Still Skeffington and Goose divide the prize. | |
And sure | |
For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays | |
600 | Renown’d alike; whose genius ne’er confines |
Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs; | |
Nor sleeps with ‘Sleeping Beauties,’ but anon | |
In five facetious acts comes thundering on, | |
While poor John Bull, bewilder’d with the scene, | |
605 | Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean; |
But as some hands applaud, a venal few! | |
Rather than sleep, why John applauds it too. | |
Such are we now. Ah! wherefore should we turn | |
To what our fathers were unless to mourn? | |
610 | Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame, |
Or kind to dulness do you fear to blame? | |
Well may the nobles of our present race | |
Watch each distortion of a Naldi’s face; | |
Well may they smile on Italy’s buffoons, | |
615 | And worship Catalani’s pantaloons, |
Since their own drama yields no fairer trace | |
Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace. | |
Then let Ausonia, skill’d in every art | |
To soften manners, but corrupt the heart, | |
620 | Pour her exotic follies o’er the town, |
To sanction Vice, and hunt Decorum down: | |
Let wedded strumpets languish o’er Deshayes, | |
And bless the promise which his form displays; | |
While Gayton bounds before th’ enraptured looks | |
625 | Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes: |
Let high-born lechers eye the lively Prêsle | |
Twirl her light limbs, that spurn the needless veil; | |
Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, | |
Wave the white arm, and point the pliant toe; | |
630 | Collini trill her love-inspiring song, |
Strain her fair neck, and charm the listening throng! | |
Whet not your scythe, suppressors of our vice! | |
Reforming saints! too delicately nice! | |
By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save, | |
635 | No Sunday tankards foam no barbers shave; |
And beer undrawn, and beards unmown, display | |
Your holy reverence for the Sabbath-day. | |
Or hail at once the patron and the pile | |
Of vice and folly, Greville and Argyle! | |
640 | Where yon proud palace, Fashion’s hallow’d fane, |
Spreads wide her portals for the motley train, | |
Behold the new Petronius | |
Our arbiter of pleasure and of play! | |
There the hired eunuch, the Hesperian choir, | |
645 | The melting lute, the soft lascivious lyre, |
The song from Italy, the step from France, | |
The midnight orgy, and the mazy dance, | |
The smile of beauty, and the flush of wine, | |
For fops, fools, gamesters, knaves, and lords combine: | |
650 | Each to his humour – Comus all allows; |
Champaign, dice, music, or your neighbour’s spouse. | |
Talk not to us, ye starving sons of trade! | |
Of piteous ruin, which ourselves have made; | |
In Plenty’s sunshine Fortune’s minions bask, | |
655 | Nor think of poverty, except ‘en masque,’ |
When for the night some lately titled ass | |
Appears the beggar which his grandsire was, | |
The curtain dropp’d, the gay burletta o’er, | |
The audience take their turn uon the floor | |
660 | Now round the room the circling dow’gers sweep, |
Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters leap; | |
The first in lengthen’d line majestic swim, | |
The last display the free unfetter’d limb! | |
Those for Hibernia’s lusty sons repair | |
665 | With art the charms which nature could not spare; |
These after husbands wing their eager flight, | |
Nor leave much mystery for the nuptial night. | |
Oh! blest retreats of infamy and ease, | |
Where all forgotten but the power to please | |
670 | Each maid may give a loose to genial thought, |
Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught: | |
There the blithe youngster, just return’d from Spain, | |
Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main; | |
The jovial caster’s set, and seven’s the nick, | |
675 | Or – done! – a thousand on the coming trick! |
If, mad with loss, existence ’gins to tire, | |
And all your hope or wish is to expire, | |
Here’s Powell’s pistol ready for your life, | |
And, kinder still, two Pagets for your wife; | |
680 | Fit consummation of an earthly race |
Begun in folly, ended in disgrace; | |
While none but menials o’er the bed of death, | |
Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy wavering breath; | |
Traduced by liars, and forgot by all, | |
685 | The mangled victim of a drunken brawl, |
To live like Clodius, and like Falkland fall. | |
Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand | |
To drive this pestilence from out the land. | |
E’en I – least thinking of a thoughtless throng, | |
690 | Just skill’d to know the right and choose the wrong, |
Freed at that age when reason’s shield is lost, | |
To fight my course through passion’s countless host, | |
Whom every path of pleasure’s flow’ry way | |
Has lured in turn, and all have led astray – | |
695 | E’en I must raise my voice, e’en I must feel |
Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal; | |
Although some kind, censorious friend will say, | |
‘What art thou better, meddling fool, | |
And every brother rake will smile to see | |
700 | That miracle, a moralist in me. |
No matter – when some bard in virtue strong, | |
Gifford perchance, shall raise the chastening song, | |
Then sleep my pen for ever! and my voice | |
Be only heard to hail him, and rejoice; | |
705 | Rejoice, and yield my feeble praise, though I |
May feel the lash that Virtue must apply. | |
As for the smaller fry, who swarm in shoals | |
From silly Hafiz up to simple Bowles, | |
Wh should we call them from their dark abode | |
710 | In broad St Giles’s or in Tottenham-road? |
Or (since some men of fashion nobly dare | |
To scrawl in verse) from Bond-street or the Square? | |
If things of ton their harmless lays indite, | |
Most wisely doom’d to shun the public sight, | |
715 | What harm? In spite of every critic elf, |
Sir T. may read his stanzas to himself; | |
Miles Andrews still his strength in couplets try, | |
And live in prologues, though his dramas die. | |
Lords too are bards, such things at times befall, | |
720 | And ’tis some praise in peers to write at all. |
Yet, did or taste or reason sway the times, | |
Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes? | |
Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled, | |
No future laurels deck a noble head | |
725 | No muse will cheer, with renovating smile, |
The paralytic puling of Carlisle. | |
The puny schoolboy and his early lay | |
Men pardon, if his follies pass away; | |
But who forgives the senior’s ceaseless verse, | |
730 | Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse? |
What heterogeneous honours deck the peer! | |
Lord, rhymester, petit-maître, pamphleteer! | |
So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age, | |
His scenes alone had damn’d our sinking stage; | |
735 | But managers for once cried, ‘Hold, enough!’ |
Nor drugg’d their audience with the tragic stuff. | |
Yet at their judgment let his lordship laugh, | |
And case his volumes in congenial calf; | |
Yes! doff that covering, where morocco shines, | |
740 | And hang a calf-skin |
With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead, | |
Who daily scribble for your daily bread; | |
With you I war not: Gifford’s heavy hand | |
Has crush’d, without remorse, your numerous band. | |
745 | On ‘all the talents’ vent your venal spleen; |
Want is your plea, let pity be your screen. |