Merit and good Fortune.
Notre mérite nous attire l’estime des honnêtes gens, et notre étoile celle du public.
The Petition of a Monkey—Lord Erskine, late Chancellor.
The late Lord Chancellor Erskine was at the commencement of his career in life in the army, and when a young Ensign was quartered at Minorca, under the command of General Johnston, whose wife, the Lady Cecilia, had a favourite monkey, which had so incurred her disgrace from its mischievous propensities, as to have been ordered to be sent out of the house. Mr. Erskine having learnt the sad fate which awaited the culprit monkey, and being invited to dine at the Government house, wrote the following lines, and placed them in Peter’s paw; they were thus offered to his mistress’s attention as the party passed on to the dining room, and obtained Peter’s pardon.
The Petition of a Monkey under Sentence of Exile.
The humble petition of sorrowful Peter!
With submission set forth, and runs thus in metre.
I think if I’m rightly informed of the crime
For which I am banish’d, it stands thus in rhyme;
For tearing of books, for mischief and stealing,
And tricks of all kinds, from the ground to the ceiling.
All culprits are punished, if Lord Coke says true,
Not for love of revenge, but for harm that they do;
On this common maxim my pleadings I found,
And th’ affair of the book must soon fall to the ground.
There was never a book, I’ll be bound to engage,
Above all, in our day, but might well spare a page,
And mankind, as well as e’en authors, might look
With smiles on a monkey devouring a book.
’Tis as well for a volume, I’ll hazard an oath,
To be chew’d by a monkey, as by critic or moth:
And then, as to reading, all wits have confest it,
You never can profit, unless you digest it;
And monkeys and men, from the north to the south,
Can only digest what they put in their mouth.
Much more might be said, if I chose to enlarge,
But I’d rather proceed to the rest of my charge.
To accuse me of mischief, and tax me with stealing,
Is really a want of all sense and all feeling,
Since Nature, who ripens the figs and the grapes,
Is no nearer kindred to man than to apes;
And the fair teeming Earth, our bountiful mother,
Loves Peter as dearly as Adam his brother.
’Tis because you are strongest, you seize upon all,
And the weakest, we know, must be forc’d to the wall.
Equipt as I am, in my shabby old gray,
I cannot quite hazard what other folks may;
But could I, yet I speak with respect and submission,
By some lucky hit get an Ensign’s commission—
I see you all laugh, but titter away,
I’m not the first monkey, I’ll venture to say.
’Tis no such hard matter to play well at cards,
And I think I should soon be the ton in the Guards.
As to height, I confess with regret I’m not tall,
But Lord A—c—m and I might parade in the Mall.
And a bag from Miss Brace,[3] with a good handsome wig,
Might, I think, pretty soon put on foot an intrigue.
What might not be done with my air, and my shape,
At a Court where ’tis the fashion to look like an ape?
What duels! what battles! what murders! what slaughters!
What tears would be shed both by mothers and daughters!
What groups in the anguish of cutting a horn,
Would wish in despair I had never been born!
Yet faith, to my sorrow I fear I should see
Ten thousand much more like to monkeys than me,
And mad for some fair one might steal forth to meet her,
And find her eloping with some other Peter.
Yet spite of these rubs, I should have the renown,
To be one of the finest young fellows in town.
Then since exile’s my fate, I implore with a tear,
To be shipped off for England, for that is my sphere.
If to this my petition, you start no objection,
My cousin, Tom Erskine, has pledged his protection,
I suppose, like the Scots—on account of connection!
[3] A celebrated Milliner of the day. Lord Ancram was of particularly low stature.