THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 MY SATIRE AND ITS CENSORS.
 
 MY SATIEE AND ITS CENSORS. 
 
 ALFRED AUSTIN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SEASON: A SATIRE. 
 
 Solqf ernes: a Schoolmaster. — But, to return to the verses; did they 
 please you, Sir Nathaniel ? 
 
 Nath. — Marvellous well. 
 
 Sol. — I do dine to-day ; . . . where I will prove those verses 
 to be very unlearned, neither savouring of wit, poetry, nor invention. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 Every dunce who starves presumes to write. 
 
 Epistle of Otway to Creech. 
 
 LONDON: 
 GEORGE MANWARING, 
 
 8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND. 
 1861.
 
 7vr 
 
 MY SATIEE AND ITS CENSORS. 
 
 In virile times when simple modes prevailed, 
 And honest pastimes flourished unassailed, 
 Youths, in the Lupercalia, naked ran — 
 For nought was deemed immodest in the Man. 
 But when a spurious Decency arrayed 
 The form which God in His own image made, 
 Imperial edicts circumscribed the Game, 1 
 And fixed on age monopoly of shame. 
 
 1 " Lupercalibus vetuit currere imberbes" says Sueto- 
 nius, writing of Augustus. Mistress Quickly seems to 
 have held opinions somewhat similar to those of the great 
 Roman emperor, as I gather from her words to Sir John 
 Falstaff, when that virtuous knight was wooing the wife of 
 
 8G0'?yiJ
 
 2 MY SATIRE 
 
 So once the pen might human vices call 
 By bold bare names, the property of all ; 
 And pedagogues and prophets rudely writ 
 "Without the sleight of circumambient wit. 
 Now so corruptly chaste our ways have grown, 
 E'en words, turned wanton, 2 arc for men alone ; 
 
 a "gentleman living at Windsor." "Have a nay-word, 
 that you may know one another's mind, and the boy never 
 need to understand anything ; for 'tis not good that chil- 
 dren should know any wickedness. Old folks, you know, 
 have discretion, as they say, and the world." This must 
 be what is meant by a certain accomplished editor, who 
 has spoken plainly enough in his time (but tempora 
 mutantur ; he had not then sixty thousand monthly sub- 
 scribers) — when he talks of " speaking much too plain 
 for our young readers." When may the sixty thousand 
 — / am one of them — hope to peruse " The Lectures of 
 Mr. Barnes Newcome on the Domestic Affections"? I 
 advise him to read what Benedick says of Claudio, and 
 think over it : " He was wont to speak plain and to the 
 purpose, like an honest man ; and now is he turned ortho- 
 grapher ; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so 
 many strange dishes." 
 
 2 Very opportunely, the other day, I stumbled on a letter
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 3 
 
 And Satire must be limited, or preach 
 With euphemistic modesty of speech. 
 
 Muse ! most correct ! — Not you, unblushing jade, 
 Whose too prompt patronage I lately prayed : 
 Not you, decolletee Muse ! whose buxom shape 
 First led, then left, me in this precious scrape : 
 But — you, Propriety ! who sit and frown 
 On low-dressed muses in your high-necked gown : 
 
 written by Miss Mary Pierrepoint, afterwards, as all the 
 world knows, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to Mrs. 
 Hewet, an extract from which is much to my purpose. 
 Here is what one lady writes to another lady : — " I was 
 last Thursday at the new Opera, and saw Nicolini strangle 
 a lion with great gallantry. But he represented naked- 
 ness so naturally, I was surprised to see those ladies stare 
 at him without any confusion that pretend to be so vio- 
 lently shocked at a poor double entendre or two in a 
 comedy, which convinced me that those persons who 
 would cry ' Fie ! fie ! ' at the word naked, have no scruple 
 about the thing." Non meus hie sermo. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MY SATIRE 
 
 Not " draped discreetly in a skirt and vest 
 Which just withhold the secrets they suggest/' 
 But swathed in good thick serge whose strings are 
 
 tied 
 All the more close the less you have to hide : 
 Whose knees — so lost — I cannot clasp ; whose feet, 
 E'en as I name them, 'neath their robe retreat, 
 And to my wicked vision won't disclose 
 Even the tips of — may I say it ? — toes : 
 Muse ! so benign to Procter and to Hood, 3 
 One finger give ! I promise to be good. 
 
 3 I have not a word to say— and, if I had, I would not 
 say it — against either the lady or gentleman alluded to in 
 the text. But would they mind asking the Athenceum, for 
 their own sakes, not to make them ridiculous with its 
 extravagant compliments? Both are writers of very 
 elegant verse, purveyors of prettinesses which even I should 
 admire, if we had not of late had rather too much of 
 these. What with spasmodic poets on the one side, and 
 sentimental poetesses on the other, the puhlic may be
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 5 
 
 Or if the tenth part of a tender touch 
 Be from Maid-Muse familiar overmuch, 
 Whisper to Hepworth Dixon you forgive, 
 And Dixon's deputy will bid me live. 
 Never again my " whip of fire" 4 shall gash 
 Vices stripped naked for the needed lash, 
 But be extinguished in a copious flood 
 Scourged from my own too-tempted boyish 
 blood. 
 
 excused its present aversion from the sight of any hook 
 each of whose lines commences with a capital letter. The 
 words of Garin d'Apchier, writ so long ago, again become 
 significant — " Les jongleurs se sont multiplies au point 
 qu'il y en a tout autant cpie de lapins dans une garenne : 
 on en est inonde." They would be fair game for any 
 sporting pen, if unfortunately like the " lapins," they 
 were not " game " at all." 
 
 4 What a " whip of fire " may he I really cannot say : 
 1 have not one. But this couplet and the ten ensuing 
 lines will become niore intelligible by a reference to a 
 critique which I have inserted in full at the end of the 
 book : vide Appendix.
 
 6 MY SATIRE 
 
 Henceforth my brain shall labour languid lays 
 Bowring might write, and Jeaffreson might praise : 
 Sonnets 5 be mine which nobody can hurt, 
 Chorley might write and Wentworth Dilke insert. 
 
 5 Fortunately, the Athcnceum does not leave us (other- 
 wise bewildered bards) quite in the dark as to what it con- 
 siders real poetry ; for it occasionally inserts sonnets on 
 its own account. I will reproduce one which appeared 
 on the same day and on the page exactly opposite to that 
 on which "The Season" was pronounced "a little 
 satire." 
 
 " How has the mighty power that ruled the earth 
 For many, many ages, lost its sway ? 
 And those gigantic chains which owed their birth 
 To ignorance, been snapped and cast away ? 
 'Tis that Philosophy's bright hour is come 
 Man to emancipate from Papal Rome, 
 Since Papal Rome has lost her ancient boast 
 Among the advanced to be advanced the most : 
 And now a heavy mud-locked wreck is lying, 
 Whilst thousand busy sails are by her flying, 
 And heralding love, light, and liberty : 
 Destined for every land, o'er every sea, 
 They speed triumphant and rejoicingly, 
 Freeing the slave and welcomed by the free." 
 
 Now, so long as even the Athcnceum can spontaneously
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 7 
 
 Bees, swallows, wagtails, milk-and-water wai'm, 
 And all that must do far more good than harm, 
 On themes like these my lines shall spend their 
 
 force, 
 And leave sins, men, and women to the " coarse." 6 
 What ! — when the pulpit decorates its blame, 
 And lets the shameless free for fear of shame, 
 
 and approvingly insert such doggerel as this, one can never 
 be sure that somebody or other will not think quite so 
 meanly of it as oneself. But whatever latitude must be 
 conceded to defective taste, none can be extended to de- 
 fective grammar. We all submit to the despotism of 
 Lindley Murray ; and one of his edicts is, that a verb 
 must agree with its nominative case in number and person. 
 How the Athenceum will reconcile with this rule the 
 remarkable inquiry, " How has those gigantic chains 
 been snapped and cast away ? " I leave it to explain. 
 But, to be frank, syntax is not more violently outraged 
 than is prosody in this shambling sonnet. 
 
 6 Frankness requires that I should own that the 
 epithet " coarse " has been applied to some of the 
 lines in " The Season " by more than one critic. Mrs. 
 Barrett Browning provides me with a repty, in words
 
 8 MY SATIRE 
 
 Prunes the linguistic liberties of Luke 
 And smiles on knaves emasculate rebuke : 
 When scented priests admonish scoffing men 
 With most polite periphrasis of pen, 
 
 move forcible than I can hope ever to write, at the 
 105th page of the fifth edition of " Aurora Leigh : " — 
 
 " Am I coarse ? 
 Well, Love 's coarse, Nature 's coarse .... 
 "We fair, fine ladies, who park out our lives 
 From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows 
 From flying over, — we're as natural still 
 As Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectly 
 In Lyons velvet, — we are not, for that, 
 Lay-figures, look you : we have hearts within, 
 Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts, 
 As ready for outrageous ends and acts 
 As any distressed sempstress of them all." 
 
 If the discussion of one's species is to he tabooed, — if 
 Pope was altogether in the wrong, and " the proper 
 study of mankind is " not " man," let us know, by all 
 means. But so long as the old doctrine stands, I and 
 a few more of us intend to express our meaning in the 
 simplest language we can get hold of, not being able 
 "to cog like lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women 
 in men's apparel."
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 
 
 Make matters pleasant with a Hell 7 disguised, 
 
 And hawk about a Gospel compromised : 
 
 When mighty journals emulate to lull 
 
 Uneasy dreamers and delude the dull ; — 
 
 Of suppurating sores, that ulcerate 
 
 And draw the life-blood from the soundest state, 
 
 As " social evils " elegantly prate : 
 
 When monthly moralists their periods trim, 
 
 Or with genteel complacent synonym 
 
 7 For fear of misinterpretation, I must avow my sym- 
 pathy with Uncle Toby's sorrow (" ' I'm sorry for it,' ,: 
 said Uncle Toby) at the announcement of the Devil being 
 " damned long ago." But hell is not quite a place to be 
 played with. If there be no such place at all, let us hear 
 no more about it : but if there be, somebody will have to 
 go there : and "somebody" had better be told of his pro- 
 spects in the plainest language possible. One hears it 
 said : " If the Devil does not get so-and-so, where is the 
 use of keeping a Devil?" This is logical. But perhaps 
 clergymen, too, are more logical than would at first sight 
 appear : doubtless, they see no reason why the Devil 
 sbould not be entitled to a sinecure as well as themselves.
 
 10 MY SATIRE 
 
 Hint, but to hide, of poisons which infect 
 
 With fertile venom the uncircuraspect, 
 
 And worming through the blameless and the 
 
 best, 
 Blast the poor babe reliant at the breast : 
 And when Society applauds this plot 
 To make each thing appear the thing it's not, 
 Shall some " young gentleman " our ears invade 
 With short sharp words, and call a spade a 
 
 spade ? — 
 Lift the light gauze which, accurately nice, 
 Divides approved Propriety from Vice ? 
 Wake, snoring scribes ! Ye varlets ! do ye 
 
 hear? 
 Up from your straw each drowsy garreteer ! 
 Propriety and printers' devils call : 
 Pluck your own quill and plunge it in your 
 sail.
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 11 
 
 Extend your necks, each interrupted goose, 
 And quack me quick five shillings' of abuse. 8 
 
 Stop— stop ! says Cynic : shall a goose's quack 
 Move you to hit so fast and fiercely back ? 
 Leave them : their necks will twisted be anon ; 
 Is 't not enough to pity and pass on ? 
 To simple eyes it seems a sorry sport 
 To flip at things whose cackle is so short. 
 
 Not quite so short as not to need the knout : 
 Errors, like geese, beheaded run about. 
 
 8 Sir Toby Belch.— •" Go, write It is no 
 
 matter how witty it is, so it be full of invention 
 
 If thou thou'st" {this young gentleman, this youth, this 
 youthful satirist, eh?) — "if thou thou'st him some thrice, 
 it shall not be amiss ; and as many lies as will lie on thy 
 sheet of paper set 'em down. Let there be gall enough in 
 thy ink ; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter." 
 —Twelfth Night.
 
 12 MY SATIRE 
 
 Yet not with some poor back I warfare wage, 
 
 Nor could a M y move my pen to rage. 
 
 But little fame, and pleasure less, redounds 
 To turn and flog these yelping garret-hounds. 
 Easy my nature ; and they widely err 
 Who think I care to castigate a cur. 
 But, when the public judgment, all astray, 
 Mistakes the mongrel's snarl for bloodhound's bay, 
 Between the cackle which once saved a state, 
 Now cries for food, doth not discriminate, — 
 'Tis time indeed to scramble to one's feet, 
 Feel for the scourge, and terrify the cheat. 
 Oh ! would some hand, more intimate than mine, 
 Uncloak these knaves and wield the knotted line, 
 How gladly I such office would eschew, 
 To linger, darling ! indolent, with you ! 
 Say, Bailey ! with your hurricane of words, 
 Why not arise and scare these forward herds ?
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 13 
 
 Or you, Dobell ! impervious too long, 
 
 Fling off this torpor, and assume the thong. 
 
 Smith ! from your sullen reticence emerge ! 
 
 Sure, you can wield retributory scourge ? 
 
 Or Massey ! with your nervous sense of wrong, 
 
 Turn on these whelps and vindicate your 
 
 song. 
 I rather far, supine, would fling me where 
 Long lazy sedges loll against the air ; 
 Or, now that leaves are green by Greta's side, 
 Invoke the quiet never yet denied, 
 And, lost to crowds, in honeysuckled haunt 
 Live, hidden hero of my own romaunt. 
 
 What can seduce from these the sober mind 
 Back to the vulgar quarrels of its kind ? 
 'Chance I shall be, once cozened into strife, 
 A literary athlete all my life.
 
 H MY SATIRE 
 
 Vindictive foes will dog rac till I die, 
 
 For they who cannot conquer can belie. 
 
 Engaging prospect ! to parade, the mark 
 
 Of each bruised mouth that slanders in the dark. 
 
 Well, let them slander : but so long as Youth 
 Stands firm, my friend, I'll give a tongue to Truth. 
 Let others dread the dirks they cannot see, 
 And think it decent to submit or flee : 
 Let Meredith 9 be cowed, or sybaritic, 
 Lislit his cheroot with blunders from the Critic ; 
 
 9 Had I been aware, when I published " The Season," 
 of the rude onslaught then meditated and since made by 
 some critics on Owen Meredith, I would have expressed 
 my opinion of " Lucile " in more measured terms. But 
 these same gentlemen who extolled that Poem to the 
 skies are, for some reason or other best known to them- 
 selves, now decrying its author in a language all their 
 own. I, who thought it right to protest against the im- 
 moderate jubilation uttered over a not very original,
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 15 
 
 At worst, I shield my back against the wall, 
 
 And bide the brunt of any or of all ! 
 
 Shame on the boy, effeminate, who loves 
 
 To strike and back be stricken but with gloves ; 
 
 Shame more on him, who, flippant, in the sun, 
 
 Kecks not if Man's Great Fight be lost or won ; 
 
 Beside some sunny river dreams aloof, 
 
 Nor heeds the river's eloquent reproof ! 
 
 O Boy ! it urges, Come with me along, 
 
 A stream no more, but broad and swift and strong. 
 
 though certainly very clever, novel in rhyme, think it 
 also right to protest against the yet more indecent attacks 
 upon the accomplished writer of the " Serhski Pesme." 
 The man who wrote the " Psalm of Confession " will, I 
 trust, excuse me for saying that he owes it to himself, to 
 the name he bears, and to the country which is proud of 
 that name, to do something better than allow himself to be 
 flattered by Mr. Thackeray into spurring with his verses 
 the slackening sale of the Cornhill Magazine ; for he has 
 shown himself capable of producing poems quite beyond 
 the mental digestion of monthly readers.
 
 16 MY SATIRE 
 
 I loved the hills where, tiny tarn, I lay 
 Screened from the rude intrusion of the Day : 
 I loved their patient slopes whose outstretched arms 
 Saved me, too confident, from courted harms, 
 Guiding my steps uncertain, till they grew 
 Firmer and not so devious, then withdrew : 
 I loved the bright broad meadows where I played, 
 I loved the woodland's transitory shade : 
 I loved the lawns where bevies of fair girls, 
 Pure as their robes though frolic as their curls, 
 Tripped down from where along the trellised 
 
 wall 
 They trained their plants, themselves outblooming 
 
 all, 
 Flowers o'er my pathway prodigally cast, 
 Coaxed me to stay but praised me as I passed. 
 Labour expects me on the banks below : 
 O lagging Boy ! pursue me as I go !
 
 AND ITS CENSOKS. 17 
 
 Me many a solemn embassage awaits, 
 
 Me the swarmed concourse of impatient freights : 
 
 To me the palpitating cities call 
 
 To bear the benefits of each to all. 
 
 Limpid no more, I rush to court assoil, 
 
 Proud of the stains of decorating Toil, 
 
 Where splendid burthens dropping on my breast 
 
 Dismiss me blessing, and avouch me blest. 
 
 Onwards I go, to greet the whelming tide, 
 
 The sad supremacy of self denied, 
 
 Solicitous no more, since soon to be 
 
 One with the vague unutterable Sea ! 
 
 So sings the river through the summer days, 
 And I, submissive, follow what I praise. 
 What if my "boyish blood" would rather 
 
 stay 
 Where lawns invite, where bonnibels delay, 
 c
 
 IS MY SATIEE 
 
 Though but a " youth" aud not averse from 
 
 these, 
 To conflict called, I abdicate my ease, 
 Bend to some honest work before I go, 
 And prove that verse can utilize its flow. 
 And since impostors most advancement stem, 
 Come on, proud verse ! we '11 have a sweep at 
 
 Them. 
 
 To Chelt'nham once, in search of food and 
 fame, 
 A discontented counter-jumper came. 
 With little schooling, but still less to eat, 
 And driven wild by hunger and conceit, 
 To sate the one, at nights he tossing lay 
 Groaning in labour of a five-act Play ; 
 The days, to stop his stomach, clothe his back, 
 " Turnover/' printer's devil, useful Jack :
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 19 
 
 Then raised from simple Jack to splendid John, 
 Wrote penny libels for the " Looker-on." 
 
 At last, this Play, as garret gossip goes, 
 Cut from the brain with long Csesarian throes, 
 Muled in the press, unfurnished with a caul, 
 And met the gaze — a " Eunuch," 10 after all ! 
 O luckless baptism ! What malicious friend 
 Prompted this name, prophetic of its end ? 
 Not even hissed nor hustled out of sight, 
 This half-got creature never ran a night. 
 All thought it dead and damned, when lo ! anon, 
 Appeared a notice in the " Looker-on." n 
 
 10 The name of the Play with which our editor 
 commenced his literary (?) career, and of which the 
 " Looker-on " asserted that there never was such a play 
 since the days of William Shakspere. 
 
 11 Whether the " Looker-on " have met the fate of 
 "The Eunuch" or still exist, transferred to London,
 
 20 MY SATIRE 
 
 " Britons ! rejoice ! " in flaring type it said : 
 " Britons ! rejoice ! the Drama is not dead ! 
 No more for Shakspere, Beaumont, Otway, weep, 
 Let Farquhar, Fletcher, unlamented sleep : 
 No more Rowe, Dryden, Massinger, regret, 
 Your tears restrain ! tlie Drama liveth yet ! 
 Thespis again shall lofty minds engage 
 And with ' The Eunuch ' vindicate the Stage ! " 
 
 The gobemouche folks of Cheltenham, amazed, 
 Read first the critique, then the Play it 
 
 praised ! 
 A fool might write it : folly never ends : 
 But, devil *s in 't, another fool commends. 
 
 under a metropolitan and Latinized name, I cannot say. 
 One sometimes sees, on the table, at Whig clubs a weekly 
 journal, whose style of criticism smacks strongly of the 
 Cheltenham periodical.
 
 AND ITS CENSOES. 21 
 
 Who could explain ? When, lo ! an office scrub 
 Peached on his fellow : " Cease your heads to rub. 
 Same fool, good folks ! And somewhat fools are you, 
 To doubt that he who wrote it puffed it too ! " 
 
 Warned to adopt less dangerous disguise, 
 This mole, unearthed, to darker London flies, 
 Where skulking things may crouch and crawl 
 
 about, 
 And no one cares to stoop and pull them out. 
 Say, slums and purlieus at the back of Strand ! 
 To what low shifts this fellow turned his hand ; 
 By what admixture of obsequious gait, 
 With skilled impertinence and braggart prate, 
 Up to the stool which once he dusted crept, 
 And swayed the office that he lately swept ; 
 Till, fitly recompensed, he came to be 
 The Athenceum's Editor, you see.
 
 22 MY SATIRE 
 
 Discerning Age ! which, logical throughout, 
 Pensions a cretin, curtseys to a lout : 
 Which, tolerant of quacks in verse and prose, 
 Endures a Dixon and endows a Close. 12 
 O great King Pepple ! yet one favour more 
 Confer on Britain, ere you quit her shore. 
 One form is wanting to your classic crew : 
 You take our Poet — take our Critic too ! 
 Though Bishops mourn, yet England, little loth, 
 Makes you a parting present of them both. 
 
 12 Does the Noble Lord at the head of Her Majesty's 
 Government intend to resist Mr. Stirling's motion, as 
 insolently as he answered Mr. Stirling's speech, on the 
 pension granted to the Poet Laureate of the King of 
 Bonny? I advise the flippant Viscount to resist it as 
 a vote of want of confidence in Her Majesty's Ministers ; 
 and then to go to the country on the cry of " Pepple ! 
 Cheap Paper, and the General Interests of Literature ! " 
 If I may judge from the reverend names appended to the 
 Laureate's "testimony to character," he will have the 
 support of the bishops and some of the clergy.
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 23 
 
 Degraded Genius ! stooping to the yoke 
 
 Of annual pence and some pert Premier's joke, 
 
 Once and for all these shameful links discard ! 
 
 Let verse, like Virtue, be its own reward ! 
 
 Dismiss, with scornfully impartial frown, 
 
 Snarls from the gutter, guerdons from the 
 
 Crown. 
 And you. The Public ! fooled by Prophets veiled, 
 Fouler than He at whom Khorassan paled, 
 O'er-rid by scribbling spectres smeared with ink, 
 Break from your bondage, and presume to think ! 
 
 Can malice, think ye, prompt a poet's pen 
 To deal so heavily with men, as men ? — 
 Or some unsettled whining after fame 
 Denounce the dullards who deny one's claim? — 
 A selfish, stupid vanity incite 
 An unacknowledged satirist to write?
 
 24 MY SATIRE 
 
 Deem ye no honest motive can engage 
 
 The muse, reluctant, in satiric rage ? 
 
 Gods ! when a parcel of unlettered boors, 
 
 Brought up in village schools or city sewers, 
 
 A hack on trial or a clerk dismissed, 
 
 A jaded author, spavined journalist, 
 
 Hiding — they well may hide — from public sight, 
 
 Wrapping their rags about them as they write, 
 
 Helped by this secrecy, the world mislead, 
 
 Can none expose them but for spite or greed ? 
 
 When nameless charlatans, for weekly pence, 
 
 Abetted by the public indolence, 
 
 Keep up this farce, with domino and din, 
 
 May not a man be angry and not sin ? 
 
 Why may not he, who dares, invade their 
 
 ranks, 
 And pluck the masks from off these mounte- 
 banks ?
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 25 
 
 / choose their chief. Look ! Judge ye from this 
 
 best, 
 What literary lepers are the rest ! 
 
 Yet naked more this mummer must be stripped : 
 Stand round, ye subalterns ! and watch him 
 
 whipped. 
 " No youth can wield the lash ? " Then bare your 
 
 back ! 
 Methinks I have the castigator's knack : 
 And little doubt I, sirrah ! but that you, 
 After the few first strokes, will think so too. 
 
 Most of your pranks, obscure to eye and 
 ear, 
 Escape detection, so arraignment here. 
 Could I hunt out the meannesses you hide, 
 My lash would then, I own it, be defied.
 
 2B MY SATIRE 
 
 Hiding in holes for most part, you emerge 
 But once or twice, to justify the scourge. 
 At length, encouraged by the awkward praise 
 An Editor exacts from hacks he pays, 
 Boldly you tread, illiterate and rude, 
 Where scholars scarcely venture to intrude : 
 Unskilled in science, language, art, you maul 
 The Life of Him, supremely skilled in all. 
 
 Open this Life. 13 What words at first engage 
 The vision, vagrant o'er the title-page ? 
 
 13 Well may the Edinburgh Review, whose opinion even 
 the editor of the Athenceum can neither buy nor bully, call 
 " The Personal History of Lord Bacon" "ideal vapour" 
 and " eccentric rhapsody," and be astounded at the 
 "coarse, vulgar taste" which it displays. Misled, how- 
 ever, by the author's assertion on the title-page, that he is 
 " Of the Inner Temple," it accuses him of the ingenuity 
 of an " advocate." Advocate, forsooth ! When a man 
 appends such a tail, in order to fly his name before the
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 17 
 
 One sees — one looks again : — one thinks to 
 
 err — 
 The " Inner Temple " called to character ! 
 "Why, man ! who ever doubted you could dine, 
 Or drink, unwitting, execrable wine ? 
 Because a scullion can extract a cork, 
 And wield, if vulgarly, a knife and fork, 
 Shall we not laugh if, swaggering where he sits, 
 The boor mistake his stomach for his wits ? 
 Oh ! what a ragged wardrobe must yours be 
 Who with such garb would screen deformity ! 
 Doff these false feathers, you transparent fool ! 
 Back to your scissors, lexicon, and stool. 
 
 public, it is only right to remind them that any man is 
 entitled to dub himself " Of the Inner Temple " by eating 
 thirty-six dinners, if he have a degree ; seventy -two if he 
 have not. The author of " The Personal History of Lord 
 Bacon" had, of course, to eat the larger number. " dura 
 messorum ilia ! "
 
 MY SATTRE 
 
 Clandestine, as before, elude the knot : 
 
 If screened secure, not flogged because forgot. 
 
 'Tis said when autliorlings begin to write, 
 They mostly keep their own dear selves in 
 
 sight. 
 One instance more approves the saying true : 
 This king of critics is the thing he drew. 
 Reach down his dusty Drama from the shelf, 
 This hapless " Eunuch," and behold himself ! 
 Powerless himself, he plots 'gainst all who 
 
 can 
 Fulfil the mental functions of the Man. 
 
 "What is this Athenceurn, that pretends 
 To damn its foes and canonize its friends ? 
 This pope pretentious that would fain impart 
 Dogmas on Science, Literature, and Art ':
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 29 
 
 Time was when, boy before its mystic shrine, 
 
 No knee was bent more credulous than mine. 
 
 Its dread anathemas, its solemn curse, 
 
 On prose heretical, schismatic verse, 
 
 Its benedictions, pompously bestowed 
 
 On novel orthodox and faithful ode, 
 
 These did I hear hebdomadally fall 
 
 On blessed or banned, and lent my faith to all. 
 
 Ay, and there was — ah ! simple clays ! — a time 
 
 When I first felt, and trembled into rhyme. 
 
 Guess how my boyish energies were raised ! 
 
 For if it did not criticise — it praised. 
 
 But somehow, as the years stole on, I came 
 
 Slightly to question, then to doubt, its claim. 
 
 I read with marvel and a sense of wrong, 
 
 The " Golden Legend " was a sorry song : 
 
 That he whose strains like woodland waters roll 
 
 Had not the singer's symphony of soul;
 
 30 MY SATIRE 
 
 Whilst the "Green Leaves" of Mackay's summer 
 
 lay 
 Should know no Autumn, but be green for aye : 
 With horror read, decreed for us to use, 
 A Chorlev's sonnets, models of the Muse : 
 Started to hear, though Bulwer could but claim 
 Cold recognition from the nod of Fame, 
 Not in its eyes could Dixon pilfer ill, 
 Nor nonsense ooze from Doran's shallow quill. 
 My creed began to slacken till, I trow, 
 I grew the sceptic that you see me now. 
 
 Terror of " Minor Minstrels ! " 14 This the 
 part 
 Shaped out for " Science — Literature — and Art ! " 
 
 14 With the affectation of superciliousness which is 
 the exclusive property of " heggars on horsehack," the 
 Athenaeum generally devotes a column of second-hand
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 31 
 
 Is this the upshot of your threats and noise — 
 To fall, like Winkle, upon little boys ? 
 As leeches seize, their appetite to cloy, 
 On maiden prostrate, or on helpless boy ; 
 When plunged in salt, how impotent they lie ! 
 Their office, now — to vomit, writhe, and die. 
 So " Minor Minstrels " are its critic's prey 
 Until some hand, more powerful than they, 
 The nasty, slimy animals submit 
 To the sharp savour of surprising wit. 
 
 Sometimes, its critics — Mudie 15 having bought, 
 Half-price, the volumes which had cost them 
 nought — 
 
 puns to "Minor Minstrels." I scarcely need quote at 
 length the scene in "Pickwick," where Mr. Winkle, 
 having announced that he is " going to begin," throws off 
 his coat and waistcoat and makes a " terrific onslaught on 
 two small boys." 
 
 15 Recourse is frequently had to the book-stalls in
 
 32 MY SATIEE 
 
 Dine off their author (fifteen-pence, a head). 
 Whom they have sold, reviewed, done all but- 
 read ; 
 And then, by some caprice of kindly Fate, 
 Take Brompton 'bus, to wait upon the great. 
 To "block the stairs, perhaps to reach the door, 
 Dance with a wall-flower, occupy a bore, 
 Look on at whist — if wanted, make up one — 
 To sneak to supper when the rest have done, 
 Eat melted ices, drink the lees of wine, 
 To swear, perhaps to think, them both divine : 
 
 Holywell Street (now, I am informed, known under the 
 name of " Booksellers' Row "), where you may often see 
 exposed for sale, at considerably reduced prices, the 
 works of our best living writers, a few days after pub- 
 lication. Did Horace live now-a-days, it would be quite 
 useless for him to pray, " Nulla taberna meos habeat neqne 
 pila libellos!" — for the modern critic would sell him 
 remorselessly in the foulest market in order to satisfy the 
 exigencies of protracted fasting.
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 33 
 
 Then to tramp back to Fleet Street in the night — ■ 
 No 'busses now his recklessness invite — 
 Solicited to joys he can't afford, 
 By Hansoms chaffed, by loiterers implored : 
 To reach his garret, mounting break his shin, 
 To find his fire gone out, his bill come in : 
 Describe the " splendid banquet, converse gay," 
 And thus, with venal, lying pen, repay 
 His lengthened evening's paradise of pain, 
 The chilly welcome and the warm champagne, 
 Expense of going, grief of getting back : 
 These the light duties of the scribbling hack. 
 As geese, designed for Strasbourg's noble pies 
 In which the crust expected is to rise, 
 Have free permit to gobble, gorge, and stuff, 
 So are these critics pampered for their puff. 
 Yet, when the supper and the praise are weighed, 
 Their meanest patron is but ill repaid. 
 
 D
 
 34 MY SATIRE 
 
 Their halt, though stilted, periods betray 
 They eat for hunger, and applaud for pay. 
 In their cold calling, native wit is lost : 
 So port turns dull and muddy under frost ! 
 
 Some from obscure, dissenting, country town, 
 Flushed with a parish grammar-school renown, 
 Rush up to London, thither phrenzy-hurled, 
 To rouse the nation and amaze the world ! 
 With eye prophetic, paint the crowds that pour 
 Around their publisher's importuned door, 
 Read and send home the journals' boundless 
 
 praise, 
 Wreathe for themselves anticipated bays, 
 And stand awhile in Dreamland's splendid doubt 
 To take a peerage or be great without. 
 Who shall describe their ignorant amaze 
 When first they find no Firm will read their 
 
 lays?
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 35 
 
 They then write " leaders/' not the Post will 
 
 print, 
 Suggest a scheme — Smith says, there's nothing 
 
 in't: 
 Make plays, make pantomimes — rejected, all : 
 Coin farces, leave them, and are asked to 
 
 call : 
 And after long rebuffs, rude words, doors slammed, 
 Get a farce acted, go to see it — damned ! 
 The time has come. Now, neophytes no more, 
 Themselves unfit, they hate those fit to soar ; 
 And to their shame and supper partial grown, 
 The Athenaium claims them for its own. 
 
 So criminals, condemned to pay the price 
 Of painful death for long career of vice, 
 By turning hangmen, yet themselves may save 
 The culprit's scaffold and the felon's grave. 
 d 2
 
 36 MY SATIRE 
 
 Some too there be, frail worshippers of Fame — 
 And these I pity, though I needs must blame — 
 Who, would they, when unrecognized, but wait, 
 Might grace their epoch, and themselves be 
 
 great. 
 Alas ! worn out by patience and by pain, 
 They yield, and prostitute their pen for gain ; 
 More and more barren wane from day to 
 
 day, 
 Till Genius, outraged, sighs and steals away. 
 As pointers trained to hint where coveys hide 
 'Neath heather-clump, or tangled bracken-side, 
 If after rabbits left to ramble loose 
 Spoil their fine scent and abdicate their use, 
 So men, designed by nature to reveal 
 Clandestine secrets for their country's weal, 
 When once with lower purpose bent on greed, 
 Forfeit the nobler instincts of the breed !
 
 AND ITS CENSOES. 37 
 
 Yet, Heaven be thanked ! some critics still 
 
 there be, 
 Blame not for pique, commend without a 
 
 fee; 
 Redeem, with proud hereditary taste, 
 An art so noble, though so much debased : 
 Who wield, responsible, the censor's pen 
 Like well-bred educated gentlemen. 
 So long as courteous Hutton condescends 
 To vindicate his foes, rebuke his friends ; 
 Whom public smile nor private fondling moves 
 To puff the rubbish that his sense reproves : 
 So long as Sotheby, scrupulous, shall sit, 
 In sportive judgment on a rival's wit, 
 And, patient of his own neglected lays, 
 Commend a poet with a poet's praise : 
 And classic Hannay, in the scorn of greed 
 Writing too well for more than few to read,
 
 38 MY SATIRE 
 
 On smaller brows sees bays profusely thrown 
 A juster age bad placed upon bis own, 
 The Critic's Art shall hold its wonted place, 
 Nor even dunce nor Dixon quite disgrace. 
 
 Here would I gladly end. But since I seek 
 The public countenance, not " Once a Week," 
 And, prone to fallow meditation, shrink 
 " All the Year Round " from running into ink ; 
 Whose mind's gestation is, as labours go 
 In days so strangely rapid, somewhat slow ; 
 Who, " Youth " 'tis true, not passionate for pelf, 
 Care — most of all — to cultivate myself, 
 But still, at decent intervals, intend 
 To strive to make Humanity my friend ; 
 Who will not — though the Gods know best- 
 perhaps 
 Itesume my pen till fruitful years elapse ;
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 39 
 
 Let me, before I lay it down, declare 
 
 A rage, I trust, all honest souls will share. 
 
 There is a race who labour to be smart, 
 To conquer nature with the tricks of art : 
 Just as fat, awkward boys, arrived in town, 
 Seek Savile Row, to smooth their roughness down. 
 AVith them, all things are " fanny : " Earth 's a 
 
 " draff • " 
 The Sun, "facetious," and the Moon, a "wag." 
 Life is a "joke;" the world, a "top you flog," 
 Spring, " lively ; " morning frost, " you dog, you 
 
 dog ! " 
 A fire has " idiosyncrasies," and " drop 
 Hot tears " thereon from every " passionate 
 
 chop." 
 Oysters are " delicate bivalves : " toasted cheese 
 Is a burning yellow lava," if you please.
 
 40 MY SATIRE 
 
 Uncle and boy they " curiously " style 
 "Avuncular relation," "juvenile." 16 
 Exquisite humour ! E'en as I transcribe, 
 I drop my pen, and press my panting side. 
 
 O Dickens ! Dickens ! yours this flimsy brood : 
 They kept by you, and you by them kotoued. 
 They call you Demi-god : you think it true : 
 First you feed them, and then they slaver you. 
 Fast for an article, a place to dine, 
 They crib your jokes the while they drain your 
 
 wine. 
 Can you not see, collected round your chair, 
 These base Delilahs cutting off your hair? 
 
 16 Quoted, verbatim, from an article written by one of 
 our most popular litterateurs, now the Editor of (I am 
 told) a very successful Monthly.
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 41 
 
 They do not tell you that the crowd, whose call 
 Welcomed your rise, are weeping o'er your fall : 
 That they, Avhose approbation is the meed 
 Alone worth having, long since ceased to read : 
 That they who oft have " Pickwick " fondly kept 
 Under their sickly pillow as they slept, 
 Heady to comfort should they chance awake, 
 Make them neglect the throb, forget the ache : 
 Who read and read — nor marked the night go 
 
 by— 
 To know if Paul would live, if Nelly die, 
 Crouched by the twilight window, book in 
 
 hand, 
 Despite a mother's warning, sire's command, 
 Then as the shadows broadened o'er the park, 
 Intrigued for candles long before 'twas dark, 
 To learn if — errors, blindness, perils passed — 
 Agnes should weep on David's heart at last :
 
 42 MY SATITJE 
 
 They do not hint that such — and I am one — 
 Skipped Dorrit's woes, and yawned at Meagles' 
 
 fun , 
 Toiled on and on for sake of auld lang 
 
 syne, 
 Or desperate flung you down, and madly rushed 
 
 to dine. 
 
 Well, take your choice. Revere your heart and 
 
 brain, 
 Or make both lacqueys to the lust of gain. 
 Write, print, and publish, when ye 've nought to 
 
 say, 
 Like what must not be even named for pay. 
 Weigh out the monthly shilling's worth of wit, 
 And measure if the length of grief be writ. 
 Nay — as if not enough by these you sank— 
 Degrade the Author to the mountebank !
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 43 
 
 Enter the lists of grinning showmen with 
 A Paul, a Woodin, or an Albert Smith. 
 Do all you can to lower in our eyes 
 The noblest calling underneath the skies. 
 
 O restless Boy ! O heart unhappy here ! 
 Soul soaring upward far beyond your sphere ! 
 Where are the men whose honours and estate 
 Leave you no peace, but prompt you to be great? 
 The proud results of abnegated ease 
 To vex the quiet of the summer trees ? 
 A sister's pride, a mother's partial face, 
 Friend's loyal grasp, bright bonnibel's embrace, 
 Are far more cheaply bought, when gained more 
 
 dear 
 Than ill-writ praise from starving pamphleteer. 
 Be warned, be wise. Oh ! answer me, what gains 
 To live a Russell or to die a Baines ?
 
 U MY SATIRE 
 
 Urge you that such as theirs is not the height 
 Which makes you work by day and weep by 
 
 night, 
 You, resolute, would storm th' Olympian vault, 
 And carry Fame, repugnant, by assault. 
 AY ell then, suppose that distant summit won, 
 Ambition ended, Life's long business done. — 
 And then ? A panegyric in the Times, 
 A tear from Jeames, from Punch some vapid 
 
 rhymes : 
 Mayhap — I gladly give it you — a tomb 
 In yonder Abbey's cold aud cheerless gloom : 
 To have — O sueet and soothing sense of pride ! — 
 The honour Milton, Byron, was denied : 
 An epitaph in true sepulchral style, 
 Aimed at a tear and answered with a smile : 
 War-office pity for your bastard son, 
 For his poor mother, place and pity none —
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. ia 
 
 Here, take them all ! Had /such boons to grant, 
 You should not long intrigue, and push, and pant. 
 Welcome to statesmen's baubles, scribes' abuse, 
 The Philanthrope's renown, the hemlock's juice ! 
 
 Yet it is hard to watch the years slip by 
 And stand as far as ever from the sky, 
 Wasting beneath the consciousness of powers . 
 To win Life's chaplet were Life's chance but 
 
 ours ; 
 Thirst with the unslaked passion to enjoy, 
 To feel the playfulness yet lack the toy : 
 To know, if came He now, we straight could claim 
 In Praise a friend, an intimate in Fame. 
 No, say — would greet Her, if of Her possessed, 
 Like some sweet girl and strain her to our breast, 
 Would lose our senses in excess of bliss, 
 Pay throb with throb and kiss reward with kiss,
 
 46 MY SATIRE 
 
 Whilst they who saw would surely not up- 
 braid 
 The spendthrift boy and unresisting maid, 
 But only say with charitable tongue, 
 " 'Tis but the privilege of being young ! 
 Not that incongruous sight we sometimes see, 
 Full-bosomed Fame on Iinpotency's knee ! " 
 
 Alas ! they will not trust us when we're young ; 
 And when they trust us, Time has tamed our 
 
 tongue. 
 Gone the fierce Faith that lets not others 
 
 doubt — 
 Gone the brave Hope that puts distrust to rout — 
 Gone the warm Charity that hides from view 
 Not our faults only, but our neighbours' too — 
 Gone the illusion which alone enthralls — 
 " Take all you wanted."—'' All I wanted, palls !
 
 AND ITS CENSORS. 47 
 
 The pangs of painful waiting filled the void. 
 The Banquet comes — too late to be enjoyed ! " 
 
 Of the rewards which human toils befall, 
 The Poet's portion is the worst of all. 
 Dragging, through ruts and up the dusty lanes, 
 With patient sweat, the dull reluctant wains, 
 The thoughtful hind with leaves bedecks his 
 
 beast, 
 And so protects him from the flies, at least. 
 But, on the Bard who, yoked to sluggard team, 
 Docs the World's work, whate'er the World may 
 
 deem, 
 Should bays be placed to make his toil less sore, 
 These dungfly critics only buzz the more. 
 Well, let them buzz their worst : for larger 
 
 gains, 
 They little reck, remunerate his pains.
 
 48 MY SATIRE 
 
 O dowried Poet ! Earth and Heaven combine 
 To blend their glories, and to make them thine. 
 For me, Spring dries her tears — those sweet 
 
 alarms, — 
 Conquers her coyness, and unveils her charms : 
 For me, the corn, arrayed by Autumn's hand, 
 Sways on the lap of the delighted land, 
 Just as — the day-toils over — you may see 
 A fair-haired, frolic girl on some proud father's 
 
 knee : 
 For me, when Summer's festal day is done, 
 In regal splendour goes away the Sun, 
 King with the purple glories round him furled, 
 Flinging his farewell largesse o'er the world : 
 For me the Moon looks down where late He shone, 
 Like yearning mother towards the boy that's gone ; 
 Or, when the hours are equal, doth arise 
 As He is blustering in the western skies,
 
 AND ITS CENSOES. 49 
 
 And with her dignified, calm, matron frown, 
 Gazes his proud and petulant boyhood down 
 For me on singing brooks and silver meres, 
 Through beechen branches diffidently peers, 
 As a fair novice through a convent grille, 
 On passing pageant timid glance will steal, 
 Eager to eye but fearful to reveal : 
 The spoiled and froward Ocean, all for me, 
 Now coaxed to love, now fretting to be free, 
 With fume-fringed, scornful lip, and fierce 
 
 delight, 
 Hurls back defiance to rebuking Night, 
 Then, petted babe on partial parent's breast, 
 On the soft sand-slope sobs itself to rest. 
 
 This is My wealth : and this, thank Heaven ! 
 is such 
 Statesmen can't tax, and critics cannot touch. 
 
 E
 
 50 MY SATIEE AND ITS CENSORS. 
 
 My real Life is spent in other sphere 
 
 From that in which I dance and chatter here. 
 
 The Angel's Sword, the Exile's stern decree, 
 
 That does not flame, this was not passed for me 
 
 For me the Golden Gates stand open still, 
 
 I enter in and roam through Eden when I will.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 FROM THE ATHENAEUM, APRIL 20, 1861. 
 
 A little satire is a dangerous thing for a youth- 
 ful writer who is apt to forget — iu both senses 
 — that he is a young gentleman. "We do not deny 
 that many vices of ' The Season ' may need lashing 
 with a whip of fire, and that it is very tempting to 
 see them stripped almost naked for it. But it re- 
 quires great art, experience and wisdom to do this 
 rightly. K"o youth can wield the lash. He cannot 
 unite the delicacy of touch with the strength of arm. 
 AYe do not deny that this author's intention was 
 honest ; it may be only the fault of boyish blood that 
 he has done far more harm than good. Nor do we 
 deny that his satire contains powerful lines, and here 
 and there hints of poetry ; as, where he calls a Beauty 
 the "wandering sunshine of a countryside"; but 
 the spirit of the thing is essentially coarse. We find 
 the author disgusts us with himself rather than with 
 the sins he describes. Also, when he smites Vice on
 
 52 APPENDIX. 
 
 the cheek, he does it in a way that must call the red up 
 in the face of Virtue. This is the fatality of a youthful 
 satirist, who is on the most flattering terms with 
 himself as he stands smirkingly before the mirror of 
 consciousness, and traces his likeness to Byron. "We 
 are not inclined to be severe with this young gen- 
 tleman ; but we must warn him that he has not 
 " caught up the whole of life and uttered it." 
 
 THE END.
 
 Just Published, Price Five Shillings. 
 
 THE SEASON: 
 
 A SATIRE. 
 
 ALFRED AUSTIN. 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE OF "THE MODERN MUSE," BY 
 THOMAS GEORGE COOPER. 
 
 Slender.— Why do your dogs bark so ? be there bears i' th' Town ? 
 
 Anne Page. — I think there are, Sir ! I heard them talked of. 
 
 Slender.— 1 love the sport well ; . . . but the women have so 
 cried and shrieked at it, that it passed. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 LONDON: 
 GEOEGE MANWAEING, 
 
 8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND. 
 1861.
 
 THE SEASON: 
 
 A SATIRE, 
 BY ALFRED AUSTIN. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " Mr. Austin has prefixed to bis poem a dictum of 
 J. S. Mill's, that the diseases of society can only be 
 prevented or cured by being spoken about in plain 
 language. He has certainly acted up to his motto. 
 There are some verses of extraordinary force and 
 vigour. 
 
 This last line — ' Till the half-drunk lean over the half- 
 dressed,' is worthy of Byron. "We anticipate a much 
 better performance from the author, when his power 
 becomes more mature, when his views of life are more 
 broad, and when he has learnt that the Season has 
 more phases than the one he has confined his atten- 
 tion to." — Literary Gazette. 
 
 " The motto prefixed to this Satire is, to a certain 
 extent, its justification. Mr. Mill has said, in his 
 ' Political Economy,' — ' The diseases of society can, 
 no more than corporal maladies, be prevented or cured 
 without being spoken about in plain language.' On 
 this hint the present satirist has spoken in very plain 
 language, of the follies and vices of the day. For
 
 4 OPINIONS OF THE PttESS. 
 
 ourselves, to whom England's growth in virtue and 
 honour is not identical with the increase of her ma- 
 terial wealth and ostentatious luxury, we are but too 
 glad when honest indignation makes some good verses 
 against high-flying vices. 
 
 " Still it is to be regretted that Mr. Austin has not, 
 in a more masterful way, ' shown vice in its own image.' 
 He has given sufficient proof here that he could have 
 done it. ' The Season' and its votaries would have 
 borne a sharper and a firmer handling — they should 
 also have been treated with an eye for masculine vices, 
 as well as for those shared with or common among 
 women. The peculiarly disgusting vanity and selfish- 
 ness of the whole genus ' Languid Swell,'' for instance, 
 would have been a fine subject for Mr. Austin's lash. 
 "While he chose to 'lay on,' few would cry 'hold! 
 enough ! ' "We must also add that Mr. Austin is a 
 little too hard on what are called the amiable 
 coquetries of the sex. But, as he tells us he is young, 
 we hope that he will outgrow the injustice of youth, 
 while he matures his powers of observation and of 
 satirical denunciation. Society will profit by it. That 
 he can appreciate and describe true womanly loveli- 
 ness is clearly shown by the few lines about a young 
 girl fresh from the country, in her first ' season.' 
 These are the best." — Globe. 
 
 " Mr. Austin evidently considers himself the Juve- 
 nal of the present age ; and certainly, if he lacks 
 something of the fire, the wit, and the delicacy* of the 
 old Roman, he is none the worse as a representative of 
 the times in which he lives. He gives us a portrait 
 of his Muse by way of frontispiece — a very espiegle 
 young person engaged before a looking-glass in some 
 of those occult mysteries of the toilet, to which 
 
 * Heaven save the mark ! I should be glad to have a delicate 
 edition of Juvenal. — A. A.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. O 
 
 Hamlet refers when he upbraids the sex with painting 
 their faces. 
 
 " The ' Satire ' is very nicely printed, and we have 
 no doubt has already served to amuse the ' wits and 
 belles ' of Tyburnia and Belgravia — for whose special 
 delectation it has evidently been designed — each 
 ' curled and scented darling ' no doubt vehemently 
 applauding those lines in which his or her dearest and 
 most detested friends are hit the hardest. Mr. 
 Austin dresses up his 'Satire' quite in the approved 
 style. He begins by invoking the Muse, and goes on 
 to divulge why he has followed the bent of his own 
 inclinations, and has not done what certain friends 
 eagerly advised him to do ; such as — 
 
 ' Compete with Meredith,' &c. 
 
 " Not an unkindly satirist is Mr. Austin. He 
 says : ' Let me lash the follies that I love,' and im- 
 mediately proceeds to give an illustration of his mode 
 of doing this, by telling how, 
 
 ' Defiant, spurning frown and foe, 
 With slackened rein swift Skittles rules the Row,' &c. 
 
 " All the follies and amusements of the town are 
 passed in review by this stem but not unamusing 
 censor. He takes us to the theatre — 
 
 ' where saucy Wilton winks her way, 
 And says the more the less she has to say ; 
 Or else where Robson, servile to the town, 
 Discards the Actor and adopts the Clown ; 
 Where Toole or Compton, perfect in his part, 
 Touches each sense except the head and heart ; 
 Where mobs ' recall ' the wit of Rogers' wig, 
 Applaud a pun and recompense a jig.' 
 
 He takes us to a ball, and tells us that it is an 
 auction-room. The comparison is drawn with some 
 vigour. — Ceitic.
 
 6 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " "We are no very great believers in the efficacy of 
 satire. No doubt it would be easy to mention some 
 productions of this class which have at different times 
 exerted a good deal of influence. But this has been 
 rather because they expressed opinions which had 
 either been gradually maturing through a nation at 
 large, or existed in great force among some influential 
 faction. Ridicule may barb the weapon, but its direc- 
 tion is usually impressed by some deeper power. 
 Abuses, however flagrant, which are either supported 
 or but feebly opposed by popular feeling, are proof 
 against wit, and the satirist of these, clever as he 
 may be, laudatur et alqet. His shaft, like the arrow 
 in Virgil, which took fire as it shot through the sky, 
 may mark its path with brilliancy, but, after all, accom- 
 plishes nothing, and the real work of reformation is 
 done by causes entirely independent of his control. 
 
 " If cleverness, a considerable turn for epigram, and 
 an unusual command of the Popean style of heroic 
 verse, united with a good deal of truth, could reform 
 the vices of London society, Mr. Austin might rank as 
 an apostle. But as he himself says, — 
 
 ' Who think by verse to better make the bad, 
 I grant it freely, must be vain or mad. 
 From Horace downwards, monitory rhymes 
 Have but amused, and mended not the times.' 
 
 " "When he explains why, under these circumstances, 
 he comes forward as a satirist, his motive is not 
 equally clear : we freely allow that he is amusing 
 enough. The fairer half of creation he pursues from 
 Rotten Row to the Opera and the other haunts of the 
 upper ten thousand, with a relentless animosity which 
 is perhaps as flattering to their power as it is offensive 
 to their vanity. One of his principal points of animad- 
 version is the topic which our contemporary, the 
 Morning Post, brought into notice last season, and 
 which then excited a transient amount of discussion —
 
 OPINIONS OF TIIE PRESS. 7 
 
 the ' fast ' ways of fashionable young ladies, especially 
 their curiosity about notorious members of the demi- 
 monde, and their tendency to attempt a sort of rivalry 
 with them in the increased freedom of their manners 
 and conversation. 
 
 " Mr. Austin defends his sex for what might be con- 
 sidered a want of taste in forsaking the society of the 
 respectable classes for such as is mentioned in the 
 foregoing extract : — 
 
 ' Is it a marvel, Man's more liberal mood 
 Should beat the wilds where nature rears her brood, 
 Along forbidden border forests roam, 
 Seeking the breeze he cannot find at home ? 
 Go, girls ! to Church ! believing all you hear, 
 Think that their lack of virtue makes them dear, 
 And heed not me who say that ban and bar 
 Make you the stupid stunted things you are ; 
 That both would dearer, happier, better be, 
 Had they your virtue, you their liberty.' 
 
 " He scolds them for their vanity of dress and person : 
 
 Then comes the ever fertile subject of mercenary 
 
 marriages, the author's opinion of which, and, of their* 
 consequences, is illustrated by a story told after the 
 fashion of the one in the ' New Timon.' In the de- 
 scription of the unmarried Blanche Darley there are 
 some pretty lines. ' A cornet waltzes, but a colonel 
 weds,' is really sublime in its antithesis, though not 
 the best line in the satire. The ' Modern Muse,' 
 who figures in the frontispiece in the guise of a re- 
 markably well-developed young lady (?) before her 
 dressing-glass, in a by no means complete state of 
 attire, and engaged in the important occupation of 
 powdering herself, has apparently presided over Mr. 
 Austin's composition to some effect, if we may judge 
 by the decolletee nature of some of his paragraphs. 
 He has some lines on the ballet, which will raise a 
 laugh in almost any masculine circle, but which 
 must assuredly exclude the book from drawing-room
 
 8 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 tables ; though, if young ladies are what the author 
 describes them, he has perhaps counted on being the 
 more read, like the ' Essays and Reviews,' the more 
 naughty he is said to be. 
 
 "Mr. Austin's verse is generally smooth. The versi- 
 fication is generally much above the average, as our 
 specimens will have shown ; and we can only regret, 
 for the author's sake, that it is not likely to do more 
 than amuse a few bachelor smokiug-rooms. He does 
 not pretend to be very desperately in earnest ; and we 
 conclude that he waltzes and flirts, and goes into what 
 the ladies call ' all sort ot places' just like anybody 
 else. So he will not be much surprised to find that 
 the world of fashion goes on very much the same as 
 if he had not taken it to task." — Press. 
 
 " A very favourable specimen of the modern satire 
 — keen, glittering, pungent, and clever. The diction 
 is masculine in its texture, the rhythm free and 
 flowing, and the author is mordacious enough, without 
 trenching upon the boundaries of good taste, to make 
 the vigorous lash he wields felt as his castigation goes 
 on." — Dispatch.
 
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