Gentles, that no longer your expectations may wander,
Behold our chief actor, amorous LEANDER!
With a great deal of cloth, lapped about him like a scarf:
For he yet serves his father, a Dyer in Puddle Wharf:
Which place we'll make bold with, to call it our Abydus;
As the Bankside is our Sestos, and let it not be denied us.
And far be it from us to deny the use of so reasonable a liberty; especially if the request be backed (as it is in the case of Mr. M.) by the craving and imperious necessities of rhyme. What man who has ever bestrode Pegasus for an hour, will be insensible to such a claim?
Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.
We are next favoured with an enumeration of the Attendants of this "debonair" Nymph, in all the minuteness of a German Dramatis Personae, or a Ropedancer's Handbill.
Haste thee, Nymph; and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles
Such as hang on HEBE's cheek
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
The Author, to prove himself worthy of being admitted of the crew, skips and capers about upon "the light fantastic toe," that there is no following him. He scampers through all the Categories, in search of his imaginary beings, from Substance to Quality, and back again; from thence to Action, Passion, Habit, &c. with incredible celerity. Who, for instance, would have expected cranks, nods, becks, and wreathèd smiles as part of a group in which Jest, Jollity, Sport, and Laughter figure away as full-formed entire Personages? The family likeness is certainly very strong in the two last; and if we had not been told, we should perhaps have thought the act of deriding as appropriate to Laughter as to Sport.
But how are we to understand the stage directions?
Come, and trip it as you go.
Are the words used synonymously? Or is it meant that this airy gentry shall come in a Minuet step, and go off in a Jig? The phenomenon of a tripping crank is indeed novel, and would doubtless attract numerous spectators.
But it is difficult to guess to whom, among this jolly company, the Poet addresses himself: for immediately after the Plural appellative you, he proceeds,