All ages, and all countries, shall combine,
To form our navy’s variegated line.
Like some vast whale, or all-devouring shark,
High in the midst shall rise old Noah’s ark:
Or, if that ark be lost, of equal bulk,
Our novel Noah rigs—the Justice Hulk:
An Argo next, the peerless Catherine sends,
The gorgeous gift of her Mingrelian friends:
Here we cannot repress our admiration at the drummer’s skill in geography and politics. He not only tells us that Mingrelia is the ancient Colchis, the country visited by the Argonauts, the country which was then so famous for its fleeces, and which even now sends so many virgins to the Grand Seignior’s seraglio, but he foresees the advantages that will be derived to the navy of this kingdom, by the submission of his Mingrelian majesty to the Empress of Russia. But to proceed:
And next, at our Canadian brethren’s pray’r,
Ten stout triremes the good pope shall spare!
We apprehend, with all due submission to the drummer, that here is a small mistake. Our Canadian brethren may indeed possess great influence with the Pope, on account of their perseverance in the Catholic religion; but as all the triremes in his holiness’s possession are unfortunately in bass-relief and marble, we have some doubt of their utility at sea.
Light-arm’d evaas, canoes that seem to fly,
Our faithful Oberea shall supply:
Gallies shall Venice yield. Algiers, xebecs—
But thou, Nanquin, gay yachts with towering decks;
While fierce Kamtschatka———
But it is unnecessary to transcribe all the names of places mentioned by our drummer in sailing eastward towards Cape Horn, and westward to the Cape of Good Hope. We flatter ourselves that we have sufficiently proved the stupendous and almost unnatural excellence of the new Lord Buckingham; and that we have shewn the necessity of innovation in the navy as well as in the constitution; we therefore shall conclude this number, by expressing our hope and assurance, that the salutary amputations which are meditated by the two state surgeons, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Wyvill, will speedily be followed by equally skilful operations in our marine; and that the prophecy of the dying drummer will be fulfilled in the completion of that delightful event—the nomination of the noble Marquis to the department of the admiralty!
* * * * *
NUMBER III.
Having concluded his description of the Marquis of Buckingham, our expiring prophet proceeds to the contemplation of other glories, hardly less resplendent than those of the noble Marquis himself. He goes on to the DUKE of RICHMOND.
In travelling round this wide world of virtue, for as such may the mind of the noble Duke be described, it must be obvious to every one, that the principal difficulty consists—in determining from what quarter to set out; whether to commence in the frigid zone of his benevolence, or in the torrid hemisphere of his loyalty; from the equinox of his œconomy, or from the terra australis of his patriotism. Our author feels himself reduced to the dilemma of the famous Archimedes in this case, though for a very different reason, and exclaims violently for the Δος που στω, not because he has no ground to stand upon, but because he has too much—because puzzled by the variety, he feels an incapacity to make a selection. He represents himself as being exactly in the situation of Paris between the different and contending charms of the three Heathen Goddesses, and is equally at a loss on which to bestow his detur pulcherimæ. There is indeed more beauty in this latter similitude than may at first view appear to a careless and vulgar observer: the three goddesses in question being, in all the leading points of their description, most correctly typical of the noble Duke himself. As for example—Minerva, we know, was produced out of the head of Jove, complete and perfect at once. Thus the Duke of Richmond starts into the perfection of a full-grown engineer, without the ceremony of gradual organization, or the painful tediousness of progressive maturity.—Juno was particularly famed for an unceasing spirit of active persecution against the bravest and most honourable men of antiquity. Col. Debbeige, and some other individuals of modern time, might be selected, to shew that the noble Duke is not in this respect without some pretensions to sympathy with the queen of the skies.—Venus too, we all know, originated from froth. For resemblance in this point, vide the noble Duke’s admirable theories on the subject of parliamentary melioration.