The author of "The Spanish Rogue" makes "a silent noise" invade the ear of his hero. General Taylor immortalized himself by perpetrating one of the grandest bulls on record, in which he attained what a certain literary professor calls "a perfection hardly to be surpassed." In his presidential address he announced to the American Congress that the United States were at peace with all the world, and continued to cherish relations of amity with the rest of mankind. Much simpler was the blunder of an English officer, during the Indian mutiny, who informed the public, through the Times, that, thanks to the prompt measures of Colonel Edwardes, the Sepoys at Fort Machison "were all unarmed and taken aback, and, being called upon, laid down their arms." There was nothing very astonishing in an Irish newspaper stating that Robespierre "left no children behind him, except a brother, who was killed at the same time;" but it was startling to have an English journal assure us that her majesty Queen Victoria was "the last person to wear another man's crown."
A single ill-chosen word often suffices, by the suggestion of incongruous ideas, to render what should be sublime utterly ridiculous. One can hardly believe that a poet like Dryden could write:
"My soul is packing up, and just on wing,"
Such a line would have come with better grace from the author of "The Courageous Turk," a play containing the following curious passage:
"How now, ye heavens! grow you
So proud, that you must needs put on curled locks,
And clothe yourself in perwigs of fire."
Nearly equalled in absurdity by this from Nat Lee's "OEdipus:"
"Each trembling ghost shall rise,
And leave their grisly king without a waiter."
When the news of Captain Cook's death at Owhyhee came to England, the poetasters, of course, hastened to improve the occasion, and one of the results of their enthusiasm was a monody commencing:
"Minerva in heaven disconsolate mourned
The loss of her Cook;"
an opening sufficient to upset the gravity of the great navigator's dearest friend.