Classic Poem

I.

A man I sing whom memory reveres;
Hallowed the spot where now he lies in earth;
Learning and genius there may mingle tears,
With virtue weeping over moral worth.
Clio, the first of Muses, hailed his birth;
But Momus, ever flouting, laughed outright,
To think that when to manhood grown, what mirth
Would be provoked by so grotesque a wight
So oddly formed as he, who was Eudoxus hight.

II.

And when adult, with Erudition's store
His early taste and judgment were supplied;
He drained the sources of historic lore,
Then poured them back through Europe purified;
Majestic, deep, yet smooth and clear the tide;
And Elegance, obedient to his call,
Sailed down his flow of words in swan-like pride;
But oh! how wondrous the Decline and Fall,
To " look upon his face, " and then " forget it all! "

III.

Like a carved pumpkin was his classic jole;
Flesh had the solo of his chin encored;
Puffed were his cheeks, his mouth a little hole,
Just in the centre of his visage bored;
His nose should to a pug have been restored.
A dame whose blindness was a piteous case,
And whose soft hand his countenance explored,
No features in so fat a mass could trace,
But said it was a thing below the human face.

IV.

His person looked as funnily obese
As if a pagod, growing large as man,
Had rashly waddled off its chimney-piece,
To visit a Chinese upon a fan.
Such his exterior; curious 'twas to scan!
And oft he rapped his snuff-box, cocked his snout,
And ere his polished periods he began,
Bent forwards, stretching his forefinger out,
And talked in phrase as round as he was round about.

V.

Oh! kindly peer! who hand his likeness down,
Through partiality's mistaken zeal,
Why did you tempt ingenious Mrs. Brown,
And make her for her pocket-scissors feel,
To cut his shade out with her ruthless steel?
(His posthumous Memoirs were quite enough),
Why stick it up on either long, long heel,
And in a frontispiece the carcass stuff,
To look like an erect black tadpole taking snuff?

VI.

'Tis not, my lord, an uncouth shape nor head
That should surviving tenderness control
To hide the outlines of the mighty dead,
But 'tis a grave man's ugliness that's droll;
The face and body then burlesque the soul;
Sir Joshua's flattery would scarcely do
To screen from laughter the historian's poll;
To place him in derision's broadest view,
Was left to Mrs. Brown, to friendship, and to you!

VII.

Yet trust me, peer, I mean not to offend;
Affection warm as yours the muse respects;
For who could ever so expose a friend
Till fondly purblind to that friend's defects?
Your sense was dazzled by his intellects;
The wrapt enthusiast, seldom seeing clear,
A charming author with his book connects;
You saw him in his graceful style appear,
And fancied Punch had grown Apollo Belvedere.

VIII.

Cramped in finances, weary of the town,
Through well-earned fame with new ambition fired,
And decked with Literature's laurel crown,
Eudoxus to Helvetia's clime retired;
There competence was wealth, there health respired.
Amid the Alps, high towering to the skies,
(Types of his mind!) fresh vigour he acquired,
In wider scope Rome's Annals to comprise,
And on an empire's fall still brilliantly to rise.

IX.

From thy romantic scenery, Lausanne!
Soon as his labours reached their destined home,
The rumour round the big-wig circles ran,
Till eagerly the world grasped every tome!
Reviewing wasps about the honeycomb
Stung where the could at a most stingless rate,
While Cadell, fattening in the Strand on Rome,
Proudly exclaimed in bibliothec state,
" Who sells great authors' works must sure himself be great. "

X.

Yet poring authors relaxation need,
And must, Apollo-like, the bow unbend;
Must walk — or else, when very fat indeed,
Their sitting brings them to their latter end.
Eudoxus could on foot a hill descend ,
And so, if he had tried, could Doctor Slop;
But climb an Alpine steep! " Oh, heaven defend!
That tugging project he resolved to drop,
Though nature's richest charms invited to the top. "