Zelotes.
[OLLAPODIANA.]
NUMBER TWENTY.
Whether you be gentle or simple, reader—whether poetical or prose-enamored—you have been free from any inflictions or productions of mine—whichsoever you may please to call them—any time these several months. If the omission has been grievous, you have had a monition that your life is not all sunshine, many things being oft anticipated, which come not to hand of him that desireth them; if pleasing, you are now reminded, that pleasures of a sublunary character are too brief to have long uniform continuance, since 'diuturnity of delight is a dream, and folly of expectation.' So much for prefatory philosophy. Plato, when he paced along the olive-walks, beneath the groves of Academe, or listened to the prattle of shining Grecian streams of yore, never knew what it was to meditate the exordium of a magazine paper. As yet, when he flourished, 'editors and agents of periodicals' never took prominent parts in university processions, with toll-gate keepers, sea-serpents, and American eagles, as was jocosely related of the late conflagratory assemblage in the edifice of Brown, on Providence Plantations.
By the way, I laughed extremely at the piece to which I allude, which was full of delightsome and most facetious things, right aptly conceited. It was an imaginary procession at Brown University, on occasion of burning all the literary productions of the students for the last five or six years. Had the sacrificial mandate extended to the honorary members of her societies, then would Ollapod have been obliged to be present with his offering to the insatiate elements; and with 'survivors of the Boston massacre, in coaches,' or 'superannuated toll-keepers of the Pawtucket Turnpike,' followed in the train of the great marine visitor at Nahant, or that supposed bird, met by the dreamer (immortalized by the muse of Sands) who sailed a-nigh it in his vision, what time his spectral charger waved to the breeze of midnight
——'the long, long tail, that glorified
That glorious animal's hinder side!'
I'll warrant me a dozen of Burgundy, with all olives and appurtenances thereunto properly belonging, that this same humorous description gave offence to those who support the dignity of a time-honored alma-mater. But they must have laughed in their sleeves at the witty conception of it. Yet it is an old saying, 'A blow with a word strikes deeper than one with a sword.' 'Many men,' saith the profound old Democritus, Junior, 'are as much gauled with a jest, a pasquil, satyre, apologe, epigram, or the like, as with any misfortune whatever. Princes and potentates, that are otherwise happy, and have all at command, secure and free, are grievously vexed with these pasquilling satyrs: they fear a railing Aretine, more than an enemy in the field; which made most princes of his time, as some relate, allow him a liberal pension, that he should not tax them in his satyrs. The gods had their Momus, Homer his Zoïlus, Achilles his Thersites, Philip his Demades: the Cæsars themselves in Rome were commonly taunted. There was never wanting a Petronius, a Lucian, in those times; nor will be a Rabelais, an Euphormio, a Boccalinus, in ours. Adrian the Sixth, pope, was so highly offended and grievously vexed with pasquils at Rome, he gave command that satyre should be demolished and burned, the ashes flung into the river Tiber, and had done it forthwith, had not Ludovicus, a facete companion, dissuaded him to the contrary, by telling him that pasquils would turn to frogs in the bottom of the river, and croak worse and louder than before.' A right pithy description is this, of the effect of wit and words.