by Thomas Moore
Which a Premier gives to one who wishes
To taste of the Treasury loaves and fishes.
It actually lifts the lucky elf,
Thus acted upon, above himself; —
He jumps to a state of clairvoyance,
And is placeman, statesman, all, at once!
These effects, observe (with which I begin),
Take place when the patient’s motioned in;
Far different of course the mode of affection,
When the wave of the hand’s in the out direction;
The effects being then extremely unpleasant,
As is seen in the case of Lord Brougham, at present;
In whom this sort of manipulation,
Has lately produced such inflammation,
Attended with constant irritation,
That, in short — not to mince his situation —
It has workt in the man a transformation
That puzzles all human calculation!
Ever since the fatal day which saw
That “pass” performed on this Lord of Law —
A pass potential, none can doubt,
As it sent Harry Brougham to the right about —
The condition in which the patient has been
Is a thing quite awful to be seen.
Not that a casual eye could scan
This wondrous change by outward survey;
It being, in fact, the interior man
That’s turned completely topsy-turvy: —
Like a case that lately, in reading o’er ’em,
I found in the Acta Eruditorum,
Of a man in whose inside, when disclosed,
The whole order of things was found transposed;
By a lusus naturae, strange to see,
The liver placed where the heart should be,
And the spleen (like Brougham’s, since laid on the shelf)
As diseased and as much out of place as himself.
In short, ’tis a case for consultation,
If e’er there was one, in this thinking nation;
And therefore I humbly beg to propose,
That those savans who mean, as the rumor goes,
To sit on Miss Okey’s wonderful case,
Should also Lord Parry’s case embrace;
And inform us, in both these patients’ states,
Which ism it is that predominates,
Whether magnetism and somnambulism,
Or, simply and solely, mountebankism.
1 The name of the heroine of the performances at the North London Hospital.
THE SONG OF THE BOX.
Let History boast of her Romans and Spartans,
And tell how they stood against tyranny’s shock;
They were all, I confess, in my eye, Betty Martins
Compared to George Grote and his wonderful Box.
Ask, where Liberty now has her seat? — Oh, it isn’t
By Delaware’s banks or on Switzerland’s rocks; —
Like an imp in some conjuror’s bottle imprisoned,
She’s slyly shut up in Grote’s wonderful Box.
How snug!— ‘stead of floating thro’ ether’s dominions,
Blown this way and that, by the “populi vox,”
To fold thus in silence her sinecure pinions,
And go fast asleep in Grote’s wonderful Box.
Time was, when free speech was the life-breath of freedom —
So thought once the Seldens, the Hampdens, the Lockes;
But mute be our troops, when to ambush we lead ’em,
“For Mum” is the word with us Knights of the Box.
Pure, exquisite Box! no corruption can soil it;
There’s Otto of Rose in each breath it unlocks;
While Grote is the “Betty,” that serves at the toilet,
And breathes all Arabia around from his Box.
’Tis a singular fact, that the famed Hugo Grotius
(A namesake of Grote’s — being both of Dutch stocks),
Like Grote, too, a genius profound as precocious,
Was also, like him, much renowned for a Box; —
An immortal old clothes-box, in which the great Grotius
When suffering in prison for views heterodox,
Was packt up incog. spite of jailers ferocious,1
And sent to his wife,2 carriage free, in a Box!
But the fame of old Hugo now rests on the shelf,
Since a rival hath risen that all parallel mocks; —
That Grotius ingloriously saved but himself,
While ours saves the whole British realm by a Box!
And oh! when, at last, even this greatest of Grotes
Must bend to the Power that at every door knocks,
May he drop in the urn like his own “silent votes,”
And the tomb of his rest be a large Ballot-Box.
While long at his shrine, both from county and city,
Shall pilgrims triennially gather in flocks,
And sing, while they whimper, the appropriate ditty,
“Oh breathe not his name, let it sleep — in the Box.”
1 For the particulars of this escape of Grotius from the Castle of Louvenstein, by means of a box (only three feet and a half long, it is said) in which books used to be occasionally sent to him and foul linen returned, see any of the Biographical Dictionaries.
2 This is not quite according to the facts of the case; his wife having been the contriver of the stratagem, and remained in the prison herself to give him time for escape.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF A NEW THALABA.
ADDRESSED TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
When erst, my Southey, thy tuneful tongue
The terrible tale of Thalaba sung —
Of him, the Destroyer, doomed to rout
That grim divan of conjurors out,
Whose dwelling dark, as legends say,
Beneath the roots of the ocean lay,
(Fit place for deep ones, such as they,)
How little thou knewest, dear Dr. Southey,
Altho’ bright genius all allow thee,
That, some years thence, thy wondering eyes
Should see a second Thalaba rise —
As ripe for ruinous rigs as thine,
Tho’ his havoc lie in a different line,
And should find this new, improved Destroyer
Beneath the wig of a Yankee lawyer;
A sort of an “alien,” alias man,
Whose country or party guess who can,
Being Cockney half, half Jonathan;
And his life, to make the thing completer,
Being all in the genuine Thalaba metre,
Loose and irregular as thy feet are; —
First, into Whig Pindarics rambling,
Then in low Tory doggrel scrambling;
Now love his theme, now Church his glory
(At once both Tory and ama-tory),
Now in the Old Bailey-lay meandering,
Now in soft couplet style philandering;
And, lastly, in lame Alexandrine,
Dragging his wounded length along,
When scourged by Holland’s silken thong.
In short, dear Bob, Destroyer the Second
May fairly a match for the First be reckoned;
Save that your Thalaba’s talent lay
In sweeping old conjurors clean away,
While ours at aldermen deals his blows,
(Who no great conjurors are, God knows,)
Lays Corporations, by wholesale, level,
Sends Acts of Parliament to the devil,
Bullies the whole Milesian race —
Seven millions of Paddies, face to face;
And, seizing that magic wand, himself,
Which erst thy conjurors left on the shelf,
Transforms the boys of the Boyne and Liffey
All into foreigners, in a jiffy —
Aliens, outcasts, every soul of ’em,
Born but for whips
and chains, the whole of ’em?
Never in short did parallel
Betwixt two heroes gee so well;
And among the points in which they fit,
There’s one, dear Bob, I cant omit.
That hacking, hectoring blade of thine
Dealt much in the Domdaniel line;
And ’tis but rendering justice due,
To say that ours and his Tory crew
Damn Daniel most devoutly too.
RIVAL TOPICS.1
AN EXTRAVAGANZA.
Oh Wellington and Stephenson,
Oh morn and evening papers,
Times, Herald, Courier, Globe, and Sun,
When will ye cease our ears to stun
With these two heroes’ capers?
Still “Stephenson” and “Wellington,”
The everlasting two! —
Still doomed, from rise to set of sun,
To hear what mischief one has done,
And t’other means to do: —
What bills the banker past to friends,
But never meant to pay;
What Bills the other wight intends,
As honest, in their way; —
Bills, payable at distant sight,
Beyond the Grecian kalends,
When all good deeds will come to light,
When Wellington will do what’s right,
And Rowland pay his balance.
To catch the banker all have sought,
But still the rogue unhurt is;
While t’other juggler — who’d have thought?
Tho’ slippery long, has just been caught
By old Archbishop Curtis; —
And, such the power of papal crook,
The crosier scarce had quivered
About his ears, when, lo! the Duke
Was of a Bull delivered!
Sir Richard Birnie doth decide
That Rowland “must be mad,”
In private coach, with crest, to ride,
When chaises could be had.
And t’other hero, all agree,
St. Luke’s will soon arrive at,
If thus he shows off publicly,
When he might pass in private.
Oh Wellington, oh Stephenson,
Ye ever-boring pair,
Where’er I sit, or stand, or run,
Ye haunt me everywhere.
Tho’ Job had patience tough enough,
Such duplicates would try it;
Till one’s turned out and t’other off,
We Shan have peace or quiet.
But small’s the chance that Law affords —
Such folks are daily let off;
And, ‘twixt the old Bailey and the Lords,
They both, I fear, will get off.
1 The date of this squib must have been, I think, about 1828-9.
THE BOY STATESMAN.
BY A TORY.
“That boy will be the death of me.”
Matthews at Home.
Ah, Tories dear, our ruin is near,
With Stanley to help us, we cant but fall;
Already a warning voice I hear,
Like the late Charles Matthews’ croak in my ear,
“That boy — that boy’ll be the death of you all.”
He will, God help us! — not even Scriblerius
In the “Art of Sinking” his match could be;
And our case is growing exceeding serious,
For, all being in the same boat as he,
If down my Lord goes, down go we,
Lord Baron Stanley and Company,
As deep in Oblivion’s swamp below
As such “Masters Shallow,” well could go;
And where we shall all both low and high,
Embalmed in mud, as forgotten lie
As already doth Graham of Netherby!
But that boy, that boy! — there’s a tale I know,
Which in talking of him comes àpropos.
Sir Thomas More had an only son,
And a foolish lad was that only one,
And Sir Thomas said one day to his wife,
“My dear, I cant but wish you joy.
“For you prayed for a boy, and you now have a boy,
“Who’ll continue a boy to the end of his life.”
Even such is our own distressing lot,
With the ever-young statesman we have got;
Nay even still worse; for Master More
Wasn’t more a youth than he’d been before,
While ours such power of boyhood shows,
That the older he gets the more juvenile he grows,
And at what extreme old age he’ll close
His schoolboy course, heaven only knows; —
Some century hence, should he reach so far,
And ourselves to witness it heaven condemn,
We shall find him a sort of cub Old Parr,
A whipper-snapper Methusalem;
Nay, even should he make still longer stay of it,
The boy’ll want judgment, even to the day of it!
Meanwhile, ’tis a serious, sad infliction;
And day and night with awe I recall
The late Mr. Matthews’ solemn prediction,
“That boy’ll be the death, the death of you all.”
LETTER
FROM LARRY O’BRANIGAN TO THE REV. MURTHAGH O’MULLIGAN.
Arrah, where were you, Murthagh, that beautiful day? —
Or how came it your riverence was laid on the shelf,
When that poor craythur, Bobby — as you were away —
Had to make twice as big a Tomfool of himself.
Troth, it wasnt at all civil to lave in the lurch
A boy so deserving your tindhr’est affection: —
Too such iligant Siamase twins of the Church,
As Bob and yourself, ne’er should cut the connection.
If thus in two different directions you pull,
‘Faith, they’ll swear that yourself and your riverend brother
Are like those quare foxes, in Gregory’s Bull,
Whose tails were joined one way, while they lookt
another!1
Och blest be he, whosomdever he be,
That helpt soft Magee to that Bull of a Letther!
Not even my own self, tho’ I sometimes make free
At such bull-manufacture, could make him a betther.
To be sure, when a lad takes to forgin’, this way,
’Tis a thrick he’s much timpted to carry on gayly;
Till, at last, his “injanious devices,”2
Show him up, not at Exether Hall, but the Ould Bailey.
That parsons should forge thus appears mighty odd,
And (as if somethin’ “odd” in their names, too, must be,)
One forger, of ould, was a riverend Dod,
“While a riverend Todd’s now his match, to a T.3
But, no matther who did it all blessin’s betide him,
For dishin’ up Bob, in a manner so nate;
And there wanted but you, Murthagh ‘vourneen, beside him,
To make the whole grand dish of bull-calf complate.
1 “You will increase the enmity with which they are regarded by their associates in heresy, thus tying these foxes by the tails, that their faces may tend in opposite directions.” — Bob’s Bull read, at Exeter Hall, July 14.
2 “An ingenious device of my learned friend.” — Bob’s Letter to Standard.
3 Had I consulted only my own wishes, I should not have allowed this hasty at tack on Dr. Todd to have made its appearance in this Collection; being now fully convinced that the charge brought against that reverend gentleman of intending to pass off as genuine his famous mock Papal Letter was altogether unfounded. Finding it to be the wish, however, of my reverend friend — as I am now glad to be permitted to call him — that both the wrong and the reparation, the Ode and, the Palinode, should be thus placed in juxtaposition, I have thought it but due to him
, to comply with his request.
MUSINGS OF AN UNREFORMED PEER.
Of all the odd plans of this monstrously queer age,
The oddest is that of reforming the peerage; —
Just as if we, great dons, with a title and star,
Did not get on exceedingly well as we are,
And perform all the functions of noodles by birth
As completely as any born noodles on earth.
How acres descend, is in law-books displayed,
But we as wiseacres descend, ready made;
And by right of our rank in Debrett’s nomenclature,
Are all of us born legislators by nature; —
Like ducklings to water instinctively taking,
So we with like quackery take to lawmaking;
And God forbid any reform should come o’er us,
To make us more wise than our sires were before us.
The Egyptians of old the same policy knew —
If your sire was a cook, you must be a cook too:
Thus making, from father to son, a good trade of it,
Poisoners by right (so no more could be said of it),
The cooks like our lordships a pretty mess made of it;
While, famed for conservative stomachs, the Egyptians
Without a wry face bolted all the prescriptions.
It is true, we’ve among us some peers of the past,
Who keep pace with the present most awfully fast —
Fruits that ripen beneath the new light now arising
With speed that to us, old conserves, is surprising.
Conserves, in whom — potted, for grandmamma uses —
’Twould puzzle a sunbeam to find any juices.
’Tis true too. I fear, midst the general movement,
Even our House, God help it, is doomed to improvement,
And all its live furniture, nobly descended
But sadly worn out, must be sent to be mended.
With movables ‘mong us, like Brougham and like Durham,
No wonder even fixtures should learn to bestir ’em;
And distant, ye gods, be that terrible day,
When — as playful Old Nick, for his pastime, they say,
Flies off with old houses, sometimes, in a storm —
So ours may be whipt off, some night, by Reform;
And as up, like Loretto’s famed house,1 thro’ the air,
Not angels, but devils, our lordships shall bear,
Grim, radical phizzes, unused to the sky,
Shall flit round, like cherubs, to wish us “good-by,”
While perched up on clouds little imps of plebeians,
Small Grotes and O’Connells, shall sing Io Paeans.
