Here are those who gave motive to sock and to buskin;
With critics, historians, poets galore;
A cheaply uniformed set of Ruskin,
Which Ruskin would hate from his heart's very core;
Molière ('99), an old calf-bound edition,
"De Pierre Didot l'aîné, et de Firmin Didot."
Which, meek and demure, with a sort of contrition,
Is masking its gun-lights, with fun all aglow;
And Smollett and Fielding, as veterans battered—
Cloth stripped from their backs, and their sides out of joint,
Their pictures of life all naked and tattered
Being thus applied to themselves with a point;
And six or eight books that I wrote myself,
To look at which, even, I'm half afraid;
They brought me more labor and pleasure than pelf,
And are clamoring still because they're not paid.
But these raw levies remain still faithful,
Because they know that volumes old
Stand by me, although their eyes dim and wraithful
Remind me they seldom at profit were sold.
So I say, be they splendid or tatterdemalion,
If only you know what they mean by their looks,
You will never find a better battalion
Of soldiers to serve you than well-tried books.
ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS.
Walter Learned. Written for the present collection.
At Cato's-Head in Russell Street
These leaves she sat a-stitching;
I fancy she was trim and neat,
Blue-eyed and quite bewitching.
Before her, in the street below,
All powder, ruffs, and laces,
There strutted idle London beaux
To ogle pretty faces;
While, filling many a Sedan chair
With hoop and monstrous feather,
In patch and powder London's fair
Went trooping past together.
Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
They sauntered slowly past her,
Or printer's boy, with gown and cap
For Steele, went trotting faster.