PROPOSALS FOR A NEW ART OF PUFFING.
It has long been felt that all the old arts of puffing have been exhausted, and the consequence is that some of the most renowned masters of the arts formerly in vogue have retired from a field in which nothing more can be gathered. The poet has departed from the Mart of Moses, and the Muses that once hung round the brilliant jet of Warren have deserted those extensive premises in the Strand where every blacking-bottle used to be, as it were, a jet of the Fount of Castaly.
The harp that once in Warren's Mart
The soul of Music shed,
Now mutely lies in Warren's cart,
Or under Warren's bed.
So sleeps the source of Moses' lays,
So Rowlands' puffs are o'er;
And heads once wreathed in poets' bays
Are thumped for rhymes no more.
No more by stanzas, songs, and odes,
Warren his blacking sells;
The van alone the carman loads,
The name of Warren tells.
Thus Moses' muse so seldom wakes;
The only sign she gives
Is when some silly rhymes she makes,
To show that still she lives.
Poetic puffing having been blown to its utmost extent until the over-inflated windbag has burst and collapsed, the oratorical style of puffing having departed with the late lamented George Robins, and the narrative or anecdotal order of puffing having been abandoned by Rowland and Son, of scented memory, nothing remains but to invent a novelty. Acknowledging, as we do, that "there is nothing new under the sun," we sit down on a day when there is no sun to be seen, and on a misty morning in December we ask ourselves whether something new under a fog may not be perceptible. From the huge cauldron of pea-soup, which is emblemed in the London atmosphere, we fancy we discern something, and a new art of puffing is revealed to us in the shape of a Proposal to combine the Commercial with the Comic, and to establish on the ruins of Warren's fitful lyre and Moses' muse's measures a system of comic puffing, containing a joke in every announcement. In order to show how the thing may be done, we give—gratis—a few specimens. We will begin with a few jokes for Royal Tradesmen.
1st. The Queen's shoemaker may advertise himself as "purveyor of shoes to the whole of Her Majesty's foot," and he may also add that "the good footing on which Royalty stands with the people in this country is entirely due to &c. &c., who makes the Queen's shoes, and who sells highlows, &c. &c. &c."
2nd. The Queen's glover may announce that "the affection entertained by the whole nation for the Royal Kids is entirely due to the fact that Her Majesty buys all her gloves of &c. &c."
3rd. The Queen's perfumer may ask conundrumically: "Why is Royalty in such excellent odour in England? Because all the scents used in the palace are purchased at &c. &c."
4th. The Queen's hairdresser may—with a disregard to orthography which is allowable in a perruquier and a punster—hazard the remark "that the true secret of the grace and beauty which adorn the hair to the throne is to be found in the fact that Her Majesty's hair owes its attractiveness to the hand of Nature and the pomade sold only by &c. &c. &c."
We could multiply instances over and over again. But as our object is to suggest a new mine of wealth to those literary men of our day who look to the art of puffing as a mode of obtaining an occasional blow out, we shall not proceed to forestall them in their labours, and take out of their mouths one morsel of that bread which, to the utter consternation of the poet, is now selling at elevenpence the quartern.