Mixed with true affectation, true mimini pimini, 63
In fact, what you find in Endymion and Rimini.64
Here’s Apoller, and Windar, and Hannar, and Laurar,65
And phrases which strike all the muses with horror.66
Here’s a gay whistling brine, and ships swirling upon it; ‡67
And here’s a jerked feather that swales’in a bonnet,68
Come, stick them up, you will find them as fine a’,69
As gingerbread-gold, copper-lace, of cracked china.70
1st Gen.
Who brings me diamonds, or emeralds, or rubies ?71
Two others.
Here’s what’s as good for bedazzling the boobies ;72
We bring a thousand impressions so proper73
Of his Majesty’s visage in good-looking copper ;74
We were attending a radical meeting,75
Where nine-tenths were gulls, whom the one-tenth was cheating ;76
* These were Hunt’s great expedients for reforming beer when he was a brewer. Mr Accum, alias Mr Death-in-the-pot, acknowledges, with due gratitude, his obligations to this
great man in giving him hints for his magnum opus.
† Sir Richard Phillips, Knt. who has utterly overthrown Sir Isaac Newton, and tramp-
led on the Duke of
Wellington.
‡ Vide Leigh Hunt’s Rimini for these precious verses.
At the end, says the chief, in dispersing the poison,77
“Come, come, subscribe, ’tis to carry the cause on,78
Down with your cash, all I ask is a penny;” 79
And the pence were put down by the chucklepate many.80
We genii, you know, in a moment detected81
The laugh-in-the-sleeve of the rogues who collected,82
And followed unseen, ’till we saw them all seated,83
Full of hopes of the spoil, but these hopes were soon cheated,84
For among them we swooped, and away in a minute85
We whipt with their box, and the coppers all in it,86
And left them all dumb, both with grief and amazement,87
Looking, some up the chimney, some out of the casement ;88
At last, off they sneaked, puzzled, thirsty, and hungry,89
And swore this was worse even than base boroughmongry.90
1st Gen.
Who brings me pictures of dainty devising ?91
2d Gen.
Here they are friend, far superior to pricing.92
This sketch of a woe-begone gang of banditti,93
Whose looks more you fear; yet incline you to pity,94
Is the famed all the talents, the great opposition,95
The Tory’s contempt, the Reformer’s derision ;96
How well done is each face! Indeed ’tis well known, Sir,97
* That Methuen and Freemantle painted. their own, Sir,98
Look, there’s Peter Moore! He is wisely pourtrayed in :99
The part of great Bottom by greasy-pate Haydon ;100
The ass-head is so like in expression and feature,101
You must see it was Peter who sat for the creature.102
Here’s—but in describing my talent is scanty,103
Go send to Auld Reekie to fetch Dilletanti.104
1st Gen.
Who brings me gold for the purpose of framing ?105
Two others.
Patience! Here’s gold! Yellow gold! see ’tis flaming,106
With a bright shining lustre. ’Tis I who was lucky107
In following Birkbeck beyond far Kentucky ;108
The wealth of old Crœsus, the wealth of the fairies109
Is nothing compared with the wealth of the prairies.110
Though the climate is sickly, the land foul and swampy,111
The day-hole you live in, cold, dirty, and dampy,112
The society vile, the mere scum of creation,113
A fraudulent runaway base population,114
’Tis the country of gold—gold grows on its mountains,115
Gold paves all its streets†—and it springs from its fountains ;116
You must own it is true, for friend Birkbeck declares it,117
Flower vouches the fact, Mr Madison swears it,118
Then believe it, my lads, or confess you are asses,119
When you see in our hands such huge native gold masses.120
1st Gen.
Silk! bring me silk to bedeck the interior !121
Two others.
Here’s paper, an ornament vastly superior,122
Here’s a ton of petitions, and, what can be sager,123
Drivelled forth by the dam ‘of reform, the old Major ;124
Here’s a speech full of ignorance, nonsense, and blunders,125
By that great rhetorician‡ feu Lord Maire de Londres ;126
Here’s another by Becher,§ which snapt in the middle127
Like Hudibras’ tale of the bear and the fiddle ;128
Here’s a bundle of sheets (from a snuff-man. we got
’em)129
Filled with only four words from the top to the bottom,130
* See New Whig Guide.
† Query—Are there any in friend Birkbeck’s Arcadia? Note by the Translator.
‡‡ So Alderman Wood designated himself on his cards in Paris. Londres is to be pro-
nounced as the worthy Alderman
pronounces it, that is, as rhyme to blunders; such being the etiquette of Cockney French.
§ M. P. for Mellow, who carries his speeches in his hat, and occasionally breaks down.
You scarcely need ask who had wind to invent ’em,131
For ’tis plain at a glance it was Jeremy Bentham :132
Who for the palace-gate brings me fit pillars ?135
Two others.
Astride of *M‘Culloch we pranced from Bob Miller’s,136
And galloped in paces most lubberly antic137
To our beast’s favourite pasture across the Atlantic,138
O’er the grave of Tom Paine, we saw going to rob it,139
The Atlas of England, P. Porcupine Cobbett ;140
He broke it all up in as sad a condition141
As he broke in his grammar the head of old Priscian,142
And he trotted away with the bones and the coffin143
† Of him against whom he so long had been scoffing ;144
‡ But we tore them away from the back of the schemer,145
And have brought you the bones of the brandy blasphemer ;146
So stick up for your pillars each mouldering dry bone,147
Backbone, and breastbone, shankbone, and thighbone.148
And here are some grinders, a fit decoration,149
Which we tore from the jaws of the Whig population ;150
The party is now just as mumping and toothless,§151
As it always was heartless and faithless and truthless ;152
We called to untooth them your friend the gay dentist,153
Dr Scott, the best poet that ever was ’prenticed.154
1st Gen.
I must beat the curst grinders as strait as an arrow.155
Ho! of brass for the roof bring me quick a whole barrow.156
Two others.
Here’s a cartload of brass of the very best colour,157
Which we gleaned from the faces of Hunt, Hone, and Wooler ;158
Here’s another, which we with much science have taken159
From the front of a certain chirurgical deacon;ǁ160
From their patrons in parliament, too, we have some, Sir,161
Got from Lambton and Tierney, small Newport, and Brougham, Sir.162
Poor devils! since now all their brass is abstracted,163
How shabbily each of their parts will be acted !164
But on crossing the channel, if great Dan O’Connell,165
¶ Or Oriflam Dromgool, or ** ’Neas M‘Donnell,166
Will indulge them by rubbing their foreheads to theirs, Sir,167
They soon will resume their superb brazen glare, Sir,168
For so touched every face will shine forth, aye will it,169
As bright as the base of a new copper skillet.170
1st Gen.
Who a fit spire for the turret has got to carry ?171
Two others.
We, from the hands of a cockney apothecary, ††172
Brought off this pestle, with which he was capering,173
Swearing and swaggering, rhyming and vapouring ;174
* In the original, Astride of Taurus. I have taken the liberty of substituting M‘Cul- loch. The reader will, I am sure,
pardon the introduction of a word almost sy- nonimous,
† See Peter Porcupine of old times, and Cobbett’s life of T. Paine.
‡ Ever since poor Cobbett has been showing the bones of a baboon as those of Paine, but ’tis all one, only the unfortunate
monkey is sadly libelled thereby.
§ How refreshing is Lord John Russel’s confession in his semitical letter to Mr Wil- berforce, that the Whigs are now
entirely powerless—weak in parliament, contemptible out of it. So be it.
ǁ An unfortunate man who in Edinburgh is looking for the fame of Alderman Waith- man in London—a noble ambition. It is
hard to decide which is the greater ass, but the linen-draper is certainly the most famous.
¶ A great Roman Catholic speaker in Ireland, who made a fine speech formerly about bringing the inflame of Catholicity
into the scattered ranks of heresy.
** An Irish orator, Aeneas quasi Aeneus (i. e. brazen-faced) M‘Donnell.
†† I would not insult my readers by insinuating, that this means Johnny Keats, who, like Apollo, practises poetry and
pharmacy. The blasphemous language of the Cockney School is, with reluctance, imitated here.
Seized with a fit of poetical fury,175
(I thought he was drunk, my good sir, I assure ye)176
With this he was scattering, all through the whole house,177
Gallipot, glisterbag, cataplasm, bolus ;178
While the poor ’prentices at him were staring,179
Or perhaps in their minds a strait waistcoat preparing,180
Loud he exclaimed, “Behold here’s my truncheon; 181
* I’m the Marshal of poets—I’ll flatten your nuncheon.182
Pitch physic to hell, you rascals, for damn ye, a—183
I’ll physic you all with a clyster of Lamia.”184
Scared at the name, in a moment we darted,185
Whipt the pestle away, and from cockney-land parted.186
1st Gen.
Here on the top of the palace I place it,187
Such a building requires such a finish to grace it.188
The rest of this scene is only an advice to have this building puffed in the Times by old Walter himself, and to make him † swear
to the execution of it in person.—Translator.
* Only Marshal. Hunt being king.
† “I’ll swear it like old Walter of the Times.”—Whistlecraft.
