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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

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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
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy sons, for valour long renowned,
Lie slaughtered on their native ground!
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.

The wretched owner sees afar
His all become the prey of war;
Bethinks him of his babe and wife,
Then smites his breast, and curses life.
Thy swains are famished on the rocks,
Where once they fed their wanton flocks;
Thy ravished virgins shriek in vain;
Thy infants perish on the plain.

What boots it, then, in every clime,
Through the wide-spreading waste of time,
Thy martial glory, crowned with praise,
Still shone with undiminished blaze?
Thy towering spirit now is broke,
Thy neck is bended to the yoke.
What foreign arms could never quell,
By civil rage and rancour fell.

The rural pipe and merry lay
No more shall cheer the happy day:
No social scenes of gay delight
Beguile the dreary winter-night;
No strains but those of sorrow flow,
And nought be heard but sounds of woe;
While the pale phantoms of the slain
Glide nightly o'er the silent plain.

O baneful cause! O fatal morn,
Accursed to ages yet unborn!
The sons against their fathers stood,
The parent shed his children's blood.

Yet when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor's soul was not appeased:
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murdering steel!

The pious mother, doomed to death,
Forsaken, wanders o'er the heath;
The bleak wind whistles round her head,
Her helpless orphans cry for bread;
Bereft of shelter, food, and friend,
She views the shades of night descend;
And, stretched beneath the inclement skies,
Weeps o'er her tender babes, and dies.

Whilst the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country's fate
Within my filial breast shall beat;
And, spite of her insulting foe,
My sympathising verse shall flow:
'Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!

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NOT as when some great captain falls
In battle, where his country calls,
Beyond the struggling lines
That push his dread designs

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead:
Or, in the last charge, at the head

Of his determined men,
Who must be victors then!

Nor as when sink the civic great,
The safer pillars of the State,

Whose calm, mature, wise words
Suppress the need of swords!-
With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our dead,

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,-
A wonder, blind and dumb,
That waits-what is to come!

Not more astounded had we been
If madness, that dark night, unseen,
Had in our chambers crept,
And murdered while we slept!
We woke to find a mourning earth-
Our Lares shivered on the hearth,-
The roof-tree fallen,-all
That could affright, appal!

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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
From nature, I believe them true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.

This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast:
'In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.'

[If this perhaps your patience move,
Let reason and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equals raised above our size.
Who would not at a crowded show
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you;
But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post,
Suppose it but an inch at most.

Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies racked with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!

What poet would not grieve to see
His brothers write as well as he;
But, rather than they should excel,
Would wish his rivals all in hell?]

To all my foes, dear Fortune, send
Thy gifts, but never to my friend:
I tamely can endure the first;
But this with envy makes me burst.

Thus much may serve by way of proem; Proceed we therefore to our poem.

*The time is not remote, when I
Must, by the course of nature, die!
When, I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
And, though 'tis hardly understood
Which way my death may do them good,

* The speech may begin here.

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Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:

'See how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head

Will never leave him till he's dead.
Besides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he says:
He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before.

'For poetry he's past his prime:
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen ;—
But there's no talking to some men!'

[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;
But now he's quite another thing:
I wish he may hold out till spring!'
They hug themselves, and reason thus:
'It is not yet so bad with us!']

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:
'O may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?
I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.'
['To public uses! there's a whim;
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride!
He gave it all-but first he died.]
And had the Dean, in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!'

[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,

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He shamed the fool, and lashed the knave; 140
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.'

'Sir, I have heard another story:
He was a most confounded Tory;
And grew, or he is much belied,
Extremely dull before he died.']

'What writings has he left behind?'
'I hear they're of a different kind:
A few in verse, but most in prose.'

'Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose:
All scribbled in the worst of times,
To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes;
To praise Queen Anne; nay more, defend her,
As never favouring the Pretender;
Or libels yet concealed from sight,
Against the court to show his spite.
[Perhaps his Travels, Part the Third;
A lie at every second word-

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