How naturally do we feel disposed to join with the dying drummer, in the pathetic apostrophe which he addresses to his hero, when he foresees that this attention will necessarily be diverted to other objects:—
Alas! no longer round thy favorite STOWE,
Shalt thou the nicer arts to artists show,
No more on thumb-worn cushions deign to trace,
With critic touch, the texture of bone-lace;
And from severer toils, some moments robbing!
Reclaim the vagrant thread, or truant bobbin!
Far, other scenes of future glory rise,
To glad thy sleeping, and thy waking eyes;
As busy fancy paints the gaudy dream,
Ideal docks, with shadowy navies teem:
Whate’er on sea, on lake, or river floats,
Ships, barges, rafts, skiffs, tubs, flat-bottom’d boats,
Smiths, sailors, carpenters, in busy crowds,
Mast, cable, yard, sail, bow-sprit, anchor, shrowds,
Knives, gigs, harpoons, swords, handspikes, cutlass blades,
Guns, pistols, swivels, cannons, carronades:
All rise to view!—All blend in gorgeous show!
Tritons and tridents, turpentine, tar—tow!
We will take upon ourselves to attest, that neither Homer nor Virgil ever produced any thing like this. How amiable, how interesting, is the condescension of the illustrious Marquis, while he assists the old women in his neighbourhood in making bone-lace! How artfully is the modest appearance of the aforesaid old women’s cushions (which we are also told were dirty cushions) contrasted with the splendor and magnificence of the subsequent vision! How masterly is the structure of the last verse, and how nobly does the climax rise from tritons and tridents—from objects which are rather picturesque than necessary—to that most important article tow! an article “without which,” in the opinion of Lord Mulgrave, “it would be impossible to fit out a single ship.”
The drummer is next led to investigate the different modes of meliorating our navy; in the course of which he introduces the Marquis’s private thoughts on flax and forest-trees; the natural history of nettles, with proofs of their excellence in making cables; a project to produce aurum fulminans from Pinchbeck’s metal, instead of gold, occasioned by admiral Barrington’s complaint of bad powder; a discussion of Lord Ferrers’s mathematical mode of ship-building; and a lamentation on the pertinacity with which his Lordship’s vessels have hitherto refused to sail. The grief of the Marquis on this occasion, awaking all our sympathy—
Sighing, he struck his breast, and cried, “Alas!
Shall a three decker’s huge unwieldy mass,
’Mid croud of foes, stand stupidly at bay,
And by rude force, like Ajax, gain the day?
No!—let Invention!———”
And at the moment his Lordship becomes pregnant, and is delivered of a project that solves every difficulty.
The reader will recollect Commodore Johnstone’s discovery, that “the aliquot parts being equal to the whole, two frigates are indisputably tantamount to a line of battle-ship; nay, that they are superior to it, as being more manageable.” Now, a sloop being more docile than a frigate, and a cutter more versatile than a sloop, &c. &c. is it not obvious that the force of any vessel must be in an inverse ratio to its strength? Hence, Lord Buckingham most properly observes,
Our light arm’d fleet will spread a general panic,
For speed is power, says Pinchbeck, the mechanic.
The only objection to this system, is the trite professional idea, that ships having been for some years past in the habit of sailing directly forwards, must necessarily form and fight in a straight line; but according to Lord Buckingham’s plan, the line of battle in future is to be like the line of beauty, waving and tortuous; so that if the French, who confessedly are the most imitative people on the earth, should wish to copy our manœuvres, their larger ships will necessarily be thrown into confusion, and consequently be beaten.
But as Sir Gregory Page Turner finely says, “infallibility is not given to human nature.” Our prodigious Marquis, therefore, diffident of his talents, and not yet satisfied with his plan, rakes into that vast heap of knowledge, which he has collected from reading, and forms into one compost, all the naval inventions of every age and country, in order to meliorate and fertilize the colder genius of Great Britain. “In future,” says the drummer,