LORD LYTTLETON.
A Burlesque Ode by Tobias Smollett.
Lord Lyttleton was not only the patron of poets, but was also a minor poet himself. He married, in 1741, Miss Lucy Fortescue, whose death five years afterwards gave him a theme for a monody which contained the following lines:—
In vain I look around
O’er all the well-known ground,
My Lucy’s wonted footsteps to descry;
Where oft we used to walk,
Where oft in tender talk
We saw the summer sun go down the sky;
Nor by yon fountain’s side,
Nor where its waters glide
Along the valley, can she now be found:
In all the wide-stretched prospect’s ample bound,
No more my mournful eye
Can aught of her espy,
But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie.
Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns,
Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns,
By your delighted mother’s side:
Who now your infant steps shall guide?
* * * * *
Smollett, who considered that his merits had been neglected by Lord Lyttleton, wrote the following parody on this monody:—
Where wast thou, wittol Ward, when hapless fate,
From these weak arms mine aged grannam tore:
These pious arms essay’d too late,
To drive the dismal phantom from the door.
Could not thy healing drop, illustrious Quack,
Could not thy salutary pill prolong her days;
For whom, so oft, to Marybone, alack!
Thy sorrels dragg’d thee, thro’ the worst of ways!
Oil-dropping Twick’nham did not then detain
Thy steps, tho’ tended by the Cambrian maids;
Nor the sweet environs of Drury Lane;
Nor dusty Pimlico’s embow’ring shades;
Nor Whitehall, by the river’s bank,
Beset with rowers dank
Nor where th’ Exchange pours forth its tawny sons;
Nor where to mix with offal, soil and blood,
Steep Snow Hill rolls the sable flood;
Nor where the Mint’s contaminated kennel runs;
Ill doth it now beseem,
That thou should’st doze and dream,
When death in mortal armour came,
And struck with ruthless dart the gentle dame.
Her lib’ral hand and sympathising breast,
The brute creation kindly bless’d:
Where’er she trod grimalkin purr’d around,
The squeaking pigs her bounty own’d;
Nor to the waddling duck or gabbling goose,
Did she glad sustenance refuse;
The strutting cock she daily fed,
And turkey with his snout so red;
Of chickens careful as the pious hen,
Nor did she overlook the tomtit or the wren;
While redbreast hopp’d before her in the hall,
As if the common mother of them all.
For my distracted mind;
What comfort can I find;
O best of grannams! thou art dead and gone,
And I am left behind to weep and moan,
To sing thy dirge in sad funereal lay,
Oh! woe is me! alack! and well-a-day!
——:o:——
It is not that my Lot is Low.
(After Henry Kirke White.)
It is not that my “place” was low,
That bids my foolish tear to flow;
It is not that that makes me moan,
But ’tis, that all my money’s gone.
Thro’ slummy back-streets now I roam,
Whene’er I venture out from home;
To luckier souls I leave the rest,
The streets that once I knew the best.
Yet when the plates, of varied size,
With hunger-stirring symphonies
Resound, I think—“A nice grilled bone!”
And sigh that all my money’s gone.
My friends now pass me, cut me dead;
I’m only happy when in bed;
I cannot get more “whisker-dye”
Without committing felony.
My creditors, with angry wail,
Tell all the same relentless tale.
I’ve none to smile with, or make free
Or, when I want it, lend to me
Yet in my dreams a cheque I view,
That’s meant for me—a large one too.
I start, and when the vision’s flown,
I weep that all my money’s gone.
From The Lays of the Mocking Sprite. Cambridge. W. Metcalfe & Sons.
——:o:——
ODE,
(In the Manner of Dr. Samuel Johnson.)
Addressed to a Girl in the Temple, 1777.
While the calescent, sanguine flood,
By vile Vulgarity call’d Blood,
Pervades this mortal frame;
Amaz’d at your translucid charms,
You I solicit to these arms,
Tho’ of procacious name!
When in your dim nocturnal rounds,
Erratic from the Temple’s bounds
Thro’ devious lanes you stray;
With friendly auscultation deign
To audit amatorial pain
Subvected in this lay.
Satellite of the Paphian dame,
Whose rays, tho’ darken’d by thy fame,
Illuminate my mind:
Desert the street, resume the plain,
Rejoin your derelicted swain—
Be prudent, as you’re kind.
My brows, obumbrated with age,
Hang scowling o’er life’s latter-page—
But you, like Lunar beam,
Thro’ my nimbosity arise;
Dispensing, from your lucid eyes,
Refocillating gleam.
From The Wiccamical Chaplet. Edited by George Huddesford. London, Leigh, Sotheby & Son, 1804.
Dr. Johnson wrote the following lines as a skit on the style of Dr. Warton, then Poet-Laureate:—
Hermit hoar, in solemn cell
Wearing out life’s evening grey;
Strike thy bosom sage, and tell
What is bliss, and which the way.
Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed,
Scarce repress’d the starting tear,
When the hoary sage replied,
“Come, my lad, and drink some beer.”
Imitation of the Above.
“Crested warrior, on whose helm
Nodding plumes encircling bind,
Tell me in what happy realm
Valour such as thine to find?”
Thus I said, and envious sighed.
He, who ne’er from battle run,
The mighty warrior, eager cried,—
“Show me how to hold my gun!”
Dr. Johnson wrote the Prologue for the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, in 1747, which was spoken by David Garrick, it commenced with the well known lines:—
“When Learning’s triumph o’er her barbarous foes
First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many colour’d life he drew,
Exhausted Worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting time toil’d after him in vain,”
* * * * *
This was the subject of a political parody in Posthumous Parodies (London, 1814) of which it is only necessary to quote a few lines:—
When Europe’s peril from her Gallic foes
First roused the age, immortal Pitt arose,
Each plot of many colour’d France o’erthrew,
Saved the old world, and overawed the new.
Commerce beheld him stretch her golden reign,
And jealous Whigs toil’d after him in vain:
His lofty thoughts his lofty phrase impress’d,
And admiration throbb’d in ev’ry breast.
* * * * *
