"Let us a plainer, steadier theme pursue,
Mark the grim savage scoop his light canoe,
Mark the fell leopard through the forest prowl,
Fish prey on fish, and fowl regale on fowl;
How Lybian tigers' chawdrons love assails,
And warms, midst seas of ice, the melting whales;
Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts,
Shrinks shrivelled shrimps, but opens oysters' hearts;
Then say, how all these things together tend
To one great truth, prime object, and good end?
"First—to each living thing, whate'er its kind,
Some lot, some part, some station is assigned
The feathered race with pinions skim the air;
Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear....
Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise,
Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies?
When did the owl, descending from her bower,
Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower;
Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,
In the salt wave, and fish-like strive to swim?
The same with plants—potatoes 'tatoes breed—
Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed,
Lettuce from lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed,
Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume
To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom;
Man, only—rash, refined, presumptuous man,
Starts from his rank, and mars Creation's plan;
Born the free heir of Nature's wide domain,
To art's strict limits bounds his narrowed reign,
Resigns his native rights for meaner things,
For faith and fetters, laws, and priests, and kings."
The "Anti-Jacobin" was continued under the name of the "Anti-Jacobin Review," and in this modified form lasted for upwards of twenty years. It was mostly a journal of passing events, but there were a few attempts at humour in its pages.
CHAPTER X.
Wolcott—Writes against the Academicians—Tales of a Hoy—"New Old Ballads"—"The Sorrows of Sunday"—Ode to a Pretty Barmaid—Sheridan—Comic Situations—"The Duenna"—Wits.
Wolcott, a native of Devonshire, was educated at Kingsbridge, and apprenticed to an apothecary. He soon discovered a genius for painting and poetry, and commenced to write about the middle of the last century as Peter Pindar. He composed many odes on a variety of humorous subjects, such as "The Lousiad," "Ode to Ugliness," "The Young Fly and the Old Spider," "Ode to a Handsome Widow," whom he apostrophises as "Daughter of Grief," "Solomon and the Mouse-trap," "Sir Joseph Banks and the Boiled Fleas," "Ode to my Ass," "To my Candle," "An Ode to Eight Cats kept by a Jew," whom he styles, "Singers of Israel." Lord Nelson's night-cap took fire as the poet was wearing it reading in bed, and he returned it to him with the words,
"Take your night-cap again, my good lord, I desire,
For I wish not to keep it a minute,
What belongs to a Nelson, where'er there's a fire,
Is sure to be instantly in it."
In "Bozzi and Piozzi" the former says:—
"Did any one, that he was happy cry,
Johnson would tell him plumply 'twas a lie;
A lady told him she was really so,
On which he sternly answered, 'Madam, no!
Sickly you are, and ugly, foolish, poor,
And therefore can't be happy, I am sure.'"
Upon Pope.
"'Grant me an honest fame, or grant me none,'
Says Pope, (I don't know where,) a little liar,
Who, if he praised a man, 'twas in a tone
That made his praise like bunches of sweet-briar,
Which, while a pleasing fragrance it bestows,
Pops out a pretty prickle on your nose."