THE MODERN PUFFING SYSTEM
UNLIKE those feeble gales of praise
Which critics blew in former days,
Our modern puffs are of a kind
That truly, really “raise the wind”;
And since they’ve fairly set in blowing,
We find them the best trade-winds going.
What storm is on the deep—and more
Is the great power of Puff on shore,
Which jumps to glory’s future tenses
Before the present even commences,
And makes “immortal” and “divine” of us,
Before the world has read one line of us.
In old times, when the god of song
Drew his own two-horse team along,
Carrying inside a bard or two
Booked for posterity “all through,”
Their luggage a few close-packed rhymes
(Like yours, my friend, for after-times),
So slow the pull to Fame’s abode
That folks oft slumbered on the road;
And Homer’s self sometimes, they say,
Took to his nightcap on the way.
But now, how different is the story
With our new galloping sons of glory,
Who, scorning all such slack and slow time,
Dash to posterity in no time!
Raise but one general blast of puff
To start your author—that’s enough:
In vain the critics sit to watch him,
Try at the starting-post to catch him;
He’s off—the puffers carry it hollow—
The critics, if they please, may follow;
Ere they’ve laid down their first positions,
He’s fairly blown through six editions!
In vain doth Edinburgh dispense
Her blue and yellow pestilence
(That plague so awful in my time
To young and touchy sons of rhyme);
The Quarterly, at three months’ date,
To catch the Unread One comes too late;
And nonsense, littered in a hurry,
Becomes “immortal” spite of Murray.
Thomas Moore.