Th’ Athenian sages, once of old, ’tis said,
Urg’d by their country’s love—by wisdom led,
Besought the Delphic oracle to show
What best should save them from the neighb’ring foe
—With holy fervor first the priestess burn’d,
Then fraught with presage, this reply return’d:
“Your city, men of Athens, ne’er will fall,
If wisely guarded by a WOODEN WALL.”
—Thus have our fathers indiscreetly thought,
By ancient practice—ancient safety taught,
That this, Great Britain, still should prove to thee
Thy first, thy best, thy last security;
That what in thee we find or great or good,
Had ow’d its being to this WALL of WOOD.—
Above such weakness see great Lenox soar,
This fence prescriptive guards us now no more
Of such gross ignorance asham’d and sick,
Richmond protects us with a wall—of brick;
Contemns the prejudice of former time,
And saves his countrymen by lath and lime.
It is our intention to embarrass this part of the Rolliad as little as possible with any commentaries of our own. We cannot, however, resist the temptation which the occasion suggests, of pronouncing a particular panegyric upon the delicacy as well as dexterity of our author, who, in speaking upon the subject of the Duke of Richmond, that is, upon a man who knows no more of the history, writings, or languages of antiquity than the Marquis of Lansdown himself, or great Rollo’s groom, has yet contrived to collect a great portion of his illustrations from the sources of ancient literature. By this admirable expedient, the immediate ignorance of the hero is inveloped and concealed in the vast erudition of the author, and the unhappy truth that his Grace never proceeded farther in his Latinity, than through the neat and simple pages of Corderius, is so far thrown into the back ground as to be hardly observable, and to constitute no essential blemish to the general brilliancy of the picture.
The poet proceeds to speak of a tribunal which was instituted in the æra he is describing, for an investigation into the professional merits of the noble Duke, and of which he himself was very properly the head. The author mentions the individuals who composed this inquisition, as men of opulent, independent, disinterested characters, three only excepted, whom he regrets as apostates to the general character of the arbitrators. He speaks, however—such is the omnipotence of truth—even of them, with a sort of reluctant tendency to panegyric. He says,
Keen without show, with modest learning, sly,
The subtle comment speaking in his eye;
Of manners polish’d, yet of stubborn soul,
Which Hope allures not—nor which fears control;
See Burgoyne rapt in all a soldier’s pride,
Damn with a shrug, and with a look deride;
While coarse Macbride a busier task assumes,
And tears with graceless rage our hero’s plumes;
Blunts his rude science in the chieftain’s face,
Nor deems—forgive him, Pitt!—a truth, disgrace:
And Percy too, of lineage justly vain,
Surveys the system with a mild disdain.
He consoles the reader, however, for the pain given him by the contemplation of such weakness and injustice, by hastening to inform him of the better and wiser dispositions of the other members of the tribunal;
—But ah! not so the rest—unlike to these,
They try each anxious blandishment to please;
No skill uncivil e’er from them escapes,
Their modest wisdom courts no dang’rous scrapes;
But pure regard comes glowing from the heart,
To take a friend’s—to take a master’s part;
Nor let Suspicion with her sneers convey,
That paltry Int’rest could with such bear sway.
Can Richmond’s brother be attach’d to gold?
Can Luttrell’s friendship, like a vote, be sold?
O can such petty, such ignoble crimes,
Stain the fair æra of these golden times,
When Pitt to all perfection points the way,
And pure Dundas exemplifies his lay?
When Wilkes to loyalty makes bold pretence,
Arden to law, the Cabinet to sense;
When Prettyman affects for truth a zeal,
And Macnamaras guard the common-weal;
When lawyers argue from the holy writ,
And Hill would vie with Sheridan in wit;
When Camden, first of Whigs, in struggles past,
Teiz’d and tormented quits the cause at last;
When Thurlow strives commercial skill to show,
And even Sydney something seems to know;
When honest Jack declines in men to trade,
And court majorities by truth are sway’d;
When Baker, Conway, Cavendish, or Byng,
No more an obloquy o’er senates fling;
When———
But where could a period be put to the enumeration of the uncommon appearances of the epoch in question?—The application of the term honest, prefixed to the name of the person described in the last line of the above passage but three, sufficiently circumscribes the number of those particular Jacks who were at this moment in the contemplation of our author, and lets us with facility into the secret that he could mean no other than the worthy Mr. John Robinson himself.—The peculiar species of traffic that the poet represents Mr. Robinson to have dealt in, is supposed to allude to a famous occurrence of these times, when Mr. R. and another contractor agreed, in a ministerial emergency, to furnish government with five hundred and fifty-eight ready, willing, obedient, well-trained men, at so much per head per man, whom they engaged to be perfectly fit for any work the minister could put them to. Tradition says, they failed in their contract by somewhat about two hundred.—We have not heard of what particular complexion the first order were of, but suppose them to have been blacks.
We collect from history, that the noble Duke had been exposed to much empty ridicule on account of his having been, as they termed it, a judge in his own cause, by being the President of that Court, whose exclusive jurisdiction it was to enquire into supposed official errors imputed to himself. The author scouts the venom of those impotent gibers, and with great triumph exclaims,
If it be virtue but yourself to know,
Yourself to judge, is sure a virtue too.
Nothing can be more obvious—all judgment depends upon knowledge; and how can any other person be supposed to know a man so well as he does himself? We hope soon to see this evidently equitable principle of criminal jurisprudence fully established at the Old Baily; and we are very much inclined to think, that if every house-breaker, &c. was in like manner permitted to judge himself, the susceptible heart would not be altogether so often shocked with spectacles of human massacre before the gates of Newgate, as, to the great disgrace of our penal system, it now is.