70 says veluti in speculum, he is called a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man who cries O. P. a man of letters too? You ran your O. P. against his veluti in speculum, and pray which beat? I prophesied that, though I never told anybody. I take it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally 60 and respectfully in Little Russell Street, and cast their, his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this building before they paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brickwork, English Audience! Look at the brickwork! All plain and smooth like a Quakers' meeting. None of your Egyptian pyramids to entomb subscribers' capitals. No overgrown colonnades of stone, like an alderman's gouty legs in white cotton stockings, fit only to use as rammers for paving Tottenham Court Road. This house is neither after the model of a temple in Athens, no, nor a temple in Moorfields, but it is built to act English plays in: and, provided you have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, I daresay you wouldn't break your hearts if the outside were as plain as the pikestaff I used to carry when I was a sergeant. Apropos, as the French valets say, who cut their masters' throats-apropos, a word about dresses. You must, many of you, have seen what I have read a description of, Kemble and Mrs Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold and silver plastered on their doublets than would have kept an honest family in butcher's meat and flannel from year's end to year's end? I am informed (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted 90 petticoat, a cotton gown, and a mob cap (as the court parasites called it;-it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap-I mean a white cap, with a mob to 80 look at them); and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. Not Salamanca, no, nor Talavera neither, my most Noble Marquess; but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be. Most thinking people, I have heard 1: you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the mob; and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called the scum of the people, and the dregs of the people. I should like to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth -not cheap soup, Mr Wilberforce-not soup for the poor, at a penny a quart, as your 1 mixture of horses' legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated, but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth; take this, examine it, and you will find-mind, I don't vouch for the fact, but I am told-you will find the dregs at the bottom, and the scum at the top. I will endeavour to explain this to you: England is a large earthenware pipkin; John Bull is the beef thrown into it; taxes are the hot water he boils in; rotten boroughs are I: the fuel that blazes under this same pipkin; parliament is the ladle that stirs the hodgepodge, and sometimes... But, hold! I don't wish to pay Mr Newman a second visit. I leave you better off than you have been this many a day: you have a good house over your head; you have beat the French in Spain; the harvest has turned out well; the comet keeps its distance; and red slippers are hawked about in Constantinople for next 1 to nothing; and for all this, again and again I tell you, you are indebted to Mr Whitbread!!! * *The comet of 1811. TOBIAS G. SMOLLETT (1720-1771) THE TEARS OF SCOTLAND MOURN, hapless Caledonia, mourn The wretched owner sees afar What boots it, then, in every clime, The rural pipe and merry lay O baneful cause! O fatal morn, Yet when the rage of battle ceased, The pious mother, doomed to death, Whilst the warm blood bedews my veins, 40 50 1Ο 20 NOT as when some great captain falls To doom, by some stray ball struck dead: Of his determined men, Nor as when sink the civic great, Whose calm, mature, wise words Do we to-day deplore The man that is no more! Our sorrow hath a wider scope, Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,- Not more astounded had we been JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) ON THE DEATH OF DR SWIFT Occasioned by reading the following Maxim in Rochefoucault: 'Dans l' adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplait pas.' As Rochefoucault his maxims drew This maxim more than all the rest [If this perhaps your patience move, Dear honest Ned is in the gout, What poet would not grieve to see To all my foes, dear Fortune, send Thus much may serve by way of proem; Proceed we therefore to our poem. *The time is not remote, when I * The speech may begin here. 80 90 30 40 Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak: 'See how the Dean begins to break! Will never leave him till he's dead. 'For poetry he's past his prime: [And then their tenderness appears By adding largely to my years: 'He's older than he would be reckoned, And well remembers Charles the Second. He hardly drinks a pint of wine; And that, I doubt, is no good sign. His stomach too begins to fail: Last year we thought him strong and hale; My good companions, never fear; For though you may mistake a year, Though your prognostics run too fast, They must be verified at last. Behold the fatal day arrive! 'How is the Dean?'-'He's just alive.' Now the departing-prayer is read; 'He hardly breathes-the Dean is dead!' Before the passing-bell begun, The news through half the town is run: [Here shift the scene, to represent How those I loved my death lament. Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day: St John himself will scarce forbear To bite his pen and drop a tear. The rest will give a shrug, and cry, 'I'm sorry-but we all must die!'] My female friends, whose tender hearts Have better learned to act their parts, Receive the news in doleful dumps: 'The Dean is dead: (pray what is trumps?) Then, Lord have mercy on his soul! (Ladies, I'll venture for the vole) Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall: (I wish I knew what king to call.) [Madam, your husband will attend The funeral of so good a friend?' 'No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight; And he's engaged to-morrow night: My Lady Club will take it ill If he should fail at her quadrille. He loved the Dean-(I lead a heart)— But dearest friends, they say, must part. His time was come: he ran his race; We hope he's in a better place.'] Why do we grieve that friends should die? No loss more easy to supply: One year is past-a different scene! No farther mention of the Dean; Who now, alas! no more is missed Than if he never did exist. Where's now the favourite of Apollo? Departed-and his works must follow; Must undergo the common fate; His kind of wit is out of date. [Suppose me dead; and then suppose A club assembled at the Rose; Where, from discourse of this and that, I grow the subject of their chat: And while they toss my name about, With favour some, and some without, One, quite indifferent in the cause, My character impartial draws: The Dean, if we believe report, Was never ill received at court; Although, ironically grave, He shamed the fool, and lashed the knave; 140 'Sir, I have heard another story: 'What writings has he left behind?' 'Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose: 150 |