We trust that this will quiet the sensibilities of our Saratoga friend, and that he will return to the city with an invigorated conscience, a healthful moral sense, and a stomach improved by the waters.
Ed. Knickerbocker.
[LETTER THIRD.]
TO EDWARD MOXON, PUBLISHER, LONDON.
The fiery bark that brought your missives o'er,
Brought the sad news that Murray was no more.
From still Hoboken, where I chanced to stray,
I marked the monster belching up the bay,
And guessed (already have I learned to guess,)
From her black look, she told of some distress.
Tidings of gloom her sable streamer spoke,
And the long train of her funereal smoke;
And soon the bulletins revealed the grief:
'John Murray's dead! of book-sellers the chief!'
In all the strange events that Rumor sends,
By flood and flame, to earth's remotest ends;
War, famine, wreck, and all the varying fates
Of rising cottons or of falling states;
Revolts at home, and troubles o'er the seas,
Among the Affghans, Chartists, and Chinese;
In all the recent millions that have gone
To the dark realm, and still are hastening on,
That one small tradesman should have joined the throng
Seems a mean theme to babble of in song.
Yet such is Fame! and such the pow'r of books,
To make small names as deathless as the Duke's:[B]
Yes, the same volume that recordeth you,
Ye mighty chiefs! embalms the printer's too;
And wheresoe'er the poet's fame hath flown,
There too the poet's publisher is known;
So shall our friend enjoy, to endless ages,
An immortality of title-pages.
Ev'n here, in Scythia, where the slighted Muse
Gets but cold greeting from the rude Yahoos;
Ev'n here is faintly heard a public sigh,
Ah, that Childe Harold's accoucheur should die!
That he who made such elegant editions
Should be past help from parsons or physicians;
Dead as the most defunct of all the verse
For which erewhile he tapped his liberal purse;
No more a bargainer for true sublime,
Himself a subject for a scrap of rhyme.
Methinks I see his melancholy ghost
Near his old threshold, at his ancient post;
Watching with eager and obsequious grin,
The pensive customers that enter in.
With curious eye selecting from the throng,
Each who has dabbled in the realm of song;
And offering, as of yore, for something nice
In way of Epitaph, the market price.
And now his bones the sculptured slab lie under,
What generous bard will give him one, I wonder?
For all the golden promises he made;
For all the golden guineas that he paid;
For all the fame his counter could afford
The rev'rend pamphleteer and author-lord;
For all the tricks he taught the friendless muse;
For all his purchased papers in Reviews;
For all the pleasant stories he retailed;
For all the turtle when the stories failed;
For all the praises, all the punch he spent,
What grateful hand will deck his monument?
Campbell's too proud the compliment to grant:
Southey, for sundry weighty reasons, can't.
Should Moore attempt it, he'd be sure to damn
John's many virtues in an epigram.
Rogers' blank verse so very blank has grown,
'T would scarce be legible on Parian stone;
Wordsworth would mar it by inscribing on it
A little sermon—what he calls a sonnet.
Alas! for all the guineas that he paid,
For all the immortalities he made,
For all his venison, all his right old wine,
Will none contribute one sepulchral line?
In truth I'm sad, although I seem to laugh,
To think that John should need an epitaph.
The greatest blows bring not the truest tear,
These minor losses touch the heart more near;
As fewer drops gush over from the eyes
When heroes fall than when your valet dies;
They, of another, an immortal race,
Ne'er seemed on earth well suited with their place,
And though they yield their transitory breath,
We know their being but begins with death:
So winter ushers in the new-born year,
So the flowers perish ere the fruits appear.
When common men, when men like Murray, thus
Are snatched away, 't is taking one of us;