You love, my Friend, with me, I think,
That Age of Lustre and of Link;
Of Chelsea China and long "s"es,
Of Bag-wigs and of flowered Dresses;
That Age of Folly and of Cards,
Of Hackney Chairs and Hackney Bards;
—No H—lts, no K—g—n P—ls were then
Dispensing Competence to Men;
The gentle Trade was left to Churls,
Your frowsy Tonsons and your Curlls;
Mere Wolves in Ambush to attack
The Author in a Sheep-skin Back;
Then Savage and his Brother-Sinners
In Porridge-Island div'd for Dinners;
Or doz'd on Covent Garden Bulks,
And liken'd Letters to the Hulks;—
You know that by-gone Time, I say,
That aimless easy-moral'd Day,
When rosy Morn found Madam still
Wrangling at Ombre or Quadrille,
When good Sir John reel'd Home to Bed,
From Pontack's or the Shakespear's Head;
When Trip convey'd his Master's Cloaths,
And took his Titles and his Oaths;
While Betty, in a cast Brocade,
Ogled My Lord at Masquerade;
When Garrick play'd the guilty Richard,
Or mouth'd Macbeth with Mrs. Pritchard;
When Foote grimac'd his snarling Wit;
When Churchill bullied in the Pit;
When the Cuzzoni sang—
But there!
The further Catalogue I spare,
Having no Purpose to eclipse
That tedious Tale of Homer's Ships;—
This is the Man that drew it all
From Pannier Alley to the Mall,
Then turn'd and drew it once again
From Bird-Cage Walk to Lewknor's Lane;—
Its Rakes and Fools, its Rogues and Sots;
Its brawling Quacks, its starveling Scots;
Its Ups and Downs, its Rags and Garters,
Its Henleys, Lovats, Malcolms, Chartres;
Its Splendour, Squalor, Shame, Disease;
Its quicquid agunt Homines;—
Nor yet omitted to pourtray
Furens quid possit Foemina;—
In short, held up to ev'ry Class
Nature's unflatt'ring looking-Glass;
And, from his Canvass, spoke to All
The Message of a Juvenal.
Take Him. His Merits most aver:
His weak Point is—his Chronicler!
HENRY FIELDING.
(To James Russell Lowell.)
Not from the ranks of those we call
Philosopher or Admiral,—
Neither as Locke was, nor as Blake,
Is that Great Genius for whose sake
We keep this Autumn festival.
And yet in one sense, too, was he
A soldier—of humanity;
And, surely, philosophic mind
Belonged to him whose brain designed
That teeming Comic Epos where,
As in Cervantes and Molière,
Jostles the medley of Mankind.
Our English Novel's pioneer!
His was the eye that first saw clear
How, not in natures half-effaced
By cant of Fashion and of Taste,—
Not in the circles of the Great,
Faint-blooded and exanimate,—
Lay the true field of Jest and Whim,
Which we to-day reap after him.
No:—he stepped lower down and took
The piebald People for his Book!
Ah, what a wealth of Life there is
In that large-laughing page of his!
What store and stock of Common-Sense,
Wit, Wisdom, Books, Experience!
How his keen Satire flashes through,
And cuts a sophistry in two!
How his ironic lightning plays
Around a rogue and all his ways!
Ah, how he knots his lash to see
That ancient cloak, Hypocrisy!
Whose are the characters that give
Such round reality?—that live
With such full pulse? Fair Sophy yet
Sings Bobbing Joan at the spinet;
We see Amelia cooking still
That supper for the recreant Will;
We hear Squire Western's headlong tones
Bawling "Wut ha?—wut ha?" to Jones.
Are they not present now to us,—
The Parson with his Æschylus?
Slipslop the frail, and Northerton,
Partridge, and Bath, and Harrison?—
Are they not breathing, moving,—all
The motley, merry carnival
That Fielding kept, in days agone?