Classic Poem

F. What! can you think the world will read your lays,
Or, if it reads them, e'er accord its praise?
Are there not myriads, fools that haunt the town,
And strive to cram their vapid nothings down,
That you must join the irritable throng,
Squeeze out your weekly sonnet, ode, or song;
Or scribble an epistle that will lie
Unread at best, p'rhaps line a trunk with Pye,
Or mingle with Scotch Letters by a Lord,
Wrapt round red herrings on a huxter's board?

A. Nay, spare your censures. If the town can bear
Pratt's dogs, that mourn with lank dishevelled hair,
Cats, and canary-birds, and tales of woe,
That outwhine all the pupils of Rousseau;
If all the maudlin sonnetteers that weep
Cock-chaffers, lap-dogs, jackasses and sheep,
A frog, crushed caterpillar, or a fly,
If these can find admirers, may not I?

F. Why, 'faith, 'tis doubtful.

A. I may trust, I think,
The known omnipotence of jetty ink;
And now since honest folks, when books they buy,
Choose them or by the finger or the eye;
Now, since a work with creamy paper graced,
With sure success lays claim to wit and taste,
Since hot-pressed pages give the best pretence
To force, to genius, judgment, and sound sense,
Bulmer shall be my printer, every line
On wire-wove foolscap, or bright crown, shall shine;
High-wrought vignettes my title-page shall grace,
And Pybus, quite outdone, shall hide his face;
Pybus, whom jealous indignation fired,
When first he marked how every art conspired
To deck our honoured Shakspeare's matchless page:
But soon to emulation turned his rage,
And " Yes, " he cried, " the Alderman shall see
" That I can be magnificent as he:
" Superb my book shall blaze before the town,
" And Shakspeare's self shall yield to me the crown. "

F. Nay, if you're willing to quit all pretence
To judgment, reason, and to common sense;
If you are pleased your verses should be seen
Mixt with aenigmas on a medley skreen;
If this suffices, and you think this fame,
Write on, and welcome, write, in Folly's name.

A. 'Tis true I am not one whose fertile brain,
With bare six weeks' gestation, without pain,
Drops a mis-shapen mass, half verse, half prose,
To blot his country's name, to laud her foes;
Then bids the thing in new editions take
Some faint resemblance to the epic make!
Aping the labours of the mother bear,
Who licks, 'tis said, with fond and pious care,
Her unformed offspring, till its limbs receive
All the proportions that a bear can give.
'Tis true my lips ne'er touched Castalia's stream,
Nor did I ever on Parnassus dream,
Nor ever wished: I supplicate no Muse
To stimulate my fancy, to infuse
Spirit and energy, to fire my brain,
Or quicken my reluctant lagging strain;
Let but my indignation breathe its fire,
'Tis all the inspiration I desire;
This shall point out the vice I ought to curse,
And give an honest ardour to my verse;
This shall point out the coxcomb and the fool,
Nor let me want fit terms of ridicule.......

F. But why this warmth?

A. Warmth! heavens! is there no cause?
Look round; see dukes and marquisses pull straws;
See viscounts, earls, and barons, fixed in state,
To view....a race of maggots o'er a plate:
Their wives and daughters, equally refined,
To faro wholly dedicate the mind;
These, like their sires and lords, their thousands bet,
Lose they? their honour may discharge the debt.
See tradesmen ape the vices of the great,
Game, whore, and, though they break for't, eat off plate.

F. Why this is madness in its wildest strains,
Worthy strait waistcoats, straw, rods, whips, and chains;
Some ranting methodist your brain has fed
With frenzied railings, and has turned your head.

A. Still 'tis all truth....and sure this frantic age
Might justify the last extremes of rage.
When Virtue quakes upon her tottering throne
At crimes to Roman satirists unknown;
When Ignorance and Vice in compact stand,
Spreading Egyptian darkness o'er the land;
When, though we cast a longing eye around,
Free from the plague no Goshen may be found;
When loud sham-patriots shout in treason's cause,
When lucky villains mock the baffled laws,
When vainly Kenyon bared his arm to throw
The bolts of justice against Virtue's foe;
While yet, by upright Eldon's frown unawed,
Still swell extortion, peculation, fraud;
Is this a time my passion's rage to rein,
To smooth my verse, or qualify my strain,
To pause for softening terms, or meanly fear,
To shock with simple truth a rascal's ear?
Perish the thought! be dumb the treacherous tongue
That bids me lose the roughness of my song!
No gentle lash makes Vice or folly sore,
Who bids them feel must cut them to the core,
Not tickle them, as if 'twixt sport and ire,
But use the fierceness of the caustic's fire.

F. Such is the plea of all who wanting skill
Adroitly and with art their prey to kill,
Treat it with all the rudeness of a clown,
And, just like bungling butchers, knock it down.

A. It needs no skill to call owls dull and grave,
To call a cat a cat, or Snob a knave.

F. I know your temper, and have often seen
Your weak endeavours to conceal your spleen;
I know your heart, that only loves to rail,
Most pleased when gall and bitterness prevail:
And yet, suppose I grant these pictures true,
Pictures that rage devoid of candour drew,
Yet might the age that sees fair Science raise
Her drooping head, demand some little praise,
Some small applause; and though your headlong strain
May rail at fancied vice, yet may the train
Of rising arts that decorate the age
Demand their eulogy e'en in your page:
Then give them honour....

A. Now 'tis plain you jeer;
Your praise is but the cover of a sneer;
'Tis plain your fields of science and of taste
Are but a fairy scene, a desart waste.

F. I jeer! Not I, by heaven! E'en you must own,
Could you but quit this misanthropic tone,
That science shines with more than common ray....

A. Why yes....And this the daily papers say....
Look at the Chronicle, Courier, and Times,
And Morning Post, that teems with flimsy rhymes;
Inspect their pregnant columns, there you'll find
Science enough to stupify the mind:
Ross teaches you the science of a curl,
While Brodum bids you safely take a girl;
Senate's love-stirring Lozenges of steel,
And cures for pains you feel, or think you feel;
Health, and long life, and Analeptic pills,
For ills unknown to mortuary bills;
Elixirs, Balms of Gilead, meet the eye,
Demand your lips, and for precedence cry;
With these a never to be numbered throng
Of Patents claim the celebrating song;
Coffins that mock the surgeon's carving room,
And wrap you snugly till the day of doom;
Razors that shave without the aid of hands,
Wigs, waterclosets, Blacking for St. James's Bands:
All these, and more I know not how to name,
All these stand up competitors for fame;
Each his pretensions on his merit founds,
The public thinks that each for hope has grounds;
But, could the public view them, with my eyes,
Packwood and Hanger should split the prize
At least till Beddoes deigns to let us see
A patent gained for immortality.

F. Mere idle mockery! Yet you'll forbear,
To touch the arts, at least the pencil spare.

A. One art at least, and with exulting eyes,
One art, at least, I see from darkness rise;
Emerge in splendour to adorn our isle,
Cheered by a gracious Monarch's fostering smile.
Though Bromley rails, and swears our English school
Has not yet passed the art's first vestibule,
Because the' Academy could find no nook
Fit to receive the dulness of his book;
Though Wolcott rails on West....though he lets fall
The bitterness and rancour of his gall,
Or boldly ventures, in the tones of spleen,
To criticise a work he has not seen;
Yet, by Saint Luke, I mock their moody ire,
Thrown as it is on talents all admire.
Thee, West, the various powers of art obey,
The great, the graceful, terrible, and gay:
With equal ease thy skilful pencil roves
Through flowery fields with Venus and her doves;
Gives us the classic scene, the sober gloom,
The learned tone of Archimedes' tomb;
In warmer tints bids gayer scenes arise,
Bids fair Calypso charm in airy dyes,
Or drives the terrible wild path along,
Sublime in grandeur, in expression strong.
Who can, unmoved, thy Regulus behold?
Who see that scene, and yet his praise withhold?
Where, nobly stern of soul, the Chieftain stands
Unmoved, 'midst weeping, supplicating bands;
Turns from the scenes that nursed his early years,
Though love and friendship court his stay with tears,
Though Carthage bids her fires of torture burn,
And on her shores Death waits for his return....
Still does the snarling wretch dispute thy claim
To excellence, to honour, praise, and fame?
Then show him where thy dying hero lies,
Who beams expression, though from fading eyes,
Who calls on glory with his parting breath,
And grasps the laurel in the arms of death.
Yet, not to scenes of earth alone confined,
The fire and ardent temper of thy mind
Gives thee the secrets of the' abyss to spy
Upon the seraph wings of ecstasy.
To paint what he in Patmos, who heard cry
The warning voice that sounded from on high,
Saw in the' Apocalypse, when heaven revealed
Visions till then from mortal eyes concealed;
When he, the conqueror, went forth, when to slay
Went forth the power that takes all peace away,
When Death rode on, and with him hell was poured
To kill with plagues, with famine, and the sword.
Thy pencil too has shown us how abode
On Ararat the man beloved of God;
Veiled in mysterious cloud, in mist, and dark,
Beneath the arch of promise, stands the Ark:
The fountains of the deep are shut; the tide
Ebbs from the mountain top; the waves subside;
All pale and wan in death's own proper hue,
The victims of heaven's justice meet the view;
And he, the subtle one, man's foe of old,
Suspends his length in many a loosened fold,
Type of his doom to come; the waves above
Her silver pinions bear the spotless dove.
These all are thine; yet still so versatile,
So strong thy powers, so prompt in every style,
That every subject finds its proper tone,
And character exclusively its own.

F. From you this candour! so much praise from you!
This panegyric strain is something new:
But will it last?

A. Last! 'Tis my chief delight.
Place objects worthy praise before my sight,
Then straight my fancy with its theme shall glow,
Then with spontaneous warmth my verse shall flow.
Reproof is painful, and the caustic song,
That pours its rage upon the guilty throng,
Gives trouble to its author, but the strain
That sings of Peace and Virtue's golden reign
Brings pleasure, brings complacency to all,
But those whose souls o'erflow with spleen and gall.
You name the arts, and I with gladness haste
To praise one artist blessed with strength and taste;
One more remains.....While others err by rule,
And regularly play the sober fool,
Ape the dull school of Mengs, and such as he,
Who draw their figures by geometry,
Lo! where soars Fuseli, through realms of light
Darting with ardent glance his piercing sight;
On high he rides: terror around him flings,
And visits scenes that Milton only sings.
The Dragon in the tempest of his wrath
He paints, and walks a visionary path;
Embodies thought, through fields of fancy flies,
And sports with forms unseen of mortal eyes;
Shows bright Titania's revels in her grove,
Or binds the cestus round the waist of Love;
While these, and more than than these, whom genius fires,
Whom purest zeal to raise the art inspires,
Whose ardent spirit o'er the vulgar towers,
To noblest subjects dedicate their powers;
Behind, a throng of luckless artists see,
Condemned to low and servile drudgery,
To waste their talents on a booby's face,
And toil to give unmeaning features grace.

F. What! your old style? I feared your breath of praise
Would quickly be exhausted. Yet why raise
Your voice against the useful powers that save
From Time's fell grasp the good, the wise, the brave;
That aid the' historic and poetic page
To hand down virtue to a future age?

A. With you I praise the pencil that bids rise
Heroes of other days before our eyes,
Perpetuates the features of the brave,
And all the worth that decorates its age.
Oft have I blessed the pencil that can steal
From absence half its bitterness, reveal
The form of one beloved, and bless our eyes
With friends that wander under other skies;
Still must I join the verse that ridicules
The flatterers of those presumptuous fools
Who give their numbskulls, dressed by art divine,
And highly varnished, in rich frames to shine.
Lawrence, or Hoppner, or Sir William, knows
What he who paints a portrait undergoes;
How e'en their skill may fail to satisfy
The cravings of self-love and vanity:
They know how oft the withered cheek demands
The bloom of youthful roses from their hands;
How oft the dead dim eye demands the ray
Of fires extinct, alas! for many a day;
And he who carries dullness in his face
Expects expression, liveliness, and grace.
He who does suit and service with his art,
To these, at best, but acts a servile part,
The nurse of folly: yet less guilty far
Than those convenient tools (if such there are,
As rugged Barry seems to hint) who lend
Their rooms for meetings with a private friend.

F. Mere surliness in Barry, spleen in you....
Nay, if this rude invective you pursue,
Music, that heavenly art, whose pleasing sway
At once the cruel and the mild obey;
Music, that sternest, fiercest souls has tamed,
Music itself will hardly pass unblamed.

A. You think me of my censures too profuse;....
'Tis not the art itself, but its abuse
That I condemn. Is there no food for rage
In the perverting spirit of the age,
When the great masters of the moving lyre,
Whose powers sublimest feelings might inspire,
Charm the rapt sense no more; for Handel's song,
All various, lofty, plaintive, sweet, or strong,
Of power to give to softest sadness birth,
Or lift the soul above the scenes of earth;
For the rich sweetness of Corelli's strain,
For Purcel's magic, lo, a quavering train,
Who place all music in the dextrous skill
Of high bravura, neat shake, or smooth trill;
These swarm in all our concerts, fill the stage,
And gain loud plaudits from a stupid age.

F. What! you condemn the wretches in a mass?

A. No....with some others, I'll let Vinci pass;
Her execution, taste, tone, magic look,
Would charm us even in the songs of Hook.
But for those fools, who, other fools to please,
Play tricks, like rope-dancers, upon the keys,
For these I have no mercy; yet they throng
E'en on our tragic stages, and ere long
It will not much surprise me if Othello
Smothers his wife to a sweet ritornello,
While she, all underneath the sheets, shall sing ye
A tear-compelling aria by Mazzinghi.

F. The care of managers forbids that dread.

A. I know not that....so long on folly fed,
The town might like it, and, as usual, say,
" Well, that Othello is a pretty play. "
Too well the manager his interest knows
To talk of folly when the house o'erflows.
Whate'er the public taste, 'tis his to please,
And now, the way once found, 'tis done with ease.
Brinsley saw well the temper of the age,
Saw how for noise and show prevailed a rage,
Marked with keen eye the temper of the town,
And found that nonsense only would go down;
Then, though in realms of wit he shone alone,
And saw the walks of humour all his own,
He decked his crown with sprigs of German bays,
And e'en from Anna Plumptre borrowed praise.
Now, Shakspeare's scenes to deck, the dance and song,
Pageants, and shows, and the procession's throng,
Must be combined. All Hamlet's charms are lost
In the superior beauties of the ghost;
And half the actors, scorning the plain door,
Must rise on traps and engines through the floor.
E'en Lear touches not by his distresses
Unless that dear Miss Rein performs the dresses.
Yet let proud Drury's managers beware,
For rivals rise the public praise to share;
Let them take special heed, or they may fall
Before the strong attractions of Vauxhall;
For Blue-beard's gardens shine not half so bright
As Ranelagh, or Vauxhall's gala night.
Lewis himself, with his infernal hosts,
Must yield to Astley's most transcendant ghosts.
Hide, Kemble, hide thy face, and blush to see
Vauxhall in elephants excel e'en thee,
Out-gild thy pageants with a single car,
And gain a victory without a war.

F. This will not save your book....howe'er debased,
Howe'er depraved and sunk the public taste,
Still some there are, the favoured sons of song,
Who shine conspicuous o'er the vulgar throng;
These have the power, with but a single frown,
Or sneer, from your bold hopes to strike you down;
And should these spare you, still some lurking foe,
Some good Anonymous may aim a blow,
Some snarling critic a false rhyme may quote,
Some angry wit may damn you in a note,
Stab with a pun, destroy with half a jest,
Or murder you with all Joe Miller's zest.
Still lives the bard, he at whose dreaded name
All fools are pale, or hang the head in shame;
Still Gifford lives, whose many sounding strain
Scattered the witlings of Bell's tinkling train;
Think'st thou that he whose satire could not spare
Doggrel and nonsense, even in the fair,
From whose rebuke Matilda went not free,
Think'st thou that he in mercy will pass thee?

A. If candid wit, if genius strikes the blow,
Some consolation in my fate I know,
Enjoy the brightness of the satire's beam,
And praise the ridicule, myself its theme.
Sure 'twere to die like that famed bird whose nest
Holds all the scents of Araby the blest,
For whom their fragrance gums and spikenard lend,
Their odours frankincense and cassia blend,
Who clasps her wings exulting in the fires,
And blest amid oppressive sweets expires.
Where, Gifford, is the promise that thy hand
Should strike a nobler, more reluctant band?
Why sleep thy bolts, why in thy quiver lie
The shafts that bid the brood of folly die?
Ripe for thy song, the vices of the age
Demand the fullest ardour of thy rage;
Then wake thou; from thy languid slumber start;
Prepare thy bow; make ready the keen dart;
Strengthen thine arm: then on religion's foe,
On guilt and villainy inflict the blow;
Nor put thou off thy wrath, till on the ground
Vice groans, laid low, and pierced with many a wound.