—— never said a foolish thing;
Nor ever did a wise one,
sent a letter to the University of Cambridge, forbidding the members to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, and read their sermons!! It is needless to remark, that TOBACCO has not yet made its EXIT IN FUMO, and that periwigs still continue to adorn “THE HEADS OF HOUSES.” Till the present all-prevailing, all-accommodating fashion of CROPS became general in the university, no young man presumed to dine in hall till he had previously received a handsome trimming from the hair-dresser (one of which calling was a special appointment to each college.) The following inimitable imitation of “The Bard” of Gray, is ascribed to the pen of the late Lord Erskine, when a fellow-commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge. Having been disappointed of the attendance of his college-barber, he was compelled to forego his commons in hall. But determining to have his revenge, and give his hair-dresser a good DRESSING, he sat down and penned the following “Fragment of a Pindaric Ode,” wherein, “in imitation of the despairing Bard of Gray, who prophesied the destruction of King Edward’s race, he poured forth his curses upon the whole race of barbers, predicting their ruin in the simplicity of a future generation.”
I.
Ruin seize thee, scoundrel Coe!
Confusion on thy frizzing wait;
Hadst thou the only comb below,
Thou never more shouldst touch my pate.
Club, nor queue, nor twisted tail,
Nor e’en thy chatt’ring, barber! shall avail
To save thy horse-whipp’d back from daily fears,
From Cantab’s curse, from Cantab’s tears!
Such were the sounds that o’er the powder’d pride
Of Coe the barber scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Jackson’s slippery lane,
He wound with puffing march his toilsome, tardy way.
II.
In a room where Cambridge town
Frowns o’er the kennel’s stinking flood,
Rob’d in a flannel powd’ring gown,
With haggard eyes poor Erskine stood;
(Long his beard and blouzy hair
Stream’d like an old wig to the troubled air;)
And with clung guts, and face than razor thinner,
Swore the loud sorrows of his dinner.
Hark! how each striking clock and tolling bell,
With awful sounds, the hour of eating tell!
O’er thee, oh Coe! their dreadful notes they wave,
Soon shall such sounds proclaim thy yawning grave;
Vocal in vain, through all this ling’ring day,
The grace already said, the plates all swept away.
III.
Cold is Beau * * tongue,
That soothed each virgin’s pain;
Bright perfumed M * * has cropp’d his head:
Almacks! you moan in vain.
Each youth whose high toupee
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-cropt head,
In humble Tyburn-top we see;
Esplashed with dirt and sun-burnt face;
Far on before the ladies mend their pace,
The Macaroni sneers, and will not see.
Dear lost companions of the coxcomb’s art,
Dear as a turkey to these famished eyes,
Dear as the ruddy port which warms my heart,
Ye sunk amidst the fainting Misses’ cries.
No more I weep—they do not sleep:
At yonder ball a slovenly band,
I see them sit, they linger yet,
Avengers of fair Nature’s hand;
With me in dreadful resolution join,
To Crop with one accord, and starve their cursed line.
IV.
Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of barber’s race;
Give ample room, and verge enough,
Their lengthened lanthorn jaws to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When all their shops shall echo with affright;
Loud screams shall through St. James’s turrets ring,
To see, like Eton boy, the king!
Puppies of France, with unrelenting paws,
That crape the foretops of our aching heads;
No longer England owns thy fribblish laws,
No more her folly Gallia’s vermin feeds.
They wait at Dover for the first fair wind,
Soup-meagre in the van, and snuff roast-beef behind.