4 Sos 
 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 5 
 
 ■'■ 
 I 
 
 '. V : :/// 
 
 % ■'-■Mm, 
 
 V/AW////////A 
 
 - y/////sss/////j 
 
 # 
 
 m 
 
 p 
 
 
 m 
 
 wMm 
 
 M0m 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 i in. 
 
 BILIAD, 
 
 UK, 
 
 HOW TO CRITICIZE; 
 8 &attw, 
 
 WITH 
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL, 
 
 AND OTHER JEUX D'ESPRIT. 
 BY T. M. HUGHES, 
 
 Author of "Revelations of Spain," "The Ocean Flower," &c. 
 
 Ta Si ypaniuuTetvs ffvyypa^ofxai. 
 
 " I will write the tricks of the magisterial scribe." 
 
 Arist'jph. Thesm. 
 
 Ci)trtJ 3£t(itton 
 
 CONSIDERABLY AUGMENTED. 
 
 LONDON. 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, 
 
 AND MAY BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 184(J. 

 
 LONDON: 
 
 WILLIAM STEVENS, PRINTER, BELL YARD, 
 TEMPLE BAR.
 
 PR 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 The extraordinary curiosity which this Work 
 excited from the moment of its first appearance, and 
 which a Second Edition could not allay, continuing 
 still to be sustained by the piquancy of the subject 
 on which it treats, and by the peculiarity of its 
 mode of publication, a Third Edition has been called 
 for within a very few weeks of its " first venturing 
 forth upon the waters." This issue presents a con- 
 siderable addition of entirely new and original matter, 
 comprising the exposure of the anomalies of existing 
 English society, from page 48 to page 57. Out of 
 respect for the judicial character, I have omitted 
 in this edition a couplet affecting a gentleman 
 who has just been raised to the Bench. In several 
 reviews of my first edition, the critics have hastily 
 assumed that the Biliad originated in personal 
 resentment. So far is this from being the fact, 
 that my strictures on the Atrabilarian were con- 
 fined entirely to its reviews of the works of in- 
 dividuals who to me are utter strangers, and I 
 specified this over and over in the Introduction and 
 
 a2 
 
 868777
 
 11 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 the Illustrative Remarks. It is the system aloue that 
 I attack ; the vile and abominable system of illiberal 
 and groundless depreciation of all new authors and 
 their works (a favoured few excepted), upon specu- 
 lation that the abuse will be piquant and will pay. 
 I am happy to add my belief that I have attacked 
 the system successfully, and that some of the most 
 eminent men in literature have assured me that my 
 book "will do much good." 
 
 A thousand thanks to certain good friends of the 
 Weekly Press for proving that there are more "Bilks" 
 than one in criticism, and giving thus involuntarily to 
 my satire a wider and more general application: especial 
 thanks to the Morning Posy, into which "Bilk," 
 usurping the functions of its fashionable flunky patrons, 
 poured the very copious slop on Monday last which 
 sold more than 100 copies of my book. The review 
 was worthy of the journal, which some call the Post 
 because always posterior in intelligence : 
 
 semper paulfim erit ultra * * 
 
 Cum rota Posterior curias, et in axe secundo. 
 
 Pers. Sat. v. 72. 
 
 This utensil, as is its nature and half its name, becomes 
 the receptacle of slops of the most opposite character, 
 for the Posy in September last had two columns to 
 prove me an ingenious and accomplished poet (vide
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. HI 
 
 Review of my " Ocean Flower"), and now in July it 
 has two other columns to prove my effusions " the 
 most disgusting absurdity in the shape of poetry, 
 that ever crost its path" — of course, since last 
 September. 
 
 — Post vehemens lupus, et sibi et hosti 
 Iratus pariter ! Hor. Ep. ii. 2. 
 
 So "Bilk" can only succeed in annoying, it cares not 
 for the exposure of its scandalous contradictions. 
 With true footmanlike powder-and-plush morality, 
 the Posy makes mirth of my incurable sickness, 
 gloats over colocynth and calomel, and revels in its 
 analysis of the slop-pail. I will not here descend 
 with it : 
 
 Collega gradu post me sedet uno. — Hor. Sat. i. 6. 
 
 " My colleague of the Posy is a step or two beneath me.'* 
 
 True reflex of the truthful spirit of its patrons — the 
 Posy, while it affects to copy my title page, with ser- 
 vants' -hall malignity omits all mention of my previous 
 authorship, sinks my " Revelations of Spain" which 
 has just elicited a flattering tribute from the Edinburgh 
 Review, and presents me as an upstart wholly un- 
 known to literature, who makes his presumptuous 
 debut as an overhauler of critics. Another gratuitous 
 falsehood smelling of the scullery, is that my " Dirge
 
 IV I'KKFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 of Repeal" consists of squibs written at separate in- 
 tervals during the last few years. Ever}" line has 
 been written during the last two months ! But as 
 the Posy procures for the kitchen to make out a live- 
 lihood — 
 
 — Tu argento Post omnia ponis ! — 
 
 Hor. Sat. i. 1. 
 
 it must be permitted, I suppose, the tone of its patrons 
 — a monopoly ofheartlessness and falsehood — a mono- 
 poly, too, of ignorance, as witness its misquotation, 
 " bphagitomized dolt " — showing its utter mistake of 
 the point and meanmg. 
 
 Pugnabant armis, quae Post fabricaverat. 
 
 Hor. Sat. i. 3. 
 
 "They fought with the accustomed weapons of Posy 
 fabrication." I never before appreciated so highly 
 the advantages of a true scurril smack and savour in 
 criticism. The praise of the Posy was near sinking 
 my " Ocean Flower" — its bi-columnar censures have 
 cleared off the second edition of my " Biliad," and 
 ushered a third with eclat into literary life ; while, as 
 thei J owy enlarges on my " Hibernian assurance," my 
 qualities as a satirist are categorized with those of 
 my country men, Swift, Sheridan, and Gifford. 
 
 "London, 1st August, 1846.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Mankind is certainly a ridiculous race enough, 
 without the superadded ridicule of jackpuddings 
 assuming the Censorship, and setting themselves 
 up as flogging Ephori, while labouring under the 
 grossest rudimental ignorance. In the following 
 pages, without travelling out of the four numbers 
 for a single month, October, 1845, of which alone 
 I took the trouble to note the blunders during the 
 past winter in Portugal, I have detected in the 
 editor of a London literary journal the most scanda- 
 lous ignorance of the Italian, Spanish, and Portu- 
 guese languages, as well as of manners, statistics,
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 customs, and literature. I have likewise opened 
 the larger question of the character of our criticism 
 generally, and of the description of censorship which 
 our present literature requires. In the smaller 
 poems which follow I have impartially recorded the 
 impressions produced on the mind of an Irishman 
 resident abroad, removed from the sphere of faction, 
 but keenly alive to his country's honour, concerning 
 the Repeal movement. 
 
 When a man ensconces himself in chair or pulpit, 
 and gives himself acroamatic airs, we sometimes 
 inquire by what right he has taken the position 
 lie assumes, and oftener lazily submit to his 
 dogmatism. But when he becomes dissrustinglv 
 dictatorial, habitually ferocious, intolerably despotic 
 in id slaughtering for mere love of slaughter, we 
 immediately apply for a writ of quo warranto ? 
 The answer here is that a certain unit hath scraped 
 together types and set up a printing-press, and the 
 only other title that can be set up with his types 
 and printing-press is the naked one of sufferance.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 When to this is added convicted ignorance, it be- 
 comes a needful task and paramount duty to pluck 
 the jay of the quills with which his tail is bestuck, 
 and show to the world what a pattern of Swift's 
 "forked radish," what a naked and shivering straw- 
 head mounted upon wires, is the Sir Oracle whom 
 fools have worshipped. 
 
 The common mode in which these Atrabilarian 
 critiques are written (for assumption the world 
 has never seen their like) is to mix very slight 
 praise with very great depreciation, where the work 
 is of a valuable character, and, appropriating the 
 information, proceed to re-write it and give it forth 
 as the reviewer's own. When three or four pages 
 are thus appropriated, and the trouble of throwing 
 over the theft the slight veil of a change of stvle 
 (retaining all the ideas) becomes too great, the 
 reviewer condescends to snip out a dozen lines as 
 they come from the author's brain, always taking 
 care to append some such disparaging observa- 
 tion as " This is not strictly true," " The proposi-
 
 ') INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tion thus stated is not quite correct," or some 
 other pinch of dust for the eyes of the exo- 
 teric community. Then, having vindicated thus his 
 pretensions to critical capacity, he proceeds with 
 three or four pages more of wholesale robbery, 
 until, wearied with his Gipsy-like task of disguis- 
 ing the features of the bantling, or compelled by 
 the force of shame, he again is obliging enough 
 to snip out half a dozen lines of your text, to which 
 he appends the usual snub, without specifying the 
 shadow of a reason. " Non valet opinio sine mo- 
 mentis," say the schoolmen ; but the Seraphic 
 Doctor himself was not so dogmatical. The edicts 
 of this Grub-Street slaughterhouse, like Herod's, 
 aim at massacring all the innocents that issue into 
 literary life — but unlike Herod (liberos proprios 
 occidens) — except his cronies' and his own. The 
 (jobemouche world, deceived by the lofty tone 
 which the rogue has the cunning to assume, 
 rush to the conclusion that, because he is so ruth- 
 lessly severe, he must be a monstrous wiseacre.
 
 INTRODUCTION. / 
 
 A lofty tone, quotha ! I am reminded of a say- 
 ing which I heard in a Parisian salon during the 
 bellicose ferment of 1840: " Les Anglois ont prit 
 h haut ton; eh bien, c'est a nous de prendre le 
 baton (bas ton) ! " 
 
 It is time, indeed, that a more wholesome style 
 of criticism should be introduced, and that the high 
 and paramount duties of the public writer, the or- 
 dained priest of Civilization, should be better un- 
 derstood and practised. Forty years have elapsed 
 since the just and noble views of an illustrious 
 German, Fichte, were put forth upon this subject ; 
 but as yet they have produced but little effect, and 
 though there is much splendid and just criticism in 
 England, the reviews which I now am noticing, with 
 some others of their class, instead of becoming human- 
 ized with the age, and moralized with its progress, are 
 growing in assumption and in outrage daily. The won- 
 der is how such an odious despotism and intolerable 
 burthen should have been borne so long, how the tor- 
 tures inflicted by the paper-capt Phalaris should not
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 have made him ere this the victim of a worse than 
 Agrigentine clamour. I roast him here in a few 
 of his own brazen bulls. 
 
 To be mocked by Medusa, and taxed with un- 
 cleanness by a shoeblack, is not very flattering to 
 self-love ; but to be twitted with ignorance by an 
 ignoramus, and condemned as vulgar by an unshin- 
 ing shoeblack, might be compared for exquisite tor- 
 ture to the dripping of an icy spigot upon an un- 
 shaven crown. Between the horns of that terrible 
 dilemma — Death or Hanwell Asylum — there is but 
 one alternative, rushing into print. Midas con- 
 fided his distress to a hole in the ground : by Pan 
 and Apollo's leave, I mean to give the wrongs 
 of authors to the world. 
 
 I am no opponent of severity of criticism upon 
 needful occasions. It is a part of my temperament 
 (which has compelled the production of the present 
 work) to take the keenest delight in the exposure of 
 humbug. And when a very ignorant or a very dull 
 follow puts himself forward as a genius, I feel as
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 much satisfaction in seeing him plucked, as myself in 
 plucking a sham patriot. But the Tomahawk school 
 of criticism, with its sweeping and insulting abuse, is 
 the reproach of England, the amazement of foreigners, 
 and the shame of civilization. I feel assured that 
 great severity of censure should always justify 
 itself in detail ; that no pretension of character and 
 " high tone," as it is called, should be allowed to 
 set itself up against this clear principle of equity, 
 that no man's damnatory assertion as to the cha- 
 racter of an unknown work should be received with- 
 out proof in the republic of letters ; that the privilege 
 to abuse so tremendous a power as disposing of a 
 reputation by a nod or an ipse dixit should never be 
 conceded, sanctioned, or permitted ; and that no gene- 
 ral assertion of stupidity, ignorance, puerility, or the 
 like (the customary cant of dishonest or incapable 
 criticism), should be tolerated unless supported by 
 specific examples. This rule of right, in my humble 
 wav, I have always observed, and in truth it is the
 
 10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 only safeguard to the public against every descrip- 
 tion of spiteful malice and enormity. 
 
 I shall he told of limited space. My answer is, 
 "Enlarge your space to the needful dimensions, or 
 he silent altogether as to the merits of authors, 
 whom you mean to execute without the legal for- 
 malities." The judge cannot omit his charge, and 
 shall the critic (the Greeks had a common name for 
 both offices) order our necks to the rope without 
 stating a word of reason 1 Not in criminal cases 
 only, but in civil, the reasons of the decision are 
 stated clearly from the bench ; and here, where there 
 is question of what to generous minds is dearer than 
 property or life, shall the critic, whose fourpenny 
 journal happens to have obtained some currency, 
 claim exemption from what Chief Justice and Chan- 
 cellor regard as a sacred duty? Limited space, 
 indeed ! The highwayman's argument for plun- 
 dering is analogous — his purse is limited. You 
 rob me of reputation. The assassin's plea for mur-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 der is not very different. He meets his victim in 
 a narrow passage — too limited to suffer him to pass 
 with life. You massacre my fame and honour. 
 
 In the abundant leisure of an invalid life, I first 
 obtained, some time back, a glimpse of the Atrabi- 
 larian's modus operandi. Whole pages of the author's 
 text are re-written into the reviewer's own language, 
 the sentences being in many instances seized neck and 
 heels and thrust into his own (apparent) text. With 
 the imperturbable coolness with which Roderick 
 Random shewed himself to the world in the deceased 
 nobleman's clothes supplied by Straji, the Atrabila- 
 rian walks forth with a very learned air, tricked out 
 with choice scraps of knowledge which he has 
 made his own without ceremony or scruple — a trick 
 which I find to be nearly universally characteristic of 
 his management. Authors, however, are not always 
 dead, like Strap's master ; but have sometimes life 
 enough left to claim their " six pair of cloth breeches, 
 one of crimson, and another of black velvet." I 
 have heard of more than one of this irritable class,
 
 1_> INTRODUCTION. 
 
 who were not at all willing that this charlatan should 
 walk off with their "hat, laced with gold, point 
 d'Espayne." There is an amusing impudence about 
 daring robbery which frequently converts indignation 
 into laughter, and saves appropriators of the Robert 
 Macaire school in France, and of Douglas Jerrold's 
 Barabbas Whitefeather genus in England, from the 
 ducking which is so richly their due ; but the " nvn- 
 quam-ne reponam?" is a temptation which is not 
 always resisted, and the contemptuous medicine of 
 desprecio, which Cervantes recommends, is some- 
 times intolerable to sensitive spirits. 
 
 This system of re-writing and appropriating an 
 author's ideas, is also not without its traps, and into 
 more than one of these the Atrabilarianhas, luckily for 
 its exposure, tumbled. My long residence in several 
 parts of the continent has necessarily made me fami- 
 liar with most of its languages, and I have thus in- 
 evitably detected such outrageous ignorance in this 
 self-imposed censor, that, although personally having 
 no interest whatever in making these disclosures,
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 they are absolutely compelled by my allegiance to 
 truth. I may possibly too expose in due course 
 the lingual nudities and topographic and historical 
 blunders of some one or two trimestrial and other 
 pretensious periodicals. I feel myself quite like a 
 schoolmaster with rod in hand, and despotic power 
 of selection ; and can only pity little boys if they will 
 think a sulky silence dignified. There is such a 
 thing as typographical errors, and with these first 
 editions abound. In his wholesale appropriation, 
 the Atrabilarian, in a recent review, actually ap- 
 propriated one of the most absurd mistakes in 
 orthography in the book — viz. " enfitercsis" for " en- 
 fiteMsis," the title by which the land is commonly 
 held in several districts of Spain. Not once, but 
 thrice over, to prove beyond a possibility of doubt 
 that he made the mistake his own, did he copy the 
 foolish disguised word and embody it in his re- 
 written text ; and glorious it was to see how the 
 erudite expositor held forth upon the relation be-
 
 14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tween landlords and tenants in Spain, and hoped 
 they would improve the enfitensis ! ! 
 
 The charlatan oddly enough betrayed at once his 
 ignorance of Greek and Spanish, for the Spanish 
 word " enfiteusis," is taken with scarcely the change 
 of a letter from the Greek, (./jLtyvrevmc, which 
 signifies "grafting," and metaphorically "making 
 a thing better than it was when it was received." 
 Justin speaks of an " empbyteuticus ager," and 
 Thomasius defines it thus : " Est genus locationis, 
 quo inculti ac deserti agri colono alicui ea. lege in 
 perpetuum locantur, ut quamdiu prsestituta merces 
 solvatur, nunquam ad dominum revertantur." In 
 fact it is precisely the species of tenant-right and 
 beneficial interest which it would be so desirable 
 to introduce into Ireland, and in which will pro- 
 bably be found a remedy for the agricultural dis- 
 tresses of my unhappy country. The unshaken 
 right of occupancy without enlargement of rent (so 
 long as the latter is paid) is so far from being the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 introduction of any novelty, that the emphyteutical 
 tenure, which was precisely this, was known to the 
 Roman civil law, and introduced together with 
 Roman customs into Spain. It exists in both Pen- 
 insular kingdoms at this moment, as I can per- 
 sonally witness ; and why it should not be esta- 
 blished in Ireland I see no better reason than there 
 is for a continuance of the corn-law. 
 
 I might derive copious illustrations of the Atrabi- 
 larian system of false imputation, assumption, and 
 shameless recklessness of assertion, from any one 
 month of its auctoricidal career. But I prefer se- 
 lecting my instances, as I do in the following poem 
 and in the accompanying observations in prose, from 
 the reviews of a single month and of the works of 
 writers with whom I have no acquaintance whatever, 
 that I may make sure of my freedom from those 
 views of partiality and bias which I condemn. I 
 shall thus be spared the temptation of recording the 
 great success which a recent poetical work of mine 
 upon the island of Madeira has achieved amongst
 
 16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the inhabitants of that lovely region. The Muni- 
 cipal Chamber of Funchal, which voted me an 
 address of thanks in my absence, in terms so 
 flattering that I shall not transcribe them, the 
 leading local journal which devoted one whole im- 
 pression to notices of the book, the Island poets 
 whose complimentary strains have not yet ceased 
 to sound in my ears, are probably as correct judges 
 whether their beautiful region is faithfully described 
 as the proprietor of some pounds weight of type 
 in Scribble-street, Strand, London. When those 
 sparkling testimonies reached the eyes of that same 
 proprietor of types, I doubt not that he realized 
 the miraculous appearance, which so astonishes 
 Plato in the first book of his Republic, — and which 
 elicits this remark of characteristic and gentle* 
 manly elegance : — 
 
 Tore /a<i ticov cyw, wporepov ce ovirw, Qpatrv^ia^or 
 fpvBpiwrra. 
 
 "And then I saw first what I never saw before — 
 Thrasymachus blushing !"
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1/ 
 
 This unwonted operation of blushing must have re- 
 cently proved its practicability even on the faces of 
 Irish Repealers, had they witnessed, as I have been 
 forced to do, the contemptuous comparisons which 
 wretched Spaniards and Portuguese have of late been 
 accustomed to form between their own intolerance 
 of oppression and frequent armed resistance on the 
 one hand and the cowardly menaces and insane 
 mouthing in Ireland against a beneficent govern- 
 ment on the other. Talking the Kraken, and acting 
 the sprat, is the surest warrant to be despised. It was 
 but yesterday that I heard this humiliating subject 
 discussed here by a party of Spanish emigrants from 
 Galicia and of Portuguese fresh from the late success- 
 ful insurrection. With what blistering mockery and 
 scorn they ridiculed the sulphur-fizzings in the air and 
 sabre-slashes in the water of men who declare their 
 wrongs to be immeasurably greater than those of any 
 other section of mankind, and yet,'said the Spaniards, 
 were " tan cobardes para charlar y no hacer nada," — 
 " such cowards as to prate and do nothing !" Alas, I 
 
 B
 
 18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 have too often of late had occasion to blush for my 
 country, and Repealers were the cause. Hating about 
 equally the charlatans (empty praters) of politics and 
 criticism, I have a cat with a tail for each in the fol- 
 lowing pages. 
 
 If a leg of the Farnese Hercules, endued with the 
 power of volition, were to conceive and execute a de- 
 sign for the dismemberment of that empire of muscle, 
 it were a truly foolish leg. The torso would still be 
 grand and noble, the leg might hobble on a few paces, 
 and pare its own nails and corns, but soon would 
 tumble helpless and shattered, or lie forgotten is 
 contempt. Such would be dissevered Ireland, such 
 is Repeal absurdity. As silly is the Atrabilarian 
 practice, which in criticising poet or philosopher 
 presents some three extracts of four lines each as 
 specimens, wnth a contemptuous flourish about the 
 injudiciousness of extending his circle of readers. 
 The transparent absurdity of this insult to common 
 sense reminds me of the Greek Sophist, who carried 
 a brick in his pocket, and showed it as a specimen of
 
 INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 a house he wished to sell. The editor of the 
 Atrabilarian too often evinces his malignity by ex- 
 tracting from the work reviewed every line of infor- 
 mation of a practical character for the million, taking 
 care to intimate that they will find all the marrow of 
 the book in his fourpenny journal ! 
 
 It is clear that the abuse of the critical function 
 has risen to a height which can be no longer tole- 
 rated. Over and over have I heard this evil com- 
 mented upon by literary men in London, with a 
 depth of intense disgust, which was more notice- 
 able in the play of feature than in actual expression ; 
 since undoubtedly the dread of incurring the dis- 
 pleasure of an established critical organ, possessed 
 of character, however acquired, operates powerfully 
 upon the bulk of minds. The result of an affront, 
 or of a conceived affront, to men who so little under- 
 stand true dignity as the conductors of the journal in 
 question, would be ostracism in their columns for 
 life. None, therefore, like to bell the cat ; and 
 hence the lengthened impunity which feline malice
 
 20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 has enjoyed. Now, I am not afraid to bell the cat either 
 of humbug-Criticism or Repeal ; perhaps, because I 
 am a little foolhardy by nature, perhaps because, 
 feeling the progressive inroads of organic disease, 
 I am more indifferent than most people to the effects 
 of a vengeance, which views of the nothingness of 
 life enforced by a sick chamber enable me to dis- 
 regard, and to which I cannot long be subjected. 
 I am not in the least affrighted, therefore, by 
 your " fervida dicta, ferox !" 
 
 The remedy here, as in every such case, is in the 
 hands of the public. If educated and enlightened 
 men will patronize an intellectual abuse, it is right 
 that they should be made to suffer in their turn, 
 that the chalice should in time be commended to 
 the lips of those, who have laughed at the writhings 
 with which others have been forced to quaff it. 
 Indeed, it is this very weakness of our common 
 nature, which is the support of the Tomahawk school 
 of criticism. We all have more or less of lurking 
 malice about us, which is pleased to see authors and
 
 INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 authorlings plucked. But let us be juster, more 
 wise, more humane. Literary production is on the 
 one hand grown so multifarious, and the avocations 
 of life, hurled along with its new railroad velocity, 
 have become on the other so all-absorbing, that 
 we are content to let some one or two literary jour- 
 nals think for us vicariously, and resign ourselves 
 like children into their hands. They are no stainless 
 Stagirites however, no passionless lecturers of Aca- 
 demus, of whom we would constitute ourselves the 
 pupils. He who was at once the disciple of Socrates, 
 and the master of Aristotle, and whose purity ob- 
 tained for him the epithet " Divine," has no type 
 in modern literary society ; and, whatever mask may 
 be worn and lofty "tone" assumed, every mean 
 and dirty passion is often found to flourish where 
 most such evil spirits should be exorcised. Every 
 man of independent mind and honourable feeling, 
 who is once convinced of the mental or moral obli- 
 quity of his guide, will be slow for the future how 
 he takes his opinions upon trust from such a quar-
 
 22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ter ; and every fair and honest man will prefer form- 
 ing his own judgment to putting his head in the 
 pocket of any proxy in the world. 
 
 The practical remedy would seem to be the esta- 
 blishment of a literary journal, which will deal 
 impartial justice, by briefly describing the contents 
 of every new work which issues from the press, 
 adding in every case a reasonable amount of ex- 
 tracts, aiming at variety and fairness of representa- 
 tion, and leaving the reader to form his own judg- 
 ment. The space which is now taken up with need- 
 less generalized criticism and editorial declamation, 
 may be much more advantageously devoted to a 
 naked exposition of the writer's merits or demerits 
 by subjecting his work in reasonable portions to the 
 public eye. By these let him stand or fall. The 
 Atrabilarian will be excused from pronouncing 
 an opinion, which in an age like this may well be 
 regarded as an obtrusion, where few are such lame 
 dogs as to require to be helped over a style by this 
 means. Both authors and readers would be better
 
 INTRODUCTION. T.i 
 
 satisfied by such an arrangement. Give the world 
 the means of judging for itself, and depend upon it, 
 it will not be long in coming to a correct conclusion. 
 I throw this suggestion out for some enterprising 
 publisher — not at all interested in the idea myself, 
 since the state of my health renders it impossible 
 that I could execute it — but thoroughly convinced 
 that the time will soon arrive when the world will 
 tolerate no other sort of critical ministration. Toiiro 
 ipyov aoiduQ, says Plato in his Republic, /x7<roe 
 kfiTToieiv ottov av elrj. " This is the effect of injus- 
 tice — to beget hatred, wherever it exists." My 
 parting advice then shall be from Isocrates' Pana- 
 thenaic : Kpirag iKavoripovQ Troislade /cai ttkttotipovq." 
 " Choose critics more competent and more trust- 
 worthy." 
 
 The imprint of this work indicates that the 
 vindictive propensities of the parties chiefly assailed 
 have made it utterly incompatible with prudence for 
 any publisher to put his name to it. I could not 
 press it upon any man to bring down upon every
 
 24 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 future publication of his the malignant spite of a 
 plucked Editor. I have therefore become, like 
 Homer, my own Publisher. 
 
 Lisbon, 18 May, 1846. 
 
 A SLASHING CONTRIBUTOR.
 
 THE BILIAD, 
 
 OR HOW TO CRITICIZE. 
 
 In Summertide when waves the ripening corn, 
 
 And birds feloniously their beaks adorn, 
 
 Now nibbling slily at the bursting ear, 
 
 Now chirping strains to glad the sunlit year ; 
 
 With scheming groans the huge agrarian mind 
 
 To send the twittering vagrants down the wind ; 
 
 Even as, with dark and desperate intrigue, 
 
 It dines and spouts to fright the Corn Law League. 
 
 Now fuming farmers set the ready snare, 
 Now bang with clappers the unconscious air, 
 Now ransack all their tattered wardrobe through 
 For coats that in the reign of Anne were new,
 
 26 THE IIII.I Mi. 
 
 For trousers that have fed a score of rats, 
 And waistcoats rickety and roofless hats ; 
 With Rag-fair trimmings next a broomstick rig, 
 And crown the horrid Scarecrow with a wig ! 
 
 'Tis thus when literary grain is ripe, 
 Some speculator lays in loads of type, 
 And while with fright poor nibbling poets sink, 
 A broad sheet daubs with horrid printer's ink, 
 Cuts short their songs by murdering their fame, 
 And gives his farthing rag a Godlike name, 
 Buys off some Bilk from many a gasping creditor, 
 And straight sets up a Scarecrow of an Editor ! 
 
 As farmers with a Guy protect their crops, 
 So fitly is the scribe the sport of fops ; 
 Both chos'n as bugbears — both to affright designed, 
 For neither requisite a spark of mind ; 
 A dire exterior truculent and tall, 
 Hung in terrorem, all its end to appal.
 
 THE BILIAD. 2/ 
 
 Investigate the head— with straw 'tis thick, 
 Search for the heart — you find a lump of stick. 
 If bards or birds can sing with this before 'em, 
 Why, thieves might dance in presence of the Quorum. 
 
 The lettered Scarecrow's wardrobe would ye seek ? 
 A scrap of Latin and a shred of Greek, 
 Of French a remnant, German half a skirt, 
 A sleeve of science, a lappel of art, 
 A lining of geography, a tag 
 Of history, of philosophy a rag ; 
 Add monstrous airs of arrogant assumption, 
 A load of impudence, a grain of " gumption ;" 
 Then take away each vestige of a heart, 
 That essence of the Critic's nobler part ; 
 Give Bile enough to float the Royal George, 
 And cram with spite Mac Flecknoe's self to gorge, 
 Let tiger rage and serpent venom meet, 
 The literary Scarecrow 's now complete ! 
 
 Thersites, Zoilus in days of yore 
 Just typified the typographic bore.
 
 28 THE BILIAD. 
 
 In Grecian fields a grinning scarecrow set 
 Was called Phobetron— frowning black as jet ; 
 In Rome Terriculum ; the " ugly mug " 
 Our ancestors more homely christened " Bugge." 
 In modern Babylon, where smooth as silk 
 Each traitor smiles, we call the monster Bilk. 
 
 Ye bards abash' d, cheer up ; whet every beak ; 
 To peck this Scarecrow let 's undaunted seek — 
 No, not a rag we'll leave to Winter's maw, 
 But strip his wooden head and limbs of straw, 
 Sing loud Sirvents avenging many a wrong, 
 And scoff the scoffer who hath scoff' d so long. 
 There 's no monopoly of type or talk, 
 And others too can ply the tomahawk ! 
 
 Tis glorious sport to see the fowler snared, 
 The miner "hoisted by his own petard," 
 The "leg" outplay'd by him he would have 
 
 pluck 'd, 
 The lawyer roasted, and the bailiff duck'd,
 
 THE BILIAD. 29 
 
 The bigot caned who sighed to make a martyr, 
 The bully whining, who has caught a Tartar. 
 But, though I 've seen young bulls at Seville gore 
 With vengeful horn the murderous Matador, 
 And view'd wild horses near Coimbra's plain 
 Trample the rider hurl'd from off their mane, 
 I ne'er have seen such retribution just 
 As false reviewer made to bite the dust, 
 The spiteful analyser analysed, 
 The Bilk o'erhauled, the critic criticized. 
 Oh, mighty Byron, thou hast led the way ; 
 A meaner Sancho shall be toss'd to-day. 
 
 To every trade save starting a Review, 
 Apprenticeship 's the sacred avenue. 
 For authorship a little learning 's well — 
 At least 'twill sometimes aid you to excel. 
 In giving judgment we reverse the rule ; 
 The critic needs not e'er have gone to school. 
 All nectar from Pierian fountain quaff' d, 
 All learning 's an incumbrance to the craft !
 
 30 THE BILIAD. 
 
 One only element is needed — types ; 
 
 One sole accomplishment — inflicting stripes. 
 
 The judge self-squatted on this legal bench 
 
 Needs not with bulky tomes his seat intrench ; 
 
 1 1 is firm decisions from a dicebox flung 
 
 Are sure to strike with awe each faltering tongue. 
 
 No need for him of knowledge, sense, or grammar ; 
 
 A ponderous Thor poor authors' heads to hammer. 
 
 Dare not appeal, but patch your scull with lint ; 
 
 Sure, the jack-pudding's sentence is in print ! 
 
 Since railway paces writers most esteem, 
 And literary eggs are hatch' d by steam, 
 Each week's production like a Leipsic fair, 
 And authors stumbled against every where, 
 The critic aims to keep the number down 
 By cutting throats and blasting their renown. 
 Thus Malthus would have check' d the population, 
 Thus Swift have served up babes for a collation. 
 Well, be it so ; but let 's be bullet-bored, 
 Or perish by a courtly damask sword,
 
 THE BILIAD. 31 
 
 Not foully slaughter' d in ignoble strife 
 
 By hangman's rope or butcher's brutal knife. 
 
 A flunky lecturing on the laws of honour, 
 A Turk upon the lineage of O'Connor, 
 A sweep enlarging upon polish' d wit, 
 Are all disgustingly inapposite. 
 But what are these to Bilk dilating cool 
 On tactics, who ne'er heard of Sandhurst School,— 
 Making e'en " sceptical, sagacious Hobbes " 
 Believe in broomsticks and succumb to mobs, — 
 Betraying in a word, that ne'er can vanish, 
 His ignorance alike of Greek and Spanish, — 
 Discussing Lusitanian (fs andj/s, 
 Who cannot e'en write " man" in Portuguese, — 
 Showing not more removed the veriest stallion, 
 Than he from grammar knowledge of Italian, — 
 And scalping in cold blood Cervantes' fame, 
 Yet ignorant how to write D071 Quixote's name !* 
 
 * For detailed proofs of all this revolting ignorance, see the illustra- 
 tive prose at the end.
 
 32 THE BILIAD. 
 
 See Bilk tremendous tomahawk a bard, 
 And send him feather' d from his hand and tarr'd : 
 In six short lines his features off he polishes, 
 In six insulting lines his fame demolishes : — 
 " The rhyme shows desperate lack of elevation ; 
 " No man was ever great by imitation. 
 " 'Tis to the apprentice-poet just permitted — 
 " The point of progress, could he only hit it. 
 " We do not charge the youth with downright theft ; 
 " But plagiary 's apparent right and left. 
 " We '11 wait until the writer's mind 's matured, 
 " And see if aught he pens can be endured ! " 
 Thus pours i' the breast of many a Keats his milk, 
 Ainl murders with a sniggering simper Bilk. 
 
 Oh Conscience ! name too oft invoked by knaves : 
 Oh Freedom ! word too oft profaned by slaves ; 
 Bilk, by the gods! ev'n Bilk his conscience boasts, 
 And swears he 's whimpering while his victim roasts ; 
 Even when with venomed spite he 's boiling o'er, 
 Proclaims the soundness of his bosom's core, 
 
 »
 
 THE BILIAD. 33 
 
 Free from the fumes of prejudice mephitic, 
 And dubs himself "a conscientious critic." 
 Thus Satan once " upon my conscience ! " swore, 
 And murder 's mere phlebotomy — no more. 
 
 Produce a poem — send it straight to Bilk — 
 His Cockney pin assassinates the wilk ! 
 With Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Pope, 
 Whiche'er your prototype, suppose it cope ; 
 From Grub-Street's Sultan higher sentence none 
 Than this need hope the Muses' dearest son : — 
 " Much discipline requires this writer ere 
 v ' He can take rank as poet any where ; 
 " And better had it served his cause, if those 
 " His lucubrations had been given in prose ! " 
 
 Pen such a work on philosophic theme, 
 As Bacon, Locke, or Newton might esteem. 
 From Bilk no treatment hope but mere abusing : — 
 " The assumption of this tract is quite amusing ; 
 
 c
 
 ,\\ THE BILIAD. 
 
 " The leading theory we can't admit — 
 " "We were not previously aware of it. 
 " We do not clearly understand his aim — 
 " For that, no douht, our intellect's to hlame. 
 " Perhaps the author had a meaning, though 
 " We could not see it, — being somewhat slow." 
 The ray of light divine had ne'er reach' d them — 
 A reason fit for reptiles to condemn ! 
 
 Young aspirants to medical renown, 
 Young wearers of the law and churchly gown, 
 Who send to Bilk some fame-alluring tract, 
 'Tis thus ye '11 find it ruthless chopp'd and hack'd :— 
 " We scarce could have believed a graduate — 
 " M.A. or Doctor — tenth or hundredth rate — 
 " Could put his name to so much twaddling trash, 
 " As in this wretched volume 's cooked to hash. 
 " Such nonsense bids us of the age despair, 
 " And shakes with rage our editorial chair. 
 " At first we thought some quack his hand had tried, 
 " But find the rascal 's duly qualified."
 
 THE BILIAD. 35 
 
 Thus the Hyaena helps you to a practice, 
 
 And is not kick'd, since print's a prickly cactus. 
 
 Let painter, sculptor, or musician give 
 Some work to man which Fate foredooms to live, 
 Of genius, power, and beauty owned by all, 
 Sublime, felicitous, majestical, — 
 'Tis seized by Bilk, who straight the canvass cuts, 
 And mumbles it as monkeys mumble nuts ; 
 The living marble maims of half the nose, 
 Or roots with porcine snout amongst the toes ; 
 The music hashes, as if Heaven an ear 
 Had given to Bilk aught else but drays to hear ; 
 With learned air discourses of the score, 
 As if his paper's sale he counted o'er ; 
 And roving cat-like over scale and tone, 
 Confounds the maestro' s crotchets with his own ! 
 
 Expend on Tragedy the midnight oil 
 Of ten long years, how Bilk derides your toil !
 
 36 THE BILIAD. 
 
 " Declamatory dissertation" first 
 
 Your preface, " bombast" next your opening burst ; 
 
 " Five acts, so called — or so the author means — 
 
 " A mere congeries of dramatic scenes ! 
 
 " With no attempt — or none that we could spy — 
 
 " At unity or continuity. 
 
 " Heterogeneous, rambling patchwork all, 
 
 " Unartificial, unartistical. 
 
 " Our notion was, when through the whole we had 
 
 run, 
 " ' All this has been already better done ;' " — 
 That is to say, when Bilk five leaves hath cut, 
 A leaf for every act, and cried : " Hut, tut !" 
 Since Criticism is Trial vnthmd Jury, 
 \ul Fame a farce where Justice is a Fury. 
 
 Let some domestic circle for its curse 
 I 'ut forth a modest volume writ in verse, 
 Their yearning eyes perchance this line will meet, 
 " In subject and in manner obsolete !"
 
 THE BILIAD. •>/ 
 
 For ferules, not applause, still itch his hands : 
 Be sure that heartlessuess a monster brands ! 
 Hoard up for years the coinage of thy brain, 
 Turn, stamp, and polish it again, again ; 
 Then trembling issue without speck or flaw, 
 And see it clutch' d by this rude caitiff's paw, 
 Rough-handled, blurred, defaced — a thousand cracks 
 Found in thy solid gold, as though 'twere wax ; 
 And, as good housewives spurn poor cotton-silk, 
 Nail'd to his counter for a rap by Bilk ! 
 
 Or if the mighty man have largely dined, 
 And gastric juice is more than usual kind, 
 Your happier fate behold — nor rope nor knife — 
 But only just transported for your life ! 
 " The author some attention gave his theme, — 
 " But then his theory 's an idle dream." 
 If Bilk from biliousness has some repose, 
 " The writer's plagiarisms we wont expose." 
 If jaundice spares his parchment face a while, 
 " The youth with study may acquire a style."
 
 38 THE BILIAD. 
 
 If cholic trouble not his diaphragm, 
 " This clever work absurd quotations cram." 
 If with his chyle the gall be not o'ermix'd, 
 " 'Twere well the humour had some purpose fix'd," 
 And if the hypochondre's free from wind, 
 " At times we thought we caught a glimpse of 
 mind !" 
 
 But, wouldst thou know the Power that Bilk 
 adores? 
 
 Vituperation, Deity of w s ! 
 
 A fishfag huge, with foul and brawny fist, 
 
 Whose throne is Billingsgate, whose breath a mist, 
 
 Wbose brow unblushing scaly sprats begem, 
 
 And herrings twisted for a diadem, 
 
 Whose sceptre is a codfish reckless swung, 
 
 Who wields the thunder of a shameless tongue. 
 
 Yet, slimy as the finny tribe at times 
 
 Can Bilk be when a banquet-giver rhymes, ' 
 
 ""Ottov yap," somewhere Epictetus says, 
 
 " 1*0 ITVfKplpOV lKt~l TO £Vff£/3eCj"
 
 THE BILIAD. 39 
 
 Which means, young ladies who think Greek is dull, 
 " Where interest lies, there Bilk 's right worshipful!" 
 Gastrolatry thus makes e'en Cerherus frolic, 
 And sauce piquante suhdues the picrocholic. 
 Profoundly skill' d he 's, too, at stealing plums 
 From every good hook to his desk that comes : — 
 Re-writing all that's new, the praise he fobs, 
 Yet, oh ye Gods, abuses whom he robs ! 
 
 Venture on History — with glorious scorn, 
 He lays about — exalting his own horn ! 
 Blazoning, as pompous as a Herald's College, 
 The trick of showing off recondite knowledge. 
 " Your title 's too ambitious— mere audacity — 
 " No smattering of political sagacity — 
 " Inaccurate, meagre, showing no research — 
 " The gather' d fruits not worth a tomtit's perch — 
 " A commentary slight, with air of mystery, 
 " On isolated points of schoolboy history — 
 " Authorities o'erlook'd," — some record musty, 
 Unrecognised 'mid myriad parchments dusty.
 
 40 THE BILIAD. 
 
 While rummaging each folio from his shelf, 
 Bilk only thinks of puffing off himself. 
 You write of France — behold him prove full plain, 
 Poor dunce, you never said a word of Spain ! 
 
 Strip from the Scarecrow the full-bottom'd wig, 
 \ud grin at the bare stick that look'd so big. 
 ( )h, Oxensticrn, be here thy sarcasm hurl'd : — 
 " How little wisdom" sways the critic world ! 
 Here, torn the mask from Ignorance' brow and 
 
 brains, 
 Effrontery, knavish badge, alone remains. 
 This daring Eratostratus, who fires 
 Ephesian domes which most the world admires, 
 This judge consummate of each thorny part, 
 This lynx-eyed Censor of the Historian's art, 
 This annalist profound of Hume's own kidney, 
 ( 'nnfounds Sir Philip with Algernon Sidney ! 
 
 Gods, men, and columns ! shall a goose like this 
 'Gainst wisdom, fancy, learning, genius hiss?
 
 THE BILIAD. 41 
 
 Shall print extend Homeromastix' scoff 
 To myriad eyes, with steam to throw it off ? 
 Were Shakspeare, Newton, Milton to arise, 
 Who douhts that Bilk would Bilk-like criticize, 
 And play on mightiest minds the kennel trick : 
 " Fling dirt enough, for some of it will stick " ? 
 Who doubts that desperation or disgust 
 Might even have gather' d their untimely dust, — 
 Still nature's truths and nature's laws untold, 
 Because a doom like Keats' s Bilk could mould? 
 
 Infallibility ! put on thy glasses, 
 And weigh this apologue for critic asses, 
 No fiction baked like sugarplum for youth, 
 But sober, serious, sad, disgusting truth : — 
 When Payne Knight's "Taste" was issued to the 
 
 town, 
 A few Greek verses in the text set down 
 Were torn to pieces, mangled into hash, 
 Doom'd to the flames as execrable trash, —
 
 42 THE BILIAD. 
 
 In short, were butcher' d rather than dissected, 
 And several false quantities detected, — 
 Till, when the smoke had vanish' d from the cinders, 
 'Twas just discover'd that — the lines were Pindar s ! 
 
 To few — how few ! when first he claims regard, 
 Is 't given to grapple with the genuine bard ; 
 So liable to err the judgment even 
 Of those to whom the finer sense is given ! 
 Men grope through mist, or, fatuous, wander wide, 
 Where fancy more than reason is the guide. 
 Here learning oft is wit's intensest curse, 
 And systems only teach to be perverse ; 
 Here rules are stumbling-blocks, and strained too 
 
 far 
 Is soundest principle with sense at war. 
 The eagle's flight what buzzard comprehends, 
 Or dreams how wide that soaring wing extends 1 
 What sparrow-hawk shall span the falcon's course, 
 And when quick turns his pinion scoff its force ?
 
 THE BILIAD. 
 
 43 
 
 as well the pithless bough, that bears no fruit, 
 May judge the vigorous sapling's lusty shoot ! 
 
 So small the number who can test his worth, 
 When solitary genius ventures forth ; 
 So shockingly do praise and censure err, 
 So false the blazonry mankind confer, 
 That few can wonder the dogmatic Scot 
 Should think the poet's fame dispensed by lot, 
 And deem mere jargon all Taste's nomenclature, 
 Founded on no fix'd principles in Nature. 
 Ere critics glanced at Avon's " sorry bard," 
 A laureate Skelton drew all men's regard. 
 The world was ne'er to see, till whirled its last, 
 The rubbish of Mirandola surpass'd. 
 A Donne, a Warner, Shakspeare's fame could 
 
 shade, 
 A Daniel was Eliza's laureate made, 
 And Spenser must triumphant long endure 
 Bartas' "Creation," Hawes's " Graunde Amoure."
 
 44 THE BILIAD. 
 
 Shad well and Settle soared to Dryden's price, 
 And Cowley darken' d Milton's Paradise. 
 Nay, Shakspeare's even and his majestic sonnets 
 Through sluggish ages lined trunk-hose and bonnets, 
 And Steevens sage — though Parliament decreed, 
 Declared the English nation ne'er would read ; 
 Nor once in all his works, for praise or blame, 
 Does Bacon cpiote from Shakspeare — breathe his name ; 
 While, fugled by Voltaire, the French baboon 
 Proclaim' d our glorious poet a buffoon ! 
 
 How far have human taste and judgment err'd, 
 From this eternal record be inferr'd : — 
 Through four editions puling Flatman flew, 
 While Shakspeare, Milton, slowly crawl' d through two! 
 
 If Thomson's Seasons met due recompense, 
 All but unread was Thomson's Indolence ; 
 And Collins at approaching death repays 
 The sum advanced for his unrelish'd lays.
 
 THE BILIAD. 
 
 45 
 
 With whom did Johnson's Poet-Lives begin, 
 When profits new the cogging Trade would win ? 
 With whom of all our minstrels hoar and holy? 
 With Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare? Gods, with 
 
 Cowley ! 
 No Sidney, Raleigh, Jonson, Marlow there, 
 No Fletcher, Wotton, Shirley, Suckling rare ; 
 But Stepney, Phillips, Walsh, Smith, Duke, and 
 
 Spratt, 
 Broome, Sheffield, Granville, Halifax, and Watt ! 
 
 Let Otway's loaf and Boyse's blanket tell 
 Of starved and shivering genius relish' d well ; 
 Let Chattertou with cup of poison show 
 How bards of matchless power are prized below. 
 Impassioned Savage scarce could sell a line 
 Till on the gallows he was doom'd to shine ; 
 His living verse could ne'er the lustre reach 
 Of his anticipated dying speech ! 
 Immortal Percy pined beneath neglect, 
 His glorious Relumes on the shore lay wreck' d,
 
 46 THE BILIAD. 
 
 While far resounding, tawdry even as tame, 
 Macpherson's garbage filled the trump of Fame! 
 The ponderous verse of Johnson, Hayley's lead, 
 The town devoured, while Coleridge scarce was read. 
 Cut short was Byron's first poetic ramble, 
 And Byron sneered at Wordsworth and at Campbell. 
 Contemporary judgment 's frail as glass, 
 Critiques buffoonery, and Bilk an ass ! 
 
 Strike lyre majestic as the Samian seer 
 Descried in aether, dream not Bilk will hear. 
 Write flashy sentiment and fustian splendid 
 In tawdry language, Bilk will comprehend it ; 
 But a mere poet — no bombastic foamer — 
 He relishes as much as Zoilus Homer ; 
 A scullion-tyrant in the realm of wit, 
 Less fit to ply the obelus than spit ! 
 
 Why lash the wretch 1 Why puny monster 
 purge ? 
 'Tis true, the Phrygian better graced the scourge.
 
 THE BILIAD. 47 
 
 The game is scarcely worth the inch of candle, 
 Yet conquerors have deigned a habe to dandle ; 
 And worrying rats, although the sport is sorry, 
 Keeps in the mouth for hunting nobler quarry. 
 See where, with bristling back and spiky teeth, 
 He rends fair sonnets filthiest sewer beneath, 
 Like Progne dares our babes to pieces hew, 
 And bid the parent swallow the ragout ; 
 See where his feculent saliva comes, 
 Each page to maculate, from poisoned gums. 
 Athena shudders for her name " divinum," 
 And bids the rag be called " The Cloacinum /" 
 
 And let Bilk's nobler brethren, too, beware 
 Of puffs exclusive and of arts unfair, 
 Nor " brilliant" dub one book that steals to 
 
 fame, 
 And burke the second with the author's name. 
 Consistent course ! No, this will never do ; 
 Accepted Ephori, be just and true !
 
 48 THE BILIAD. 
 
 Ye who aspire to literate renown, 
 And would with wit or pathos storm the town, 
 Be cooks or Counts, he cobhlers or be Peers, 
 Be tailors, tapsters, tinkers, grenadiers, 
 Be Poles, Kamschatkans, Affghans, Caffres ; yes — 
 Be aught ye please, save members of the Press I 
 Thus green-eyed Jealousy, thus Envy's gall, 
 Need not decree your pride shall have a fall ; 
 Thus, if some glory light upon your pen, 
 Ye need not tread the kibes of other men, 
 Nor drive through critic breasts the maddening pike ; 
 " Why, d — me, did not I perform the like?" — 
 " Is 't Thingumy produce a noble poem ? 
 " Impossible ! Why, d — me, don't I know him?" 
 Such the syncritic wrath which fills the chasm 
 Of generous heart with lead from typoplasm. 
 Nor Gods nor men shall move newspaper column 
 To hail newspaper bard with greeting solemn. 
 That Bandon's badged: "Turk, Jew, or Atheist 
 " May enter here, but not a journalist !"
 
 THE BILIAD. I!) 
 
 Oh, rank Exclusivism, that stinks where'er 
 O'er earth's wide surface British snouts appear, 
 Upturn' d and poking outward to keep off 
 All mortals else with vulgarizing scoff ; 
 Oh, vile Pretension, ignorant Conceit, 
 That swan-like floats unconscious of its feet ! 
 Oh, consequential pettiness of Pride, 
 That struts while laughed at by the world beside, 
 Must Letters own your despicable reign, 
 And Genius wear while it defies your chain '( 
 Must Cliquism wither with its cramping span 
 The fair pursuit that most ennobles man, 
 And Sets and Coteries their chilling gloom 
 Throw o'er the page as o'er the drawing-room ? 
 Shall Mind's high -priests degrade themselves so low: 
 "None shall have merit but Myself and Co.," 
 And Journalism, consigning to the shelf 
 Its children and compeers, exclude itself. 1 ' 
 No, perish rather, Gottenberg, thy Press — 
 A curse to wither, not a gift to bless ! 
 
 D
 
 50 THE BILTAD. 
 
 And earth become a ■wilderness again, 
 
 [f highest culture most debases men ! 
 
 The arts that civilize, exalt, refine, 
 
 Be devilish all regarded, not divine, 
 
 If to concentrate malice is their end, 
 
 And blot from life's sad page the name of Friend ! 
 
 Where'er we turn through Babel's din, we meet 
 Refin' d dissimulation and deceit, 
 The courteous nod, the face that smiles on all, 
 The heart of marble and the breast of gall ! 
 Each through the jostling crowd that fain would 
 
 wind, 
 Is tript and trampled on by those behind ; 
 Each toiler up the steep ascent of Fame 
 Is trodden down and kick'd by dogs more lame ; 
 Till, as the throng new myriads daily swell, 
 Success at last becomes impossible ; 
 Each crowded thoroughfare so chok'd and block' d 
 That all the aspirants must halt dead lock'd ;
 
 THE BILIAD. 51 
 
 And manger-dogs by scores content appear 
 
 With foiling your moi/ens de parvenir. 
 
 Yet grisly blanks at times, too, have supplied 
 
 A Blanchard's and a Hay don's suicide, 
 
 Neglected by the exoteric crowd, 
 
 Too late adorn' d their memory and their shroud ; 
 
 And esoteric pity, too, is late, 
 
 Prone to condole but not avert their fate. 
 
 Say, is not England hostile to her men, 
 Whose intellectual strength is in their pen ? 
 Say, if her money-getting soul hath prized 
 The names she should have deepest idolized, 
 Who late their stragglings upon earth forsook — 
 Southey, and Campbell, Hood, Maginn, and Hook ? 
 Gold-grubbers fortunate, and heirs-at-law, 
 Her admiration and her worship draw. 
 The vulgar upstart and the rich half-caste 
 Whose knowledge by his butler's is surpassed, 
 The civic booby who hath bravely dined, 
 Whose paunch with coin as well as capon 's lined,
 
 52 THE BILIAD. 
 
 The grocer gross is more than Science sought, 
 
 And savon than the Savant learning-fraught ; 
 
 The chandler, whose enlightenment is told 
 
 In good round sums of hank'd and funded gold, 
 
 Is more esteem'd than Genius, by whose light 
 
 A world 's ilium' d, Humanity more bright. 
 
 The man of wit and fancy far outlags 
 
 The man of business and of money-bags ; 
 
 And Learning's head than Ignorance' shows less big, 
 
 So but his coachman wears a periwig ! 
 
 Far-piercing Chief, whose words were proverbs 
 flung 
 With ease majestic from thy golden tongue, 
 Too well our microcosm thine eye could fill ; 
 U 'e are of shopkeepers a nation still ! 
 
 Oh, Chrysolatria, England's curse and shame — 
 While France pursues her rivalry of fame, 
 This be her glory, more profoundly wise, 
 Both gold and gewgaw title to despise.
 
 THE BILIAD. 
 
 53 
 
 Mind, mind presides o'er every circle there, 
 
 And bids the yellow dross of rank despair, 
 
 With heir-loom titles, sire-transmitted glory, 
 
 That lives not in its country's living story ! 
 
 Bugeaud his Marquisate in boyhood spurns, 
 
 And now victorious from a Dukedom turns ; 
 
 More prized a riband by the wearer won, 
 
 And "honour" -stamp' d, than pass'd from sire to 
 
 son, 
 While England worships still the name of Lord, 
 And whatsoe'er is showy and absurd, 
 Salaams, Kotoos, regards as merit's stamp 
 The name of any Honourable scamp, 
 And, though brute Ignorance with meanness mix, 
 Reveres it rolling in a coach-aud-six : 
 Teutonic weakness, despicable sin, 
 Inherent in our Saxon origin ; 
 For see pretensious swell in Rheinland now 
 The High-Dutch-town-clerk-and-toll-master's-/rai«, 
 And mark of Mistress Alderman the hey-day, 
 Whom some strange accident hath made " my Lady,"
 
 54 THE BILIAD. 
 
 While genius, taste, refinement, learning, wit, 
 Are snubb'd if in a one-horse-chaise they sit ! 
 
 Utilitarian pickaxe of the age, 
 Whose monopolylogue doth hold the stage, 
 Say, shall Material Progress leave behind 
 The .Moral Law, the progress of the Mind? 
 Must Art and Letters vail their glorious head 
 To spinning-jennies, shovels, tracts, and thread ? 
 Shall man yield vilely up his heart and brain 
 To one sole object — the pursuit of gain ? 
 Shall Poesy, Astraea-like of yore, 
 Profound disgusted fly this earthly shore, 
 Vud stupid Wealth and stupider Parade 
 Apotheoize the dwarf — successful Trade? 
 No, no, the aspirations of the soul 
 
 i lid to higher and to holier goal. 
 No, grandly feeling, fancy, the Ideal 
 Shall vine-like shoot o'er framework of the Real. 
 Procrustean beds or China footcramps ne'er 
 Can bid the Mind their sordid fetters wear.
 
 THE BILIAD. 
 
 55 
 
 In mart and factory still shall Spirit glow, 
 
 Through dockyard, rail, and mine shall Genius flow, 
 
 And, panting for each ray of sun and star, 
 
 Sprout up acanthus-like o'er every bar ! 
 
 The very triumphs of mechanic skill 
 
 Shall spirits with inspiring wonder fill. 
 
 The spark that instant bears from sea to sea 
 
 Trade's mandates shall of Thought the lightning 
 free. 
 
 The locomotive piercing mountains vast, 
 
 As each ravine and precipice is passed 
 
 With eagle-wing, shall waken Mind as well 
 
 As conquered Space with more than wizard spell. 
 
 Though many a Martyr fall and voice be dumb, 
 
 From this great struggle glorious good shall come. 
 
 Thy monads, Man, shall be re-ordered o'er, 
 
 Society dissociate no more, 
 
 An orbit yet for Genius shall be found, 
 
 The Poet's lay shall not unechoed sound. — 
 
 Mind shall be Wealth, nor bard's nor painter's toil 
 
 Shall end blood-sprinkling an ungenial soil, —
 
 56 THE BILIAD. 
 
 To pigmies for a show no more supplied 
 
 The guerdon for which thankless Genius sighed ! 
 
 A day will come — nor far remote the hour — 
 
 When Mind shall strongly re-assert its power, 
 
 And Letters, Art, and Science, sceptre-fann'd, 
 
 Shall dwell amongst the nohlest of the land ! 
 
 Be thine the glory, Johnson, to foresee 
 
 And launch this justice in thy Mayoralty ; 
 
 Be thine the praise the balance t' have restored, 
 
 And call'd high Genius to thy festal board. 
 
 Thus, thus, aristocrats, your morgue be tamed, 
 
 Concentric circles of Exclusion shamed, 
 
 And heads with curls without and nought within 
 
 Their teachers to revere be made begin. 
 
 Tims letter'd men's pursuits respect shall earn, 
 
 If mutual wisdom of respect they learn, 
 
 If writers soar above the glorious work — 
 
 A brother's babes to slaughter or to " burke ;" 
 
 And Pride no longer shall its doors be shutting, 
 
 So each desist the other's throat from cutting !
 
 THE BILIAD. ~>7 
 
 This is the age of locomotion fix'd — 
 The as;e of iron and of brass commix' d ; 
 The age of ferreal schemes for every country, 
 Of Speculation, Humbug, and Effrontery ; 
 Of splendid promise and of shameful failing — 
 The accursed age of Rails and eke of Railing ! 
 Of Brass and Iron, from whose welded din 
 Poor knaves are studiously extracting Tin ! 
 The only reading for which man now cares 
 Is Railway notices and Railway shares ; 
 And sometimes too — astounding revolution — 
 Sweet tokens of impending dissolution. 
 A cast-off conscience every scruple cures ; 
 Take leave of shame, and all the world is your's. 
 No South Sea froth or El Dorado scheme 
 E'er match' d the dirty bubbles blown by Steam ! 
 
 "The iron enters" now the critic "soul," 
 And railing flourishes from pole to pole. 
 The poet's back, beneath remorseless whip, 
 Must pay for the reviewer's sins of scrip !
 
 .O THE BILIAD. 
 
 Your finest thoughts the murderous rogue will 
 
 ravage, 
 Because increasing discounts make him savage. 
 The poet now must conquer critic scorn, 
 And cold indifference rouse with Roland's horn ! 
 Must pink a duke or knock a bishop down, 
 Ere blaze his name like gas along the town. 
 Like nightmare squatted Bilk incessant cries, 
 " Thou hast no speculation in those eyes ;" 
 Because his speculations were a bite, 
 Resolved to make the poet cease to write. 
 The cataract of Niagara cork, 
 Or stop the ocean with a silver fork ! 
 In vain thou tear'st the bard's Promethean heart ; 
 Still he defies thee — vengeful as thou art ! 
 
 In critic courts see Lord Chief Justice Spleen 
 Garble, pervert, distort, — do all that's mean. 
 Sav in what robes Chief Justice Spleen is squatted? 
 Wbv ermine, sure, and plaguily 'tis spotted!
 
 THE BILIAD. 59 
 
 Whene'er your head through flattery soft and 
 clammy 
 Is like to turn, just ask yourself, " Who am I ?" 
 And if your aim 's ridiculous to look, 
 Just tempt the teeth of critics with a book ! 
 
 The sorry Clazomenian, Bubalus, 
 Whose daub defamed the bard of Ephesus, 
 Provoked Hipponax in such bitter verse 
 The wretch's derelictions to rehearse, 
 That straight he hang'd himself for grief and shame : 
 Of Bilk and Bubal the deserts the same. 
 My papyromachy more meanly lies, 
 A verier dolt I would sphagitomize. 
 As for its dam " mamma " the infant scmalls, 
 So Lisbon's Chelsea Belema he calls. 
 Thus loosely Epsom, to Hippona sacred, 
 He'd call a purge to scour off humours acrid! 
 
 Shades of Longinus, Aristotle, Tully, 
 Behold the critic sunk into the bully !
 
 60 THE B1LIAD. 
 
 The fount of knowledge now a puddle lies, 
 
 And shallowest dahhlers write and criticize. 
 
 A gynrecocracy hath seized the pen, 
 
 And coolly sets aside less parlous men. 
 
 An ounce of pica and a pound of primer 
 
 Supply of Penny Magazines the skimmer. 
 
 Tis easier than farsightedness to squint, 
 
 And to ahuse than solid judgments print. 
 
 Then straight sets up the matagrabolizer, 
 
 And deems himself than Rabelais e'en wiser ! 
 
 Thus Learning's ape, with not a thumbscrew less, 
 
 Revives the ancient torture of The Press ; 
 
 And Genius trembling waits, like boys at school, 
 
 The anecdote decisions of a fool ; 
 
 Laughs at each dull mistake, but that he knows 
 
 The world is most made up of fools and foes, 
 
 And for his mental toil and struggling hard 
 
 Sees this the guerdon, sympathy, reward — 
 
 A blunderer call'd by one for blundering famous, 
 
 And charg'd with ignorance by an ignoramus!
 
 THE BILIAD. fi I 
 
 As at the College feast of old renown, 
 One flunky tript — the others all came clown, 
 Even so sham-critics from the decks abaft 
 Come down upon the assailant of "the craft ;" 
 And he who ..dares disturb their learned rest 
 Soon finds his hand within a hornet's nest. 
 Let snivelling caitiffs quail and "kiss the rod," 
 Not I — for truth's the brightest work of God! 
 
 Oh, days of empty smattering and conceit ! 
 Now " Kuklops " and " Peisistratus " we meet. 
 Why not, since Grseculist renown ye seek, eh, 
 Alexandria, Aigupt, and Aphrike, 
 So much more learned than " Mehemet Pasha 
 Of Alexandria, Egypt, Africa" 1 
 Bilk coldly tortures words and artists too, 
 Condemning what he never saw or knew. 
 Bear witness, Perrot, lectured for thy singing, 
 Though all thy quavers from thy toe are springing 
 
 t* 
 
 * The following "criticism" appeared in the Jtrahilarian of Saturday, 
 25 July, 1846:—" / Puritani, which was given for M. Perrot's benelit
 
 62 - THE B1LIAD. 
 
 O'er every sense of honest shame victorious, 
 A snarling scurra to the last censorious, 
 If any dog but he through all the town 
 Should dare to bark, how Bilk will bark him down ! 
 And nourishing his pipe as 'twere a truncheon, 
 Like some drunk porter straddling on a puncheon, 
 Not British brains alone he assumes to sway, 
 But French, par die, and Yankee must obey ! 
 Even Longfellow the stolid rogue discards, 
 Translating specimens of Europe's bards, 
 Because he gives no Britons — lucid pate — 
 As if a Yankee English could translate ! 
 
 Rail on, poor scrivener ! Ashamed I feel 
 To grind a moth beneath an iron heel, 
 
 on Thursday evening, enabled this rapidly rising artist still further to 
 -show the progress he has recently made. He sang the last act in his 
 loveliest voice ; but he is too fond of attempting a fan simile of Rubini's 
 high falsetto notes." Perrot never sang a note in his life ! ! ! That he is 
 merely a dancer is known to the whole world— except the infallible igno- 
 ramus, Bilk, whose dishonest system is here admirably exposed, since he 
 si, ubs and depreciates systematically what he manifestly never saw. 
 Oh, Mega Thremma, oh, nose-led people, when wilt thou extricate 
 thy snout ?
 
 THE BILIAD. 63 
 
 With ponderous battle-axe an egg-shell dinge in, 
 Or chase a butterfly with railway engine ! 
 
 The trick of general censure, ceaseless knout, 
 Deceives the -crowd until the trick 's found out : 
 " How deuced sharp must that there writer be, 
 " Who can't find nothing to commend, d'ye see?" 
 The topmost geniuses in all the land 
 This Harlequin belabours with his wand, 
 Of praise to Campbell, Wordsworth, Moore, is chary — 
 Astounds weak heads with his nil admirari. 
 Each mystic flight with him is want of sense, 
 Originality 's extravagance, 
 And every grace unknown to vulgar art 
 A dotard's drivelling or a maniac's part. 
 Faugh, what a stench ! The trickster of that ilk 
 You 've but to unmask, and stop the nose at Bilk ! 
 
 'Tis fit this arrogant pretence be hurl'd 
 Like sore-breech' d Vulcan from the critic world;
 
 <»4 
 
 THE BILIAD. 
 
 'Tis fit we bid e'en Justice mildly shine, 
 And raise to meek Urbanity a shrine, 
 Cast off the galling and dishonouring fetters 
 Of brutes and bullies in the world of letters, 
 Restore the reign of feeling and of heart, 
 Consign to gentlemen the Censor's part, 
 Retrieve a vestige of Augustan glories, 
 And make our " litterse " " humaniores." 
 
 " OUR POETICAL CONTRIBUTOR ELECTRIFYING HIS CIRCLE.
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL.* 
 
 Strepunt 
 
 Hibern(i)a . . . turgidi ! 
 
 Horat. Carm. iv. 12. 
 
 " Repeal" 's the Irish word — 'tis well ; 
 With Britons be the word, "Repel! " 
 "Repeal" 's the shout — ah, well-a-day, 
 When will the shout arise, " Repay f" 
 
 Pingui tentus omaso 
 
 Furius hibemas . . . conspuit Alpes. 
 
 Horat. Sat. ii. 5. 
 
 See Furius sputter o'er his Irish Alps — 
 
 His paunch well fatted while the savage scalps ! 
 
 * I was once smitten with the Repeal mania, and wrote some verses 
 in its favour eight years ago, before the real character of the movement 
 became apparent, and when I was incapable of forming a solid judgment. 
 I was then an enlightened politician of four-and-twenty !
 
 66 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 
 
 — Tu pisces hiberno ex eequore verris ! 
 
 Horat. Sat. ii. 3. 
 
 You fish up gudgeons from the Irish ocean. 
 
 How much, pray, may your net take by each motion? 
 
 Nee tu cum obstiteris semel, instantique negaris 
 Parere imperio, rupi jam vincula, dicas. 
 Nam et luctata canis nodum arripit : attamen illi 
 Cum fugit, a collo trahitur pars longa catenae. 
 
 Pers. Sat. v. 157. 
 A mastiff may growl — 
 
 A wolf-dog may howl, 
 And his neck from the bonds be an instant released ; 
 
 But a bit of the chain 
 
 There still doth remain, 
 By which, when you please, you may tether the 
 beast ! 
 
 " I am glad to say that the Repeal will be left so far an open 
 question, as not to exclude Repealers from promotion in the 
 various professions." — Letter from Daniel O'Connell to T. M. 
 Ray, 24 July, 1846. 
 
 At length for Ireland better days are budding ; 
 
 Britannia, choke Repeal with solid pudding !
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 67 
 
 Revocat. Redeam ? non si obsecret. 
 
 Horat. Sat. ii. 3, 264. 
 
 "Return the money!" some are shouting. — 
 
 For G — 's sake, take it out in spouting ! 
 
 Avrap {Vet Tapirriffav eSrjTvos 7)8e 7tott)to?. 
 
 Hom. Od. v. 201. 
 The word "potatoes" (potutos) here appears to be pure 
 Greek. 
 
 How typical this line of Paddy's fate is : 
 
 " For meat and drink they'd lashings of potatoes." 
 
 But, ah, the Liberator liberates 
 
 His rent from Pat, though rotten his potates ! 
 
 Infestus 0(b)rion 
 
 Turbaret hibernum mare. 
 
 Horat. Epod. xv. 
 
 When Irish seas are stormy, have an eye on 
 
 Vexatious, angry, turbulent 0(b) rion ! 
 
 Scalpuntur versu. 
 
 Pers. Sat. i. 21. 
 
 " Repeal in extremis" — how fit doth it seem ! 
 
 Repealers were always in utter extreme.
 
 68 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 
 
 Ruebat 
 
 Flumen ut Hibernum. 
 
 Horat. Sat. i. 7. 
 Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, &c. 
 
 Epist. i. 2. 
 
 The Irish river of Repeal 
 Resembles Horace's a deal : — 
 Upon its bank some hopeful asses 
 Stand gaping till the river passes — 
 Trusting their blink-eyed Sun old Dan '11 
 Have soon dried up the Irish channel. 
 They wait results with due decorum : 
 It flows in S(Ecla sceculorum ! 
 
 Lady Macbeth: Art thou a man ? 
 Macbeth : Ay, and a bold one, &c. 
 
 " Art thou an Irishman?" — Ay, and a bold one, 
 That 's not ashamed to say e'en now : "Behold one!" 
 
 — Juvenum te revocant preces. 
 
 Horat. Carm. iv. 1. 
 — Licve caput, madidique infantia nasi. 
 
 Juv. Sat. x. 199. 
 
 "Young Ireland" — young, 'tis plainly seen ; 
 " Green Erin " — ah, how deeply green !
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 69 
 
 For coxcomb boys not e'en half learn'd, 
 And bad old men your pence are earn'd. 
 Your heart 's too warm for thoughtful head, 
 Your brain with air-drawn fancies fed. 
 Keep back your coppers from the rogues — 
 And buy yourself a pair of brogues ! 
 
 — Tonantis annus hibernus Jovis. 
 
 Horat. Epod. ii. 
 
 — Ah, demens, temeraria vota ! 
 
 Tibul. iii. 6. 
 
 " 'Tis Repeal Year ! " quoth thundering Paddy 
 
 Whack ; 
 
 And Echo answers " Year" these five years back ! 
 
 Ne, pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella, &c. 
 Heu, miserande puer. Virg. JEn. vi. 
 
 Now, do give up your make-believe, 
 Your rattling can and cap and feather. 
 
 Go back to school, you naughty boys, 
 And fight it out together !
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 
 
 Nec curat O(b)rion leones. 
 
 Horat. Carm. ii. 13. 
 
 Tristis 0(b)rion cadit. 
 
 Epod. x. 
 
 The House should beware— it has caught quite a 
 
 Tartar ; 
 Though small as a Member, he 's great as a Martyr ! 
 
 'Opfforpiaivav eiipvfflav @eov. 
 
 Pind. Pyth. ii. 
 
 "The trident-shaking, widely-powerful God." 
 
 Neptunus alto tundit hibernus salo. 
 
 Horat. Epod. xviii. 
 
 The Irish Neptune like a porpoise rolls ; 
 
 The English Neptune calmly sways the poles. 
 
 For all the fishfag Triton, Nereid throng 
 
 The trident shall not lose its Irish prong ! 
 
 Dan Neptune says that " ere a twelvemonth pass, 
 
 The Senate shall to Ireland go to grass." — 
 
 Ere sits a Parliament in College-green, 
 
 A shoal of whales shall there afloat be seen !
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 71 
 
 Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati, 
 Mamurram habere quod .... 
 Habebat uncti Britannia ? 
 
 Catul. xxvii. 
 
 Shall some raw youth from Cork or Cavan 
 
 Conceive Jhat he 's the bard of Avon, 
 
 Squeak ignorant with learned air, 
 
 And fancy Britain's in despair ? 
 'Tis thus a mouse once scratch' d beneath a wall, 
 And fancied that a Pyramid would fall. 
 
 Una Vertigo. 
 
 Pers. Sat. v. 75. 
 
 Ye Gods ! where is the glorious Irish mind ? 
 Where Swift's rich ore, and Goldsmith's gold refined? 
 Thy sparkle, Sheridan — thy splendour, Burke 1 
 Dwarfed, idiotized — see, Corn-Exchange, thy work ! 
 
 Venit post multas una serena dies. 
 
 Tibul. iii. 6. 
 
 Say in what part of speech upon " The Sod" 
 Our agitators shine the most ? In quod !
 
 72 THE DIRGE OF REPEAJ,. 
 
 Revocas nono post mense. 
 
 Horat. Sat. i. 6. 
 
 Nine months bring forth the vile Repeal abortion ; 
 Will thrice nine end the vile Repeal extortion ? 
 
 'Tis peas in a bladder make geese to move on ; 
 This bladder is empty, the^(ennie)* are gone ! 
 
 ON O'CONNELL'S ABANDONMENT OF REPEAL 
 
 IN 1844, 
 
 WHEN' HE GAVE IN HIS ADHESION TO THORPE PORTER'S 
 FEDERALISM. 
 
 Veteres revocavit artes. 
 
 Horat. Carm. iv. 15. 
 
 Poor Ireland again Dan O'Connell deludes, 
 
 No longer affecting to court her ; 
 Forswears as too strong the Repeal double ex, 
 
 And takes to a draught of weak Porter !
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 7^ 
 
 ON THE SAME OCCASION. 
 
 " Repeal — Revocation." — Walker's Diet. 
 Dan left his cage lest juries prove 
 
 A mockery and delusive game ;* 
 Warm from the hug of Ireland's love, 
 He proved Repeal the same ! 
 
 " He did not see why Repealers should not take place when 
 offered to them." — Speech of John 0' Cornell in Silly -Agitation 
 Hall, 27 July, 1846. 
 
 Repeal, noisy nuisance, would, like barrel-organ, 
 Be sopped to be silenced — a placable Gorgon ! 
 
 HOMERIC NUTS FOR DAN TO CRACK.f 
 
 Most philocteanous of demagogues, 
 And polyphloisbous tempest in the bogs ! 
 Hibernoloimous, brotoloigous brawler, 
 Hecatonglot and arrectophonous bawler, 
 Cunommatous, cradielaphous, cacossomenous, 
 Poor Ireland's ephialt, dasmologue oulomenous ! 
 
 1 "Lest trial by jury should become a mockery, a delusion, and a 
 snare." — Lord Denman. 
 
 f I once was an admirer of O'Connell's, but his course during the past 
 seven years has expunged nearly every feeling of sympathy.
 
 74 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 
 
 Cerdaleophrous and antaganophrosynous, 
 Drachmidian bellower, patriot eleemosynous, 
 The services thou mayst have rendered haply 
 Have been repaid thee triply and tetraply ! 
 
 Quid est igitur aliud adhortari adolescentes, ut turbulenti, 
 ut seditiosi, ut perniciosi cives velint esse, quam ad reipublicse 
 
 pestem ? etiam Nationibus. 
 
 Cic. Philippic, i. 5. 
 
 Three tailors once in Tooley Street 
 
 Proclaimed themselves " The Nation :" 
 Three scribblers now in Dooley* Street 
 
 Aspire to the same station. 
 The tailors shall as soon back-stitch 
 
 A bran-new Constitution, 
 As these shall with their scribbling itch 
 
 Achieve a Revolution ! 
 
 ■ Fanaticus oestro 
 
 Percussus, Bellona, tuo. 
 
 Juv. Sat. iv. 123. 
 
 Be sure, when spouters raise their voice for War — 
 There 's not the smallest danger of a scar ! 
 
 * D'Olier Street, Dublin.
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. / l> 
 
 Migret in obscuras humili sermone tabernas. 
 
 Horat. de A. Poet. 229. 
 
 Young Ireland boasts its paltry rag, 
 
 And deems it monstrous clever ; 
 Thus Niggers o'er young Flat-nose brag — 
 
 "The likes him saw — no nebber!" 
 
 Medio tutissimus ibis. 
 
 " A Middleman 's the safest specnlation." 
 Your tenants grind till nakeder than Hindoo, 
 
 Then prate for hours about " my injured nation," 
 And leave your parish without one glass window ! 
 
 Praeberet spelunca domos, ignemque, Laremque, 
 Et pecus et dominos communi clauderet umbra. 
 
 Juv. Sat. vi. 3. 
 
 Young Ireland can't be quiet for the life, 
 But longs for yellow shirts and savage strife — 
 The good old times, when all were monsters hairy, 
 Bloodthirsty as to-day in Tipperary.
 
 7G 
 
 THE DIRGE OF REPEAL. 
 
 The barbarous nations used with awful eyes 
 Of Greece and Rome the majesty to prize, 
 And sought alliance oftener far than variance- 
 The Irish are resolved to be Barbarians ! 
 
 SILLY-AGITATION HALL. 
 
 Csetera redde coquo. 
 
 Martial, xiii. 52. 
 
 Repeal is dead ! — "What sound doth pierce the gloom? 
 
 Tis only rats a-squeaking from its tomb. 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 
 Ridiculum caput!" 
 
 Terent. Andr. Act ii. Sc. 2.
 
 // 
 
 CORN AND COERCION; OR THE FRUITS OF THE 
 
 SESSION. 
 
 Dat pro pane sonum populo, sectatur Hibernos, 
 
 Putrida dum vitse parca alimenta patent ; 
 Vocibus asservavit apia-TOKpaTtta que aristas, 
 
 'Apio-rav plebis ne poterit qnis inops. 
 Annum consumpsit ne quis consumere fruges 
 
 Jure queat liber : putria poma soli 
 Sit pro pane ciboque coercitus ipse senatus 
 
 Manducare epulis, vindice ventre, suis ; 
 Pro totidem verbis toties jam devoret auras, 
 
 Esurieque scelus guttur inane luat ! 
 
 ON OUR SIKH CONQUEST. 
 
 T fl jxiya atfxvri Ni'ktj ! 
 " Oh, great and august Victoria !" 
 
 Eurip. Iph. in Taur. 1497. 
 
 Victrix palma tibi redeat, Victoria, semper, 
 Anglia sic et Io, mite, Triumphe canat ; 
 
 Lauro paciferse nectatur ramus olivae ; 
 Hostes qua vincis protege blanda manu !
 
 78 
 
 THE LOCOMOTIVE AGE OF IRON. 
 
 The world by them is parcelled out in shares.* 
 
 Thomson, Castle of Indolence, c. ii. 
 
 /Etas heec fern ; de ferro est cuique voluntas, 
 
 Cor, caput, ausa ; vise ferreee ubique patent. 
 Manducare queat si quis jam pabula ferri, 
 
 Esuriens terris, Hercule, nullus erit ! 
 Caelicolas olim ferro invasere Gigantes, 
 
 Pygmsei Lunam nunc fatuique petunt. 
 Prospectu ex meliore pavimenta usta Gehennee 
 
 Propositis biviis ferrea Disque facit! 
 
 FOREIGN SYMPATHY WITH REPEAL. 
 
 Avec un bruit de guerre un tambour est si bel, 
 Et c'est aux fanfarons de battre le Rappel ! 
 
 EI2 THN riOAKAN. 
 
 Poll-pleasing Polka, polygon of hops, 
 I fear me tbou'rt polygynsecoelops ! 
 
 * This singularly antitipative line occurs in the next stanza to the ce- 
 lebrated one about the " Man of God," who " had a roguish twinkle 
 in his eye."
 
 79 
 
 C2X> 
 TRAVELLING IN THE PENINSULA. 
 
 Hem ! quttd si quiessem, nihil evenisset mali. 
 
 Terent. Andr. act. iii. sc. 4. 
 
 — Hispania : Pyreneeum 
 Transilit : opposuit Natura. 
 
 Juvenal. Sat. x. 151. 
 
 The shaking is shocking, 
 And racking the rocking. 
 So taunting the jaunting, 
 
 So horrid the jolting, 
 So slaving the paving, 
 
 I 'd wish to be bolting !
 
 80 TRAVELLING IN 
 
 Buggy posadas 
 
 Hath Heaven's anger sent us, 
 Almost as bad as 
 
 The rascally ventas ! 
 Bandits gun-cocking 
 
 Not very far from us, 
 Trunks soon unlocking 
 
 In spite of St. Thomas. 
 D — d muleteros 
 
 Still ready to do us ; 
 Scowling rateros 
 
 With knives to run through us. 
 Talk here of Railways — 
 Send the knaves jailways ! 
 
 Ere locomotion new, 
 Mending their frail ways. 
 Hell, they say,'s paved 
 
 With the best of intention ; 
 Roads here with nothing 
 
 Are paved I can mention !
 
 THE PENINSULA. 
 
 Rapparees, tories, 
 
 And slugs through your brain, 
 Such are the glories 
 
 Of travelling in Spain ! 
 
 Fright your soul shaking, 
 And pestilent quaking ; 
 Drum-like knee-knocking, 
 Through dread of ear-docking ; 
 Shivering, quivering, 
 Stand-and-delivering, 
 Bandits to plunder-" bus," 
 Armed each with blunderbuss, 
 Grumbling patron 
 Like a dog o'er a bone. 
 Fingering your silver, be 
 Scowls at you ill, very ; 
 Pondering o'er if he 
 Can't bleed some more of you ; 
 At your guide winking, 
 Your dollars a-jinking ; 
 
 F 
 
 81
 
 v _' TRAVELLING IN 
 
 While your cash clawing 
 
 Or changing a note, 
 His finger he 's drawing 
 
 Across his bull-throat ! 
 Truth to be talking, 
 
 In country more oivilized, 
 
 Land less bedevilized, 
 Better ev'n walking! 
 
 Paving-stones mountainous, 
 
 Ruts like dog-holes ; 
 Oft from a fountain as 
 
 Far as the poles ! 
 Mail-carts all springless 
 
 As rough as this stanza, 
 Noah's ark wingless 
 
 They call Diligenza ! 
 If you can't box your roun' 
 Beggar's staff knocks you down. 
 All the policemen 
 
 And guardias civils
 
 THE PENINSULA. 
 
 83 
 
 Strive how to fleece men, 
 
 The plundering devils ! 
 Every Alcalde 
 Picaron valde, 
 Each Escribano 
 Spares your purse — ah, no ! 
 Justice is bought off" here, 
 
 Rhino for buffets, 
 Law is ne'er thought of here, 
 
 Only the profits ! 
 Rapparees, tories, 
 
 And slugs through your brain ; 
 Such are the glories 
 
 Of travelling in Spain !
 
 84 
 
 THE FACIAL DILEMMA. 
 
 Democritus or Heraclitus ? 
 
 Jamne igitur laudas, quod de sapientibus alter 
 Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum 
 Protuleratque pedem : flebat contrarius alter ? 
 Mirandum est, unde ille oculis suffecerit humor. &c. 
 
 Juv. Sat. x. 28. 
 
 Democritus vir magnus in primis, cujus fontibus hortulos 
 suos Epicurus irrigavit. Cic. De Nat. Dear. i. 121. 
 
 I know not which — to smile or weep- 
 
 At human pride and folly ; 
 To laugh out in derision deep, 
 
 Or melt in melancholy ! 
 With Heraclitus now I grieve 
 
 Some stroke of baseness after ; 
 Then with Abdera's sage believe 
 
 The only balm is laughter !
 
 THE FACIAL DILEMMA. 85 
 
 When slanderers wound a virgin's fame, 
 
 When bullying cowards swagger, 
 When Honour's eye sustains a shame, 
 
 Or Truth a poisoned dagger ; 
 When rogues enjoy triumphant swing — 
 
 And not upon a gallows — 
 From frolic Mirth a tear 'twould wring, 
 
 A heart-drop thaw from Malice ! 
 
 And yet so mean are Falsehood's arts, 
 
 So vain its toilsome shuffling, 
 And Hypocrites so bare their hearts, 
 
 Despite of pious muffling ; 
 The cozener to such schemes resorts, 
 
 To tricks so low the jobber, 
 That laughter-peals seem fit retorts 
 
 On scoundrel, cheat, and robber ! 
 
 Let Honesty in smiles rejoice 
 'Gainst Yillany directed;
 
 86 THE FACIAL DILEMMA. 
 
 What spectacle has earth so choice 
 
 As Villany detected? 
 The Knave, be sure, is still a fool, 
 
 Who goes a tedious journey 
 To cheat himself, at last, by rule — 
 
 Self-hangman— and — attorney! 
 
 But that the tear unbidden starts, 
 
 I doubt if aught that 's human 
 Deserve a tribute wrung from hearts, 
 
 Save pure, untainted woman. 
 They say that Man is partly worm, 
 
 And partly soaring eagle; 
 The crawling 's true — whate'er the form 
 
 Wolf, mastiff, hound, or beagle ! 
 
 Who goes not forth in masquerade? 
 
 Who is not acting merely ? 
 Who hath no bubble stock-in-trade? 
 
 Who walks the earth sincerely ?
 
 THE FACIAL DILEMMA. 87 
 
 The life of man is one great lie ; 
 
 His grave e'en falsehood reaches, 
 For when he lays him down to die, 
 
 His tomb to lie he teaches ! 
 
 Democritus, thy laughter-note 
 
 Partook the Thracian madness ; 
 Near Biston's lake, where nought could float, 
 
 Still buoyant thou with gladness. 
 Hosts entertain both " man and horse" — 
 
 If poor — with much disdainment ; 
 The Clazomenian man and horse 
 
 For thee found entertainment ! 
 
 'Twixt thee and Heraclitus here 
 
 Perplexed my facial muscle, 
 To wear at once a scowl and sneer 
 
 Through Life's long selfish bustle. 
 Whene'er I weep for human pride, 
 
 It shall be tears of laughter ;
 
 88 
 
 THE FACIAL DILEMMA. 
 
 Whene'er I laugh, I '11 so deride, 
 That tears shall trickle after ! 
 
 A MODERN DEMOCRITUS.
 
 89 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DINNER GIVING. 
 
 " Kara crrdfia /3 td{e ff 6 at. "—Plvt. 
 
 Hie bona dente 
 Grandia magnanimus peragit puer ! 
 
 Pers. Sat. vi. 21. 
 A reason plain made Nature's brain, 
 
 With wondrous wise discretion, 
 The organs fix where functions mix 
 
 Of speech and mastication. 
 Still flattery from the selfsame ground 
 
 With the saliva comes ; 
 The wagging of the tongue is found 
 
 Through tickling of the gums ! 
 
 The worst or best of us obeys 
 
 That small but active member ; 
 Then oil it well if in your praise 
 
 You'd make it loose and limber. 
 I've long since found the way to sound 
 
 Each heart is down the throttle ; 
 If man you'd win, trepan him in 
 
 A savoury bone and bottle !
 
 90 
 
 If prized, in short, Iris good report, 
 
 With port then make him mellow ; 
 But try champagne, o'er hearts you'll reign 
 
 The worthiest jolly fellow. 
 Give ne'er a feed, your doom 's decreed — 
 
 Curmudgeon, knave, and sinner ; 
 But pepper gums with devilled drums — 
 
 The devil 's in a dinner!
 
 91 
 
 OX AN ELDERLY LADY WITH FORTUNE, WHO 
 MARRIED A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WITH NONE. 
 
 Fis anus, et tamen 
 
 Vis formosa videri. 
 
 .... refugit te, quia luridi 
 
 Dentes, te quia rugse 
 
 Turpant et capitis nives. — Horat. Carm. iv. 13. 
 
 Poor Poll with all her money no 
 Well-favour' d youth could bend ; 
 
 She couldn't find a lover, so 
 She put up with a friend. 
 
 As hourly to the glass she sped, 
 
 Her bustle still grew bigger ; 
 Quoth she, " Dear Richard, now we're wed, 
 
 Aint Poll a pretty figure?" 
 
 Quoth Dick, "Your teeth they are like pearls, 
 
 Your breath as sweet as honey." 
 But all the time the knowing rogue 
 
 Kept eyeing Polly's money ;
 
 92 
 
 " 'Twirt seventy and seventeen,'' quoth he, 
 
 " I know the difference well. 
 •'The charms to me of seventy pounds 
 
 " From seventeen hear the bell !" 
 
 Now Polly wore with velvet shaw] 
 
 A fine pelisse of satin, 
 And strutted all through London streets, 
 
 A -talking French and Latin. 
 
 Her arms they cost two guineas each, 
 
 Her bosom cost ten pound ; 
 All moulded by French farcisseuse, 
 
 Elastic, soft and round. 
 
 Her wig cost full its weight in gold, 
 
 Of rouge she 'd half a ton ; 
 More wadding o'er her figure ran, 
 
 Than fills a Cockney's gun. 
 
 A tooth she had that, when she smiled, 
 Denoted Paphian pleasure ;
 
 93 
 
 That tooth was Cleopatra's once, 
 And cost a mint of treasure. 
 
 But, ah, the more of money she 
 Laid out upon her charms, 
 
 The more Dick like a shadow grew, 
 Still fleeting from her arms ! 
 
 S5&
 
 !)! 
 
 THE CORN-LAW SCHWERTLIED. 
 
 Quid raeritus es ? Crucem ! 
 
 Terent. Andr. Act iii. Sc. 5. 
 Pro peccato magno paulum supplicii. 
 
 lb. Act. iii. Sc. 5. 
 The might of England shimhers, 
 
 While swell her sinewy numbers ; 
 
 The millions ask for bread, 
 
 Shall " No " by fools be said ? 
 
 A groan o'er all the Island 
 Ascends from plain and highland ; 
 Our blood shall lordlings quaff, 
 And echo back a laugh ? 
 
 Shall breath like feeblest tabour 
 
 Arrest the arm of Labour, 
 The mill upon the stream, 
 The mighty power of Steam 1 
 
 Hurrah ! 
 
 Hurrah ! 
 
 Hurrah !
 
 95 
 
 Shall gewgaw title, fashion 
 Pipe down the storm of passion? 
 
 A nation's voice of Fate 
 
 Shall units suffocate ? 
 
 How long, poor brethren younger, 
 Must be our portion Hunger ? 
 Our babes have mouths like you, 
 And we are fathers, too. 
 
 When move our banded millions, 
 Ye quake in your pavilions. 
 
 Take heed for hall and park ; 
 
 The dogs may bite who bark. 
 
 Hurrah! 
 
 Hurrah ! 
 
 Hurrah !
 
 96 
 
 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 Fortuna sua. tempora lege regit. 
 
 Tibul. 1. iii. Eleg. 3. 
 
 What part hath Fortune in dispensing fame ! 
 See Hardinge's glory, Ellenborough's shame. 
 
 Nee semper proelia clade. 
 
 Propert. I. iii. Eleg. 9. 
 
 Unscrew your guns, your flags be furl'd ; 
 
 Artillery's idle wind. 
 By goose-quills Kings to earth are hurl'd; — 
 Tis not brute force now rules the world, 
 
 But Heaven-ascending Mind ! 
 
 Uxorem grandi cum dote. 
 
 Horat. Sat. i. 4. 
 
 What qualities make wedlock sweet as honey ? 
 Youth, beauty, breeding, virtue, wit, and— money !
 
 EPIGRAMS. 97 
 
 What qualities for single life are fit ? 
 
 If poor — youth, beauty, breeding, virtue, wit ! 
 
 Since matrimony dower' d alone is sunny, 
 
 'Twere just as well, for short, to call it " 'money." 
 
 - Laudis titulique cupido. 
 
 Juvenal. Sat. x. 143. 
 
 " What ! chain' d for ever to your books ?" 
 Quoth Readnone, as he crost my portal ; 
 
 More posed he at my answer looks : 
 " I kill myself to be immortal !" 
 
 ON A YOUTH WHO WAS SAID TO BE DESTINED 
 FOR THE GALLOWS. 
 
 Jam calida et matura juventa, 
 
 Inguina traduntur medicis, 
 
 Juvenal. Sat. vi. 368. 
 
 Jack will not hang ; oh, say it not ! 
 
 He will not hang— but living rot ! 
 
 With flowers he wreathes the poison odious, 
 
 Yet fatal as thy sword, Harmodius !
 
 98 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 La traicion es aceptada, pero el traidor es aborrecido. 
 
 Spanish Proverb. 
 
 Be such, ever such, the apostate's reward ; 
 
 Though the treason's accepted, the traitor 's abhorr'd ! 
 
 Medicis quid tristibus ? 
 
 Juvenal. Sat. vi. 388. 
 
 Your tongue 's put forth to clear his doubt 
 For some black-draught-decocter. 
 
 Why dont you boldly put it out 
 At every living Doctor ?
 
 EPIGRAMS. 99 
 
 THE RATIONALE OF TALE-BEARING. 
 
 " Quern conta urn conto acrescenta-lhe um ponto." 
 
 Portuguese Proverb. 
 
 Hoc peperit misero garrula lingua malum. 
 
 Tibul. lib. iv. 13. 
 
 He who telleth a tale, 
 Adds a bit without fail ; 
 
 The reason of this would ye seek 1 
 'Tis a dutiful thing 
 To give foundlings a wing, 
 
 And to prop up the lame and the weak ? 
 
 Nee medici credas nee curatoris egere. 
 
 Horat. Ep. i. 1, 102. 
 
 Hydropathy and Homoeopathy, 
 
 Long may ye nourish o'er Allopathy! 
 
 For still, though swamp' d be he who takes to water, 
 
 He'scapes from gallows and from drug-shop slaughter ; 
 
 And doses infinitesimally small 
 
 Would be still better were they none at all !
 
 100 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 AN IRISH DUEL. 
 
 Duello 
 
 Stultorum continet sestus. — Horat. Epist. i. 2. 
 Pacem duello miscuit. Carm. iii. 5. 
 
 O' Blunder's pistols with his hrainpiece chimed, 
 For when his fit of jealousy exploded, 
 
 The one was loaded without being primed, 
 
 The other one was primed without being loaded ! 
 
 When, primed at last and loaded too, the blockhead 
 
 His trigger pull'd, he had forgot to cock it ! 
 
 — Dis 
 Notum , qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor ! 
 
 Juven. Sat. x. 353, 
 Romantic Ned ! 'twas fit, I vow, 
 
 That Poll's romance-quotations win you; 
 
 You 've had your wish, you 're wedded now, 
 
 And find that Poll is not Virginia ! 
 
 — vSwp 5' avafxiffyerai vSei. 
 
 Hes. Theog. 955. 
 
 Hydropathy 's as old as Noah's time ; 
 It cured the Earth of each disease and crime. 
 It makes its patients 'neath wet blanket sit ; 
 Hence Doctors a wet blanket throw o'er it !
 
 EPIGRAMS. 101 
 
 Bona pars non ungues ponere curat. 
 
 Horat. Be Arte Poet. 297. 
 
 What ? Bonaparte, thy clutches shun ! 
 
 Hath England tamed thy mighty heart ? 
 No corner on the earth but one, 
 
 Of which thou did'st not bone a part ! 
 
 — Ne male dispari 
 lacontinentes injiciat manus. — Horat. Carm. i. 17. 
 
 Teach me each chiromantic antic 
 
 To make old maids and young, too, frantic, 
 
 Throw coma, trance, and catalepsy 
 
 And sleep Mesmeric o'er each gipsy. 
 
 My passes shall the young pursue ; 
 
 The old ones I will leave to you ! 
 
 A HYDROMANTIC PREDICTION. 
 
 Vaenit vilissima rerum 
 
 Hie aqua. Horat. Sat. i. 5. 
 
 When Hydrophobia finds specific sure, 
 Hydropathy will be a certain cure.
 
 102 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 With some Bottles, which Dr. Oliveira, 
 
 President of the Municipal Chamber of Funchal, and Pro- 
 prietor of some of the most delicious wines in Madeira, wished 
 sent to him to be refilled. 
 
 — Vultis me quoque sumere 
 
 Partem Falerni ? 
 
 Horat. Carm. i. 27. 
 
 These flasks which by your kind desire, 
 Dear Doctor, from my shelf retire, 
 Long to regain their useful station, 
 And pine for active occupation. 
 
 — Tremat omento popa venter ! 
 
 Pers. Sat. vi. 74. 
 
 — Animal propter convivia natum. 
 
 Juvenal. Sat. i. 141. 
 
 Turtle and venison, champagne and pullets ! 
 Settle each question with forc'd-meat bullets. 
 
 — Satur anseris extis. — Pers. Sat. vi. 
 
 Aspice quam tumeat magno jecur anseremajus. 
 
 Martial, lib. xiii. Epig. 38.
 
 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 103 
 
 Quoth Gorge, nigh finishing a goose 
 As fine as ever flew : — 
 " A foolish bird— too much for one, 
 And not enough for two !"
 
 104 EPIGRAMS. 
 
 THE SHATTERED CABINET.— 25th JUNE, 1846. 
 
 Ne odium 
 
 Sedulus importes, opera vehemente, Minister! 
 
 Horat. Epist.i. 13. 
 
 Ask ye the reason why Sir Robert fell ? 
 He did his work too wisely and too well. 
 
 TESTE HIBERNIA. 
 
 Fuste coerces miserque 
 
 Rumperis, et latras, magnorum maxime regum ! 
 
 Horat. Sat. i. 3. 
 
 Tis shelving Repeal hath laid Peel on the shelf, 
 And coercing poor Erin coerces himself ! 
 
 WALPOLE'S AND PEEL'S RETIREMENT. 
 
 Cererem in spicis intercipit. 
 
 Ovid. Met. viii. 292. 
 
 The first Sir Robert bargain' d for his head, 
 The second baked his own and England's bread! 
 
 TIPPERARY LOQUITUR. 
 
 Si quis ad ingentem frumenti semper acervum 
 Projectus vigilet cum longo fuste, neque illinc 
 Audeat esuriens . . . contingere granum. 
 
 Horat. Sat. ii. 3. 
 
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting Peel, 
 
 The agrarian herd winds scampering o'er the lea, 
 
 The surly ploughman makes the Premier feel, 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me !
 
 I/ENVOY TO THE REPEALERS. 
 
 No fewer than twelve distinct nations, the Marsi, 
 Peligni, Vestini, Marcini, Picentes, Ferentanse, Hir- 
 pini, Pompeiaui, Venusini, Apuli, Lucani, and Sam- 
 nites, in the year U. C. 663, sent a joint deputation 
 to Rome (as Livy informs us) to demand a parti- 
 cipation in the privileges of Roman citizens, of which 
 they alleged that by their services they had so largely 
 increased the value. The senate told them in reply 
 that they must renounce their pretensions and dis- 
 continue their turbulent assemblies, and the nations 
 flew to arms. In modern times it is not the preten- 
 sions to citizenship that are renounced, but the pri- 
 vileges of citizenship, and the "turbulent assemblies" 
 are held not with a view to emerge from barbarism, 
 but return to it ! Whether were the Marsians and 
 Samnites, or are the Irish by their mode of procedure 
 the greater Barbarians ? Having spent many years of 
 my life in various parts of the continent, I can vouch 
 that the dignity of being a British subject to-day is
 
 106 
 
 as great as was that of being a Roman citizen 2000 
 years ago, and that if (which Heaven forbid !) the 
 fatal delusion of Repeal were to succeed, with its 
 inevitable consequence, Separation, Ireland and Ice- 
 land in the estimation of continental Europe would 
 differ only by a letter. The Irish imagine that they 
 have a history and literature of their own to sustain 
 an independent national character, but their bards 
 and annals do not surpass the Icelandic scalds and 
 sagas, and they have no modern literature worth one 
 farthing which is not steeped in Shakspeare and his 
 successors. I, an Irishman, say this, knowing 
 enough of the ancient language and the ancient and 
 modern literature to laugh at the claims of factious 
 scribblers. 
 
 The twelve allied nations, which would no longer 
 be Barbarians, took to the field to the number of 
 100,000 men, and conquered the privileges of Roman 
 citizenship from a Roman army of equal numbers, 
 defeating the two Roman consuls, one of whom was 
 the first Julius Caesar, kinsman of the greater Julius 
 Caesar, who was then in his boyhood ; and the result
 
 107 
 
 of the war was that they had to be added to the list 
 of Roman citizens, new rolls being made out, and the 
 number of aliens admitted on the rolls being probably 
 equal to that of the ancient inhabitants. But the 
 Repealers, in love with all of Barbarism but its 
 bravery, will neither take the field nor consent to 
 the glorious privilege of having their names recorded 
 on the roll of British citizens. Let me conclude by 
 recommending to Repeal fanaticism to adopt for its 
 fitting motto a line from Ovid's Fasti : — 
 
 Barbaras hie ego sum ; quia non intelligor ulli ! 
 
 PAINTING A NAKED SAVAGE.
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE REMARKS. 
 
 P. 27. " The lettered scarecrow's wardrobe would ye 
 seek ? 
 A scrap of Latin and a shred of Greek." 
 
 It is doubtful whether our Atrabilarian hath even 
 this sixth-form accomplishment, so timidly doth he 
 resort to its use : 
 
 At magnum fecit, quod verbis Grseca Latinis 
 Miscuit. O seri studiorum ! 
 
 Hor. Sat. i. 10. 
 
 " O stupidi in literis !" says Dacier. It is humi- 
 liating enough to think how a mountebank may leap 
 to the top of a beer-barrel, take the poker for a 
 sceptre, and sway the world of letters : 
 
 Bestius urget 
 
 Doctores Graios ! Pers. Sat. vi. 37. 
 
 Ibid. "Add monstrous airs of arrogant assumjition." 
 Horace has touched him off to a hair : 
 
 Nil rectum, nisi quod placuit sibi, ducit. * * 
 
 Quod mecum ignorat, solus vult scire videri ; 
 Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis, 
 Nostra sed impugnat ; nos nostraque lividus odit. 
 
 Epist. ii. 1.
 
 110 
 
 P. 27. " The literary scarecrow '« now complete /" 
 Ich kenne nichts aermeres 
 Unter der sonn' als euch ! 
 
 Goethe, Prometheus. 
 " I know nought more pitiful under the sun than 
 you!" 
 
 P. 28. " In Grecian fields a grinning scarecrow set 
 Was called Phobetron — frowning black as 
 jet ;" 
 "EKrirajxai (pofiepav <pp4ua, Severn ira.\Kwv. 
 * *'H ttSttol, avdpi6/j.a yap 
 4>e'pa> TT7ifj.aTa' ovre yap 
 "Exyova xAvTas xflorbs Au£eTai. 
 
 Soph. (Edip. Tyran. 153, 167. 
 " I am distracted with fearful mind — quaking with 
 terror. Alack ! 1 bear unnumbered ills ; for the 
 fruits of the blessed earth no longer ripen." 
 
 Ibid. " In Rome Terriculum " — 
 
 Rivos diducere nulla 
 
 Relligio vetuit, segeti prsetendere sepem, 
 Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres. 
 
 Virg. Georg. i. 269. 
 
 Ibid. " In modern Babylon, where smooth as silk 
 
 Each traitor smiles, we call the monster 
 
 Bilk." 
 
 This happy art is as old as the days of Aristophanes, 
 
 who celebrates it with the phrase, Sio\ia6(?v robs xp'ho-ras, 
 
 literally, "to give one's creditors the slip." — Nub. 433.
 
 Ill 
 
 P. 28. "Sing loud, Sirvents, avenging many a 
 wrong." 
 
 Sirvente was the generic name of the objurgatory 
 and sarcastic effusions of the Provencal poets. There 
 is occasionally much fire and spirit in this portion of the 
 Troubadour minstrelsy. See Raynouard's specimens, 
 especially the " Quan lo dons" of Folquet de Romans, 
 and the "Ira e dolor" of the Chevalier du Temple, 
 upon the taking of Assur by the Saracens, in 1265. 
 
 OUR BIBLIOMANIAC.
 
 112 
 
 P. 28. " And others too can ply the tomahawk /" 
 
 De te sumam supplicium, ut volo. 
 
 Terent. Andr. Act. iii. Sc. 5. 
 
 P. 31 . " But what are these to Bilk dilating cool 
 
 On tactics, who ne'er heard of Sandhurst 
 School." 
 
 " With the exception of the Royal Military Aca- 
 demy at Woolwich, which is designed for the artillery 
 only, we have no scientific nursery for our officers." 
 (Atrabilarian, No. 935, Review of Mitchell's " Fall 
 of Napoleon.") In the subsequent number, a mili- 
 tary officer takes the writer to task, astonished at 
 the ignorant omission ; and Bilk, with characteristic 
 coolness, brazens it out thus : " We certainly at the 
 moment forgot Sandhurst ; but how does this affect 
 our argument ? " Why, directly, and in the strongest 
 manner. The point which Bilk was urging was that 
 " we have no scientific nursery for our officers." Not 
 cooler was the assertion of the pickpocket, when the 
 judge remarked on the rather unfavourable circum- 
 stance of his hand being caught in the gentleman's 
 pocket, that it found its way there by accident ! 
 Now that I am on the subject of the Atrabilarian' s 
 correspondence, I must remark the gross unfairness 
 with which it commonly declines to insert the state- 
 ments of an adverse letter-writer, pretends to de-
 
 113 
 
 scribe his arguments, and then knocks down the 
 sham Frankenstein of its own creation ! 
 
 OUR POLITICIAN. 
 
 P. 31. " Making e'en sceptical, sagacious Hobbes 
 
 Believe in broomsticks and succumb to mobs." 
 Vide No. 938, Review of " Pott's Discovery of 
 Witches in Lancashire," and letter of an indignant 
 Subscriber in No. 939. The Atrabilarian adopted the 
 statement that Hobbes "was paralysed, and shrank 
 from the subject of Witchcraft, as if afraid to touch 
 
 H
 
 114 
 
 it !" though the philosopher himself says distinctly: 
 " as for witches, I think not that their witchcraft is 
 any real power," and goes on to declare that they are 
 "justly punished." 
 
 ENORMOUS CRANIAL DEVELOPMENT OF 
 "OUR OWN PHILOSOPHER." 
 
 P. 31. " Discussing Lusitanian (/s and p's 
 
 Who cannot even write 'mart in Portuguese." 
 
 "The Lobishomes (from Jobo a wolf and home a 
 man) are evidently the wolf-men — the loups-garoux — 
 so famous in France, in Esthonia, and other parts of 
 Europe." (Review of Mr. Kingston's " Lusitanian 
 Sketches." No. 939.) As well might the critical 
 quack assert that they are the Kelpies of Scotland or 
 the Ghouls of India ; so little have they of the wolf, 
 that they happen to be compounded of man and 
 horse ! ! This cockney naturalist would probably find 
 a difficulty in distinguishing a wolf from a horse.
 
 115 
 
 But really, such monstrous misinformation requires a 
 stringent remedy. So carelessly does Bilk insult the 
 understanding of his credulous readers, that else- 
 where, in the same critique, he records that the lobis- 
 home is compounded of the horse and not the wolf. 
 " By some strange transformation of the legend, the 
 horse is substituted for the wolf in Portugal." Poor 
 man, he forgot this circumstance when he flippantly 
 set down the lobishome as identical with the loup- 
 yarou. The secret of this blunder is that, finding 
 "wolf" common to both names, the confident im- 
 postor jumped to his ridiculous conclusion ; while 
 " loho" here in the Portuguese does not mean 
 
 OUR TRAVELLED MAN.
 
 116 
 
 "wolf" at all, but "bugbear." Equally palpable is 
 his ignorance in writing home as Portuguese for 
 "man," the word being homem. 
 
 For a specimen of Bilk's strictures on the social 
 state of Portugal, take the following. " The money 
 paid by the poor for the celebration of saints' days, 
 and other silly displays, in fire-works, wax-candles, 
 and above all in supporting the idle — would go far 
 towards relieving the abject poverty of the whole 
 nation. The higher orders condemn such impositions 
 as much as we do." (No. 939.) This short paragraph 
 contains no fewer than four gross blunders — a mis- 
 take for every two lines. First, the money is not 
 paid by the poor, but by all classes that can afford 
 it, by voluntary contribution. A collection is made 
 at the doors of all the houses in the parish, the 
 poorest excepted. A copper or two from each suffices 
 for the purpose, and in many cases the expenses are 
 almost entirely borne by Irmandades, or religious con- 
 fraternities. Secondly, it is not expended " in sup- 
 porting the idle ;" every farthing goes to the pur- 
 chase of tapers, fireworks, and church decorations, 
 and the ministers of the altar are supported by the 
 state and by fixed fees. Thirdly, as to "the abject 
 poverty of the whole nation," there is no such thing. 
 In fact there is a good deal of wealth in the country, 
 and very many extensive capitalists in Lisbon and
 
 117 
 
 Oporto. The flagrant disproportions of English 
 society are not witnessed here, and if, with few ex- 
 ceptions, there are none enormously rich, there is not, 
 and has not been for years, one case of destitution 
 throughout the entire country. The very opposition 
 journals, while abusing their Government, during the 
 late ministerial crisis in England arising out of the 
 corn-law question, confessed that " the people here 
 are never in want of bread." {Revolucao and Patriota, 
 January, 1846.) Fourthly, "the higher orders" are 
 so far from " condemning such impositions," that 
 their families willingly contribute their quotas, and 
 no one in Portugal ever breathes a word against the 
 practice, which constitutes in fact the sole amuse- 
 ment of the people. I presume that actual residence 
 in the country constitutes me something more of a 
 judge than Bilk, enveloped with his curtain of London 
 smoke ; and I might refer (if it were recpiired) in 
 testimony to my accurate knowledge of Portuguese 
 and Madeirese customs, language, history, and lite- 
 rature, (as recorded in my Ocean Flower,) to the un- 
 qualified praise of the Lisbon Diario or official jour- 
 nal, the Correio Portuguez, the Revista Universal 
 (the leading literary journal) and the Impartial of 
 Madeira. I am here, observe, still closely adhering 
 to my rule of confining my observations to the 
 Atrabilariatis strictures on the works of others, and
 
 118 
 
 catching him in a mesh of ignorant absurdities where 
 he hoped there would be no one to expose his preten- 
 sious dogmatism. 
 
 "OUR man of science. 
 
 P. 31. " Showing not more removed the veriest stallion 
 Than he from grammar knowledge of 
 Italian." 
 
 In a single number of the Atrahilarian (938) I find 
 no fewer than two mistakes by Bilk in the orthography 
 of two of the commonest words in the Italian language. 
 Gazzetta he spells with a single z (p. 1019), and Im-
 
 119 
 
 provvisatore with a single v (p. 1013). The mistakes 
 are proved to be essentially Bilk's own, for the first 
 of them occurs in that exclusive paddock, through 
 which he loves to roam with fancy free, " Our Weekly 
 Gossip," and the second in his review of a work in 
 which the word is correctly spelled. 
 
 "OUR CONSCIENTIOUS AND DILIGENT DISCHARGE OF 
 THE CRITICAL FUNCTION." 
 
 P. 31. " And scalping in cold blood Cervantes' fame, 
 
 Yet ignorant how to write Bon Quixote's 
 
 name ! ' ' 
 
 He spells it "Quixote," with two *'s {vide No. 939, 
 
 p. 1030). As an ordinary specimen of intolerable
 
 120 
 
 assumption, which might be followed in every page, 
 I shall extract a remark of Bilk's concerning the 
 Don Quixote of Cervantes. " If Mr. Kingston were 
 much acquainted with the literature of Spain, he 
 would know that this famous book was never a 
 general favourite." The assumption here is as 
 untrue as it is insulting : Mr. Kingston is well ac- 
 quainted with the literature of Spain, of which Bilk 
 just knows the nomenclature, and such tag-ends of 
 information as he has acquired by cutting open the 
 leaves of sundry works, sent foolishly to be assassi- 
 nated. This style of imputing grovelling ignorance to 
 Kingston is common to all the Atrabilarian reviews, 
 and is enough to make a man's blood boil. But the 
 assertion with which he endeavours to sustain his as- 
 sumption is utterly unfounded ! It is true that the 
 work was at the very commencement received with in- 
 difference, and even contempt (" con la mayor indife- 
 rencia, objeto de la burla y desprecio" — Navarrete, 
 Vida de Cervantes), and that the ingenious author 
 published his Buscapie (a squib running about 
 people's feet), apparently to "blow it up," but in 
 reality to explain the object of the satire, and excite 
 the public curiosity. The Buscapie, which has since 
 been lost, but which a writer of such character as 
 Rui Diaz attests that he had seen and read, was most 
 successful for its purpose, as Cervantes himself
 
 121 
 
 states at the commencement of the second part of 
 Don Quixote (" recebido con general aplauso de las 
 gentes)." In the very same year in which the first 
 part was published, 1605, there were published no 
 fewer than four editions of the work in Spain (" a lo 
 menos cuatro ediciones." Navarr. Vida de Cervantes), 
 and in the years immediately following there were 
 multiplied editions of it published in France, Italy, 
 Portugal, and Flanders. Yet " the book was never 
 a general favourite," quoth Bilk ! Four editions in 
 the first year of its publication. " Indeed it was 
 little read," quoth Bilk ! Cervantes was called agu- 
 disimo (most acute) by his learned contemporary 
 Faria y Sousa. " Quixote was received," says Na- 
 varrete, with universal appreciation (aprecio universal) 
 The great Lope de Vega was enthusiastic in his ap- 
 plause (" Las publicas alabanzas con que ensalzaron re- 
 ciprocamente sus obras." — Navarr.) And the fame 
 which Cervantes had acquired by the work, caused 
 him to be appointed by the Duke of Lerma, in the 
 very same year of its first publication, to write a 
 description of the splendid reception given to the 
 English embassy, which was printed in Valladolid, and 
 which the poet Gongora satirized by allusions to 
 Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and his ass. Three 
 years after the first publication, viz., in 1608, Cer-
 
 122 
 
 vantes issued a fifth edition of the first part, care- 
 fully revised and corrected, and this is the edition 
 most prized. The fame which he had achieved in 
 Spain may be estimated from the anecdote which he 
 himself relates, in one of the last writings which he 
 gave to the world, of the student who, hearing his 
 name by accident, while riding on the road from 
 Esquivias to Madrid, dismounted from his ass, and 
 was ready to worship the author of Quixote, whom 
 he never had seen before, but whom he apostrophized 
 enthusiastically as " the full of fame, the delightful 
 writer, the joy of the muses" (el famoso todo, el 
 escritor alegre, el regocijo de las musas). Also from 
 the other well authenticated anecdote of Philip III. 
 standing in a balcony of his palace at Madrid, and 
 observing a student reading a book on the banks of 
 Manzanares, laying down the book from time to time, 
 striking his forehead violently, and exhibiting other 
 extraordinary movements of frantic delight. " That 
 student," said the monarch, " is either mad or read- 
 ing Don Quixote." The courtiers ran to the spot, and 
 found that the student was actually reading the work. 
 So much for the ridiculously conceited ignorance of 
 Bilk. " Indeed it was little read!" The fact is that 
 the unhappy man mistakes some loose notion, which 
 he had picked up of Cervantes's poverty, for his not
 
 123 
 
 being read or appreciated. He was poor, because 
 the profits of publishing then were inconsiderable ; 
 in after ages the greater literary cultivation of Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany, caused the Quixote to 
 be more appreciated there than in Spain ; but never 
 was a writer so famous in his lifetime as Cervantes, 
 except his countryman, Lope de Vega. 
 
 OUR PROFOUND LINGUIST. 
 
 The immeasurable arrogance and impudence of 
 Bilk are well illustrated in the conclusion of the 
 same passage. "They [the Spaniards]" he says, 
 " never could see, and they cannot see at present,
 
 124 
 
 the beauties which so much enrapture foreigners. 
 This fact would form the subject of a curious essay." 
 Very curious, indeed ! It is curious that I have 
 travelled through nearly the entire Peninsula, and 
 have recorded the results of my experience in " Re- 
 velations of Spain," and have never met any Spaniard 
 with the slightest pretension to literary information 
 or judgment, who was not familiar and in raptures 
 with Don Quixote. It is equally true that four-fifths 
 of the people know nothing at all about the work, 
 because they are supinely ignorant, and cannot even 
 read. Bilk proceeds with his insufferable tone of 
 baseless pretension : " Probably at a future oppor- 
 tunity we may revert to it [the non-appreciation of 
 Don Quixote in Spain] . It is much too important to 
 be discussed at the fag-end of a light notice of a 
 light book :" — thus most gratuitously insulting Mr. 
 Kingston, who knows more of the Peninsula than 
 50,000 Bilks and impostors. 
 
 The Spanish proverb says that " air 
 
 "And airs we take at will." 
 Bilk of the latter takes his share, 
 
 While driving Bilkish quill. 
 Assumption's trick, when once found out, 
 
 Exposes the deceiver
 
 125 
 
 To have his " airs " expelled beneath 
 Exhausted cash-receiver ! 
 
 " OUR REPRESENTATIVE AT A CELEBRATED 
 SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS." 
 
 P. 32. " See Bilk tremendous tomahawk a hard, 
 
 And send him feather'dfrom his hand and 
 tarrdr 
 
 Corvos poiitas, et poetridas picas 1 
 
 Pers. Sat. Prolog.
 
 12G 
 
 P. 32. ' In six short lines his features off he 
 polishes." 
 
 A wiseacre discovered what he called a false quan- 
 tity in my "Ocean Flower," in the following line : 
 
 " Like fair Cytherea springing from the sea." 
 
 He inferred that I pronounced it thus : " Like fair 
 Cytherea." I did no such thing. The line runs, 
 "Like fair CJthereil," &c. This profound critic was 
 not aware of the existence of the anapaestic variety, 
 which sparingly and judiciously introduced, constitutes 
 such a beauty in English poetry — a beauty latterly 
 more generally recognised, now that we have got 
 over the frigid correctness of Queen Anne's poets. 
 In Shakspeare, who knew better, the instances are 
 very frequent. Thus, to cite only from famous pas- 
 sages : — in Hamlet's first speech, he uses the ana- 
 paest no fewer than fifteen times! 
 
 " Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun." — 
 " That can denote me truly : these indeed seem." — 
 " His canon 'gainst self-slaughte>. O God 1 O God." — 
 " Possess it merely. That It should come to this I" — 
 " Hype | rlon to | a satyr : | so loving | to my mo | ther." 
 
 [This line contains two anapoests, and two amphi- 
 brachs, together with the hypercatalectic syllable at 
 the end ; in other words, it contains fifteen syllables
 
 127 
 
 where it should only contain ten, yet is it strictly 
 musical ! I may remark, that it would not be at all 
 incorrect (except that it would be a sacrifice of 
 beauty, and worthy of a Grteculist coxcomb) to 
 pronounce the Hyperion classically, which would be 
 merely transposing the anapaest and iambus thus : 
 " Hjperi | on to."] 
 
 " By what it f«d on, and yet within a month — 
 " Let me not think on't. Frailty, thy name is woman !" 
 " My father's brother, but no more like my father," — 
 " With such dexterity to incestuous sheets." 
 
 And in Othello's celebrated speech, when proceeding 
 to the murder of Desdemona, he uses the anapaest 
 five times : — 
 
 " Thou cunningest pattern of excelling Nature, 
 
 " I know not where is that Promethean heat 
 
 " That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose," 
 
 [Here he uses it in three successive lines, and like- 
 wise in the next but one] 
 
 " It needs must wither : I'll smell it on the tree." — 
 " And love thee after : — one more, and this the last." 
 
 Not to multiply instances, in the finest passages of 
 Byron, Wordsworth, and Southey, the anapaestic 
 movement is frequently met. Wordsworth intro- 
 duces it even into the sonnet. Thomson, one of the
 
 128 
 
 most elegant of English poets, has an anapsest in ex- 
 actly the same place as "poor I," in a most musical 
 line near the commencement of his " Castle of 
 Indolence : " 
 
 " As Idleness fancied in her dreaming mood." 
 
 Milton uses the anapsest with great power in several 
 passages of the Paradise Lost ; in the following line, 
 he uses it twice : 
 
 " Some capital city, or less than if this frame." 
 
 It is also frequently used by Spenser — three times in 
 one stanza of his celebrated description of the cro- 
 codile : 
 
 " Unweeting of the perilous wandering ways, * * 
 " His mournful plight, is swallowed up unawares." 
 
 I do not know that it was necessary to say so much 
 about a matter with which every poetic ear is familiar. 
 But, as dunces can influence dunces like themselves, I 
 may just observe that every schoolboy knows the 
 penultimate in Cytherea to be long — a knowledge 
 which he may acquire without travelling out of the 
 first book of the /Eneid : 
 
 " Parce metu, Cytherea : manent immota tuorum." 
 
 Nay, in many editions it is written with a more close 
 adherence to the Greek original — Cythersea !
 
 129 
 
 He will not have even to travel out of Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses for the same knowledge : 
 
 " Exigit indicii memorem Cythereia poenam. — iv. 190. 
 " Hie sua complevit pro quo, Cytherea, laboras." — xv. 816. 
 
 And he will find it in the fourth ode of Horace. 
 
 " Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente Luna." 
 
 Yet this pompous expositor, "The Christians' 
 Monthly Magazine, and Church of England Review" 
 for March, 1846, is so grossly ignorant as to refer to 
 "Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and Euripides," for the 
 quantity of the word " Cytherea," which does not 
 occur at all in any one of those authors ! ! The crass 
 ignorance (Lord Brougham's phrase), which knows 
 not where it is to be found, refers at hap-hazard to a 
 number of Greek authors, in whose works, as it is of 
 Greek formation, he guesses that it is of course to be 
 met with. From beginning to end of the four au- 
 thors named it does not occur. Homer, in his Iliad, 
 invariably uses the name "Aphrodite," except once 
 in the fifth book, where the Goddess is wounded by 
 Hiomede, and is called " Cypris" (11. 330, 422, and 
 7(50) . Throughout the whole of the Iliad and Odys- 
 sey there is only one instance of the derivative " Cy- 
 therea" being used, and the form is there " Cythe- 
 rie:"—
 
 130 
 
 'iffxavow (piAorrjTos f'vtTTecpavov Kuflepenjs. 
 
 Odys. viii. 288. 
 
 In Pindar it does not occur at all. The name of 
 Venus occurs I think only twice in the few remains 
 which envious Time has left us of this magnificent 
 poet — once in the first Olympionic, where " Cypria" 
 is the name used, and once in the second Pythionic, 
 where she is called " Aphrodita." The appeal to 
 the Greek tragedians is equally blundering and igno- 
 rant. If this person or parson, who refers us to 
 " Euripides and Sophocles" for the quantity of the 
 word Cytherea, knew any thing at all of Greek 
 Tragedy, he would know that the female Deities, with 
 whom its masters chiefly deal, are not of the soft na- 
 ture of the Cyprian Goddess, but the Fates and Fu- 
 ries, Hera and Leto, Artemis and Pallas ; that in 
 the whole of Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris the 
 name of Venus does not once occur, and that in the 
 Choruses in the Iphigenia in Aulis, especially the 
 celebrated one in the second act — 
 
 Ma.Ka.pes, alt /xerpias 6eov, 
 
 of which love is the exclusive subject, where it does 
 frequently occur, the name KvdrjpEia is not once made 
 use of by the poet, but invariably Aphrodite and Cy- 
 pris (Kinrpic) to which names he adheres in his other
 
 131 
 
 productions. If this pretender knew anything of So- 
 phocles, he would know that Venus is rarely named 
 by that poet, and that when he does name her he 
 calls her, like Euripides, " Cypris," as in the Chorus 
 in her praise in the Trachinice, 
 
 Meya ri adevos a Kinrpts iK(pfperai, 
 
 and in one of the Choruses of the Antigone, 
 " Aphrodita," and in a Chorus of the (Edipns 
 Coloneus by the same name. The name of Venus 
 occurs in no other part of Sophocles, and " Cytherea" 
 does not occur at all either in Sophocles, Euripides, 
 or Pindar, or in the Iliad, or in that form in the 
 Odyssey, and yet this profound scholar refers me for 
 the quantity to " Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, and Eu- 
 ripides ! ! " I blush to add, that I find printed on 
 the cover of this periodical the words, in conspicuous 
 type— 
 
 " Edited by 
 CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND." 
 
 As to the Anapaestic pronunciation of the first 
 three syllables in the word " Cytherea," which I 
 have adopted in my " Ocean Flower," it is not only 
 correct, but it is the only one which is correct. The
 
 132 
 
 first syllable being short, the pronunciation is neces- 
 sarily Sitk-erea, and not Siffh-iherea. Hence, unless 
 the anapaest be introduced, there is a halt in the line, 
 and a very disagreeable halt, as I will prove by 
 printing the line according to this bad Graeculist's 
 notion, and according to my own. He would have it 
 thus : 
 
 "Like Cytherea springing from the sea." 
 
 I wrote the line — and like it very much — as follows : 
 " Like fair Cytherea springing from the sea." 
 
 To me it is manifest that, quantity indispensably 
 requiring the two first syllables to be pronounced 
 short, the word can be only effectively introduced in 
 an anapaest. I leave it to the candid reader whether 
 the following line in Lord Holland's exquisite Trans- 
 lations from Lope de Vega does not sound lame and 
 weak : 
 
 " From Cytherea's temple haste away," 
 
 and whether it would not be strengthened by com- 
 pleting the anapaest with the epithet from my own 
 line, "fair:" 
 
 " From fair Cytherea's temple haste away." 
 
 Shakspeare's ear taught him the beauty of the 
 anapaestic variety occasionally introduced into English
 
 133 
 
 heroic verse. A close study of the Greek tragedians 
 has in recent times made this practice systematic. 
 Euripides introduces the anapaest into his iambics in 
 about every third line, and Sophocles in every fifth. 
 
 P. 32 " The rhyme shows desperate lack of elevation" 
 
 To such sweeping imputations the answer is brief — 
 the same which Juno gives to Jupiter in the nine- 
 teenth Iliad — Yevar-oeets, " Mentiris !" 
 
 Ibid. "Bilk, by the gods, ev'n Bilk his conscience 
 boasts, 
 And swears he 's whimpering while his victim 
 roasts." 
 
 Venias nunc precibus lautum peccatum tuum ? 
 
 Hisce ego dictis ita tibi. . . . dabo, 
 
 Ut ne restiDguas, lachrymis si extillaveris ! 
 
 Terent. Phorm. Act v. sc. 8. 
 
 P. 34. " At first we thought some quack his hand had 
 tried, 
 But find the rascal 's duly qualified." 
 
 The first of a series of nine reviews, under the head 
 of "Medical Works" in the Atrabilarian, No. 937, 
 is as follows. I of course abstain from giving the
 
 134 
 
 name of the work or author reviewed : " If we did 
 not know that the examinations for medical honours 
 in our universities, and in corporations of apothe- 
 caries, surgeons, and physicians, were miserably de- 
 ficient, we could hardly have believed that a graduate 
 in medicine, and an M.A., could have put his name 
 to so much nonsense as is contained in this volume. 
 We have lately heard a great deal from the medical 
 profession, of the quackery and empiricism [most 
 distinguished balderdash, Bilk !] of illegal practi- 
 tioners ; but were we to appeal to our own library 
 table, we should find that nine-tenths of books like 
 the present are written by men legally qualified." 
 Neither with the gentlemen thus reviewed, nor with 
 any of those for whom I have incidentally taken up 
 the cudgels, entirely on public grounds, have I the 
 slightest connexion, nor indeed have I the slightest 
 knowledge of their persons. But I am not the less 
 zealous in my disinterested exposure of Humbug. 
 
 A coxcomb once vow'd 
 
 He was great as a chemist, 
 Though his sight in such matters 
 
 Was quite of the dimmest. 
 He blew up the coals, 
 
 And distill' d so, in short,
 
 13 :> 
 
 That he hlew up kimself- 
 'Twas a fitting retort ! 
 
 OUR FRIAR BACON. 
 
 P. 36. " Their yearning eyes perchance this line will 
 meet : 
 ' In subject and in manner obsolete I ' 
 
 Vide Atrabilarian, No. 939. 
 
 "'Poems by a Father and a Daughter.' Ob- 
 solete both in subject and manner.' ' 
 There is not another word.
 
 136 
 
 P. 37. "Be sure that heartlessness a monster 
 
 brands!" 
 
 Vvxa-v &tyv\ov rovrhv ix 0VTa - " This man hath a soulless 
 soul!" 
 
 Aristoph. Ran. 1334. 
 
 P. 38. " Yet, slimy as the Jinny tribe at times 
 
 Can Bilk be when a banquet-giver rhymes." 
 
 Qua tibi summa boni est ? Uncta vixisse patella. 
 
 Pers. Sat. iv. 17. 
 
 P. 39. " Re-writing all that 's new, thepraise he fobs. 
 Yet, oh ye gods, abuses ivhom he robs." 
 
 A curious instance of this unparalleled effrontery 
 is to be found in No. 938, review of Mr. King- 
 ston's " Lusitanian Sketches." " On the legendary 
 history of Guimaraens, especially of its far-famed 
 Cathedral, it would be easy to adduce much that 
 would interest the reader from the veracious chro- 
 nicles of Portugal. But, as our author has passed 
 them over, with one slight and inaccurate exception, 
 so will we." As I happen to know Portugal, where I 
 haveresided more than four years, and as Bilk happens 
 never to have set his foot in it, I take leave to say 
 that the "one slight and inaccurate exception" is 
 about the most monstrous piece of assumption and 
 impudence which I have ever witnessed. I need 
 scarcely add that the insinuation is grossly untrue.
 
 137 
 
 But not even in Portugal have I witnessed such in- 
 tense immorality as presides over the AtraMlarian 
 pen. As well might Mr. Kingston characterize as 
 inaccurate Bilk's computation of the number of 
 saucepans in his own house. I take leave to tell him 
 that Mr. Kingston knows Portugal, which the Atra- 
 Mlarian does not, as the following passage attests. 
 " The monks that remain are mostly unfrocked, and 
 some of them" so metamorphosed, that it would be 
 difficult to know them again," vide No. 938. The 
 monks were secularized to a man twelve years back ! 
 Bilk piques himself on his operatic notices. It is only 
 a few months since I saw an article of his the subject 
 of intense ridicule on the Continent, where, in his 
 accustomed pretensious way, affecting to know every- 
 thing, he made the most absurd hotch-potch of the 
 history of singers and dancers. 
 
 OUR IDEAL OF CHOREGRAPHIC ART.
 
 138 
 
 P. 40. " This annalist profound, of Humes own 
 kidney, 
 Confounds Sir Philip with Algernon Sidney!" 
 
 Vide No. 948, 2/ December, 1845. This is, I 
 think, nearly the only instance where I extend my 
 observations beyond the month of October. Bilk re- 
 presents Sir Philip's friend and correspondent, Hubert 
 Languet, as the friend and correspondent of Alger- 
 non. There is only a slight difference of two gene- 
 rations, a mistake which he once surpassed in con- 
 founding the name of the Spanish painter ZurbaroM 
 with that of Espartero's general Zurbawo — a little 
 slip of more than two centuries ! 
 
 OUR ARTIST-CRITIC.
 
 139 
 
 P. 42. "'Twas just discover' d — that the lines were 
 Pindar's .'" 
 Vide Notes to " English Bards and Scotch Re- 
 viewers." — Murray's complete Edition, 1844. 
 
 P. 43. " That few can wonder the dogmatic Scot 
 
 Should think the poet's fame dispensed by lot." 
 Adam Smith. 
 P. 47. " Nor * brilliant'' dub one book that steals to 
 fame, 
 " And burke the second with the author 's 
 name." 
 The dirtiest part of Criticism is its spiteful incon- 
 sistency. The unknown is lauded to the skies ; the 
 known — because he is a "brother chip" — is con- 
 signed to Tartarus : 
 
 Ilia prius creta, mox haec carbone notasti ! 
 
 Pebs. v. 108. 
 
 P. 57 " The Age of Iron and of Brass commix d." 
 Tertia post illas successit aenea proles, 
 Saevior ingeniis . . . . De duro est ultima ferro. 
 Protinus irrumpit venae pejoris in 3evum 
 Omne nefas : fugere pudor, verumque, fidesque; 
 In quorum subiere locum fraudesque, dolique : 
 Insidiaeque, et vis, et amor sceleratus habendi.* * 
 Vivitur ex rapto : non hospes ab hospite tutus, 
 Non socer a genero : fratrum quoque gratia rara est.
 
 1-40 
 
 Filius ante diem patrios inquirit in annos. 
 
 The railway mania to a hair ! 
 
 Ovid. Met. i. 
 
 P. 58. " The Poet now must conquer critic scorn, 
 
 And cold Indifference rouse with Roland's 
 
 horn !" 
 Cantabant surdo ; nudabunt pectora cfeco. 
 
 Propert. 1. iv. Eleg. 9. 
 P. 58. " In vain thou tear st the Bard's Promethean 
 heart, 
 Still he defies thee — vengeful as thou art" 
 
 rCjre 8e fxiv tKanpQe Kapr)fx4i/<v i]-rrap eneipov, 
 AepTpov (ffco Svvovres. — Hom. Odys. xi. 577. 
 
 " Vultures sitting on both sides gnawed his 
 (Tityos') liver, penetrating in to the 
 vitals.'" 
 Immortale jecur. — Virg. JEn. vi. 598. 
 Hier sitz ich, forme * * 
 Ein geschlecht, das mir gleich sey, 
 Zu leiden, zu weinen, 
 Zu geniessen und zu freuen sich, 
 Und dein nicht zu aohteu 
 Wie ich ! Goethe, Prometheus. 
 
 " Here sit I — and form a race that may be like me ; 
 to suffer — weep — enjoy — rejoice — and be heedless of 
 thee, as 1 1" 
 
 P. 59. "So Lisbon's Chelsea ' Bel etna' he calls." 
 
 See the Atrabilarian Review of Titmarsh's Voyage 
 from Cornhill to Grand Cairo.
 
 141 
 
 P. 6 1 . " Even Longfellow the stolid rogue discards, 
 Translating specimens of Europe' s bards." 
 
 For this richest of all possible treats, refer to 
 No. 936, Renew of Longfellow's translated speci- 
 mens of the Poets of Europe. " And yet, it is such 
 an absurdity that it might have served to test for 
 him the weakness of his principle * * Our island is 
 blotted out of the poetical map of Europe. * * The 
 minor is put for the major ; the poetry is made for 
 the translation, not the translation for the poetry." 
 Mr. Longfellow's sole object, be it remembered, was 
 to make his countrymen acquainted through the pro- 
 cess of translation with the poetry of the various 
 continental languages. Yet this mangy critic forgets, 
 or feigns to forget, that English is not susceptible 
 of translation to an American, even while he twice 
 writes the word. Could the force of absurdity 
 further go ? 
 
 /'. 77 . " 'Apiarar plebis ne potent qui* inops." 
 " For the benefit of the country gentlemen," I may 
 as well explain that apicrrav means to dine. 
 P. 86. " The crawling '* true — whate'er the form — 
 Wolf, mastiff, hound, or beagle!'''' 
 
 Wundern kann es mich nicht das menschen die hunde so 
 
 lieben ; 
 Denn ein erbarmlicher schuft ist, wie der mensch, so der 
 
 hund. Goethe {Epigram).
 
 142 
 
 " It cannot surprise me that men should love 
 dogs so much ; since dog, like man, is a pitiful 
 sneak." 
 
 P. 87. " Near Bistorts lake, where nought could 
 float, * * 
 The Clazomenian man and horse 
 For thee found entertainment !" 
 
 Ahdera, the city of Democritus, was founded by Her- 
 cules, and augmented by a Clazomenian colony. The 
 lake Biston in its neighbourhood was said to let 
 nothing float on its surface. The " Abderse mala 
 pascua " were of so inflammatory a character as to 
 make the horses which grazed on them rabid, and it 
 was a joke of Democritus's that the horses were as 
 mad as the people. 
 
 P. 101. " When Hydrophobia finds specific sure, 
 Hydropathy will be a certain cure." 
 
 I trust this persiflage will not be mistaken for a 
 serious condemnation of Hydropathy within proper 
 regulation and restraint. I believe there are many 
 diseases to which this system may be advantageously 
 applied, though in an equally numerous class of cases 
 it would be utterly pernicious. The Golden Mean is 
 as applicable to this as to any other circumstance in
 
 143 
 
 life, and may be safely recommended to Critics to 
 steer them clear of slaver and scurrility. 
 
 Aecipe supremo dictum mihi forsitan oro, 
 Quod tibi qui mittit non habet ipse, vale. 
 
 bilk's first peep at the biliad. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 William Stevens, Printer, Bell Yard, Temple Bar.

 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 date stamped below. 
 
 10M-11-50'2K5 470 remington rand inc. 20 
 
 m ™™.?& M »'
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 374 445 5 
 
 r 
 
 ^
 
 m 
 
 w