his father’s influence Luttrell secured a seat for Clonmines in 1798, ‘which he subsequently commuted for a pension’.1 In 1819 Luttrell published ‘Lines Written at Ampthill Park in the Autumn of 1818’, ‘and dedicated it to Henry Vassall Fox, Lord Holland (1773–1840; DNB). This was an infinitely inferior work to his ‘Advice to Julia’ of which Thomas Moore said that it was ‘full of well bred facetiousness and sparkle’, as did Byron, who similarly commended the poem for its ‘tact and wit, and still more “good breeding”’.2 Seemingly known by everyone of importance in the social whirl of London club life, Henry Luttrell was a notable wit, raconteur and conversational­ ist. He was friend to some of the period’s greatest literary figures such as Byron, Moore, and Sir Walter Scott. Luttrell had a strong connection to the Holland House circle of Whigs, and was accordingly well known to many high society figures. The Holland House circle was a loose group of aristocratic Whigs ideologically commit­ ted to Catholic emancipation and doomed to perpetual opposition. After the collapse of the Talents Ministry in 1807, ‘Holland House could not make up in wit and learning for the fact that its host and hostess belonged to a beaten party with a barren future’.3 As a result, ‘high-whiggism, its courtier-like vocabulary progres­ sively less relevant to the politics of an expanding commercial society, tended to withdraw from debate, to leave the protection of its interests to others, and to con­ tract from a political party into an ethic of high-toned and scrupulous inaction’.4 This seems to be the case in relation to Luttrell’s satirical verse. His Letters to Julia consist of four epistles and in terms of genre are Horatian satires on the upper ech­ elons of London polite society. This is not to suggest for a moment that the Letters are apolitical; on the contrary, they comment with a good deal of barbed wit on what Luttrell sees as an essentially moribund and indeed corrupt political society. 180

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-13

Luttrell (from Letters to Julia)

Yet the overall tone of the Letters aims at dispassionate observation rather than vitu­ perative personal abuse in the Juvenalian manner. As Gary Dyer has remarked: ‘While Luttrell’s descriptions admittedly bring into the open the seedy underside of the West End, they never have enough weight behind them to inhibit the reader’s parasitical enjoyment of the book’s real subject, the leisurely life of those who like to show themselves in Hyde Park and go to clubs like Almack’s’.5 The unnamed poetic persona who offers his cousin Julia advice presents himself as urbane, disinterested, world-weary and cynical. Julia has been recently widowed. She is young, beautiful and spoilt. The poet is giving advice to his cousin on her cor­ ruption of his friend Charles. This proves to be the opening gambit in all four letters of advice and serves the poet’s purpose in that it gives him the opportunity to begin with a remonstrance before ranging widely across an assortment of issues that are social and/or political. Included below are lines 1–65 from ‘Letter I’ and lines 1–61 from ‘Letter II’. Also included from ‘Letter II’ are lines 208–337 on the correlation between Almack’s, a fashionable London club, and the state of politics as Luttrell sees it in 1822. After discussing at length the importance of club-life, Luttrell moves the discussion into the realm of politics, ironically, and indicative of the misplaced moral values of the age, making the former appear more important than the latter.]

1 2 3 4 5

DNB Ibid. William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, pp. 53–55. Ibid. Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 60.

181

LETTER I Julia, in vain, from three to four, Day after day, I haunt your door. In vain, betokening many a call, My cards1 lie scattered in your hall, Or crowd your chimney-piece by dozens. Is this the way folks use their cousins? ’Tis thus you treat me, Julia, is it? Well, well, I shan’t repeat my visit. My patience is at last o’ercome By your pert porter’s ‘not at home’. Trust me, both you and he will stare When next I’m seen in Portman-Square;2 And, since you shun me, conscience-smitten, What can’t be spoken must be written. Young, beautiful, of gentle blood, The flower of early widowhood, With Nature’s charms, and Fortune’s plenty Showered on a head of two-and-twenty, Julia, to men with hearts and eyes, Faith, you’re a tempting, glorious prize. But if more tempting still, no matter, Fair cousin, I disdain to flatter. Beauties must sometimes take jobations,3 And bear with humdrum from relations. Others, as fair as you, have fretted, First mother-spoiled, then husband-petted, At the first sound of aught sincere Grating harsh music on their ear. So listen, Julia. Truth to you, Howe’er unwelcome, must be new. And if it hurt your pride, why, let it. You want a lecture, and must get it. Long wooed, and meaning to be won, Why have you thus poor Charles undone? Say to what purpose, to what end 182

1

10

20

30

Luttrell (from Letters to Julia)

You thus coquet it with my friend? Why will you thus monopolize His words and thoughts, his ears and eyes? Why rob him of his dearest treasure In every moment of his leisure? Must pranks like these be played to prove How far a slave is gone in love Who, mastered by his head-strong passion, Adores you – till he’s out of fashion? No, never have I known a change In man so sudden and so strange; A revolution so entire In every habit and desire. Time was, he minded not a feather If it was bright or cloudy weather, Nor what Moore’s almanack4 foretold Of wind or rain, of heat or cold; But joined his cronies in the Park, ‘Fellows of likelihood and mark’, In trot or canter, on the backs Of ponies, hunters, chargers, hacks, Proud to display their riders’ graces Through all imaginable paces, From walks and ambles up to races. Or on an Andalusian barb5 Alone, in military garb, With shoulders duly braced, and back’d head, And regimental air, contracted On service in his last campaign, From overrunning France and Spain,6 Guided, with skilful, gentle force, Each motion of his managed horse.

40

50

60

LETTER II. I care not, cousin, if I hurt Your feelings: you’re a hardened flirt. Here, in a melancholy letter, Charles tells me he is used no better, And begs, in language quite pathetic, The favour of my rod poetic, 183

1

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

To lay a few more gentle lashes On haughty Julia – with two dashes. Still you exhaust each female art To make a plaything of his heart, By dealing it a see-saw measure Of hope and fear, of pain and pleasure. For shame! That hacknied, stale pretence Of coldness and indifference Is far too flimsy a disguise To cheat the most unpractised eyes. Your heart and mad-cap head, ’tis plain, Agree like antidote and bane, For though you frown upon, and flout him, You fidget, if three days without him. Why thus capricious and uneven? Oh, you’ve an oath, – ‘an oath in heaven’, Since Death’s cold fingers turned the key Of wedlock once, and set you free, Never to rivet on again The galling matrimonial chain. Such is the vow of every widow. Thus, long resolved, at last poor Dido7 Thought as her sister did, and I do, That one good husband might be reckoned A fair excuse to try a second. Chain, if you will – but wherefore galling? Why, marriage is your sex’s calling. Awhile rejoicing to be free, How soon you loath your liberty, Renounce your solitary plan, And, at the altar, cling to man! To widows is decreed by Fate An awkward, inconvenient state; A life of cheerless blank desertion, Unapt for business or diversion. Have they a law-suit? How they end it! Money? – They scarce know how to spend it. Beauty, – with ‘pulses’, we’ll suppose, ‘That riot, and with blood that glows?’ Oft are fair wives unscreened from shame E’en by a living husband’s name;

184

10

20

30

40

Luttrell (from Letters to Julia)

What, then, in conscience may be said About them, when the screen is – dead! Cousin, to give you both your due, Why may not Charles pretend to you? I own you’re handsome, rich, and young; What, then? Your lover has a tongue; Has eyes to plead their master’s passion, Is tall, not ugly, and – the fashion. Oft has that ‘unbought grace of life’ Distanced all rivals in a wife. Full many an angler with that bait Has hooked both beauty and estate. O’erpowering influence! think how far It reaches east of Temple-Bar!

50

60

... ‘Friend, I’m The Ministry, – give way’. Avaunt, Lord Viscount Castlereagh!8 You’re doubtless in the Commons’ house A mighty man, but here a mouse. This evening there was no debate Or business, and your lordship’s late. We show no favour, give no quarter Here, to your ribbon, or your garter.9 Here, for a Congress10 no one cares, Save that alone which sits up stairs’. Fair Worcester pleads with Wellington;* Valour with Beauty. ‘Hence, begone! Perform elsewhere your destined parts; One conquer kingdoms, t’ other hearts. My Lord, you’ll have enough to do; Almack’s is not like Waterloo. Awhile lay by that wreath of laurels Culled in composing Europe’s quarrels;11 Secure, the war-whoop at her door, In Britain’s cause to gather more’. – For the first time in vain, his Grace Sits down in form before the place, Finds, let him shake it to the centre,

210

220

230

* After some hesitation, on account of a late melancholy event, the author has retained this passage, since, he trusts, there is nothing in it that can be painful to the feelings of any one connected with the much lamented lady alluded to.

185

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

One fortress that he cannot enter, Though he should offer on its borders The sacrifice of half his orders. The English Duke – the Spanish Lord – The Prince of Flanders – drops his sword; Compelled at last, ere break of day, To raise the siege, and march away! Thus our fair Sovereigns ‘rule the ball’, Indulging none, and just to all. But, since no art has been invented As yet, to make us all contented, Some factious folks there are, whom mad I call, With principles unsound – nay radical, Who, by reform or revolution, Would change this happy constitution. Julia, I hope, my dear, that you Are not among the rebel crew Who swear (their fancy is so stricken With peas, asparagus, and chicken) That, if they ever get the upperHand, they’ll insist upon a supper. Nay, some have ventured to petition; Think what apostles of sedition! To rail at Congo and Bohea,12 Because, forsooth, they are but tea; Libels on London-cream to utter, And quarrel with their bread and butter. ‘How niggardly’, they cry, ‘to stoop To paltry black and green from soup! Once, every novice could obtain A hearing over iced Champagne, And claret, ev’n of second growth, Gave credit to an amorous oath. But now, such lifeless love is made On cakes, orgeat, and lemonade, That hungry women grow unkind, And men too faint to speak their mind. Tea mars all mirth, makes evenings drag, And talk grow flat, and courtship flag; Tea, mawkish beverage, is the reason Why fifty flirtings in a season Swell with ten marriages, at most, The columns of the Morning-Post.’ 186

240

250

260

270

Luttrell (from Letters to Julia)

‘Return blest days! Return ye nights Of dear, ineffable delights, When all the West, at Fashion’s call, Flocked to a Piccadilly-ball, And found their multitudes increased By strong detachments from the East. When hungry crowds, with dancing jaded, Down the great stair-case “promenaded”, (A term invented then for rushing, Squeezing and elbowing, and crushing) To feast below, ’midst blooming faces, On all the season’s delicacies. There fragrant pines, midst strawberries, grapes, And cherries, reared their graceful shapes, Sent up in April, to regale Our palates, by the Yorkshire mail; And though (since fruit, when fire has done Its best, will languish for the sun) Tasteless and flat, yet folks were lost In wonder at the sums they cost!’ ‘Then “wreathed smiles” went round, and speeches Fine, forced, and plentiful, – as peaches, And costly wines on every side Poured their bright current far and wide. Hark to the toast from many a guest Grateful, elated, and refreshed. “Here’s to our generous hostess’ health! How nobly she employs her wealth, Who, though five hundred are set down, Finds chickens’ wings for all the Town!”’* ‘What anguish the remembrance rouses! Past is that golden age of Houses. No tongue can tell the difference, no pen. Now scarce a door of one is open.– Ne’er shall we see, I’ll venture odds, Such nights and suppers of the Gods; Feasting’s now folly, fasting clever, And London’s glory gone for ever!’

280

290

300

310

* A request from someone at supper to be helped to the leg of a chicken, was, it seems, overheard by the mistress of the feast. ‘I should be very sorry indeed’, she is reported to have said, ‘if, in my house, there were not chickens’ wings enough for everyone at table’.

187

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Let them prate on.– My answer’s ready For any gentleman or lady. Too warm, my friends, your anger waxes; Consider, pray, the war and taxes. First ’twas Napoleon and the French. Now ’tis The Peace.13 – We must retrench. War was a bitter scourge and curse; Yet peace, is, somehow, ten times worse. Peace, or (as more than one division14 Has gravely voted it) transition, As commerce droops, and times grow harder, Shuts here a cellar, there a larder; By slow yet sure degrees, disables Parks, gardens, eating-rooms, and stables; Nor yet in her career relents, But mows down whole establishments. The poor, the middling, shoot a pitch More and more humble; – ev’n the rich From whose fat acres milk and honey Keep flowing in the shape of money, For lean economy produce If not a reason, an excuse. Their rates are high, their rents decrease, Their corn’s a drug;15 – ’tis all the Peace! This jade-like Peace! Say, who will father her, Unless she’s sworn to the tax-gatherer?

188

320

330

JOHN KEATS

From The Cap and Bells, or, The Jealousies (1819) [First published in Richard Monkton Milnes, ed. Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats, 2 vols, London, Edward Moxon, 1848, vol. 2, pp. 214–24, 248–51.1 John Keats’s unfinished comic experiment, The Cap and Bells, most of which was written in the final months of 1819, was the poet’s last extended work. Though it has a cast of other-worldly characters which would not seem out of place elsewhere in Keats’s poetry, the tone of the piece is markedly different from anything else in his writing. Underpinning its composition is Byron’s satirical work, in particular Don Juan. The poem was supposedly written at Charles Brown’s prompting, and for financial reasons, a literary satire intended to ride on Byron’s coat-tails. The Cap and Bells was to have been published under the pseudonym of ‘Lucy Vaughan Lloyd’, an admirer of Byron and would-be poetess from ‘Chin-a-Walk, Lambeth’ (‘Lucy’ being obviously Wordsworthian, ‘Vaughan’ being one of the poetastic anti-heroes of Gif­ ford’s The Baviad, and, possibly, ‘Lloyd’ for Coleridge’s ‘doleful egotist’). Its satire is both bookish and political (dealing with the marital troubles of the Price Regent and his wife Caroline). Throughout the satirical attack Keats uses interpolated parody to deliver its message. The chief target is Byron; The Cap and Bells is simultaneously indebted to Byron and both satirises and parodies the aristocratic poet. ‘Keats’s hos­ tility to Byron went deep’, writes Christopher Ricks, and ‘the satirical fantasy ‘The Cap and Bells’, gets most of what energy it has from a drawling contempt for Byron’.2 In the portrayal of Elfinan, the fairy king, there are satirical glances at Byron’s arrogance, sexual cupidity and marital difficulties. And, as W. Jackson Bate writes, Keats employs parody of Byron’s notorious ‘Fare thee well! and if for ever’ to make his point, ‘using direct quotation for burlesque’.3 If Byron is to be identified with Elfinan, then Keats leaves us in little doubt whom the primary model for his advisor Crafticant might be. Echoing the anony­ mous 1817 caricature of Southey, ‘A Poet Mounted on the Court Pegasus’, Crafticant is twice described as ‘Pegasus’ and in his own verse describes the ‘Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown’s back’ who bellows a Prothalamion at the Princess (perhaps a reference to Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, The Lay of the Laureate (1816), which was written for the marriage of Princess Charlotte). He is given poetry that 189

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-14

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

clearly parodies Southey’s oriental verse, The Curse of Kehama, with its ethereal flights and exotic eastern scenery, most particularly: From two till half-past, dusky way we made, Above the plains of Gobi, – desert, bleak; Beheld afar off, in the hooded shade Of darkness, a great mountain (strange to speak), Spouting, from forth its sulphur-baken peak, A fan-shap’d burst of blood-red arrowy fire.

Notwithstanding the identification with Southey, Keats also uses Crafticant to mock the slow-witted prosiness of Wordsworth: Show him a mouse’s tail, and he will guess, With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse; Show him a garden, and with speed no less, He’ll surmise sagely of a dwelling house.

Though his perhaps over-precise allegorical interpretation is not without its decri­ ers,4 Robert Gittings suggests that ‘Keats’s satire ranged Byron and Hunt on one side and the Lake Poets on the other, with Hazlitt as a sardonic outsider’.5 Hum, author of ‘Tit-bits for Phoebus’ (a title which one might imagine Blackwood’s invent­ ing) is Hunt, Gittings argues, and, perhaps less convincingly, he views Eban as a veiled portrayal of Hazlitt. Gittings sees Hum’s description of the fairy embassy as parodic of The Story of Rimini and argues that the belaboured emphasis upon the word ‘now’ in stanza LXII (which lead Elfinan to exclaim ‘Those nows you man­ aged in a special style’) has a particular Huntian resonance: ‘It is in fact, the style of Hunt’s The Story of Rimini, and a direct parody of passages when the weddingembassy arrives in that poem too: And now the huntsman shows the lessening train, Now the squire-carver, and the chamberlain, And now his banner comes, and now his shield ...

While Hunt’s scene reaches its bathetic climax with the moment: When some one’s voice, as if it knew not how To check itself, exclaims, “The prince! now now!”’6

The use of the Spenserian to comic effect, the jovial handling of the faery and the not infrequent use of material and characters borrowed from Keats’s previous work, ‘The Eve of St Mark’ most notably, also introduces an element of self-parody. This may testify to the poet’s thrifty reluctance to waste materials not intended for publication, but a case might be made to see The Cap and Bells as the disappointed poet turning upon the preoccupations of his own previous writings. Indeed, Bate goes so far as to call this aspect of The Cap and Bells an ‘almost savage parody of his earlier work’.7 Keats did nothing in parody or satire remotely the equal of Byron and The Cap and Bells is not without its flaws (perhaps understandably, given that it is an incomplete, experimental poem written in a time of ill-health and emotional dis­ tress). Nonetheless, it is a work that repays critical attention. Keats’s parody and 190

Keats (from The Cap and Bells)

satire tends to be neglected or dismissed,8 but perhaps his work in comic genres is worth more attention than it is usually accorded.]

1 2 3 4

5 6 7

8

Lines 217–56 appeared in The Indicator, 23 August 1820. Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 74. W. Jackson Bate, John Keats, London, Chatto and Windus, 1963, p. 624. Miriam Allott, for instance, insists that the poem is purely a political rather than a literary allegory, arguing that Gittings ‘implausibly interpret[s] the poem as an abortive satire on the rivalry between the Lake Poets and the Cockney School’ (The Poems of John Keats, ed. Miriam Allott, London, Longman, 1970, p. 702). Whilst Gittings is over-schematic, there is no good reason why The Cap and Bells should not be both literary and political satire. Robert Gittings, John Keats, London, Heinemann, 1968, p. 372. Gittings, p. 372. Bate, op. cit. p. 624. Cf. Also Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, London, Secker and Warburg, 1963, p. 355: ‘For no apparent reason Keats began throwing in material from his earlier poems, chiefly ‘The Eve of St Mark’, and his satire ends like a parody of the poet he had been’. As does his jocular bawdry. ‘The Cap and Bells’ poem is little admired: ‘the poorest of all Keats’s poems, leaving aside the juvenile verses and the numerous impromptu ones’, declares W. Jackson Bate (op. cit., p. 623). Cf. also Guy Murchie, The Spirit of Place in Keats: Sketches of Persons and Places known by Him, and his Reaction to Them, London, Newman Neame, 1955, p. 192: ‘As great poetry from a great poet this final poem does not amount to much’.

191

I In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,1 There stood, or hover’d, tremulous in the air, A faery city, ’neath the potent rule Of Emperor Elfinan;2 fam’d ev’rywhere For love of mortal women, maidens fair, Whose lips were solid, whose soft hands were made Of a fit mould and beauty, ripe and rare, To pamper his slight wooing, warm yet staid: He lov’d girls smooth as shades, but hated a mere shade. II This was a crime forbidden by the law; And all the priesthood of his city wept, For ruin and dismay they well foresaw, If impious prince no bound or limit kept, And faery Zendervester3 overstept; They wept, he sin’d, and still he would sin on, They dreamt of sin, and he sin’d while they slept; In vain the pulpit thunder’d at the throne, Caricature was vain, and vain the tart lampoon.4 III Which seeing, his high court of parliament Laid a remonstrance at his Highness’ feet,5 Praying his royal senses to content Themselves with what in faery land was sweet, Befitting best that shade with shade should meet: Whereat, to calm their fears, he promis’d soon From mortal tempters all to make retreat, – Aye, even on the first of the new moon, An immaterial wife to espouse as heaven’s boon. IV Meantime he sent a fluttering embassy To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign,6 To half beg, and half demand, respectfully, The hand of his fair daughter Bellanaine;7 An audience had, and speeching done, they gain Their point, and bring the weeping bride away; 192

1

10

20

30

Keats (from The Cap and Bells)

Whom, with but one attendant, safely lain Upon their wings, they bore in bright array, While little harps were touch’d by many a lyric fay. V As in old pictures tender cherubim A child’s soul thro’ the sapphir’d canvas bear, So, thro’ a real heaven, on they swim With the sweet princess on her plumag’d lair, Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair; And so she journey’d, sleeping or awake, Save when, for healthful exercise and air, She chose to promener à l’aile,8 or take A pigeon’s somerset, for sport or change’s sake.9 VI ‘Dear Princess, do not whisper me so loud’, Quoth Corallina, nurse and confidant, ‘Do not you see there, lurking in a cloud, Close at your back, that sly old Crafticant?10 He hears a whisper plainer than a rant: Dry up your tears, and do not look so blue; He’s Elfinan’s great state-spy militant, His running, lying, flying foot-man too, – Dear mistress, let him have no handle against you!’ VII ‘Show him a mouse’s tail, and he will guess, With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse; Show him a garden, and with speed no less, He’ll surmise sagely of a dwelling house,11 And plot, in the same minute, how to chouse The owner out of it; show him a –’ ‘Peace! Peace! nor contrive thy mistress’ ire to rouse!’ Return’d the Princess, ‘my tongue shall not cease Till from this hated match I get a free release.’12 VIII ‘Ah, beauteous mortal!’ ‘Hush!’ quoth Coralline, ‘Really you must not talk of him, indeed’. ‘You hush!’ replied the mistress, with a shine Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed In stouter hearts than nurse’s fear and dread: ’Twas not the glance itself made nursey flinch, But of its threat she took the utmost heed; 193

40

50

60

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch, Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch. IX So she was silenc’d, and fair Bellanaine, Writhing her little body with ennui, Continued to lament and to complain, That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be Ravish’d away far from her dear countree; That all her feelings should be set at naught, In trumping up this match so hastily, With lowland blood; and lowland blood she thought Poison, as every staunch true-born Imaian ought. X Sorely she griev’d, and wetted three or four White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears, But not for this cause; – alas! she had more Bad reasons for her sorrow, as appears In the fam’d memoirs of a thousand years, Written by Crafticant, and published By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers Who rak’d up ev’ry fact against the dead,) In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal’s Head.13

70

80

90

XI Where, after a long hypercritic howl Against the vicious manners of the age He goes on to expose, with heart and soul, What vice in this or that year was the rage, Backbiting all the world in every page; With special strictures on the horrid crime, (Section’d and subsection’d with learning sage,) Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime To kiss a mortal’s lips, when such were in their prime. XII Turn to the copious index, you will find Somewhere in the column, headed letter B, The name of Bellanaine, if you’re not blind; Then pray refer to the text, and you will see An article made up of calumny Against this highland princess, rating her For giving way, so over fashionably, To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e’er could stir. 194

100

Keats (from The Cap and Bells)

XIII There he says plainly that she lov’d a man! That she around him flutter’d, flirted, toy’d, Before her marriage with great Elfinan; That after marriage too, she never joy’d In husband’s company, but still employ’d Her wits to ’scape away to Angle-land; Where liv’d the youth, who worried and annoy’d Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fann’d To such a dreadful blaze, her side would scorch her hand. XIV But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle To waiting-maids, and bed-room coteries, Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle. Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease, Let us resume his subject if you please: For it may comfort and console him much To rhyme and syllable his miseries; Poor Elfinan! whose cruel fate was such, He sat and curs’d a bride he knew he could not touch. XV Soon as (according to his promises) The bridal embassy had taken wing, And vanish’d, bird-like, o’er the suburb trees, The Emperor, empierc’d with the sharp sting Of love, retired, vex’d and murmuring Like any drone shut from the fair bee-queen, Into his cabinet, and there did fling His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen, And damn’d his House of Commons, in complete chagrin.14 XVI ‘I’ll trounce some of the members’, cried the Prince, ‘I’ll put a mark against some rebel names, I’ll make the Opposition-benches wince, I’ll show them very soon, to all their shames, What ’tis to smother up a Prince’s flames; That ministers should join in it, I own, Surprises me! – they too at these high games! Am I an Emperor? Do I wear a crown? Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown!15

195

110

120

130

140

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

XVII I’ll trounce ’em! – there’s the square-cut chancellor, His son shall never touch that bishopric;16 And for the nephew of old Palfior,17 I’ll show him that his speech has made me sick, And give the colonelcy to Phalaric;18 The tiptoe marquis, moral and gallant, Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick;19 And for the Speaker’s second cousin’s aunt, She sha’n’t be maid of honour, – by heaven that she sha’n’t! XVIII I’ll shirk the Duke of A.; I’ll cut his brother; I’ll give no garter20 to his eldest son; I won’t speak to his sister or his mother! The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run; But how in the world can I contrive to stun That fellow’s voice, which plagues me worse than any, That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun, Who sets down ev’ry sovereign as a zany, – That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany?21 XIX Monstrous affair! Pshaw! pah! what ugly minx Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride? Alas! my wearied heart within me sinks, To think that I must be so near allied To a cold dullard fay, – ah, woe betide! Ah, fairest of all human loveliness! Sweet Bertha!22 what crime can it be to glide About the fragrant pleatings of thy dress, Or kiss thine eyes, or count thy locks, tress after tress?’ XX So said, one minute’s while his eyes remain’d Half lidded, piteous, languid, innocent; But, in a wink, their splendour they regain’d, Sparkling revenge with amorous fury blent. Love thwarted in bad temper oft has vent: He rose, he stampt his foot, he rang the bell, And order’d some death-warrants to be sent For signature: – somewhere the tempest fell, As many a poor felon does not live to tell.

196

150

160

170

180

Keats (from The Cap and Bells)

XXI ‘At the same time Eban’,23 – (this was his page, A fay of colour, slave from top to toe, Sent as a present, while yet under age, From the Viceroy of Zanguebar, – wise, slow, His speech, his only words were ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ But swift of look, and foot, and wing was he, –) ‘At the same time, Eban, this instant go To Hum24 the soothsayer, whose name I see Among the fresh arrivals in our empery. XXII Bring Hum to me! But stay – here, take my ring, The pledge of favour, that he not suspect Any foul play, or awkward murdering, Tho’ I have bowstrung many of his sect; Throw in a hint, that if he should neglect One hour, the next shall see him in my grasp, And the next after that shall see him neck’d, Or swallow’d by my hunger-starved asp, – And mention (‘tis as well) the torture of the wasp’. XXIII These orders given, the Prince, in half a pet, Let o’er the silk his propping elbow slide, Caught up his little legs, and, in a fret, Fell on the sofa on his royal side. The slave retreated backwards, humble-eyed, And with a slave-like silence clos’d the door, And to old Hum thro’ street and alley hied; He ‘knew the city,’ as we say, of yore, And for short cuts and turns, was nobody knew more.

190

200

… [Crafticant reads from his diary.] LXXXIII ‘And “Bellanaine for ever!’ shouted they, While that fair Princess, from her winged chair, Bow’d low with high demeanour, and, to pay Their new-blown loyalty with guerdon fair, Still emptied, at meet distance, here and there, A plenty horn of jewels.25 And here I (Who wish to give the devil her due) declare Against that ugly piece of calumny, Which calls them Highland pebble-stones not worth a fly. 197

740

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

LXXXIV ‘Still “Bellanaine!” they shouted, while we glide ’Slant to a light Ionic portico, The city’s delicacy, and the pride Of our Imperial Basilic;26 a row Of lords and ladies, on each hand, make show Submissive of knee-bent obeisance, All down the steps; and, as we enter’d, lo! The strangest sight – the most unlook’d-for chance – All things turn’d topsy-turvy in a devil’s dance. LXXXV ’Stead of his anxious Majesty and court At the open doors, with wide saluting eyes, Congées and scape-graces27 of every sort, And all the smooth routine of gallantries, Was seen, to our immoderate surprise, A motley crowd thick gather’d in the hall, Lords, scullions, deputy-scullions, with wild cries Stunning the vestibule from wall to wall, Where the Chief Justice on his knees and hands doth crawl. LXXXVI Counts of the palace, and the state purveyor Of moth’s-down, to make soft the royal beds, The Common Council and my fool Lord Mayor Marching a-row, each other slipshod treads; Powder’d bag-wigs and ruffy-tuffy heads Of cinder wenches meet and soil each other; Toe crush’d with heel ill-natur’d fighting breeds, Frill-rumpling elbows brew up many a bother, And fists in the short ribs keep up the yell and pother. LXXXVII A Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown’s back, Rode to the Princess swift with spurring heels, And close into her face, with rhyming clack, Began a Prothalamion;28 – she reels, She falls, she faints! while laughter peals Over her woman’s weakness. “Where!” cried I, “Where is his Majesty?” No person feels Inclin’d to answer; wherefore instantly I plung’d into the crowd to find him or to die.

198

750

760

770

780

Keats (from The Cap and Bells)

LXXXVIII Jostling my way I gain’d the stairs, and ran To the first landing, where, incredible! I met, far gone in liquor, that old man, That vile impostor Hum, –’ So far so well, – For we have prov’d the Mago never fell Down stairs on Crafticanto’s evidence; And therefore duly shall proceed to tell, Plain in our own original mood and tense, The sequel of this day, though labour ’tis immense!’

199

790

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

From Don Juan (1819–24) [The ‘Dedication’ was first printed in The Works of Lord Byron, London, John Murray, 1832–33, vol. XV, pp. 101–08. Canto XI was first published along with Cantos IX and X in Don Juan, London, John Hunt, pp. 135–40. Don Juan is Byron’s magnum opus; it is also a masterpiece of European literature. Left unfinished at his death, in total the poem contains sixteen complete cantos, and a fragment of the seventeenth canto consisting of fourteen stanzas. At its most superficial level the poem is concerned with the picaresque adventures of its epony­ mous hero. As Juan travels across Europe in the course of the poem, Byron makes us aware through trenchant satire the extent to which the modern world has fallen. In the debate that raged about the moral probity of Don Juan once the first cantos had been published, the author’s intentions are clearly expressed. With an eye on posterity Byron wrote in his journal: Don Juan ‘will be known by and by for what it is intended a satire on abuses of the present states of Society – and not an eulogy of vice’.1 Don Juan tracks the development of Juan’s character against the backdrop of European politics in general and British politics in particular, what Byron referred to as ‘the damned Cant and Toryism of the day’2. In the process the poem offers comment and analysis on man in varying states of nature. As he flees in exile from polite Spanish society, Don Juan lives in ‘a bucolic natural state’ on an island, ‘an eastern despotic state in canto 5 … an absolutist court in Catherine’s Russia’ and ‘commercial oligarchy in the English cantos’.3 Below is a complete text of the ‘Ded­ ication’ and stanzas 76–87 from Canto XI. As well as being a highly topical public document, Don Juan is a deeply personal and bitter reflection on the failure of Byron’s marriage to Annabelle Milbanke, and an excoriating attack on those who participated on her side in the separation proceedings and attendant scandal in 1816. The target in the ‘Dedication’ is once again the Lake poets, Wordsworth, Col­ eridge and Southey, all of whom were the regular butt of Byron’s satire for repudiating the radicalism of their youth and in Byron’s view becoming mouthpieces for the Tory establishment.4 In a letter to Crabb Robinson referring to The Quarterly Review’s hounding of Shelley and its criticism of The Revolt of Islam, Wordsworth wrote to Henry Crabbe Robinson: ‘You will probably see [William] Gifford, the 200

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-15

Byron (from Don Juan)

Editor of The Quarterly Review; tell him from me, if you think proper, that every trueborn Englishman will regard the pretensions of the Review to a character of a faith­ ful defender of the institutions of the country, as hollow, while it leaves that infamous publication Don Juan unbranded … What avails it to hunt down Shelley whom few read, and leave Byron untouched? I am persuaded that Don Juan will do more harm to the English character, than anything of our time’.5 If Crabb passed on Words­ worth’s request, Gifford, a personal friend of Byron, was unmoved. In the ‘Dedication’ Wordsworth is lampooned for his pretentiousness and Coleridge berated for his obscurity. Of the ‘Lakers’ it is Southey, however, who receives Byron’s most biting personal satire; the consequence of his fury – a ‘gross calumny’ of Southey relating to him, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont: ‘the son of a bitch … said that Shelley and I “had forged a league of incest.”’ Don Juan proved to be one of the most contentious poems of the Romantic period and created a storm of protest, especially in regard to its supposed lack of moral probity. Gifford and John Cam Hobhouse, friends of Byron both, advised Murray against publication.6]

1 Marchand, ed. BLJ, 10, p. 68. 2 Marchand, ed. BLJ, 6, pp. 76–77. 3 See James Chandler, England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 381. 4 Byron reluctantly withheld the ‘Dedication’ when the first edition of Cantos I-II was pub­ lished on 15 July 1819. Murray and Hobhouse made other unauthorised cuts. The text above is substantially indebted to that prepared by McGann, BCPW, 5. 5 ‘Wordsworth to Crabb Robinson’, in Andrew Rutherford, ed. Byron: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge, 1970, pp. 163–64. The letter has been dated by Sir Charles Firth, arguing from internal evidence, as having been written in January 1820 (ibid., p. 163). 6 Rutherford, ed. Byron: Critical Heritage, pp. 159–60, 161.

201

Dedication 1 B OB SOUTHEY ! You’re a poet – poet Laureate, And Representative of all the race; Although ’tis true you turn’d out a Tory at Last, – yours has lately been a common case: – And now, my epic renegade! What are ye at, With all the Lakers in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons to my eye Like ‘four and twenty blackbirds in a pie; 2 ‘Which pie being open’d, they began to sing’ – (This old song and simile holds good) ‘A dainty dish to set before the King’, Or Regent, who admires such kind of food. And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumber’d with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation – I wish he would explain his Explanation.1 3 You, Bob! Are rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only Blackbird in the dish; And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying dish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture, quite adry Bob!2 4 And Wordsworth, in a rather long ‘Excursion’, (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages) Has given a sample from the vasty version Of his new system to perplex the sages:3 ’Tis poetry – at least by his assertion, And may appear so when the dogstar rages;4 202

1

10

20

30

Byron (from Don Juan)

And he who understands it would be able To add a story to the Tower of Babel. 5 You, Gentleman by dint of long seclusion From better company have kept your own At Keswick, and through still continued fusion Of one another’s minds at last have grown To deem as a most logical conclusion That Poesy has wreaths for you alone; There is a narrowness in such a notion Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.

40

6 I would not imitate the petty thought, Nor coin5 my self-love to so base a vice For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price. You have your salary – was’t it for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.6 You’re shabby fellows – true – but poets still, And duly seated on the immortal hill. 7 You bays may hide the baldness of your brows, Perhaps some virtuous blushes – let them go, To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs, And for the fame you would engross below The field is universal, and allows Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow – Scott, Rogers, Moore, and Crabbe,7 will try ’Gainst you the question with posterity. 8 For me who, wandering with pedestrian Muses, Contend not with you on the winged steed, I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses, The fame you envy, and the skill you need; And recollect a poet nothing loses In giving to his brethren their full meed Of merit, and complaint of present days Is not the certain path to future praise. 9 He that reserves his laurels for posterity (Who does not often claim the bright reversion?)8 203

50

60

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Has generally no great crop to spare it, he Being only injured by his own assertion; And although here and there some glorious rarity Arise, like Titan from the sea’s immersion, The major part of such appellants go To – God knows where – for no one else can know. 10 If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,9 Milton appeal’d to the Avenger, Time, If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs, And makes the word ‘Miltonic’ mean ‘sublime,’ He deign’d not to belie his soul in songs, Nor turn his very talent to a crime – He did not loathe the sire to laud the son, But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

70

80

11 Think’st thou, could he, the blind Old Man, arise Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, Or be alive again – again all hoar With time and trials, and those helpless eyes And heartless daughters, worn, and pale, and poor, Would he adore a sultan? He obey The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?10 12 Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,11 And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferr’d to gorge upon a sister-shore; The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want, With just enough of talent, and no more, To lengthen fetters by another fix’d, And offer poison long already mix’d. 13 An orator of such set trash of phrase Ineffably, legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes – all nations – condescend to smile: Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,12 That turns and turns, to give the world a notion Of endless torments and perpetual motion. 204

90

100

Byron (from Don Juan)

14 A bungler even in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are still afraid, States to be curb’d, and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or congress to be made – Cobbling at manacles for all mankind – A tinkering slavemaker who mends old chains, With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains. 15 If we may judge of matter by the mind, Emasculated to the marrow, It Hath but two objects – how to serve and bind, Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit; Eutropius13 of its many masters – blind To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit – Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice, Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

110

120

16 Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds? For I will never feel them – Italy! Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds Beneath the lie this state-thing breathed o’er thee; Thy clanking chain, and Erin’s yet green wounds, Have voices – tongues to cry aloud for me. Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still, And Southey lives to sing them very ill. 17 Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate In honest, simple verse, this song to you; And if in flattering strains I do not predicate, ’Tis that I still retain my ‘buff and blue’.14 My politics, as yet, are all to educate, Apostasy’s so fashionable too, To keep one creed’s a task quite Herculean, Is it not so, my Tory ultra-Julian?15

205

130

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Canto XI LXXVI ‘Where is the world’, cries Young,16 ‘at eighty?’ Where The World in which a man was born? Alas! Where is the world of eight years past? ’Twas there – I look for it – ’tis gone, a Globe of Glass! Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere A silent change dissolves the glittering mass. Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings, And dandies, all are gone on the wind’s wings. LXXVII Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows: Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell: Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan,17 all those Who bound the bar or senate in their spell? Where is the unhappy Queen18 in all her woes? And where the daughter,19 whom the Isles loved well? Where are those martyred Saints the Five per Cents?20 And where – oh where the devil are the Rents!

10

LXXVIII Where’s Brummell? Dished. Where’s Long Pole Wellsley?22 Diddled. Where’s Whitbread?23 Romilly?24 Where’s George the Third? Where is his will? (That’s not so soon unriddled.) 20 And where is ‘Fum’25 the fourth, our ‘royal bird?’ Gone down it seems to Scotland, to be fiddled Unto by Sawney’s26 violin, we have heard: ‘Caw me, caw thee’ – for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching. 21

LXXIX Where is Lord This? And where my Lady That? The Honourable Mistresses and Misses? Some laid aside like an old opera hat, Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is An evolution oft performed of late). Where are the Dublin shouts and – London hisses? Where are the Grenvilles?27 Turned as usual. Where My friend the Whigs? Exactly where they were. LXXX Where are the Lady Carolines and Franceses?28 Divorced or doing thereanent.29 Ye annals 206

30

Byron (from Don Juan)

So brilliant, where the lists of routs and dances is, Thou Morning Post, sole record of the pannels Broken in carriages, and all the phantasies Of fashion, – say what streams now fill the channels? Some die, some fly, some languish on the Continent, Because the times have hardly left then one tenant.

40

LXXXI Some who once set their caps at cautious Dukes, Have taken up at length with younger brothers: Some heiresses have bit at sharpers’ hooks; Some maids have been made wives, some merely mothers; Others have lost their fresh and fairy looks: In short, the list of alterations bothers: There’s little strange in this, but something strange is The unusual quickness of these common changes. LXXXII Talk not of seventy years as age! In seven I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to The humblest individual under heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through. I knew that naught was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable, without being new: Nought’s permanent among the human race, Except the Whigs not getting into place. LXXXIII I have seen Napoleon,30 who seemed quite a Jupiter, Shrink to a Saturn. I have seen a Duke31 (No matter which) turn politician stupider, If that can well be, than his wooden look. But it is time that I should hoist my ‘blue Peter,’32 And sail for a new theme:- I have seen – and shook To see it – the King hissed, and then carest; But don’t pretend to settle which was best. LXXXIV I have seen the landholders without a rap – I have seen Joanna Southcote33 – I have seen The House of Commons turned to a tax-trap34 – I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen35 – I have seen crowns worn instead of a fools-cap – I have seen a Congress doing all that’s mean36 – I have seen some nations like o’erloaded asses Kick off their burthens – meaning the high classes. 207

50

60

70

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

LXXXV I have seen small poets, and great prosers, and Interminable – not eternal – speakers – I have seen the Funds at war with house and land – I’ve seen the Country Gentleman turn squeakers37 – I have seen the people ridden o’er like sand By slaves on horseback38 – I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for ‘thin potations’ by John Bull39 – I have seen John half detect himself a fool. – LXXXVI But Carpe diem,’40 Juan, Carpe, carpe!’ To-morrow sees another race as gay And transient, devoured by the same harpy. ‘Life’s a poor player’,41 then ‘play out the play, Ye villains!’ and above all keep a sharp eye Much less on what you do than what you say: Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but always what you see. LXXXVII But how shall I relate in other Cantos Of what befell our hero in the land, Which ’tis the common cry and lie to vaunt as A moral country? But I hold my hand – For I disdain to write an Atalantis;42 But ’tis as well at once to understand, You are not a moral people, and you know it Without the aid of too sincere a poet.

208

80

90

ANON.

from Kouli Khan, or, the Progress of Error (1820) [First published in Kouli Khan, or, the Progress of Error, London, William Benbow, 1820, pp. 1–22. Kouli Khan purports to tell the story of a tyrannical eastern potentate and the problems he faces when he tries to divorce a troublesome wife who is popular with his people. The analogy between topical events in England in 1820 is obvious. In allegorical form the text depicts the Prince Regent’s vexed relationship with his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, the activities of the Milan Commission, and George IV’s botched attempt to discredit Caroline with the London masses who took up her cause because of their hatred for George himself. In this respect Kouli Khan takes its place alongside Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus, and poems by Leigh Hunt, William Hone, and George Cruikshank, amongst many others produced in 1819–21.1 Kouli Khan makes no pretension towards literary merit. It is a political pamphlet in verse steeped in the popular politics of the day and is a sprightly and engaging poem which is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. There is little in the way of allusion and the verse is for the most part rough doggerel metre . Never­ theless, it captures the spirit of popular disapproval regarding George’s selfindulgent actions in a time when hardship and austerity was the common lot of the nation’s population. As E. A. Smith has noted, George’s reputation in the country in the years following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 was at an all time low. He ‘came to be associated in the popular culture of the time with the repressive acts of the central and local authorities and the refusal of ministers and Parliament to make concessions to popular demands or modify the discriminatory system of taxation which bore most heavily on the poorer sections of society’.2 As a result of this he was mercilessly pilloried in the popular press and in pamphlet polemic. Caro­ line’s cause was taken up by the more radical elements in the press during the period. Broadsheet ballad, lampoon and pasquinade all gleefully took up the cause of the queen. Kouli Khan is a representative example of this popular cultural phenomenon.]

209

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-16

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2 1 For examples by Cruikshank, and Hone, see Volume 3, pp. 203–34, and in this volume, Oedipus Tyrannus, pp. 152–62. 2 Smith, George IV, p. 172.

210

R EPLETE with good manners, and just Come of age, K OULI K HAN makes his entry on life’s public stage; But soon he’s surrounded by knaves, pimps, and sharpers; His good manners he drops, his good sense he barters; Forgets the Instruction receiv’d in his youth; Loses sight both at once, of religion and truth; To fell dissipation devotes his whole time, And in orgies, nocturnal, consumes all his prime;1 ’Till his health quite impair’d, and quite empty his purse, Owing almost a Million of Debts, which is worse; Perplex’d and sore troubled with duns and Vexation, He curses his Follies, and vows Reformation. At length, with much promising, swearing, and praying, His conduct in future he’d take better care in, By the friends of his Father, a promise was made, If he’d take him a wife, why, his debts should be paid: So, to have his debts cancell’d, he married a wife,2 And, while honey-moon lasted, he led a new life. It was thought he reform would, when once he was wed; But, alas! reformation ne’er enter’d his head. He return’d in two months, to his old course of life; Got himself a new mistress;3 neglected his wife; E’en left her, and then, not content with desertion, Tried to sully her fame by a groundless aspersion; To conceal his own Guilt, would have made it appear That she was unchaste, though so virtuous and fair.4 But, her innocence prov’d, she his malice defied, And her Judges were men who had truth on their side. Her accusers, confounded, with shame and dismay, To their Caverns of Darkness, slunk, conscious, away. S TILL intent on his follies, and bent upon vice, Disregarding instruction, neglecting advice; K OULI K HAN , now forgetting his rank and his name, Devises new methods to publish his shame; And the Woman he vow’d to love and protect, Treats with scorn and contempt, and increasing neglect, The Child of her bosom, away from her tears,5 211

1

10

20

30

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

In spite of her earnest entreaties and prayers; And, by mean machinations, compels her to roam6 Unprotected, a wanderer, far from her home; Pursues her with Spies, to insult and oppress her, And exults in the schemes that were form’d to distress her.

40

HE thus having treated the wife he should cherish; And driven her forth, like an outcast, to perish, Adds insult to insult, and takes to caress, In her place, to console him, a fat M—ch——ss;7 With whom, while indulging in amorous play, Like Pindar’s8 ‘sweet singers’ thus carols away. I’ve conquer’d, I’ve conquer’d, The Day is my own; She whom I abhorr’d, is to Foreign parts gone. There, there, let her wander, Forsaken, forlorn, And to Persia’s fair shores May she never return.

50

… Well, we’ve manag’d it neatly, We’ve shewn her some sport; Tho’ she prov’d she was virtuous, We drove her from C---t.9

60

Of her Bairn10 we bereav’d her, Then sent her to roam, Where we’ve Spies and Informers As well as at home. Now H---d,11 dear H---d, She’s gone far away; In pleasures we’ll revel, For who shall say nay? And in love and in mirth Forget ev’ry care, Nor Y-rm--th,12 nor Fame’s mouth, Nor any mouth fear. His daughter dies, the fairest of the fair,13 But yet his bosom’s unoppress’d with care; He drinks and revels just as heretofore, 212

70

Anon. (from Kouli Khan)

And runs the same mad courses o’er and o’er. Oft, of Di---ce,14 revolving some new schemes, He nightly of another help-mate dreams. Pleas’d with the thought, yet somewhat still in doubt, How such a project might be brought about, He forthwith calls a grand Divan,15 to try On their support how far he may rely; And, having found them ready to his mind, And to his secret purposes inclin’d, He orders gives, in furtherance of his plan, To send a special mission to Mi--n.16 T HIS said special mission is now gone abroad, To the land of hypocrisy, lying, and fraud;17 Where the midnight assassin, the vilest of men, May receive absolution, and murder again; Where all crimes may be pardon’d, and money will buy A full dispensation to perjure and lie. Here the special commissioners lurk all to find Informers and witnesses just to their mind; Lying evidence cull, from no one knows who, Seal it up in Green Bags, and indorse it as true.18 H IS Sire expires,19 and K OULI K HAN Becomes the Chieftain of his Clan; But, as new honours round him rise, New schemes to be divorc’d he tries; For she, the object of his hate, Has claims upon his new estate; Therefore immediate KOULI K HAN Assembles round him his Divan, And with much courtesy and grace, He thus makes known to them his case. M OST noble Persians! Pillars of his state! I thank ye all For this attendance; And crave your kind attention To what I am about to mention. I hold ye all my friends, And likewise know— That upon all occasions, You’ve seconded my inclinations. ’Twas kind in ye: to do it— 213

80

90

100

110

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And, for the same, Receive my hearty thanks. Your predecessors, fourscore years20 ago, When I was sadly deep in debt, For at that time At such a rate, I gold and silver squander’d, That had I had the world For my estate, I should have spent it all. Free soul, say you, And so in faith I was, And you shall find me so Ere I have done.

120

130

… You know what schemes were tried To blast her fame; And though she foil’d them And preserv’d her name; Her darling was torn from her; And she sent forth, To wander like an outcast From her home:21 And further more than this, Were Spies to watch her.

140

But things are chang’d, I am not what I was, No more is she. She has new rights acquir’d and will no doubt Dare to assert them. This must not be permitted: For, should she land once more On this our coast, The Swinish Multitude22 would hail her Q---n;23 And there’s a ‘stubborn virtue’ in those wretches That won’t be tamper’d with.

150

Much more on this important subject I could say Were it expedient; But for the present I pray you let this Green Bag24 For me to speak; In it you will find ample information. 214

Anon. (from Kouli Khan)

A ND now much debate rose amongst the Divan, What was best to be done with the wife of the Khan. The Mufti,25 who look’d for preferment and honour, Her, call’d Unbeliever, so would not pray for her; And some who were fond of the loaves and the fishes, Her head off would cut, to increase their own riches; While other consider’d ’twould be the best course, To please K OULI K HAN , and procure a di---ce. But, alas! by the laws of the Persians,26 ’twas said, They could grant no di---ce, neither cut off her head; ‘Twas therefore resolv’d, by the tools of the Khan, Some slight alteration to make in their plan; To compromise with her, grant her a Douceur, To forego her own title for that of a Wh--e.27 The proposals with just indignation were read, And this answer directly return’d, it is said; ‘Tell the Khan, that his wife, though he dares to disown her, Will perish before she will live in dishonour; That her motto, whate’er he may do in despite Of her cause, shall be always, for God and her Right; That her honour she prizes too highly to sell, And in aid of her rights will exert herself well: Nay, further, to prove and make good her assertion, She’ll defend both the one and the other in person; And though K OULI K HAN and his Courtiers reject her, Still truth’s on her side, and the laws will protect her’. T HIS answer to Kouli immediately flew, Which caused consternation in him and his crew: But ere they had time to recover their fright, To wipe Kouli clean, and put matters to right, To their utter dismay his Sultana appear’d, And insisted her cause should be speedily heard; That her fame they’d traduc’d, while she was from home, And now for redress at their hands she was come. That they’d dar’d to insult her for some private ends; But, now for such insult, she demanded amends. They star’d on each other, for what could they do? Well knowing the whole she asserted was true; But yet, if they forfeited Kouli’s good graces, They would loose all their pensions, and likewise their places; So they though ’twould be best, since she’d take no denial, From the guts of the Green Bag to bring her to trial; 215

160

170

180

190

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And in the mean time, as a matter of course, Prepare a Black B--l for to ground a Di---ce.28

216

200

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

From The Vision of Judgment (1822) [First published in The Liberal, 15 October 1822 under the pseudonym ‘Quevedo Revivivus’ without Byron’s preface and corrections. The second edition appeared corrected and with the original preface in The Liberal, 1 January 1823, pp. 5–39; here pp. 6–8, 16–20, 35–39. Most of Byron’s poem was probably written between 20 September and 4 Octo­ ber 1821. Byron sent the manuscript of the poem plus the prose preface to Murray with instructions to pass both on to John Hunt for publication in the first number of The Liberal, where the poem duly appeared on 15 October 1822, minus the pref­ ace and some minor corrections that Byron had made to the proofs. Byron was incensed with Murray, and as a result, says McGann, Byron ‘broke definitively’ with him thereafter.1 The extracts below have been chosen to preserve as much as possi­ ble the narrative line of the poem. In order to grasp fully the extent of Byron’s anger with Southey the vituperative preface is reproduced in its entirety, minus its postscript. The Vision of Judgment is Byron’s response to Robert Southey’s apotheosis of the recently deceased George III, A Vision of Judgment (1821). Like Dryden’s satire against Thomas Shadwell, Byron’s Vision dealt a blow to Southey’s reputation as a poet from which he has not yet fully recovered. In truth the preface to A Vision of Judgment, without the poem appended to it, would have attracted opprobrium from Southey’s enemies. He lauds the House of Hanover generally as an institution to which the country owes much, and George the Third in particular as a monarch, ‘under whose government the military renown of Great Britain has been carried to the highest point of glory’. Similarly, public affairs have never been so prudently and honestly managed, and ‘The brightest portion of British history will be that which records the improvements, the works, and the achievements of the Georgian age’.2 Byron’s intention in The Vision of Judgment was to counter ‘The gross flattery, the dull impudence, and renegado intolerance and impious cant of the author of Wat Tyler’.3 The ‘renegado’ element in his character for which Byron takes Southey to task is reiterated in the preface as it develops. Byron is particularly incensed that Southey’s opposition to the government and the monarchy in the 1790s has been transformed 217

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-17

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

by the second decade of the nineteenth century into what he sees as the most craven subservience.4 In his preface to A Vision of Judgment Southey attacks modern poetry for its ‘hor­ rors and mockery, lewdness and impiety’. From a position of moral purity English literature has degenerated, says Southey into an unprincipled quagmire. In words that are reminiscent of a seventeenth-century puritan, Southey blames the poetry of what he refers to as a ‘Satanic school’ for current moral turpitude: ‘for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety’. This evil, says Southey, is ‘political as well as moral’, the two being ‘inseparably connected’.5 Given Byron’s reputation in England at the time of publication, there can be little doubt as to the target of Southey’s critique. Here he replies in kind. From English Bards and Scotch Reviewers through to Don Juan, Byron is savage in his criticism of Southey. In this respect he was consistent; the lines below give Southey no quarter. ]

1 McGann, ed. BCPW, VI, p. 670. 2 Robert Southey, ‘To the King’, A Vision of Judgment, in Southey’s Poetical Works, London, Longman, 1844, p. 766. All further references to Southey’s poetry are to this edition 3 Byron, ‘Preface’, below, p. 219–20. 4 Byron, ‘Preface’, passim. 5 Southey, ‘Preface’ to A Vision of Judgment, pp. 768–79.

218

The Preface to The Vision of Judgment It hath been wisely said, that ‘one fool makes many’; and it hath been poetically observed, ‘That fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. – Pope.1 If Mr Southey had not rushed in where he had no business and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not possi­ ble that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, and renegado intolerance and impious cant of the poem by the author of Wat Tyler, are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself – containing the quin­ tessence of his own attributes. So much for his poem - a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed ‘Satanic School’, the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature, thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer. If there exists anywhere, except­ ing in his imagination, such a school, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is that there are certain writers whom Mr S. imagines, like Scrub, to have ‘talked of him; for they laughed consumedly’.2 I think I know enough of most of the writers to who he is supposed to allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done more good in the charities of life to their fellow-creatures in any one year, than Mr Southey has done harm to himself by his absurdities in his whole life; and this is saying a great deal. But I have a few questions to ask. 1stly. Is Mr Southey the author of Wat Tyler? 2ndly. Was he not refused a remedy at law by the highest judge of his beloved England, because it was a blasphemous and seditious publication? 3rdly. Was he not entitled by William Smith, in full Parliament, ‘a rancorous renegado?’ 4thly. Is he not Poet Laureate, with his own lines on Martin the Regicide staring him in the face? And, 5thly. Putting the four preceding items together, with what conscience dare he call the attention of the laws to the publication of others, be they what they may? I say nothing of the cowardice of such a proceeding; its meanness speaks for itself; but I wish to touch upon the motive, which is neither more nor less than that Mr S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the ‘Anti-Jacobin’3 by his present patrons. Hence all this ‘skimble scamble stuff ’4 about ‘Satanic’, and so forth. However, it is worthy of him – ‘Qualis ab incepto’.5

219

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

If there is anything obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public, in the following poem, they may thank Mr Southey. He might have written hexa­ meters, as he has written everything else, for aught that the writer cared – had they been upon another subject. But to attempt to canonize a Monarch, who, whatever were his household virtues, was neither a successful nor a patriot king – inasmuch as several of his years passed in war with America and Ireland, to say nothing of the aggression upon France - like all other exaggeration, begets opposition. In whatever manner he may be spoken of in this new ‘Vision’, his public career will not be more favourably transmitted by history. Of his private virtues (although a little expensive to the nation) there can be no doubt. With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgements in the next world, is like his own judgement in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be some­ thing worse. I don’t think that there is much more to say at present. … VIII In the first year of freedom’s second dawn Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn Left him nor mental nor external sun: A better farmer6 ne’er brush’d dew from lawn, A weaker king ne’er left a realm undone! He died – but left his subjects still behind, One half as mad – and t’other no less blind. IX He died! – his death made no great stir on earth; His burial made some pomp; there was profusion Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth Of aught but tears – save those shed by collusion; For these things may be bought at their true worth: Of elegy there was the due infusion – Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners, Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners, X Form’d a sepulchral melo-drame. Of all Who flock’d to swell or see the show, Who cared about the corpse? The funeral Made the attraction, and the black the woe. There throbb’d not there a thought that pierced the pall; And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low, 220

60

70

Byron (from The Vision of Judgment)

It seem’d the mockery of hell to fold The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

80

XI So mix his body with the dust! It might Return to what it must far sooner, were The natural compound left alone to fight Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; But the unnatural balsams merely blight What nature made him at his birth, as bare As the mere million’s base unmummied clay – Yet all his spices but prolong decay. XII He’s dead – and upper earth with him has done: He’s buried; save the undertaker’s bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will; But where’s the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still, Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman. XIII ‘God save the king!’ It is a large economy In God to save the like; but if he will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better still: I hardly know too if not quite alone am I In this small hope of bettering future ill By circumscribing with some slight restriction, The eternity of hell’s hot jurisdiction. XIV I know this is unpopular; I know ’Tis blasphemous; I know one may be damn’d For hoping no one else may e’er be so; I know my catechism; I know we are cramm’d With the best doctrines till we quite o’erflow; I know that all save England’s church have shamm’d, And that the other twice two hundred churches And synagogues have made a damn’d bad purchase. …

90

100

110

[Stanzas 18–22 deal with the arrival of George III before the gates of heaven. The clatter that accompanies his arrival leads St Peter to suppose that Lucifer is returning.] 221

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

XVIII ‘No,’ quoth the Cherub; ‘George the Third is dead.’ ‘And who is George the Third?’ replied the Apostle; ‘What George? What Third?’ ‘The King of England’ said The Angel. ‘Well! He won’t find kings to jostle Him on his way; but does he wear his head? Because the last we saw here had a tussle, And ne’er would have got here into heaven’s good graces, Had he not flung his head in all our faces.’ XIX He was, if I remember, king of France;7 That head of his, which could not keep a crown On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance A claim to those of martyrs – like my own: If I had my sword, as I had once When I cut ears off, I would cut him down; But having but my keys,8 and not my brand, I only knock’d his head from out his han’d. XX ‘And then he set up such a headless howl, That all the saints came out, and took him in; And there he sits by St Paul, cheek by jowl; That fellow Paul – the parvenu! The skin Of Saint Bartholomew,9 which makes his cowl In heaven, and upon earth redeem’d his sin So as to make a martyr, never sped Better than did this weak and wooden head.

140

150

160

XXI But had it come up here upon its shoulders, There would have been a different tale to tell: The fellow feeling in the saint’s beholders Seems to have acted on them like a spell, And so this foolish head heaven solders Back on its trunk: it may be very well, And seems the custom here to overthrow Whatever has been wisely done below.’ XXII The Angel answer’d, ‘Peter! do not pout; The king who comes has head and all entire, And never knew much what it was about – 222

170

Byron (from The Vision of Judgment)

He did as doth the puppet – by its wire; And will be judged by all the rest no doubt: My business and your own is not to inquire Into such matters, but to mind our cue – Which is to act as we are bid to do.’ … [The angel’s expostulations notwithstanding, George’s entry into heaven is compli­ cated by the arrival of Lucifer who has arrived to do judicial battle for the possession of the former king’s soul. In his view George belongs in hell. In George’s defence speaks the archangel Michael, to whom Lucifer replies.] XXXIX ‘Michael!’ replied the Prince of Air, ‘even here, Before the gate of him thou servest, must I claim my subject; and will make appear That as he was my worshipper in dust So shall he be in spirit, although dear To thee and thine, because nor wine nor lust Were of his weaknesses; yet on the throne He reign’d o’er millions to serve me alone. XL Look to our earth, or rather mine; it was, Once, more thy master’s: but I triumph not In this poor planet’s conquest, nor, alas! Need he thou servest envy me my lot: With all the myriads of bright world’s which pass In worship round him, he may have forgot Yon weak creation of such paltry things; I think few worth damnation save their kings,

310

320

XLI And these but as a kind of quit-rent, to Assert my right as lord; and even had I such an inclination, ’twere (as you Well know) superfluous; they are grown so bad, That hell has nothing better left to do Than leave them to themselves: so much more mad And evil by their own internal curse, Heaven cannot make them better, nor I worse. XLII Look to the earth, I said, and say again: When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm, Began in youth’s first bloom and flush to reign, 223

330

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

The world and he both wore a different form, And much of earth and all the watery plain Of ocean call’d him king: through many a storm His isles had floated on the abyss of Time; For the rough virtues chose them for their clime. XLIII He came to his sceptre, young; he leaves it, old: Look to the state in which he found his realm, And left it; and his annals to behold, How to a minion first he gave the helm;10 How grew upon his heart a thirst for gold, The beggar’s vice, which can but overwhelm The meanest hearts; and for the rest but glance Thine eye among America and France! XLIV ’Tis true, he was a tool from first to last; (I have the workmen safe); but as a tool So let him be consumed! From out the past Of ages, since mankind have known the rule Of monarchs – from the bloody rolls amass’d Of sin and slaughter – from the Caesar’s school, Take the worst pupil; and produce a reign More drench’d with gore, more cumber’d with the slain!’ XLV He ever warr’d with freedom and the free: Nations as men, home subjects, foreign foes, So that they utter’d the word “Liberty!” Found George the Third their first opponent. Whose History was ever stain’d as his will be With national and individual woes? I grant his household abstinence; I grant His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want; XLVI I know he was a constant consort; own He was a decent sire, and middling lord. All this is much, and most upon a throne; As temperance at Apicius’ board,11 Is more than at an anchorite’ supper shown. I grant him all the kindest can accord; And this was well for him, but not for those Millions who found him what oppression chose. 224

340

350

360

Byron (from The Vision of Judgment)

XLVII The new world shook him off; the old yet groans Beneath what he and his prepared, if not Completed: he leaves heirs on many thrones To all his vices, without what begot Compassion for him – his tame virtues; drones Who sleep, or despots who have now forgot A lesson which shall be re-taught them, wake Upon the throne of Earth; but let them quake! XLVIII Five millions of the primitive, who hold The faith which makes ye great on earth, implored A part of that vast all they held of old, – Freedom to worship – not alone you Lord, Michael, but you, and you, Saint Peter! Cold Must be your souls, if you have not abhorr’d The foe to Catholic participation In all the licence of a Christian nation. XLIX True! He allow’d them to pray God; but as A consequence of prayer, refused the law Which would have placed them upon the same base With those who did not hold the saints in awe.’ But here Saint Peter started from his place, And cried, ‘You may the prisoner withdraw: Ere heaven shall open its portals to this Guelf,12 While I am guard, may I be damn’d myself!

370

380

390

L Sooner will I with Cerburus13 exchange My office (and his is no sinecure) Than see this Bedlam bigot range The azure fields of heaven, of that be sure!’ ‘Saint’ replied Sathan, ‘you do well to avenge The wrongs he made your satellite to endure; And if this to this exchange you should be given, I’ll try to coax our Cerburus up to heaven’. 400 … [At this point Michael intercedes on George III’s behalf and instructs Sathan to summon witnesses to prove the justice of his case. Two are called: John Wilkes and ‘Junius’,14 both of who turn savagely on the monarch. Finally, Southey is allowed to speak for himself.] 225

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

XCVI He said – (I only give the heads) – he said, He meant no harm in scribbling; ’twas his way Upon all topics; ’twas, besides, his bread, Of which he buttered both sides; ’twould delay Too long the assembly (he was pleased to dread) And take up rather more time than a day, To name his works – he would but cite a few – Wat Tyler – Rhymes on Blenheim – Waterloo.15 XCVII He had written praises of a regicide; He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide, And then against them bitterer than ever; For pantisocracy16 he once had cried Aloud, a scheme less moral than ’twas clever; Then grew a hearty antijacobin17 – He turned his coat – and would have turned his skin.18 XCVIII He had sung against all battles, and again In their high praise and glory; he had call’d Reviewing ‘the ungentle craft’, and then Become as base a critic as ere crawl’d – Fed, paid, and pamper’d by the very men By whom his muse and morals had been maul’d: He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose, And more of both than any body knows. XCIX He had written Wesley’s life:–19 here, turning round To Sathan, ‘Sir, I’m ready to write yours, In two octavo volumes, nicely bound, With notes and prefaces, all that most allures The pious purchaser; for there’s no ground For fear, for I can choose my own reviewers: So let me have the proper documents, That I may add you to my other saints’. C Sathan bow’d, and was silent. ‘Well, if you With amiable modesty, decline My offer, what says Michael? There are few Whose memoirs could be render’d more divine. Mine is a pen of all work; not so new 226

770

780

790

Byron (from The Vision of Judgment)

As it was once, but I would make you shine Like your own trumpet; by the way my own Has more of brass in it, and is as well blown.

800

CI But talking about trumpets, here’s my Vision! Now you shall judge, all people; yes, you shall Judge with my judgement! And by my decision Who shall enter heaven or fall! I settle all these things by intuition, Times present, past, to come, heaven, hell, and all, Like King Alfonso!20 When I thus see double, I save the Deity some worlds of trouble’. CII He ceased; and drew forth an M.S.; and no Persuasion on the part of devils or saints, Or angels, now could stop the torrent; so He read the first three lines of the contents; But at the forth, the whole spiritual show Had vanish’d, with variety of scents, Ambrosial and sulphureous, as they sprang, Like lightning, off from his ‘melodious twang’. CIII Those grand heroics acted as a spell: The angels stopp’d their ears and plied their pinions; The devils ran howling, deafen’d down to hell; The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own dominions – (For ’tis not yet decided where they dwell, And I leave every man to his opinions;) Michael took refuge in his trump – but lo! His teeth were set on edge, he could not blow! CIV Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known For an impetuous saint, upraised his keys, And at the fifth line knock’d the Poet down; Who fell like Phaeton,21 but more at ease, Into his lake, for there he did not drown, A Different web being by the Destinies Woven for the Laureate’s final wreath, whene’er Reform shall happen either here or there.

227

810

820

830

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

CV He first sunk to the bottom – like his works, But soon rose to the surface – like himself; For all corrupted things are buoy’d, like corks, By their own rottenness, light as an elf, Or wisp that flits o’er a morass: he lurks, It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf, In his own den to scrawl some ‘Life’ or ‘Vision’, As Wellborn says – ‘the devil turn’d precisian’.22 CVI As for the rest, to come to the conclusion Of this true dream, the telescope is gone Which kept my optics free from all delusion, And show’d me what I in my turn have shown: All I saw further in the last confusion, Was, that King George slipp’d into heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm.23

228

840

WILLIAM COMBE

from The Third Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of a Wife (1821) [First published in The Tours of Doctor Syntax, 3 volumes, London, Ackermann, 1821, vol. 3, pp. 9–25. William Combe (1741–1823; DNB), was born in Bristol and educated at Eton where he was the contemporary of the brilliant Whig politician, Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB) and the notorious libertine and author of Vathek, William Beckford (1759–1844; DNB). Indeed, Combe had something of a reputation for libertinism himself. After Eton he went up to Oxford in 1760 or 1761, ‘where he gave himself up to dissipation, and left without taking a degree’.1 Combe lived con­ tinuously beyond his means and was consequently plagued by debt throughout his life. Whilst in France he is said to have known Lawrence Sterne (1713–68; DNB), who at the time was composing the second part of A Sentimental Journey.2 Combe was the author of many works of poetic and prose satires including, The Diaboliad (1776), The Devil upon Two Sticks (1790), and The Microcosm of London (1808). He is mostly remembered for his Dr Syntax poems, which he published anonymously in order to deny his creditors. The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax were originally published separately. The first tour, ‘in search of the picturesque’ was published in Rudolph Ackermann’s Political Maga­ zine in 1809 and then in book form in 1812. Tours two and three, ‘in search of consolation upon the death of his wife’, and ‘in search of a wife’ appeared respec­ tively in 1820 and 1821. Syntax’s tour for a wife is organised into five cantos. During the course of his perambulations Syntax has the opportunity of assessing many dif­ ferent types of women available to him in his rural constituency, before moving in Canto IV to London. The tour itself is begot by the melancholy temper that has overtaken Syntax’s naturally jovial character upon the death of his first wife. In his quest for a wife Dr Syntax has an opportunity to view the marriages of his neigh­ bours and in the process offer advice on the shortcomings of their wives situated as they are in the various stations of rural society. These include the wives of the following: Squire Bumpkin, the yeoman Farmer John, and Sir Stately Stirrup, the aristocratic head of Syntax’s social world. The extract included below is drawn from the episode that occurs early in Canto 1 and is concerned with the marriage of the local squire, Sir Bumpkin. Squire Bumpkin is created, partially at least, in the mould 229

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-18

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

of Henry Fielding’s Squire Western from The Adventures of Tom Jones (1749). He is bluff, hearty, verbally brusque and a lover of field sports in line with the Fieldingesque stereotype of the English country squire. The squire’s private life, however, is something else entirely in that he has what appears to be a shrew for a wife: she is the dominant force in the squire’s domestic world and as such is seen to usurp the natural order. In the course of his stay with the Bumpkins, both husband and wife ask Syntax for his advice on the ideal marriage. His response tells us much of what were considered model marital relations in rural England. Syntax is not the traditional misogynist that one might imagine, though his values regarding a wife’s role in marriage are overwhelmingly traditional, reflecting his time and his station in life. In his advocacy of a companionate marriage, however, and in his view that a wife is essentially subordinate to her husband, Syntax is echoing views that were the staple of Anglican and puritan writings on marriage from the early seventeenth cen­ tury onwards.]

1 DNB. 2 Ibid.

230

CANTO I. And now old Margaret sigh’d again As if she suffer’d real pain; When Syntax thus the dame address’d— ‘What anxious thought disturbs your breast, And wherefore do you lift your eye As if commercing with the sky?’ Now Madge1 it seems had caught the sense Of all the Doctor’s eloquence, And, with kind feelings for her guide, She thus, in measur’d speech, replied— ‘It is not for myself I sue To Heaven’s mercy, ’tis for you. I could well scold you if I dare, And your whims almost make me swear; You may keep talking on for ever ’Twill never do you good, no never. What is your fending and your proving, ’Tis nonsense all—I say, keep moving. Do you not hear what pleasures reign Among the crowd on yonder plain? Quit, my sad Sir, that odious chair, With your grave melancholy air, And join the pastimes of the fair. See ’midst the bustle what is done, Look on the sports and view the fun: Who knows but a good donkey race May plant a smile upon your face. Of this I’m sure, that when you see The scene of harmless revelry, And from the happy people hear The untaught joke, the merry jeer, Their honest pleasures will impart Smiles to your sympathising heart. You know the joy your flock will share To view their much-lov’d pastor there; And when you see how they receive it, 231

180

190

200

210

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

You’ll feel it two-fold, you who give it. Do as I say, you’ll find it right, ’Twill prove a most enliv’ning sight, And save you from a restless night. Keep moving – quit your studious labours, Set off and visit all your neighbours. A change of scene, a change of place, Will from your mind these whimsies chase, And soon I with delight shall see My master from his meagrims2 free’. Syntax. ‘Thank you for that, my vet’ran lady, I’ll go and try to get a gay day; ’Twas rare, sound common-sense, that brought Such good advice into your thought. To-morrow, I’ll clap spurs to horse, And, in good earnest, take my course To Billy Bumpkin, who will greet me With his loud laughs, and kindly treat me: Yes, with his broad-face mirth he’ll try The power of hospitality’. On the next morn his breakfast done, With not a cloud to hide the sun, The Doctor did his way pursue, And, in a trotting hour or two Bumpkin’s old hall appear’d in view. When soon he saw its hearty host Leaning most idly ’gainst a post, And letting loose loud fits of laughter To see boys bathing in the water; Who with their splash of mud and mire Amus’d the humour of the ’Squire. Syntax, in sober, solemn state, With Pat behind drew near the gate; And when he their approach espied, Bill Bumpkin clapp’d his hands and cried; ‘My worthy Parson is it you? The same y’ fackins,3 I’ve in view. Six months, I think, are gone and past And more since I beheld you last! Whate’er I knew I left at college, And you like none but men of knowledge; Yet, in plain English, I declare, 232

220

230

240

250

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

I do delight to see you here. I have no learn’d or Latin lingo, But a fresh tap of foaming stingo,4 Which will make you to jabber Greek, As nat’rally as pigs can squeak. And, if your heart is out of tune, Will make you long to stride the moon’. ‘—Not quite so high as that my friend, But something which doth that way tend: Not quite so high’, the Doctor said, ‘But yet some choice enliv’ning aid My slacken’d spirits have in view When I pay my respects to you; For here, I’m sure, that humour gay And the frank smile will crown the day. You, my good-hearted friend, must know The cause of my domestic woe. Of my friends too I am bereft, The W ORTHIES have the country left, And when they may return to cheer My drooping heart doth not appear:— Thus dulness now is found to reign5 Within the verge of Sommerden,6 And doth a full possession take Of its fair borders of the Lake. Thus ’tis my joyless fate to roam For comfort that’s not found at home.’ ‘—Then find it here,’ replied the ’Squire, ‘New scenes will other thoughts inspire, My means of pleasure you shall share: I'll teach you how to banish care’. Though Syntax did not trust the skill That such a promise would fulfil, He gave assent with nodding head, And followed where his leader led. He took the Doctor through his grounds, Display’d his kennel and his hounds, Their diff ’rent ages, old and young, Their speed, their noses and their tongue; Then order’d forth his hunting stud, Dwelt on their merits and their blood; While to their diff ’rent feats, and more, The green-clad huntsman stoutly swore. He then described some arduous chase 233

260

270

280

290

300

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

That did his Nimrod7 annals grace; Show’d many a brush that cover’d o’er The purlieus of the kennel door: Nor did a hero ever prize The trophies gain’d in victories, Whose flutt’ring ensigns might display The pride of many a well-fought day, With more exulting sense of fame, Than Bumpkin told the boasted name, Which his equestrian powers command Among the woods of Westmoreland. The Doctor heard and made pretence To listen to his eloquence; But though with certain science fraught, It could not charm his serious thought; Nor did it seem to chase away The gloomy humour of the day. ‘Why still so grave my worthy friend?’, The ’Squire exclaim’d, ‘where will this end? I prithee, why make all this pother; You’ve lost one wife, then get another; And sure, in all this country round, Another may be quickly found. From different motives people grieve, For wives that die and wives that live. —That scare-crow Death is oft a sad one, Takes the good wife and leaves the bad one, As sure as that bright sun doth shine, I wish that he had taken mine. Not that I suffer such disaster As to let madam play the master, Nor yet, to let the lady boast That o’er her lord she rules the roast. I learn’d not, where I went to school, In such a way to play the fool. ’Tis true from harshness I refrain, But then I always hold the rein: For he who ventures on a wife, To be the comfort of his life, Should never this advice refuse:— Take her down in her wedding-shoes’. —Syntax his fancy to beguile Here sunk his laughter in a smile. For it was known to great and small 234

310

320

330

340

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

How things went on at Bumpkin-Hall: Nay, ’twas a well-known standing joke, Among the neighb’ring country folk, That when the lady’s in the way The ’Squire would ne’er say yea or nay But as her ruling spirit told him, Or with a certain look control’d him: Though now his tongue ne’er seem’d to rest, And thus his invitation press’d.— ‘Doctor come here, next hunting-season, And faith, my friend, I’ll shew you reason; You shall mount on my Yorkshire grey, And gallop all your cares away’. ‘I doubt not’, Syntax smiling said, ‘Your recipe would be obey’d; It would afford a speedy cure For ev’ry evil I endure; But for my kind physician’s sake, I do not wish my neck to break’. They talk’d, when soon the bell’s shrill chime Declar’d it to be dinner time, Nor was it an unwelcome call That bade their footsteps seek the hall; For though the Doctor’s whims prevail’d, His appetite had never fail’d. By madam he was kindly greeted, As, ‘How d’ye do?’ and ‘pray be seated. It doth a perfect age appear Since we enjoy’d your presence here; I feel it always as a treasure, And wish I oft’ner felt the pleasure’. ‘Bumpkin, I pray you move the dish, And help the Doctor to some fish’. ‘Indeed I hope, ’tis in your view To pass with us a day or two. Nay I could wish it might be more, And lengthen’d out unto a score’. ‘Bumpkin, you think not as we dine, That some folks love a glass of wine’. ‘I have not seen you for an hour, Since you have made your charming Tour, And I shall ask you to display Its hist’ry in your rapid way’. ‘Husband, I'll bet my life upon it, 235

350

360

370

380

390

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Our kind guest’s plate has nothing on it; Make haste and give it a supply Of that well-looking pigeon-pye’. ‘’Tis a fine match Miss Worthy made: A charming girl, I always said; And does those qualities possess That claim the promis’d happiness. Some may think one thing, some another; But is she handsome as her mother? Her mamma’s auburn locks, I own, Are better than her daughter’s brown, Although the latter you may see, Dame nature has bestow’d on me’. ‘Squire Bumpkin, were it not my care To see how all about me fare, Our Rev’rend friend would have good luck, To get a wing of that fine duck’. ‘Since, Doctor, you were here before, I’ve added to my Floral store, And some fine specimens have got Which are not ev’ry Florist’s lot. They’re in the happiest state to view, And will be much admir’d by you. As some folk do not seem to think That when we eat, we want to drink, I ask you, Doctor, if you’ll join Your Hostess in a glass of WINE ? Your better taste, Sir, will prevail, Nor share in vulgar cups of ALE! My new Piano has a tone Which your judicious ear will own, At least to me it so appears, Such as one very seldom hears. I too of late have practis’d much, And am improv’d in time and touch; Thus with your fiddle’s well-known power, We shall delight an evening hour’. The Doctor made his frequent bow, And yes replied, or answer’d no, Just as the lady’s words required, Or as his empty plate inspir’d. Indeed it clearly must appear He’d nought to do but eat and hear: While the calm Husband’s sharpen’d knife 236

400

410

420

430

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

Obey’d the orders of his Wife. Thus Madam, with habitual art, Continued her presiding part; Did with her smiles the Doctor crown, Or silence Billy with a frown; And, in a well-adapted measure, Alternately display’d her pleasure; Her tongue was never at a stand, But play’d at Question and Command: She could affirm and could deny With mild impetuosity, And scarce her question could be heard, Ere she an answer had preferr’d: Thus, till the absence of the cloth, She to and fro employ’d them both; At once th’ attention to delight And give a grace to appetite. The dinner pass’d as dinners do; Ma’am’s health was drunk and she withdrew; But as the lady left the chair With solemn smile but gracious air, ‘Doctor’, she said, ‘I know your taste Is not your time and thoughts to waste In that intemp’rance which gives birth To boist’rous noise and vulgar mirth, Which, with its loud and clam’rous brawls, Too oft has echoed in these walls; But, if I can such feats restrain, Shall seldom echo here again. Pray let not that good man prevail To swill yourself with sluggard ale: But when you’ve sipp’d a glass or so Of wine that makes the bosom glow, Let him go booze his fav’rite liquor With the exciseman and the vicar, While I expect my rev’rend friend Will in the drawing-room attend’. The rev’rend Friend bow’d his assent, And with a flirt the lady went. The ’Squire who scarce had spoke a word While dinner smok’d upon the board, No sooner was the fair-one gone But he assum’d a lofty tone. 237

440

450

460

470

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Bumpkin. ‘Doctor, I hope you know me better Than to suppose that I can fetter My sports and pleasures to the will Of that same tongue that ne’er lies still: You saw what pretty airs she gave As if I were a very slave: But, my good friend, as you were by I did not chuse to look awry. Nor would I wound your rev’rend cloth, By rapping out a swinging oath, Which, but from my respect to you, I was full well inclin’d to do, And would at once have brought her to. Yes, she may toss her head and hector, But she shall have a curtain lecture:8 I’ll make the saucy madam weep, Believe me, ere she goes to sleep. I married Mary for her beauty, And faith I’ll make her do her duty. Pray tell me, friend, what means you took When a pert speech or haughty look Was darted at you from your wife, And threaten’d matrimonial strife?’ Syntax. ‘She never spoke a saucy word, She ne’er an angry look preferr’d: Affection dwelt within her eye And all her speech was harmony: But let I pray that subject rest, Nor wake the sorrows of my breast: For here I came on pleasure bent To share your well-known merriment, And find good humour and content; My gloomy fancies to beguile And learn from you a cordial smile. Come, come, a foaming bumper quaff, And let me hear you loudly laugh’. This counsel given, in solemn measure, Appear’d to check the ’Squire’s displeasure; But though his spirits ceas’d to flutter, His pouting lips were seen to mutter. At length the coffee was announc’d: 238

480

490

500

510

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

Again he swell’d, look’d big and bounc’d: But when the bell was made to ring, For well he knew who pull’d the spring, Another song he chose to sing. ‘My worthy friend as you are here, I in good humour will appear, And since the meagre slip-slop’s made, I think the call should be obey’d. But one glass more I must engage, My present feelings to assuage, Though, to speak truth, I’m always dry When this same bev’rage meets my eye’. Now led by fragrance and perfume, They pass’d into the drawing-room, Which, from its bright display of flowers, Might pass for one of Flora’s bowers. —Syntax enchanted at the sight, Broke forth in language of delight. ‘—When the Creator’s works I view And, wond’ring, the bright course pursue; And from sublimest objects range To most minute in endless change, If in those works that meet the eye, From sky to earth, from earth to sky, He in the greatest stands confest, Still is he greater in the least’.* Thus as he spoke, with ardent glow, Of all the various tribes that grow Or in the garden or the field, Or which the rock or mountain yield, From the wide spreading cedar tall, To the low hyssop9 on the wall, The yawning ’Squire devoid of thought, With lazy stride the sofa sought, The cushions cuff ’d with all his strength, And then laid down his listless length. Madam grew red, and then grew white, And gave her rosy lips a bite, Which might denote an inclination To gratify a rising passion: When the Divine to turn aside

520

530

540

550

560

* Si l’Auteur de la Nature est grand dans les grandes choses il est tres grand dans le les petites. J. J. Rousseau.

239

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

The rising burst of wounded pride, Continued, with encreasing force, The fervour of his sage discourse; But as the lady lent her ear, To what she was so charm’d to hear, Poor Bumpkin with a snort and snore, Roll’d from the sofa on the floor: The servants did their master shake, But he was not dispos’d to wake: ‘There’, said their mistress, ‘let him lay, To pass another hour away. Oh Doctor! ought I not to bless My share of married happiness! Is not this quite enough to shame me? Nay, can you for my anger blame me? Excuse me, but I scarce should weep If this were his eternal sleep. —Where tastes and tempers so much vary, O what a folly ’tis to marry! The greatest fortune will not suit The gentle spirit with the brute: Nor the fond, tender inclination, With a mere coarse instinctive passion, Nor the affection of the soul With the rude mind that claims the whole, And will not share the kind controul. —’Tis true I have a coach-and-four, Whene’er I call it, at my door. Or, as I please to take the air Command the ponies to a chair: And when I ride, I also see The Beauty Mare reserv’d for me. I decorate my drawing room With earliest flowers to breathe perfume, And if I chuse, I have the power Winter to clothe with vernal bower: And, if it should my fancy suit, To taste in Spring the Summer fruit; While my gay pride, may, to excess, Enjoy the toilette’s happiness. I can make this old mansion gay, With song or dance, in any way That my fond vanity may choose, The neighb’ring circle to amuse. 240

570

580

590

600

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

All this you know, perhaps, but still It does not my fond wish fulfil. You, Sir, may ask, the question’s fair, What ’tis I want I do not share? What is it I do not receive Which a fond husband’s bound to give? That secret, Doctor, I’ll impart: I want what he has not—a heart: Yes one, where tender feeling rules, And warm affection never cools. I want a character refin’d Grac’d by a cultivated mind, Where taste and science are enshrin’d; With manners that from kindness flow, Speech that is chaste, and thoughts that glow. Failings e’en in the best must be, But love would ne’er those errors see, When it th’enraptur’d power possest To nestle in a noble breast. —On shaggy mountain’s lofty brow, Or in the woody vale below, Or by the ocean’s craggy side, Believe me, I would rather bide, With such a being by my side, Than with stupidity to live And all the show which wealth can give; Though that show tempted me to join, A Booby’s lasting lot with mine: Such is my fate, for you must see To whom false Fortune coupled me’. The slumb’ring ’Squire now op’d his eyes, Look’d round the room with dull surprise, Then slowly rose and shook his head, Call’d for a light and went to bed. Mrs Bumpkin. ‘Since, my good Sir, what has appear’d, Which you have seen as well as heard, You must acknowledge my complaint Doth ask the patience of a Saint’. Syntax. ‘Excuse the liberty I take When thus I most sincerely speak; 241

610

620

630

640

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

But that same virtue would confer Perfection on your character. O let me beg you to attend To the kind counsels of a friend! The die is cast, the deed is done, The cord is fast that makes you one: Though, if well order’d, I confess I see no bar to happiness. When I perceive the nat’ral state Of reason in your married mate, I would consent, in word and deed, That you, fair Dame, should take the lead; But then employ your better powers To rule by sweets and not by sours. Madam, the ancient proverb says, Which words can never duly praise, That one rich drop of Honey sweet, As an alluring, luscious treat, Is known to tempt more flies, by far, Than a whole tun of Vinegar. —Ask with kind words, he’ll ne’er deny, Give winning looks and he’ll comply, With waken’d sensibility. If you but smile and never frown He’ll shape his wishes to your own: Nay, symptoms of obedience show, Whether you do obey or no. Thus blest with temper’s cloudless ray Your morrow will be like to-day. O let him not perceive you rule, Nor ever treat him like a fool; Do not, at least to others show, If he be such, you think him so. O ne’er again delight to tease him, But look as if you wish to please him, Check notions, that so idle prove, Of Shepherds and Arcadian love: Your active, well instructed mind, To such vagaries should be blind, Let not your fancy e’er refine Beyond calm reason’s fair design, But leave to Misses of eighteen The raptures they from Novels glean,10 You surely have the means to bless 242

650

660

670

680

Combe (from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax

Your life with social happiness; And O beware you do not spoil Your comforts with domestic broil!’ Mrs Bumpkin. ‘Doctor, I do admire your plan, And I’ll pursue it—if I can’.

243

690

LADY SYDNEY OWENSON MORGAN and SIR THOMAS CHARLES MORGAN

from The Mohawks; a Satirical Poem with Notes (1822) [First published in The Mohawks, London, Henry Colburn and Co., 1822, pp. 26–35, 38–43. The Morgans were a formidably intellectual couple who wrote prolifically. Sir Charles Morgan (1783–1843; DNB) was a fashionable surgeon, and the author of primarily scientific and medical works; Lady Sydney Owenson Morgan (1753–1859; DNB), was an Irish woman of letters, primarily writing on French and Italian litera­ ture. She was also well enough known as a novelist for George Daniel to describe her thus in The Modern Dunciad: ‘First Lady Morgan, Amazonian Fair! / (Ye gods, what will not Lady Morgan dare?’.1 The Mohawks is an indirect satire. It deploys an Horatian mode for the most part, but digresses from its rough ottava rima in ‘The Crab’s Descant’ into a more Juvenalian and vituperative use of heroic couplets in order to increase the savagery of its critique. The target of the poem is the ‘smugly uncompromising discourse of Tory satire—symbolically reproducing, exploiting and unravelling it’.2 The name ‘Mohawk derives from Steele’s Spectator and is adapted by the Morgans to apply to Tory satirists. Steele writes: For this reason I could not forbear communicating to you some imperfect information of a set of men (if you will allow them a place in that species of being), who have lately erected themselves into a fraternity, under the title of the Mohawk-Club, a name bor­ rowed, it seems, from a sort of cannibals in India, who subsist by plundering and devouring all the nations about them. Agreeable to their name, the avowed design of their institution is mischief; and upon this foundation all their rules and orders are framed. An outrageous ambition of doing all possible hurt to their fellow creatures is the great cement of their assembly, and the only qualification required in the members.3

The ‘Dedication’ to the poem announces itself as being ‘FREELY I MITATED FROM HORACE, Book I, Ode XII’, and opens with a series of rhetorical questions framed in heroic couplets. The only fit subject for the ironic dedication turns out to be Lon­ donderry, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (Marquis of Londonderry from 1821): ‘Who o’er our Islands holds command, / From Dover, westward quite to Kerry, / And north to John-a-Groat’s far land’.4 Castlereagh is the butt of much 244

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-19

Morgans (from The Mohwaks)

Whig satire in the Romantic period, primarily for his perceived treachery in relation to Catholic emancipation, and the seemingly opportunistic manner in which he gave up his allegiance to the Whigs in 1795 and joined Pitt’s Tory ministry. Throughout his political career Castlereagh played his part in the period’s repressive gagging of reform and of the press, with the latter being achieved primarily through raising the stamp duties on newspapers and periodicals. Indeed, the period between the French Revolution and the Great Reform Act of 1832 bore witness to the precarious nature of press freedom. John Wilkes’s North Briton, and the agitation that surrounds it, is testament to the fact that even before events in France came to dominate the politi­ cal agenda in Britain, the principle of freedom of expression in print was by no means unassailable.5 Extracted below is the Morgans’ satirical reading of the freedom of the press from its inception, with Caxton’s introduction of printing into England, through to their own time. Printing is seen here to be the mother of all dissent: the Reforma­ tion, Cromwell, and revolution – in England, France and America—as well as radical and reformist writing that questioned the government and its actions up to and including the ministry of Lord Liverpool.]

1 2 3 4 5

George Daniel, The Modern Dunciad, p. 100. Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 5. Richard Steele, Spectator, 324 (1712); cited by the Morgans in The Mohawks, p. iii. The Mohawks, p. 2. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 86, 92; Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 71; Clark, English Society, 1660–1832, pp. 366–67.

245

… XXVI Oh! Westminster, within thy cloister’d abbey Caxton in England first set up a press;1 And our best Kings have shewn themselves not shabby When call’d a zeal for learning to express; Little they dream’d the imp they nursed, so crabby, Should cause their children’s children such distress, Else, like wise Austria, they’d restrain’d all breeding To the mere bounds of writing and of reading.* XXVII First there came Luther2 to disturb their rest, Intent upon religion and – his spouse; Next Cromwell fanatized from east to west, Cashier’d the monarch, and the upper house;3 While wand’ring Charles, neglected and distress’d,†4 More than half starved, fared worse than a church mouse. Next James the Second, that most zealous ass, Barter’d three goodly kingdoms for a mass.‡5

210

220

XXVIII The license of the Press, at this most critical Juncture, brought Nassau,6 then, the House of Hanover;7 By publications anti-jacobitical8 Seduced the people to a wicked plan over, Filling their brains with many new political Doctrines, while James to Louis boldly ran over, * ‘A me basta chye i miei suggetti sappiano leggere e scrivere’. Speech of the Emperor of Austria to the Institute at Milan. † ‘On sait quelle table le bonne homme (St Albans) tenoit à Paris, tandis que le Roi son maître mouroit de faim à Bruxelles, et que la Reine mè sa maîtresse, ne faisoit pas grande chère en France’.—Mém de Grammont. ‡ ‘Quand je cherche un rime pour Guillame Je trouve qu’il a conquis son royaume; Quand je cherche un rime Jacques, Je trouve qu’il a fait—ses pâques’.

246

Morgans (from The Mohwaks)

And a most trait’rous impious convention* Dismiss’d him from his place, without a pension.

230

XXIV Oh! had not Satan first invented letters, Casting his type with Hell-concocted lead, The people ne’er had quarrel’d with their betters, Nor with seditious science fill’d their head. Bacon and Locke10 (of heresy abettors), And Newton many dang’rous tenets spread;11 While Harvey,12 when he traced the circulation, Set the pulse galloping of half the nation. XXX Old Torricelli’s vacuum13 doubtless taught Certain discoveries in physiology, Which royal heads in bad repute have brought; And Galileo’s tube spoil’d much theology,†14 Inspiring doubts, like those by Tom Paine15 sought, So ably clear’d in Watson’s fam’d Apology;16 While Franklin’s rods17 robb’d heav’n of its thunder, And cured the people of much wholesome wonder. XXXI Certes, ’twas Franklin’s skill in electricity Seduced the Bostoners to tar th’ exciseman;18 And made Lord North19 commit a multiplicity Of errors, proving he was not a wise man; Franklin, a perfect monster of duplicity!20 Who first wrote books, to treason to entice And then, least his M. S. should lie on shelf, The double traitor – printed them himself.

240

250

* These epithets are applied by anticipation. In this current 1822, it is still decent to affect an admiration of the Convention Parliament;9 but woe to him who, presuming on the precedent, shall claim for the people the right to be well governed, or shall justify the revolutions of Spain and Portugal against the attacks of legitimacy. He will most assuredly be calumniated in The Courier, misrepresented by The Quarterly Review, preached to sleep by The British Critic, and regularly assassinated in reputation twice a week by that most moral of all the Caryatides of the throne and the altar, The John Bull. † Chi studiò teologia dogmatica Sa ben che qualsisia religione (Del dogma parlo sol, non della prattica)’ Satr insieme non può colla ragione

247

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

XXXII So, in old France, before the revolution, That arch, convicted heretic, Rousseau,21 Threw its finances into much confusion, Whence ills, like waves on waves, incessant flow. He practised on the King by such illusion,* As made his moral character so so; ’Twas reading Julie 22 set the people starving, And hunger set them for themselves a carving.† XXXIII So, in old France, the Priests refused to pay Tax to the state, which made the people stare; The Nobles also chose to run away, Leaving the King of friends and money bare;23 And all this mischief certain wiseheads say Was brought upon the country by Voltaire.24 Thus, now, when rents are low and farmers mob it, Our English statesmen lay the blame to Cobbett.25

260

270

XXXIV ’Twas Voltaire brought about the coalition, And march’d the Duke of Brunswick into France26 Rousseau at Coblentz wrought the King’s perdition, By promising on Paris to advance; * I.e. Louis the XVth † This idea is taken from a jeu d’esprit of the celebrated French chansonnier, Berenger, of which the following is an extract: ‘Pour la carême, écoutez Ce mandement, très-chers frères, Et les grands vérités Que débitent vos vicaires; Si l’on rit de ce morceau, C’est la faute de Rousseau; Si l’on nous siffle en chair, C’est la faute de Voltaire. Tous nos maux sont advenus D’Arouet et de Jean Jacques, Satan, qui les avoit lus, Ne faisoit jamais ses pâques; Eve aima le fruit nouveau, C’est la faute de Rousseau; Cain tun son frére, C’est la faute de Voltaire’. Note.—Soon after the return of Louis XVIII, the Archbishop of Paris published a mandement against Rousseau and Voltaire, of which the above is a sort of parody.

248

Morgans (from The Mohwaks)

Voltaire, that sanguinary politician, At Jemappe led the Germans a sad dance; ’Twas he roused Robespierre to murd’rous passion, And Rousseau wrote the guillotine in fashion.27 XXXV But, as I said, it was the traitor Franklin Seduced the Yankees to kick up a row; And France (a fact with Englishmen long rankling) Joined in the fray; – for which it suffers now.28 For Frenchmen, when the English they’d done mangling, Came home, the democratic seed to sow. The blow which kill’d their King (a deed not very gay), Was struck – such is man’s foresight – in America. XXXVI This, in due time, call’d forth a Bonaparte29 To triumph o’er the democrats, and reign In spite of all our ministerial party, Although we beat the Frenchmen out of Spain.30 Millions were spent – for still John Bull was hearty (He will not quickly be so stout again); This made the debt – the debt on landlords presses, And landlords puzzle Van with their distresses. XXXVII What great effects from little causes spring!31 As consequence on consequence arises; Some trifling fault makes many a felon swing, Which, early check’d, had spared him the assizes. So all the ills, of which we feel the sting, (Ills which the minister in vain disguises), Wars, revolutions, the finance’s ruin, Are one and all – a Printer’s Devil’s brewing. XXXVIII Oh! had it pleased Heav’n’s providence to make The swinish multitude32 without their eyes; Or given eyes only to those few, who take A bribe, to act the useful part of spies; The rest like moles left blind, their shins to break Then had the great, secure from a surprize, Not fear’d a revolutionary crash From Hunt’s Examiner,33 or penny trash.

249

280

290

300

310

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

XXXIX I can’t help thinking what a sweet collection Of books had then been printed, for the use Of those quintessences of all perfection The great, so very difficult t’ amuse, – Sland’rous memoirs, to lie without detection, Verses like those which flow from Th--’s muse,34 The cream of good Lord L-nd-n-ry ’s speeches,35 Or W-lb-rf-ce’s intellectual riches.36 XL The Morning Post had still supplied us news, The Courier still had ruled the afternoon; (There’d been no need of Quarterly Reviews,37 Where authors were all set to the right tune; ‘John Bull’ might then have rested in the stews,38 From which it came, for its own friends too soon, Despised, disown’d, while its poor men of straw Suffer vicariously the scourge of law). XLI Then, twice as lengthy, almost twice as dull, If that were possible, his laureate strains S—thy39 had pour’d, whene’er the moon was full, And gain’d another pension for his pains.* But C—ly40 with a somewhat thicker scull, Had still contented been with smaller gains; While G--ff--d,41 lacking subjects for his hate, Had stung himself, and met the scorpion’s fate. XLII Those tomes, whose sale we’re told is so immense, Indited by the fluent muse of Waverly,42 Where pure description holds the place of sense, And ghosts and warlocks visit us so neighbourly, – Where Whigs to malice ever are prepense,43 And Tories preach their abject creed so cleverly,

320

330

340

* Che se dell’arte loro volevano servirsi con l’ordinario loro interessato fine, di maggiormente ubediente e pronto all’essecuzione di quelle cose che desideravano render la plebe ignorante monstrandole che a’ commandamenti degli uomini concorreva il voler di Dio, sapessero che Parnasso non era stanza di quelli sciocchi’, &c. &c. Boccalini, Rigguaglio di Parnasso. ‘That if they wanted to direct their art to their accustomed purposes of self-interest, and attempt to render the ignorant people more obedient and prompt to execute the desires of their masters, by showing them that the commands of the authorities are conformable to the will of God, they might remember that Parnassus is no place for, &c. &c’.

250

Morgans (from The Mohwaks)

Might still have had their vogue: spite of abusing, We needs must own the novels are amusing. XLIII Yes, to the heav’n-born few these works are level, Guiltless of moral, quite devoid of thinking; Save when they teach a credence in the devil, Or vaunt the virtues of excessive drinking. Their maudlin heroes, neither good nor evil, Are pretty models of the art of sinking;44 Infirm of purpose, into nothings tamed, They’d never make the merest lord ashamed.

350

XLIV Not so Childe Harold,45 – he no place should find Among the race of wits aristocratic; His daring, deep intensity of mind, Has something in it much too democratic; Quite diff ’rent from those intellects refined, So polish’d, so demure, so sweet, so attic, Which rouse no fire, with no strong feeling tease, ‘The mob of gentlemen, who write with ease’. XLV Byron, there are, who think some strange anomaly, Fitted thy head upon a Noble’s shoulders; Just as if that of poor Sir Samuel Romilly46 On L-v-p-l’s47 were fixed to pose beholders; Or just as if a drawling, stale, dry homily, Which on the shelf in some old College moulders, Were, by the magic of Sir Humphry’s lore, Amalgamated with the wit of Moore.48

360

… L Return we now our too discursive pen Back to the subject we’ve so long forgotten; – The Press (as we were telling you, Sir, when We were by something a new scent thus put on), The Press has made a furious change in men, Our ancestors we don’t regard a button; Losing our dullness, gravity, aud schoolishness, We deem their wisdom little more than foolishness.

251

400

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

LI We can’t conceive, in this age, the vast merit Of being born to title and estate; For virtue, wit, and courage men inherit But seldom; and ’tis certainly more great To earn distinction by our sense and spirit,* Than to receive it at the hands of Fate; Though, through a pedigree of noble blood, Derived from ev’ry Baron since the Flood.† LII Nor do we think, as wise men thought of yore, The people fixtures, parcel of the land; But deem, in spite of lawyers’ antique lore, The soil for man was made at heav’n’s command. Hence sprung that doctrine (to all ills a door), That Kings committed to their people stand, First Magistrates a nation’s laws to keep, And not the masters of a flock of sheep. LIII ’Tis marvellous how great’s the education Derived from newspapers and magazines; What lots of facts are spread throughout the nation, From which the dullest ideot something gleans. Their Editors, in my imagination, Like brokers operate upon our means. Those help the public mind in abstruse cases, By giving change for thoughts, as these for ‘Hases’.50 LIV ’Tis very much the fashion to revile The smaller journals, and to call them ‘trash’, Because they’re not too polish’d in their style, And love at Kings and Ministers to slash. (Though they shew infinitely less of bile Than their more loyal rivals, when they lash). Yet this same trash, when ev’ry thing is said, Hits frequently the right nail on the head.

450

460

470

* ‘S’il est heureux d’avoir de la naissance, il ne l’est pas moins d’être tel qu’on de s’informe plus si vous en avez’. La Bruyere. ‘Generari et nasci a principibus fortuitum, nec ultra æstimatur. —Tac. Hist. 1.59 † ‘That crept through scoundrels’, &c. Pope.

252

Morgans (from The Mohwaks)

LV Compare the most ill-managed Sunday paper, That fills our ‘rude mechanicals’51 with rage; For argument and sense, with Dean Swift’s52 draper,* Or the best pamphlets of a former age. (Howe’er Attornies-General may vapour, Or Judges fume, like mountebanks on stage, At its perverse and wicked capability), You needs must own ’tis written with ability. LVI Cobbett of Gaffer Gooch makes curious fun, His ‘Gridi’on’ frighten’d Jews and money-lenders; And Hunt’s Examiner is apt to run Successfully a-tilt ’gainst all offenders. The ‘Slap at Slop’ a victory has won, From L-nd-nd-r-y’s hireling, fee’d defenders; And there are highborn faces that look sadder, When hoisted on Hone’s53 matrimonial ladder.† LVII Cobbett, vile rogue, whom law’s restraints can’t teach To treat the Powers that be, with due respect; Cobbett will criticise a royal speech, And loves its faults in grammar to detect; Sticks to his prey as eager as a leech, Anxious to jibe, and bitter to reflect; St--t, St-dd-rt, G-ff-d, Cr-k-r,54 how he’d distance ye, But that the fitful fellow wants consistency.

480

490

LVIII Each day, week, month, and quarter, in collision With all the Tory phalanx of inditers; Now holding up a blockhead to derision, * ‘The Draper’s Letters’ were very ill judged. Wood’s patent was calculated to be highly beneficient to Ireland, by supplying a copper circulation, at that time greatly wanted. As to the general merits of political pamphleteers, there is far less abuse and calumny in the writers of the present day (excepting those always under the protection of the Tr--s-ry) than in those of the olden time. † The existence of what is called the Radical Press is a necessary consequence of the state of parties in Parliament. For in politics, as in magnetism, one pole cannot be affected without a corresponding change in the other; and the ultra speculations concerning reform, are closely allied with ultra obstinacy in resisting every amelioration. The indifference of the upper classes to constitutional points, excites the turbulence of the humbler orders. Let the parliamentary opposition show itself in earnest, and it would take from the hostility of the press all its acrimony and all its danger.

253

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

And now contending with their abler writers, These journals force e’en mobs with some precision To judge between them, as between prize fighters; And thus the rascals pick up sundry notions, As parsons tell us, pregnant with commotions: – LIX Now on the Paper System some shrewd guesses, And now, a thought or two about the Trinity; A stray idea on country folks distresses, Or on our Bishops’ Church-and-State divinity; Now pithy arguments for their addresses, Or on the laws of conjugal affinity, Doubts on immense Taxation’s vast utility;* Or hints upon the Sinking Fund’s futility.†

500

510

LX But, worst of all, they’ve set the people storming ’Gainst rotten boroughs and intriguing p--rs;55 Made them adopt the fashion of reforming, Unmov’d by W-rtl-y’s wrath, or C-nn-ng’s jeers;56 At public meetings in great numbers swarming, C-rtwr--t and H—t57 they greet with rapt’rous cheers; While not a traitor of the whole remembers That rotten boroughs send the best of Members.

* The question of the operation of taxes can only be doubted by one whose too much learning has made him mad. When a private man’s estate is saddled with a jointure, then may a nation be esteemed the richer, for being obliged to support three or four armies of non-productive placemen. † Of these accusations against the press, it may be observed, ‘Che anco negli animi composti e lontanissimi da ogni bruttura, scandolo molto maggiore cagionavano certi oscenissimi libri viventi che caminavano per le strade’. Boccalini, Ragguagli di Parnasso. ‘That even to the best disposed and most loyal mind, certain living books that swarm about the streets, (Tr-as-ry and P-rli-m-nt-house) occasion greater scandal, and tend more to a breach of the peace than all the libels ever printed.

254

ROBERT MONTGOMERY

from The Age Reviewed (1827) [First published in The Age Reviewed, London, William Charlton Wright, 1827, revised and corrected in the second edition of 1828, pp. 70–73, 86–90, 94, 100–08, 132–39, 154–59. Robert Gomery (1807–55), bluntly described by DNB as a ‘poetaster’, added the aristocratic prefix ‘Mont’ to his name whilst still at school.1 His first poem of note was The Stagecoach (1827), and in the same year, The Age Reviewed. Montgomery was a prolific writer of religious verse of the kind that appealed greatly to the evangelical wing of the Church of England, into which he was ordained in 1835. Works in this vein include The Omniprescence of the Deity (1828) and Satan, or, Intellect without God (1830), the former going through eight editions in as many months. Later editions of The Omniprescence of the Deity included a portrait of Montgomery striking a Byronic pose with upturned gaze and open collar. Indeed, Montgomery’s admiration for Byron knew no bounds, notwithstanding the latter’s scandalous reputation. In Part 1 of The Age Reviewed there is a pen portrait of Byron that leaves little doubt as to Montgomery’s opinion of his life and works; Part 2 is preceded by an epigraph from Don Juan, XII. 40. At the outset of his career Montgomery enjoyed almost universal approval from the reviewing press. The review for A Universal Prayer; Death; a Vision of Heaven; and a Vision of Hell (1828) written by Edward Clarkson that appeared in the Sunday Times and the British Traveller, was massively inflated. Clarkson ‘compared favourably Montgomery to Milton’.2 Southey too, presumably unaware of Montgomery’s anti­ pathetic depiction of him in The Age Reviewed, thought that Montgomery ‘was a rising young poet of much promise’.3 Given Montgomery’s limited talent, however, there was bound to be a backlash, and this duly appeared in Macauley’s scathing review of Montgomery’s poetry in The Edinburgh Review.4 Macauley’s general attack is aimed at what he sees as an appalling trend of bland, indeed banal, poetry being rhe­ torically inflated by reviewers who are in the pockets of unscrupulous publishers. Such reviews are written ‘by that class of people who more than once have talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious, or more difficult, trick, than when they passed Mr Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet’.5 In the best tradition of reviewing ‘We select him because 255

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348150-20

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

his works have received more enthusiastic praise, and have deserved more unmixed contempt, than any which, as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared within the last three or four years. His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a turkey-carpet bears to a picture’.6 Macauley also accuses Montgomery of plagiarism. Byron’s line from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage when addressing the sea, ‘Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow’,7 is rewritten by Montgomery in The Omniprescence of the Deity as: ‘And thou vast Ocean on whose awful face / Time’s iron feet can no print no ruin-trace’.8 Macauley’s review, however, did little to dent Montgomery’s popularity. By 1858 The Omniprescence of the Deity was in its twenty-eighth edition. The DNB suggests that Macauley’s review achieved an effect that was opposite to its intentions, and ‘succeeded in rescuing [Montgomery] from the oblivion to which he was properly destined’.9 The Age Reviewed is more notable for its ultra-Tory belligerence than for its literary quality. The poem in its entirety is some three hundred and eight pages in length and is divided into two parts (Part One consists of 1,489 lines; Part Two, 1,804). The first fifty-four lines consist of an apostrophe to Britain. Here Montgomery com­ pares this ‘Isle of enchanting forms, and lovely eyes’ with the glories that were Greece and Rome and in the process warns against the similar fate of an imminent fall, as the degenerate times inevitably witness ‘History sorrow o’er her second Rome’.10 The fault for this fall lies in the hands of events and of movements in poli­ tics and culture: the French Revolution and the iniquitous rise of democracy in Britain; industrialisation that sees the decline of the rural at the expense of urban values; popery, nonconformity, libertinism, and the appalling state of contemporary English literature. Like Mathias in The Pursuits of Literature, Montgomery sees noth­ ing ‘progressive’ about the age and chooses selectively to read Edmund Burke, for instance, as the Tory reactionary that he emphatically was not, and religious tolera­ tion as something that should be avoided at all costs as in his bitter and vituperative attack on Catholicism.11 Indeed, the tone and content of this passage would not look out of place in the debates about popery in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­ turies. Certainly Montgomery was swimming against the tide: the movement to bring about Catholic emancipation was to be successful only two years after the publication of The Age Reviewed. As Gary Dyer has recently stated, the mixture of illiberal politics, religion, and patriotic fervour was a heady brew drunk by many of the satirists of the Romantic period, Robert Montgomery not least among them.12 In tandem with his views on the state of politics, religion, and the nation Mont­ gomery has little time for any of his literary contemporaries, with the notable exception of Byron. Just as he argues that ‘… in society, where rank and birth / should shine – alike in dignity and worth’, so Montgomery believes that the literary tradition traced from ancient Greece and Rome, enshrined in the great Renaissance poets, Shakespeare and Milton, and currently embodied in the work of the neoAugustan Byron, should be preserved at all costs. As late as 1827 the Lake poets are still seen as dangerous avant-gardists, and Montgomery returns to the satirical ter­ rain of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in his attack on the ‘simple Wordworth’. According to Montgomery, ‘Soft Betty Wordsworth twaddles through her line’; he is 256

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

‘A flagging Jeremy, without his sense, / The Lakist bard in native impotence’.14 Col­ eridge and Southey receive similarly short shrift, with the former accused of being an ‘Alluring spinner of unmeaning rhyme’, an echo perhaps of Byron’s accusation in the ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan that Coleridge is deliberately obscure to the point of incomprehensibility.15 Given Montgomery’s bitter attack on the decline in Britain of rural values in the age of industrial revolution, one might have expected more admi­ ration for the Lakers and less for the metropolitan sophistication and polish of Byron’s verse. Montgomery also glosses over Byron’s contempt for the conservative politicians Pitt and Castlereagh that the author of The Age Reviewed so obviously admires.]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

DNB. Cited, DNB. Cited, DNB. T. B. Macaulay, ‘The Omnipresence of the Deity, a Poem’. ‘Satan, a Poem’, Edinburgh Review, CL (1830), pp. 193–211. Ibid. p. 194. Ibid. p. 201. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV.182; McGann, ed. BCPW 2. Macaulay, Edinburgh Review CL (1830), p. 202. DNB. Montgomery, The Age Reviewed, pp. 47, 50. Below, lines 155ff. Dyer, British satire and the politics of style, p. 48. Ibid. lines 257, 259–60. See ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan, above, pp. 202–05.

257

… A den* there is in London’s foggy sphere, To rank convenient, and to scoundrels dear, Where purseless rogues, and monied knaves are met, To share the easy purgat’ry of debt; Free from the bailiff,—here’s a calm retreat For all who bravely live, and wisely cheat; For all who go the dirty round of bills, And live, like monarchs, on their empty tills!— Far down the court extends the oblong pile, With grated windows and o’er slanting tile; Within, some choice old rascals sit at ease, And curse, and grin, and guzzle as they please; Or stretch’d luxurious on infected beds, With pensive satisfaction rub their heads; Without, some crack the joke, or sound the song, Or puff their pipe-smoke on the passing throng; More active, others ’gainst a circled wall, With wiry bats hurl up the mountain ball; Or, still as logs, upon a narrow seat, Lay out their limbs and doze away the heat. Oh! blest beyond cool Academus’ glade, Is England’s shelter for her sons of Trade; Where weary debtors rest quite snug awhile, And plot how villains may become more vile! And, mark how usurers† swarm, with greedy bait; Those harpies feeding on the fallen great; Secure they cozen by illegal aid, And raise on broken hearts their hideous trade!

330

340

350

* The King’s Bench1 was, no doubt, intended for a benevolent institution. But nothing has been more diabolically abused. It is the source of many a broken heart, and of many beggared families. The profligate and dissipated look to it as the haven of rest; the goal whence, after a due refreshment, and a further initiation into the mysteries of cozening, they start off again, with reinvigorated powers to renew the race. † Notwithstanding the usury laws, it is well known that usury still subsists in all its direful realities. Jews and Christians are alike sharers of this griping practice; the former are, indeed, worthy the appellation of dogs. They are filthy in person, and filthier in mind; petrified against humanity, preferring gold to the flesh on their bodies; and of course to other people’s. It is dreadful to think of the calamitous consequences, occasioned by these outcasts, to young men of dissipation. To their personal appearance we may well apply: Hispida membra quidem et duræ per brachia setæ Promittunt atrocem animum. Juv.2

258

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

Of swindlers most abhorred – the crafty Jews, Colleagued with brokers and their monied crews, Crawl round the land to cozen and enmesh, Like Shakspeare’s, ready for the coins or flesh;—3 The world’s collected scum from ev’ry zone, Would shame these men-hounds that defile our own: Look on a Jew-dog!—how the living pest Palls on the gaze, and heats the loathing breast; Mark! how the minion rolls his greedy eye, And through his widen’d jaw lets out the monstrous lie! Prowling for victims, through the allies dark He roams, a lender to each high-born spark; And grants some squeezing pittance for a bond, Till ruined heirs from bartered rights abscond. In early times, Vice felt her true disgrace, And mostly put a mask upon her face; But, see the privilege of modern times, When thieves and knaves can advertise their crimes! Furious with plans, large* ‘Companies’ unite, Bait their nice hook, and get the dupes to bite. …

360

370

Ye mongrel mixtures of the cit5 and clown, Who ape the vice and fashion of the town; Ye who would strut so fiercely fine and grand, And ship our peasants from their native land,† While big and broad, fat-eyed, red-cheeked, and round, * The future historian, who shall relate the domestic occurrences of eighteen hundred and twenty six, will certainly present some interesting memoirs for posterity. No doubt, nineteen hundred and twenty six will be weaving tales to illustrate the national cheats and unblushing bilks of eighteen hundred and twenty six. The Joint Stock Companies, have presented an original picture of undaunted, unrepented villainy, only to be matched by the bamboozling pirates that purloined the succours from Greece. We must have looked uncommonly glorious in the eyes of surrounding nations a few months since; when every brought with it an account of some fresh discovered cheats! It was not one solitary thief that shone in the light of infamy; not two; no, not a dozen;— but gallant bands!—C OMPANIES of sleek-mouthed rogues who united to filch and advertised their capabilities!! And yet other Companies, phoenix-like, are beginning to rise from the ashes of the last:— … illos Defendit numeros, junctæ que umbone phalanges.4 † Transport our poor peasantry!!—well, that S OUNDS political. At any rate we should have more room in that case to receive imported beggars; for whiskered Italians, and Gallic footmen, dressed up for French teachers. Perhaps Mr Sharon Turner’s6 observation will not be criminally introduced here. ‘The M ORE population tends to press upon the quantity of subsistence in any country, the more it also tends to increase it. As the pressure begins, the activity and ingenuity of mankind are roused to provide it’. We all know the ‘ingenuity of the Malthusian disciples’.7 Would that the country were relieved of a few of its political scribblers! We can spare to transport a few of them instead of the labourers. Every peasant is worth fifty government grubs.

259

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

You’d lag at home, with wealth and luxury crown’d,— Know, of all mimics of the mean and base, Of brutish vanity and vile disgrace,— A half-born, half-bred farmer is the worst; Mock’d by the rich, and by the poor man curst;— False to his country, foe to her moral growth, Ruined by wealth, and rotting in his sloth,— Nor wise nor good, nor generous nor brave,— A fop, a fool, a tyrant, and a knave! Now leave the country, for an upstart scene, Ignobler far than all the past hath been: To see a pack of mongers swell so great, So good and wise, as to uphold the state! So patriotic as to shut up shop, And make the money-tinking till to stop! Burdened with fate, SIR PUNCH 8 to London goes, ‘Noes’ in his eyes, and ‘ayes’9 upon his nose;— Room for Sir Punch!—Reporters, nib your pens! And listen to the ‘hows’, and ‘wheres’, and ‘whens’. Hark! how his leathern lungs, like bellows, pant, Heave the big speech, and puff it out in cant; See how he licks his tooth, and screws his eye, And twists and twirls his thumbs, he can’t tell why; Like Pythia, perched upon the Delphic stool,10 He writhes and wriggles till his mouth is full, And then unloads a heap of stubborn stuff, Till coughs proclaim the House has had enough; Then down he sits, with aching sides and bones, Just like a hog, convulsed with grins and groans. Shame to the sunken state! and Britain’s pride, That e’en when beggar’d helms a world beside; Since paltry traders* represent our isle,

580

590

600

* Quintillian11 says, no man can be an orator without he is a good man. ‘oratorem autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse, nisi vir bonus, non potest’.12 Look over our Parliamentary list for the present session, and when was England so degraded? How will it read hereafter that, ‘Earth’s dictatress, Ocean’s mighty queen’ WAS P ARTLY legislated by a brood of huckaback merchants, brokers, and Ambubaiarum conlegia, pharmacopolæ Mendici, mimæ, balatrones; hoc genus omne?13 It certainly matters not what that man’s former condition was who has made himself competent to represent his country; but more than half the present members are UTTERLY unqualified; they have crept into Parliament, bribed and bribing. But ‘M.P’ is somewhat unconvincing at the end of a name; for instance, ‘John Wilks, Esq. M.P., &c. &c. And what do the field-bred clouts perform in Parliament? Why, wear out their leathern breaches by a few hours’ fidgets and scribble franks for cousins and Co.

260

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

As mean in talent, as in moral vile. What! shall the knave and blockhead dare to sit, Where Pitt and Sheridan14 once flashed their wit? How will Britannia look to rival states, When varlet W——, or E—— legislates!—15 How must her Constitution's glories bloom, Through jobbing E——e, and piratic H——?16 Time was, when great abroad, and brave at home, Her Senate’s genius rivalled pristine Rome; And tongues unchained by dullness or by hire Proclaimed the patriot with Athenian fire:— There is an eloquence in Canning’s17 eye, And classic verdure in his rich reply, A thoughtful vigour in perspicuous Peel;18 But how will raggamuffins speak or feel, That, job-inspired, to Stephen’s mansion flock, To turn the Parliament a jointed stock? Big with ‘M. P’. behold the mushroom race Thrust in by bribes to fill a barter’d place; To drizzle speeches, and like pug-dogs perk, In halls once hallow’d by the lips of Burke.19 … And so, by printed,* or by spoken lies, Behold the Spirit of rebellion rise; Yes! every blockhead born to clean the mews, To patch our breeches, or to mend our shoes, Cocks his pert eye, uplifts his pompous brow, And dubs himself a politician now. …

610

620

670

See Cobbett rise,—with brutish pride to reign, The bone-preserver of th’ accursed Paine;23 * Orator Hunt, Cobbett, Carlile,20 and Co., are those minions who invariably arise from a disordered country; they are the offspring of faction, just as horn flies teem from manure:— they live on the rotten. How it is possible, that such an apostate, so mean a demagogue as Cobbett can excite respect in any bosom, seems to me more than paradoxical. What are his tenets? What have been, and what are his actions? He lives on weekly libels— Himself a living libel on mankind. He has talents;—‘is the first political writer in this country’,—cries Counsellor Kirnan. But these talents only increase his shame. Domitian,21 Nero,22 and a thousand petty scoundrels of antiquity, were talented; but do we like them the better? Could there be a greater proof of Cobbett’s corrupted heart, than his conduct with regard to Paine’s bones. Supposing it were true, as these theorists aver, that our religion is a mere humbug, still there is some little respect due to the national religion of the country’.

261

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

With proper page to print each vile attack, The ‘Herald’s’ mouth-piece, and the butt for Black: Detested ‘Patriot!’ whose mean tongue can turn, Well lick Burdett,*—and then the patron spurn,— Though thy rank pen be dipp’d in miscreant gall, To soil thy betters, and to poison all,— Deem not, foul renegade, there’s none can see The buried hypocrite, alive in thee! Though Paddy Kernan25 spout thine impious line, And crazy Connell deem’d thee once divine: Thine aim well-rob’d in patriotic vest, Gleams forth traducive, in each wild protest, — Thou liv’st but to enjoy thy pestful ire, And lay the fuel for Rebellion’s fire; To drive Religion from her hallow’d fane,— With heart of Thurtell, and with head of Paine! Obscure in print, but splendid on our shoes, Unmatched in Billingsgate,26 for black abuse,— Grossness in port, and baseness in his eye, I see the Punch of hustings27 dangle by, — The farmer’s Alfred,—brazen-visaged Hunt,† Whom Baron Leatherbrains can scarce confront; Embalm’d in dunghills,—figur’d on the wall,— In universal fame, Hunt beats them all! Who can forget that never-equall’d day,‡

770

780

790

* That Cobbett should traduce and be an ingrate after receiving Burdett’s24 bounty, is not remarkable. It would be unreasonable to expect pure water from a muddy horse pond. But that a man of Sir Francis Burdett’s birth and acquirements, should link himself with Cobbett, is more than remarkable. I suppose H E had his reasons. † Those who are partial to “character” must admire Mr Orator Hunt. There is no man in this kingdom who lies so magnanimously—so unrelentingly bold—so like a ‘genuine’ John Bull.28 He is none of your half-hinters—drawling, whining suppositionists; he will lie in the face of thousands; and batter with falsehoods the plainest proof. Those who have heard him enunciate his most celebrated falsehoods, and marked the flashing impudence of his eye, will join with me in awarding him unrivalled fame for mendacity. In this respect— His name will be his epitaph alone. ‡ I happened to be walking up Norfolk-street, just as Hunt made his “triumphant entry” along the Strand. He seemed to have fattened in goal [i.e. jail]: there was altogether an increasing insolence in his manner, and when he waved his cloak, he looked as though he were sweeping to him the product of ten thousand bottles of blacking. ‘Triumphant entry!’—had better chair Wilks and Hume29 next; the one for his service to the companies, and the other for his Greek patriotism. On seeing Hunt in his car, one could not but remember the anecdote of the Roman emperor, who gathered cockle-shells on the sea shore of Britain, and entered Rome with the heroism of a mighty conqueror. Hunt puffed hard to get into Parliament: but Sir T. Lethbridge, notwithstanding ‘all appliances’ of stupidity, uselessness, &c. contrived to prevent him. The demagogue has nick-named him ‘Leather-Breeches’.

262

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

When, fresh from gaol, he mov’d the coach-lin’d way, In car triumphant, and with crimson cloak,— The donkies brayed and chimnies ceas’d to smoke! Such hands were tongued, such pipes were split with cries, All thought that Ilchester had lost a prize!— Propitious pair! heroic duo hail! So nicely fitted for a modern jail,— Mob-courting rivals of th’ Athenian two, What monument shall Britain rear for you? Oh! calmly wait till death’s surprizing day Shall cool your patriotic busts of clay; Then shall two snowy statues grateful own, Neglected patriots, kindling from the stone;— A chizelled Register in Cobbett's hand, While Hunt shall look all eloquently bland! … P OPERY!*—Oh, ye who pant to see return The liberal days when living hearts shall burn; When fresh Marozias33 and their impure clan Shall turn each English fane a Laterán,— Begone!—like Duncombe,34 wear the papal hose, And slabber kisses on the giver’s toes! In vain, impervious Butler gilds his creed, And quotes for Southey half the monst’rous creed;

800

820

* Who can mention the Roman Catholic religion, nor advert to the times that are past? Whether we look to the superstitious slavery of its creed, the bloated impiousness of its popes, or the wary, base-minded trickeries of its prowling priesthood,—nothing but one scene of crime and bloodshed appears to the view. Among all the questions that have been, and are still agitating, there is none of such vital, as we may say, awful importance to an Englishman as the ‘Catholic’ one. In this respect Dr Southey, notwithstanding his former apostacy, has been of considerable service: Charles Butler30 was properly and finely shewn up by him. The advocates for the Roman Catholic religion, have attuned their throats to the most plaintively and insinuating tone possible. Their amiable lips quake with the jargon of ‘common right’, and all the ready cant of ‘liquid lies’. But when they tell us that the Roman Catholics are not what they used to be; are we blind our eyes against RECENT deeds of H ORRID bigotry? Are we to forget Mr Plowden’s speech,—one of their warmest advocates? viz. whoever pretended that the Roman Catholics of the PRESENT day differed, in O NE I OTA , from their A NCESTORS, he was guilty of perjury, &c.! The truth is, (and Mr Plowden, a rara avis is honest enough to tell it,) the Catholic croak is a most insidious plot to re-establish the papal dominion, and slave the whole kingdom to a revengeful, money-loving priesthood; a priesthood that pretends to preserve souls by counted beads, or send them to heaven on two-penny pieces! Every Catholic is BOUND by his creed to do his utmost to introduce that creed, and consequently, to undermine the church and state of the Protestants. God grant! that neither the democratical chicaneries of the Scotch Cato, the traducing spume of Shiel,31 or the poisonous drivel of O’Connell,32 may attain their end; if so we say of the Pope:— …Whether rough Or smooth his front our world is in his hand!!

263

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Or takes ten thousand virgins on his arm, To keep his sacerdotal spirit warm,— Politic whine betrays the smother’d hate, And popish vengeance burning for the state. What! though they boast their union in those times, When parricides were bishop's gentler crimes, Of Leo Medici,35 Christ’s Vicar Pope That robb’d Urbino,36 and deserved the rope,— Shall we forget the Popedom’s pristine deeds, The swinish incest and the barter’d creeds, Bandini’s murder,37 and the butcher’d Jew, The Marian war,38 or Erin’s mangled crew? The red crusade the Albigenses saw,39 The hunted mountain sons of bleak Vaudois?40 – Forget the Inquisition’s bloody pack,41 And all the church-hounds grinning o’er the rack!! Forbid it! Nature’s exil’d common-sense, That souls should be redeem’d by paltry pence; That priest-attrition ev’ry sin should cure, And beads and penance make salvation sure! While Papists gently tune their guileful note, And tempt us meekly for the mighty vote; We think of Rome’s incestual mass of trick, From howling Dunstan down to Dominic:42— ‘What then,’—cries candid Plowden,43 ‘still we own, This saintly humbug props the Papal throne; Who dares abjure one saint's recorded deed,— He lies,—a dastard to our Romish creed!’ Remember, Britons, how your martyrs died, Nor in descended Hilderbrands44 confide, Arm round that glorious faith your Luther gave,— Nor shrink from God, to be a Popish slave! Say, who for Erin’s isle* the tear restrains,

830

840

850

* Attributing the distresses of Ireland to the ‘slavery of the Roman Catholics’, is another of the artful resources of the worshippers of the ‘Great Whore’ This is not the proper place to enter into the question; but has not the late conduct of O’Connell and Shiel, been enough of itself to testify the lurking villainy of their distorted minds? What opinion are we to form of that man whose tongue is forked with unceasing forgeries, lampooning spite, and envy?—of the man, who, dressed in green, went round the country to excite rebellion among his ignorant countrymen? Shiel is a more decent, mealy-mouthed demagogue than O’Connell; but even he, flowery and fluent as he is in eloquising to port wine, was audacious enough to traduce, slander, and black with his perfidious slaver, the late brother of our reigning King, while racked with the agonies of disease! This is an introductory specimen of what we may expect hereafter, I suppose. And yet O’Connell and Shiel are the two pillars of Catholic Intrigue. No one can deny they are quite worthy of the situation. A bigoted system of Humbug will stand the better for being propped by congenial rogues.

264

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

Where unfed thousands wear the priesthood’s chains; Where abject gloom o’erclouds the sunken mind, And poverty to all but Vice, is blind? We groan for Spain – for India’s harness’d slaves, But slight the fellow land, where famine raves! Reproach of Erin, by rebellious aid The lawless leader of a green tirade, Vile-hearted despot of th’ insurgent free, How base the Bedlamite45 that ranks with thee, Transporting legions from their present zone, And making new Chronologies thine own! That ready flow of eloquential lies, That reckless love of nursed brutalities,— Reveal the blackness of the plotting hate, Though mumbling Fingal46 stroke thy fuddled pate:— The day will come when cursed ‘O’Connell’s’ name, Shall sound the trumpet of Hibernian47 shame! Thou of the fiendish stamp, whose Papal growl Prophanes the kindly hours of feast and soul,— Could not a monarch, on his bed of death, Perfidious Shiel, hold in thy blasted breath? Could none but Royal York48 sustain the gibe, And show the Traitor to his sotted tribe?* — … Could pens eternal last, to name the stock, Of all the bards that to Parnassus49 flock— The sentimental megrims of their brain, The sonnet, ode, and elegiac strain,— Proclaim the parents of those ragged rhymes In Magazines, Gazettes, and all the Times?— Must my poor Muse decide the snappish claims, And metre-wonders of ten thousand names? The young and grey - the whimp’ring, bold or mad, The flippant, funny, flowery, gay, and sad— Must all, like Banquo’s issue, pass her view,50 Each with his work? – Lord help her if they do! Some frantic Poets leave no gap untried,† Whose genius scorns to take a Pope for guide; If blunt conceit can frame supplanting schools, Why care, though genuine taste denounce them fools?

860

870

1190

* With the sordid cunning of a Jesuit, Shiel attempted a kind of recantation after his Royal Highness’ decease; it was, however, but awkward perfidy, struggling to be more hypocritical † Nil intentatum nostri liquêre poëtæ. H OR.51

265

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Some ever climb the clouds, – some creep in caves, Some sing of balls, while others groan to graves;— Wild, prurient, turgid, scanty or diffuse, Through all the gambols of a jadish muse; Cold artifice for Nature’s fresher powers, They flounce o’er weeds, and dream them beds of flowers! Of all the whining herds that late uprose, On whose flat page the tide of nonsense flows;— The Lakists52 hobble worst, in lifeless chime; Their hills have souls, their ponds are all sublime!— Convulsive phrensies stir about their brains, Till moon and stars pour spirit on the plains; Their hearts beat time to every pheasant’s wing, Their ears catch intellect when owlets sing;— Their eyes adore the woods for beauty’s marks, While their sweet souls ascend with morning larks!— A mystery floats upon the Keswick breeze, And sprites Castalian, chatter from the trees;— For them, the clouds dress up with tints refined, And every sunbeam serves to light their mind! Insipid, whimpering out his prosy verse,* As if he moaned it all behind a hearse, Soft Betty53 Wordsworth twaddles through her line, Most beautiful,—most pulingly54 divine;— A flagging Jeremy, without his sense, The Lakist bard in native impotence:— Who, wakeful reads th’ Excursion’s55 sleepy page Of whining dullness and old preachments sage? There, view, drawled forth the metaphysic scheme, Where trash devoutly lends the Muse a theme; And pedlar, pauper, bard, and weaver’s wife,56 With tuneful logic hum the poet’s life: Dear William! thou for ever on the nod, Receive my praises for the drowsy god:— When on my knees th’ excursive leaves recline, How do I bless thee for their anodyne! Monastic Southey,—he whose natal hour†

1200

1210

1220

1230

* No one can deny Wordsworth the possession of great, very great genius; but it is miserably clogged with twaddle. Mr Southey, who is also a great man, thinks most of the poets since the time of Elizabeth, scarcely worth comparison with the ‘Lakists’. He, and the whole ‘Namby Pamby’ family, can find sublimity in ‘Peter Bell’ and ‘Betty Foy’!! There is no accounting for tastes; – trite, but true. † Whom thou rich nature at thy happy birth Blest in her bounty with the largest dower

266

Montgomery (from The Age Reviewed)

Rich Nature favoured with her largest dower; In vain apostacy from Keswick comes, To tickle George’s ear with Laureate hums;61 Protean bard!62—that once could Tyler63 sing, Then slipped his hide—and lo! ’twas Court and King! Since wordy lumps of artificial stuff Insure thine homage of a Quarter’s puff,64— If egotistic spleen can ought avail, To keep thy laurels green, and odes unstale;— Long sound the peerless trumpet of thy praise, Let self for ever load the Laureate lays; In these, the suction of a tory brain, More faddling far than Pye65 or Whitehead’s66 strain. Peace to thy pond’rous Epics!—few can dare To waddle through the dronish lumber there; That last weak dribble came replete with whine,— The tale of Paraguay—thine, only thine!— Such drivelling pathos, that the rook must caw, While Madam Southey press’d her genial straw! If ever vapid dross in sickly verse, Proclaimed a piddling Laureate growing worse— Thou showd’st it here—not filthy Latin lore Could save the twaddle from Oblivion’s store. Oh! Southey, scorn the verse which few can read, And sweat for Murray,67 where thy prose is meed; That garland green which crowns thy living head, Will deck a turncoat’s shame, when thou art dead! The cock struts nobly, now,—tu-whit – tu-whoo—68 And moon-eyed owlets pierce the night-air through; Come, promptly weave around the circle trice,69

1240

1250

1260

That heaven indulges to a child of earth. … Now really, Doctor, this is more than a quantum suff. Your fancy must have been drunk with the inspiring crystal of the Keswick Lakes, when she told you such insufferable conceit. A little after, in the same ‘Carmen Nuptiale’,57 we have,— That green wreath which decks the bard when dead, That laureate garland crowns my living head. A laureate is always expected to be conceited; but this egotism is not at all à la mode. Dr Southey has fallen off dreadfully in his poetry. His Epics were never generally liked, notwithstanding his own high opinion of them; but friend or foe, who could like his ‘Tale of Paraguay’, or ‘Laureate Odes, &c.?58 He is an admirable prose writer; but extremely artificial, even in his best poetry; it will bear reading but once. The following observations by Galt59 are worth perusing. ‘Mr Southey cogitates himself into a state of poetical excitement, but he seems to be rarely touched with the fine frenzy of the poet. He has sagacity and means to build a pyramid; but the little entaglio of Gray’s Elegy,60 is more valuable than all this great tumulus to the memory of the last of the Goths’.

267

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 2

Lo! Coleridge* perched upon a dome of ice!— Alluring spinner of unmeaning rhyme, His ‘Pixy’ wond’rous, and his ‘Ass’ sublime;—71 The mimic Wilson72—let him be forgiv’n— For wafting sleeping infants’ thoughts to heav’n.

* Mr Samuel Coleridge, like Wordsworth, is a Lake poet of most original genius. But, for some occasional beautiful lines, he repays us with an immense deal of floundering bathos, German mysticisms, and perplexing absurdities. Qui fit, Mæcenas.70

268

EXPLANATORY NOTES

George Ellis, from The Rolliad (1785) 1 See the Genealogy, pp. 21, 22] In the ‘Short Account of the Family of Rollos, now Rolles’, which precedes the text, Ellis offers a mocking family history of the Rollos as they descend from the aristocracy to the minor gentry. 2 Such Geese … &c. &c.] Echoes a famous incident in Roman history when Geese raised the alarm at an attempted invasion of the city. 3 Lord Mahon] Charles Stanhope (1753–1816; DNB), politician and cousin of William Pitt. 4 Mr Pitt] William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806; DNB), prime minister 1783–1801, 1804–06. 5 Sh—ne] William Petty, first Marquis of Lansdowne (1737–1805; DNB), better known as Lord Shelburne. Shelburne’s resignation in 1783 brought about the elec­ tion whereby Pitt and his followers were the principal beneficiaries. 6 Dundas] Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811; DNB), politician and supporter of William Pitt, sometimes referred to as the unofficial king of Scotland. 7 Octavius] Gaius Octavius (63 BC–AD 14) was the first Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, taking the name Augustus in 27 BC. Augustus was emperor from 31 BC–AD 14. 8 ‘nolo episcopari’] ‘I am unwilling to accept the office of bishop’. 9 Mulgrave’s] Henry Phipps, first Earl of Mulgrave and Viscount Normanby (1755– 1831; DNB). Phipps was a statesman and supporter of William Pitt. 10 Mr Wedgewood] Josiah Wedgewood (1730–95; DNB), potter and manufacturer. 11 Mr Secretary Prettyman] Sir George Pretyman Tomline (1750–1827; DNB), William Pitt’s Cambridge tutor and from 1783–87, his private secretary. 12 con amore] ‘With love’. 13 Tu Marcellus eris] ‘You are to be Marcellus’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 882). 14 Oh miserande puer!] ‘Oh miserable boy’. 15 Argus] In Graeco-Roman mythology the Argus is a monster with a hundred eyes. See Ovid’s Metamorphosis, I. 16 Addison] Joseph Addison (1672–1719; DNB), essayist and civil servant. 17 India Board] In 1783 Fox tried to get the India Bill passed through both houses of parliament. The purpose of the bill was to pass control of the East India Company to commissioners who were appointed by Parliament. After having successfully got the bill through the Commons it was defeated in the Lords after George III applied the necessary pressure. The principal ministers involved were dismissed leading to 269

Explanatory notes to pages 6–13

18 19

20 21 22

the formation of the Pitt administration. John Rolle was one of the India Bill’s most vocal opponents. Grenville’s] William Wyndham, first Baron Grenville (1759–1834; DNB), at this time Paymaster 1783–89. Martinus Scriblerus] A pseudonym invented by the members of the Scriblerus Club to signify a pedantic hack. The Scriblerus Club was founded in the early eighteenth century as a loose association of Tory intellectuals who gathered together to discuss contemporary affairs. Its most famous members were Alexander Pope (1688–1744; DNB), Jonathan Swift (1667–1745; DNB) and John Gay (1685–1732; DNB). bawd] Pimp. Chatham’s] William Pitt the Elder, first Earl of Chatham (1708–78; DNB). Chatham was Prime Minister from 1757–61, 1766–68. Essay on Criticism] Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), l. 155. Pope is slightly misquoted; the line should read: ‘And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art’.

Thomas James Mathias, from The Pursuits of Literature (1794–97) 1 La nudrita … c. 46.] Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), Orlando Furioso (1516), Canto 46. 2 Sunt adhoc curæ … amicos agant.’ Plin. Ep.] ‘There is still a trust and duty to care for other people; there are those too who concern themselves with the friends of the dead’ (Pliny, Letters, I, letter 17). 3 OMNES / Admonet, … (1796)] He ‘admonishes everyone and with a voice booming through the gloom bears witness: be warned, learn to be just and do not offend the gods’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 618–20). 4 ‘Agri, edificia, … Cic. De Leg. Orat. 3.] ‘The farms took over buildings, places, posses­ sions and the rest; the sky and the sea they left untouched’ (Cicero, De Legibus, III). 5 ‘Quantus suspirus et … intelligi D EUS !’] ‘Such a sighing and groaning was there that, in however small a part, God was understood to be present’ (source untraced). 6 ‘Auctor nominis … Annal. 15. S. 44.] ‘The author of this is by name CHRIST, who in the days of the Emperor Tiberius was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate’ (Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome, XV. 41). 7 ‘Non est quit judicat … iniquitatem.’] ‘None pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity and speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity’ (Isiaiah 59: 4). 8 Crazy Tale] Mathias is referring to Crazy Tales, by John Hall Stevenson (1718–85; DNB) first published separately in 1762, with a second edition in 1764. Many of the Crazy Tales are translations or adaptations of particularly bawdy French fabliaux. 9 Priapus’ bust] Priapus is a Graeco-Roman fertility god, traditionally depicted in art as being physically ugly with a gigantic phallus. 10 I lictor, colliga manus.] ‘Go, lictor, tie his hands’ (A lictor was an official attendant). The original seems to come from a purely pagan source, Livy’s History, I, ch. 26, but the words were subsequently attributed to Pontius Pilate at the condemnation of Christ – whose hands were ordered to be tied. 11 ‘Græcè / Discumbant … J UV.] Attributed by Mathias to Juvenal. However, the Latin does not appear to make much sense. ‘Graece Discumbant’ might mean ‘They take their place at table in the Greek fashion’. Then something apparently goes wrong with the text. ‘Velari’ might be a corruption of ‘curtain’ or (more likely) ‘can­ 270

Explanatory notes to pages 14–15

12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20

21

22

23 24

vas’. The last two lines are grammatically unsound, but may be translated thus ‘In the tuneful choir, there being to start up Spanish love songs’. ȈȠijȚĮ ʌȡȦIJȠȞ… İʌİ ȚIJĮ İȚȡȘțȚțȘ.] ‘Wisdom is first pure, then peaceful’. Maro] Publius Virgilius Maro (70–19 BC), better known as Virgil, the Roman Augustan poet and author of The Aeneid. Boileau’s art and Dryden’s rapture rove.] Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), French man of letters and translator of Longinus’s On the Sublime (first century A.D), published in French in 1674. Boileau’s translation exercised a profound influence on eighteenthcentury aesthetics. John Dryden (1631–1700; DNB), was indebted to it in his critical essay The Author’s Apology for Heroic Poetry (1677). Burke ALONE … our foes:] Edmund Burke (1729–97; DNB), aesthetician, philoso­ pher, political theorist and author of the anti-revolutionary Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), of which Mathias approved mightily. Wakefield rant] Reverend Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801 DNB), scholar and literary controversialist. Glomerare sub antro … (1796.)] ‘He gathers smoke-laden night beneath the roof of the cave, darkness mixed with fire’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VIII. 254–55). ‘Ubi passim palantes … tramite pellit.’] ‘(As in the forests) when wandering aimlessly, distraction make you lose the path’ (Horace, Satires, II. iii. 48). Thelwall bawl,] John Thelwall (1764–1834 DNB). Thelwall in the 1790s was the most accomplished political theorist of the radical London Corresponding Society (LCS), as well as being a journalist, pamphleteer, poet and playwright. He looked upon the radical theorist William Godwin as his ‘philosophical father’; see Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, p. 143. Horne Tooke] John Horne Tooke (1736–1812; DNB). Horne Tooke was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1760 and was a champion of radical causes. He supported John Wilkes until 1771 and then formed the Constitutional Society with a view to the promotion of parliamentary reform. He was a supporter of the American Revo­ lution, and was active as a radical in the 1790s. Arrested for treason in 1794, though acquitted. By fifties in a cave] Scripture: ‘For it was so … that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water’ (1 Kings 18: 4). The wider topical reference to which this refers is the Seditious Meetings Preven­ tion Act (1795), an Act that Mathias wishes to have made perpetual. Pitt or Grenville] William Pitt (1759–1806; DNB), British Prime Minister from 1783– 1801 and 1804–06. Pitt was widely reviled by British radicals and supporters of the French Revolution for introducing repressive legislature during the 1790s. William Wyndham (1759–1834 DNB), Baron Grenville, Foreign Secretary from 1791 to 1801, in which capacity in 1792 Wyndham introduced the Alien Bill, designed ‘for the registration and supervision of all foreigners in the country’. In 1794 moved the first reading of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill and in 1795 he introduced the Treasonous Practices Bill’ and the Seditious Meetings Bill (DNB). Burke’s claws in gold] In 1794 Burke was awarded a pension of £1200 by the govern­ ment for his counter revolutionary polemics. ‘Summos … Statius.] ‘They had tamed the longest claws with gold’ (source untraced). 271

Explanatory notes to pages 15–22

25 ȆȠȜȜȠȣĮȞ ʌȡȚĮȚμȘȞ . (1796.)] ‘I would pay alot’. 26 Thurlow just, in Wedderburne, serene] Edward Thurlow (1731–1806; DNB), Lord Chan­ cellor from 1778–83, when he was dismissed at the insistence of Charles Fox. Thurlow was a constant enemy of reform. Alexander Wedderburne (1733–1805; DNB), Baron Loughborough and first Earl of Rosslyn. On 28 January 1793 Wed­ derburne was appointed Lord Chancellor by William Pitt the Younger in which capacity he vigorously prosecuted the sedition trials of the 1790s. 27 Dundas,] Henry Dundas (1742–1811; DNB), Viscount Melville. Home Secretary, 1791–94. 28 Smit with the fame of Rollo’s bard and squire] Mathias’s note on this line refers the reader to a series of Whig satires entitled Criticisms of The Rolliad (1784–85), and published collectively in 1791. See the headnote and extracts from The Rolliad, above, pp. 1–7. 29 Correct as Gifford, or as Cowper strong] William Gifford (1756–1826; DNB), poet and satirist and William Cowper (1731–1800; DNB), poet. Gifford and Mathias were the subject of an attack in verse entitled A Poem: On the Authors of Two Late Productions; Intitled ‘The Baviad’ and ‘The Pursuits of Literature’ (1797) where they are characterised as ‘Two Rhymers from the loins of envy sprung; / Who spread with liberal hand their load of dung’ (p. 1; cited by Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, p. 173, n. 44). 30 decernunt quodcunque volunt DE CORPORE NOSTRO ] ‘They make whatever pro­ nouncements they please about our body’. 31 Per solis radios, … cæli,] ‘They swear through the rays of the Sun and the Tarpeian thunderbolts and all the missiles that the heavenly armouries hold’ (Juvenal, Satires, XIII. 78). 32 Ejectum litore, … in parte locavi!] ‘A castaway on the shore, a beggar, I took him in and insanely gave him a share of my kingdom’ (Virgil, Aeneid, IV. 373–74). 33 ‘IN FUTURAM REI MEMORIAM !’] ‘In the future recollection of the matter’. 34 M OORE ] John Moore, M.D. (1729–1802; DNB), author of A View of Society and Man­ ners in France, Switzerland, and Germany (1779) and A View of Society and Manners in Italy (1781). 35 Vineta cædit sua.] ‘He cut down his own vineyards’ (Horace, ‘Epistle to Augustus’, 220). 36 Abbè Sieyes] Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748–1836), considered by some scholars to be the leader of the early revolution in France. 37 ‘I N NOSTROS FABRICATA EST MACHINA MUROS.’] The engine of war has been built before our walls’ (Laocoon, speaking with reference to the Trojan horse) (Vir­ gil, Aeneid, II. 46). 38 Peturbatur … POSITURÆ PRINCIPIORUM .] ‘His entire body is all at once upset and all the dispositions of the constituent atoms changed’ (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, IV. 666–67). 39 ‘ǾįȘ ȖĮȡ μȠȚ… ĭȚȜȠıȠijȦȞ.] ‘The darkness of ignorance about everything was now on me, and black illusion and boundless error and endless fantasy and uncon­ vincing folly. So I went through them [the theories of the philosophers] to show the contradictions in them and how their investigation of reality is undefined and 272

Explanatory notes to pages 22–26

40 41 42

43

44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56

57

unbounded, relying on no obvious fact or clear argument’ (Hermias, Satire of the Pagan Philosophers, chs 18 and 19). ‘īİȞȠμİȞȦ … ȞȣȤİIJȠ !’] ‘Being in agony he prayed more earnestly’ (Luke 22: 44). Godwin’s dry page no statesman e’er believ’d] Mathias is referring, of course, to William Godwin’s celebrated and notorious Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). gifted villains die] In 1794 Godwin published a popularisation of the ideas and argu­ ment of Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in the form of a novel entitled Caleb Williams, or, Things as they Are. Falkland is the one of its two major characters, and the ‘gifted villain’ to whom Mathias refers. PARR] Dr Samuel Parr (1747–1825; DNB), pedagogue and clergyman. Parr was a pronounced Whig in his politics: ‘He regarded Burke as a renegade, but was equally anxious to condemn Paine’. Parr also disapproved of the government’s repressive legislation in the 1790s, ‘and condemned the dominant war spirit in various ser­ mons’ (DNB). notis et commentariis perpetuis DOCTORIS GUILLOTONI,] ‘With the notes and run­ ning commentaries of Doctor Guillotine’. Ƞ ʌĮȞȣ] ‘The famous’. Tucker swore] Josiah Tucker (1712–99 DNB) D.D., Dean of Gloucester, economist and Anglican divine. Hinc illæ lacrymæ!] ‘Hence arose those tears’. critick dignity] Mathias is referring to Richard Hurd (1720–1808; DNB), Bishop of Worcester, with whom Parr was at literary odds. Hic Cimbros et summa … Urbem.] ‘This man, however, takes on both the Cimbrians [a Celtic people] and the greatest dangers in the world, and on his own protects the trembling city’ (Juvenal, Satires, VIII. 249–50). ‘ȉĮ ȣIJĮ ʌĮ ȞIJĮȜȠȖ ȚıμȦ … vol. 2. Ed. Serrani] ‘Taking all these things into account, he [the philosopher], remaining calm and tending to his own affairs, as if standing aside under a wall in a storm of wind-swept dust and hail, seeing others filled with law­ lessness, is content if he can somehow live out his life here, unblemished by wickedness and evil deeds, and make his departure with fair hope, serene and con­ tent’ (Plato, Republic, VI. 496d–e). Rousseau] Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French philosopher and man of letters, author of The Social Contract (1762). the social savage, Man] Mathias is referring to Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). ǼʌȠȤȘ] ‘Suspension of judgement’. Curius quid sentit, et AMBO Scipiadæ,] ‘What would Curius and the two Scipios think?’ (Juvenal, Satires, II. 154). Philip’s son] Alexander the Great, (356–23 BC) son of Philip of Macedonia. Bryant’s hand] Jacob Bryant (1704–1815; DNB) mythologist, antiquarian, librarian, and author of the celebrated thesis A Dissertation Concerning the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians (1796), positing that Troy did not exist. Acrasia’s foaming bowl] In Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596). Acrasia is ‘the personification of incontinence or intemperate pleasure’ Spenser, The Faerie Queene, A. C. Hamilton, ed. London, Longman, 1977, p. 294, n. She dwells in the Bower of 273

Explanatory notes to pages 27–29

58

59 60 61 62

63 64

65

66

67

68

Bliss and is cast into chains of adamant by Sir Guyon, the knight of temperance, 2. xii. 82. Gebelin] Antoine Court de Gebelin (?1719–84), Swiss Protestant clergyman and occultist, author of Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (1781), The Primitive World Analysed and Compared with the Modern World. Douglas] The Rt. Rev. Dr John Douglas (1721–1807; DNB), Bishop of Salisbury. Hallam] Dr John Hallam. John Hallam was the dean of Bristol from 1781–1800. Gillies] Dr John Gillies (1747–1836; DNB), classical scholar and translator of Aristo­ tle’s Politics. Buonaparte’s iron pen] Mathias is referring to Napoleon’s spectacular military victories in the 1790s in Italy and Germany. The analogy between the pen and the sword was a common one by the 1790s. Garden-God] Mathias is referring to Priapus, the Greek god of lust in the lines immediately preceding (not included here). ‘ǹȜȜȠIJİμȠȚ…Ed. Fol. Lugdun. 1623.] ‘I do not in anyway think that there is any­ thing else … to record about this person. For he would be sufficient to show … all the unsuitable passions of the soul. Since anyone who disregards shame over his actions does not deem it unfitting to appear disgusting to those he meets, so for this person no path of lawlessness was barred: setting his face ever to shamelessness he easily and with no trouble entertained the most abominable of Acts’ (Procopius, Secret History, 9). Another Cleland see in LEWIS rise] John Cleland (1709–89; DNB), the author of Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1750), a notorious erotic novel concerning the adventures of a prostitute. Mathew Lewis (1775–1818; DNB), the author of the similarly notorious Gothic novel, The Monk (1796). Blackstone] Sir William Blackstone (1723–80; DNB), English jurist and Professor of Law at Oxford University, famous for codifying English common law in his Com­ mentaries on the laws of England (1765; 4th edn 1770). Williams, Hale, … and Burn] William Peere Williams (1664–1736; DNB), barrister and law reporter and editor of Vernon’s Reports, to which Mathias refers in his foot­ note. Mathew Hale (1609–76; DNB), noted English jurist and Chief Justice. Richard Burn (1709–85; DNB), author of The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, described by DNB as ‘the most useful book ever published on the law relating to justices of the peace’. Sure from the womb I was untimely torn] Mathias is echoing Macduff ’s reply to Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play: Despair thy charm And let the angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped. (V. iii. 13–16).

69 Canning] George Canning (1770–1827; DNB), MP and Under Secretary for State. 70 ‘Pessimum genus inimicorum Laudantes.’ Tacit.] ‘The very worst kind of personal ene­ mies’ (Tacitus, Agricola, 41: ‘Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies’).

274

Explanatory notes to pages 30–32

71 a six-weeks Epick, or a Joan of Arc] Robert Southey (1774–1843; DNB) and his epic poem Joan of Arc (1796). 72 The Great Auruncian] Gaius Lucilius (c. 180–102 BC), the father of Roman satire and an influence upon the classical satirists Perseus, Juvenal and Horace. 73 Ut vellem his potius … TEMPORA SÆVITIÆ!] An adaptation of ‘Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset Tempora saevitiae’. ‘So that I might wish that he had given up to trifles like these all the time, which he devoted to cruelty’ (Juvenal, Sat­ ires, IV. 150). 74 Holcroft] Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809), close friend of William Godwin’s, political radical and author of plays and novels. 75 Scurra degrunnit prior.] ‘First of all the clown grunts’ (Phaedrus Augusts Libertus Fables in the Style of Aesop, Book 5, no. 5, ‘The Clown and the Countryman’. 76 Diderot] Denis Diderot (1713–84), leading French philosopher closely associated through his criticisms of the political system with French revolutionary thought. 77 Thelwall] See above, n. 19. 78 ȆİȡȚııȦȢ İμμĮȚȞȠ μİȞȠȢ.] ‘Exceedingly enraged [in logic]’. 79 When Barristers turn author’s… prate’] Thomas Erskine (1750–1823; DNB), Whig bar­ rister and MP, author of View of the Causes and Consequences of the Current French War (1797) and defence counsel for Thomas Paine, charged with seditious libel in 1792. Erskine also defended successfully Thomas Hardy, the radical leader of the London Corresponding Society at his treason trial in 1794. 80 CHARLES F OX ] Mathias is referring to Charles James Fox (1749–1806 DNB), bril­ liant Whig politician and orator, and Foreign Secretary in 1782, 1783, and 1806. 81 Triste ministerium, … (Virg. Aen. 6.)] ‘A sorrowful duty, and in the time-honoured fashion, with averted eyes, they held the torch below’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 223–24). 82 ǾȖȜȦııĮ ʌȣȡ, … ʌȡĮȣIJȘȢıȠijȚĮȢ.] ‘The tongue is fire, inflaming the wheel of gen­ eration and inflamed by Gehenna, an unstoppable evil, replete with death-bearing things’. Fox may learn the ‘fair way of life’ and ‘gentleness of wisdom’ (cf. James 3: 13: ‘Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom’). 83 ǹȡȞȣμİȞȠȢ… Od. L. I.] ‘Striving for his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he did not save his comrades, for all his yearning’ (Homer, Odyssey, I. 5–6). 84 ‘ǼʌİȚ ȉȡȠȚȘȢ … Od. l. I. v. 2.] ‘After he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy’ (Homer, Odyssey, I. 2). 85 But to return … home;] Mathias is referring to those returning from emigration to America, disillusioned with the new republic. 86 Mutemus clypeos, … (Virg. Aen. 2.)] ‘Let us change our shields, and dress ourselves in the trappings of the Greeks’ (Virgil, Aeneid, II. 389).

275

Explanatory notes to pages 35–38

Richard Polwhele, The Unsex’d Females (1798) 1 Darwin and Hayley] Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802; DNB), poet and scientist and author of The Botanic Garden (1789–91). William Haley (1745–1820; DNB), poet and patron of poets and author of The Triumph of Temper (1781). 2 Fuseli’s … Emma Crewe’s] Henry Fuseli (1741–1825; DNB), artist. For Fuseli and Wollstonecraft, see below, note 49. Emma Crewe, artist and illustrator. 3 Gibbon] Edward Gibbon (1737–94; DNB), historian and author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. 4 Mr Hayley] William Hayley, see above, note 1. 5 Eloisa] Alexander Pope, author of the verse epistle ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ (1717). 6 Whitaker] Reverend John Whitaker (1735–1808; DNB), historian. Whitaker was the author of The History of Manchester, 2 vols (1771–75), and Mary Queen of Scots Vindi­ cated (1787). Polwhele was a great admirer of Whitaker. 7 Sciolist’s] An archaic term for one who pretends to be knowledgeable. 8 ‘Greatly think, or nobly die. Pope.] Alexander Pope (1688–1744; DNB), ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’ (1717), line 10. The line in full reads: ‘For those who greatly think or nobly die’. 9 Walk … government] 2 Peter 2: 10. ‘But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities’. 10 Quem praestare protest mulier galeata pudorem?] ‘What modesty can she, who wears a hel­ met, show?’ (Juvenal, Satires, VI. 252). The context is that such a woman (‘mulier’ is a wife rather than a maiden) is assuming a male role and, as such, is a renegade to her sex. 11 I have seen … Juvenal] Gifford’s complete translation of The Satires of Juvenal did not appear until 1802. 12 Proteus of petrific art] In Greek mythology Proteus was a minor deity who could change into terrifying forms. 13 Gallic faiths resign’d] Roman Catholicism, with the possible added meaning of French republicanism. 14 Madam Tallien] Teresa Cabarrus (1776–1835), a leader of French fashionable society and the wife of the French revolutionary, Jean Lambert Tallien (1767–1820). 15 Floret] Small flower. 16 In order … our hands] Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). 17 Each pungent grain of titillating dust] Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714), canto 5, line 207. Polwhele is slightly misquoting. Pope’s line is as follows: ‘The pungent grains of tit­ illating dust’. 18 Non vultus … videri] The description is of the Sybyl, living in the wild volcanic hills of Cumae: ‘her countenance and complexion are not composed, the locks of her hair do not stay braided, her panting bosom and wild frenzied heart heave and she appears to grow taller …’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 47–49). 19 Philosophism] A spurious and deceitful philosophy. 20 —Laevis haud … atrae] ‘Then the vague phantom no longer sought hiding places, but, flying high into the air, merged with a dark cloud’ (Virgil, Aeneid, X. 663–64). 276

Explanatory notes to pages 38–41

21 ‘A wild … forbidden fruit’] Pope, An Essay on Man: Epistle I (1733–34), ll. 7–8. Pol­ whele slightly misquotes Pope. The second line in Polwhele’s note should read: ‘Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit’. 22 ‘Raging waves foaming out their own shame’ – St Jude]. ‘The General Epistle of Jude’, verse 13: ‘Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever’. 23 Paine] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB), author of The Rights of Man (1791). 24 Rousseau] Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), philosopher and man of letters. 25 ‘Mulieres … defenderunt’—Liv.] ‘With prayers and tears the womenfolk defended the city, that they could not defend by arms’. 26 And vindicate the Rights of womankind] Polwhele is, of course, playing on the title of Wollstonecraft’s most famous work. 27 Si sic omnia dixisset!] ‘Had he always spoken thus!’ (Juvenal, Satires, X. 123–24). 28 Miss Aikin] Anna Barbauld, see note 31 below. 29 Jebb] Untraced. 30 Mr Dyer] George Dyer (1755–1841) , poet, radical and author of Poems (1792; 1801). 31 B ARBAULD caught the strain] Anna Letitia Aikin Barbauld (1743–1825), poetess and prose stylist. Barbauld was married to Rochemont Barbauld a French Huegenot ref­ ugee and dissenter. She is the author of Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) and Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), a critique of England’s declaration of war on revolutionary France. 32 Mrs R OBINSON ’s] Mary Robinson (1758–1800), poet, novelist and friend of Woll­ stonecraft and Godwin. Wollstonecraft influenced Robinson’s A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination (1799). 33 Smith] Charlotte Smith (1749–1806), poet and novelist and author of Elegiac Sonnets (1784) and Ethellinde: or, The Recluse of the Lake; a Novel (1814). 34 Shenstone] William Shenstone (1714–63; DNB), poet and landscape artist. 35 Gray] Thomas Gray (1716–71; DNB) poet. 36 Collins] William Collins (1721–59; DNB) poet. 37 Gilpin] William Gilpin (1724–1804; DNB), illustrator and sketch artist. 38 Petrarch] Francesco Petrarca (1304–74) poet. 39 D’Arblay] See below, note 70. 40 Williams] Helen Williams (?1761–1827), poet and supporter of the French Revolu­ tion. Williams was the author of Peru: A Poem in Six Cantos (1784), and Letters Written in France (1790). 41 Avernus] In Roman mythology Avernus was the name of a crater in Cumae near Campania, believed to mark the entrance to the underworld. 42 Yearsley,] Ann Yearsley (1753–1806), working class poetess patronised by Hannah More (on whom see below, note 74), was the author of On Various Subjects (1787), Reflections on the Death of Louis XVI (1793), and The Rural Lyre (1796). 43 Hays] Mary Hays (1760–1843), poet and pamphleteer. Hays’s Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (1793) was influenced substantially by Mary Wollstonecraft. 44 Kauffman’s] Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), artist. Kauffman was known particu­ larly as a painter of portraits and historical and classical scenes from the perspective of eighteenth-century sentimentalism. 277

Explanatory notes to pages 41–46

45 Miss Emma Crewe … ‘Flora at play with Cupid] See above, note 2. 46 Lycurgus] Lycurgus (396–325 BC), was an orator, financier, and statesman in ancient Athens. 47 Plutarch, in his Lives of Lycurgus and Numa] Plutarch (AD 45–125), historian and author of The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. 48 Flammantia maenia mundi. … agitat molem] ‘The blazing ramparts of the world’ (Lucre­ tius, De Rerum Natura, I. 73). The tags ‘spiritus intus alit’ (‘a spirit within sustains’) and ‘mens agitat molem’ (‘mind gives motion to the whole mass’) are from a meta­ physical-cum-cosmological episode in Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 726–27. 49 F USELI ] Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), an artist and great admirer of Shakespeare, the scenes from whose plays he often painted. Fuseli was also known to Mary Wollstonecraft and is referred to in highly ambiguous terms by Godwin in his Mem­ oirs of Mary Wollstonecraft, from which Polwhele quotes in his footnote. 50 Collinsonia] A herb used to treat, amongst other thing, urinary problems, constipa­ tion and flatulence. 51 Mr Imlay] Gilbert Imlay (1754?–1828?), adventurer. He was the lover of Mary Woll­ stonecraft and abandoned her when she bore him a child. 52 ‘Love, free as air, … in a moment flies’] Pope, ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ (1717), lines 75–76. 53 Dr Price] Richard Price (1723–91; DNB), dissenting preacher, moral philosopher and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft. 54 Lucretia] Lucretia was raped by Tarquin, last of the Roman kings. Tarquin’s crime brought about the advent of the Roman republic. 55 Portia] The wife of Brutus, the Roman senator and ringleader in the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. 56 Arria] In Roman mythology Arria was the wife of a man ordered by the emperor to commit suicide. He could not bring himself to do it. Arria grabbed the knife from his hand and stabbed herself, saying ‘it does not hurt’. 57 Zenobia] Zenobia was the putative ruler through the management of her son Vabal­ lathus of Palmyra during the reign of the Roman emperor Aurelian, 270–75 AD. 58 Quintilian] Quintilian (b. AD 30?), a leading teacher of and writer on rhetoric. 59 Pericles] Pericles (495–429 BC), a leading Athenian statesman in the populist vein. 60 Seneca] Lucius Annaeus Seneca (3 BC–AD 65) was a leading statesman, philosopher, and dramatist in the reign of Nero, AD 54–68. 61 Penelope] The wife of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. 62 Andromache] The wife of Hector in Homer’s Iliad. 63 Lavinia] The bride won by Aeneas in his war against Turnus in Virgil’s Aeneid. 64 Mrs Montague] Elizabeth Montagu (1720–1800; DNB), was a critic and wit and as a leading figure in the so-called Bluestocking school of female intellectuals, she pre­ sided over one of the eighteenth century’s most notable literary salons. Montagu was the author of An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare (1769). 65 Mad. Dacier] Anne Dacier (1654–1720). Dacier was famous throughout Europe for her translations into French of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. 66 Carter’s Epictetus] Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806), poet, translator and bluestocking. Her translation of Epictetus appeared in 1758. 67 vivida vis animi] ‘A lively force of spirit’ (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, dedicatory eulogy, l. 11). 278

Explanatory notes to pages 46–47

67 Chapone’s letters on the Improvement of the Mind] Hester Chapone (1727–1801), author of Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1772). 68 Miss Seward] Anna Seward (1747–1809), poet and author of a sonnet in defence of Polwhele: POLWHELE, whose genius, in the colours clear Of poesy and philosophic art, Traces the sweetest impulse of the heart, Scorn, for thy Muse, the envy-sharpen’d spear, In darkness thrown, when shielded by desert She seeks the lyric fane. To virtue dear Thy verse esteeming, feeling minds impart Their vital smile, their consecrating tear. Fancy and judgment view with gracious eyes Its kindred tints, that paint the silent power Of local objects, deeds of high emprize To prompt; while their delightful spells restore The precious vanish’d days of former joys, By Love, or Fame, enwreath’d with many a flower.

69 Mrs Piozzi] Hester Piozzi, nee Thrale (1741–1821), poet, prose stylist and skilled lin­ guist. Mrs Piozzi was an intimate of Dr Johnson and was well known in eighteenthcentury literary circles. 70 D’Arblay] Fanny Burney (1752–1840), married name D’Arblay, novelist and author of Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782), and Camilla (1796). 71 RADCLIFFE … and the mystic dome] Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), Gothic novelist and author of The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797). 72 The Tales of Leonora … Beauclerke] Diana Beauclerk (1734–1808). Leonora (1796) is a poem written by the German author Gottfried Augustus Burgher. 73 And e’en a Princess … and breathe in every trace] George III’s daughter, Princess Eliza­ beth, provided the illustration to The Birth and Triumph of Love (1796), an effusive poem by Sir James Bland Burges (1752–1824). 74 Miss Hannah More] Hannah More (1745–1833), bluestocking, dramatist and writer on reform. 75 Lady Jane Grey] Lady Jane Grey (1537–54; DNB), was briefly crowned as queen after the death of Edward VI in 1553. She was soon, however, displaced by the rightful heir Mary Tudor. Grey had a considerable reputation for learning. 76 Mrs Rowe] Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737), poet and author of Poems on Several Occasions (1759). Rowe was noted for her piety. 77 Cereti] Laura Cereti (1469–99). 78 Macaulay] Catherine Macaulay (1731–91; DNB), historian and author of History of England, 8 vols (1763–83). 79 Bryan] Jane Haldimand, also known as Mrs Bryan (1769–1858), astronomer and author of A Compendious System of Astronomy (1797).

279

Explanatory notes to pages 50–59

Eaton Stannard Barrett, from All the Talents (1807) 1 Vido ego … LUCAN ’S PHAR ] ‘I myself saw the Drusi, heroes of the people, rejoicing in immoderate laws; and the Gracchi, that famous pair of daring brothers’. The witch of Thessalia provides the narrator with a vision of the great names of Roman history, raised from the dead (Lucan, Pharsalia (Bella Civilis), VI. 795–96 (some ver­ sions have 946–48)). 2 Non HÆC … [Virgil]] ‘These are not the shores that the Delian Apollo recom­ mended, nor did he command you to settle in Crete’ (Virgil, Aeneid, III. 161–62). 3 periturae parcitae charta] ‘Spare the pages (or ‘these pages’) that are destined to per­ ish’ – a comment perhaps upon the impermanence of literary works. 4 Tho’ C–bb–tt rage and P–nd–r rise again] William Cobbett (1763–1835; DNB), radical MP and journalist. ‘Peter Pindar’ was the pseudonym of John Wolcot (1738–1819), a prolific satirist. 5 L–wr–nce] Possibly James Henry Lawrence (1773–1840; DNB), miscellaneous writer. 6 O for a thund’ring tongue like Fox’s own] Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB) was par­ ticularly known for his oratory. 7 Mutato nomine … Fabula narratur] ‘Change the name and the same story could be told about you’. Proverbial, i.e., ‘what are you laughing at?’ 8 Mr Gr–y;] Charles Grey, Viscount Howick (1764–1845; DNB), in 1806, First Lord of the Admiralty and later, Foreign Secretary. 9 Sh–r–d–n] Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816; DNB), dramatist and Whig politician. 10 W–nd–m’s] William Wyndham, Lord Grenville (1759–1834; DNB), the Prime Minis­ ter from 1806–07. 11 ’Connor] Roger O’Connor (1761–1834; DNB), Irish nationalist politician. 12 Te sulco, … serrentum] ‘You, Serranus, sowing the seed in your furrow’ (Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 844). The context is a visionary account of Roman history: Serranus is called from his fields to a higher destiny. 13 But on his COUNTRY calling fondly died] In his footnote Barrett is quoting from Alex­ ander Pope’s Epistle to Cobham (1733), ll. 262–65. 14 Di precor, a nobis … sinistrum] ‘O gods, I pray you, lift this unfavourable omen from us’ (Ovid, Heroides, XIII, 49). 15 ȅȚȦȞȠȢĮȡȚıIJȠȢ ,] ‘The best wine’. 16 To measure merit merely by success] When Pitt died in 1806 Fox objected to a motion in the House of Commons to honour Pitt with a statue to be erected in the collegiate church at St Peter, Westminster. The motion was nevertheless passed by 258 votes to 89. See Robin Reilly, Pitt the Younger, London, Cassell, 1978, p. 346. 17 Delenda est Carthago] ‘Carthage must be destroyed’, attributed to Cato the Elder. He looked on Carthage as a serious threat to Rome and looked for nor further justi­ fication for its pre-emptive destruction. 18 The human fiend] Napoleon Bonaparte, (1769–1821). 19 Where pale Toulon … Marengo bled] The Battle of Toulon (1793) was fought to recapture the port from the British. Napoleon’s role in this battle led to his promo­ tion to Brigadier General. Lodi (1796) and Marengo (1800) were battles fought in Napoleon’s Italian campaign. 280

Explanatory notes to pages 60–72

20 Rarus duabus … Jul. Agric] ‘Seldom do two or three cities band together to ward off a common danger. So, they fight singly and all are conquered’ (Tacitus, Agricola, 12). 21 plaintive in the lay] In his footnote the reference to Mr Cr–k–r is to John Wilson Croker (1780–1857; DNB), politician, essayist, and author of Familiar Epistles to Fred­ erick Jones, Esq., on the State of the Irish Stage (1804). 22 While British oaks supremacy maintain] Barrett is referring to British naval supremacy. 23 B-df-rd] John Russell, sixth Duke of Bedford (1766–1839; DNB), Whig aristocrat and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland the All the Talents Ministry of 1806–07 24 N-rf-lk] Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk (1746–1815; DNB), Whig aris­ tocrat, kmown amongst his contemporaries for his slovenly appearance. 25 Gr-nv-lle] William Wyndham, Lord Grenville (1759–1834; DNB) Prime Minister. 26 A fair one’s virtues and a nation’s love] Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821), Princess of Wales, later Queen Caroline, wife of George IV. 27 Antoinette.] Marie Antoinette, wife of the French king, Louis XVI, executed 16 October 1793.

Lady Anne Hamilton, The Epics of the Ton (1807) 1 Ida] Mount Ida is the mythical home of the muses. 2 Bell] John Bell (1748–1831; DNB) fashionable publisher. 3 ‘Fop in Fashion’] Sir George Etherege (1636–91; DNB), author of The Man of Mode (1676), also known by the title, Sir Fopling Flutter. 4 Smollett] Tobias Smollett (1721–77; DNB), novelist, critic and historian. Smollett is known primarily to literary history for his picaresque novels, The Adventures of Roder­ ick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771). Peregrine Pickle was particularly noted for its bawdy content. 5 Punk] Prostitute. 6 Rogers] Samuel Rogers (1763–1855; DNB), poet and author of The Pleasures of Memory (1792). 7 Good-natured Scott rehearse in well-paid Lays] Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832; DNB), poet and novelist. Until the publication of Byron’s Childe Harold, Cantos 1 and 2 in 1812, Scott was the most famous poet in the land and enjoyed considerable financial suc­ cess with the publication of works such as Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). 8 Or lazy Campbell spin his golden strains] Thomas Campbell (1777–1814; DNB), poet and author of The Pleasures of Hope (1799). 9 M—F—] Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837), mistress of the Prince Regent. 10 H— A——] High acquaintance. 11 r–y—l ——] Royal whores. 12 Nell Gwyns unnoticed then, and Pompadours] Nell Gwyn (1650–87), actress and mistress of Charles II; Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Madame Pompadour (1721–64), mistress of the French king Louis XV, (1710–74). 13 J——] Frances Villiers, Lady Jersey (1753–1821), the woman who succeeded Maria Fitzherbert as the Prince Regent’s principle mistress. 14 H—] Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford (1759–1834), confidante of the Prince Regent and (erroneously) supposed by some to be his mistress. 15 r—l——] Royal lovers. 281

Explanatory notes to pages 72–85

16 ‘Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes’] ‘On either side loom huge cliffs’ (Virgil, Aeneid, I. 162). 17 p——y] Princely. 18 Et incestos amores / De tenero mediatur ungui] The full version reads: ‘The maiden early takes delight in learning Greek dances, and trains herself in coquetry even now, and plants unholy amours, with passion unrestrained’ (Horace, Odes, III. 6. 23–24). 19 M—of A—] Elizabeth Berkeley, Margravine of Anspach (1750–1828; DNB). Berke­ ley separated from her first husband in 1780 and travelled extensively in Italy, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Greece. When her first husband died in 1791 she married the Margrave of Anspach, with whom she had been living. 20 M—g——e] Margrave. See above, note 19. 21 Hymen] In Greek mythology Hymen is the goddess of marriage. 22 Maid of Arc] Southey, Joan of Arc (1796). 23 Lady M–ry W–rt–y M–nt–gue!] Mary Wortley Montague (1689–1762; DNB). 24 Centlivre and Siddons] Suzanne Centlivre (1669–1723), actress and successful playwright. Sarah Siddons (1755–1831), the most famous actress of the later eighteenth century. 25 Mother Win] Mother Win was a notorious bawd in the eighteenth century. 26 Gamester] A gambler and libertine, usually upper class. 27 ‘What though … SHAKESPEARE.] Shakespeare, Othello (1604). Hamilton misquotes, the lines should read: ‘I had been happy if the general camp, / Pioneers, and all, had tested her sweet body, / So I had nothing known’ (III. iii. 351–53). 28 Thomas] A generic name for a footman. 29 D——of G——] Jane, Duchess of Gordon (1746–1812), formerly Jane Maxwell, the Miss M. of Hamilton’s footnote. The Duchess of Gordon was London’s most formidable Tory political hostess. 30 Faro] A card game popular in the period among the upper classes. 31 R—l’s heir] Royal’s. 32 Burdett] Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844; DNB), Whig reformer and politician. 33 L—M— P; D— of R—; M—C—; D—of M—; D—of B—] Untraced. 34 Rara avis … JUVENAL .] ‘An extremely rare bird and very like a black swan’ (Juvenal, Satires, VI. 165). 35 L——L——M——] Untraced. 36 d—h—ss] Duchess. 37 pelf] Might or strength. 38 D— of S— A—] Untraced. 39 D——of D———] Georgiana Spencer (1757–1806; DNB), Duchess of Devonshire from 1774. The Duchess of Devonshire was the most celebrated Whig political hostess of her day and the queen of high society. See Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, London, HarperCollins, 1998. 40 S—r] Spencer. 41 Felt the mad passion of the gamester’s breast] The Duchess of Devonshire had an addic­ tion to gambling that plagued her for most of her adult life. She regularly ran up what were for the period huge gambling debts.

Richard Mant, from The Simpliciad (1808) 1 the bird must know full well] Wordsworth, ‘Yes! full surely ’twas the Echo’, Curtis, ed. Poems in Two Volumes and Other Poems, Cornell Wordsworth. The charge that Words­ 282

Explanatory notes to pages 86–93

2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

worth did not represent nature faithfully was by no means confined to Mant. An unsigned review of Coleridge’s Remorse in the Quarterly Review, XI, April 1814, accuses the Lake poets of the ‘habitual examination of their own feelings’ which ‘tends to produce in them a variation from nature almost amounting to a distortion’ (Woof, ed. Critical Heritage, I, p. 240). in prospect of delight] Wordsworth, ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’ from Curtis, ed. Poems in Two Volumes, Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 212–13; the italics are Mant’s. bless it by its name] With reference to Wordsworth’s ‘Among all lovely things my Love had been’, stanzas 2, 4 and 5, Curtis, ed. Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 101–3. Mant mis­ quotes slightly from the first line of stanza 2: ‘When riding near her home one stormy night’ should read, ‘While riding near her home one stormy night’. that gallop down the hills] The reference is to Wordsworth’s ‘Louisa’, Curtis ed. Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 69–70. daffodills] The ridicule with which Mant treats Wordsworth here was also reflected on by Anna Seward when she read Wordsworth’s now famous ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. She wrote to Walter Scott that ‘Surely if his worst foe had chosen to carica­ ture this egotistic manufacturer of metaphysic importance upon trivial themes, he could not have done it more effectively!’ (Woof, ed. Critical Heritage, I, p. 251). and two feet wide] The reference is to Wordsworth’s ‘The Thorn’, Lyrical Ballads, Butler and Green, eds, Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 77–85. in the dell] Mant is referring to Coleridge’s ‘An Address to a Young Ass’. butterfly] Wordsworth, ‘To a Skylark’, and ‘The Redbreast and the Butterfly’, Curtis, ed., Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 117–18, pp. 75–77. apostolic daisies] Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes, Poems in Two Volumes, Curtis, ed., Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 238–41; the capitalization is Mant’s. chymic maids] Coleridge, ‘Lines on an Autumnal Evening’ (1793), ll. 37, 41–42, 45–46; Mant’s italics. Pray for their Spaniels; consecrate their spades] Wordsworth’s ‘Tribute to the Memory of the Same Dog’, and ‘To the Spade of a Friend (An Agriculturist)’, in Poems in Two Volumes, Curtis ed., Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 243–44, 257–58. Gaffer grumble’s … Pringle’s pig] Mant is parodying the content of Lakeland poetry, particularly its preoccupation with the ordinary and everyday in rural existence. Redbreasts … Butterflies] Wordsworth, ‘The Redbreast and the Butterfly’, in Poems in Two Volumes, Curtis, ed. Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 75–76, ll. 1–14. patient primroses and dauntless daisies] Wordsworth, ‘To the Small Celandine’, ibid. pp. 79–81. mysterious cuckoos] Wordsworth, ‘To the Cuckoo’, ibid., pp. 213–15. Linnet’s wing] Wordsworth, ‘The Green Linnet’, ibid., pp. 229–30. Good Lord Clifford’s praise] Wordsworth’s ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’, a poem which celebrates the restoration of Lord Clifford to his estates after the Wars of the Roses, ibid., pp. 259–64. ‘And madness … Dryden.] Dryden, ‘Fable of Palation and Arcita’, l. 84. Blossoms that breathe, and twigs that pant with pleasure] Mant footnotes ll. 25–27 of ‘The Green Linnet’, Curtis, ed., Cornell Wordsworth, and ll. 11–20 of ‘Lines written in early spring’ from Lyrical Ballads to gloss this couplet, Butler and Green, eds, Cornell Wordsworth, p. 76. 283

Explanatory notes to pages 93–102

20 Heaths bloom with cups, the darlings of the eye] Mant footnotes ll. 43–44 of Wordsworth’s ‘The Thorn’ from Lyrical Ballads in ibid. 21 Green fields … a sense of joy] Mant quotes in his footnote ll. 5–8 of ‘Lines written at a small distance from my house’ from Lyrical Ballads, in ibid, pp. 63–64. 22 With loftiest numbers uncontroll’d by rhyme] Mant is referring to the closing couplet of Andrew Marvell’s ‘On Paradise Lost’: ‘Thy verse created like thy theme sublime, / In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme’. 23 Thomson … Cowper] James Thomson (1700–48; DNB), author of The Seasons (1730); William Cowper (1731–1800; DNB), author of The Task (1785). Thomson and Cowper are now recognised by critics as important pre-cursors of Romanticism. 24 In solemn quatrain pensive Gray complains] Mant is referring to Thomas Gray (1716–71; DNB), and his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (c. 1742–50). 25 Percy’s Reliques] Thomas Percy (1728–1811; DNB), author of Reliques of Ancient Eng­ lish Poetry, 3 vols (1765). Percy’s Reliques is a collection of mostly medieval ballads. Its influence upon poetry in the later eighteenth century was considerable, a fact openly acknowledged by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the title of their 1798 collec­ tion, Lyrical Ballads. The attacks upon Lyrical Ballads for their novelty, as Marilyn Butler has argued, are misplaced, (Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries, p. 58). 26 Sapphics … dactylics] ‘Sapphics’: stanzas of four lines, with eleven syllables per line in the first three lines and five in the fourth. The name derives from the ancient Greek poet, Sappho. ‘Dactylics’: in poetry a dactyl is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable, followed by two that are unstressed. 27 Ambrose Philips’s trochaics] Ambrose Philips (1675–1749; DNB), English pastoral poet. ‘Trochaic’: a trochee is a metric foot of two syllables, with the stress falling on the first syllable. 28 dithyrambics] In ancient Greek poetry a dithyramb was a choral song in praise of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus. Usually signifies in its modern sense the use of strongly emotive and impetuous language. 29 Yours be the linnet’s note, teem’d forth in gushes] Wordsworth’s ‘The Green Linnet’, l. 36, Poems in Two Volumes, Curtis, ed., Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 229–30; p. 230. 30 And yours … he rushes] Wordsworth, ‘To a Sky-Lark’, l. 20, ibid., pp. 117–18; p. 118. 31 And yours the fiery nightingale’s that sings] Wordsworth’s, ‘O Nightingale! thou surely art’, ll. 1–2, ibid., p. 205. 32 Betty Foy] Wordsworth, ‘The Idiot Boy’ from Lyrical Ballads, Butler and Green, eds, Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 91–104. 33 Which washer-women use to wash their clothes] Wordsworth’s ‘The Blind Highland Boy’, ll. 111–15, Poems in Two Volumes, Curtis, ed. Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 219–268; p. 111–15.

Lord Byron, from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) 1 Time was … as the poet’s fame] The opening ten lines deliberately echo Alexander Pope’s mock-epic masterpiece, The Dunciad (1742). See also, Juvenal, Satire VI. 1–20. The revised 1812 version makes the analogy with Pope yet more explicit: Still must I hear? – shall false F ITZGERALD bawl His creaking couplets in a tavern hall, And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch reviews 284

Explanatory notes to pages 102–04 Should dub me scribbler and denounce my muse? Prepare for rhyme – I’ll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme – let Satire be my song

2 Congreve … Otway] William Congreve (1670–1729; DNB) and Thomas Otway (1652–85; DNB), noted Restoration dramatists and wits. 3 Southey’s epics] Robert Southey (1774–1843 DNB), a supporter of the French Revolu­ tion in the 1790s and a convert from radical to Tory by 1801. When he accepted the poet-laureateship in 1813 he was widely reviled in the radical press. He was the con­ stant butt of Byron’s satire. See the ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan and The Vision of Judgement, below, pp. 202–05 and pp. 217–28. 4 Little’s Lyrics] Thomas Moore, Poems of the Late Thomas Little, Esq. (1801). On Moore, see Volume 5. 5 Tales of Terror] Mathew G. Lewis, Tales of Terror, 2 vols (1801). Other contributors to Tales of Terror include Robert Southey and Sir Walter Scott. Byron admired Scott and came to feel the same way about Lewis, notable chiefly for his authorship of the sensational Gothic novel, The Monk (1795). 6 Lays of Minstrels] Byron is referring to Sir Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), a border ballad that bought Scott’s name to a much wider audience than the one to which he had hitherto been used. Despite his admiration for Scott Byron believed that he was wasting his talent on imitations of border ballads. Byron quali­ fied these remarks somewhat in his preface to The Corsair (1814). It is ‘Scott alone, of the present generation, [who] has hitherto completely triumphed over the fatal facility of the octo-syllabic verse’ (McGann, ed. BCPW, 3, p. 149). When Scott turned to the writing of novels Byron was one of his biggest fans. See Marchand, ed. BLJ, 7, p. 83. 7 Marmion] Sir Walter Scott, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, 1808, a romance in 6 can­ tos featuring the eponymous, brooding knight killed for his plotting by the hero of the poem, Sir Ralph de Wilton. Byron here, perhaps inadvertently, makes Marmion ‘Byronic’. 8 Murray with his Miller] John Murray (1778–1843; DNB), and William Miller (1769– 1844; DNB), of Constable, Murray and Miller, Scott’s publisher, and from the first canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Byron’s too. Miller was one of the most successful publishers in London. He took shares in Scott’s poems and published solely Scott’s 18-volume edition of Dryden’s works. 9 Half-a-crown per line] Upon the phenomenal sales that were generated by the publica­ tion of The Corsair, The Anti-Jacobin drew attention to these disparaging remarks by Byron of Scott prostituting his art: ‘this magnanimous young lord has actually sold his works to this same Murray … for a whole crown a line.’ The reviewer acknowl­ edges that Byron had made a gift of the copyright to Robert Charles Dallas, but qualifies this by stating that ‘it matters little into whose hands the money ultimately fall[s]’ (Reiman, ed., The Romantics Reviewed, 1, Part B, p. 40). 10 ‘good night to Marmion’] See Scott, Marmion, canto 6, stanza 28. 11 See Wordsworth’s ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), Butler and Green, eds, Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 740–60. 12 Betty Foy … idiot Boy] Byron is referring to Wordsworth’s ‘The Idiot Boy’, Lyrical Ballads. 285

Explanatory notes to pages 104–10

13 yet still obscurity’s a welcome guest] Byron frequently satirised what he saw as Coleridge’s philosophical pretensions. See stanza 2 of the ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan, below, p. 202. 14 Pixy for a muse] Byron is alluding to Coleridge’s ‘Song of the Pixies’ (1793).

George Daniel, from The Modern Dunciad (1814) 1 Churchill] Charles Churchill (1761–64; DNB), a leading satirist of the eighteenth century. 2 Hervey … Gildons of the day] John Hervey (1696–1743; DNB), courtier and acolyte of Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745; DNB), prime minister from 1721–42, under George I. Hervey is characterised as ‘Sporus’ in Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot. Charles Gildon (1665–1724; DNB) is satirised by Pope in The Dunciad. 3 H–df–t’s] Thomas Taylor, Marquess of Headfort (1786–1870), courtier and friend of the Prince of Wales. 4 Manners] George Manners (1778–1853; DNB), barrister, noted wit and the proprie­ tor and editor of The Satirist. 5 Agg] Thomas Agg, hack satirist who sometimes published under the pseudonym ‘Peter Pindar’, Jun., ‘Jeremiah Juvenal’ and ‘Humphrey Hedgehog, Esq.’ 6 Matilda] Daniel is referring to ‘Rosa Matilda’, the pseudonym for Charlotte Dacre (1782–1841), author of Zofloya (1806), a Gothic novel. 7 Lewis] Mathew Lewis (1775–1818; DNB), author of The Monk (1796), a particularly salacious Gothic novel. 8 Crusca] Daniel is referring to William Gifford’s satirical poems The Baviad (1794) and The Mæviad (1795) which were an attack upon the so-called Della Cruscans. See Volume 4, pp. 1–65 of this edition. 9 Wharton] R. Wharton, author of Roncesvalles: a Poem in Twelve Books (1812). 10 Walcott] John Wolcot (1738–1819; DNB), who wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar. See The Works of Peter Pindar in Four Volumes, London, John Walker, 1796. 11 Andrews’ Prologues] Miles Andrews, one of the Della Cruscan poets satirised by Wil­ liam Gifford in The Baviad. 12 Paine blasphemes, nor Priestley raves] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB) and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804; DNB), noted radicals from the 1790s. Paine was an atheist and Priestley, a Unitarian preacher, chemist and philosopher, was attacked by Church and King mobs for his reformist politics and nonconformist religious views. Both were republicans. 13 The Rights of Man] Written by Thomas Paine and published in 1791. The Rights of Man is the most famous response to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). 14 Tooke] John Horne Tooke (1736–1812; DNB), radical politician and philologist. 15 How-itt] William Howitt (1792–1879), Quaker poet and author of The Influence of Nature and Poetry on National Spirit (1814). 16 Thelwall] John Thelwall (1764–1834; DNB), a leading radical in the 1790s. 17 Gale Jones] John Gale Jones (1769–1838; DNB), surgeon, male midwife and member of the London Corresponding Society. 18 Pasquin] John Williams (‘Anthony Pasquin’) (fl. 1790s), poet, satirist and blackmailer. 286

Explanatory notes to pages 110–13

19 Fitzgerald and Cobbett] William Fitzgerald (c. 1759–1829; DNB), society scribbler. William Cobbett (1763–1855; DNB), journalist and editor of the radical Political Register. 20 Clio Rickman] Thomas Clio Rickman (1761–1834; DNB), bookseller, reformer and biographer. Rickman was the author of Corruption, A Satire. With Notes (1806). Rickman was a close friend and follower of Thomas Paine, and the author of Life of Thomas Paine (1819). In classical mythology Clio is the goddess of history. 21 Godwin] William Godwin, (1756–1836; DNB), radical political philosopher and novelist. 22 Joanna Southcott dreams] Joanna Southcott (1750–1815), prophetess and religious fanatic. 23 Jeffrey] Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850; DNB), editor and contributor to the Whig Edin­ burgh Review. 24 Minerva … maid] The Minerva Press, based in Leadenhall Street in London, was famous for the publication of trashy romantic novels with complicated love plots. 25 Verbal Index of Shakespeare] Francis Twiss (1760–1827; DNB), A Complete Verbal Index to the Plays of Shakespeare, 2 vols (1805) 26 Hewson Clarke] Hewson Clarke (1787–1832; DNB) was one of Byron’s fiercest crit­ ics. See the headnote to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 27 Satirist, Scourge, and Theatrical Inquisitor] Contemporary periodicals. 28 ‘While thou liv’st, keep a good tongue in thy head] Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611), III. ii. 109–10. 29 a piebald race] Grub Street hacks. 30 Lewis] Mathew Lewis (1775–1818; DNB), author The Monk (1796), a notorious Gothic novel. 31 Mistress Radcliffe] Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), author of the noted Gothic novels, The Italian (1797) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). 32 Minerva’s press], see above, note 25. 33 Meeke and Rosa] Mary Meeke was a prolific novelist published by Minerva press. Rosa Matilda was the pseudonym of Charlotte Dacre. See above, note 6. 34 Lane] Untraced. 35 hoyden] A boisterous girl. 36 Lady Morgan] Sydney Owenson Morgan (1753–1859; DNB). See the headnote to The Mohawks in this volume, pp. 244–45. 37 Llewellyn] Mrs Llewellyn, author of Read, and give it a name (1813). 38 Ann of Swansea] The pseudonym of Anne Hatton, author of Deeds of Olden Time: A Romance (1826). 39 Bridget Bluemantle] pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomas, author of The Vindictive Spirit: A Novel (1812), and Purity of Heart, or the Ancient Costume: or, The Ancient Costume, a Tale (1817). 40 ‘Midnight Weddings’] Mary Meeke, Midnight Weddings: A Novel (1802). 41 Honoria Scott] author of, Amatory Tales of Spain, France, Switzerland and the Mediterra­ nean: Interspersed with Pieces of Original Poetry (1810). 42 Gunning] Elizabeth Gunning, author of Dangers Through Life: or, The Victim of Seduc­ tion; A Novel (1810). 287

Explanatory notes to pages 113–24

43 Mrs Clarke] Elizabeth Clarke, author of The Advertisement, or Twenty Years Ago; a Novel (1818). 44 Cervantes Hogg] the pseudonym of Eaton Stannard Barrett. See the headnote to All the Talents, above pp. 48–49. 45 Johnson … Boswell.] Samuel Johnson (1709–84; DNB), critic and man of letters; James Boswell (1740–95; DNB), author of Life of Johnson (1791).

Thomas Love Peacock, from Sir Proteus (1814) 1 ILLE EGO ] ‘The one I’. 2 Kehama] Robert Southey (1770–1843; DNB), author of the Curse of Kehama (1810). 3 Hindoostan] In the preface to The Curse of Kehama Southey opens by stating that ‘the religion of the Hindoos … is the most monstrous in its fables, and the most fatal in its effects’ (Southey’s Poems, p. 117). 4 Thalaba] Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). 5 And then he gave …] Southey’s epigraph to Madoc (1812), Southey’s Poems, p. 461. 6 DIVERSE … FAVELLE ] ‘Strange tongues, horrible outcries’, referring to ‘those who lived without blame and without praise’ (Dante, Inferno, Canto 3. 25). 7 Wight] Body. 8 Rarum ac memorabile … magister] Part of an attack on degeneracy and gluttony: ‘He offers a rare and memorable example of a broad gullet and is [a tutor] who would adorn any household’ (Horace, Satires, II, 271). 9 Braw] Scots dialect: good. 10 Anti-hyloistic] Peacock is here satirising the leading eighteenth-century chemist, Rich­ ard Kirwan (1733–1812; DNB). Unlike Kirwan, Peacock is an empiricist in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. 11 insanire parans certa ratione modoque:] ‘He appears to act like a madman, but with a certain reason and method’ (Horace, Satires, II. 271). 12 Bubble and Squeak]. A culinary dish made from leftovers, widespread in the north of England. 13 Small lollypop of Greek] Peacock slightly misquotes Cowper’s Tirocinium, or, A Review of Schools (1784): ‘Small skill in Latin, And still less in Greek, / Is more than adequate to all we seek’. The italicised pronoun should be ‘I’. 14 Mare Australe Incognitum.] ‘The unknown southern sea’. 15 Terra malos … ridet et odit.] ‘The Earth now brings forth evil and puny men and therefore God laughs at and loathes everyone upon whom he case an eye’ (Juvenal, Satires, XV. 70–71). 16 And Alice Fell so small] Peacock is referring to ‘Alice Fell’, Poems in Two Volumes (1807), Curtis, ed., Cornell Wordsworth, pp. 120–23; ‘Goody Blake and Harry Gill’, Lyrical Ballads (1798), and the popular folktale of ‘Jack and Jill’. 17 ǼȈȉǾȈǼ ] ‘He set up’ or ‘he established’, would have been pronounced by Moore and his contemporaries as ‘ess tee see’, or ‘S T C’, i.e., a pun on S. T. Coleridge. 18 Dight] Clothed or adorned. 19 In medio duo … fuit alter?] Virgil, Eclogues, III. 40. 20 Discedo Alcæus puncto … nisi Callimachus?] ‘I part company with Alcaeus on that pont of his: what does he matter to me? Who counts except Callimachus?’ (Horace, Epis­ tles, II (Ars Poetica), 2). 288

Explanatory notes to pages 125–38

21 In jaunting car] Peacock is punning on the name of the barrister, travel writer and occasional poet Sir John Carr (1732–1807; DNB). 22 perpetuo revolubile gyro,] ‘In an ever returning cycle’ (Ovid, Elegy, V. 1). Ovid’s ref­ erence is to the cycle of the seasons. 23 Non porrigit ora capistro.] ‘He does not offer his mouth to the muzzle’. An ironic adaptation of Juvenal, Satires, VI. 43; the original Juvenal reference is to those who do volunteer for the (matrimonial) muzzle. 24 ȤȡȘȞ… Ǿȃ Ȇȅ ȁȊ ] ‘This just penalty ought to come straightaway upon all who would break the laws: the penalty of death. Then wrongdoing would not abound’ (Sophocles, Electra, 1505–08). 25 OR CHI SE TU ] ‘Who are you’ (Juvenal, Satires, VI. 43). 26 Lady of the Lake] Poem by Walter Scott (1771–1832; DNB), published in 1811. 27 Nereids] In Greek mythology the Nereids were fifty in number and were the daugh­ ters of Nereus and Doris. They dwelt in the Mediterranean Sea. The Nereids were benevolent minor deities who were able to prophesy, and were helpful to sailors. 28 Mæonium qui jam … volumine Moses!] ‘The letter of this law is not to be found in the present volume of Moses’. 29 Van Tromp] Cornelius Van Tromp, Dutch admiral and participant in the AngloDutch war of 1664–67. 30 Sheerness dock] The site of a naval dockyard on the Isle of Sheppey where the Dutch achieved a famous victory in 1667. 31 Cr—k—r] John Wilson Croker (1780–1857; DNB), politician and essayist. Croker was a prolific contributor to the Quarterly Review, where he wrote pejorative reviews of the works of Leigh Hunt, Shelley, and Keats. 32 ȃǾǹ … ʌȠȞIJȦ] ‘Zeus had smitten his swift ship with his bright thunderbolt, and had shattered it in the midst of the wine-dark sea’ (Homer, Odyssey, V. 132–33). 33 Lo! on these rocks his tub is tost] Peacock’s footnote quotes from Wordsworth’s ‘The Blind Highland Boy’, ll. 101–02, 111–14 (Curtis, ed. Poems in Two Volumes, Cornell Wordsworth), p. 225. 34 Lethean] In Greek mythology Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Hades. 35 Stygian] Very dark. From the river Styx, like Lethe, a river situated in the Greek underworld of Hades. 36 ȤĮȚȡİ μȠȚ… ǹȆȅ ȁ ȁȍȃ ] ‘Hail Proteus: you will no longer have joy of your craft, for brightly coloured [or variegated] Apollo will pay’.

‘S. T. Colebritche’, from Christabess (1816) 1 Oh! … snore] The opening stanza sets the tone by deflating any high-blown preten­ sions to Gothic. Compare the opening lines of Coleridge’s Christabel: ‘’Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock, / And the owls have awakened the crowing cock’. 2 Hath a one-eyed she grey cat] Coleridge’s ‘toothless mastiff bitch’ (Christabel, Part 1, l. 7). 3 honxes] Haunches. 4 Sphinx] An ancient Egyptian stone figure having a lion’s body and a human or ani­ mal head’ (OED). 5 I wot] Archaic: I know. 6 gemini] An astronomical constellation that in mythology was said to represent the twins, Castor and Pollux. 289

Explanatory notes to pages 139–61

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

I wis] Archaic: certainly. Flang] Fling. nooze] Noose. po] Chamber pot. ban-box] Hat box. St Mary-le-bone] A parish in northwest London. I ween] Archaism: I think. kenn’d] Northern British slang: knew. mote] Archaism: must. phiz] Visage.

Percy Bysshe Shelly, from Oedipus Tyrannus (1819) 1 Swinish Multitude] A phrase made famous by Burke in his Reflections of the Revolution in France in reference to the common people. In turn the phrase generated a glut of pamphlets and periodicals with titles such as Hog’s Wash, Pig’s Meat, and Rights of Swine. 2 Swellfoot] George IV. 3 Boetian] Pig-like. 4 Iona Taurina] Queen Caroline. 5 Hymen] In Graeco-Roman mythology Hymen is the goddess of marriage. 6 Purganax] Robert Stewart (1769–1822; DNB), Viscount Castlereagh and Marquess of Londonderry. Castlereagh was Foreign Secretary at the time of Shelley’s writing. Along with Byron Shelley savaged Castlereagh in verse on a regular basis. The most famous example of this is The Mask of Anarchy (1819), Shelley’s response to the Peterloo Massacre of the same year. 7 Pack them then] ‘Packing’, or ‘rigging’ juries was common in the period. 8 Laoctonos and Dakry] Respectively, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852; DNB) and John Scott, Lord Eldon (1751–1838; DNB). 9 Mammon] Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool (1770–1828; DNB), Prime Minister (1815–27). 10 The poison … Spider huge] A document case containing evidence, customarily green in the period, in this case evidence gathered of Caroline’s adultery. Cameron cites the Examiner of 11 June 1820: ‘“An animal … sets itself down, month after month, at Milan to watch the doors and windows, to intercept discarded servants and others who knew what deposition might be worth, and thus to gather poison for one of those venomous Green Bags, which have so long infected and nauseated the peo­ ple, and are now to infect the QUEEN” ’ (Shelley: the Golden Years, pp. 356–57). 11 Gadfly’s] William Cooke, a member of the Milan Commission. 12 Leech] Sir John Leech, chairman of the Milan Commission. 13 Rat] Major James Browne, a member of the Milan Commission. 14 Lord High Chancellor] Lord Eldon. See n. 8. 15 G REEN BAG ] See above, n. 10. 16 Bellona] The Roman goddess of war. 17 Sad genius of the Green Isle] Viscount Castlereagh. See n. 6. 18 Rise now] Shelley’s incitement to rebellion. Compare Men of England: Men of England wherefore plough For the Lords who lay ye low? 290

Explanatory notes to pages 161–66 … Sow seed, – but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth, – let no imposter heap; Weave robes, let not the idle wear; Forge arms, – in your defence to bear. Cameron argues that for these lines Shelley owes a debt to Coleridge, whose Letter of Liberty to her Dear Friend Famine (1795), states forcibly that unless more liberal economic reforms were introduced by the government then insurrection would inevitably follow (Shelley: the Golden Years, pp. 361–62).

19 Ionian Minotaur] A personification. According to Jones: ‘Shelley makes the Minotaur a potent symbol of the people in the collective act of seizing the succession’ (Shelley’s Satire, p. 129). 20 Europa’s taurine progeny] An allusion to the Greek myth of Pasiphae’s rape by the bull, Europa, and the mythical foundation of Europe. 21 John Bull] The archetypal plain-speaking and patriotic Englishman. 22 During this speech …] Iona Taurina is here being compared with Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. 23 whipper-in] In a foxhunt a whipper-in is one who controls the hounds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, from Peter Bell the Third (1819; 1840) 1 There … Castlereagh] John Castle, government spy and agent provocateur; George Can­ ning (1770–1827; DNB), Tory politician; William Cobbett (1762–1835; DNB), radical journalist; Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822; DNB), foreign secretary. 2 All sorts … for Trepanning] Caitiff, a cowardly or contemptible person (OED); Cozen­ ing, trepanning, to cheat. 3 ***] It is not known for certain to whom Shelley is referring. Reiman speculates that it is perhaps John Scott, Lord Eldon (1751–1838; DNB), the Lord Chancellor (Shel­ ley’s Poetry and Prose, p. 331). 4 Chancery Court] The Lord Chancellor’s court. It was the Chancery Court in 1817 that denied Shelley custody of his children by Harriet Westbrook. 5 a King … and a public debt] On Shelley’s plea for urgent reform of the political system see his A Philosophical View of Reform (1819). 6 There is … methodism] Shelley is echoing the often voiced fear by liberals that the Hanoverian monarchs would resort to German troops in order to enforce social and political acquiescence to the will of what Shelley perceived as a tyrannical gov­ ernment and monarchy. 7 Taxes … and cheese] In the wake of victory over Napoleon punitive commodity taxes were imposed on the people to finance repayment of the national debt. Naturally, these fell hardest on the poor. See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 336. 8 Lawyers … old hobnobbers] Those who associate closely with one another and scratch one another’s back. 9 Stock-jobbers] Stockbrokers. 10 courteous] Courtly behaviour, fit for the company of princes. 11 moiling] Working hard. 291

Explanatory notes to pages 166–73

12 levees] A reception or assembly chaired by the monarch or his representative. 13 Cretan-tongued] Proverbially the Cretans were liars: ‘One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies’ (Titus 1. 12). 14 Alemannic] Germanic. 15 conversazioni] A social gathering, often of intellectuals meeting to discuss cultural subjects such as art, literature etc. 16 Conventicles] A clandestine gathering of Nonconformists. 17 Flams] Deceitful actions. 18 Stripe on Stripe] Whipping. 19 Cobbett’s snuff …] Shelley is calling on the radical journalist William Cobbett to use his Political Register as a vehicle of revenge on the governing order. 20 In which faith …] Shelley is referring to those like himself who are keeping true to the faith of radicalism. 21 Grosvenor Square] A fashionable address in London. 22 He had a mind … a sort of thought in ease] In his edition of Shelley’s Poetry and Prose Don­ ald H. Reiman has argued that the lines 147–66 ‘can probably be taken as Shelley’s true (if somewhat sardonically expressed) evaluation of Wordsworth’s genius’ (p. 335). 23 Diogenes] Greek Cynic philosopher who flourished in the fourth century BC. The Cynics believed that the pursuit of wealth and office was antithetical to living according to nature. 24 Burns] Robert Burns (1758–96; DNB), poet. 25 Boccaccio …] From Boccaccio’s Decameron: ‘A mouth that’s been kissed does not lose its charm; / Rather, it renews itself as does the moon’. 26 A toad-like lump …] Shelley alludes to the discovery of the disguised Satan by the angelic guardians of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 4. ‘Him there they found / Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve’ (ll. 799–800). There is a further allusion to the character of Sporus in Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, where as Reiman has noted, Pope is also echoing the same passage in Milton (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, p. 335). 27 Drone] A male worker bee: also, a pejorative term for one who is unintelligent and idle. 28 wight] Body. 29 petit-soupers] Small intimate suppers to whom only close friends are invited. 30 A man there came] Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834; DNB), poet and philosopher. 31 But his own mind – which was a mist] Compare this portrait of Coleridge with Byron’s depiction in the second stanza of the ‘Dedication’ to Don Juan: And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumber’d with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation – I wish he would explain his Explanation.

32 Mr ---, the bookseller,] Joseph Cottle, bookseller and publisher of Lyrical Ballads. 33 A book] Job’s enemy was God: ‘Oh that one would hear me! behold my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book’ (Job 31: 35). 292

Explanatory notes to pages 174–82

34 Pray abuse] When Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes (1807) was published it was savaged in many of the leading periodicals of the day. See Woof, ed., Wordsworth: Critical Heritage, pp. 169–345. 35 seriatum] One after another. 36 Mrs Foy’s daughter] Mrs Foy, the mother in Wordsworth’s ‘The Idiot Boy’, does not have a daughter. 37 Ullswater] One of the larger lakes in the Lake District. 38 Dr Willis] Shelley refers to three doctors, Francis Willis (1718–1807; DNB), and his two sons: John Willis (1751–1835); Robert Willis (1760–1821). All three were spe­ cialists in mental illness, and all three had at some point treated George III. 39 Leipsic] Leipzig. 40 Born’s translation of Kant’s book] Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German founder of critical philosophy. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) was translated by F. G. Born into Latin in 1796. Coleridge was a great admirer of Kant’s Critique. 41 furor verborum] Reiman glosses the Latin as ‘the inspired frenzy of poets and proph­ ets’ (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, p. 340). 42 Vox populi, vox dei] The voice of the people is the voice of God. 43 Sir William Drummond] William Drummond (d. 1828) was a sceptical Scottish phi­ losopher and the author of Academical Questions (1805), which among other things criticised Kant’s metaphysics. Shelley was much impressed with the volume. 44 luce praebens fumum] From light he then gives smoke. 45 subter humum] Beneath the earth. 46 White obi] A devil or demonic figure. 47 Deist] A believer in a supreme being as a creator who does not interfere in the affairs of men. Deists are believers in natural law. 48 Calvin and Dominic] Jean Calvin (1509–64), French Protestant reformer and origina­ tor of the doctrine of Calvinism. St Dominic (1170–1221), was the founder of the Roman Catholic order of preaching friars that bear his name. 49 Dynastophilic] Shelley is referring to the support that Southey and Coleridge gave to the ancien regime in their later years. Pantisocracy refers to the plan by Southey, Col­ eridge and their wives to found a utopian community in the United States. 50 See the description … years.] Shelley is alluding to Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814): And, verily, the silent creatures made A splendid sight, together thus exposed; Dead – but not sullied or deformed by death, That seemed to pity what he could not spare (VIII. 568–71).

51 George Colman] George Colman (1762–1836; DNB), a dramatist and author of farces. 52 Molly] Homosexual.

Henry Luttrell, from Letters to Julia (1820; 1822) 1 My cards] Calling cards. 2 Portman Square] A fashionable London address. 293

Explanatory notes to pages 182–92

3 jobation] A scolding. 4 Moore’s almanack] An almanack is an annual publication that appears in the form of a calendar and usually contains statistical and astronomical information. Moore’s Alma­ nack was published by the Stationers Company. 5 Andalusian barb] A breed of Spanish war-horse. 6 France and Spain] Luttrell is referring to the Napoleonic wars. 7 Dido] In Virgil’s Aeneid Dido, the widowed queen of Carthage is promised marriage by Aeneas who then deserts her. She commits suicide. 8 Castlereagh] Robert Stewart (1769–1822; DNB), Viscount Castlereagh and Earl of Londonderry. 9 ribbon, or your garter] The ribbon and the garter are symbols of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the oldest and most prestigious of British chivalric orders founded by Edward III in 1348. 10 Congress] Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary, was for a while the British representative at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), convened by the victors of the Napoleonic wars to debate the future of Europe. 11 Europe’s quarrels] Luttrell is referring to the wealth of honours piled upon Wellington upon his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. 12 Congo and Bohea] High grade tea. 13 Now ’tis the Peace] Taxes were inordinately high during the Napoleonic wars. When they ended taxes remained high for a long time afterwards due to government debts. 14 Division] When a division in parliament occurs a vote is called for or against a bill. 15 Their corn’s a drug] Luttrell is referring to the high price of corn after the Napoleonic wars.

John Keats, from The Cap and the Bells (1819) 1 In midmost Ind, besides Hydaspes cool] See Paradise Lost, III. 346. 2 Elfinan] Lord Byron, or alternatively, the Prince Regent, both of whom were known to be promiscuous. The name itself derives from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, II. x. 72: ‘… noble Elfinan, who layd / Cleopolis foundation first of all’. Elfinan has been iden­ tified with Brutus, the legendary founder of London, figured in Spenser’s text as Cleopolis. 3 Zendervester] The ‘Zend-Avesta’ is a text sacred to those following the Zoroastrian religion. 4 In vain the pulpit … and vain the tart lampoon] The Church of England was against the Regent’s divorce plans. Keats supplements this by referring also to the plethora of material in the form of cartoons and scurrilous verse that was generated in 1819–20 by the Prince Regent’s attempt to divorce his wife. 5 High court of parliament … Highness’ feet] In 1795 the Regent had been pressurised into his marriage to Caroline of Brunswick by his father, George III, and the govern­ ment of the day.

294

Explanatory notes to pages 192–98

6 Imaus] As Allott has noted in Keats: The Complete Poems, (p. 704) Keats is alluding to Milton. Imaus is a mountain in Scythia, and derives from Milton’s Paradise Lost (III. 431–32): ‘As when a vulture on Imaus bred’. 7 Bellanaine] A mixture of Italian and French. ‘Bella’ (beautiful), ‘naine’ (dwarf). Prin­ cess Caroline was small and attractive. C. L. Finney suggests in The Evolution of Keats’s Poetry, New York, Russell and Russell, 1936, that Bellanaine is a near anagram of Annabella Millbanke, Byron’s estranged wife (p. 735). 8 promener à l’aile] A walk in the air. 9 Somerset] Somersault. 10 Crafticant] Craft-Cant, denoting slyness and hypocrisy, but also, perhaps, a pun on the two syllables that comprise Wordsworth’s name. 11 Show him … a mouse’s tail] Possibly a reference to Wordsworth. See headnote. Within the context of the stanza as a whole, however, Keats could just as easily be referring to the Prince Regent. 12 Till from this hated match I get a free release] Again, Keats is possibly alluding to the Prince Regent’s marriage. 13 In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal’s Head] Keats is parodying the style of sixteenthand seventeenth-century imprints. Keats takes Panthea from Spenser’s Faerie Queene: ‘Who of all Christall did Panthea build’ (II. x. 73). 14 And damn’d his House of Commons, in complete chagrin] See above, n. 5. 15 Am I an Emperor … go hang thyself or drown] A reference here perhaps to the perceived arbitrary pretensions of the Prince Regent. 16 bishopric] Both Allott (Keats: The Complete Poems, p. 709) and Barnard (John Keats: The Complete Poems, p. 714) speculate that this could well be a reference to Nicholas Van­ sittart (1766–1851; DNB) the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1812–22 and the common butt of blame for the current state of high taxation. 17 Palfior] An invented name. 18 Phalaric] An invented name. 19 upon tick] On credit. 20 garter] The Order of the Garter, Britain’s oldest and most prestigious chivalric order founded by Edward III in 1348. 21 Esquire Biancopany] Keats is referring to Samuel Whitbread MP (1758–1815; DNB), a vocal supporter of Princess Caroline. 22 Sweet Bertha] See Keats’s Eve of St Mark, from which he borrowed Bertha’s name and her characteristics. 23 Eban] Allot (Keats: The Complete Poems, p. 711) suggests that Eban suggests ‘Ebony’, black servants being very popular in the eighteenth century due to the formation of the Royal Africa Company in 1762 and its monopoly on the slave trade. Robert Git­ tings, however, in John Keats, London, Heinemann, 1968, suggests that Eban stands for Hazlitt (p. 370). 24 Hum] Contemporary slang for humbug. There is also, however, a reference to the Regent. See the headnote above, and also Thomas Moore’s satire ‘Fum and Hum, the Two Birds of Royalty’, in Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 118–20. 25 A plenty horn of jewels] A cornucopia. 26 Basilic] Basilica. In ancient times a basilica was a royal palace. 27 Congées and scape-graces] Grovelling, bowing and scraping. 295

Explanatory notes to pages 198–203

28 Prothalamion] A wedding song, the most famous of which in English literature is that written by Edmund Spenser in 1596.

Lord Byron, from Don Juan (1819–24) 1 Explain his explanation] In Byron’s view Coleridge was consistently obtuse in his phil­ osophical writings. According to Jerome McGann ‘Byron has in mind The Statesman’s Manual (1816), Biographia Literaria and Lay Sermon (1817), and the recently published Friend (1818)’ (BCPW, 5, p. 671). James Chandler, however, believes that Byron is referring to Coleridge’s attempt ‘explain his explanation’ in the first of his Philosophi­ cal Lectures for 1819: lecture 3, given on the 4 January (Chandler, England in 1819, p. 367). 2 Quite adry Bob] Slang: sexual intercourse without ejaculation. 3 Excursion] Byron is of course referring to Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814). In his preface to the first edition of this poem Wordsworth made what appeared to Byron to be excessively grand claims. The Excursion, says Wordsworth, ‘was an attempt to produce a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled The Recluse … It is not the author’s intention to announce a system’ (Ernest de Selicourt and Helen Darbishire, eds, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, vol. 5, p. 2). Byron leapt upon Wordsworth’s pretensions in a letter to Moore dated 12 August 1814, remarking that Wordsworth had just ‘spawned a quarto of metaphysical blank verse, which is nevertheless only part of a poem’ (Marchand, ed. BLJ, 4, p. 157). 4 And may appear so when the dogstar rages] Byron is alluding to the opening six lines of Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735): Shut, shut the door good John! fatigu’d I said, Tye up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead, The Dog-star rages! nay ’tis past a doubt, All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out: Fire in each Eye, and Papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land.

5 Nor coin] To convert or counterfeit. 6 Excise] In 1813 Wordsworth accepted an appointment as Collector of Stamps for Westmoreland. 7 Scott … Crabbe] Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832; DNB), poet and novelist, and along with Byron, the famous man of letters of his day; Samuel Rogers (1763–1855; DNB), poet and wit and author of Pleasures of Memory (1792), and Jacqueline (1814). Thomas Moore (1779–1852; DNB), poet and satirist and one of Byron’s closest friends. George Crabbe (1763–1855; DNB), poet, whose most well known work is the grimly realistic rural poem The Village (1783). In a letter to Moore dated 1 June 1818, Byron offers Scott and Crabbe as altogether more appropriate examples of poetic excellence (Marchand, ed., BLJ, 6, pp. 46–47). 8 Bright reversion] In law a reversion denotes a right of possession or succession to property, in this context poetic laurels. In canto 4 of Child Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron appears to claim this reversion for himself: 296

Explanatory notes to pages 204–05 … and should I lay My ashes in a soil which is not mine, My spirit shall resume it—if we may Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land’s language ( McGann, ed. BCPW, 2, ll. 73–78).

9 Evil tongues] Byron is echoing Milton’s Paradise Lost (1674): … I sing with mortal voice unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude … (7. 24–28). In stanzas 10 and 11 Byron is reacting against what he saw as the depoliticisation of Milton advocated by the later Coleridge and Wordsworth and takes issue with Coleridge’s pronouncements on Milton’s alleged retreat from politics into the poetic sublime in chap­ ter 2 of Biographia Literaria. Byron is arguing that Milton was consistent in his republicanism and in his opposition to the Stuart monarchy. Milton’s reception in the Romantic period is very complex. The best and most recent guide is by Lucy Newlyn, Paradise Lost and the Romantic Reader, Oxford, Clarendon, 1993.

10 Castlereagh] Robert Stewart (1769–1822; DNB), Viscount Castlereagh and Marquess of Londonderry. Byron regularly and savagely criticised Castlereagh at every given opportunity. Castlereagh, for instance, was notorious for the poor quality of his spoken English when making speeches in the House. Byron refers to this explicitly in canto 9, stanza 49 of Don Juan: Oh, gentle ladies! should you seek to know The import of this diplomatic phrase, Bid Ireland’s Londonderry’s Marquess show His parts of speech; and in the strange displays Of that odd string of words, all in a row, Which none divine, and every one obeys, Perhaps you may pick out some queer no-meaning Of that weak wordy harvest the sole gleaning (McGann, ed., BCPW, 5, 9. 49).

11 Erin’s gore] In 1798 the United Irishmen failed in their revolt against the British gov­ ernment. As an Irishman who helped crush the rebellion, and because of his involvement in establishing the Union in 1801, Castlereagh was widely hated by Irish republicans and those like Byron who sympathised with their cause. See ‘The Irish Avatar’ in Vol. 1 of this edition, pp. 171–78. 12 From that Ixion’s grindstone’s endless toil] In Greek mythology Ixion was condemned to Tartarus for the attempted seduction of Hera, queen of the gods, after Zeus had ini­ tially forgiven him for the murder of his father-in-law. His punishment was to push perpetually a grindstone wheel to no avail. According to Ovid: ‘Ixion’s wheel revolves, / Always behind himself and always ahead’ (Metamorphoses, IV. 446–47). 13 Eutropius] Eutropius (d. AD 399) was a eunuch and consul in the Eastern Roman Empire notorioius for his cruelty and avarice. Gibbon, in a pen-sketch in line with 297

Explanatory notes to pages 205–06

14 15

16 17

18

19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26

27

Byron’s, offers us an assessment of Eutropius’s character: ‘Eutropius, one of the principle eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin he had accomplished and whose vices he soon imitated. Every order of the state bowed to the new favourite; and their tame and obsequious submission encouraged him to insult the laws, and what is still more difficult and dangerous, the manners of his country (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 2, p. 239). Buff and blue] The colours of the Whig party. Tory ultra-Julian] Byron is comparing Southey to Flavius Claudius Julianus (AD 332– 63), Emperor of the Easter Empire, known also as Julian the Apostate for rejecting Christianity after he seized the throne. Young] Edward Young (1683–1765; DNB), poet and dramatist. Young was eighty years old when he published his poem Resignation (1762). Grattan … Sheridan] Henry Grattan (1746–1820; DNB), lawyer, Irish statesman, and supporter of Catholic emancipation. John Philpot Curran (1750–1817; DNB), Irish statesman and orator and supporter of Catholic emancipation. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816; DNB), was a noted eighteenth-century dramatist whose most famous works are The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777). Sheridan entered parliament in 1780 as a Whig. He was a supporter of Fox and a close friend of the Prince Regent. Unhappy Queen] Queen Caroline, the estranged wife of George IV. Caroline’s mar­ riage to George IV, from its inception in 1795 was a scandalous cause celebre throughout the perid. She died in 1821. See the headnotes in this volume to Khouli Khan, Oedipus Tyrannus, and Peter Bell the Third, pp. 209–10, 152–54, 163–64. Daughter] Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV and Queen Caroline died aged twenty-one in 1817. Five per Cents] The amount in interest paid to those investing in Public Funds. Brummell] George (Beau) Brummell (1778–1840; DNB), a Regency dandy, noted leader of fashion, and a close friend of Prince Regent until he fell out of favour and had to flee abroad to escape his debtors. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Byron ‘liked the Dandies—they were always very civil to me—though in general they disliked literary people’ (Marchand, BLJ, 9, p. 22). Long pole Wellsley] William Long Pole Wellsley (1778–1857; DNB). Like Brummell, Wellsley was a noted Regency dandy. Whitbread?] Samuel Whitbread (1758–1815; DNB), Whig politician. Romilly?] Sir Samuel Romilly (1757–1818; DNB), barrister and English law reformer. In the 1790s Romilly was a sympathiser with the ideals of the French Revolution and wrote a pamphlet in their defence entitled Letters Containing An Account of the French Revolution (1792). Fum] Thomas Moore (1719–1852; DNB), poet and satirist. Sawney’s] Sawney was a derogatory name for the Scots. Byron is referring to the spectacularly successful visit made by George IV to Scotland in 1822. The visit itself was orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott. Grenvilles?] Byron is referring to the political dynasty of the Grenville family: George Grenville (1712–70; DNB), was a one time supporter of Pitt the Elder; William Wyndham, Baron Grenville (1759–1834 DNB), was foreign secretary from 1791– 1801, where he supported fully the repressive measures of the 1790s presided over 298

Explanatory notes to pages 206–11

28

29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

by the prime minister, Pitt the Younger. Wyndham served briefly as prime minister himself in the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807, for which see Barrett’s All the Tal­ ents, above, pp. 45–64. Lady Carolines and Franceses] Lady Caroline Lamb (1785–1828; DNB) and Lady Frances Wedderburn (fl. 1810s). Caroline Lamb had a notorious (and destructive) affair with Byron until he put an end to it. Wedderburn came extremely close to having an affair with Byron until the poet shied away. Byron, says Benita Eisler, left Weddurburn to ‘a clear conscience and a loveless marriage’ (Eisler, Byron, p. 401). For poems relating directly to these two women see McGann, ed., BCPW, 3). Thereanent] Northern or Scots dialect meaning to be concerned with, or relating to. Napoleon] Like many writers in the Romantic period, Byron’s views on Napoleon were often ambivalent and always complex. The most recent treatment of Napo­ leon on the period’s writers is, Simon Bainbridge, Napoleon and English Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Duke] Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852; DNB). Wellington was commander of the allied armies that defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. When he entered politics Wellington supported the Tory policy of domestic repression. Blue Peter] A nautical flag raised by a ship to signify its departure from harbour. Southcote] Joanna Southcote (1750–1815; DNB), prophetess and religious fanatic. Tax-trap] Byron is referring to the excessive taxation imposed on the country to pay for the cost of the Napoleonic wars. I have seen that sad affair of the late Queen] See above n. 18. I have seen a Congress doing all that’s mean] Byron is referring to the Congress of Vienna. Country Gentlemen turn squeakers] Byron is referring to those who supported the war against Napoleon and who are now complaining about having to repay the war debt through heavy taxation. By slaves on horseback] A possible reference to the Peterloo Massacre, 16 August 1819. John Bull] A generic name for the archetypal plain speaking and patriotic Englishman. Carpe diem] ‘Seize the day’. Life’s a poor player] Byron is echoing Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more (V. v. 23–25).

42 Atalantis] Byron is referring to the utopian prose fiction The New Atalantis (1709), by the female Tory satirist Delarivier Manley.

Anon., from Khouli Khan, (1820) 1 And in orgies, nocturnal, consumes all his prime] As Prince of Wales George rebelled against his father, George III, and led a dissipated life in the company of Charles James Fox (1749–1806; DNB), the leading Whig politician of the 1780s and 1790s.

299

Explanatory notes to pages 211–14

2 So, to have his debts cancell’d, he married a wife] George’s marriage to Caroline of Bruns­ wick on 8 April 1795 was motivated entirely by his need to pay off his debts and placate his father. 3 Got himself a new mistress] George lived amicably with Caroline for approximately two months, though the presence of Lady Jersey, his mistress, was a constant irritant to his new wife. Relations broke down upon the birth of Princess Charlotte on 7 Janu­ ary 1796. See Smith, George IV, pp. 73–75. 4 That she was unchaste, though so virtuous and fair] In 1805 Caroline faced accusations of adultery with a succession of alleged lovers, leading George to provoke an inquiry into his wife’s conduct. The so-called ‘Delicate Investigation’ of 1806–07 led by the Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, could find no evidence to support the charge. See Smith, George IV, p. 113–14; Flora Fraser, The Unruly Queen, pp. 152–57. 5 The Child of her bosom, away from her tears] George continually frustrated Caroline’s access to her daughter, Princess Charlotte. 6 And, by mean machinations, compels her to roam] In 1814 Caroline left England for the continent, where she was constantly spied upon by government agents. 7 In her place, to console him, a fat M---ch------ss] Lady Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford (1759–1834; DNB). 8 Pindar’s] Pindar (522–443 BC), Greek lyric poet. William Boyce (1711–79; DNB) set Pindar’s odes to music. The reference here may be to ‘The New Year’s Ode’ (1774). 9 C---t] Court. 10 Bairn] Northern and Scots dialect for child. 11 H----d] See note 7. 12 Y-rm--th] Francis Charles Seymour, third Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842; DNB), earlier Earl of Yarmouth and Viscount Beauchamp, husband of Marchioness Hertford. 13 His daughter dies, the fairest of the fair] Princess Charlotte, daughter of George and Caroline, was extremely popular. When she died in 1817 it was an occasion of national mourning. 14 Di---ce] Divorce. 15 Divan] Parliament. 16 Mi--n] Milan. The Milan Commission was formed to gather evidence of Caroline’s adultery. The three commissioners appointed to fulfil this task under the authority of Sir John Leech, were: William Cooke, KC, John Allan Powell, and Major James Browne. See Smith, George IV, p. 176. 17 To the land of hypocrisy, lying, and fraud] In the popular imagination that was fuelled by anticatholicism and xenophobia, Italy was felt to be the site of every form of degen­ erate behaviour. 18 Lying evidence cull … and indorse it as true] The Milan Commission was widely felt to be corrupt. It was accused of manufacturing evidence and of paying Caroline’s servants to tell lies about their mistress. 19 HIS Sire expires] George III died on 29 January 1820. 20 fourscore years] It was twenty four years since George married Caroline. 21 To wander like and outcast / From her home] See note 6. 22 The Swinish Multitude] A phrase made famous by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolu­ tion in France (1790) in reference to the common people. In turn the phrase 300

Explanatory notes to pages 214–25

23 24 25 26

27 28

generated a glut of pamphlets and periodicals with titles such as Hog’s Wash, Pig’s Meat, and Rights of Swine. Q---n] Queen. Green Bag] A document case containing evidence, customarily green in the period. Mufti] ‘A Muslim legal expert who is empowered to give rulings on religious matters’ (OED). By the laws of the Persians] Parliament would only countenance a divorce for George on the grounds of adultery. As he was clearly guilty of this himself it was judged that proceeding on such grounds would lead to failure. Wh--e] Whore. Black B--l] Black Bill. ‘The Bill of Pains and Penalties, introduced at George’s insist­ ence, which would dethrone [Caroline] as queen and end her marriage’ (Smith George IV, p. 181).

Lord Byron, from The Vision of Judgment (1822) 1 Pope] Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, l. 625. 2 like Scrub …] The reference is to George Farquhar’s play of 1707, The Beaux Strategem, where the servant Scrub is being quizzed by her mistress about the adven­ turer Aimwell: ‘and I believed they talked of me for they laughed consumedly’ (III. i. 62). 3 in some recent … Anti-Jacobin] Southey had been attacked during the 1790s in the Anti-Jacobin for his radicalism. More recent publications include Byron’s own work, particularly Don Juan. 4 skimble scamble stuff] The reference is to Shakespeare’s I Henry IV (III. i. 148) and is of Shakespearean coinage, meaning nonsensical. 5 Qualis ab incepto] Latin: Such as it was from the outset. 6 Farmer] ‘Farmer’ was George III’s nickname, earned because of his pre-occupation with agricultural affairs. 7 king of France] Louis XVI (1754–1793); executed 21 January 1793. 8 Keys] ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (Mathew 17: 19). 9 Saint Bartholomew] St Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, was said to have been flayed alive. See Mathew 10: 3; Mark 3: 18; Luke 6: 14; Acts 1: 13. 10 How to a minion first he gave the helm] The minion to whom Byron refers is John Stuart, Earl of Bute (1713–92). In the earliest years of his reign George III was accused of trying to organise a new form of absolutism, with Bute as its architect. 11 Apicius’ board] Marcus Garvius Apicius (fl. early first century AD) was a noted gour­ mand and glutton. 12 Guelf] The Guelfs were the German princely family from which the Hanoverian dynasty was descended. 13 Cerburus] The three-headed dog from Greek mythology said to guard the gateway to hell.

301

Explanatory notes to pages 225–26

14 John Wilkes and Junius] John Wilkes (1727–97; DNB), MP for Aylesbury and editor of The North Briton, an opposition newspaper severe in its criticism of George the Third and his prime minister, the Earl of Bute. Junius was the name under which a series of letters were published between 21 January 1769 and 21 January 1772 ‘attacking the policies of George III’s government’. His real identity remained undiscovered. The current scholarly consensus has it, however that Junius was Sir Philip Francis (1740–1819; DNB). ‘Byron himself ’, says McGann, ‘subscribed to this view’ (BCPW, 6, pp. 676–77; BLJ, 6, pp. 18, 25). 15 Wat Tyler, Rhymes on Blenheim, Waterloo] Works by Robert Southey: Wat Tyler (1817), The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo (1816). Pirated editions of Wat Tyler often contained Southey’s lyric poem ‘Battle of Blenheim’. 16 pantisocracy] The utopian scheme to establish an ideal community on the banks of the Susquehanna devised by Coleridge and Southey. Both men were influenced heavily by the events of the French Revolution. This is Southey in the heady atmos­ phere of the 1790s, planning to go ‘To the distant shore Where Freedom spurns Oppression’s iron reign I go: not vainly sorrowing to deplore The long-loved friends I leave to meet no more, But the high call of Justice to obey’ (Cited, Storey, Southey: A Life, p. 57). The venture with Coleridge was abandoned because of progressive disagreement on the nature of the community they were setting out to achieve.

17 Antijacobin] The Jacobins were the most radical of the groups generated in France by the Revolution and were closely associated with Robespierre. Southey was appalled at Robespierre’s execution and jointly wrote with Coleridge a sympathetic tragic drama entitled The Fall of Robespierre (1794), though it is only Coleridge’s name that appears on the title page. In a latter to Horace Walpole Bedford, 22 August 1794, Southey wrote: ‘Poor Robespierre! Coleridge and I wrote a tragedy on his death in the space of two days! … If you ask me the opinion of this great man I will tell you. I believe him to have been sacrificed to the despair of fools and cow[ards]’, Ken­ neth Curry, ed. New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 72–73. After ardently supporting the ideals of the Revolution in the 1790s Southey turned viciously against them in Byron’s view, along with the other first generation Romantic poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge. The most recent treatment of Robespierre and Romantic writers has been written by Gregory Dart, Rousseau, Robespierre and Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 18 turned his skin] In the ‘appendix’ to The Two Foscari (1821), Byron was scathing about ‘Mr Southey’s … shifting and turncoat existence’. He goes on: ‘There is at once something ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all work sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide, all shuf­ fled together in his writing desk’ (McGann, ed. BCPW, 6, pp. 224, 225). 302

Explanatory notes to pages 226–46

19 Wesley’s life] Robert Southey, The Life of Wesley and the Rise and Progress of Methodism, 2 vols (1820). 20 King Alphonso] King Alphonso of Castile (1221–84). Alphonso is reported to have said when speaking of the Ptolomean system: ‘had he been consulted at the creation of the world, he would have spared the Maker some absurdities’ (McGann, BCPW, 6, note, p. 678). 21 Phaeton] In Greek mythology Phaeton was the child of the Sun and Clymene. In the Metamorphosis (Book 2), Ovid relates how driven by the insults of others to prove his parentage, Phaeton demands of his father the right to drive his chariot for one day and is killed in the attempt, plunging to the earth when the chariot is at its highest point. The story is a classic exposition of talent outstripped by ambition. 22 As Wellborn says] The reference is to Philip Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, where Wellborn, a prodigal and libertine exclaims ‘The devil turn’d precisian’ (1. 1. 6). The term ‘precisian’ was widely used in the seventeenth century as a derogatory synonym for a puritan. The most famous example occurs in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in relation to the sexual hypocrite Lord Angelo: Lord Angelo is precise, Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. (1. 3. 51–54.)

23 the hundredth psalm] Psalm 100 is subtitled as ‘A Psalm of praise.’

William Combe, from The Three Tours of Doctor Syntax (1821) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Madge] A diminutive form of Margaret. Meagrims] Low spirits. i’ fackins] Archaism: In faith. Stingo] Strong liquor. dulness now is found to reign] An allusion to The Dunciad (1740) by Alexander Pope (1688–1744; DNB). Sommerden] Syntax’s home. Nimrod] Generic name for a skilful hunter derived from the Bible. See Genesis 10: 8. curtain lecture] A severe talking to in private. hyssop] An aromatic herb. But leave to … Novels glean] A reference to the trashy romances that were deemed to be turning young girls’ heads.

Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, from The Mohawks (1822) 1 Caxton] William Caxton (1422–91; DNB), the first English printer. 2 Luther] Martin Luther (1483–1546), instigator of the German Reformation in the sixteenth century. 303

Explanatory notes to pages 246–47

3 Cromwell … and the upper house] Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; DNB), Lord Protector from 1653–58. Charles I was executed in 1649 and in the same year the House of Lords was abolished. 4 While wand’ring Charles neglected and distressed] The future Charles II, eldest son of the executed monarch. 5 James the Second … for a mass] James Stuart, king from 1685–88, the last Catholic monarch in England, deposed by parliament in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 for his popish sympathies. 6 Nassau] William of Orange, invited by parliament in 1688 to assume the throne jointly with his wife Mary, James II’s daughter. 7 House of Hanover] Queen Anne was the last of the Stuarts, and when she died in 1714 the elector of Hanover, the future George I, was given the throne in order to ensure the Protestant succession 8 By publications anti-jacobitical] The followers of the House of Stuart were referred to as Jacobites, after the man they saw as the legal heir to the throne, James Stuart, eldest son of the deposed king James II. ‘Jacobitical’ derives from Jacobus, the Latin ver­ sion of James. 9 Convention Parliament] It was the Convention Parliament of 1689 that dismissed James II. Thereafter he took refuge at the court of Louis XIV, in France. 10 Bacon and Locke] Francis Bacon (1561–1626; DNB), philosopher and scientist; John Locke (1632–1704; DNB), philosopher and political theorist, the so-called intellec­ tual father of liberalism 11 Newton … spread] Isaac Newton (1642–1727; DNB), holder of the Lucasian chair in mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of the Principia (1687). 12 Harvey] William Harvey (1578–1657; DNB), personal physician to Charles I and author of On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628). 13 Torricelli’s vacuum] Evangelista Torricelli (1608–47), inventor of the barometer, Torri­ celli was the first man to create a sustained vacuum. 14 Galileo’s tube] Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). Galileo introduced the first sophisticated telescope in 1609–10. His astronomical theories led in 1632 to his house arrest for life by the Inquisition. 15 Tom Paine] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB) English radical and author of The Rights of Man (1791). 16 Watson’s famed Apology] Richard Watson (1781–1833; DNB), Methodist theologian and author of An Apology for the Methodists (1799). 17 Franklin’s rods] Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), diplomat, polymath, printer and inven­ tor of the lightning rod. 18 Seduced the Bostoners to tar th’ exciseman] The Morgans are referring to the practice in Boston of tarring and feathering the collectors of the new and intensely unpopular stamp tax imposed upon the Americans by the British government led by Lord North, for whom see the endnote following. 19 Lord North] Frederick North (1732–92; DNB), MP and Chancellor of the Excheq­ uer during the Stamp Act crisis of the 1760s and Prime Minister from 1770–82.

304

Explanatory notes to pages 247–50

20

21

22 23 24

25 26

27

28 29 30 31

32 33

34

35

North was blamed by many for the incompetent manner in which the colonies in America were lost. Franklin, a perfect monster of duplicity!] Franklin supported a peaceful settlement between the British government and the colonies in America. He later changed his mind. Rousseau] Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) philosopher and novelist whose The Social Contract (1762) was felt by many to be an intellectual impetus towards revolu­ tion in France in 1789 Julie] Rousseau’s epistolary novel Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) Leaving the King of friends and money bare] Both the nobility and the Church were exempt from the payment of taxes in pre-revolutionary France. Voltaire] Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778), French enlightenment thinker whose works (along with Rousseau’s) were felt by many to be a pre-cursor of French revolutionary thought. Cobbett] William Cobbett (1763–1835; DNB), English journalist and reformer, edi­ tor of the radical Political Register. Duke of Brunswick into France] Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick (1771–1815) and brother of Caroline of Brunswick, the wife of George IV. Frederick attempted in 1809 to liberate his duchy – annexed to Westphalia by Napoleon in 1806. His suc­ cess was temporary. He fled to England and died in the battle of Waterloo. ’Twas Voltaire … in fashion] The Morgans are pointing ironically to the idea that it was the works of Voltaire and Rousseau that brought about the Revolution and the Terror. for which it suffers now] Political conservatives in France and England often blamed French support for the Americans as a cause for revolution in their own country. Bonaparte] Napoleon I, defeated by Wellington at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Although we beat the Frenchmen out of Spain] Wellington defeated Napoleon’s armies in Spain in the Peninsular War of 1808–14. What great effect from little causes spring!] The Morgans are echoing the opening couplet of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1714): ‘What dire event from amorous causes springs, / What mighty contests rise from trivial things’. The swinish multitude] This phrase is from Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Hunt’s Examiner] James Leigh Hunt (1784–1859; DNB) and his brother, John Hunt (1775–1848; DNB), launched the radical periodical The Examiner in 1808. The Exam­ iner supported the cause of radical Whigs in politics and also published the poetry of Shelley and Hazlitt. The Hunts pointed out on the front page of every copy that half the cost of The Examiner was the fault of the government’s ‘tax on knowledge’. Th—’s muse] Possibly John Thelwall (1764–1834; DNB), jacobin poet of the 1790s. By the 1820s in Leigh Hunt’s phrase, ‘Reformers were angry [with Thelwall] for his having given up politics’. Lord L-nd-n-ry’s speeches] Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and Earl of London­ derry (1769–1822; DNB). 305

Explanatory notes to pages 250–53

36 W-lb-rf-ce’s intellectual riches] William Wilberforce (1759–1833; DNB), supporter of religious liberty; best known, however, for his commitment to the abolition of slavery. 37 Quarterly Reviews] The Quarterly Review was a Tory periodical. 38 stews] Brothels. 39 S--thy] Robert Southey (1774–1843; DNB), at the time the Morgans were writing, the poet laureate. 40 C--ly] George Croly (1780–1860; DNB) poet, satirist and Tory journalist. 41 G--ff--rd] William Gifford (1756 01501826; DNB), Tory satirist. See Volume 4 of this edition. 42 the fluent muse of Waverley] Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832; DNB). Waverley (1814) was an immense critical and commercial success. 43 Prepense] Deliberate or intentional. 44 the art of sinking] The Morgans are alluding to Alexander Pope’s prose treatise, Peri Bathous, or, Martin Scriblerus, his Treatise of the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728), which takes as its theme the works of those writers who lack or misapply knowledge. 45 Childe Harold] Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18). 46 Sir Samuel Romilly] Sir Samuel Romilly (1757–1818; DNB), was a barrister and active reformer of the law. He was also an admirer of Rousseau and enthusiast for the French Revolution, in support of which he wrote Letters Containing an Account of the Late Revolution in France (1792). 47 L-v-p-l’s] Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool (1770–1828; DNB), Foreign Sec­ retary, 1801–03, Home Secretary, 1804–06, 1807–09, and Prime Minister from 1812–27. Liverpool was closely associated in the period with repressive acts such as the suspension of habeas corpus. 48 Moore] Thomas Moore (1779–1852; DNB), poet and satirist. See Volume 5 of this edition. 49 Generari et nasci … Tac. Hist. 1.] ‘To be begotten and born of royal stock, is a mere accident, as is not to be valued as anything more’ (Tacitus, Histories, I, 16). 50 ‘Hases’] Banknotes, after the Chief Cahier of the Bank of England, Henry Hase. 51 rude mechanicals] Artisans. The phrase is from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act III, scene ii, and is collectively used to describe the play’s artisan, lower class characters. 52 Dean Swift’s draper] Jonathan Swift (1667–1745; DNB), one of the greatest satirists of the early eighteenth century and the author of Gulliver’s Travels, penned the Draper’s Letters, seven letters in satirical prose written between 1724 and 1725. The letters attacked the government of the day for its attempts to manipulate the coinage in Ireland for its own ends. 53 When hoisted in Hone’s matrimonial ladder] William Hone (1780–1842; DNB), radical and satirist and author of The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1819). 54 St--t, St-dd-rt, G-ff-d, Cr-k-r] Charles Sturt, an unequivocal believer in the supremacy of royal power. For William Gifford, see Volume 4 of this edition. John Wilson Croker MP (1780–1856; DNB), a prominent Tory politician, and contributor to the Quarterly Review. Croker was one of the most hated men of the period and was sati­ rised by Lady Morgan in her novel Florence Macarthy (1818) as well as by Peacock in Melincourt (1817), and Disraeli in Coningsby (1844). 306

Explanatory notes to pages 254–61

55 rotten boroughs and intriguing p--rs] Before the Great Reform Act of 1832 rotten bor­ oughs were able to elect MPs with very few voters. They were therefore easily controlled by the local aristocracy. 56 C-nn-ng’s jeers] George Canning MP (1770–1827; DNB), a prominent Tory politician and follower of Pitt. Canning was the editor of the anti-reform and anti-republican Tory satirical journal, the Antijacobin from 1797–98. 57 C-rtwr--t and H--t] Major John Cartwright (1740–1824; DNB), radical reformer and author of Take Your Choice (1776), a treatise arguing for manhood suffrage, the secret ballot, and annual elections. Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt (1773–1835; DNB). Hunt was sentenced to thirty months in jail for rabble-rousing at a large gathering at St Peter’s Field in Manchester on the occasion of the notorious Peterloo Massacre in 1819.

Robert Montgomery, The Age Reviewed (1827) 1 The King’s Bench] A division of the High Court of Justice. 2 Hispida membra animum. Juv.] ‘Indeed, your hairy limbs and the tough bristles on your arms suggest a fierce spirit’ (Juvenal, Satires, II. 10–11). The passage is part of a dig at Stoic philosophers: they cultivate the appearance of rough manliness, when they are actually as much given to homosexual practices as the followers of Socrates. 3 Like Shakespeare’s, ready for the coins or flesh] The reference is to Shylock in Shake­ speare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596) 4 illos / Defendit numerus, iunctæque umbone phalanges] ‘Their number protects them and they stick together as tightly as the shield bosses in a battlefield phalanx’ (Juvenal, Satires, II. 46). This is, again, part of a critique of male sexual perversion. 5 Cit] Citizen. 6 Mr Sharon Turner] Sharon Turner (1768–1847; DNB), solicitor, historian, and Mont­ gomery’s friend). 7 Malthusian disciples] The followers of the classical economist, Thomas Malthus (1766–1834; DNB). Malthus argues in his Essay on Population (1798), that world pop­ ulation would eventually outstrip mankind’s ability to provide for itself. 8 Sir Punch] A generic term for the buffoon-like country squire. Used here in a pejora­ tive sense to describe the arrival in the city of country MPs. 9 noes and ayes] Affirmative and negative votes in Parliament. 10 Like Phythia, perched upon the Delphic stool] In Greek mythology Pythia is the highpriestess of the Delphic oracle, the seat of prophecy associated with Apollo. 11 Quintillian] Quintillian (AD 35–96), Roman rhetorician. 12 oratorem autem … non potest] ‘We are, however, instructing that perfect orator, who by definition cannot fail to be a good man’ (Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria, Book I, Pro­ hoemium 1, no. 1). 13 Ambubaiarum conlegia, … hoc genus omne] ‘Troupes of music-girls, quacks, beggars, mummers, buffoons and everything of this sort’ (Horace, Satires, II. 1–2). 14 Pitt and Sheridan] William Pitt (1759–1806; DNB), Tory politician and prime minister (1783–1801; 1804–06). Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816; DNB), dramatist and Whig politician.

307

Explanatory notes to pages 261–64

15 W—— and E—] Untraced. 16 E—— e, and piratic H—— ] E——e is untraced. H——. is Joseph Hume (1777– 1855; DNB), radical parliamentarian. 17 Canning] George Canning (1770–1827; DNB) foreign secretary, 1822–27, then briefly, Prime Minister until his death. 18 Peel] Robert Peel (1788–1850; DNB), Tory politician and Home Secretary from 1822–27. Peel resigned rather than serve under Canning. 19 Burke] Edmund Burke (1729–97; DNB), Whig politician noted for his oratory and his authorship of Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). 20 Orator Hunt, Cobbett, Carlile] Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt (1773–1835; DNB), agitator and radical reformer. Hunt was the presiding speaker at the meeting held in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in 1819 that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre. William Cob­ bett (1762–1835; DNB), radical reformer, journalist and MP. Richard Carlile (1790– 1843; DNB), radical reformer and republican. 21 Domitian] Titus Flavius Domitianus, (AD 51–96), Roman emperor from AD 81 until his death. Domitian is particularly known for his persecution of Christians. 22 Nero] Nero Claudius Caesar (AD 37–68), Roman emperor from AD 54 until his death. Nero was one of the most tyrannical and bloodthirsty of the Roman emperors. 23 See Cobbett rise … accursed Paine] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB), author of The Rights of Man (1791), a response to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. When Paine died he was buried in New York. His bones were dug by William Cobbett and returned to England, where they since disappeared. 24 Burdett’s] Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844; DNB), independent MP and radical reformer. 25 Paddy Kernan] Unidentified 26 Billingsgate] The largest of the London fish markets 27 Hustings] A platform on which the candidates for Parliament formerly stood to address electors. 28 John Bull] Archetypal name for the patriotic and plain-speaking Englishman. 29 Wilks and Hume] John Wilkes (1727–97; DNB), radical politician. Joseph Hume (1777–1855; DNB), parliamentary radical. 30 Butler] Charles Butler (1750–1832; DNB), distinguished lawyer and champion of Catholic emancipation. 31 Shiel] William Lalor Shiel (1791–1851; DNB), Irish patriot, second only to Daniel O’Connell in the struggle for Catholic emancipation. 32 O’Connell] Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847; DNB) Irish patriot and the leading Irish advocate of Catholic emancipation. 33 Marozias] Marozia, mistress of Pope Sergius III (904–11). 34 Duncombe] Untraced. 35 Medici] Giovanni de Medici (1475–1521), Pope Leo X from 1513–21. 36 Urbino] The dukedom was given to Lorenzo de Medici (1492–1519) by his uncle, Pope Leo X.

308

Explanatory notes to pages 264–66

37 Bandino’s murder] Bernardo Bandini murdered Guiliano de Medici in the cathedral in Florence in 1478. He was captured and hung. See James Cleugh, The Medici, Lon­ don, Robert Hale, 1976. 38 Marian war] Possibly a reference to the counter-reformation in England during the reign of Mary (1553–58), when approximately three hundred protestants were burnt at the stake. 39 Albigenses] A heretical Christian sect that flourished in southern France in the twelfth and thirteen centuries. Eventually the Albigenses were brutally suppressed by the Inquisition, for which see below, note 41. 40 Vaudois] The reference is to the Waldensians, a heretical medieval sect. ‘Vaudois is a clearly defined version of the many diverse patois which existed between Provence and Piedmont’, and was the dialect in which Waldensian texts are said to be written. See Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Reflections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, p. 218. 41 Inquisition’s bloody pack] The Inquisition was originally instituted by Pope Gregory IX to deal with heresy from the Catholic faith. A second variety was introduced in 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV that eventually gained an independence of its own and is known more generally as the Spanish Inquisition. This was not officially suppressed by papal decree until 1834. 42 Dunstan down to Dominic] St Dunstan (924–88; DNB), Christian zealot and Arch­ bishop of Canterbury. St Dominic (1170–1221), founder of the Dominican order of monks. The Dominicans were instrumental in prosecuting the Inquisition. 43 Plowden] Francis Plowden (1749–1829; DNB), lawyer and eminent writer on legal and political issues. Plowden was an activist in the cause of Catholic emancipation. 44 Hildebrand] Hildebrand (c. 1020/25–1085), reigned as Pope Gregory VII, 1061–73. 45 Bedlamite] i.e. from Bedlam, a lunatic. 46 Fingal] Arthur James Plunkett, eighth Earl of Fingal (1759–1836; DNB), probably the most loyal of the Catholic aristocrats. 47 Hibernian] Irish. 48 Royal York] Frederick Augustus, eleventh Duke of York (1763–1827; DNB), the sec­ ond son of George III. York opposed Catholic emancipation and spoke against it in the House of Lords on 23 April 1825. 49 Parnassus] In classical mythology Mount Parnassus is the home of the muses. 50 Must all, like Banquo’s issue, pass her view] In Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) Macbeth is presented by the witches with ‘A show of eight kings, the last with a glass in his hand’ (IV. i. 111–12, s.d.). They are the murdered Banquo’s descendants, destined to be the kings of Scotland and England. 51 Nil intentatum nostri liquêre poëtæ. H OR ] ‘Our poets left nothing untried’ (Horace, Epis­ tles, II (Ars Poetica), iii. 285). 52 The Lakists] Robert Southey (1774–1843; DNB), William Wordsworth (1770–1850; DNB), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834; DNB). 53 Soft Betty] Alluding to Betty Foy in Wordsworth’s ‘The Idiot Boy’, Lyrical Ballads, Butler and Green, eds, Cornell Wordsworth. 54 pulingly] Adverbial form of the verb ‘to pule’, meaning to whine or complain.

309

Explanatory notes to pages 266–68

55 Th’ Excursion] Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1815); cf. Byron’s remarks in Don Juan ‘Dedication’, above, pp. 202–05 56 And pedlar, pauper, bard, and weaver’s wife] A disparaging reference to Wordsworth’s concern with the quotidian. 57 Carmen Nuptiale] Robert Southey, The Lay of the Laureate: Carmen Nuptiale (1816). 58 Tale of Paraguay … Last of the Goths] Southey, A Tale of Paraguay (1825), and Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814) 59 Galt] John Galt (1779–1839; DNB), novelist and occasional critic. 60 Grey’s Elegy] Thomas Gray (1716–71; DNB), Poet and author of ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1742–50). 61 To tickle George’s ear with Laureate hums] Southey was widely ridiculed for his laureate verses on George III. 62 Protean bard] From Proteus, the Greek mythological figure capable of infinite shape changing 63 Tyler] Southey’s republican play Wat Tyler, written in the 1790s but not published until 1817, was a source of much embarrassment to its author. 64 Quarter’s puff] The Quarterly Review, a Tory periodical and rival to the Whig orientated Edinburgh Review. 65 Pye] Herbert James Pye (1745–1813; DNB), Southey’s predecessor as poet laureate. 66 Whitehead’s] William Whitehead (1715–85; DNB), Pye’s predecessor as poet laureate. 67 Murray] John Murray (1778–1843; DNB), the period’s most successful publisher. 68 Tu whit, tu whoo] Wordsworth, ‘The Idiot Boy’, line 450. 69 Come, promptly weave around the circle trice] Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’, l. 51. 70 Qui fit, Mæcenas] ‘How does it happen, Maecenas?’ (Horace, Satires, I. 1). 71 His ‘Pixy’ wond’rous, and his ‘Ass’ sublime] Coleridge, ‘Song of the Pixies’, and ‘To a Young Ass’. 72 Wilson] John Wilson (1785–1854; DNB), critic and writer, better known as ‘Christo­ pher North’, the pseudonym he used when writing for Blackwoods Magazine.

310

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 3 Collected Satires III: Complete Longer Satires

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 General Editor: John Strachan Consultant Editor: Steven E. Jones Volume Editors: Nicholas Mason David Walker Benjamin Colbert John Strachan Jane Moore

BRITISH SATIRE 1785–1840 Volume 3 Collected Satires III: Complete Longer Satires Edited by Benjamin Colbert

First published 2003 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2003 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

British Satire, 1785–1840 1. Verse satire, English 2. English poetry – 19th century 3. English poetry – 18th century I. Strachan, John (John R.) II. Jones, Steven E. (Steven Edward), 1959– III. Gifford, William, 1756–1826 IV. Moore, Thomas, 1779–1852. Satires of Thomas Moore V. Shorter Satires VI. Extracts from longer satires VII. Complete longer satires 821’.07’0807 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

British Satire, 1785–1840 / general editor, John Strachan p. cm Includes bibliographical references. Contents: v. 1. Shorter satires / edited by Nicholas Mason – v. 2. Extracts from longer satires / edited by David Walker – v. 3. Complete longer satires/ edited by Benjamin Colbert – v. 4. Satires of William Gifford / edited by John Strachan – v. 5. Satires of Thomas Moore edited by Jane Moore. 1. Verse satire, English. 2. English poetry – 19th century. 3. English poetry – 18th century. I. Strachan, John (John R.) PR1195.S3 B75 2002 821’.708–dc21 2002066203 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-729-2 (set)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348167 Typeset by JCS Publishing Services

Henry Wigstead. Frontispiece to The Lousiad: An Heroi-Comic Poem. Canto I. By Peter Pindar, Esq. New Edition (1786).

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

CONTENTS List of short titles

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction by Benjamin Colbert

xi

John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar, Esq.’) ‘The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem’ (1794–96)

1

Nathaniel Thomas Haynes Bayly (‘Q. in the Corner’) ‘Epistles from Bath; or Q.’s Letters to His Yorkshire Relations’ (1817)

161

William Hone and George Cruikshank ‘The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder, A National Toy, with Fourteen Step Scenes; and Illustrations in Verse, with Eighteen Other Cuts’ (1820) 203 ‘James Harley’ ‘The Press, or Literary Chit-Chat. A Satire’ (1822)

235

Anon. ‘The Illiberal! Verse and Prose from the North!!’ (1822)

381

Explanatory Notes

405

LIST OF SHORT TITLES BMC

Mary Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires: Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols 5–11, London, British Museum, 1935–1954.

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography on CD-ROM, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Dyer

Gary Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

EBSR

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980–93, vol. 1, pp. 227–64.

Lemprière Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary of Proper Names Mentioned in Ancient Authors Writ Large, 3rd edn., London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. OED

Oxford English Dictionary

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank John Strachan for inviting me to edit this volume and for providing such expert guidance at every stage of the process. I would also like to thank Sarah Humbles, Mark Pollard, and David Salmo of Pickering & Chatto for their help in securing copy texts and in answering many technical queries. Most of my research for this volume was conducted at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and I would like to thank the staff of the Upper Reading Room for their courteous assistance. Similarly, I am grateful to staff who have assisted me at the British Library and the University of Birmingham, Special Collections Department. I am also indebted to Gerry Stigbert of the International Loans Department, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, for providing me with a photocopy of James Harley’s rare volume, The Reviewer’s Guide; to Sue Constable, Keeper of the Shoe Collection, Northampton Museum, for answering several fashion enquiries; and to Pamela Morris, English Subject Librarian, Harrison Learning Centre, University of Wolverhampton, for help in tracking down resources. I am particularly grateful to Pamela Clark, Registrar of the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, for her generous help in identifying members of the Royal Household mentioned in The Lousiad. In addition, numerous friends and colleagues deserve thanks for answering individual and general queries, particularly George D. Chryssides, Gary Dyer, Kyle Grimes, David Jenkins-Handy, Jane Moore, Lynda Pratt, Frank Wilson, and Duncan Wu. Above all, I am grateful to Hilary Weeks for being, as always, my closest reader, critic, and companion.

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

INTRODUCTION By Benjamin Colbert

Public figures and personal enemies are the lifeblood of satire, which speaks first to its contemporaries about contemporaries. Their follies and vices may be unoriginal, but satire attacks them as they appear, dressed in the fashions of the day. Sometimes the voice of satire can be heard only faintly in the marketplace, but it is always public. When heard clearly, it can touch a collective nerve, magnify the popular mood, and transform satirists, however briefly, into celebrities. The earliest editors of satire have recognised the problems and opportunities this presented to subsequent generations: one observed in 1826 that, ‘it is the nature of satire to be so linked with the circumstances, manners, and opinions of the times in which it was written, that without explanation, or comment, the justice of its application, and the beauty of the verses … pass alike unperceived by the reader’.1 In 2003, the challenge of approaching Romantic period satire on its own terms is made greater by a tradition of critical reading that has above all valued works that transcend the material conditions that produced them. We have been so accustomed to thinking of the aesthetic decision-making of Romantic poets as a ‘response’ to context that it still takes another kind of understanding to appreciate and enjoy writing in which context and content cannot be so easily distinguished. While the volumes in this edition are all engaged in this act of recovery, this one performs its task somewhat differently. Five longer satires written between 1785 and 1822 are here printed in facsimile, fully supported by introductory notes and annotation, but uninterrupted by signs of editorial intervention, such as corrections, footnotes, or other page marks. This allows the general reader, however vicariously, to experience the reading of Romantic period satire in some of its representative forms. To do so is to be reminded of satire’s ephemeral status; the way it manipulates popular formats, layouts, and graphics, or carelessly bares its warts and blemishes, those typographical errors, hasty additions, or omissions that occur when authors and publishers hurry to meet the satiric moment. The satirists represented here met that moment with varying degrees of success, though the volume does include work by two of the period’s most prolific and bestselling satirists, John Wolcot and William Hone. Popularity alone, however, has not been a criterion of selection. Nor can this volume attempt to encapsulate the range and diversity of satires produced in these years. Nevertheless, the works reprinted here do take account of the major generic tendencies identified in Gary Dyer’s xi

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

pioneering study, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789–1832 (1997), with several caveats discussed below. Briefly, in Dyer’s schema the Roman satirists Horace and Juvenal continued to be invoked as representing distinct styles: the Horatian emphasising a comic, tolerant approach to censure, the Juvenalian, a tragic, indignant scourging of vice.2 In the 1790s, the Juvenalian provided William Gifford and Thomas James Mathias with a ‘monological, unambiguous’ style with which to oppose ‘the perceived threat of “Jacobinism” in politics and culture’ (Dyer, p. 2); oppositional satirists, notably Wolcot, found in Horace possibilities for a more connotative, indirect critique that could inform and delight audiences without incurring prosecution. By the nineteenth century, Dyer argues, Neo-Juvenalian satire had become associated with conservative, anti-Jacobin ideology, while Wolcot’s tradition bifurcated into a Neo-Horatian and a Radical legacy. Neo-Horatian modes were usually employed in satires espousing political and social quietism, often conservative by default. By contrast, ‘Radical satires’ are distinguished by their innovative, formal heterogeneity and their complex rhetorical strategies for eluding increasingly strict censorship laws. A problematic final category, Menippean satire, acknowledges the need for a generic term not limited to verse or political ideology, but which shares with ‘Radical satire’ a mixed stylistic mode. Volume 4 of this edition establishes Gifford as the most vicious, Neo-Juvenalian satirist of the 1790s; witness his withering attacks on the Della Cruscan poets (The Baviad and The Mæviad) or his libellous character assassination of Wolcot (‘Epistle to Peter Pindar’). The present volume begins instead with Wolcot himself, the decade’s chief oppositional satirist, who published scores of pamphlet satires under the pseudonym ‘Peter Pindar, Esq.’. Wolcot has received far too little critical attention for a poet of his stature, and the vast majority of his writings remain undeservedly out of print. His most ambitious poem is The Lousiad: An Heroi-Comic Poem (1785–95), originally issued in five cantos over the course of an eventful decade and reprinted here in its first complete edition (1794–96). The Lousiad is a raucous mock-epic in the line of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, with which it shares a ‘hair theme’: enraged at finding a louse on his dinner-plate, George III orders that his kitchen staff submit to having their heads shaved; the cooks resist, throwing the Royal Household into turmoil. The consequent test of wills between monarch and menials provides a situation well suited to burlesque; the king reveals his petty motivations, the staff their over-blown pride, while the self-conceits of all disclose the shaky foundations of power in the Household – and in the Kingdom. Like many of Wolcot’s satires, The Lousiad insinuates political critique by demythologising the king’s stature and undercutting the self-importance of public figures. Wolcot’s style is disarming, chatty, and familiar, replete with ironic compliment, faux declarations of sincerity and good will, as well as coarse language and bawdy suggestion. His character sketches border on caricature, at times accentuating features to the point of grotesqueness, and at least one commentator has compared Wolcot’s work with the graphic satires of James Gilray, a contemporary who paid tribute to Wolcot in return.3 While Wolcot provoked an anti-Jacobin backlash in the mid to late 1790s, The Lousiad reminds us that Wolcot also belonged to an earlier era, before Whig–Tory xii

Introduction

skirmishes over parliamentary reform and royal prerogative had been radicalised by the French Revolution. The Lousiad demonstrates how these eras were often separated only by shades of emphasis; after 1789, the levelling of kings and subjects treated with such levity throughout Canto 1 (1785) and Canto 2 (1787) might be considered more explicitly seditious. The politics of style are similarly Janus faced. Wolcot’s comic mode might indeed be regarded as an effective riposte to Gifford’s Tory viciousness, but Wolcot also inherited a tradition in which Juvenal, not Horace, was likely to be seen as the satirist of opposition. Wolcot contrasted his own satiric techniques with those of Charles Churchill and ‘Junius’, predecessors whose severer attacks on George III so dramatically undermined conventions of royal inviolability: Compar’d to them, whose pleasure ’twas to stab, Lord! I’m a melting medlar to a crab! My humour of a very diff ’rent sort is: Their satire’s horrid hair-cloth; mine is silk: I am a pretty nipperkin of milk; They, two enormous jugs of aqua-fortis. … The world should say of PETER PINDAR’S strain, “In him the courtly HORACE lives again––4 Wolcot also exploits a tradition of complex attitudes towards Horace. On the one hand, Horace’s moderation and decorum were highly valued standards in eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, even though Juvenal was thought to be the more trenchant satirist.5 On the other hand, Horace was sometimes regarded as a compromised, insider poet, screening rather than exposing corruption in high places; as Pope puts it, Horace’s ‘sly, polite, insinuating stile / Could please at Court, and make AUGUSTUS smile’.6 Wolcot invokes the ‘courtier Horace’ ironically, facetiously suggesting an intimacy with George III, yet revealing this as a mere fiction of convenience (‘Yes, beef shall grace my spit, and ale shall flow, / As long as it continues George and Co.; / That is to say in plainer metre, / George and Peter’).7 The Horatian comic mode becomes a mask of friendship behind which an adversary lurks. Wolcot’s sly, insinuating style may make Augustus smile, but more importantly allows his readers to smile at Augustus, a reversal that politicises laughter by subverting social hierarchies at a time when to do so was cause for increasing anxiety among the ruling classes. In Dyer’s argument, ‘the politics of style’ come to the fore under radicalised conditions; Neo-Juvenalian satire flourishes when authors can ‘represent themselves as loyal subjects … under siege’ (Dyer, p. 55). Such a formulation works best when considering anti-Jacobin satire in the 1790s, and Dyer offers few examples of unmodulated Neo-Juvenalian satire after George Daniel’s The Times (1811). This may indicate that the relevance of the Juvenalian ‘to new social dynamics’ (Dyer, p. 66) became problematic much earlier than Dyer would suggest, and that the Horatian never ceased to be so. The four remaining satires in this volume demonstrate the xiii

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

versatility of Horatian modes across the political spectrum, and the ways in which the Juvenalian presents less clear-cut political choices in a newly radicalised, post-Napoleonic moment. All four were written and published between 1817 and 1822, a period of intense reform agitation. In these years, radical reformists achieved some of their most marked post-war successes, rallying around a series of public events that embarrassed the government: the acquittals of the publishers William Hone and T. J. Wooler on charges of seditious blasphemy in 1817; the massacre of peaceful reform demonstrators at St Peter’s fields, Manchester, in August 1819 (‘Peterloo’); and above all the Queen Caroline crisis of 1820, when George IV sought a public, though immensely unpopular divorce. During the same years, the Liverpool administration employed increasingly severe countermeasures against free speech and the right to assembly: the renewal of 1790s legislation under the Coercion Acts of 1817 and the suspension of Habeas Corpus; further repressive legislation in the form of the notorious ‘Six Acts’ in 1819; the use of spies, informers, and ex officio informations; and, most effectively, the levying of stamp taxes on periodical publications. Yet despite and perhaps because of this tenor of crisis, the satirists here, Tory and Radical alike, evince a curious reluctance to rely upon harsh methods unmitigated by humour. Crucially, these authors no longer assume that they represent an audience of initiates, whose reactions to political events can be predicted and relied upon. Instead, they must use all the rhetorical and stylistic tools at their disposal to appeal to, or claim solidarity with a newly empowered class of readers. The first in this group of satires is Epistles from Bath; or, Q.’s Letters to His Yorkshire Relations (1817) by Nathaniel Thomas Haynes Bayly (‘Q in the Corner’), a light satire on the fashionable pleasures and pretensions of the provincial spa town. Bayly was a young Bath poet who would later become a significant contributor to Theodore Hook’s John Bull (1820–92), a high Tory magazine with populist tendencies initially formed to counteract the appeal of radical publications during the Queen Caroline affair. However, Epistles typifies Dyer’s notion of the covertly conservative Horatian muse. Like its model, Christopher Anstey’s New Bath Guide (1766), the poem steers clear of topical politics, even omitting a section celebrating the aging Queen Charlotte’s Royal visit, which was interrupted by the sudden death of her granddaughter, Princess Charlotte, in November 1817. The volume indicates its national solidarity by including an elegy to the Princess (‘The Muse of Sorrow’) among its ‘Miscellaneous Poems’, but the title poem remains focused on the general follies of Bath society. ‘Q’ looks on all with the wide eyes of the young provincial tourist just come to town, quick to mock insincerity, but equally eager to cut a figure of fashion himself. By means of this speaker and the characters he censures or admires – parvenus, fashionable invalids, men of taste, dandies, and belles – Bayly pleasantly instructs his readers to beware the allure of superficial refinements. While many Anstey imitators turned their spa scenes to the purpose of vituperative personal satire, abusing wellknown figures among the elite, Bayly remains decorous, even-tempered, and indirect: as his epigraph from Ovid phrases it, ‘Nulla venenato litera mista joco est’ (‘not letter of mine is dipped in poisoned jest’). xiv

Introduction

Not so with William Hone and George Cruikshank’s The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder, A National Toy, with Fourteen Step Scenes; and Illustrations in Verse, with Eighteen Other Cuts (1820), a Radical satire on George IV and his ministers during the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings. The ‘National Toy’ was a freestanding pasteboard ladder made up of fourteen thumbnail vignettes, each depicting a ‘step’ in George’s selfdefeating campaign against his wife, the last being his own ‘degradation’ before the people (symbolised by the crop-wielding figure of Britannia). The toy was sold with a separate pamphlet, consisting of detailed, allusive woodcuts, incisive epigraphs, and the ‘Illustrations in Verse’, again following the step-scene format. As a coda, Hone and Cruikshank added an orientalist fantasy, ‘The Joss and His Folly’, which transmogrifies George IV’s escapist pleasure palace at Brighton Pavilion into the distorted reflection of his political corruption. Though the poetry draws on metres popularised by Anstey and used for such different purposes by Bayly, the production as a whole demonstrates how Hone’s comic verse combined with Cruikshank’s caricatures can synergistically produce brutal satire. In laughing at kings, Hone and Cruikshank inherit the mantel of Wolcot, but with a difference. George III’s foibles and verbal tics give way to George IV’s grotesque physique and insincere histrionics. Cruikshank depicts him as a swollen drunk, a watchman bearing false witness, a Guy Fawkes led by a grotesque cupid, a barrow full of cat’s meat, and an oriental tyrant. This is multi-media satire at its best, melding graphics with text, skilfully combining popular humour with severe Juvenalian invective. Hone and Cruikshank exploit the full range of tonalities, alternately mocking, insulting, and scolding the King, while sympathising with the Queen and extolling press freedom. James Harley’s The Press, or Literary Chit-Chat (1822) is the one satire printed here that was judged, and found wanting, by the standards of its Neo-Juvenalian forbears, particularly T. J. Mathias’s The Pursuits of Literature (1794–96) and Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Yet like Byron’s, Harley’s survey of the literary scene is self-divided and cannot sustain the impassioned defensive outrage expected of the Juvenalian critic. The preface rails against seditious blasphemy and the immodest tendencies of modern literature, yet the poem’s lively banter dilutes censure with praise, outrage with appreciation, partly, one suspects, because Harley is torn between his fears for literature’s moral direction and his admiration for many of its productions; Byron in particular becomes a complex figure of repulsion and attraction in the poem. Like Bayly, Harley also refuses to get personal: ‘books have been my game, not men’ (p. 243). Personal invective like the sensationalism with which it is allied, Harley suggests, are characteristics of a decadent literature that sacrifices morality in the rush to pander to market forces. Harley’s conservatism is nostalgic, for even Tory allies like Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine are excoriated for suffering ‘their pages to be polluted by articles more fit for Billingsgate than Parnassus’ (p. 300), selling scurrility at the expense of political consistency. Harley’s charges against Blackwood’s were anachronistic, for Maga had shifted away from the unrestrained scurrility of its early days. The libellous ‘Chaldee Manuscript’ of 1817, a pseudo-biblical allegory satirising Edinburgh literary society, gave way to the jovial tavern satire ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ in March 1822, reflecting xv

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

William Blackwood’s shrewd sense that his journal had ‘got quite above attacks and malignities’.8 In fact, the ‘Noctes’ and The Press have a good deal in common: their purpose in reviewing a broad selection of contemporary literature, their dialogical format, and their easy conviviality (‘Literary Chit-Chat’, as Harley’s subtitle would have it). Yet while Harley struggled to maintain a classical, impersonal façade, Blackwood’s sought and found the right mix of topicality and personality in a new, more marketable format: the periodical satire featuring a cast of commentators, amiable or irascible, but always memorable in themselves. By contrast, Harley’s interlocutors (Hocus, Jocus, and Pocus) are virtually interchangeable, and chiefly serve a formal function. Their purpose is to maintain the steady, associative banter with which books and authors are compared, critiqued, and discarded for new subjects of conversation. The volume concludes with an anonymous Menippean interlude, The Illiberal! Verse and Prose from the North!! (1822). The Illiberal takes its place among a deluge of pre-emptive and post-publication strikes in the Tory periodical press (including Blackwood’s) against a new periodical produced in Italy by Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and the recently deceased Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Liberal. Verse and Prose from the South. The Illiberal distinguishes itself by distilling periodical invective into highly entertaining caricatures of the principals: Byron, the immoral author of Don Juan, is tortured by his conscience; the ghost of Shelley, the damned infidel, is tortured in hell; and Hunt, the vulgar Cockney, tortures Byron with bad verses. Ultimately, the satire is directed at Byron, challenging him to lift himself from the low company he keeps and to turn back to the paths of genius. Yet The Illiberal draws on low mimetic techniques such as farce, caricature, and parody, in a manner that suggests its own engagement in the populism it finds so abhorrent in Hunt. Published as a cheap pamphlet, The Illiberal proved even more ephemeral than the periodicals from which it drew its satire. The British Library copy, one of two extant, was lost from sight until ‘found lurking in a quantity of waste which came from the warehouse of Messrs. Richard Bentley & Son’,9 publishers of popular novels from the 1830s. Jerome McGann has remarked that ‘the method of printing or publishing a literary work carries with it enormous cultural and aesthetic significance for the work itself ’.10 This is especially true for satire, as all the works reprinted here attest. As well as attempting to profit through economies of scale, low priced pamphlet satires like The Illiberal or The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder represent attempts to manipulate popular iconography and stylistic modes for particular ideological ends. Their format suggests intervention in current debates rather than detached commentary, and the state of surviving library copies often attests to their success (tattered and handled) or failure (pristine, rebound in calf, gilt-edged). In the case of Wolcot’s The Lousiad, the original rough pamphlet format becomes a sign of Peter Pindar’s claim to be the ‘poet of the people’, yet the relatively high price of each canto (1s, 6d) suggests that he aimed for a somewhat less demotic audience, his populism a façade concealing a more anxious balancing act between respectability and profiteering. The complete Lousiad (1794–96), as reprinted here, marks a new phase in Wolcot’s xvi

Introduction

literary relations. Published as the leading poem in The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq., fronted by a portrait of the author (the publisher’s sign of authenticity to demarcate ‘official’ editions from piracies), The Lousiad signals Wolcot’s success and status, marking the beginning of his institutionalisation as a satirist who represents an era in addition to the issues of his day. Hone and Cruikshank clearly followed the early Wolcot in attempting to position their works among popular forces, recognising in the rapidly expanding reading classes not merely a conduit through which to espouse their views, but also a marketing opportunity; Cruikshank notably did not scruple to offer his talents to ministerial publishers when commercial advantages beckoned. Even less popular and populist satirists like Bayly and Harley responded to potentially new readerships. Bayly wrote for a Bath populace that had undergone significant demographic changes since the days of Anstey, when Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1761; DNB) presided over the Pump Rooms as Master of Ceremonies. Nash famously promulgated rules of etiquette that elided the distinction between social classes once a ticket holder had been admitted to the assemblies. By the late eighteenth century, the selfselective stratification upon which Nash’s system depended had begun to weaken as the popularity of the spas increased. By the early nineteenth century, residential Bath had expanded with the middle-classes increasingly represented, while public works projects had introduced newly divided social spaces (e.g. the Upper vs the Lower Pump Rooms). With Epistles, Bayly attempts to revivify Anstey’s satirical formula for an age newly conscious of class distinctions even as the barriers between them were eroding, and he models a generous but genteel sensibility for those residents and visitors who would distinguish themselves from the ‘vulgar’ shows of the social climber. In The Press, Harley similarly attempts to uphold moral values within a print culture that he believes too readily sacrifices substance for stage effect: ‘Amidst the myriads of publications daily issuing from the British press … No work excites attention but such as is in some way or other piquant’ (p. 245). For this reason, Harley ironically explains, ‘I have resolved to lay my sentiments before the public in the shape of a Satire— … who now listens to a sermonic discourse?’ (p. 245). Despite his desire to combat excesses of the press, Harley finds himself of necessity implicated in them; an instance of ‘generic production’ which Lee Erickson has identified as an ‘authorial anxiety’ developed by writers in this period who ‘seek to accommodate their writing to the demands of the marketplace’.11 For Romantics like Wordsworth or Shelley, resistance rather than accommodation to the marketplace became central to their literary pronouncements, despite their experiments in satire and other popular genres. Shelley calculated that his sympathetic auditors amounted at most to ‘five individuals’12 and declared that his writings were primarily directed towards improving ‘the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers’.13 Wordsworth claimed that the great poet must create ‘the taste by which he is to be enjoyed’, sacrificing present popularity for future good.14 Steven E. Jones has shown how Romanticism, despite its purported anti-commercialism, comes to be defined (and defines itself) against the xvii

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

cultural dominance of satire in the period, thus becoming marked by the heritage it would repress.15 Yet no such meta-historical stances are possible or desirable for the Romantic period satirists represented in this volume, fully implicated as they were, and knew themselves to be, in popular literary culture and its mechanisms of distribution and reception. Whether successful or unknown, these satirists selfconsciously draw on past models and genres in order to engage with and influence their present. Before leaving them to the readers of their future and our present, I would like to offer a few remarks on my copy texts and the scholarly apparatus in place to support them. Following the general editorial guidelines for all the volumes in this series, I sought to reproduce the first published edition of each satire, an undertaking made simpler by the fact that only The Lousiad and The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder reached a second edition. Nevertheless, for cogent reasons explained in a ‘Note on the Text’ (p. 7), I have interpreted these guidelines flexibly with The Lousiad and have used the first collected edition rather than a composite of the various cantos. All the texts are facsimiles, without silent corrections. The long faced ‘s’, for example, has not been modernised, though original headlines and signatures have been omitted. Footnotes to the introductory essays and all explanatory notes appear at the end of the volume. Explanatory notes generally refer to line numbers counting from the top of the page, though The Press presents two exceptions. First, the verse sections contain their own lineation, which has been retained. Second, its prose notes have been treated discretely; line numbers are counted from the top of each note, even if more than one note appears on a page. In all instances, I have attempted to align my annotations with words, phrases, or sections of text that appear most logical or convenient. As there are no editorial interruptions in the facsimiles, including note indicators, I can only hope that I have successfully anticipated my readers’ requirements and beg their indulgence when I have not.

xviii

John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar, Esq.’) The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem (1794–6)

The forty-four year old physician, former clergyman, and amateur painter, John Wolcot (1738–1819; DNB), began publishing under the pseudonym ‘Peter Pindar, Esq.’ with Lyric Odes for the Royal Academicians (1782), a pamphlet of satiric addresses to the exhibitors in the Academy’s annual show at Somerset House. The young upstart James Northcote, Peter foamed, appeared to be ‘working on Canvass, like a dog in dough’; Gainsborough he enjoined to stick to landscape and Stubbs to horses; Benjamin West, the King’s favourite, represented ‘our blessed Redeemer like an Old-Clothes-Man’. Mixing personal attack and ironic compliment with the comical, gossipy style that was to become his trademark, Peter announced himself as the Academy’s gadfly.1 Though the pamphlet was not an immediate success, ‘Peter Pindar’ remained in the public eye with the help of the Morning Post.2 After being taken up by the entrepreneurial publisher George Kearsley in 1786, he went on to become the best-known opposition satirist since ‘Junius’ (see p. 255, 82n), a reputation that remained largely intact throughout the 1790s. His international fame spurred imitators and rivals – a ‘kinsman’ Paul Pindar, a ‘half-sister’ Polly Pindar, an American ‘cousin’ Jonathan Pindar, Esq., to name three3 – and numerous pirated editions.4 The young Wordsworth grouped the ‘redoubted Peter’ with Boileau and Pope (‘these are great names’5) while Tory enemies like Isaac D’Israeli and later William Gifford showered him with abuse. Even when Wolcot began fading from the literary scene after 1800, the Pindar industry continued apace, with successive editions appearing and a new generation of satirists (C. F. Lawler, George Daniel, and John Agg) publishing under the nom-de-plume and its variants.6 What made ‘Peter Pindar’ notorious was not his attack on the Royal Academy, but his lampooning of its Royal patron, George III, and Canto 1 of The Lousiad, an HeroiComic Poem (1785–95) first established this profitable direction. As Vincent Caretta has argued, the convention that satirists obey the dictum that ‘the king can do no wrong’ had been weakened in the 1770s when ‘Junius’ treated the King’s inviolability as a legal form, incommensurate with ‘the man who corrupts the office’.7 While the American wars had given opposition satirists ample scope for eroding the King’s dignity in public,8 Wolcot peered into the Royal Household itself, exposing George III as a ruler preoccupied by affairs of the larder rather than the state, motivated by flattery, avarice, and a craving for trivial pleasures. Wolcot’s royal satires of 1787 move 1

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348167-1

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

the critique to other venues – the King’s visit to Samuel Whitbread’s brewery (Instructions to a Celebrated Laureate), his attendance of a musical performance of the Poet Laureate’s New Year’s Ode (Ode upon Ode), his encounter with an apple dumpling in a peasant’s kitchen (Apologetic Postscript) – but change of place does nothing to alter the inconsequentiality of George III and his court followers. Though Wolcot styled himself ‘soul-physician to the king’,9 mocking the discrepancy between monarchical stature and George III’s actual behaviour, his critics accused him of laughing maliciously, demeaning the satirist’s high moral calling by descending to base scandalmongering.10 Peter Pindar’s readers (reputedly including George III and the Prince of Wales) were voracious, and Wolcot obliged them with a quick succession of quarto pamphlets targeting not only the King, but his Queen and sons, his ministers and his protégés, particularly the royal architect Sir William Chambers, George’s scientific adviser Sir Joseph Banks, and the Poet Laureate Thomas Warton. Between 1785 and 1795, the span in which the five cantos of The Lousiad appeared in instalments, Wolcot produced at least forty-eight separate publications, not counting multiple editions of his most popular works, some with ‘additions’.11 Yet The Lousiad was widely regarded as the apogee of Wolcot’s achievement in his own day and deserves to be better known in ours. Like the best mock-epics, it is based on the slightest of incidents: George III’s order that his kitchen staff have their heads shaved after a louse is discovered on the royal dinner plate. Fully exploiting the genre’s opportunities for extended simile and digression, Wolcot packs the poem with topical references, at times with an allusive density that delighted his contemporaries but which now demands careful annotation. George III’s role in the plot is minimal but crucial. He starts up as a one-dimensional buffoon, whose stumbling language outpaces his ideas – ‘For, lo! the solemn march of graceful speech, / The KING long since had bid to kiss his b[reec]h’ (p. 61, 13–14) – but whose character flaws allow Wolcot to cast side-glances on the machinations of continental monarchs, prominent politicians, and the objects of society gossip. His kitchen satire becomes, as the root satura implies, a mixed feast. Robert Huish, an early royal biographer and acquaintance of Wolcot, reports that Wolcot learned of the Great Shave from the cooks themselves by eavesdropping on their conversations at ‘The Queen’s Larder’, a coffeehouse on St James’s Street favoured by servants at Buckingham House.12 If it occurred at all, the shave must have taken place sometime between 1779 and August 1782, most likely around the time Wolcot first came up to London in 1781.13 Nevertheless, members of the Royal Household who kept journals or recorded their memoirs, notably Frances Burney and Charlotte Louise Henrietta Papendiek, have failed to corroborate the event. Wolcot himself insisted on the truth of his sources, appending a list of the fifty-one ‘victims’ to later editions of Canto 1,14 and naming many of the Lord Steward’s menials in Canto 2 (‘the Cook’s Petition’), most of whom are identified for the first time in the notes to this edition. As Gary Dyer has observed, Wolcot skirted prosecution by basing his works at least partly on material that was common knowledge 2

Wolcot (‘The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem’)

(Dyer, p. 33), but the public’s belief that he had infiltrated the Royal Household’s closed ranks added in no small part to the poem’s interest. Yet Wolcot’s intimate, at times jingoistic focus on Household personalities like Madam Schwellenberg, Queen Charlotte’s powerful Keeper of the Robes and confidant, serves an additional function. The resentments between Charlotte’s German attendants and the upstart English commoners below stairs turn the Household into a microcosm of a society fractured by fault-lines in class and national identity. The cooks’ jealousy of the favouritism shown to foreign attendants above stairs, Wolcot suggests, hints at the fury that sparked the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780, yet at another remove, reflects the honest indignation of the true-born Englishman against new moneyed East Indian power-brokers, such as Warren Hastings, subject to much suspicion when they returned to Britain. Similarly, the cooks’ call to arms (‘Rouse Opposition’) on the one hand invokes the mob psychology manipulated by John Wilkes during the Middlesex election controversy or by anti-Whig factions during the Westminster Election of 1784. On the other hand, Wolcot’s cooks stand in for a legitimate Commons (‘the MAJESTY of US the PEOPLE’, p. 39, 10) counterbalancing the King’s arbitrary exercise of royal prerogative. Wolcot’s political bearings can be difficult to gauge, for his satire is often directed at ways in which character distorts social and political relations. After 1789, however, Wolcot’s belittling of George III might be, and in some circles was, taken as a more radical stance, akin to Thomas Paine’s declaration of ‘The Rights of Man’. Recent critics have qualified the extent to which Wolcot himself professed radical, let alone Jacobin ideals, though all concede that his works might have suggested as much in their historical context. Grzegorz Sinko calls Wolcot a ‘Wilkesite type of an oppositionist’ rather ‘than a philosophical Radical from the School of Paine’, but nevertheless a ‘radical’ who ‘became sensitive in a degree not to be observed with any of his contemporaries to the increasing social wrongs of his time’.15 Dyer discusses Wolcot’s ‘populist’ features, particularly the ‘colloquial presentation’ (Dyer, p. 32) and broadside format of his pamphlet poems, but follows Sinko in distinguishing Wolcot from the school of Paine (Dyer, pp. 35–36). John Strachan refers to Wolcot’s ‘raucously anti-establishment manner’ but points to his ‘Ode to Mr Paine’ as decisive evidence that he was ‘emphatically not a radical or Jacobin’.16 The evidence of the present edition underscores the dangers of generalising about Wolcot’s political affiliations, which shifted sometimes in response to the times, sometimes for reasons that remain mysterious. Canto 1 (1785) and Canto 2 (1787), written before events in revolutionary France had polarised political opinion, prosecute the King’s foibles with good-humour, consistent with Wolcot’s explanation in An Apologetic Postscript (1787) that, ‘far from despising Kings, I like the breed, / Provided King-like they behave’. In the highly-charged aftermath of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Canto 3 (1791) and Canto 4 (1792) are relatively tame instalments, as if Wolcot had become wary of the parallels that presented themselves between the cooks’ rebellion and that of the Third Estate in 3

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

France. In fact, Canto 3 appeared in the same year as Wolcot’s Odes to Mr. Paine, which underpin his anti-Jacobin credentials. With Canto 5 (1795), however, Wolcot returned to the attack in an atmosphere of some danger to anti-ministerial writers. The year opened with the renewal of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and closed with the passing of William Pitt’s ‘Two Bills’ to prevent seditious meetings; one of these, the Treasonable Practices Act, ‘extended the law of treason … to include anyone who, by speech or writing, “compassed or devised” the death or deposition of the king’.17 Far from shying away from the radicalised political environment, Canto 5 addresses it directly with seditious lines ambiguously given to ‘the mob’, followed by sentiments not clearly distinguished from those of the narrator: ‘Heavens! if EQUALITY all ranks confounds, / No more shall we be whistled to like hounds’ (p. 140, 11–12). In the present edition, first published in 1796, Wolcot strengthened the radical message by deleting the reference to ‘the mob’ and adding lines to the Cook Major’s speech that carry these implications further.18 To Queen Charlotte’s declaration that the cooks should be thankful, when history shows that heads as well as hairs might be forfeit to the monarch, Dixon offers another history lesson whose most recent exemplum was Louis XVI: ‘“Yes, please your Majesty,” the Cook reply’d, / “And something, if I don’t mistake, beside – / How subjects also cut off heads of Kings!’ (p. 143, 1–3). In 1795–96, it would appear, Wolcot had a hand in radicalising interpretations of his mock epic. This re-engagement with radical politics is hardly unequivocal. One of the longest 1796 additions extols the Prince of Wales (‘all civility to all mankind’) as a future king worthy of his subjects, a view more in line with the Whig opposition than the radicals.19 At the end of 1795, Wolcot also offered up a gentler version of The Lousiad in what otherwise might be considered his most courageous and outspoken political satire, Liberty’s Last Squeak, a criticism of the Pitt ministry’s assault on free speech. Wolcot celebrates Peter Pindar as ‘the Poet of the People’ but rejects the logic that would indict laughter and ridicule as subversive agents: ‘Lo, in a little inoffensive smile / There lurks no lever to o’erturn the STATE’. Though outraged by the erosion of liberty in the name of patriotism and emphatic that true patriotism must allow space for satire, Wolcot refers to The Lousiad as ‘a joke upon the shave of Cooks at Court / … / A pretty piece of inoffensive sport’20 that ought to be beyond the jurisdiction of ‘treasonable practices’. More perversely, Wolcot followed up his ‘radical’ poems of 1795 by entering negotiations with government for a pension in return for his realignment as a pro-ministerial writer.21 Highly embarrassed by this temporary apostasy, Wolcot began writing for Richard Phillips’s radical Monthly Magazine (1796–1826) and may well have authorised the Canto 5 additions to The Lousiad in the spirit of atonement. The Canto 5 additions were included in Walker’s 1797 edition of Peter Pindar’s Works, but removed from 1801–05. The last three editions (1809, 1812, 1816) published in Wolcot’s lifetime by Walker retain this less politically sensitive version. This ‘new’ Lousiad reflects the success of the anti-Jacobin backlash that Wolcot suffered at the end of the 1790s. When Wolcot attacked Hannah More in his Nil Admirari 4

Wolcot (‘The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem’)

(1799), The Antijacobin Review (1798–1821) responded by excoriating Pindar as ‘a wholesale dealer in doggerel-rhymes’, ‘a monster in human shape’, who employed ridicule for subversive purposes.22 Placing the 1796 Lousiad firmly at the centre of Wolcot’s misguided literary career, the reviewer summed up: [Literary ladies] may have traced the progress of Peter, from his first entrance into public life … they may have watched him in his subsequent attempts to obtain notoriety and wealth, by bribing the servants of his Sovereign to betray their trust, to reveal his family secrets, and to expose all those little foibles from which no man upon earth is exempt, in order to render them objects of public derision and scorn; recollecting, no doubt, that the regicides of France attempted to render their sovereign ridiculous before they ventured to murder him; they may have marked his progress from seditious to treasonable insinuations, in recommending it to subjects occasionally to behead their Monarchs … and they may, lastly, have heard of his base acceptance of a salary from that government which he had incessantly vilified, to write in opposition to the very men whose principles and whose conduct he had invariably praised … .23

Wrongly attributing this review to William Gifford, editor of The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner (1797–98), Wolcot began taunting him in subsequent satires, an error that eventually led to blows exchanged between the two in the offices of Gifford’s publisher. Before this ‘battle of the bards’ occurred, Gifford responded with a devastating personal attack, the ‘Epistle to Peter Pindar’ (1800) (see Vol. 4, pp. 71– 87). The epistle’s abuse of Wolcot – ‘all filth, all venom as thou art, / Rage in thy eye, and rancour in they heart’ – can hardly be described as literary criticism, but Gifford does quote the Anti-Jacobin Review passage at length in his preface, making the ‘radical’ Lousiad an index to his charges against ‘Peter Pindar’.24 It is tempting to believe that Gifford added the more illustrious scalp of ‘Peter Pindar’ to those of the Della Cruscan poets, yet the decline in Wolcot’s output after 1800 may also be attributed to his poor health and failing eyesight. The Lousiad fared otherwise. It was reprinted in Works (1801–05) and puffed as Wolcot’s ‘chief satirical production’ in The Beauties of Pindar (1807). The English language publisher at Paris, Galignani, brought out an influential pirated edition in 1805, which helped to extend Wolcot’s continental reputation. The collected editions of Wolcot’s Works in 1809, 1812, and 1816 evinced a further upturn in his literary fortunes. Anti-ministerial writers also continued to seek his company. Wolcot dined frequently with William Godwin from the early 1800s, and from around 1814 he was visited in his lodgings at Somers Town by a role call of young radicals, including William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Cyrus Redding, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.25 This intergenerational appeal owes something to the renewed currency of Wolcot’s brand of Royal lampoon once the Regent, George IV, was sworn in on 6 February 1811, immediately disappointing the Whigs and Radicals who expected his support. In May, the veteran champion of Reform, John Thelwall, held a large dinner in which Wolcot was the guest of honour.26 In June, the young Shelley, styling himself ‘Philobasileus’, imitated Wolcot’s facetious love of kings in a satiric vignette on George IV that invokes the sidereal conclusion of The Lousiad: ‘High let [our noble Royal Family] soar, high as the expanse of empyrean & may no invidious louse dare to interrupt the reveries 5

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

of pensive enthusiasm’.27 By 1813, a host of more regular radical satirists, particularly C. F. Lawler, began appropriating the ‘Peter Pindar’ pseudonym to make sport of the Regent and his government. The no-holds-barred scurrility of many ‘Peter Pindar’ imitators and their use of popular mixed media formats, combining verse and illustration, made Wolcot’s subtle, ironic humour appear innocuous and ‘literary’ by contrast. After Wolcot’s death in 1819, this induced some Tory commentators to grow nostalgic for the original. As one puts it, reflecting on William Hone’s and George Cruikshank’s The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820) (see pp. 203–34): … he [Wolcot], a genuine bastard of Apollo, Spite of our better will a laugh commanded, And beat these Radical verse grinders hollow For Peter could divert us single-handed, While they, poor oafs, in vain implore the town Without a cut to make their wares go down … ‘Peter had occasional touches of grace’, adds a note to these lines, ‘ … unlike the uncompromising spleen of Radicals.–But Peter was by education a gentleman and a man of letters’.28 The making of the ‘man of letters’ from the royal gadfly continued apace. Editions of The Lousiad after 1816 frequently rely on the 1796 copy text, indicating the extent to which Wolcot’s most ambitious work was beginning to become dissociated from radical politics as its topical references lost their immediacy. This process of sanitisation and canonisation was complete when Jones & Co began binding yearly editions of Wolcot’s works (1822–26), including the 1796 Lousiad, with the satires of George Canning, a former contributor to the Anti-Jacobin. The ground-breaking anthology, The British Satirist, Comprising the Best Satires of the Most Celebrated Poets, from Pope to Byron (Glasgow, 1826), printed The Lousiad in full, declaring it ‘a mock-heroic poem, which for wit, humour, pathos, sarcasm, and satire, all united, is without a rival in literature’.29 Reinforcing this submission of politics to formal excellence, the frontispiece engraving to the volume presents a quincunx of lozenges depicting Pope and Swift along with a triumvirate of moderns – Byron, ‘Dr. Wolcot’, and Canning – odd bedfellows all, but refined by the vagaries of time and taste into the worthies of Satire.

6

Wolcot (‘The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem’)

Note on the Text The Lousiad: An Heroi-Comic Poem was last anthologised in 1826, last published in 1856, and has never been annotated. Originally, the poem was published in instalments over ten years, with Canto 1 appearing in 178530 and Canto 2 in 1787. Canto 3 (1791) promised ‘the fourth and last canto … in due time’, yet Canto 4 (1793) failed to bring the story to a conclusion. The definitive last canto was delayed until 1795. Wolcot rapidly revised and expanded the first two cantos, probably within months of the first editions and his booksellers produced multiple editions thereafter – at least nine of Canto 1 and six of Canto 2 by 1788. 31 Canto 1 at first consisted of a mere 277 lines (with 10 more appended as ‘errata’) printed by J. Jarvis as a rough quarto pamphlet, priced one shilling sixpence. A greatly expanded ‘New Edition’,32 priced two shillings, appeared under the Kearsley imprint in 1786 with the addition of an ‘argument’ and a comic frontispiece by Henry Wigstead, sometimes misattributed to Thomas Rowlandson (see the frontispiece to this volume).33 This edition established the format for the early cantos.34 Yet the poem never achieved a finished effect during the years in which it was best known, even though Wolcot’s revisions were generally complete early in the life of each canto. Wolcot used different publishers for Cantos 3, 4, and 5. Wigstead provided no plates for the last two cantos. Before Wolcot sold his copyright to Robinson, Goulding, and Walker in 1793, ‘collected’ Lousiads consisted of different quarto editions of each canto bound together. Though Walker reset Cantos 1–4 for The Works of Peter Pindar in 1794, he confined Canto 5 to a separate volume in editions published after 1796, perhaps owing to his dispute with the author over the terms of their agreement.35 Other editions were published in Dublin, Paris, and Philadelphia, some pirated, but ‘official’ plates or portraits did not generally accompany these.36 Wolcot’s white-hot method of composition belies the choice of later editions as copy texts. There is as yet no compelling evidence that Wolcot oversaw The Works of Peter Pindar (1809, 1812, and 1816) that appeared before his death, or that he suggested further corrections to his publishers.37 Indeed, from 1806, Wolcot was becoming increasingly blind and deaf, and he began withdrawing from active literary pursuits, though he did use an amanuensis. A collection of the quarto pamphlets that represent Wolcot’s final revisions, complete with Wigstead frontispieces for Cantos 1–3, would make an obvious choice for a new scholarly edition. Yet Wolcot’s quartos use very generous typefaces and line spacing; a facsimile of this nature would require a volume of its own. By way of a happy compromise, the present text reproduces the first official edition of the complete poem published in The Works of Peter Pindar (London, 1794–96).38 This edition has several advantages: it reproduces most of Wolcot’s major early revisions of Cantos 1–2; it includes the rare ‘jacobinical’ additions of 1796; and it still captures something of the ‘unfinished’, developmental appearance that characterised the work for over twenty years. 1794– 7

British Satire 1785–1840, Volume 3

96 is also a transitional edition. No second edition of Canto 3 (1791) was called for; Cantos 4 (1793) and 5 (1795) never reached a third. Clearly, those who wished to read the entire Lousiad were turning to Works rather than ad hoc compilations.

8

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

PE TER PINDAR,EsQ~ IN

THREE

VOLUMES~

VOLUME

10

Co vV TId I •.,VI4/7\t~ (J ~• ..A. Sl.1FPLICATING

r>.

EPISTLE TO

~-"") 6.THE LOUSL~, CANTO 7.THE

THE REVIEWERS -... -.._... _----.-.. 2.LYlUC ODES TO THE l\OYAL __ -_'

j

AC.ADEMICIANS,FOll 1]8:t .•....• \

t 9· Q

3.DITTO, FOR

17 83

/l.

4.DITT 0, FOB.

17 85

\ \

5.F_UEWELL ODES, FOR

1786--..- \/

LOUS:rA..D_ CANTO

8.THE LOUSIAD. CANTO

THE LOUSIAD. CANTO

I._.--.

n ..

m.

.

1.0.CONGllATULATORYEl'lSTLE TO

J.A:M:ES BOSWELL

,

1l.:BOZZI&FIozzr,_~TOWNECLOGUE

L O N DON. JOHN W.ALKER,N.o 44,Paternofter-Row.

M.Dcc.xcm

9

.__

rv

12. ODE UPON ODE, OR. A PEEP AT S ~ JAMES's.

Printed for

_

BritishSatire 1785-1840) Volume3

10

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

THE

u

o

L

s

I

A

D.

AN

HER 0 I - COM I CPO E M.

CAN T 0

I.

l'rima Syracolio dignata eft ludere veriu Noftra, nee erubuit fylvas habicare Thalia;

Cum canerern reges et prselia, Cynthius aurem V allit et admonuit--

VIll(;X£~

I, who fo lately in my Lyric lays Sung to the praife and glory of R. A&"s;, And fweetly turr'd to Love the melting line, With OVID'S art, and SAPPHO~S warmth divine; Said, (nobly daring!) "MUSE, exalt thy wings, "

LOVE

and the SONS OF CANVAS quit for laughing at my powers of fong,

KINGS."-

ApOLLO,

Cry'd

"PETER PINDAR,

prithee hold thy tongue."

But I, like' Poets, felf-fufficient grown,

Reply'd, "A-e OL L 0, prithee hold thy eum,"

11

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

T O' THE R E .t\ D E R. CENTLE READER,

I T is nece1Iary to inform thee, that His Majefl:y actually

difcovered, f0111e time ago, as he fat at table, a LOUSE on his plate. TIle emotion occafioned by the unexpected appearance of filch a gueft can be better imagined than defcribed. An ediCt: was, in confequence, paired for Iha ving the Cooks, Scullions, &c. and the unfortunate LOUSE condernned to die. Such is the foundation of the LOUSIAD.-Vlith what degree of merit the Poem is executed, the uncritical as well as critical Reader will decide.

The ingenious AUTHOR, who ought to be allowed to know fornewhat of the matter, hath been heard privately to declare, that, in his opinion, the Batrachornyomachia of Horner, the Secchia Rapita of 'Tafioni , the Lutrin of Boileau, the Difpenfary of Garth, and the Rape of the Lock of Pope, are not to be compared to it; and to exclaim at the fame time, with all the modefl: afiurance of an allthorCedite; fcriptores Rornani ; cedite, Graii-« Nil ortum in terris, Lolffiada, rnelius.

Which, for the fake of the mere Englifh Reader, is thus beautifully tranflated : Roman and Grecian Authors, great and fml1l3

The Author of the LOUSIAD beats you all.

13

T lIE

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

T FI EAR GUM E N T. THE Proemium-Defcription of the LOUSE'S FaII-Hiftoryof his Wife and Family-A wonderfully fublime Simile of a Cow-s-Difcovery of the LOUSE by His Majefly-s-The King's Horror and _~[[onHhnlent on feeing him-e- equal to that he felt. at Mr. Fox's Attempt on Prerogative-at Mr. BURK £'s dreadful Defalcation of the Royal Table-equal to that his Majefty felt in a Tumble from his Horfe-s-equal to the Horrors of difappointed Venifon Eaters-of a Serjeant at Law-of a Country Girl-of a Petit-Maitre faluted by a Chimneyfweeper-of the Devil when pinched by St. DUNSTAN'S redhot tongs-of Lady WORSLEy-of SAM Rou S E the Patriotof BILLY R.A1\.lUS-of KYNASTON-, the 'Squire of LeatberiJead -of the perjured CHRISTOPHER ATKINSON-of the Prince of ASTURIAS-of the King of SPAIN-of Dr. JOHNSON, and Dr. Wr r.s o x-c-Defcription of His Majefry's Heartmofl naturally and wittily compared to a Dumpling-His Majefty's Speech to the OEeen-Her Majefty's moll: gracious and Ihort Anfwer-e-The fhort Speech of the beautiful Princeffes-His Majefty's rough Rejoinder-TIle Fear that came ()11 the Q!!ecn and her Children-beautiful Apoftrophe to the Prince1fes-The King's Speech to the Pages-The King unable to eat-The Q!!een able-The King's Orders about the Lo c ss-c-Defcription of DIXON the Cook fvlajor-llis Speech -_/\ Speech of the Cooks-Fine Simile of Bubble and Squeak i thought more fublime than that of HOMER'S Black PuddingSpeech of a Scullion-of a Scullion's Mate-of a Turnbroche -Noble Comparifon of a Tartar Monarch after he hath dined -.l~. long and wife Speech of a Yeoman of the Kitchen-The Cook's Approbation of the Yeoman's Speech-Grand Simile of a Barn and its Lodgers fet on fire by Lightning-The concluding Speech of the Cook Major..

14

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

THE

L

o

u s

I

A

D.

CANTO THE FIRST..

T HE

1fing, who, from fome head unknown, Y et born and educated near a throne, LOUSE

Dropp'd down-(fo will'd the dread decree of Fate 1) With legs wide Iprawling on the Monarch's plate:

Far from the raptures of a wife's embrace; Far from the gambols of a tender race, Whofe little feet he taught with care to tread Amidft the wide dominions of the head; Led them to daily food with fond delight,

And taught the tiny wand'rers where to bite;

To hide, to run, advance, or turn their tails, When hoftile combs attack'd, or vengeful nails: Far from thofe pleafing fcenes ordain'd to roam, Like wife Ulyffes, from his native home i

home

15

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Yet) like that [age, though forc'd to roam and mourn, Like him, alas! not fated to return;

Who, full of rags and glory, faw his boy *

And wifet again) and dog ] that dy'd fop joy. Down dropp'd the lucklefs LOUSE~ with fear appall'd, And "rept his wife and children as he fpra\vl'd.

Thus" on a promontory's mifly brow, The POET'S eye, with forrow, faw a cow Take leave abrupt ef bullocks, goats, and Iheep,

By tumbling headlong down the dizzy fteep; No more to reign a queen amongfl the cattle, And tlrge her rival beaus, the bulls, to battle i She fell §) rememb'ring ev'ry roaring lover, With all her wild courants in fields of clover. Now on his legs, amidft a thoufand woes, The

LOUSE)

with judge..like gravity, arofe e

He wanted not a motive to entreat him, Befide the horror that the King might eat him : The dread of gafping on the fatal fork, Stuck with a piece of mutton) beef or pork, Or drowning 'midft the fauce in difmal dumps, Was full enough to. make him ftir his frumps.

Vain • Telemaches.

f

t Penelop He held the peeping Captain in his arms; Like David, that moil: am'rous little dragon,

Ogling fweet Bethfheba without a rag on:

Not 19

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Not more the great Sam Houfe" with horror Ilar'd,

By mob affronted to the very beard; Whore impudence (enough to damn a jail) Snatch'd from his waving hand his fox's tail) And ftuff'd it, 'rnidfl 11i5 thunders of applaufe, Full in the center of SarTI'S gaping jaws, That, forcing down his patriotic throat,

Of " Fox and Freedom!" flopp'd the glorious note, Not with more horror Billy Ramus t ftar'd,

When Pufft, the Prince's hair-dreffer, appear'd

Aln1dft ~ In Wefl:minfter Hall, where the finfl (the author was jt1rll: about to fay JZ01YC1!ft) of the people was to be taken on an election.

1- Billy Ramus-emphatically and. conilantly called by HiJ Majefly Billy RaN:tu; one of the Pages: who {haves the Sovereign, airs his Ihirts, reads to him, writes- for him, and collects anecdotes.

t

Puff, his Royal Highnefs's hair-drefler, who attending him at Windfor, the Prince, with his ufual good-nature; ordered him to dine with the P AGE S • The pride of the Pages immediately took Ere, and a petition was difpatched to the King and. Prince, to be relieved from the diflrefsful circumflance of dining with it /;;tlir-drifer. The petition was treated' with: the proper contempt, And the Pages commanded to receive Mr, Puff into their mefs, or quit the table. With unfpeakable mortification Mr. Ramus and his brethren fittmitted; but" like the poor Gentoos who lore

their C:afl~ have not held up their heads Jinct.

20

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

Amidft their eating room, with dread defign,

To )it with PAGES, and with

PAGES

dine!

Not with more horror Glofter's Duchefs Itar'd, When (bleft in metaphor I) the King declar'd, That not of all her mongrel breed, one whelp Should in the Royal kennel ever yelp ~

Not more that man fo fweet, fo unprepar'd, The gentle 'Squire of Leatherhead ", was fcar'd, When, after prayers fo good, and rare a fermon, He found his front attack'd by fierce Mils Vernon, Who meant (Thalefiris-like, difdaining fear!) To pour her foot in thunder on his rear; Who, in

GOD'S

houfe ]-, without one grain of grace,

Spit, like a vixen, in his Worfhip's face; Then fhook her nails, as Iharp as taylor Ihears,

That itch'd to [crape acquaintance with his ears. Not' .. Kynaflon is the nams of the gentleman aflailed by the furious Maid of Honour, for difapprobation of the lady as an acquaintance for his wife.

t Verily in the HOUSE of the LORD, on the Lord's Day; in the yea.r of our 40rd 1785, ia the village of Leatherhead, ia the county of Surry, did this profane falival aflault take place on the phiz of 'Squire Kynafton, to the difgrace of his family. the wonder of the parfon, the horror of the slerk, and tlle ftupefaClion of the congregation. 21

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

N ot Atkinfon ~ with ftronger terror ftarted (Somewhat afraid, perchance, of being carted) When

]USTICB,

a fly dame, one day thought fit

To pay her ferious compliments to Kit; Afk'd him a few Ihort queftions about corn, And whiiper'd, fhe believ'd he was forfworn; Then hinted, that he probably would find, That though fhe fometimes wink'd, Ihe was not blind,

Not more ASTURIAS' Prince-IS t look'd affright, At breakfaft, when her Ipoufe, the unpolite, Hurl'd, madly heedlefs both of time and place, A cup of boiling coffee in her face; Becaufe the fair one eat a butter'd roll,. On which the felfiih Prince had fix'd his foul:

Not more aftonifu'd look'd that Prince to find His royal father to his face unkind;

Who, to the caufe of injur'd beauty

WOD,

Seiz'd on the proud probofcis of his Ion,

(Juft • Mr. Chriftopher Atkinfon's airing on the pillory is fufficiently known to the public.

t This quarrel between the Prince of Afturias and his Princefs, with the interference of the Spanifu Monarch, as defcribed here, is not a poetic fiB:ion, but an abfolute fact, that happened not many months ago. 22

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

(Juft like a tiger of the Lybian fhade, Whofe furious claws the helplefs deer invade,

And led him, till that fon its durance freed, By alking pardon for the brutal deed; Led him thrice round the room (the ftory goes) Who follow'd with great gravity his nofe, Rofolv'd at firft (for Spaniards are ftiff £tuff)

To afk no pardon, though the fnout came off: Not more aftoniih'd look'd that Spanifu King," Whene'er he mifs'd

3.

fnipe upon the wing:

Not more aftonifh'd look'd that King of Spain, To fee his gun-boats blazing on the main: Not Doctor Johnfon more, to hear the tale Of vile Piozzi's marrying Miftrefs Thrale , Nor Doctor Wilfon, child of am'rous folly, When young Mac Clyfter bore off Kate Macaulay.j-

What ~ His Molt Catholic Majefly's Ihooting merits are univerfally acknowledged. Though far advanced in years, he is Hill the admiration of his fubjects, and the envy of his brother Kings, as a SHOT; and it is well known, that even on thofe days when the Royal Robes are obliged to be worn, his breeches pockets are Huffed with gun flints, {crews, hammers, and other implements neceflary to the deflruction of fnipes, partridges, and wild pigs.

t The fair

Hiftorian~

23

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

What dire emotions fhook the Monarch's foul I

Juft like two billiard balls his eyes 'gan roll; Whilfl anger all his Royal heart poffefs'd,

That, [welling, wildly bump'd againft his breaft i Bounc'd at his ribs with all its might fo Itout, As refolutely bent on jumping our, T' avenge, with all its pow'rs, the dire

difgrace~

And nobly [pit in the offender's face.. Thus a large dumpling to its cell confin'd, (A very apt allufion, to my mind) Lies fnug, until the water waxeth hot, Then buflles 'midfr the tempeft of the pot: In vain I-the lid keeps down the child of dough, That bouncing, tumbling" fweating, rolls below, ~,

What's that ! what's that !" th' aftonifh'd Monarch cnes,

(Lifting to pitying Heav'n his piteous eyes) cc

What rnonfler's that, that's got into the houfe?

Ie

Look, look, look, CharI y! is not that a louie 21'

The ~een look'd down, and [aid" (C good la!

cc Mine

Gate!

And with a [mile the grey-back'd STRANGER raw.. Each Princefs ftrain'd her lovely neck to fee, And, with another Iinile, exclaim'd, ~(Good me !"_ cc 24

Mine

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

ct

Mine Gote l Good me! is that all you can Iay?"

(Our gracious Monarch cry'd, with huge difmay.) cc What ! what! a filly vacant [mile take place cc

Upon your Majefty's and chi'dreri's face,

cc

Whilft that vile LoUSE (foon, foon to be unjointed!)

(c

Affronts the prefence of the

LORD'S ANOINTED! "

Dafh'd, as if tax'd with Hell's moft deadly fins, The Queen and Princeffes drew in their chins,

Loolc'd prim, and gave each exclamation o'er, And, very prudent,

C

word fpake never more..'

Sweet Maids ! the beauteous boaft of Bar r ..~IN7s Ille, Speak-were thofe peerlefs lips forbid to finile P

Lips! that the foul of fimple NATURE moves-sForm'd by the bounteous hands of all the LOVES! Lips of delight! unflain'd by

SATIRE'S

gall!

Lips! that I never kifs'd-and never fhall, Now, to each trembling Page, a poor mute moufe, The pious

MON ARCH

cried,

(C

Is this your Loufe ?"

" Ah ! Sire," (reply'd each Page with pig-like.whine) " An't pleafe your Majefty, it is not mine." ce Not thine t" (the hafty Monarch cried agen) ~c;

What? what? what? what? what? who the dev~l's

then ?" Now 25

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Now at this fad event the

SOVEREIGN,

fore,

Unhappy, could not eat a mouthful more : His wifer Qgeen, her gracious Ilomach ftudying, Stuck mofl devoutly to the beef and pudding i For Germans are a very hearty fort, Whether begot in Hog-ftyes or a Court; Who bear (which thews their hearts are not of frone) The ills of others better than their Grim

TERROR

O"\VH.

feiz'd the fouls of all the Pages,

Of different Iizes, and of different ages; Frighten'd about their penfions or their bones,

They on each other gap'd like Jacob's fons! Now to a

PAGE,

but which we can't determine,

The growling Monarch gave the plate and vermin: cc

Watch well that blackguard animal," he cries>

rc

That foon or late, to glut my vengeance) dies!

~cc

Watch, like a cat, that vile marauding

(C

LOUSE,

Or George fhall play the devil in the houfe,

cc

Some Spirit whifpers, that to Cooks lowe

cc

The precious vifitor that crawls below;

(C

(C

Yes, yes! the whifp'ring Spirit tells me true,

And foon Ihall vengeance all their locks purfue. 'c Cooks, 26

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

'C~ Cook~, fcourers, cc

feullions too, with tails of pig,

Shalllofe their coxcomb curls> and wear a wig."

TIlus roar'd the King-not Hercules fo big; And all the Palace echo'd-

MOSES,

fnore,

Or good' Squire Pindar's Odes, or Wharton's frick i

cc

Or Horace Walpole's Doubts upon King Dick,

cc

Who furious drives, at times, his old goofe quill,

cc

On Stratob'rry, (Reader!) not th' .donien Hill;

cc

Whether he doom the

ec

Or thqfe of Lords and Commons to the King;

ROYAL SPEECH

to cling,

(( Where one begs money, and the others grant cc

So eafy, freely, friendly, complaifant,

" As though the calli were really all their own,

" To purchafe knick-knacks * that difgrace a throne. cc Ah~ C(

me! did people know what trifling things

Compare thole idols of the earth call'd Kings)

cc

Thofe counterparts of that important fellow,

er

The children's wonder-e-Src sca

PUNCHINELLO;

Who • The Civil Lift, we are inclined to think, feels deficiencies from toys-For an inftance, we will appeal to Mr. Cumming's non-defcript of a time-piece at the Q!een's I-Ioufe, which cofl nearly two thoufand POUftUS. The fame artift is alfo allowed sool, per annttm to keep the bauble in repair ~

36

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

" Who flruts upon the ftage his hour away; ct His outfide, gold-his infide, rags and hay; cc

No more as

cc

Nor make the world cut throats for RIGHT DIVINE,. Thofe

ce

GOD'S

LORDS

Vicegerents would they fhine,

of Earth, at dinner, we have feen,

" Sunk, by the mereft trifles, with the fpleen" Oft for an ill-drefs'd egg have heard them groan, cc

And feen them quarrel for a mutton bone:

cc

At faIt or vinegar, with paffion, fume,

'c

And kick dogs, chairs, and pages, round the room."

CC

Alas! how often have we heard them grunt,

cc

Whene'er the rufhing rain hath fpoil'd a

cc

Their fanguine wifhes crofs'd, their fpirits clogg'd,

cc

Mere riding difhclouts homeward they have jogg'd ;

Ie

Poor imps ! the fport(witll all theirpride and pow'r)

cc

Of

NATURE'S

HUNT!

diuretic ftream-a Ihow'r ! diuretic

• This is partly a picture of the Iaft reign as well as the pre-.. fent. The paffions of George the Second were of the moil: impetuous kind-e-his: hat and his favourite minifler, Sir Robert Walpole" were too frequently the foot-balls of his ill humour-snay, poor ~een Caroline came in for a fhare of his foot benevolence. But he was a Prince of virtues.....ubi plura niteut, non egll

paucis offt11dar maculis,

37

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

cc

This we) the actors in the farce, perceive;

cc

But this the diftant world will ne'er believe,

" Who fancy cc

~,

KINGS

N e' er by the vulgar ftorms of paffion torn; But, bleft with fouls fo calm, like furnmer feas,

~C~ That fmile to

Heav'n, unruffled by a breeze:

.. Who think that ~c

to all the virtues born,

KIN G5 J

Speak fentences like

on wifdom always fed..

BACOl't1'S

brazen head;

" Hear from their lips the vileft nonfenfe fall, «c

Yet think fome heav'nly fpirit dictates all;

" Conceive their bodies of celeftial clay, ~c

And, though all ailment, Iacred from decay;

rc

To nods and fmiles their gaping homage bring,

" And thank their GOD their eyes have feen a KING! (f:

~,

Lord! in the circle when our ROYAL MASTER Pours out his words as fafr as hail, or faller,

c~ To country 'Squires, and

wives of country 'Squiresj

~c Like ftuck pigs ftaring, how each oaf c~

Lo l ev'ry fyllable becomes a

GEM

admires]

'!

(, And if; by chance, the Monarch cough, or hem, cc

Seiz'd with the fymptoms of a deep furprife,

cc

Their joints with rev'rence tremble, and their eyes

cc

Roll wonder firft; then, Ihrinkino back with fear,. b

'! WQl.lld hide behind the brains" were any there.

t,

38

How

Wolcot (The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

cc

How taken is this idle world by Ihowl

" Birth, riches, are the Baals to whom we bow; ce

Preferring, with a foul as black as foot,

cc

A rogue on horfeback, to a faint on foot.

ee

See

cc

And mark the defert of each DESPOT'S brain;

1-'

Whofe tongues fhould never treat with taunts a FOOL;

cc

Who prove that nothing is too mean to rule.

cc

What could the

It,

FRANCE,

Without the

fee

PORTUGAL, SICILIA) SPAIN,

PRINCE, high tow'ring

~IAJESTY

of Us the

like a fleeple,

PEOPLE?

cc

Go, like the King of Babylon,* to

cc

Or wander, like a beggar with a pafs!

(C

However modern

KINGS

may

graiS~

COOKS

defpife,

" vV ARRIORS and KINGS were cooks, or Hift'rylies.-cc PATROCLUS

broil'd beef-fteaks to quell his hunger: potted conger ! -

cc

The mighty

cc

AndCHARLESofSWEDEN,'midfthisQUns and drums,

~,

Spread his own bread and butter with his thumbs,

cc

Be Ihav'd !-No !-fooner pill'ries, jails, the ftoc]~s,

~,

Shall pinch this corpfe, than

'-J

cc 'C

f~

AGAMEMNON

BARBERS

Inatch my

locks.'?

Well haft thou faid,' a Scourer bold rejoin'd ,

Damme! I love the man who [peaks his mind." Then • Nebuchadnezzar, 39

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Then in his arms the orator he took, And fwore he was an angel of a Cook,

Awhile I1e held him with a Cornifh hug; Then feiz'd, with glorious grafp, a pewter mug, Whofe ample womb nor cycler held nor ale, But nectar fit for

JOVE,

and brew'd by THRALE.

c.c

A health to Cooks," he cried, and wav'd the pot;

It

And he who fighs for titles is a fot-

C(

cc

'c

Let Dukes and Lords the world in wealth furpafs; Yet many a lion's fkin conceals an afs, Lo ! this is one amongft my golden rules,

ec

To think the greateft men the greateft fools:

ec

The

(C

And fly a Briton's for a eunuch's tongue;

cc

Thus idly fquand'ring for a Iquall their riches,

6C

To faint with rapture at thofe cats in breeches.

GREAT

are judges of an opera fong,

(( Accept this truth from me, Iny lads-tIle man c«

Who firft found out a [pit, or frying-pan,

ct:

Did ten times more towards the public good,

~'

Than all the tawdry titles fince the flood:

~c

Titles! that KrNGS may grallt to aires, mules,

(c

The [corn of [ages) and tile boaft of fools."

He

40

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

He ended-All the Cooks exclairn'd, cr Divine I'· Then whifper'd one another, 'twas cc damn'd fine I" Thus fpoke the

SCOURER

like a man infpir'd,

of the kitchen fir'd: Grooms, mafter fcourers, Icullions, fcullions' mates,

Whole fpeech the

HEROES

With all the overfeers of knives and plates, Felt their brave fouls like friiky cycler work, Whizzing in oppofition to the cork: Earth's Potentates appear'd ignoble things, And Cooks of greater confequence than Kings; Such is the pow'r of words, where truth unites,

And fuch the rage that injur'd worth excites!

The SCQURER'S Ipeech, indeed, with reafon blefl; In flam'd with godlike ardour all the rea. Thus if a barn Heav'n's vengefullight'ning draw,

The flame ethereal darts amongft the ftraw; Doors, rafters, beams, owls, weazels, mice and rats, And (if unfortunately maufing) cats;

All feel the fierce devouring fire in turn, And, mingling in one conflagration, burn. Co,

ec

Sons of the SPIT,'· the Major cry'd again,

Your warlike fpeeches prove you blefl with brain J

,~ Brain! that Dame Nature gives not ev'ry head, I~ But

fills the vaft vacuity with lead!-CC

41

Yet

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

t' Yet ere far oppofition we prepare, ~,

And bravely battle in the caufe of

cc

Methinks "twould be but decent to petition,

(C

(C

HAIR;

And tell the King, with firmnefs, our condition: Soon as our fad complaint he hears us utter,

c:

His gracious heart may melt away like butter;

c

Fair

It

And anger'd MAJESTY forget the

MERCY

Ihine amidlt our gloomy houfe,

42

LOUSE~~~

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

A D V E R TIS E MEN 'r,

As many people perfifl in their incredulity with refpeEt to the

attack made by the Barbers on the heads of the harmlefs Cooks, I Ihall exhibit a lift of the unhappy fufferers ; it is the Palace

lift, and therefore as authentic as the Gazette.

A TRUE LI~T OF THE SHAVED AT BUCKINGHAM E:OUS~

Two Malter Cooks, Three Yeoman ditto, Four Grooms, Three Children, Two Mafter Scourers, Six Under Scourers, Six Turnbroches,

Two Soil-carriers, T\vo Door-keepers" Eight Boys" Five Paftry People, Eight Silver Scullery, for laughing at the Cooks.

In all, fifty one..

A young man, named John Bear, would not fabmit, and 10ft his place.

43

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

THE

o

L

u

s

I

A

D.

AN

1-1 E R 0 I - COM I CPO E 1\1.

CAN T 0

" S(

~t11jsapil1ce1'/o.n

II.

HORACE,

As it was in the beginnlng; is now, and ever ih3.l1 be, world wi.tho\ft end .."

45

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

~HE

ARGUMENT.

INVOCi\TION to the Mufes-Degeneracy of modern poets~ The ragged flate of the ladies of Pamafius-s-Sad condition of bards-Praife of Mr. Weft's great picture of King Alexander and the Stag-More invocation to the Mufes-« The tricks of thofe Ladies - Their im pofitions on Poets and Poeteffes-A compliment to King George and Dr. Herfchell, on their intimacy with the Moon, and important difcoveries in that planet-In~rocation to Apollo-Invocation to Confcience-Confcience defcribed-The great powers of Confcience-l\1ore invocation to Confcience-Truth and Falfehood, their fituations - More invocation to ConfcienceThe praife of Royal economy and a Hanoverian CollegeAddrefs'to Gottingen-More invocation to Confcience-Mr. Haflings's bulfe, Mrs. Haftings's bed and cradle properly treated-More words to Confcience-The fatal po\ver of Confcience over the late Mr. Yorke and Lord Clive-Addre[~ to Fame-s-A requeft to the aforefaid Gentlewoman, inftruCting her how to difpofe of fome of her trumpets-Defcription of her pfeudo-votaries-The Bard bluiliing for the quantity of invocation-Proceffion of his Epic Poem-Madam Schwellenberg defcribed with a plate of ham-Account of her birth, parentage, and education-s-Account of Pride-Madam Schwel1enberg's vifit to the King-His Majefi:y's moil: gracious fpeech-Madam Schwellenberg's anfwers-s-Addrefs to Readers on Ladies [wearing-Sir Francis Drake, the Steward of the Houfehold, defcribed-not to he confounded with the famous Sir Francis Drake, who died near zoo years ago-The perqui:fi.tes of the prefent Sir Francis-Defcription of the dining-room belonging to the Cooks at Buckingham Houfe-e-The entertainment and utenfils of this roomDixon the Cook-Major's fpeech-Story of a Nabob and a .Beggar-Cook-Major Dixon's fpeech in continuation-Speech of another Cook-The Cooks in the dunlps-The CookMajor's rejoinder to the Cook's fpeech-A very fenfible fpeech-Conclufion with a beautiful fimile-s-The petition of the Cooks, 46

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

THE

L

o u s

I

A

D.

CAN TOT H ESE CON D.

NYMPHS of the facred fount, around whofe brink Bards rufh in droves, like cart-horfes, to drink; Dip their dark beards amidft your Ilreams fo clear,

And, whilft they gulp it, wifh it ale or beer; Far more delighted to poffels, I ween, Old Calvert's brewhoufe for their Hippocrene , And bleft with beet their ghoftly forms to fill, Malee Dolly's chophoufe their Aonian hill;

More pleas'd to hear knives, forks> in concert join, 'Than all the tinkling cymbals of the

NINE;

Affift Ine-ye who themes fublime purfue,

With fcarce a Ihifr, a frocking, or a Ihoe ! Such pow'r have fatires, epigrams, and odes,

As make ev'n bankrupts of the born of gods,

47

As

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

As well as mortal bards, who oft bewail Their unfuccefsful madrigals in jail)

Where penn'd, like haplefs cuckoos, in a cage, The ragged warblers pour their tuneful rage i Deck the damp walls with verfe of various quality, And~

from their prifons, mount to immortality,

Ah! tell me where is now thy blufh, 0 SH AME !

Shall bards through J*ails explore the road to F arne r Like fouls of Papifts in their way to glory, Doom'd at the half-way houfe, cal1'd Purgatory, To burn, before they reach the realms of light)' Like old tobacco-pipes, from black to white ?

Yet let me fay again, that pow'rful rhyme Hath lifted poets to a ftate fublime , To lofty pill'ries rais'd their facred ears High o'er the heads of marvelling compeers, Whofe eggs~ potatoes, turnips, and their tops, Paid flying homage to their tuneful chops! Bleft ftate! that gives each fair exalted mien, To grace in print a monthly magazine; And deck the {hops with fweet engravings dreft,

'Midft angels, finners, faints of Mifter Where brave King

ALEXANDER

WEST ;.

and the

DEER,

A noble buftling hodge-podge fhall appear, FrOIll 48

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

From that fam'd * piCture which our wonder drew) And pour'd its brazen fplendors on the view; Bright as the pictures that with glorious glare,

On pent-houfe high, in Piccadilly Ilare, Where lions feem to roar, and tigers growl,

Hysenas whine, and wolves in concert howl; And, by their goggling eyes and furious grin,

Inform what fhaggy devils lodge within. Ye

NYMPHS

who, fond of fun, full many a time"

Mount on a jack-afs many a child of rhyme, And make him think, aftride his braying hack, He moves fublime on Pegafus's back :

Ye

MUSES,

oft by brainlefs poets fought

To bid the ftanza chime, and [well with thought;

Wl1o, whelping for OBLIVION) fain would fave Their whining puppies from the fullen wave; Affift me!

YE

who vifit towns and hovels,

To teach our girls in bibs to eke out novels,

And treat with [corn (far nobler knowledge ftudying) The humble art of making pye or pudding: Who bitt our Sapphos of their verfe be vain, And fancy all Parnaffus in their brain;

And,.

* A whole acre of canvas [0 daubed by colour as to give it the appearance of a brafs foundery. 49

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

And, '111id the buftle of their lucubrations,

Take downright madnefs for your inlpirations ,

Charm'd with the cadence or a lucky line,

Wl10 tafte a rapture equal, When, bleft at

DATCHET,

to thine ,

GEORGE,

through tI1Y

HERSCHELL'S

glafs, That brings from diftant worlds a horfe, an afs,

A tree, a windmill, to the curious eye, Shirts, Ilockings, blankets, that on hedges dry, Thine eyes, at evenings late, and mornings Ioon,

U nfated feafl; on wonders in the Moon; Where

HERSCHELL

And happy

on volcanoes, mountains, pores,

NATURE'S

true fublime explores;

Whilft thou, [0 .modeft, (wonderful to tell!)

On

L UN AR

trifles art content to dwell,

Flies, grafshoppers, grubs, cobwebs, cuckoo [pittle ;-

In Ihort, delighted with the world of little; Which WEST fhall paint, and grave Sir JOSEPl-I

BANKS

Receive from thy hifioric mouth with thanks , Then bid the vermin on the journals * crawl, Hop, jump, and flutter, to arnufe us all..

And thou, great

PATRON

t

of the double quill,

That flays by rhyme, and murders by a pill,

A pretty, :!:

Of the Royal Society__

t Apollo. 50

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

A pretty I(i11d of double-barrel'd gun, More giv'n to tragic than to comic Aufpicious

PATRON

fU11;

of the paunch and backs

Of thofe all-daring rafcals chriiten'd quacks,

To whom our purfe and lives are legal plunder, \Vho, hawk-like, keep the human Ipecies under:

GOD of thofe gentlemen of ginglil1g brains, ,V 110, for their cum amufement, print their ftrains; Strains that ne'er foar'd beyond tIle beetle's flight, Save on the pinions of a fchool-boy's kite ,

Strains arrant ftrangers to a depth profound, Save

V

T/]1en

deep pilgrimaging under ground"

In humble rags, like Tinners in a mine,

They pay their

COllrt

to

CLOACIN A'S

fhrine ,

Strains that no ray of light nor warmth proclaim, Save when, committed to the fire, they flame;

Strains that a circulation never found, Save when they turn'd on beef or ven'fon round :

Oh! aid, as lofty

HOMER

fays, my noufe

To fing fublime the MON ARCH and tIle Lousz ! N Y~1P:{S,

in IllY .;'irft heroic chapter

PHCEBUS,

I Ihould have pray'd for crumbs of tuneful rapture: Thus to forget In V friends vias not fo clever; But, fays the proverb,

cc

51

better late than neoer;'

wen:

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Well! fince I'lTI in the invocation trade, To

CONSCIENCE

CONSCIENCE,

let my compliments be paid---

a terrifying little fprite~

That, bat-like, winks by day, and wakes by night; Hunts through the heart's dark holes each lurking vice);

As Iharp as weafels hunting eggs or mice; Who, when the lightnings flafh, and thunders crack, Makes our hair brittle like a hedge-hag's back; Shakes, ague-like, our hearts with wild commotion , Uplifts our faint-like eyes with dread devotion;

13 ids the poortrembling tonguernake terms with He av 'TIs And promife miracles to be forgiv'n; Bids fpectres rife, not very like the Graces" With goggling eyes, black beards, and Tyburn faces j With fcenes of fires of glowing brimftone fcares, Spits, forks, and proper culinary wares

For roafting, broiling, frying, fricaffeeing The

SOUL,

that fad offending little Being;

That ftubborn £tuff, of falamander make,

Proof to the fury of the burning lake,

o CONSCIENCE!

thou ftrait jacket of the foul.

The madding [allies of the bard control; control; 52

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

Who, when inclin'd, like brother bards, to lie,

Bring

TRUTH'S

neglected form before his eye;

Fair MAID! to towns and courts a ftranser grown, o 0

And now to rural fwains aImoft unknown,

Whofe company was once their prudent choice; Who once, delighted, liften'd to her voice;

When in their hearts the gentler paffion ftrove, And

CONST_4..NCY

went hand in hand with LOVE!

Sweet Tn o rn, who fteals through lonely Ihades along, And mingles with the turtle's note her fang;

Whilft

FALSHOOD,

rais'd by fycophantic tricks,

U nbIufhing, flaunts it in a coach and fix. CONSCIENCE!

who bid'ft our Monarch, from the

nation, Send fons to Gottingen for education,

Since helplefs CAM and

ISIS,

loft to knowledge,

Are ideots to this Hanoverian college, Where Iimple

beams with orient ray;

SCIENCE

The great, the glorious So fays the

RULER

ATHENS

of us Englilh fools,

Who cannot judge like hitn of Dear attic

of the day!

GOTTINGEN!

WISDOM'S

fchooJs.

to thee I bow,

Of Knowledge, oh! moft wonderful milch cow! From 53

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

From

WhOlTI

huge pails the royal boys Ihall bring,

And oaive, we hope, a little to the ...

--a

Through Tbee, befides the knowledge they may reap~ The lads Ihall get their board and lodging cheap; And learn, like their good parents, to fubfift Within the limits of the Civil Lift; Who feldoln bid a Minifter implore

A little farther pittance for the poor. CONSCIENCE!

who, to the wonder of his

Bad'It from his wonted ftate a

And, like a That

!10t

fu~;efc,

PRINCE

SIRE.,

retire,

humbly feek the Ihade,

a tradefrnan might remain unpaid :

An action that the foul of

El'IVY

ftings-

A deed unrnention'd in the book of CONSCIENCE!

KINGS:

who mad'Il a Monarch, by thy pow'r,

Send pris'ner the fam'd Di'mond *' to the Tow'r , So witchingly that look'd him in the face,

And impudently fought to bribe his

GRACE:

Where, too, the cradle and the bed Ihall reft,

That on the fame darnn'd errand left the Eaft--Thus fall of gelu and pearl the treas'nous tribe, And beds and cradles that would

MONARCI-iS

bribe!

Cor,~ Such is the ftary of the late Ily Bulfe that Ilole into St. james's, 54

Wolcot (The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

who now canft like a cart-horle draw i No\v, lifelefs finlzing, fcarcely lift a flraw , CONSCIENCE!

So cliff'rent are tI1Y' pow'rs at diff'rent times, Thou clear companion of the man of rhymes! ~110U! "V!lO at times canft Iike a lion roar

For one poor Iixpence , yet, like NOR TH, canft fhore,

Though rapine, murder, try to ope thine eyes, And raging Hell with all his horrors rife; Whore eye on petty frauds can fiercely flame, Yet wink at full-blown crimes that blaft a name I

o CONSCIENCE!

who didft bid to madnefs work

(So great t11Y pow'r) the brain of haplefs

YORK,

And mad'Il him cut from ear to ear his throat,

That lucklels fpoil'd his patriotic note; Yet wanted'It ftrength to force from his hard eye One drop-s-who help'd him to yon fpangled fky , Whole damned pray'rs, feign'd tears, and tongue of art.. W on on the weaknels of his honefl heart! Poor YORK! without a ftone whofe reliques lie, Though

a

VIRTUE

mark'd the murder with a figh!

CONSCIENCE!

who to

That, defp"rate plunging,

CLIVE

tOQI{

didft give the knife

his forfeit life i forfeit

55

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Who, lawlefs plund'rer, in his wild career> Whelm'd

ASIA'S

eye with woe, and heart with fear;

Whofe wheels on carnage roll'd, and, drench'd with

blood) From gafping Nature forc'd the blufhing flood;

Whiift Hxvocx, panting with triumphant breath, Nerv'd his red arm, and hail'd the hills of death.c--, And now to thee, 0 lovely

FAME,

I bend;

Let all tI1Y trumpets this great work commend: Give one apiece to all the learn'd Reviews> And bid them found the labours of the Mufe z Give to the Magazines a trumpet each"

And let the fwelling note to doomlday reach: To daily News-papers a trumpet give; Thus fhall my epic ftrain for ever live: Thus Ihall my book defcend to diftant times, And rapt pofterity refound my rhymes,

By future Beauties -{hall each tome be prefl, And, with their lapdogs, live a parlour guefl,

Thee, dearefl F A?vIE, [orne mercenaries hail, Merely to gain their labours a good fale ,

Or rife to fair preferment by thy tongue, Though deaf as adders to thy charms of fong; charms 56

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

Juft as the hypocrites fay pray'rs,

fing pfalms,

Beftow upon the blind and cripple alms; Yield g'ory to the Pow'r who ru.es above,

Not from a principle of heav'niy love, But, fneaking rafcals! to obtain, when dead, A comfortable lodging over head, When fore'd by age, or doctors, or their fpoufes~

The vagrants quit their fublunary houfes,

With tirefome invocation l1aving done, At length our glorious Epic may go on. Lo! Madam SCHWELLENBERG~ inclin'd to cram~ Was wond'rous bufy o'er a plate of ham ,

A ham that: once adorn'd a German pig, Rough as a bear, and as a jack-afs big; In woods of We.ftpbaly by hunters fmitten, And fent a prefent to the Qgeen of Britain. But ere we farther march, Jye Mufes, fay Somewhat of Madam

SCH\VELLENBERG,

I pray.

If ancient poets mention but a horfe,

vVe read his genealogy of courfe: Oh! fay, fhall horfes boaft the deathlefs line, And

0' er

a Lat/y's lineage fleep the Nine?

By 57

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

B 17 virtue of her father and her mother, 1 r: 1 1-' 'This woman raw tile Jlgnt wiithout _ our lTItlC11., p O~TLi1. er , .J

That is-no grand commotions Ihook our earth i Apollo danc'd no hornpipe at her birth, To fay to what perfection Ihe

V\'2.S

born,

What wit, what wifdom Ihould the N yrnph adorn:

No bees around her lips

ill

c.u'Iers hung,

To tell the future fweetnefs of her

t011gt!e;

Around her cradle perch'd no cooing dove)

To mark the foul of innocence and love; No Imiling Cupids round her cradle play'd,

To Ihow the future conquefrs of the maid, Whofe charms would make the jealous [ex her foes, And with their lightningsblaft a thouland beaus. Indeed the Mufe muft own a trifling pother Sprung up between the father and the mother ~

For, after taking methods how to gain her,

They knew not how the dev'l they mould maintain her. Heav'ns l what! no prodigy attend her birth, \Vho awes the greateft palace upon earth? Yes! a black cat round the bantling fquall'd,

j oin'd its young cries, and all the houfe appall'd :-

Now here, now there, h-e flpruno-D with vifase wild O' And mace a b O~C21 at[e~npt to l Whether the

KING

fhall have a tart or pudding.

Not be, by virtues to the world endear'd,

By foes refpeCted, and by friends rever'd , Prompt to relieve the fupplicating figh, Who never dafh'd with tears the afking ey"'e; But wak'd of joy the long departed beam, Deep funk in forrow's unremitting ftream:-

But he, with generofity at ftrife, Who never gave a fixpence in his life;

Who, if he ever afk'd a friend to dine, Requefted favours that outweigh~d his wine': From lane to lane, who- fteals with wary feet,

Juft like

the cautious hare that feeks his feat:

Who, though a city * near him, rears her head, And wealthy villages around him Ipread, No friend, no neighbour near his manfion found, Like

CAIN

furveys a folitude around.

"Twas f;

Exeter. 66

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

'Twas ibis Sir

FRANCIS,

quite a diff'rent man

From him who round the world with glory ran: Forbid it, Heav'n! that e'er the l\1uSE untrue Should give to any man another's due! M USE, leave we now the Monarch, vengeance brew-

ing, To take a peep at what the Cooks were doing. In that fntlg room,

* the fcene of Ihrewd remark,

Whofe window flares upon the faunt'ring Park , Where many a hungry bard, and gambling finner, In chop-fall'n fadnefs, counts the trees for dinner; In that fuug room where any man of fpunk

Would find it a hard matter to get drunk ;t Where coy Tokay n'er feels a cook's embraces, Nor Port nor Claret Ihow their rofy faces; But where old Adam's beverage flows with pride, From wide-rnouth'd pitchers, in a plenteous tide; Where veal, pork, mutton, beef, and fowl and fifh,

.r. \11 club their joints to make one bandfome difh ; \¥here ~

The Larder.

t This will be deemed ftrange by my cottntry readers; but it

is neverthelefs true.

67

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Where flew..pan covers ferve for plates, I ween, An~.1

knives ani forks and [poons are never Ieen,

Where pepper iflues from a paper bag, And for a crewet Itands a brandy cag; Where Madam

SCHVi:ELLENBERG

too often fits

Like Iome 011 tabby in her moufing fits, Demurely fquinti!1g with maieflic mien, To catch fome fault to carry to the I1"l

t1l~t 1!1ugroom, ,;,...; I"

~

-1

ll~,;:.e

thole 1

QE"EE~J :

1 G reeks, 1

-.

l1TI1TIOrta

Of- whom, in book the thirteenth,

OVI D

fpeaks;

Around the table, all with fuiky looks, Like culprits doorn'd to Tyburn, fat the Cooks : P.s..t length, with phiz that fhow'd the man of 'Noes)

TI1e forrowing King of [pits and Itewpans role. Like

PAUL

at Athens, very juftly fainted,

And by the charming brufh of Raphael painted, \\,V ith outflretch'd hands, and energetic gr~ce,

I-Ie fearlefs thus harangues

t:1C ROASTING RACE;

Whilft gapii1g round, in mute attention, fit Tile poor forlorn diicip'es of tIle fpit. " Cooks, Icullions, hear

l11e

ev'ry mother's fon-

ce

Know that ! relifh not this Royal [lIn:

"

GEORGE

cc

To c4rry gllts, Iny brethren, to a bear."-

thinks us fcarcely fit ('tis very clear) cc

68

Guts

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

ce

Guts to a bear I"~ the Cooks, up-fpringing, cry'd-

" Guts

to

a bear 1" the Major loud reply'd,

" Guts to the dev'l !' loud roar'd the Cooks again,

And tofs'd their nofes high in proud difdain : The plain tranfiation of whofe pointed nofes The reader needeth not, the bard fuppofes; But if the reafon fome dull reader looks,

'Tis this-whatever Kings Inay think of Cooks, Howe'er crown'd heads may deem them low..born things, Cooks are poffefs'd of fouls as well as Kings. Y et are there forne who think (but what a fname !) Poor people's fouls like pence of Birmingham, Adulterated brafs-bafe ftuff-abhorr'd-. That never can pafs current with the Lo RD ; And think, becaufe of wealth they boafl a flore, With ev'ry freedom they may treat the poor: Witnefs the ftory that my Mufe, with tears, Relates, 0 Reader, to thy Ihrinking ears. With feeble voice and deep defponding Iighs,

With fallow cheek and pity-afking eyes, A

WRETCH,

by age and poverty decay'd,

For farthings lately to a

NABOB

pray'd ,

The 69

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

The

NABOB,

turkey-like, began to fwell,

And damn'd the beggar to the pit of hell. cc

Oh! Sir," the fupplicant was heard to cry,

(The tear of mis'ry trickling from his eye) cc

Though I'm in rags, and wond'rous, wond'rous poor, And you with gold and filver cover'd o'er,

'c

There won't in heav'n fuch difference, Sir, take place,

cc

When we before the

cc

LORD

come face to face."-

" To« face to face with me}" the Nabob cry'd,

In all the infolence of upftart pridecc To« face to face with me, you dog, appear! cc Damme, I'll kick you, if I catch you there,,"Oh, fhocking blafphemy! oh, horrid fpeech1...... Where was the fellow born ?-tl\e wicked wretcll!So black an imp would pull, I do fuppofe, A bulfe of di'monds [rain a B:EGUM'S nofe , Or make, Iike

DOULAH,

carelefs of his foul,

A new edition of the old Black Hole.

(, What's life," theMajorfaid,

~c my brethren) pray,

,c If force muft match our firft delights away? " Relentlefs Ihall the Royal mandate drag c

The hairs that long have grac'd this filken bag;

c

Hairs to a barber fcarcely worth a fig,

C(

Too few to make a foretop for a wig?

Mufl: 70

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,) ({C

Muft razors vile thefe locks fo fcanry,

cc

Locl

" y es, yes, her mouth with beard divinely briftles(C

Curfe me) I'd rather kifs a bunch of thiftles,

cc

Oh! were it but His Majefty's commands

(, To give her gentle jawbones to thefe hands, ,c

I'd {have her, like a punilh'd foldier, dry;

(C

No killing [ow fhould make a fweerer cry:

cc

I'd pay my compliments to Madam's chin ,

«

I'll anfwer for't I'd make the devil grin:

C~

The razor moft delicioufiy Ihould work;

cc

I'd trim her muzzle , yes, I'd fcrape her pork:

«

I'd teach her to fome purpofe to behave,

cc

And Ihow the witch the nature of a {have.

cc

O! woman, woman! whether lean or fat,

" In face an angel, but in foul a cat1" He ended-wheneacl1 mouth upon the ftretc11)

Crown'd with a loud horfe-laugh the claffic Ipeech.

Too

71

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Too foon, alas! And

JOE(E

R.AGE

RESENT11ENT

feiz'd the hour;

refign'd his grin-provol{.ing pow'r;

dimm'd of mirth the fudden funny Iky,

Arid fill'd with gloomy oaths each fcowling eye; Whilft

GRIEF,

returning, took her turn to reign,

Sunk ev'ry heart, and Iadden'd ev'ry mien;

Drew from their giddy heights the laughing gracesFor much is GRIEF difpos'd to bring down faces. (C

Son of the [pit," the Major, Ilrutting, cry'd,

C{

I like tI1Y fpirit, and revere thy pride:

cc

I'd rather hear thee than a Bifhop preach,

cc

For thou haft made a very pretty fpeech.

(c

Such is the language that the Gods Ihould hear,

cc

And fuch fhould thunder on the Royal ear.

cc

Yet, [on ofdripping, though thou fpeal{.'ft mynotions,

cc

W e muft not be too nimble in our motions.

" Awhile, heroic brothers, let us halt , ec

Soft fires, the proverb tells us, make fweet malt,

ec

And yet again I bid you ftand Iike reeks,

cc

And battle for the honour of your locks.

cc

La! in thele aged hairs is all n1Y joy;

cc

To Ihave them, is Iny being to dellroy,

«(

cc

What's life, if life has not a blifs to

O"i,,~e?

o

And, if unhappy, \vI10 would wifh to live? cc CONTENT

72

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,) (' CONTENT

can vifit the poor fpider'd

rOOlTI;

'c Pleas'd with the coarfe rufh mat and birchen broom i cc

Where parents, children, feaft on oaten bread,

cc

Vi ith cheeks as round as apples, and as red;

" Where HEALTH with vigour nerves their backs and cc ec

hams,

Sweet fouls, though ragged as young colts or rams;

" Where calmly Ileep the parents with their darlings) cc

Though nibbled by the fleas as thick as ftarlings;

cc

Lull'd to their relt, beneath the coarfefi rugs.,

" And dead to bitings of a thoufand bugs. cc CONTENT,

mild maid l delights in finzple things,

And fuffers not a quaver to efcape ~ ~DISCORD, all

eye, all mouth, all ear, all nO(Cj

For ever warring with a world's repofe!

When

FAl'viE

arriv'd, the !having tale to tell;

Pleas'd was the red-ey'd Fury in her cell,

Wherefcorpionscrawl'd,wherefcreech'd that noifyfowl~ Known in Great-Britain by the name of OWL; Bats Ihriek'd, and grillaralpas join'd the found,

Cats Iquall'd, pigs whin'd, and adders hifs'd around,

Clore to the refllefs wave her manfion lay" Receding from the beam of cheerful day ~ Hence on black wing the

HAG

was wont to roam,

And join the witches 'mid the ftormy gloom i

Howl with delight amid the thunder's roar i Hang o'er the wrecks that crowd the billowy fhore,

See, 'midO: each flaih, the heads of feamen rife, And drink with greedy ears their drowning cries,

Around her dwelling various portraits hung, 'Of thofe whofe noify names in hift'ry rung.

Here • This was a mofl ludicrous circumftance that happened not long fince, when .his -**#:J and the Orcheflra were lefe-to them-

{elves and GodfasJl tb, King.

94

Wolcot (The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

Here, with fpread arms, whom Grate and Fury fill, T'hund'ring damnation" Ilar'd Stentorian There curs'd, SIR

JOSEPH BANKS,

HILL:

in queft of fame)

At finding fleas and lobflers not the fame. Here a prime fav'rite, of a fainted band, Hell in his heart) and torches in his hand; LORD GEORGE,

by mobs huzza'd, and, what is odd,

Burning poor Papifts for the love of God; Pleas'd as old

NERO

on each falling dome,

Sublimely fiddling to the flames of Rome! 'There, in refpeB: to Kings, not over nice, That Revolution-finner-e-Docron

PRICE;

Whofe labours, in a moft uncourtly Itile,

Win not, like gentle BURKE'S, the Royal finile, Gain not from good DIVINES both praife and thanks, Call'd, by the wicked, ce

(C

Gofpel Mountebanks,

Mere Qgack pretenders, from their lofty ftation

" Puffing off idle noflrums of Salvation; rc

Who, where the milk and honey flows, refort,

(( Like rooks in corn fields; black'ning all the Court," Here, leading all her bears fo lavage forth,

Wild rag'd the AMAZONIAN of the North, With

RUIN

leagu'd, t' attack the Turkifh hive,

And leave not half a Muffulman alive: Turkifh 95

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Trlere {'corln'd a VIXEN, far and near renown'd For fweetneJs, meeknefs, piety profound; Her Sons abufing (in abufes old),

With all the fury of a German [cold! Thefe, with feme fcores, were feen, of equal fame, Thanks to a lonely taper's livid flame! -I'he form of

i'A.ADAM SCHWELLENBERG

Ihe took,

Her broken Englifu, garb, and fin-like look , Then fought the Palace, and the Royal ear, And whifper'd thus, "Mine God, Ser, nebber fear......

" Oh, pleafe )TOUi Majefty, you ver ver right: " Shave all de rafcal, if but

Ollt

of [pite.

cc

Lord! Lord l 110W vill a mighty Monarch look, I~ at able, 0 mine God t for fhave a cook I

cc,

Dat like a

~,

Mine God! p1'a}~ haf more fpirit dan a cat.

cc

Ser, in mine court, de prince be great as l(ing-

cc

He [corn to ax one word about a ting,

ct

ec

(~ C(

l~ing)

I fay, what can't do dat?

Mine God! de cook mufs nebber dare make groan,. Nor dare to tell a Prince der foul der own: 'Tis de darn Englis only, dat can fay,

" 'Boh! fig for king1 by God.) I'll haf my way.' cc ·,·c

I haf fee Court enough-~ Prince and Deok,

But nebber wifh on fufh as dis to, look:

" I fay 96

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

c

1 fay ver often to lTIyfelf-Goode God!

" I nebber villi a crown mine head for load! " I do not villi myfelf more greater efils : cc

A King of Englis be a King of delis..

qc

To punifhment de loufy rafcal bring,

cc

And Ihow dern all vat 'tis for be a King.

c.e

America haf cover us vid Ihame ,

" Jack Wilkes, too) be a dan]; dam uglifh name; cc

And fal de paltry Coole be conquerer too r-

" No, God forbid! as dat vill nebber do. ,~

De hair mufs fall before your royal eye,

" 'Tis fometing, fags! to triumph 'pon poor fly."-Pleas'd with her voice) the King of Nations fmil'd,

For Pow'r with Monarchs is a fav'rite child: " What! what!

110t

fhave 'em, {have 'em, fhave 'em~

fhave 'em] '4"

Not all the world, not all the world Ihall fave 'em..

lJ

I'll Iheer 'em, Iheer 'ern, as I Iheer my

fheep.)'~

Thus fpoke the mighty Monarch in his fleep : Which proves that Kings in fleep a fpeech may make, Equal to what they utter broad awake, Charm'd with the rnifchief full on Fancy's view,

Ql.!ick to the Major's room the

97

FURY

flew:

Fut

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Put off the form

or

SCHWELLENBERG,

and took

OfM..tlDAM HAGGERDORN the milder look : A woman) in whofe foul no guile is feen, The Miftrefs of the Robes to our good Q..!een---A ~eenJ who really has not got her peer; A Qgeen, to this our kingdom wond'rous dear i

Which fhows, however folks are apt to fpott, That all the Virtues may be found at court. Now, in the MAJOR~S ear the Beldame [aid,

er

you muft not, man, be '{raid. I like mufh your peteefhon to de King, Though GEORGE will [wear 'tis dam, dam fauey ting , And fwear, dat as his foul is to be fave, Dat ebbry von of you fal all be Ihave : YAN' DIXON", tader your dear life lay dowrr,

fC

Dan be de laugh (mine Gate!) of all de town.

cc

De ver, vel" littel boy all girl you meet,

cc

ViTI point and laugh and hoot you trow de Ilreer,

cc YAN DlxON-YAN) cc

ec cc cc

H «(

De fame (mine Gote!) vill chimney-fweep behave; And cry, 'Dere go de blockhead dat was fhave ;' Dere go von poor fhave fellow! cry de Trull,

"

t

ce

(Beeaufe he had de Ioufe upon his feulL

cc

I know he fay, dar you til louie your lock,

j

j

,', Before to-morrow rnornin twalfe o'clock. " I rink 98

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,) ff

I tink dere Inay be battle-nebber mind,

(f

I hope dat Godamighty will be kind,

~f

What if de King make noife about de houfe,

cc

For noting but dis dam confounded loufe ,

" He be but von, you know , an den for you., e«

Mine Gote! Y AND IXQ.N, you is fifty- two ~

cc

'Tink, Y AN~ how

cc

When Lord GEORGE GORDON rnakedat burninjob,

,~

Mine Gate! Y AN, mind m~, :racier lofe dy place,

GEORGE

vas frighten by de mob,

(, Dan fuffer fuch dam nafty dam difgrace. cc

I tell you true, indeed, ver true, dear Y.AN_"

cc

His Majefty be ver goat fort of man ,

cc

But ver ver like indeed as oder men,

cc

Dat is" a leetel ftubborn now an den.

ec C(

'Tink, Y AN'- of dar ver ugly ting, a wig, For pot-boy and de pot-girl run der rigI

cc

Bah! filthy ting,. enough de deffi.l [care;

cc

And made per4ap

~c

J fal not wonder if,. dy foul for Ihock,

cc

A ghoft come feize upon der ftolen lock.

cc

No, fags!

cc

De vig vid mufh, mufh fury from dy fcull.

(

'POll

nor

of difinal dead man's hair!

vonclers if dey

COl11e

an pull

forn poor ftrumpet head perhap dat grow'd,

«( Dat die of dam

difforder, nafty toad!"-

Thus 99

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Thus faying, 10 1 the Fury made retreat, And left the Lord of Saucepans in a fweat.

Juft like King Richard in his tent, JOHN

rear'd,

And verily a man of woes appear'd. Now handling his Imall pig-tail, "Now you're here)" Exclaim'd the MAJOR, "but not long, I fear: " Perhaps fome good may follow this fame dream, cc

And refolution mar this fhaving Icheme,

cc

Curs'd be the LOUIe that fo much mifchief bred,

" Al~d Yields to barbers' boys the harmlefs head : cc

Curs'd be the razor-maker, curs'd the prig

(C

Who thought upon that greafy' thing-a wig.

" Sure, 'twas fome mangy beaft, fome [cabby r0gtie3

'c Who brought a thing fo filthy into vogue! c' Had

NATURE

meant the fcare-crow to be worn,

c

Infants with wigs had certainly been born.

e(

But 10! with little hair) and that uncurl'd,

cc

But not with wigs, they come into the world!

cc

\V hat Ihame, that fneep, that horfes, cows, and bulls,

" Should club their tails, to furnifh Chriftian fculls ! cc

But what a facri'egious Ihame, the dead

" Can't keep, poor fouls, their locks upon their head ~ (c

"That fhame, the fpectres, in the midnight air,

cc Should wander, [creaming for their plunder'd hair!

Curs'd 100

Wolcot (The Lossiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

cc

Curs'd be the Ihaving plan, I fay again,

ec

Although the bantling of a Royal brain t"

Thus curs'd the

M.i\]OR

to

NIGHT'S

lift'ning ear,

Enough to turn a Chriftian pale to hear 1 Thus, heedlefs of hereafter, for a pin Will men and women run their fouls in fin ! Now paus'd the MAJOR, with a thoughtful air i

And now foliloquy'd with folemn ftare: cc

Drunk with dominion, gorg'd with vicious thoughts)

cc

With Folly teeming, doz'd by Flatt'ry's draughts) Taught to admire their very maudlin dreams,

cc

And think their brains' dull mudpools,

(C

WlSDOl'd'S

ftreams, ec

Too many a monarch lives; but) 10! not ours!

" A King, who

WISDOM'S

very [elf devours;

cr

Snaps at arts, fciences, where'er they rife,

cc

With all the fire of boys at butterflies.

cc

Such cannot furely own a little heart;

cc

Therefore our locks and \ve l'iZay never part."

Now" from a ftool, a tinder-box he took, And fiercely with the flone the fteel he ftruck i And, after many unfuccefsful fhocks,

TIle fparks inflam'd the tinder in the box; Which, by a match which JoaN did fagely handle, Gave fudden luftre to a farthing cand'e.

Thus, 101

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Thus, if final} things with great we may compare, ' Ve fee hard pedagogues, with furious air, Strike with the fifl, and often with a flick, L ight through a fcholar's [cull, ten inches thick,

N OV1, full illuminated,

DIXON

ftole,

W here lay a Mafter-cook within his hole: F rom whence, to all t11' inferior Cooks they went, Inclin'd to Oppofition's big intent;

But, not fa fierce, alas! for oppofition,

As in the threat'ning, bullying Petition; F or men (it is reported) dafh and vapollr Lefs on the field of battle, than on paper. T hus, in the hift'ry of each dire campaign,

More carnage loads the news-paper than plain. A nd now the Cooks and Scullions left each neft;~ A nd now, behold, they one and all were drelt, La! fallen to the kitchen mov'd the throng, Gloom on each ese; and filence on each tongue:. H ow much like crape-clad mourners round a bier! B ut, ah! imprels'd with Iorrow more Iincere , F or oft" at tombs, with joy the bofom burne--T here, 'tis the fable back. alone that mourns,

Now 102

Wolcot (The Lousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

N O\V making, with a few dry chips, a fire, They fullen fat, their grief commix'd with ire i Sad ruminating all around the flame,

Like Harry and his band) of deathlefs name. Near Agincourt, expectant of the day Big with the horrors of a bloody fray; A fray that threaren'd his poor little band, To fweep it, juft like fpiders, to that land

Cferra incognita yclep'd, which Ilretches Afar-of which, imperfect are our fketches ,

Since all who have furvey'd this diftant bourn, So welcom'd, were not fuffer'd to return. Thus did the Cooks expect the fatal morn, When, fheep-like, every head was to be fhorn,

N ow to the whitening eafl: they call: their fight, And wifh'd, but vainly, an eternal night: Nat with lefs pleafure ftares upon the day,

The wretch condemn'd hard Nature's debt to pay; Condemn'd ere noon to aft a deed abhorr'd ,

To flretch, for Juftice' fake, the fatal cord: Not with lefs pleafure Ihrunk (unknowr; to Ihame}, A meat) drink, fiiuff, and diamond-loving

DAME"

'Vhen told, "Tl1at if poor Haftings went to pot, ~,

A ,vay went pearls) and jewels, and what not,

'" Torn 103

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

tc

Torn from the ftomacher fo fine, yet foul,

" Which

AVtRICE

thirfted for, and

RAPINE

ftole :"

N ot with lefs pleafure, in the vale of life, Poor

EGL-N-T-N

beheld a youthful wife>

(Forc'd, on a bed of ice, fweet flow'r, to bloom; Ah! forc'd to fhine, a fun-beam, on a tomb) That blooming youthful wife, inclin'd to ftray

With

HAM-LTON,

all in a billing way;

Juft like two turtles,

or a pair of lambs,

Or ewes fo playful with the frifky rams: Not with lefs glee an old and hopelefs In aid

Surveys the fun afcending from the Ihade , A fun; that gives a younger lifter's charms, So hated, to a bridegroom's happy arms:

Not with lefs joy~ that raging chafte old maid Sees the frail Fair-ones in the Cyprian trade Efcape the whip and gaol, and hemp befide,

By means of gentle MISTER

JUSTICE HYDE.

Sweet wrecks of beauty! though, with afpic eye, And.glance difdainful,

PRUDERY

pafs them by,

With mincing flep, and fquinting cautious dread,

As though their looks alone contagion fhed,

1 view each pallid WRETCH with grief fincere, And calIon

PITY

for her tend'reft tear;

See, 104

Wolcot (The

See, on their cheeks, the bluih of Hear from their fouls the figh of

Lousia~

an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

VIRTUE

RUIN

burn;

mourn;

View,veil'd in HORROR'S gloom, theirfwimmingeyes;,

Beaming with hopelefs willies to the fkies,

Like the pale

MOON'S

dim folitary form,

\Vrapp'd in the darknefs of the midnight florm.

winning finile betray'd, Too fondly trufting, falls the fimple maid! Too oft, by

TREACH'RY'S

Too many a

TH-L-E

To foul of

INNOCENCE

walks the world of woe,

the Iacred fnow!

To love, yet nurfe the thougIlt of villain art, How hard a Ieffon for the partial heart! Too hard a leffon for the female foul, Where LOVE no partner owns, and [corns controul,

Not with lefs pleafure doth a Poet look On cruel criticifm, which damns his book,

. O r recommends it to that peaceful Ihore Where books and bards are never heard of more,

Than look'd each man, with lengtheri'd boding beard) On that fad morn, which doom'd them to be fhear'd: Nat with lefs pleafure, likewife, let me fay, A hungry author fees his dying play; Child of his dotage,

'VI10

furveys its fall,

Juft as mankind Ihall view the tumbling Ball, 105

'\Vhen

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

When fun, moon, ftars, and all the diflant Ipheres,

Burft in one general wreck about their ears.

Not with lefs pleafure did * SIR W lLLIAM'S ey~ See SOMERSET'S bold wing defert its fky , A fall, at which the Nation's purfe exclaims, That thund'ring crufh'd the back of roaring TH~"MES ~ Not with Iefs pleafure did SIR WILLIAM'S ear,", A Jccond craih of this fam'd fabric hear; When poor SIR JOSHUA, with his painting band, Swore the dread day of judgment juft at hand, Not with lefs glee, tenacious of his drofs,

.Ross-] ftarted-Reader! not the Man of Rofs-=-When _J\~d

ivlAJESTY>

to reft his royal head,

of the Church's mitred Son a bed,

PoOft *

This gentleman fl:ilI retains the place of Comptroller of the "Board of Works, to the Kingdom's furprife; but demerit in Bui!ding> as well as in Painting, is a fufficient recommendation "to a. ceril~;u.jpe~ies of PATRONS" particularly if the Profeffors are cIeij.,ifed by the people at large. It is the money of this Nation that is fought for~ not the merit. The circumftance of being a foreigner too (for this fame 81R \tV ILL 1 P. ~A: C H A 11 BE R S is a STJ.-ede), carries with it another itrong claim to favouritifin!

i The prefent Br s aoz of EXE'rER~ WI10, when Ids rv1AJESTY" vifited that ancient City lately> 1110ft halJdjomely excufed himfelf the honour of entertaining his Roy AL Mxs r-e s , by billeting hhn upon DEAN BULLEP_. The follo\ving lines, extracted from ;1. manufcript performance of one JOHN PLOUGHSHARE, called.

The

106

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

'Poor Man! who proving, like his Sovereign, poor, Begg'd him to knock at good

DEAN BULLER'S

door;

BULLER,.

The Roy AL PRO GRES s, "Fe think, will elucidate this part of our

EPIC, and not be unacceptable to our readers. ~

IN comm'd the King at lafle to town,

'" With douft and zweat az nutmeg brown, The hoffes all in [make; -. Huzzaing, trumpeting, and ringing & Red colours vleeing, roaring, dringing, r: Zo mad zeem'd all the voke, C

J

r: 4"

r;

~

c

~ .c &

Wiping his zweaty jaws and poll, Allover doufte we [pied 'SQ...UIRE ROLLE, C Clofe by the I{ing's coach trattin ; Now {having in tlte coach his head, Meaning (we thoft) it might be zed, ~c 'S~u IRE ROLLE and GEORGE be chattin J?

Novr went the ALDERMEN and MAY'.R, Zome with cut wigs, and zome with hair, & The Royal yoke to ken; When MEASTER MAY'R, upon my word. Pok'd to the King a gert long fword, ~ Which he pok'd back agen .

Now thoofe that round his Worfhip flood, c Declar'd it clumfily was dood; c Yet SQ.YIRT, the people zay~ " Brandifh'd a gert hofs glyfter-pipe, ~ To make un in his Ieflon ripe, ~ That took up half a day,

~

make 107

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

BULLER,

who took his wand'ring mafter in,

And fluff'd with corn and oil his fcrip and Ikin i For which (on gratitude [0 wont to dote) The Monarch gave a TUMBLER-worth a groat!

o glo-

down droo Vore-ftreet did they com, ~ Zum hallowin, and fcreeching zum : .c Now trudg'd they to the DEAN'S; c Becaze theBI8HOP zent mun word, C~ A could not meat and drink avord, cc A had not got the means.')

c: 1~ow

A zed, that, M--y becometh a Convert to the Speech of D",~ME .t\VA2!CE-The POE7'S nne Reflet'tion on Generality-leIS M~y Drdtreth the Cooks to be rented for the 'SnAv,s--The K- fpeaketh l\rlarvels in favour of l\fujefty-Deep re~aions of the POET on A.MBt~rION, with the various eA.~es of her Power~The COOX!} at kllgtb fubmit to be fh,",eJ-An Americm Comparifon on the occafion, perb~rps not pleafing to ~"taitJ. GREAT PSOPLlt !-The POET addreifeth the )ffJ$2 on the want of :a B4tlle, fa ueeeifary to an EPIC Po esc -The Po A't, gWI} in Honour, refufeth to make a Battlewhere there \\~S none; proclaiming at the fame time his a{;ility, were a Battle necemrv-His l\tI-...-y exulteth in his VictorY over th~ , J1 011

BARl> ~gain

1iing

3

Cd~ 133

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3 it. R. s U 1\-1 1! :N T ..

C-ooks-His M--y endeavoureth to prove by affirtilJll the P,a-

pertyof th€ LousE-Alfo the Certainty of its being a real Laufe,

by his great a-cquaintance with Natural Hifiory-The K...,.-, in his

great juiHce, jho1.t-efh the little ANI~AL, by way of convi£tionThe POET exibiteth btblical and clqffical Knowledge in an Account of Animals that have [polen" in order to reconcile the Reader's revolting mind. to the Speech of the LOusE-TheLo-usEJP£echifte~1 and giveth a wonderful Hillory of HiTl':!i!J', his F41;li,ly~ ~nd'Mif!artune-Lou-sE proveth the i}.lpe Antiquity of his 'RACE to that

of KINGS-TheKo;-, il;}

wra~

nor

giveth LOU.sE the.iip., and.endea-

voureth his defuuaIQnr-ZEP:B:Ylt, trembling: at his danger)'i fud... denly beareth-him off t~ the .celeflial ,~on,. an9~ tw~ changing hi~' mind, converteth him into a $TA:R., dafcover~ fOQ:J1

*t

after by the GTeat;~ DOC-rER. HEltSCB£LL, and .his Spy-Glafs, wliich, lincomplimentto.his 1'I.IAJE£l:i:, the Dcc-ro a baptized the G~lOllS:tUM SInus! ! i

134

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,) THE

L

0

u

S I

Ci\.NTO TI-IE

A

D~

FIFTH~

N OvV with the fweefeft lips that love infpire, Tile

PRINCESS ROYAL

thus addrefs'd her Sire:

" 0 Sir, for once attend a daughter's ptay'r--t'

Refirain

)TOUr

fury from your people's hair:

(, A thoufand bleffings will their mouths beftow, t,

And

eT.,"r~l

heart with gratitllde o'erflow :

" For [ucb a. vict'ry, who would give a fig ? " Pray, Sir, don't make them wear a nafiy wig," Such founds, fo fweet, that moil divinely broke)

_f\.s might have mollified the fturdy oak,

"\tVere fruitlefs doom'd on royal ears to fall! Yet Mufic drove the Devil out of Saul! To HER the KING, with mofi afionifh'd e}7es-, And furly wrinkled brows fo fiern, replies:

" What, 135

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

" What, what ? 110tjhave

'em, fbaue 'em,

now they're

caught? " What l have this pretty hubbub all for nought?

" No,

110,

" Beg

011

girl;

110,

girl; no, girl; no, girl---no---

till doomiday, girl---it fhan't b'e fo·.

" How, how, pray, would it look; how, how; pray" " look? cc

People would Iwear I could not

~

Tou call \vigs

., Don't, don't e

n~:fly, )70U

{have a

Cook.

Mifs ? Fine fpeech, indeed!

fee I've one

Go back, go back, Mrss

UpOl1 mjT

PERT,"

head?

he bluntly cried;

Then with his elbow pufh'd the nymph afide : Although the Monarch did

110t

box her ears,

He drown'd tile radiance of her eye with tears.

Far from the wsathful I{il1g the

MAID

withdrew,

Ani veil'd her rrrodefl beauties from his view.

TllUS when the \Tirgill 1\1oR.N her blufhes fpreads, Aud paints with purefi ra~y the mountain 'heads .;

Behold, thofe blufhes fo divine to fhroud, The turly

BOREAS

gatllcrs ev'ry cloud;

Biels the huge phalanx feek the finiling Eafi, AI1C{

blot the lufire of her crirnfon veft :

From pale to pole extends the black'ning band ~

Cloud prclung cloud, obeys his rude .command : 136

In

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

In tears fhe moves a\Va}T, the heav'nly

MAl}D,

And leaveshim Monarch of the migllty fhade, Now o'er the Sov're.ign"s ihoulder, with a figb., The fair

AUGUSTA

cafi a pitying eye;

And whitper'd to her Sire a tender pray'r,

To [ave from razor-rage the heads of hair;

WIlen 10, the King! " What, you too, Mifs, petition for each knave? ~,

You, you, too, Mifs, all ellemy to jhave ?')

Mute was the Maid; when foft from I(ing and Cooks, Concern'd, fhe fhrunk a'vvay, with fweetefi looks:

TIllis, o'er a murky cloud tIle Moo s -[0 brigllt,. Oft' gives a peep of momentary light; Much

~!S

to fay, "I wiih my fmiles to gral1t,

e' To cheer Sing,

yOl1

darkling mortals, but I can't,"

l1eZI.V'111y GODDESS,

how the Cooks behav'd,

WIlD fwore t11eJT'd all be d-n'd ere they'd be fhav'd,

Who penn'd to

MAJESTY

the bold petition,

And daring fum'd with rebel oppofition 1

Cow'd, cow'd, alas! the Lords of Iaucepans feeI..-: Each heart [0 val'rous funk i11tO tile heel:

heel: 137

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

And

10;

each threat'ning Amazonian Dante,

Her fI)irit drooping, and extinct her flameFor 10, of Majefiy the pow'rful blaze, His coat's brigllt gold, and eyeball's rolling gaze,

Jtlfi like the light that cover'd fad

SAJ:NT PAUL,

Flafh'd on their viiages, and fmote them all! Who could have thought that things would thus have

cnclcd? FATE

feemingly a dreadful crafh intended !

Such flately refolution in the Cooks, Such fierce demeanour in their fpoufes looks I

But thus in Weftern India Jave ordains

At times an afiJeB: wild of hurricanes :

Dark gro\vs the Iky, with gleams of threat'ning red: All nature dumb, the fmalleft zephyr dead-

Bird, beafi, and mortal, trembling, paufing, flill, Expectant of the tempeft's mighty will. Tremendous paufe l when lo, by fmall degrees,

Light melts the mafs ; with life returns the breeze;

And

DANGER,

on his cloud, who fcowl'd diiinay,

Moves fullen with his cOl1gregated glooms a\v"a)'. How ftrange that Kings, with borrow'd plumes who

foar, Should make the very rzt1ing·makers adore! Strange 138

Wolcot (The Iousiad, an Heroi-Comic Poem,)

Strange that the realm, 1))1 which a Monarch lives,

Should tremble at the Majefty it gives! Strange that

all

Empire fo much rcafon wants,

When bounteous Majcfiy a pcnfion gral1ts J .lls

110t

to underfland, the fiupid fionc,

He grantetll not a fixpence of his oton ! What's ftranger frill, indeed, to people's cJ"es, 'That Monarchs and their wives fhould

{CC1U { fon,

cc

Are oft by curiofity undone !

" Dire wifh l for 'midfi my travels, urg'd by FATE,

" From

jTOU,

0 I{ing, I fell upon your plate! " Sad 157

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

" Sad was the precipice !-and

" Far from " Who

LOUSILLA,

110\V,

110V{

I'm here,

and Iny children dear!

poor fouls! in decpeft mourning

all, " Groan for my prefence, and lament my fall, ,~

N ITTILLA now,

llly

eldefi girl, with figlls

" Bewails her father loft, \'ilitll fireaming eyes: " And c

GRUBRINETT A,

In frate,

ill

" And fiurdy c

with the Iovelicft mien,

temper, and in form a queel1; SNAP,

n1.Y 1011, a child of grace,

His father' s irnaae both in form and face;

in a C letter, For further particulars-> For further particulars-> particulars-> particulars-> For furtherFor particulars-> further particulars-> particulars-> particulars-> particulars->

FINIS.

234

'J ames

Harley'

The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire (1822)

Both the British Library and Bodleian catalogues attribute The Press) orLiterary ChitChat. A Satire (London, Lupton Relfe, 1822) to John Hamilton Reynolds. However, Leonidas M. Jones has persuasively argued on the basis of internal evidence that the satire cannot be by Reynolds, who does not share the author's Tory proclivities.' Other sources (Halket and Laing, Dictionary of .Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, 1926-62, and William S. Ward, Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1979) give 'James Harley', but provide no evidence or further details. My own discovery of an extremely rare satire by Harley, The Reviewers Guide/ or New Art of Criiicism (London, Lupton Relfe, 1823), has confirmed these earlier conjectures, for Harley is listed on the title page as the author of The Press and Nonsense Verses (London, Cadell, 1822), a miscellaneous volume containing an entertaining satire in the manner of Byron's DonJuan. Harley has left few tracks. Between 1821 and 1823, he contributed verses to The LondonMagazine'2 and published the three volumes already mentioned. The Reviewers Guide lists a second edition of Nonsense verses as well as a volume 'preparing for publication', Ramblings and Rambling Rhimes,3 but if either of these were ever published no copies have survived. Nevertheless, Harley's limited visibility on the literary scene, the lack of references to him by contemporaries, and his absence from biographical records all suggest the possibility that the Literary Gazettewas correct in referring to him as 'the pseudo James Harley'.4 The Gazette went on to imply that Harley was among the fraternity of reviewers.f a surmise supported by the range and currency of books, topical events, and literary gossip treated in Nonsense verses and The Press. While expressing conservative political and literary opinions, Harley remains aloof from the Blackwoods - QuarterlY Review flank that represents Tory interests in the mock battle of The Press, Part II; he was more likely associated with one of the minor London reviews, many of whose contributors remain shadowy.'' Little more can be said about his identity. He shares with Reynolds (hence the confusion) an attraction to Byron's satirical verse forms and rhetorical models, and his last two books appeared under the imprint of Lupton Relfe, who later published Thomas Hood's Whims and Oddities (1826), though there seems to be no further connection between Hood and Harley? Harley's last work, The Reviewers Guide, may offer an ironic coda to such speculations, as applicable to the present editor as to 235

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348167-4

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Harley's contemporaries: 'there are ways and means of finding out an author, even though he be clad in the garb of a fictitious name - a stumbling block to many reviewers. When, however, the critic is unable to procure correct information, his safest course is silence, or the review enigmatic ... '. 8 The Press was published at the end of 1822 and comprises an eclectic stock-taking of contemporary books, journals, and public figures; one review called it 'a lively breakfast-table index to the respective qualifications of living authors'." Such as it is, the plot involves three friends (Hocus, Jocus, and Pocus) gathered round 'the region of the hearth', exchanging 'gibes', 'retorts', and 'playful chat' (p. 254, 53-56) on literary matters. While the preface leads one to expect them to wage a Juvenalian onslaught against 'impious ribaldry and prophane [sic] obscenity' (p. 244), the satire can hardly be said to pursue such a single-minded purpose. To be sure, the first part chides the Reverend Robert Charles Maturin for exchanging the sacred for the profane, Byron for mixing them, and Thomas Moore for failing to restrain his 'loosely-girdled' muse, but Harley's conversationalists move associatively in diverse directions. Their opening discussion of Walter Scott's anonymity in the Waverly novels turns into a consideration of the pseudonymous works of Barry Cornwall with a side glance at Olivia Wilmot Serres, 'Princess of Cumberland', who claimed to be a relation of both the Duke of Cumberland and the famous eighteenth-century political satirist, 'Junius'. Cornwall's efforts in drama lead to a discussion of churchmen-turned-dramatists (Milman, Maturin), while Maturin's Gothic excesses provoke a lecture on the pursuit of novelty (Caroline Lamb, Godwin, Byron). So it goes on, with books and authors accumulating. There are consolidating gestures too: the first part ends with Jocus's dream fable of a great battle waged between London and Edinburgh reviews; the second part with his verses, 'Bas-Bleusia', depicting a dystopian kingdom of women writers; the final part with Hocus's vision of a future tourist musing on the ruins of literary London. Throughout, Harley demonstrates and satirises the self-generative fecundity of this world of letters; even the concluding vision evaporates before a 'future Byron' who reconstitutes and recycles the 'relics' of the past in a new series of writings. Though milder and far less poignant than the Dunciad, Harley's poem similarly indicts scribblers and their enablers: editors, translators, journalists, and publishers. 'Universal darkness' charges the pens of Harley's 'age of ink' (p. 374, 234). Harley's poem belongs to that amorphous subgenre that Gary Dyer refers to as 'satirical reviews of literary talent' (Dyer, p. 15) and its epigraph acknowledges a genealogical debt to one of the most popular examples, Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). With its heroic couplets, dialogic form, and Tory politics, The Press also recalls the N eo-Juvenalian satires of William Gifford (The Baviad and The Maviad) and more particularly T. J. Mathias (The Pursuits of Literature, 1 794-97). Mathias's poem famously wielded its lash in unwieldy, digressive footnotes. Harley's notes, though numerous, are mild and pithy in comparison. The Press owes much more to Mathias's quick-paced, epigrammatic couplets and his conversational format, both of which tend to weaken the virulence of his satire; as Mathias remarks, 236

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

'conversation has its laws, but they are pleasant, not severe restraints' .10 Like Byron in EnglishBards, Harley mixes satiric tones and 'declines explicitly to take up themes that demand Juvenalian methods' (Dyer, p. 45) in spite of his dependence on Juvenalian forms. 'Books have been my game, not men', Harley announces in his preface, and in the poem, when the state of modern satire becomes the topic of debate, Jocus offers a model that seems not far off that which Harley practices: Suppose I try my hand At lashing all the follies of the land Zounds! I will shew that satire's not abuse, And that when quizzing, we need not traduce. (p. 316, 197-200) Ironically, Pocus's rejoinder ('Bravo! my Jocus. I will buy the book, / To save one copy from the pastry-cook') anticipates the unfavourable reception of The Press; the critics felt that Harley had over-diluted his Juvenalian rage. The Literary Gazette calls Harley 'a minor Macbeth in letters ... wielding the weapon of a satirist, but without the bitterness necessary for the station'."! The Museum lamented his inability to handle 'that formidable weapon - the pen of castigation' .12 The MonthlY Censor added that 'nothing but heavy blows occasionally inflicted by the hand of sharp and vigorous satire can be expected to give effectual relief, and sweep away "The host of idiots that infest the age" ... a Dunciad ... repeated at short intervals', but Harley 'wants poignancy and force' to follow Gifford and Byron in this calling. 13 The spectre of Byron haunts Harley's work. Nonsense Verses employs the ottava rima stanza and comic twists of Don juan, arguing feebly that 'ere the publication / Of his, great part of mine had seen the light' (st. 141). The Press affectionately mimics the language of Don juan in the proem to Part ~ and registers Harley's appreciation of English Bards and other works in a number of places. At the same time, Harley is troubled by the political and social effects of Byron's popularity and by the company that the noble poet keeps. He accuses Byron of dealing in 'clap-trap and quackery' (p. 356, Note 43), popularising misanthropy, and making subversive messages insidiously attractive through sensationalism. The preface joins Byron's name with that of William Benbow, the radical pornographer and pirate publisher who brought out an unauthorised cheap edition of Donjuan,14 proof in itself to Harley of the immoral potential of Bryon's work. The poem then links Byron with Leigh Hunt, the radical publisher and editor of The Examiner, much maligned by Maga as the chief of the Cockney School of Poetry. As Harley composed The Press in September 1822,15 the talk of the town was of Byron's impending collaboration with Hunt and Shelley in a new literary periodical, The Liberal ("'the Licentious" would be a more appropriate title', scoffs Harley in a supplementary note). The Press gives a unique insight into the trepidation with which the Tory press viewed the collaboration and the rapidity of the response to it. For Harley, the threat posed by Byron epitomises the subtle ways in which popularity drives literary taste and production against the best interests of society. Harley's repeated invocations to sales and profits as the engines of his own satires becomes a wry acknowledgment that 237

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

disinterestedness had become the rarest of commodities, for if the satirist cannot stand above the marketplace, who can? Certainly not women, in Harley's world view, for among the insidious attractions that he deplores is Byron's sway over 'the bas-bleu world' (p. 263, 211), though Harley would have sympathised with Byron's assertion of masculine values in his late satire, 'The Blues' (1823) .16 The Press similarly draws on misogynist conventions in satire to attack independent women or to belittle the understanding of women readers, who must be protected, he implies, by the paternal satirist from popular literature's powerful stimulants. Harley does not completely rule out the possibility of women satirists (Lady Blessington is praised for her 'elegantly satirical pen'), but he does debar them from 'masculine' styles and subject matter. For instance, Harley cannot conceive that Lady Morgan could be responsible for those parts of The Mohawks (see Vol. 2, pp. 244-54) 'of a most unlacfylike nature', referring to sexual innuendo, and that these must be the work of her co-writer and husband, Sir Thomas Charles Morgan. Harley emerges most openly as the defender of patriarchal values in a note concerning Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer, whose work at Newgate became a model for ladies' charitable associations throughout the country. While applauding Fry's motives, Harley deplores the 'example' set by women obtruding in public affairs where they will be more susceptible to 'vice', the bugbear Harley raises when circumscribing femininity. He is especially troubled by women acting in public capacities where they might usurp the male privilege of setting the bounds of identity: 'The female sex have of late become far too fond of display, and are too apt to seek for that applause ... which they ought alone to look for from their fathers, husbands, or brothers' (p. 355, Note 41). Even women whom The Press approves of as suitably religious and conservative, such as Felicia Hemans or Hannah More, are segregated into the satire-within-the-satire of Part II, 'Bas-Bleusia', or island of the bluestockings. Ruled by Gog, the wooden idol of Lord Mayors and aldermen, the Bas-Bleusian court is a place where women writers and their attendants revel in pageantry and self-aggrandisement. The connection Harley draws between women's literary society and aldermanic associations, however, betrays his anxiety over the subversive power of unregulated organisations of any kind, a lesson brought home during the reform agitation of 1817-20 when metropolitan radicalism flourished at parish level, impelled by populist figures like the Radical aldermen Matthew Wood and Robert Waithman, but also by women's groups. In Bas-Bleusia, of course, the radicals come off worst, particularly Lady Morgan and Helen Maria Williams; their anarchic protests drown out all the others, dispersing the scene of Gog's final oration, despite his reading of the Riot Act. The principal topics of The Press - poetry, drama, fiction, travel, medicine, cookery, antiquarian research, popular education and self-help, music, satire, journalism, religion, women's writing - accumulate into a 'thick description' of metropolitan literary activity in a period of relative prosperity. By the end of 1822, post-war economic stagnation was lifting, the image of Queen Caroline was fading from popular consciousness, and the reform movement appeared temporarily becalmed. Yet 238

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

The Press asks what the effects of material progress will be for a society imbued by the schemes of reformers: Oh! noble noon-day of the mind - no more We will submit to live as those of yore; Ere long, no doubt, cast-iron footmen may, Impell'd by steam, our each behest obey, Whilst the same agents all our work may do, And those who labour now, their joys pursue. (p. 369, 133-38) For Harley, the chimeras of industry reflect the vagaries of the press. The threat from mass culture lay not in what it can do for, but to those it would serve; its capacity to tempt people 'like automata, to pass through life / With, if but little pleasure, little strife' (p. 315, 181-82). In The Press, the hyperinflation of literary output distracts the reading public from the exercise of thought and judgment, giving voice to 'the little great' but stifling true debate. At another level, the poem celebrates the press as a fertile ground that generates weeds and flowers, but above all, provides the public-spirited satirist 'scope' to practice 'the good advice of Pope; / Expatiate freely on the deeds of man, / Blame where I must, be candid where I can' (p. 315, 183-86).

Note on the Text Harley's notes are marked by consecutive superscript numerals enclosed in parentheses. These very often give sufficient information with which to understand the text. The reader should therefore consult them first whenever possible. I have included additional notes to the main text in three instances: 1) when Harley does not provide a note; 2) when Harley's note provides insufficient or irrelevant information; 3) when the text first names a person, even if an accompanying Harley note provides supplementary information. I have also annotated Harley's notes whenever they require further elucidation. For greater convenience, all of my annotations to the main text refer to Harley's line numbers on thepage in which the reference occurs. However, the attentive reader will notice that in several places Harley's compositor has introduced errors in sequencing. These are as follows: In Part I, '70' is placed at the 69th line, and '190' at the 188th line. '230' appears twice, the second time correctly. '250' appears in the 249th line, but '260' restores the proper sequence almost until the end, when '590' occupies the 591st line. Harley's 'Notes to Part 1', however, are keyed into the true lines, although the endnote number for Note 21 has been placed in the previous line of text than that in which it should appear. Similarly, in Part II, '390' appears in the 239

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

391st line; '470' in the 472nd line; '480' in the 481st line. Here, however, the endnotes are keyed into the incorrect sequence. In Part III, the sequencing and notes are correct.

240

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

THE PRE'SS, OR

LIT ERA Rye H I T-C HAT•

•

" The cry is up, and scribblers are my game:' ByTO'R...

LONDON; PRINTED FOR LUPTON RELF:£,

1822. 241

18,

CORNHITjL.

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

PRI~TF:D

nr

s.

LO~DON !\~f)

R.

:

IrF:~TI.F:Y,

242

rH)n~ET

~TflEET.

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

1-) REF ACE.

few of the personages alluded to in the following pages are known te me otherwise than by their works, I bear them no ill-will, and trust they will peruse my rhimes with a similar freedom from malice. I have, as much as passible, avoided personalities. Books have been my game, not men--and I trust the propriety of such sporting remains unquestioned by the game-laws of public opinion. What a man publishes becomes the property of the public. He casts his seed abroad, and is answerable for the fruit. What will be the fruit of Dlany of the publications noticed in my poem, God alone knows. I am not' wont to be timid VERY

243

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

or suspicious, but when we see impious ribaldry and prophane obscenity openly writtenopenly published--and openly displayed in our

libraries, what thinking mind bu t must tremble

for the consequences? Let it not be supposed that I am what in modern slang is called a saint ~ the reader of my work must be convinced of the contrary-but I have a firm love for the constitution of my country, and a sincere veneration for that religion

which (setting aside all major considerations) is necessary for its support. Such being my sentiments, I am galled to the quick to view the open and covert attacks daily made upon both by a knot of book-makers, who arrogate to themselves the claim of superior liberality, knowledge, and

discretion, Girded together for this object, ·the peer and the peasant coalesce to cater for the aIready vitiated taste of the public; and a Byron condescends to become a fellow-pander with a Benbow. The only difference is, that the one penetrates into the boudoir, whilst the other advances not beyond the servant's hall. But my chief fear is not of a Byron or a Ben... 244

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

These are the .open attackers-we have concealed assailants perhaps more to be dreaded. A certain "r.osy tinge " pervades many works un... suspected by the generality of readers, until a kindred shade imbues itself over their minds, and th us the danger increases. Morals-especially female morals-fall into the snare, and where then is our safeguard? The laxity of sentiment generally prevalent with regard to the female sex, I cannot hut consider as amongst the worst "signs of the times." 'The cestus of virtue is daily becoming more loose. If not speedily tightened it bow.

will fall off altogether. Amidst the myriads of publications daiJ.r issuing from the British press, it is a difficult task for an author to acquire publicity. No work excites attention but such as is in some way or other piquant. Under this conviction I have resolved to lay my sentiments before the public in the shape of a Satire-otherwise it had been the last mode I should have chosen, as I almost consider

the subject too serious an one for the satiric muse.. But who now listens to a sermonic discourse? I will not detain the reader with further pre'"

245

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

I have in my poem given my undisguised opinion on many subjects. When convinced of face.

error, I shan be most ready to recant-s-till then the missiles of my foes win be hurled at me in

.

vam,

246

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

CO

PART I.

NTENTS~

toe

NOTES TO PART

e....

I,

PART II. "" .... NOTES TO PART

It

10 • • • • •

•••

"

It

o • • • , e _ • • • • • • • • " . . . • • • .. • • •

••••••••••••••

,

••

,

•••••••

II

"..

P Anr 11 I. NOTES TO PART

11.

3 41

57 97 113

III

_

247

"

127

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

James Harley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

THE PRE S S. A SATIRE.

PART I.

249

C\ Taylor & Francis ~Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

THE PRES S. A SAT-IRE.

PART I.

BYRON

saith "critics all are ready made,"

(I)

Therefore, though quite a novice at the trade, I 11 write a book :-ye gods, vouchsafe success!

My aim is-profit, and my theme-the Press! The Press, that engine of the little great To puff a quack, or overturn a state ; That mighty and magnificent machine, At once the mouthpiece of applause and spleen. Mine is a task so bold I almost fear To venture onward in my mad career;

251

10

1

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

But I've begun, and with no timid pen I 'II even beard the critic in his den.

Scatheless I hope not from the fight to come,

Yet,

though my friends advise me to be dumb,

My self-will'd pen will suffer no controlSo let the critic's harshest thunders roll,

I'll bear the brunt, and, if o'ereome, my fall

May wisdom teach not thus again to scrawl. A century or two ago, when books

Were few and far between, like tender looks From husbands to their wives, or, rarer

20

far,

Scarce as convietion from. a wordy war,

My thankless task had easy been; but now, When tomes are marching hourly from "the ROW,'~ Ranged rank and file in strong array to meet Levies from Albemarle or Conduit-street,

My Muse entangled midst the jostling throng Knows not which first to honour with her song; At last, like many a wiser head, she cries,

"Be chance my guide," and then amuck she flies. 30

252

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

But first, in duty bound, I 'n supplicate A deadly tincture cull'd from Byron's hate, A trifling touch of Jeffrey's northern bile, From Lady MOl!gan an Athenian smile, Then mix the three with Hazlitt's impudence,

And let who will proclaim my want

or sensei

From Byron hate-what of? of all mankind; Jaundice from Jeffrey right and wrong to blind;

Smiles, soft as Ida's, melting hearts to lure, And self-conceit-with these' success is sure:

40

Advancet dear Muse, nor stay another line, The task be your's, ma'am, and the profit mine. Tis sweet at times, when summer's zephyr stirs With whispers shrill the leaves of Scotia's firs, To wander musing down some lonely glen

Far from the haunts of women and of men, To mark the woodbine round the elm-tree creep, Or view the moon upon the Ioehan sleep;

(2)

But, when stern winter with astounding howls Like midnight caitiff round your dwelling prowls, 50

253

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

And the closed curtain trembles at his voice, More narrow confines are the general choice.

The region of the hearth, which Cowper sung,

I s render'd vocal by the human tongue, Gibes and retorts fly round, with playful chat,

Perhaps tea, coffee, muffins, and all that.. Fancy a room to lay before your eyes, Nat large, nor small, but of " a certain sise,"

(3)

Fire, candles, curtains drawn, and two or three Persons of common aspect taking tea;

60

Scou t not the scene as neither rare nor grand, Hear their discourse, and hearing understand,

HOCUS.

-A truce, friend Pocus, to thy sneers at Scott, Let him enjoy in peace his happy lot, Acting the part of marechal-volunteer, When British kings would taste of Scottish cheer t

Planting his larches on Tweed's past'ral shore, Or pilfering lintels from one ruin more, (D)

254

(4)

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

To deck his Abbotsford: what though his play Scarce was the town-talk for

70

a short-lived day-- (6}

(Sad falling-01f from happier times of eld When the Last Lay or Marmion we beheld 1)

Yet still his novels--pocus.

His perhaps they bet But why thus clothe them all in mystery? HOCUS.

1 'm not behind the scenes, or I might tell Of other reasons; 'tis to make them sell;

The mystic halo that around them Boats Enters the pockets of ten thousand coats, Thick tomes are written on th t important theme; And some one chuckles at the happy scheme. POCUS..

'Tis not the first-far instance, Junius once Addled the brains of many a learned dunce. Think you his Letters have not gain'd a share Of fame, because their author is but air?

255

('1)

SO

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Francis and

Wilmot~ lOCUS"

Ay, the fair Olive

Hath conn'd but ill her lesson to deceive. HOCUS.

As men will argue on a hair, each tongue

With doubts and answers to them quickly rung, Then to contend with others in dispute

90

Each bought the book unwilling to be mute.

This be yclept the " great unknown" perceived,

(9)

The trick was tried, and wonders hath achieved. Besides, he's Scotch. and well each northern ehield Knows bow to bear a brother through the field.

Though 'mongst themselves they wrangle. yet, to us, When their worst witling writes, they make a fuss, The magic name of countryman at once Transforms into a wit the happy dunce. Yet Scott hath merit that should make him shun 100

Laurels by such low J cunning conduct won.

256

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

lOCUS.

Why who can blame him? if men will be tools, Let whoso can make money of the fools! HOCUS.

Cornwall, too, tried this plan, but gave it up And quafl"d but shallow draughts from Mysttry's

cupo POCUS.

Mirandola, the meteor of a night,

(10)

Appear'd, and then sunk far from human sight.

aoctrs, Green-room ecltt, and neighbours' friendly smile Lured the attorney from his musty toil; "Let me," he cried, "forsake my briefs and writs, 110 And drink th' applauses of my fellow eits ; Now I may stray down Chancery-lane unseen,

But then how noble will become my mien f As past the Six-clerks' Office I shall stride,

Faces well-known will throng the other side;

257

(U)

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Smiles, like a counsel's when he gains a cause,

\-ViII mingle with the accents of applause;

Clerks from each office, articled or not, Will, staring, envy me my glorious lot. No surly doorkeeper will bid me pay

120

My silver fee when I would see the play, But with an easy air, as quite at home, I 'll dare the boxes, pit, or e'en green-room l" HOCUS.

Quiz not poor Proctor, for I much admire

His first production ;-true, it hath not fire, (12) But then around it such a luscious air

Of tender feeling ever hovers near,

That I had hoped for much in future tomes To mend the manners of the drama's domes. pocus.

False hope, alas! Mirando]a appear'd

And, though each friendly critic loudly cheer'd, A few short hours, and his became the doom Of consignation to the Cap'Iets' tomb.

258

130

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

rocus. The stage, alas! is now eonsign'd by all To shows that predicate its utter fall. To-day some pageant where the tailor's skill Vies with the sceaepainter's the breast to thrill;

To-morrow pantomimes, where oft-tried tricks Strive the attention of the house to fix. Perhaps some spurious farce attains a name,

140

And authors' puffing friends pronounce it fame-

A farce where jokes grown stale, and grim grimace Of wit and humour occupy the place; Or haply some gaunt drama drawls along

(13)

Its tedious length by dint o-f many a song.

WllY write not poets plays-the first we have, Witness full many a well-concocted stave? HOCUS.

The others also.

Milman stalks to view,

Surely some honour to his muse is due 1

pocus. Granted-yet his is not the strain we want, Too much between an epic and a chant; 259

J50

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

With step so measured he proceeds along

(14)

That tedious seems his never-changing song. Though void of rule his dramas, yet all rules

That e' er were manufactured in the schools

Appear his pawing Pegasus to rein, Who longs to gambol in a bolder strain. rocns. If Drury's, or its neighb'ring pile were full Of learned dunces, critical and dull,

Then he might hope success; but now, I feart

160

In vain he'd strive t'invoke a single tear. HOCUS.

Besides, it strikes me that the playwright's trade

Is apt the priest's profession to degrade; Not that I 'm strict in such things, but, alas! These are not times to mingle with the mass Those who are separated from it-no, Letpriests with passion make their sermons glow.

pocus. Y et Maturin writes?

260

(1;')

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

aeetrs, He does, aftd ably too ~ Bertram still Pears his head above the ·cr.ew Of crude abortions which 'the stage hath bred;

1170

Creatures no sooner born than -they are dead ~ Though in some parts bombastie he may seem, Yet others amply do the fault redeem. lOCUS.

What think you of his novels? HOCUS.

Here, indeed.

I cannot quite so much applause coneede, His Woman is improbable and wild, His Melmoth of a madman's brain the child, Pity necessity should thus compel A man of God to publish thoughts from Hell!

(16)

pocus. Compel, indeed-I what damning reason ought 180

To have such power when with such -danger fraughtl

261

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

HOCUS.

Not one; but such the temper of the day, These are the sort of books most apt to pay. The ear of public feeling hath become

So dull, that he who shrieks not is thought dumb;

(17)

Out-Herod Herod is the general cry-

Methinks that many now to do this try. There

'8

Lady-I forget her name-who wrote

Glenarvon-

(i8)

POCUS.

190

(That book held its antidote. Though 'twas a tender tale, yet 'twas so wild,

Where was the brain that could be so beguiled 1) HOCUs..

And many more, Godwin and Byron both Deal out excitement wit}! a hand not loth. rocus. First of the former: there in Godwin's works

Is something to draw feeling out of Turks; Their tendency, alas! I cannot praise, 'Tis to teach man to curse his Iengthen'd days. 262

(19)

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

Byron demands a longer notice-

(20)

HOCUS.

Yes, my frieni{, WIlen he is named, what thoughts within me" blendt

200

Of passion plighted, and of vows forgot,

Of all the mis tries of the exile's Iot, Of friends forsaken, woo'd again, and next Extracts from Barrow and Boccaecio mixt 1

His Juan is the index of his mind, There all its contradicting parts we find, Now he will rave of lave, devotion, woe,-In the next line a sneer on each bestow. pocus.

Such is the mao, and, with a fiend-like clasp, Methinks he hath the world within his grasp,

210

The bas-bleu world, I mean, those knowing wights

Who half adore whatever Byron writes, Rapt unto blindness by his dazzling spellJOCUS.

Query-Where does this magic influence dwell ? 263

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

pocus. Partly, because the vaiD and wayward Childe Unbar'd before the woeld his passions wild,

The deep .recesses of his breast exposed,

And all his follies, griefs, and fears disclosed; He made lUntself the hero of his song, The novel plan transfis'd the list'ning throng,

220

Soon he became the common topic.....then, Who could neglect the offSpring of his pen 1-

aoous,

This was the plan Rousseau pursued to lure The Gauls t' enlist beneath his flag impure.--HOCUS.

Byron, too, warbles in a strain above Each common songster in th' Aonian grove ;

A fearlessness-a species of delight Against each old opinion to wage fight...... First he half-makes us think as he does; next

With some strange paradox we are perplex'd,

264

230

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

At length we throw aside the book, and cry,

4.\ riddle both the bard and poetry.

~30

secus. How he lash·d Jeffrey! HOCUS.

Yes t and others, too,

As well as him of" saffron and of blue." JOCUS.

Methinks, whenJ effrey read the twinging book, ~1) HO"N

he would frown upon tllY walls, Craigerook!

T he neighh'ring woods would darker grow the while,

And Fortha's glitt'ring bosom cease to smile. HOCUS.

Alas, for Jeffrey! he

80

idle grows,

Courting on Pentland's braes demure repose, That the Review, to other hands consign'd, No longer owns the chieftain's mightier mind. pocus.

Who fill his place!

265

240

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

HOCUS..

Men of little, note,

With just enough of learniag to misquote; Men with whom sophistry may pass for sense, Bless'd with no scanty lot of impudence.. Horner DQ.longer charms us with a store (22) Of classic sweets cull'd from a Roman shore, But there his bones revolving years consume,

Whilst rapt admirers linger near his tomb: Hazlitt now 61ls the void. lOCUS.

Oh, jaunty wight, 250 Shining in aught that thou essay'st to write, Mighty and wonderful thy name shall he From Chelsea Reach unto the river Lea ! Oft in one man we've seen one virtue shine,

In thee, great Hazlitt, what a host combine: At once wit, critic, painter, politician, And, eke, a moralist and rhetorician !

266

(23)

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

Lord of the happy limits of Cockaign,

With lerrgthen'd empire o'er thy subjects reign; May thy deep Essays teach them how to live, Thy wit delight to all their moments give;

260

Long may'st thou strut mottg tb'admiring street, Receiving homage from each cit you meet! POCUS.

Yau would not have him take the throne of Leigh, That would be worse, my friend, than treacherylOCUS.

Ah! I forgot the true legitimate King of the cockneys' literary state; Yet as a viceroy Hazlitt still may reign

Whilst the chief monarch dares the raging main.

(24)

HOCUS.

When is the -offspring of his royal tour

Its triple sweets npon our coast to pour f POCUS ..

One of the trio is no more: of him Let silence be the fittest requiem;

267

27·0

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

And when the others' send the promised treat,

Doubtless as profitable as discreet, Is hard to tell-I doubt if either can

Say when mature will prove the vaunted plan.

(24·)

HOCUS.

Harold and Rimini, a noble pair,

Will not the first time meet in union there;

The DedicationlOCUS.

Ah! the poignant page To mark the " fellow-feeling" of the age!

(25)

280

Peeping through "Foliage" new Don Juans may, Haply conceal'd, their modest gambols play;

Whilst Manfreds with Leanders boldly stalk Or Heros with Gulnares together walk.

Thrice happy book to make the nations free, And teach benighted Englishmen to see! pocus.

Who '11 usher forth the numbers-e-M urray fears To draw a hurley-burley round his ears?

268

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

JOCUS.

From the pure purlieus of famed Catherinestreet

(26)

Perchance may issue the expected treat.

290

HOCUS.

Fit soil for such a plant-oh! may it ne'er Inhale the breezes of a purer air! Whilst the Examiner deplores its price Reduced, not par nccessiti; but choice; The magic essays shall the press revive,

And teach the brothers how in wealth to live. A glorious couple, hand in hand they'll start, This to convince the head, that sap the heart;

Gaunt Twop'nny's ashes pheenix-Iike will rise By the "great union's' aid to mortal eyes;

Boy Johnnys yet unborn will own its sway, And bas-bleu washerwomen bless the day!

pocus.

Ob! for a blast to sink the noxious freight,

And crush the viper ere it meet our sight !

269

(27)

300

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

HOCUS .

Enough! my friend; suppose we turn to. hooks Worthy, perchance, of more approving looks! pocus.

\V ith all my heart, friend Hocus, I had much Rather avoid obnoxious tomes to touch, But he, who, pluckless, hesitates to blame,

Applauses-or, at least, th' effect '8 the same.

310

HOCUS.

Lo l from a trans-atlantic realm approach Two bulky bales-their hidden stores we '11 broach.

Ah! these are Sketches fit for British use.

(28)

Though from a clime and press far less profuse; True English sentiments pervade each page: Not those now crawling o'er our tainted age, But such as ruled old England in her prime,

In the old-fashion'd and " good olden time." pocus.

Welcome the strangers to a British shore, And of such cargoes let us hope for more!

270

8.20

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

Hl)CtJB.

New en· the feet of Fancy let

1m

&ttoll

To wlrere the torrents o.f the mountain roll.

Lo r to our eyes what lovely scenes a.ppear, The rocky valieyanll the loDely

m"ere,

The copse-girt meado-w and the woody eeaur, Whilst snew-eapt mountains rear their heads afar. lOCUS.

This is a land of poesy and song,

Proclaim the bardsto whom these vales bE'longo HOCUS.

Not few or nameless are they. View yon rock

Seeming the relic of chaotie shock, Though

DOW

130

with verdure clad, SCt £ftrangely wild

Crag above crag, and peak o'er peak is piled ; Beneath it gurgling rill. now court the view. Then hide themselves 'midst flowerl of ev'ty hue. pocus.

Ah! 'tis a scene a poet to deligbt;And make him tuneful ofh-;s. stars in spite!

271

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

HOCUSo

In yonder modest mansion Wordsworth dwells Framing fresh Waggoners and Peter Bells ; Wordsworth, at once philosopher and child,

The sport of every thought however wild,

340

Behold in yon secluded hasel'd glen A wight who stops, proceeds, then stops again;

Approach-a moss obtains his musing care, Anon, his fancy mounts into the air, And in a boat, in lieu of Pegasus,

(29)

He takes a voyage) far and perilous, From sphere to sphere--now like a shooting star

He falls to earth from out his fragile car, And with yon blue-eye'd babe, that idly strays Searching for gaudy flowers, the poet plays.

350

JOCUS.

Such is the man, and such the author too, Yet oft he painteth with a pen so true

That Mem'ry starteth as .she views, the while, And deems that scenes of former pleasures smile.

272

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

HOCUS.

A few'ishon miles, and, under Skiddaw's brow, Where Derwent's fairy mirror floats below Midst shelt'ring bowers, enlaurell'd Southey's home

Uprears to view its hospitable dome. Far from the jar of courts be whiles the time

With hist'ry's treasures, or the sweets of rhyme. 360 JOCUS.

Oh! that his Vision had not met the eyes

or those who study but to criticise! pocus.

Yes, 'tis a foolish thing, unfit to tread The path that Madoc or stern Rod'riek Jed. His Laureaee Odes 000JOClTS.

Are but mawkish trash,

To publish them was impudent and rash, pocus.

He can write ably, both in prose and verse, The latter tunefulc and the former terse. Like you his Life of Wesley? 273

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

HOCUSlI

No, not much, 'Tis not a fitting theme for bim to touch;

370

A compilation crude. he hath but made, Too like the common garbage of" the trade.. t ' Southey should stick to Spain; hes there au fait, And with auspicious guidance makes his way. Either too fond of writing, or of pelf, He volumes writes unworthy of himself; His rivals chuckle, and his foemen laugh,

Hoping his grain will soon be hid by chaff:

pocus. Admire you Christabelle-the Christabelle 1

(80)

HOCUS.

Not in the, least; it is a driv'lling tale

Without a line of beauty to atone For crowing cocks, or mastiff bitches' moan;

'Tis arrant nonsense-so are both the scraps Tack'd at the end, purloin'd from broken naps.

274

380

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

Who would imagine that the self-same wigbt Remorse as well as Christabelle could write? lOCUS.

" 'Tis strange, 'tis passing strange-e-"

pocus. His Mariner Is what can never from the mem'ry stir ; Though wild beyond compare, it somehow tells, And to admire each wond'ring mind compels.

390

roous, In every work they write, bow odd it is These Lakish poets seem to woo the quiz I pocus.

Such is the case; their imitators too

Always hang out this sign to catch the view. Thus Lloyd is smitten with the same disease, Hoping by quaintnesses the world to please. HOCUS.

He shines most in transleeiou-e-

275

(31)

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

POCLS .

Also Lambe,

(62)

Whom Covent Garden once contrived to damn. HOCUS.

His Farce you mean: 'tis better than the mass Of flitting dramas that before us pass.

400

His tales are so affected in their style That oft, in lieu of tears, they cause a smile.

Wilson, though freer from the Lakish cant,

(33)

ls still a little Lakish in his chant.

I-lis City of the Plagtle is but De Foe Deprived in part of his too ardent glow. pocus.

How like you Cro]y ? I-IOCUS.

He is much too fine,

And far too gorgeous in his lavish line; His beauties are o'erwrought, and sober sense

Sinks 'neath a cloud of epithets so dense;

276

410

James lIarley' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

His Paris least, of all his works, abounds

In this unmeaning march of empty sounds. lOCUS.

A truce to converse.-What rich measures greet Our raptured ears

80

musically sweet 1

With art insidious through our veins they steal, And beating pulses all their influence feel;

Brows flusll'd with passion; frequent deep-drawn sighs, Ecstatic lustre in the melting eyes, Proclaim the tenor of the dang'rous lay, And Prudence cries, Forbear the strain to play. 420 HOCUS.

This oft hath Prudence cried when tomes of Moore Have sought our clime from Erin's em'rald shore, But cried in vain-the bard still fondly woos

A loosely-girdled and immodest muse, Yet woos so sweetly, that we almost deem

The verse atones for the too dang'rous theme.

277

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Cease favour'd Child of Song, while yet 'tis time, Tinge with less rosy hues thy luscious rhime; Y au th needs no lay like thine to warm h is soul,

But more demands chill caution, and control. Music and poetry like thine pervade Too oft the bosom of the blooming maid, Rapt by the themes, insidious tempters gain

\Vhat else they might have sought, but sought in vain.

As round the coiling reptile of the west A fascinating vapour seems to rest

(34)

Lulling his victim to an early tombThus treach'rous flowers around Moore's verses

bloom; Dreams, all! too pleasing creep upon the sense Till waking thought deplores lost innocence.

440

'Pocus.

Oh! that his lays like Campbell's shone serene, Whose muse is lovely and of modest mien f

278

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

When o'er his strain my musing fanoybaDgs, Hope sweetly soothes the wounds of Sorrow's fangs, Virtue and Innocence, oh, lovely pair!

Seem like twin spirits hov'ring in the air, Each thought of present sorrow flies away

As Hope proclaims a brighter, future day. JOCUS.

Campbell, devoted to his Magazine, Produces verses few and far between;

450

Alas! that genius such as Ilia should waste

Its strength and sweetness where 'tis so misplaced! Ile ought to leave the Monthly to a mind Somewhat more versatile, and less refined:

The work would renovate, and we again Might bear at least one sweet and blameless strain, Such as were sung of pale O'Connor's child,

Or Gertrude, as her native forests wild. HOCUS.

Behold two bards in garb and gait antique Strike the loud chords with fingers far from weak ;460

279

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Barton and Wiffen.

In this rhiming age

(&5)

E'en solemn Quakers dare the elder's rage;

The accents of the lyre have gain'd

at last

The shade repulsi ve of their beavers vast. Wiffen, though imitator, sweetly sings, And beauties fresh o'er Ampthil's forests flings;

Barton hath struck a more aspiring lyre, And woos at once Moore's softness and Gray's fire;

May they in part unstarch those solemn sons "tho seem constructed like automatons!

470

JOCUS.

The wish I second: though I much commend The calculating coldness of a friend,

(36)

Yet I confess his vest and air uncouth Too much excite the smiles and jeers of youth.

pocus. Cease your discourse, my friends ; I hear a strain

Of mingled clamor echoing o'er the plain.

Hark to the Babel! let us mark the throng As jostling, squabbling, they proceed along.

Who be they ? 280

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

JOCUS. K,ROW

yon not the mighty clan 1

In garb of brown great Gifford leads the van; 480 Four times a year he sends his great guns forth, To meet the cannons of the colder north. pocus. Now I divine your meaning: come, relate Your thoughts of these great guardians of the state• rocus. Too arduous task; they hardly know their own, And alter oft at quarter-day their tone,

pocus.

V\T e faults will pardonJOCUS.

Well then, I '11 essay To tell a scene I saw the other day.

'Twas eve, and. whether sleeping or awake, I know not; but I chanced a stroll to take Across an ample plain of verdant sward, Doubtless on purpose for some fight prepared,

281

490

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

Nor long I wander'd, ere before me sprung Hosts such as Homer or as Tasso sung,

Mighty and numerous,-ob! Muse, be kind,

And with fit energy inspire my mind! Two rival armies fought beneath my sight,

And I, methought, was umpire of the fight; An inch and quarter taller than I

'Ill

wont

To stand, I stood before the embattled front. Stern Gifford was field-marshal on one side,

500 (37)

And well his pen in place of spear he plied. A numerous host in solemn brown array'd, His body-guard, their ink-fill'd pens display'd ; Though strong in limb, and form'd for stubborn blows, In active speed they yielded to their foes, A brawny clan who wore loose kilts of blue,

Which saffron limbs beneath exposed to view: These were good skirmishers, though oft they bled, Too forward by their daring chieftain led,

A man of slender stature, yet whose eye

Spoke him fit ruler of the company.

282

610

James Harlry' (The Press) orLiterary Chit-Chat. A Satire')

Leagned with the Browns, an heterogeneous rank Of merry Scots composed the dexter flank;

(88)

A hardy crew, who ofttimes, as in sport, Lash'd their own party as they fearless fought; Their ruler held an eb'ny wand aloft,

Though at this badge his followers frequent

SCI)W'(I,

Yet, if a foe the truncheon dared to touch,

Soon theycompell'd him 'neath their feet to crouch.5~O pocus. Who were opposed to these? JOCUSa

A blundering band, Led by a Constable, so spoke his wand; In olive dress'd, they fought beside the Bines, And much their blunders did 1l1y mind amuse; Half of their weapons were consumed with rust,

And soon as brandish'd crumbled into dust. Gifford was flank'd upon the left by one

(40)

Who knew full well to wake the trumpet's tone;

283

(39)

British Satire 1785-1840) Volume 3

When he blew forth the proud heroic swell, The charging hosts obey' d the summons well

j

520

Anon he changed his note, and sprung a blast That made tIle eyes of each towards home be cast: Then, with a master's skill, he turn'd the tone, And sighs o'er absent joys no more were thrown,

But Hope a splendid pageant held afar Fraught with the warrior's pleasures after war.

pocus. How did lie fight? JOCUS.

But ill, for, wanting brass, Inferior penrnen