During the next nine years, when the remembrance of Collins and Gray was working a glorious change in the popular mind, he ascended to Pindarics, and closed his lyrics with some such pious invocation as this:—
'And now we'll sing
God save the king,
And send him long to reign,
That he may come
To have some fun
At Montem once again. '
During the first twelve years of the present century, the influence of the Lake school was visible in his productions. In my great work I shall give an elaborate dissertation on his imitations of the high-priests of that worship; but I must now content myself with a single illustration:—
'There's ensign Ronnell, tall and proud,
Doth stand upon the hill,
And waves the flag to all the crowd,
Who much admire his skill.
And here I sit upon my ass,
Who lops his shaggy ears;
Mild thing! he lets the gentry pass,
Nor heeds the carriages and peel's.'
He was once infected (but it was a venial sin) by the heresies of the cockney school; and was betrayed, by the contagion of evil example, into the following conceits:
'Behold admiral Keato of the terrestrial crew, Who teaches Greek, Latin, and likewise Hebrew; He has taught Captain Dampier, the first in the race, Swirling his hat with a feathery grace, Cookson the marshal, and Willoughby, of size, Making minor serjeant-majors in looking-glass eyes.'
But he at length returned to his own pure and original style; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present ode which is very pathetic, and almost Shakspearian:—
'Farewell you gay and happy throng!
Farewell my muse! farewell my song!
Farewell Salt-hill! farewell brave captain.'
Yet, may it be long before he goes hence and is no more seen! May he limp, like his rhymes, for at least a dozen years; for National schools have utterly annihilated our hopes of a successor!"
"I will not attempt to reason with you," said the inquirer, "about the pleasures of Montem;—but to an Etonian it is enough that it brings pure and ennobling recollections—calls up associations of hope and happiness—and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than wisdom, and the great that there is something nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I remember only the nick-names;—they are now degenerated into scheming M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors; -but at Montera they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form Etonians." {4}