Place elephants for want of towns.
Here would be towns and elephants too, the popular and the prodigious. How much would not Swift do for Ireland, in this geography of wit and talent! What a figure would not St. Patrick's Cathedral make! The other day, mention was made of a 'Dean of St. Patrick's' now living; as if there was, or ever could be, more than one Dean of St. Patrick's! In the Irish maps we should have the Saint himself driving out all venomous creatures (what a pity that the most venomous retain a property as absentees!); and there would be the old Irish kings, and O'Donoghue with his White Horse, and the lady of the 'gold wand' who made the miraculous virgin pilgrimage, and all the other marvels of lakes and ladies, and the Round Towers still remaining to perplex the antiquary, and Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village', and Goldsmith himself, and the birthplaces of Steele and Sterne, and the brief hour of poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Carolan with his harp, and the schools of the poor Latin boys under the hedges, and Castle Rackrent, and Edgeworth's-town, and the Giant's Causeway, and Ginleas and other classical poverties, and Spenser's castle on the river Mulla, with the wood-gods whom his pipe drew round him.—J. H. Leigh Hunt. The World of Books.
ON 'CORYAT'S CRUDITES'
Tom Coryat, I have seen thy Crudities,
And, methinks, very strangely brewed—it is
With piece and patch together glued—it is
And how, like thee, ill-favoured hued—it is
In many lines I see that lewd—it is
And therefore fit to be subdued—it is
Within thy broiling brain-pan stewed—it is
And 'twixt thy grinding jaws well chewed—it is
Within thy stomach closely mewed—it is
And last, in Court and Country spewed—it is
But now by wisdom's eye that viewed—it is
They all agree that very rude—it is
With foolery so full endued—it is
That wondrously by fools pursued—it is
As sweet as gall's amaritude—it is
And seeming full of pulchritude—it is
But more to write, but to intrude—it is
And therefore wisdom to conclude—it is.
J. Taylor. The World's Eighth Wonder.
LITERATURE FOR DESOLATE ISLANDS
I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing
In all public collections of books, if a wing
Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands,
Marked Literature suited to desolate islands,
And filled with such books as could never be read
Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,—
Such books as one's wrecked on in small country taverns,
Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns,
Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented,
As a climax of woe, would to Job have presented,
Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so
Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe;