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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 M^mit)
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 IN FOUR CANTOS. 
 
 " I cannot'siispfct it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur 
 Ifora spleen, or mali-volence of intent in these sallies. I believe and know 
 them to be truly honest and sportive :— but consider, my dear lad, that fools 
 cacaol distinguisli this, — and that knaves will not." Tristram Shandy. 
 
 LONDON: 
 UMLLIAM H. AINSWORTH, 
 
 OLD BOND STREET. 
 
 1827.
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY S. AND R, BEKTLEY, DORSET STREET.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 The Morning Visit. . . .3 
 
 The DiNNT:n. • . . 61 
 
 The After-Dinner. . . .99 
 
 The Midnight Drive. . . 141 
 
 L'Envot. 
 
 
 190
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 Trova prima il Silenzio, e da mia parte 
 Gli di, che teco a quest' impresa venga. 
 Fornito questo, subito va in parte 
 Dove il suo seggio I'Amor tenga. 
 
 Orlando Furioso.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 ])EniCATION. 
 
 TO LORD H^LI/^^2nD. 
 
 My Lord, whom :xll that know yoii know 
 The best good-natured man below ; 
 With all of Fox's better part. 
 The vigorous head, the generous heart ; 
 Who touch the point so hard to hit 
 'Twixt sportive sense and venom'd \vit ; 
 
 B 2
 
 MAY PAIR. 
 
 How often J- in your evening chair, 
 I Ve seen your honest bosom bare ; 
 When, circled by the chosen set. 
 Forgetting man was made to fret ; 
 Glad as a schoolboy from his task, 
 You toss'd aside the day's dull mask ; 
 Cared not a doit for all the din 
 Of Whig and Tory, out or in ; 
 But as the glass its circuit ran. 
 Forgot the Statesman in the man : 
 
 Then, as the unsought memories rose, 
 Discnss'd the mighty in repose. 
 Or touch'd in smiles the stuff that passes 
 For wisdom in our world of asses ; 
 Gave in your own unrivall'd Avay 
 The fierce formality of G* * * ;
 
 TIIK MORNING VISIT. 
 
 Old Granville's triple-sentenced talk. 
 
 Like sHim-milk thicken'd up with chalk 
 
 (Xlike his Lordship's talk and tail 
 
 Descended to the nearest male.) 
 
 The nonsense Lord George gets by rote> 
 
 Fit preface to his annual vote. 
 
 Old Bags's glance of fear and wonder. 
 
 When out bursts Lfilt* l/yi^s tide of blunder ; 
 
 The conflict of the parts of speech. 
 
 When D ***** * rises—" to impeach :"* 
 
 That emblem of a worn-out rattle, 
 
 That stirs but never shares the battle. 
 
 * A great patriot and investigator of Admiralty atro- 
 cities ; but rather fallen in his vigour. lie has not of 
 late demanded the head of Lord Melville, more than about 
 once in every two years.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 The true prize-oxen speech and look. 
 
 That shows us to the life — the Duke -Jj ^i^J-c^y^^ 
 
 Or, giving all thy frolic swing, 
 
 Revived Joe Miller in Joe K * * *.t 
 
 The sap-dried brain put out to nurse, 
 
 The pun for better or for worse ; 
 
 The floundering tale, the desperate jol-e, 
 
 The economic plan of smoke. 
 
 t A most painstaking and praiseworthy jester. Nothing 
 comes amiss to him more than to the Ostrich. Taxes, 
 turnpike-bills. Chancery, civil-law, gas-light, and the circu- 
 lating medium, all go down alike. Once taken into his gas- 
 tric region, they all re-appear in the same shape, — a joke. 
 He is the legitimate successor of Lord Stanhope, who, with 
 a due sense of his merit, bequeathed to him his common- 
 place book. He wants nothing but that noble lord's me- 
 morable breeches to be " Stanhope himself again." 
 
 D. & W.
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 Till laughter half-convulsed the ring, 
 And, all but conscience, there sat K * * *. 
 
 Thus, admitted of thy crew, 
 Have I sat till midnight flew ; 
 Those delights while thou canst give. 
 With thee, H * * * * *d, will I live. 
 And with me among thy peers, 
 May'st thou live those thousand years I 
 
 Now, thou fattest, best of men. 
 Smile upon thy Poet's pen. 
 
 Reader, hear my mystery, — 
 No dabbler with the Pluses I ; — 
 No rambler o er their hackneyd hill. 
 With all my rent-roll in my quiU :
 
 8 MAV FAIR. 
 
 No brain -besiegjiig monthly bore, 
 No working member of the corps, 
 I lounge along an easy life. 
 Untroubled with a muse or wife ; 
 To all the wits I lightly yield 
 The glories of the paper field ; 
 Not one among the diners out — 
 I neither mimic, sing, nor spout.* 
 
 * Very good persons they are that do all those things, 
 and very much indebted should we be to them for their 
 troulile. In fact, the hours of theatres and things of that 
 sort are so preposterous, that we should never know any 
 thing of them except for those gentlemen. They give 
 us every thing good in those places, without compelling us 
 to go to them. By one gentleman in particular, whose 
 name has escaped my recollection, but who carries songs in
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 Without a sigh I leave old Wh\', 
 To tell his stories once a year. 
 
 « 
 
 See Bobus S>^h eternal planning, 
 To charm us second-hand with G^^^ji^g. 
 No flutterer in the crowd of Blues, 
 I neither kiss their lips nor shoes. 
 
 In short, to set the thing at rest, 
 I live — wherever I live best : 
 I rise at two, am seen at four. 
 Once cab it round the ring, no more, 
 Blerely to countenance the Park : 
 Just reach the Clarendon by dark. 
 
 his pocket, and is, to do him justice, very ready in their 
 perfoi-mance, I will acknowledge I have been considerably 
 amused. S. R.
 
 10 MAY I-AIR. 
 
 Content three times a week to dine 
 Wherever I approve the wine ; 
 Nor wish the giver in tlie Styx, 
 Although his vulgar hour were six ; 
 Nor give him my especial hate. 
 Although he should not feed off plate ; 
 Nor think the thing the more inhuman. 
 If chequered tastefully with women : 
 Not too muck wife, and no relations — 
 Those people never know their stations* 
 
 Dear to my soul art thou. May Fair ! 
 There Greatness breathes her native air ; 
 There Fashion in her glory sits. 
 Sole spot still unprofaned by Cits. 
 There all the mushroom, trading tribe 
 In vain would bully or would bribe :
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 11 
 
 The Rothscliilds, CouttseS;, Goldsmids, Barings, 
 In other spots must have their pairings ; 
 We fix your bounds, ye rich and silly, 
 Along the road by Piccadilly ; 
 Convenient spot for the approaches 
 Of Cousins who keep hackney-coaches ; 
 And duly, (if the Sunday 's fine,) 
 Come down to pudding and port wine ; 
 Or drop, like pigeons from a cage. 
 Six insides from the shilling stage. 
 
 Hail ! seat of her that earliest stole * 
 Just half my heart and all my soul ! 
 
 * The leader of every thing — party and partizans, pretty 
 women, — and also of Whigs, that are any thing but pretty.
 
 12 MAY FAIK. 
 
 Thou realm of all my J ^-^^^ ^ y'g glories. 
 Sovereign alike of Whigs and Tories ! 
 
 Hail now, for time the tenth, May Fair!* 
 I'hough many a stable scents thy air — 
 
 'Tis true, the Duchess of Devonshire was a leader, and 
 even a leader of Whigs. But then a WTiig might be a 
 gentleman; and Charles Fox was certainly worth a 
 woman's while.. But these days are over. 
 
 * AU the world knows, or should know, May Fair — 
 the nohh quarter of London. The writers of Novels 
 of Fashionable Life, a tribe who seem to have as 
 much knowledge of that life as an Esquimaux has of 
 pinks and pine-apples, class it under the " West End," 
 and describe it in their eloquent and natural style as 
 a region of palaces. Let such not be believed. The very 
 term '' \Vest End" detects the locale of those high-bred
 
 THE M0RN5NG VISIT. 
 
 Though many a butcher's glowing shambles 
 Startle the beauty's morning rambles— 
 Though to her horror many a Jew 
 Shows her past stockings " goot as new" — 
 Thought swung from many a dyer's pole, 
 Old blankets catch her eye's blue roll ; 
 And petticoats, in league with breeches. 
 Increase the atmospheric riches ; 
 A sort of upper story bower 
 To filter the eternal shower ; 
 And dropping down their dingy dew, 
 Veneer her skin with black and blue. 
 
 13 
 
 authors. The word is indigenous east of Temple Bar, 
 flowers less profusely along the Strand, dies off in the 
 aeighbfturhood of Charing Cross, and thenceforward be- 
 comes absolutely unknown.
 
 14 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Yet^ land of ponch romaine and plate, 
 Of dinners fix'd at half-past eight ; 
 Of morning lounge, of midnight rout. 
 Of debt and dun, of love and gout. 
 Of drowsy days, of brilliant nights. 
 Of dangerous eyes, of downright frights, 
 Of tables where old Sidney shines,* 
 Of ladies famous for their wines : 
 
 * A pleasant creature as livas ; hut now growing pursy 
 and polemical to a painful degree. I remember to have 
 been much amused with n version of a charge issued! 
 in, what he somewhere calls, " the vexatious bustle of a^ 
 new Bishop." The foundling v/as, by the natural fate of ai 
 notorious jeu-d'esprit culprit, left at his door — perhaps, 
 however, without any very exact enquiry into the re- 
 lationship.
 
 THK MORNING VISIT. 15 
 
 Grim Countesses that make their way — 
 Resistless charmers ! — by Tokay ; 
 
 My Reverend Brethrf.n, 
 " Dance not, sing not, fiddle not, flute not ; 
 Hunt not, fish not, course not, shoot not ; 
 Bow down in the dust to all men with big wigs. 
 Whip your children betimes, and take care of your 
 
 pigs; 
 Strip off all your trowsers ; you know the Law teacher^ 
 The priest was no priest till he put on his breeches. 
 So henceforth, I hone, you '11 eschew your loose Jiahit.9, 
 And further attend to your tithe of the rabbits, 
 Likewise of the cabbages, corn, and potatoes, — 
 The farmers are always conspiring to cheat us. 
 Now, go home to your wives, nip iniquity l>udding. 
 Feed well when you can, but avoid too much pud- 
 ding ;
 
 16 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Of bold on dit and plain sonp^on, 
 
 Known to all mankind but the one ; 
 
 Of tedious IM. P.'s, pursy peers, 
 
 Illustrious for their length of ears ; 
 
 Of Dide and Doctors, Bowstreets, Bards, 
 
 Crowds, Concerts, Chat, Champaigne, and Cards ; 
 
 Of all the Sjmrrs, Bp..d-.lls,— Bi*c^s, 
 
 The St^lw-pts, P-g-ts, G-w-rs, De-R-ses ; 
 
 Of faction, flirting, and quadriUe ; — 
 
 With all thy faults, I love thee still ! 
 
 Keep your surplices clean, also cure your own bacon : — 
 The man who does these things can't be much mis- 
 taken. 
 On Sundays besides, 'tis my special desire 
 That, invited or not, you aU dine with the Squire."
 
 THE MOUNING VISIT. 
 
 Andj while I have a love to spare. 
 Dear to my soul art thou. May Fair ! 
 
 Take fifty of your modern bards—   
 (Your porter 's sure to have their curds — 
 Alike to them the saint or sinner ; 
 The true Amphitryon gives the dinner) — 
 I '11 bet you fifty pounds a-piece 
 They plunge their pens at once in Greece ; 
 No matter though the subject roam 
 Not half of fifty miles from home ; 
 Some fact that lay before your eye : 
 Who last gave gallant B^ii;i«i^#it the lie : 
 Who, to the mirth of all beholders, 
 Last laid the switch across his shoulders ; 
 
 c 
 
 17
 
 18 WAY FAIR. 
 
 Who last rubb'd up thy fur, my H^*^«__ 
 In what Sir Francis calls " that room," 
 And show'd the world its great debater 
 In every sense a calculator. 
 Not one of them could pen a line 
 With " sweet simplicity" like mine. 
 
 The point of points is to astonish ; 
 
 Hyde Park and Hounslow turn Byronish ; 
 
 If deuce a word you understand. 
 
 The Bard's the surer of the grand. 
 
 Out burst the Cerebellum's labours, — 
 
 A gush of piStoJs^ "poniards, sabres, 
 
 Mail, muskets, timbrels, Turkish tunes, 
 
 Drums, trumpets, full and half-full moons ; 
 
 Mustachios, monks, pashas with three tails,- 
 
 You '11 have them all, in all the details ;
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 19 
 
 With iu>tes on Helicons, Apollos, 
 
 And so forth ; — all the rest that follows. 
 
 Then comes the Heroine, soul of feeling, 
 With passion, heavenly passion^ reeling ; 
 Her eye all flash, her cheek all glow. 
 Her soul on fire from top to toe ; 
 Though lost, still loved, a glorious wreck. 
 Her thoughts as naked as her neck ; 
 Faults, follies, frailties, crimes, combine. 
 They make her but the more divine. 
 She robs, stabs, poisons, — but her tear, 
 Delicious drop ! makes all things clear. 
 And take your life, or take your purse. 
 My lady 's not a hair the worse. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 MAY FAIR. 
 
 I pledge myself to keep the peace — 
 
 May Fair sliall be my only Greece. 
 
 One twinkle of young P-^g-^t's eyes. 
 
 Worth all the stars in all her skies ; 
 
 Ladies and Loves, your poet's pen 
 
 Shall charm you but with Christian men. 
 
 No goblins worse than Brooks' or White's. 
 
 I scorn to give you nightmare nights ; 
 
 I starve you on no Alpine tract ; 
 
 I plunge you down no cataract ; 
 
 (Grim forests all the skylight dimming — 
 
 Below, for life, the lady swimming ;) 
 
 No sudden lava round you flashes. 
 
 Leaving the world a beauty's ashes ; 
 
 No Rhenish eddy sucks you under. 
 
 To rise some fishy Dutchman's wonder;
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 You fill no wolf's luxurious paunch ; 
 You freeze beneath no avalanche ; 
 You see no storms in terror stalk ; 
 You hear no hills in high Dutch talk ; 
 When, ' by particular desire/ 
 Old Nick deserts his house of fire ; 
 And, ' that night only,' plays his parts, 
 "In his old Drury Lane, the Hartz ; 
 While new-spread clouds on all the hills 
 Serve for the Roscius' posting-bills. 
 
 Then every necromantic burgess 
 Secures a seat for the Walpurgis ; * 
 
 21 
 
 * The Walpurgis— the annual fete champetre of the 
 German witches. Goethe has had the fortune to find an
 
 22 MAY FAIR. 
 
 With cloth of gold are lined the ditches. 
 Reserved for sixteen-quaiter witches ; 
 The lower on the sulphur roll, 
 With^broad-clothmust their tails console. 
 Then every precipice's crupper 
 Sustains a regular-bred'supper. 
 There 's not the most ill-featured rock 
 But has its compliment of hock ; 
 There 's not an oak dares show a branch 
 Without a sirloin or a haunch ; 
 The peach hangs out among the brambles — 
 In short, it shames our May Fair scrambles ! 
 
 English translator who has actually done him more justice 
 than any or all of his translating hundreds or thousands 
 in ail the languages of Europe. For poetry and passion. 
 Lord Gower's Faust against the field .'
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. ' 
 
 (How oft, amid the dear five hundred, 
 
 I 've seen the struggling footman plundered- 
 
 Seen the orgeat by belles waylaid, 
 
 The war for life and limonade. 
 
 And not a sandwich left to tell 
 
 The fate that all its tribe befell.) 
 
 Then, while the moon above them halts. 
 
 Rings all the welkin with the waltz ; 
 
 And every hiU plays harp or horn 
 
 Till comes the hateful air of morn — 
 
 Its vulgar breath of pinks and roses 
 
 OtFensive to their sulphur noses. 
 
 Each from her pocket plucks her salts 
 
 Each on her maneged broomstick vaults. 
 
 Settles her petticoats for flight, 
 
 And vows " a most delightful night!' 
 
 23
 
 24 aiAY FAIR. 
 
 While, as he mounts his chaise of flame. 
 The master of the melodrame 
 Consigns it to the Earth below, 
 Aux soins tie Goethe, G-w-r & Co. 
 
 At length conies out the virgin Spring, 
 
 Still under Winter's matron wing ; 
 
 While storm and shower and sleet and dust, 
 
 Like Guardians, keep her still in trust. 
 
 Now all the Beau-monde wake together, 
 
 Like swallows at the change of weather ; 
 
 The belles, blue, deep-blue, white and brown/ 
 
 Make up their minds and cheeks for town : 
 
 * There is a delicate distinction between the Blue and 
 the Deep Blue. The former merely reads Reviews, &c.*; 
 the latter writes them. The former merely falls in love
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 25 
 
 The young, tlie old, the wed, the single. 
 Feel through their veins the annual tingle. 
 
 All Peers with hosts of second sons. 
 All Baronets sick of rustic duns ; 
 All M.P's. with unsettlei votes. 
 Determined to new-line their coats j 
 All dames who, tired of pigeon-cooing, 
 Long to know what the world is doing ; 
 
 with the works of poets, &c. ; the latter falls in love with 
 the poets, &c. in person. The former merely attends 
 Albemarle-street, and is content to see Mr. Brande burn 
 his own fingers, and singe his own minutely curled periwig. 
 The latter practises the experimental philosophy at home, 
 burns wig and fingers at her own expense, aiul blows up 
 her husband and children. S. R.
 
 26 MAY FAIK. 
 
 All ^vitlows weary of their sable — 
 All mothers of the marriageable. 
 That, keen as bees about their honey. 
 Hunt every bush for man and money ; 
 Spite of the wind's and rain's embargo, 
 Each coming with her native cargo. 
 First shown to the discerning few. 
 Like pictures at a private view ; 
 All vulgar bidders being ejected 
 Until the ' gems' have been selected : 
 But, if no high-born pencil mark it, 
 The sample then must play and park it ; 
 And have its texture and its tints. 
 Like Urling's lace and Howell's chintz,* 
 
 * Mr. Ukling, the proprietor of the finest lace, and finest 
 young gentlemen distributors of it, imaginable. The ele-
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 27 
 
 Displayed by the attendant matrons, 
 
 On Hymen's counter, the Spring patterns ; 
 
 The blonde, the bronze— so much per set— 
 
 Each ticketed a coronet, 
 
 A jointure, pin-money ; of course 
 
 A sum in case of a divorce — 
 
 (No age this of the flitch of bacon) — 
 
 Not five pounds under can be taken. 
 
 gance of their coiffure is really an honour to commerce, 
 and a charming evidence of tlie advanced civilization of 
 the 1 9th century and the counter. It is shop-keeping 
 urged to the highest point of the curling-iron capacity. 
 \V_rc-st-r protests, that though his nature is not prone 
 to envy, he hates to pass by the boudoir qf those charming' 
 young persons. And B-nk-s, who has seen every kind of 
 curl from the Iroquese to the Abyssinian, allows that he 
 has seen " nothing like it," and sighs over the vanity of 
 travel.
 
 28 ' MAY FAIR. 
 
 Sweet Spring ! let bards of thorn and thistle 
 
 Tell the tired world how blackbirds whistle ; 
 
 How rabbits at thy summons burrow — 
 
 How cackle hens^ how ploughmen furrow ; 
 
 How herd on herd of hunting squires 
 
 Play all the jackass, like their sires ; 
 
 How maidens, at their suit made wives, 
 
 Hepent it for their natural lives ; 
 
 How, like a rogue fresh 'scaped from jail. 
 
 Limps Nature, ragged, squalid, pale, 
 
 Till her full feed of sun and air 
 
 Plumps up the thin, and clothes the bare. 
 
 Such topics fit the attic-lodgers — 
 
 I know no more of fields than R-g-rs.* 
 
 * ". Diseur de bons mots, mauvais caractere, is the stern 
 sentence of Pascal, himself a deep diseur, and of course
 
 29 
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 Now Fashion's realm is all alive — • 
 Ah, tr^s heureux celui qiCy vive — 
 No more around the naked square 
 You send your desolated stare : 
 Lifeless, but where some half-pay sinner 
 Walks;, when all Christians go to dinner ; 
 
 acquainted with the criminality of the profession. — But it i s 
 not applicable in this instance. R-g-rs is of puns and points 
 the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. He says all the 
 good things. He has enjoyed this incomparable monopoly 
 longer than an East India charter. The facetiae are his by 
 a sort of Parnassian act of Parliament ;" and the only jeux- 
 d'esprit that have a chance of popidarity must, like the 
 " Widow Welch's pills," be issued under the popular name. 
 His restless brilliancy in the Sunday newspapers is un- 
 rivalled and unrivalable. J. M.
 
 30 MAY FAIR. 
 
 No more along five miles of street 
 Rings the lone echo of your feet ; 
 No more your half-reluctant knock 
 Sends round the square the sudden shock. 
 The startled porter in the hall, 
 Doubts whether 'tis a human call/, 
 And from the ^vindow, on his guard. 
 Inspects you ere he takes your card. 
 The beadle stops to reconnoitre — 
 Thinks that he knows your easy loiter ; 
 And marks you, as you tread the gravel. 
 An old offender come from travel. 
 The footman, from his area grate. 
 Swears that you have an eye to ]ilate — 
 Deems your high air but more suspicious. 
 And hurries to lock-up his dishes.
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 Ecstatic change ! the desert, den. 
 Is peopled ; all IMay Fair again. 
 There, by the pendule half-past three, 
 Rolls out the well-hioivu vis-a-vis. 
 None ever bore a lovelier freight 
 Than thee, my folly and my fate — 
 Thee, from whose eyes the slightest glance 
 Can make the very life-blood dance ; 
 Whose smile can all the spirit seize. 
 Do all but set the heatt at ease ! 
 There mutual stanhopes — stanhopes meet ; 
 There totter belles on Chinese feet ; 
 There beauty half her glory veils 
 In cabs, those gondolas on wheels ; 
 There shakes the pavement the barouche ; 
 There rides my lord en Scaratnoiiche ; 
 
 31
 
 32 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 There through the gay confusion dashes 
 The Lancer^ man of spurs and sashes ; 
 There footmen lounging by the score, 
 Stand, decorations of the door : 
 Your only dressers, costly beaux. 
 As well his Lordship's rental knows. 
 
 On sweeps your cab — you make your calls : 
 Sow cards, broad-cast, the seed of balls ; 
 For, if through life you 'd take your fling, 
 A pasteboard friendship's jjist the thing. 
 'Tis quick to make, 'tis cheap to keep. 
 Its loss will never biieak your sleep ; 
 It gives your friend no right to borrow^ — 
 If ruined, you cut him dead to-morrow. 
 You hear the Duchess is done up - 
 You cast about where next to sup :
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 You hear the Viscount 's dead, or worse- 
 Has run his mortgage length of purse ; 
 My Lady from my Lord revolted, — 
 In short, the whole concern has bolted ; 
 Yet you 're no party in the quarrel. 
 In which you 're sure to gain no laurel ; 
 And though you grieve the house is dish'd, 
 Where twice a-week you soup'd and fish'd ; 
 Yet, being neither aunt nor mother. 
 You drop your pasteboard with another. 
 
 Now to the Marchioness I drive : 
 I find her rising — just alive ; 
 Exhausted by the last night's rout — 
 The spirits in her lamp burnt out ; 
 
 D 
 
 33
 
 34 MAY PAIR. 
 
 Upon her visage I inspect 
 Three balls, two suppers '' most select." 
 The shaking of her hand of snow 
 Still seems to meditate the throw : 
 I read upon her dazzling forehead 
 The very last rouleau she borrow'd. 
 
 Ye weary washers of chemises ; 
 Ye warm artificers of cheeses ; 
 Ye ploughmen's ladies, who must walce. 
 Before the dawn, to brew and bake ; 
 Ye milkmaids, who your charms display, 
 Piled overhead with curds and whey ; 
 Ye who with cobwebs wage the war. 
 Kneel down and thank your lucky star ! 
 For press, or wash, or milk, or sweep, 
 Still, spite of fortune, you can sleep.
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 35 
 
 No rabble roar, no strife of poles, 
 Disturbs your iinsey-wolsey souls ; 
 No Brussels drapery gone to wreck. 
 Gives to the world your knee or neck. 
 The midnight o'er your blanket flies ; 
 The morn is up, you rub your eyes ; 
 Then off to milk, sweep, wash, and press, 
 Without a wrinkle more or less. 
 
 Around the fainting beauty glows 
 The boudoir silk, couleur de rose ; 
 For, ladies' faces freshly made 
 By instinct cultivate the shade. 
 All belles of ton, 'twixt you and I, 
 Of noonday suns are somewhat shy— 
 
 D 2
 
 36 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Perhaps in pity to mankind. 
 Lest too much radiance strike you blind ; 
 Perhaps because two suns together 
 IMight make it rather sultry weather ; 
 Perhaps because their brighter face . 
 Might show Apollo's in disgrace ; 
 Perhaps because the last night's rouge 
 Has left its blessing in gambouge. 
 
 In pour the crowd, a lovely mob. 
 Gay plunderers, careless whom they rob ; 
 There L-mb-t's eyes of liquid black 
 Make on the soul a fierce attack ; 
 There the last fragment of your freedom 
 
 ftMu A<l7»vls prize to thy twin sapphires, N m ; 
 
 There the last scruple of your heart 
 Yields^to thy white arm, B-u D-s-r-t ;
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 37 
 
 There roams the eloquent and crazy. 
 
 Who sets her cap at Est-rh-zy : 
 
 There shCj whose conquering pair of blushes 
 
 Upset the Lord of all the Russias ; 
 
 There she who, frigid' beloAV 7.Qro,7J]^ J^rtiji^yh*' 
 
 Yet leads in chains our modern Hero ; 
 
 There she — La Grande de I'Emhjfisade, 
 
 Soft as the pastures, of Belgrade ; /^J^ 
 
 There she, who, two feet nigher heaven. 
 
 Gives heirs and happiness to L^v/n ; 
 
 * I rather think that thing's off a good deal. The 
 little Hungarian is cunning; and, since the decline oiour 
 noble relations, is much more philosophical than he wa 
 a week before. Could he have expected any state secrets? 
 The subject is curious, and I shall set it down in my 
 tablets. L- S.
 
 33 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 ^% 
 
 And she whose coy e^piegle look 
 Wrought miracles — inspired the Duke ; 
 When writing billet-doux with gas, 
 He " told his love" on window-glass. 
 Who the dear modesty can blame 
 That shoAv'd his fondness by his JIame, — 
 Kept all his blushes hid in night, 
 » Yet gave his secret soul to light, 
 Till every mother thought het- Emma 
 Had brought him to the true dilemma ; 
 And, as the R-g-rs pours the strain, 
 All read their pleasure in his pane ? 
 
 Let moralists say what they will. 
 
 They '11 never make the world stand still. 
 
 If eyes are made the soul to pierce. 
 
 You '11 have them at their carte and tierce
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 If Nature whispers them, " Be killing," 
 Manslaughter is but law-fulfilling. 
 Thus circled, by the deadliest belles, 
 I never try to break their spells. 
 By Cupid's shots eternal mangled. 
 Am thirty times a month entangled ; 
 And though by mamma's under ban, 
 That blacksheep " not a marrying man," 
 The first bright eye that says " Deliver !' 
 Has all the heart I have to give her. 
 
 Woe to the gay celibataire, 
 
 At whom are levelled Gr-v-lle's pair ! 
 
 No more in single blessedness 
 
 He wines it at the Knightsbridge mess ; 
 
 No more his tumbril stops the way 
 
 Where Fashion throngs to see Perlet ; 
 
 :i9
 
 40 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 He droops, neglects his tailor, dreams ; 
 Talks pastoral, writes verse by reams ; 
 Looks low in chintuft and moustache : 
 Thinks cards a bore, and hazard rash • 
 Cuts all his well-dressed friends, grows mulish- 
 In fact, plays to the life the foolish. 
 
 You '11 see the hero on his rounds. 
 
 Although the dinner-bugle sounds ; 
 
 Developing with double spine 
 
 The minnows of the Serpentine 
 
 And sullen, as if Earth forgot him. 
 
 Bespeaking lodgings at the bottom. 
 
 At length (for water spoils the figure) 
 
 He takes a fancy to the trigger, 
 
 Sits gravely down to make his will. 
 
 Feels, when 'tis done, he 's living still ;
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 41 
 
 Thiiiks marriage easier of digestion — • 
 Dresses, drives out, and pops the question ! 
 
 Round goes the chat, — the R-g-rs tells, 
 
 " No music like a ring of Belles ;" 
 
 Deliciously the measure varies — 
 
 Who loves, who hates, who fights, who marries- 
 
 — " Heavens ! how the Duchess lost at cards ! 
 
 The money was of course her ward's." 
 
 " How the dear Viscount ivill be miss'd ! 
 
 But yesterday the hands were kiss'd ; 
 
 Some horrid place, Fate knows how far off, 
 
 Is always sure to take our star off : 
 
 The man who dances a merveille 
 
 Is certain to be first to sail." 
 
 — " Delightful opera, that La Gazza, 
 
 With Ayton playing the Ragazza>
 
 i- 
 
 42 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Fine figure as she steals the spoons 
 / Tgjthat most exquisite of tunes." 
 < «^ -y^' But Toso — ah, superbe sensation !* 
 /'J That prima donna importation" — 
 
 " Too much at once — youth. Voice, and beauty ; 
 
 True Roman, — ^ pupil of Velluti.' " 
 
 *' What think you. Colonel, of her eye ?" 
 
 " Oh, magnifique ! — quite look and die. 
 
 I envy from my soul her sposo ! 
 
 Ah ' Idol del mio core/ Toso ! 
 
 " She '11 be a first rate hit for Ebers." 
 
 * 
 
 — " So, M-^"^re has melodramed the Ghebers ; 
 
 * A remarkably fine creature ; a noble figure, and one of 
 the most promising voices that has caught the public ear 
 for a long time. She is a prodigious favourite. W. 
 
 i" The present proprietor of the King's Theatre, a very
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 43 
 
 The scenery all of Amh — rst's sketching — 
 The various forms of fever-catching ; 
 The British style of marsh-encamping ; 
 The Indian style of army-swamping ; — 
 In short, you have before you set, 
 Au vif, a whole Rangoon Gazette." 
 
 " They say, the Bard, delicious treble, ^^ ^^^^-6. 
 You 've heard, of course, his chansons rebelled, 
 Scorning to mix his pretty verses 
 (As odd as harlequins in hearses) 
 
 active, intelligent, and attentive administrator of that 
 usually perplexed government. lie has infinitely improved 
 the perfoi-mances, and, of course, the popidarity of th'? 
 Italian Opera. H. S.
 
 44 MAY FAIR. 
 
 With that infinitude of prosing-. 
 
 That sets our whole seven senses dozing. 
 
 In all the regicide reviews ; 
 
 Has put new stockings on his muse ! 
 
 Thinks that the sight of loaves and fishes 
 
 Would decorate a poet's dishes ; 
 
 In sundry paragraphs and rhymes 
 
 Is feeling out his way % Times : 
 
 Nay, R-g-rs swears, has joined the Tories, 
 
 And sighs, — Oh tempora ! Oh mores! * 
 
 " So, W,t;^<:^*c**M-/Snd his wife have parted,' 
 " Yes, both the lovers broken-hearted." 
 
 * Eheu quo fugit. — 
 Qui spirabat amores 
 Et me sevpuerat milii.
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 45 
 
 " Fi done, my Lord — affairs of state," 
 " Ah, qiioui, the labours of debate. 
 When love had given the reins to reason,' 
 " A mere arrangement for the season : 
 Her Father Jesuit, in a panic, 
 Thought the dear M-rq-s puritanic ; 
 Felt certain controversial qualms, 
 Stirr'd by his style of singing psalms ; 
 And, full of faith in salt and water, 
 Whisk'd over seas his failing daughter," 
 
 " You've heard the crash ;— last night's break- 
 down?" 
 " Yes ; that the Colonel 's somewhat blown." 
 " Blown up j^the minor Lord was bubbled." 
 "Ten thousand?"— "Ay, twice that twice 
 doubled.
 
 40 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 " The Captain 's done. — My Lord's attorney 
 Has hired one Scarlet and one Gurney." 
 
 " The Dowager's ?"— " The Sunday party, 
 
 A Waltz, a Concert, and Ecarte ; 
 
 It takes — the whole live world are there : 
 
 I never get beyond the stair." 
 
 " Traitre, you volunteer the station." 
 
 " Why, 'tis convenient for flirtation : 
 
 There, like an angler on his weir, 
 
 One chooses from the ascending fair ; 
 
 Or, like the sportsman, pulls the string 
 
 And nets the covey in its spring. 
 
 There, as the crowd sets strongly in, 
 
 Scarce thinking suicide a sin — 
 
 (The rooms your true Calcutta heat, 
 
 Thermometer at ninety-eight) —
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 47 
 
 When stript of silk, and ript of lace. 
 Crushes your ribs some battling Grace ; 
 Or, hung upon your back, some nymph 
 Half melts into her native lymj)h ; — 
 When, not to your expiring prayer 
 Your dearest friend would lend her chair. 
 Not wishing to depart this life, 
 I take some widow, maid, or wife. 
 And, perch'd among the staircase blooms, 
 Eschew the distant war of plumes ; 
 Or, nestling in the boudoir window. 
 Watch coolly what the world within do." 
 " And try on all the self-same glances }" 
 " Why, that's selon les circonstances" 
 " If maid?"—" I look the sentimental !" 
 " First having ascertained her rental :"
 
 4U MAY PAIR. 
 
 ^' Show her the moonlight through tlie trees ; 
 Let on her cheek the garden breeze'; 
 Talk Petrarch, troubadours, guitars. 
 Crusaders, Shakspeare, streams, and stars." 
 " If widow ?"— " Satirize her set— 
 Her secret soul will pay the debt." 
 " If wife."— "Fill both her ears with scandal : 
 Her husband furnishing the handle !" 
 
 " The Duk« not married !" — " Nor will ever ; — j 
 He thinks the ladies much too clever !" 
 
 " 'Tis pity — handsome, showy, young, 
 And, 'pon my life, he has a tongue ! 
 His Thursday evenings so select — 
 I '11 live to see him yet henpeck'd." 
 No Duke must drone it in our hive." 
 " The girl 's not born that he will wive. 
 
 1
 
 THE MORNING VIPIT. 49 
 
 _ L — -, and ll^lU, Cq C a C 
 
 Tliough lumdreds, M- 
 
 Strive his philosophy to unlock ; 
 
 Though all the speculating mothers^, 
 
 Have put themselves in various pothers, 
 
 And, spite of his Spitzbergen looks, 
 
 Still set their hearts on little Dukes ; 
 
 Cool as his favourite limonade, 
 
 He smiles on mother and on maid — 
 
 A frozen Anti-Benedict !" 
 
 " My word upon it, he'll be trick'd ; — 
 
 Nay, if / thought it worth my Avhile— " 
 
 " You'd make him any thing but smile. 
 
 Ay — torture, teaze, and tantalize ; 
 
 I know the power of those bright eyes ; 
 
 Round all his haughty spirit twine. 
 
 And make his chains — as charmed as mine !"
 
 50 MAY FAIR. 
 
 " Ah wretch ! you know I hate this talkj 
 
 So very a la moonlight walk." 
 
 " If thoughts as fond as ever vow'd," — 
 
 " My Lord, pray recollect the crowd : 
 
 Truth is, those noble waifs and strays 
 
 Are open in a thousand ways : 
 
 Let but the one but smile her wishes. 
 
 All 's over with the C — nd-t- sh's !" 
 
 •M 
 
 " What ! not one look — one last, kind word ?" 
 " Oh, hang it ! you grow quite absurd ; 
 And that old monster's eye insidious, — 
 To-day particularly hideous ! — 
 Seems hearing every word you say ; 
 Begone ! the duchess gives a play ; — 
 La Porte, St. Ange, and all the rest . — 
 ' Those things are growing quite a pest !"
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 
 
 " There may I venture to encroach?" 
 " You '11 do to hand us from our coach :" 
 " Till then, farewell ! (there goes my Juliet) 
 Farewell ! (I '11 make you play the fool yet./' 
 
 •' The Colonel taken ^o the Quakers ?" 
 
 V 
 " Yes, — housed in his paternal acres ; 
 
 The club turned off— the hounds, the stud, 
 
 Et cetera — all the bits of blood I 
 
 The Plough unhorsed, the Star put out. 
 
 All Cheltenham to the right about ! 
 
 No more delighting in fox-slaughter, 
 
 His Vin de Comete changed for water ; 
 
 His field artillery, stock and rammer, 
 
 Knock'd up by Christie's knock-down hammer ! 
 
 e2 
 
 51
 
 52 
 
 MAY FAIR, 
 
 His table captains all dismist — 
 Grand clearance of his civil-list ; 
 No word escapes his lips converted. 
 Without an oh ! or ah ! inserted ; 
 Of G-rn-y, the enraptured scholar, 
 He strips his coat of cuff and collar ; 
 Shaves off his grooms the worldly locks, 
 Unpleasing to his Saint, George Fox ; 
 Clothes all their sinful souls in drab — 
 The household of Aminidab ; 
 Cuts up his mutton with a sigh. 
 And lives by leave of Sister Fry." 
 
 " A message ! — Ay the old shake-hands. 
 The game of questions and commands ; 
 A drive to take a morning Avhet, 
 Then dejeuner a lafourchettc.''
 
 THE MORNING VISIT. 53 
 
 " No, faith ! a genuine thing— they fought : 
 I rode just now to see the spot. 
 The whole in form — Sir Bob, a surgeon ; 
 Sir R-n-ld, and a—' Major Sturgeon !' 
 Six rounds ! six paces — action hot !" 
 " I'll eat whichever one was shot." 
 " The battle early ; quite a by-way ;" 
 " Yes : noon, upon the Hounslow highway." 
 " 'Tis true — the thing was rather known." 
 " Right! public men are not their own : 
 And, whether give or take their wounds, 
 Should war alone on public grounds." 
 '• Spring-Soup had caught" — Or, got a hint — 
 That patriot who but lives in print ; — 
 That meteor of the Irish Whigs, — 
 That gentleman, Avho deals in figs ;
 
 54 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Who, now that N-w-p-rt gets the quinsy. 
 With " Emerald Isle," and so forth, dins ye ; 
 Gives you at second-hand the tropes 
 Of her incarcerated hopes, 
 And looks che look, and groans the groan. 
 Of her much-injured, long-hang'd Tone ! 
 J, / ^7 " Spring-Soup, the best man at a rub, — " 
 " Established runner of the club, — ' 
 " Flew off full speed to bring the bows ; — " 
 " The rest the world of laughers knows." 
 
 Long may he live, and they to tell it, 
 Unsliced by crab-stick, steel, or pellet ! 
 Long may their heirs desire their shoes ! 
 Long may they scribble their reviews ! 
 Long may their brains and boxes rattle ! 
 Long may they wage the bloodless battle \
 
 THE MORNING VJSIT. 55 
 
 Sooner may Hymen raise a furrow 
 
 Beneath thy ringlets, EU-n ; 
 
 Or scorn to bow the knee 
 
 To thee, illustrious lord in fee ; 
 
 Or flesh disguise the charger's bones. 
 
 That stalks thee o'er the London stones. — 
 
 Sooner the little M-rch— n-ess 
 
 Be more adored, be talk'd of less ; 
 
 Or watch her truant Lord's demarches, 
 
 Unaided by the Dean of Auches — 
 
 Or C lock her Opera -box, 
 
 On hearing my Lord Marshal's knocks ; 
 While, conscious that his reign is done, 
 Sulks through the evening P-lm-rst-n. — 
 Sooner old T-m])l- look the Duke, 
 Or bookworm Spencer read a book ;
 
 56 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Clerk St-n-h-ps learn his sliirt to button ; 
 B-df-rd talk any thing but mutton. 
 Sooner may shave Northumbria's Grace, 
 
 Than living man twit R 's face ; 
 
 Sooner write poelry, St^w4; R-se, 
 Than living man pull Sweepum's nose. 
 
 " A marriage ?" — Yes, the fact 's undoubted. 
 What, if my Lady Duchess pouted ?- 
 So lovely, young, an angel voice ! 
 By Jove, I envy him his choice ! 
 What care 1 for a high-born fright ? 
 No right like Beauty's sovereign right ! 
 His whole long line not iit to wait on 
 The half of half your charms, my P-t-n. 
 Give me the lovely heraldries 
 Of ruby lips and sunny eyes ;
 
 TlIK MORNING VISIT. 
 
 No nobler shield than Nature's charms- 
 No arms, than two such snowy arms. 
 What care I where the blushing rose. 
 That wraps my sense in sweetness, grows ? 
 What care I where the dark eye's blaze 
 That lights my soul, first shot its rays ? 
 What care I in what sullen mine 
 BIy diamond first began to shine ? — 
 Once master of her noble heart, 
 Ao-ainst the world I 'd take her part ; 
 And in a cot, or on a throne, 
 I 'd own her — and be proud to own. 
 
 r>7 
 
 END OP CANTO 1.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 Se Amante ancor tu sei 
 Come trovar si poco 
 Sai negli sguardi miei 
 Quel ch'io non posso flir ! 
 lo, che nel tuo bel foco 
 Sempre fedei m' accendo, 
 Mille segreti intendo, 
 Cara, da un tuo sospir. 
 
 _ Attilio Regolo. — Metast.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO LADY J^^^Y. 
 
 When Venus gave your Ladyship 
 The red reversion of her lip, 
 And said, departing for the skies, 
 " Be magic in its smiles and siglis ;" 
 And to your eye the glances lent. 
 Blue as her bluest element ;
 
 62 MAY FAIR. 
 
 And round you breathed the Je ne scat quoi, 
 That wins, yet keeps us all in awe ; — 
 I can't but think 'twas her intention. 
 In giving you this Venus-pension — 
 This ribbon of the Venus-garter, 
 To renovate sweet woman's charter — 
 Teach her to twist us like her glove. 
 Nay, though our wife, be still our love. 
 
 But R-g-rs says, the rub of rubs. 
 
 Is Queen of Hearts turned Queen of Clubs ? 
 
 Beau Sexe, from soft fifteen to fifty — 
 
 No matter with what tongues Heaven gift ve— 
 
 Keep to your own delightful tricks, 
 
 And leave us port and politics.
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 When Beauty mounts the party-frown, 
 I write it — " conscious going down." 
 She whispers how the question goes ; 
 My tablets bear it — " Ruby nose." 
 She sports a sarcasm on the King: 
 My tablets — " Cupid's on the wing." 
 
 'Tis Nature takes the loyal part ;— 
 
 No woman ere was Whig at heart. 
 
 There never moved on earth a beauty. 
 
 But would have mankind kiss her shoe-tie. 
 
 The hideous may die Democrate — 
 
 The pretty rebel 's sure to rat : 
 
 If single, the sweet Radical 
 
 Would fling her fetter on us all ; 
 
 If wedded, ask the lady's spouse. 
 
 Who hati the right hand of the house. 
 
 63
 
 64 MAY FAIR. 
 
 In soul, all are, or would be. Queens, — 
 You see I 've peep'd behind the scenes.) 
 
 Even thou, by whose provoking tongue 
 Those dreary Whigs have lived so long ; 
 Thy high-born look, thy polish'd wit. 
 Proclaim thee all, all hypocrite. 
 'J' hat wit, which from thy stately lip 
 Comes like a shaft with golden tip ; 
 That look, which, spite of all thy art, 
 Proclaims thee despot of the heart ; — 
 Nay, not a passing glance of thine 
 But flashes with the " Right Divine.'' 
 
 " Oh ! woman, in our hours of ease," 
 Who canst do any thing — but tease ;
 
 THE DINNER. 6/ 
 
 Make winter summer, and what not. 
 You'll find it all set down in Scott ; 
 Canst charm alike the prince and peasant — 
 Nay, almost make the country pleasant ; 
 Though, there to wind me up to bliss. 
 Would take a most uncommon Miss. 
 
 Preserve me ! from the shapes that stalk 
 In memory round a village walk ; 
 The Doctor, with his last year's news. 
 Tithes, turnpikes, politics, and pews ; 
 Death's deputy, the jEsculapius, 
 Telling who last has got his capias, 
 The solemn Chairman of the Sessions, 
 Doling out knaves' and fools' confessions ; 
 
 p 
 
 r.
 
 66 ' MAY FAIR. 
 
 And, bitterest pill of all the three, 
 That bore of bores, the ex-JM.P. 
 
 A Cato in his climacteric. 
 Making my very soul hysteric ; 
 Your genuine Reminiscent, full 
 Of all that dullest makes the dull ; 
 The stuff that time in pity stifles, — 
 The trifles — nay, the shade of trifles ; 
 The stalest of the stalest stories. 
 Of long forgotten Whigs and Tories ; 
 Embalming in his sexton-prose 
 The colour of their wigs and clothes ; 
 The tedious twaddle of a brain. 
 Flat as his own homebrew'd champagne.
 
 THE DINNER. 67 
 
 Oh ! woman ! — but " of this too much," 
 
 May I be doom'd to hear High Dutch — 
 
 Or sit beside a Portuguese, 
 
 When summer sets her at her ease ; 
 
 Or dine in presence of a wit. 
 
 In tortures till he makes a hit ; 
 
 Or meet the T-mpl-s, sons or brothers — 
 
 Or see my flirt look soft on others — 
 
 Or listen to a H-me oration — 
 
 Or travel Sec de la legation. 
 
 Le Diplomat, ecstatic fate 
 Of the fifth cousins of the great : 
 Blest with a pound a-day for life, 
 To lacquey Monsieur UEnvoj/'s wife — 
 P 2
 
 68 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Teach French and figures to the daughters. 
 See that they swallow their Spa-waters ; 
 Pref)ared to answer every question 
 Touching your " sweet eleves" digestion ; 
 Take passport-pictures of the mob. 
 Who ramble to be robb'd, or rob ; 
 The length of chin, the tint of nose. 
 The holes in breeches, and in hose. 
 Scribble the rout and dinner packs. 
 Lock up the royal pounce and wax ; 
 Echo his Excellency's jest. 
 Mend your own stockings like the rest ; 
 Dine how and where il plait aux ciaiT, 
 Battle his mongrel household crew ; 
 Cook up his cotelette at a spirt,, 
 Air mi Lor's newspaper and shirt ,
 
 THE DINNER. Hd 
 
 Feel laugh'd at by the luckier fribbles. 
 Till life between your fingers dribbles ; 
 Condemn'd, till its last sands are roll'd, 
 To fold and frank, and frank and fold ; 
 And envying every wretch in fetters. 
 Die as you've lived — a man of letters* 
 
 * In my travels through the greater part of the habi- 
 table globe, Turkey, W^'iltshire, Venice, and the Essex- 
 fens, the Ukraine, and WTiitechapel, I have never met 
 with any thing, I pledge myself, as a man of honour, 
 as an Irishman, as a Baron of England, and member 
 of Brooks's, at once so useless, impudent, and misei-able, 
 as the whole minor diplomacy — the whole race of the 
 attaches of this great and unfoi-tunate country on the 
 Continent. Playing the guitar, patching their own coats, 
 terrifying the ears of foreigners of all descriptions 
 with the guiltiest perversion of grammar, are fair enough
 
 70 MAY PAIR. 
 
 May I be doom'd to all : or worse, 
 Meet GrOsv^nor without length of purse ; 
 Without a peerage cross tliy way, 
 Patrician of patricians — Gr4y.t 
 
 employments for the intellects of nine-tenths of them. 
 But the three hundred and sixty-five pounds British, 
 so expended annually, is one of the monstrous abuses 
 of a state of things, in all its parts equally unnatural, 
 improvident, unprincipled, and rushing to its speedy 
 national ruin. I have been predicting the catastrophe 
 every day these forty years. It must come ! — It is coming ! 
 It has come ! Tout est perdu. Take my word for it, so 
 Vivent les Vauriens. (D n.) 
 
 * The gi-eatest brick-maker in the known world, and 
 worth — what, I don't presume to say ; probably, twice as 
 much even as Prince Leopold has saved out of his 
 Annuity ! 
 
 f The fact notorious. Every one that knows rae, knows
 
 THE BlNNEn. 71 
 
 Or take on winter days thy hand, 
 Grim king of kelp, coals, salt, and sand. 
 Or hear stern G-nv4lle from his chair,* 
 Lash the low time-servers that were ; 
 
 that I am not in the habit of retailing dinner anec- 
 dotes. Though, upon my life, these are not likely to 
 
 have my Lord G for their hero. But the fact is, that 
 
 no man in St. James's-street is more serviceable to save 
 one's expenditure on ices in the dog-days j his very 
 look is a Refrigerator. But from November to May — 
 Heavens! — The other day I met little M — ^1 Ang-lo, 
 with his hand stuffed into his mouth : " Studying a new 
 ^tew ?" said I. — " Confound Gr-y," was the answer, 
 " I just shook him by those icicles of his ; and may I 
 never max lobster sallad again, but I am frostnipped 
 for life."— W. 
 
 * I protest against this. If my lord did keep his place.
 
 72 MAY FAIR. 
 
 The slaves, that when their master's bank 
 Was cashless, with him feebly sank. 
 Unlike the generous friend of Pitt, 
 Who scorn'd his ancient Bench to quit, 
 Through patriot, pure distrust of Fox ; 
 Still grasp'd the nation's moneybox, 
 Stared vulgar scoffers in the face. 
 And kept his principles — and place. 
 
 what was it but common gratitude, for his place kept him ? 
 If he took office under Fox, what can be more proper 
 than to be friends with all sorts of men ? If he found 
 himself the inspector of his own office, who could know 
 more of his conduct than himself? Every man is the best 
 judge of his own actions. I look upon him as a model 
 for statesmen, who deserve to be remembered by their 
 families. N.
 
 THE DINNER. 73 
 
 May I be shot ! nay sent to singe a 
 Conscience and cuticle in India ; 
 Dispute Sir James's dinner dictum, 
 To die of Scotch and snuiF the victim ; 
 Turn from Mt. Ch-rl-s's rosiest oscolo ; 
 Sit out a mortal hour of F-sc-lo^ 
 (With all the prosing post and ante 
 That prosers ever prosed of Dante) 
 Nay, be thy rival, Signor Torri - 
 Ere make a woman sad or sorry ! 
 
 What ! she, whom all my summer days 
 I 've worshipp'd with all sorts of lays ; 
 She, on whose smiles my boyhood hung ! 
 Whose glance alone now tunes my tongue ; 
 Stiflg her ! I could not if I dared. 
 The thought would all unbard the Bard.
 
 74 WAY FAIR. 
 
 The poison on her soul distil ! 
 My hand at once would lose its skill ; 
 My Cupid moult his purple wing, 
 My lute instinctive break the string ; 
 And giving to the winds its moan, 
 Lament its noblest spirit gone. 
 
 No ! — Let the tribe who daily dabble 
 In all the stuff call'd — fashionable.* 
 
 * Peevish ! Peevish !^ Peevish ! I join in no general 
 charge against any man or set of men. The works are 
 admirable in every sense of the word. Admirable for 
 fancy ; for the writers never can have seen what they des- 
 cribe. Admirable for research ; for they have evidently 
 pressed every page of M. Ude and his co-adjutors in their 
 own; and admirable for the perfect originality of their
 
 THE DINNER. /O 
 
 Knowing as much about the matter 
 As their own shoemaker and hatter ; 
 To raise the laugh of tradesmen's wives. 
 Discuss, Heaven help us ! noble lives — 
 No ! trust inij page, a woman's tear 
 Shall never drop in anguish hert? : 
 
 conce]>tions of good society, for they have absolutely created 
 a new species of its existence. I understand, from my pub- 
 lisher, that those works are growing into rapid request iti 
 Australia ; that the Don Cossacks take a vast number ; 
 and that in the Illinois and Otaheite, they are rapidly pro- 
 moting cookery and civilization. In my next edition of 
 my Poems, I intend to make honourable mention of what 
 I look on, as, upon the honour of a legitimate, popular, 
 and immortal poet, a very great accession to the culinary 
 Cause, in our day of steam ranges and science at sixpence 
 a-head. S. R.
 
 76 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Rather for life I 'd burn my pen. 
 Than be the man, the shame of men ; 
 The assassin scribbler of a line, 
 That made the cheek of beauty pine. 
 
 'Tis dinner ! silence all, and state, 
 
 Long footmen, peeresses, and plate, 
 
 A sprinkling of the Guards — some lovers, - 
 
 My memory fails me in the covers — 
 
 T leave them to those — gentlemen, — 
 
 Who wield the " fashionable" pen ; 
 
 Historiographers of pies. 
 
 Who lay the carte before your eyes. 
 
 Adepts in all the tribes of jelly. 
 
 The very toughest names they '11 spell ye, 
 
 Through all the p^te-climax soar. 
 
 From poisson up to pcrigord ;
 
 THE DINNER. 77 
 
 Or stretching still a higher strain. 
 
 Touch the rognons a la champagne. 
 
 Then, as their loftier genius shines, 
 
 Amaze your feelings with the wines ! 
 
 The St. Peray, La fitte — Lunelle, 
 
 You 'd think the bouquet meets your smell ! , 
 
 La Rose, Leoville, Latour, Preignac, 
 
 You 'd swear you had them at your back ! 
 
 The Sillery, cool, delicious, still, 
 
 You feel your whole machinery thrill ! 
 
 The pink champagne, rich, creamy, sparkling, 
 
 You see the room around you darkling ! 
 
 The king of cups, the grande Bourgogne, 
 
 You feel your whole seven senses gone ! 
 
 Though says the R-g-rs, at his age 
 
 He 'd like a little Hermilage.
 
 78 MAY PAIR. 
 
 But others, the superior works. 
 Give you exact the spoons and forks. 
 So that if spoon or fork be miss'd, 
 The butler ouys them for a list. 
 Nay others, abler than them both. 
 Square-inch the table and the cloth ; 
 (Of Algebra the fine appliance. 
 The modern, mighty march of science !) 
 Tell you how many off them dined ; 
 How many valets stood behind. 
 How many buttons on their coats, 
 How many sauce-and-butter boats ; 
 How many fair ones fill'd their glasses. 
 Who bumpers it ! who sips, who passes !- 
 Long live ! — ye wonder working works. 
 Where something for all palates lurks, —
 
 THE DINNER. 79 
 
 For sixpence, where the hungry sinner. 
 Miss what he may, will find a dinner. 
 And all, from footmen up to cooks, 
 Own you the very books of books ! 
 
 The Chaplain sends his whisper round : 
 
 Then follows much more sense than sound ; 
 
 For who, above an Esquimaux, 
 
 Would speak till the Entrees withdraw ? 
 
 What mortal that pretends to taste, 
 
 Would see such moments run to waste ? 
 
 Till, with the lighter entremets 
 
 The business lessens by degrees. 
 
 Then whispers wake ! — a dropping fire, 
 
 That seems to near you, then expire ; 
 
 A kind of conversation-ague. 
 
 That comes at intervals to plague you ;
 
 80 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Instalments of a debt of tongue, 
 
 You wish the caller for it hung : 
 
 A tardy, intermittent talk. 
 
 Like watchmen on their midnight walk. 
 
 Just venturing from their wooden den, 
 
 To growl, and be ensconced again. 
 
 Then, as the wine its circuit goes, 
 
 We start upon the native prose ; 
 
 The atmospheric Conversation 
 
 Dear to our weather-beaten nation. 
 
 " Fine morning, — stormy— sunshine — cloudy — 
 
 So cold, scarce gave her grace a how-d 'ye ; — 
 
 The park hot — damp — dry — rainy — fine — 
 
 Calm — windy — honor to take wine ; 
 
 Sharp breeze ; Lord Duke — Tokay ?"— " With 
 
 pleasure.'' 
 Till of his neighbour each takes measure ;
 
 THE DINNER. 81 
 
 No doubt we thus escape High Treason, — 
 In England all things have a reason. 
 
 Before he opens — thus the hound 
 
 Maps with his cautious nose the ground. 
 
 Thus, your established man of jest, 
 Dreading to lose his very best, 
 His way by inuendo tries 
 Before he makes the grand surprize. 
 
 Thus, thieves their optics round them dart, 
 Ere from their holes they make the start. 
 
 Thus, N-rm-nby his novel writes. 
 To set '^ the matter'' in all lights ;
 
 82 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Deeming, in rehtis yet infactis, 
 
 His theory should precede his practice. 
 
 Thus soldiers ere they bivouac,. ^ ^. 
 Probe all the corners of attack. 
 
 Thus B******** play'd the ultra-tory, 
 Before he plunged in papist glory. 
 
 Thus felons scorn to rest their toes 
 Upon the rungs by which they rose ; 
 Heroic from the ladder spring, 
 And take their independent swing. 
 
 Thus the spruce scribes of high-life novels 
 - First study fashion in their hovels ;
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 Then licensed of the servant's hall. 
 Biographize us one and all. 
 
 Thus H-l^tJ^a Greek among the Greeks, 
 First for his jobbing thousands seeks ; 
 Then to the Greek appends the Jew, 
 And squeezes out, pounds fifty-two. 
 
 Thus D*****, much renown'd for brain, , 
 Talks stufFj— then rises to explain. 
 
 Thus B*****, lorooFvat and vapour. 
 Experiments his speech on paper ; 
 Till on the all-important night. 
 He scrubs the Ethiopian white ! 
 
 G 2 
 
 83
 
 84 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 The R-g-rs says, that no man hops, 
 More pleasantly from psalms to slops ; 
 No Saint that treads this wicked sphere 
 Thinks more devoutly of his beer. 
 
 Thus G****** shows the Irish gag. 
 Ere G^ulb-rn o'er the coals he drao;. 
 
 Thus, like a Methodist in pain, 
 W-rd plays the pious in Tremaine ; 
 Finds out the swallow of the Town, 
 Then crams the politician down. 
 
 Thus patriots are to Newgate sent, 
 
 Academy for P-rl ; > 
 
 The R-g-rs says, "Ifor partji^W^r 
 There 's no such training as the bar '
 
 THE DINNER. 85 
 
 Thus lovers try the Lady's temper. 
 Before they make her cadem semper. 
 
 Thus, when you ballast a balloon. 
 With its two madmen for the moon. 
 The pilot-bladder mounts in token. 
 Which way their necks may best be broken. 
 
 Thus, ere he wields the nation's fates. 
 Lord John shows off on turnpike gates. 
 
 Thus one fair S-to-t^h, uxorious W ^Y^^ 
 Prepares your ring for all the cluster. 
 
 Thus Ti^rn-y cautious in his wrath 
 First tosses BrW<+^n in C4nn*g's path.
 
 86 ' MAY FAIR. 
 
 Thus Irish rehels flog their cattle, 
 . True patriots, foremost into battle ; 
 And by the sacrifice of pigs. 
 
 Save for the world the breed of Whigs. 
 
 Thus all your new Administratio ns 
 Launch out inaugural orations ; 
 " Grand era — Empire — noble scope- 
 Wealth — Habeas Corpus — saving hope !" 
 They never on essentials touch, 
 Until they have you in their clutch ; 
 Then comes the Budget cent, per cent., 
 Perhaps 'twill tell you what they meant. 
 
 The ladies gone, those dear removes, 
 Compote of sugar plums and doves !
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 The marquis on the throne vacated ; 
 
 Our anguish partially abated : 
 
 For thoughj I own, the sex's presence 
 
 Is of life's essences the essence ; 
 
 And though the last that leaves the room, 
 
 Dips every chandelier in gloom ; 
 
 Yet, with our souls all cloth'd in sable. 
 
 We 're bound to rally round the table ; 
 
 In the most desperate condition. 
 
 Renew our claret ammunition ; 
 
 Mourning cur decimated ranks. 
 
 Feel up like soldiers, from the flanks ; 
 
 And try the battle to sustain. 
 
 By new discharges of Champagne. 
 
 Now comes ihe hour of English talk. 
 When no man will his subject balk. 
 
 87
 
 m 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 " Returii'd from Greece? '—The Capitani 
 
 Laughed at them, zany after zany ; 
 
 In vain our patriots raved and rambled. 
 
 In dunghills sank— through thistles scrambled ! 
 
 Ate cats,— in classic sludge bivouacked. 
 
 Drank ditches, — baretailed rode bareback'd. ' 
 
 At sight or shadow of a Turk, 
 
 Felt as if swallo^ving his dirk ! 
 
 Were flea-bit, dexter and sinister. 
 
 Till the whole patriot was a blister ; 
 
 Were stript, and ^vhipt, and sconced, and starved ; 
 
 Too happy to escape uncarved !" 
 
 '' Still, spite of all their English-Greek, 
 The Capitani " chewed their leek !" 
 In vain our very best haranguers, 
 \ Still by their hams reposed their hangers:
 
 THE DINNKK^ 89 
 
 The blunderbuss still graced the hooks, 
 Malgre the Constitution cooks. 
 Though Bentham sent the sense of ages 
 Boil'd down into his half-score pages ; 
 The weightiest ^matter ever shijip'd 
 Since law first lodged in manuscript ; 
 Though the fierce Colonel on them fluri ; 
 Conviction in his mother-tongue." 
 
 " When from him roll'd the rights of nations. 
 Tropes, metaphors, hopes, adjurations ; 
 The true-born Demosthenic thunders, 
 That do in Palace Yard such wonders ! 
 And with resistless vengeance fall 
 Upon thy grocer Kings, Leaden HaU : 
 Still heads and tails alike of clans 
 Stuck closely to their coffee- cans,
 
 90 MAY FAIR. 
 
 At Mouarchs when he gave his mpes. 
 The Capitani filled their pipes ; 
 And, made of philosophic stuff, 
 Returned him gravely pufF for puff ! 
 Then asked the Embassador of Bentham 
 What sum in cash his Sovereign sent them ? 
 For, though not very rapid scholars. 
 They have a genuine sense of dollars ; 
 Then up the whisker'd council broke, 
 Ending, as it began, in smoke !" 
 
 — " A palace ?" — " Yes, magnificent ! 
 " Where every sewer bestows its scent !" 
 " Solid ?"— " Foundation in a bog !" 
 " Wholesome ?" " An atmosphere of fog." 
 " Landscape ?" — " A marshy, miry flat." 
 " Canal V — " A grave of dog and cat."
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 " Pure air ?" " Where every passing pufF 
 Is Westminster."—" Enough, enough." 
 
 — " The race — odd business ; Daphne shy ! 
 My Lord some thousand pounds too sly ; 
 The partners pocketed the notes — 
 I '11 swear three scoundrels wore their coats. 
 The Club examined— did their best, 
 And found it — honest as the rest." 
 
 Yet, spite of all their Worships' ears, 
 Newmarket, thou'rt the place for Peers. 
 No Epsom, throng'd with city feeders — 
 No Doncaster, all brutes and breeders. 
 There Taste on all things sets her seal ; 
 With elegance the hostlers steal ; 
 
 91
 
 92 MAY FAIR. 
 
 The man that pillages your fob 
 But hoaxes — none would call it^ rob; 
 The Jockey, in his speech and look, 
 Seems the first cousin to the Duke ; 
 The rogue who tricks you to your face 
 Looks more than brother to his Grace ; 
 And many a claimant of a cord 
 Passes for Baronet and Lord, 
 
 There, 'tis the etiquette, the winners 
 Ask the bedevilled to their dinners. 
 Oh ! nights and banquets of the Gods ! 
 What odd discussions of the odds ; 
 What light opinions upon weights — 
 What cool conceptions upon heats ; 
 What solid talk on drench and mash. 
 Deep things on which the wisest clash ;
 
 THE DINNER. 
 
 What lofty thoughts on hoof and heel. 
 Round with the brains and bottles wheel ! 
 
 Claret, true Lethe of all sorrows ! 
 Marchande of sunshines and to-morrows ; 
 Gay doctor of all human evils — 
 Soft exorciser of blue devils ; 
 Light porter of Life's heaviest loads ; 
 Nurse of a hundred thousand odes ; 
 Fiddle, that makes even dandies dance — 
 First, best embassador of France ; 
 With more than diplomatic art. 
 Fixing her interests in the heart ; 
 Lamp, that at midnight brightest glows— 
 Cosmetic, that tints all with rose ; 
 Mistress, that never jilts our flame — 
 Beauty, for fifty years the same. 
 
 93
 
 94 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Cheerful withoutj as with a carriage — 
 Nay, even bewitching after marriage ; 
 Brush, that Life's spatters out do'st rub — 
 Long live Queen Regent of the Club. 
 
 There Wh-cl-fFe counts no more his bets, 
 jkJUJAhis, mortgages forgets ; • ; 
 
 Slig-Cwith " both his hands in mortar," 
 Scarce feels himself a shilling shorter ; 
 The C-h-e-1,— S^fton,— VtrMl^*^^ 
 No more take measure of a psalm ; 
 
 R d no more^ with hair on end. 
 
 Hears all the world refuse to lend ; 
 Nay, even the Lord of Donna Clara 
 Takes comfort with " Che sard, sard" 
 And wishes otdi/ hang'd the pack. 
 From Avhom no penny will come back*
 
 THE DINNER. 95 
 
 How oft we've sat 'twixt sun and sun. 
 Nor felt the hour, my Cl-r-nd-n. 
 True Tories, telling every hit 
 That men of Fox e'er got from Pitt ; 
 But keeping under triple locks. 
 What men of Pitt got back from Fox. 
 The B(-nt*ncks, F*tzr*ys, Otvtnd^shes, 
 All look like — men that had their wishes ; 
 And all is blood, bone, jest, and song. 
 Till morning whips the night along. 
 
 END OP CANTO II,
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO III. 
 
 Gli Angeli, ii Sol, la Luna erano iiitorno 
 Al Seggio di Natiira in Paradiso, 
 Quando formaron, Signor, il vostro viso 
 D'ogni belta perfettamente adorno ! 
 Era r aer sereno e chiaro il giorno ; 
 Giove alternava con sua figlia il riso ; 
 ¥j tra le belle Grazie Amore assiso 
 Stavasi a mirai- voi suo bel soggiorno. 
 
 Fkacastoko.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO III. 
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 L-RD PrrGlSH^I. 
 
 Plkasantest of pleasant men, 
 Tell me in what secret deu 
 Is your dextrous soul contriving 
 New dexterities in driving ; 
 What new elegance of spur. 
 In the world to make a stir ; 
 H 2
 
 100 MAY FAIR. 
 
 What new brilliancy of whip^ 
 Yet to give us all the slip ; 
 Whatj when ask'd at eight to dine. 
 Keeps you back till half-past-nine ?* 
 
 * His Loi-flship is decidedly the best-bred man of the 
 age, and abounds in pleasantries and clevernesses. But 
 the sceptre of the supreme bon ton is not the lightest one 
 in the world to carry ; and etiquette is more inflexible 
 and unintelligible than Chancery. One of its inflictions 
 is the compelling the Noble Lord to lose his dinner. The 
 ordinary exquisites come in when every one else has sat 
 down ; on the principle that the entrance of an exquisite 
 ought ne/er to be a thing unnoticed, which it might vbe in 
 ■':■ 01-0 vvd before. But the Monarch of the Exquisites 
 :^oes beyond this ; he delays his entrance until dinner is 
 past, and then solaces himself with the fragments of the 
 dessert ; a proceeding which it is also etiquette to permit 
 without the slightest obstruction.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 
 
 Forty years are gone and past — 
 HeaA^ens ! that years should fly so fast, 
 Since the tufts vandyked your chin. 
 Since carmine tattooed your skin ; 
 Since the nondescript cravat, 
 Since the exquisite of hat ; 
 Boots that baffled Hoby's art, 
 Coat that fractured Brummel's heart ; 
 Stays that B-rt -1-zzi graced. 
 Marked you Emperor of taste. 
 
 Tell me, pleasant P m. 
 
 Have you never felt a qualm. 
 When on entering the salon, 
 Caught your ear the parting tone ; 
 Where the slow-retiring fair 
 Troop'd to coffee and despair. 
 
 101
 
 102 MAY FAIIl. 
 
 Is it that you dread the spells, 
 
 Scatter'd by the man-trap belles ? 
 
 Is it that your soul begins 
 
 To note the difference of skins ? 
 
 You, whom young and old chefs-d'oeuvre, 
 
 Fail'd so long to out-manceuvre. 
 
 Welcome P — t — m, at last, 
 Though the courses three be past ; 
 Though the husk of peach and pine 
 Teach you what it was to dine ; 
 Yet no soul affects surprizes — 
 No one at your coming rises ; 
 Calm as if they sat at prayers, 
 All imbedded in their chairs : 
 On you not a glance is cast. 
 As you try to break your fast ;
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 103 
 
 Every apple-rind that lingers, 
 Lawful capture to your fingers ; 
 While a nut the board bestrews, 
 Free as air your feast to choose ; 
 Till as closes your dessert, 
 The cross fire talk assails your ear. 
 
 *" Both Houses up. A brilliant night." — 
 " Debate, dull, dreamy, wiredrawn, trite."- — 
 
 * It may be a satisfaction to both parties who are now 
 cutting each other up in the grand Council, that I am 
 neuter, till the thing is decided. In my verses, I give but 
 the clashing opinions of those who have something em- 
 barked in the battle. Like the Americans^ I drive a 
 general carrying-trade for both belligerents, and shaU
 
 104 
 
 MAY PAIR. 
 
 " n 
 
 The Premier made the happiest hits." — 
 " The Treasury always has the wits." — 
 " The Whigs were never higher mettled."- 
 " Trust me, the matter 's far from settled ; 
 
 never fire a shot for either, until I see good reason why. 
 Canning I have long observed : he is a clever, dashing 
 eloquent feUow, as the world has not now to learn. His 
 "Right Honourable friend on the opposite side of the 
 house/' I have long observed too; and he is a solid, 
 strong-headed and lucky fellow. The cardinal point is, 
 which is lilcely to break down fii-st; and, until that be 
 settled, I shall defy " my nearest and dearest friends" to 
 discover on which side my politics lie. Point d'argeni 
 point de Suisse is the true language of jihilosophy in this 
 delicate and high principled time. My private opinion 
 rests in imo pectore, for at least a month to come.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 1"^ 
 
 There 's mutiny among the crew." — 
 '• Sir, pardon me, the wine's with you. 
 The Whigs will have a bed of roses ;"— 
 " True, if they count the world by noses." — 
 " The staunchest votes in desperate cases ;" — 
 " Ay, just as many as get places." — 
 " The Earl will doubtless have the garter ;"— 
 *' His boroughs are a first-rate barter." — 
 " All genuine merit — your rappee." — 
 " Sir, many a string round many a knee 
 Had been much better round the neck." — 
 " Rely on 't, we'll not quit the deck." — 
 " No doubt, alone you '11 fight the guns. 
 When ev'ry rascal from you runs." — 
 " The crew will perish with the ship." — 
 " Rats never love their tails to dip :
 
 106 _ MAY FAIR. 
 
 The very first that smeUs a leak 
 Gives to the rest a signal-squeak ; 
 No sooner does the light shine through, 
 Than ev'ry snout cries ' Sanve qui pent,' 
 Resolved in their cheese-paring souls 
 To die in terra Jirma holes • 
 
 No man of sense will ever swop 
 
 His conscience till he knows liis shop : 
 
 The balls may shine, the cash be ready. 
 
 He '11 wait to see the partners steady. 
 
 Not wishing to receive a shock 
 
 By sudden deficit of stock. 
 
 No matter whether lace or lawn 
 
 For which he put his soul in pawn.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 
 
 Yet, 'tis the deuce for politicians 
 Wishing to better their conditions ; 
 Accomplished men prepared to sing 
 Heaven save the rabble, or the King ! 
 To live in awkward times that pose 
 A genius 'twixt the ayes and noes ; 
 To keep their patriotic sense. 
 When England wants it ! in suspense, 
 And see their traffic at a stop. 
 Until they know which is the shop ! 
 
 If fierce on one side or on t'other, 
 A moment may your fortunes smother ; 
 And yet the feeble partizan. 
 Whoever wins, is under ban. 
 
 107
 
 108 3IAY FAIR. 
 
 'Tis pleasant to see dext'rous fools 
 Thus slipping 'twixt the party stools ! 
 
 For me, whose multitude of sins 
 Is always friendly to the ins ; 
 Whose eloquence by instinct spouts 
 Against those criminals the outs — 
 A patriot, Burdett to the bone. 
 Resolved to call my soul my oAvn ; 
 A loftier specimen of Brutus, 
 I hate to live in medio tutus, 
 Long with a pension to be tried. 
 And trample on the falling side. 
 
 » 
 
 And though (for years in Opposition) 
 We scorn the language of contrition ;
 
 THE AFIEU-DISNER. 
 
 And fifty times would rather beg. 
 
 Than to the Premier make a leg ; 
 
 Yet if he makes the first advances, 
 
 Men should not throw away their chances : 
 
 And though wed rather die than sink 
 
 To ask the thing in pen and ink ; 
 
 Yet if he thrusts one into place, 
 
 To serve one's country 's no disgrace. 
 
 'Tis true we now and then abused him. 
 But those were trifles that amused him ; 
 'Tis understood that ayes and noes 
 May differ, without being foes. 
 Peril aps, in some obscure debate. 
 Some evening when the house sat late, 
 We dropt, in party's usual way. 
 Something we quite forgot next day ; 
 
 109
 
 110 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Some local jest^ some rfindom hit. 
 
 Some nonsense that then pass'd for wit. 
 
 J3ut hurry, heat of argument ; 
 
 Not that one likes the word, — repent, 
 
 Yet, even in party's liercest fever. 
 
 We always thought him monstrous clever; 
 
 Though Hi^e might growl, and T^^rnty sneer. 
 
 The truth was neither here nor there. 
 
 Through N^wpd^'s squeak, and BHxt«n's prate. 
 
 We felt the leader of the State. 
 
 The idle world might call it satire, — 
 
 The world knew nothing of the matter. 
 
 But things in such a way presented 
 
 By greatness never are resented ; 
 
 Mere drops between the cup and lip : 
 
 Your wisest men will sometimes trip :
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. Ill 
 
 In short, 'tis known, your first-rate minds 
 Give all offences to the winds. 
 
 We own that some would make a noise, — 
 
 Boys aping men — men aping boys : 
 
 But all true patriots like Jack R /t f^ C 11. 
 
 Though now and then they join'd the bustle ; 
 
 Yet in their hearts abhorr'd the thing. 
 
 And loved, like him, the Church and King ! ^ 
 
 'Tis true, they bellow'd for Reform, 
 
 Yet, seeming hot, were scarcely warm. 
 
 Nay, all that knew their feelings best. ^Y Oh' ^ ^ '- 
 
 I f ' 
 
 Knevv^ that it made their standing iesi. \^ 
 
 Admit, they sometimes swell'd the crowd, 
 Their curses were not deep, though loud. 
 There 's Gwennapp ready to make oath, 
 For office he was never loatli ;
 
 112 MAy FAIR. 
 
 Nay, since his tumble in the stoclvs. 
 He scorn'd the very name of Fox. 
 There 's our great oralor who wishes, 
 May all his bones go feed the fishes ! 
 But, since the faction first harangued. 
 He wonders they escaped unhang'd. 
 Their muddled, mongrel, special pleadings, 
 
 Their nameless House proceedings. 
 
 The nonsense that by dint of votes 
 They strove to cram down people's throats, 
 Their Constitutional infractions, 
 , • The head and tail of their transactions ; 
 
 He gives them to the D 1 that moved them 
 
 They lie, that say he liked or loved them. 
 In secret he adored the throne ; 
 He cares not where the secret's known, 
 •' So your Petitioner will pray;"
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 113 
 
 He farther saith, 'twas clear as day. 
 Six yards of ministerial silk, 
 At any time had changed his milk ; 
 A black emollient for his skin. 
 Grown rusty with the bombasin ; 
 But stuff eternal in and out. 
 The purest loyalty might rout ; 
 Not that a treasury could buy him — 
 He wishes that they'd dare to try him. 
 Although at certain times a title 
 Might seem to some a fit requital, — 
 Not that he meant to eat his words, 
 To be a lord, — or fifty lords.
 
 114 MAY FAIR. 
 
 " The vessel gone ?" — " High hopes of P-*tty/'* 
 " Sure as my grandam to miscarry ;'' 
 " He takes five hundred pecks of coals !'' 
 " No doubt he 'il liquify the poles ;" 
 
 * P — y is a shrewd, enterprizing, and frost-defying per- 
 sonage as any in his Majesty's dominions ; no man alive 
 can object to him for doing his best to get a ship; nor for 
 making an expedition once a-year ; nor for making a book 
 out of that expedition ; nor for having attempted impossi- 
 bilities and failed ; nor for having done nothing where no- 
 thing was to be done. If the philosophers of Somerset 
 House, and the ship-people of that ci-devant Scotch Pa- 
 lace, near the Horse Guards, had recommended a voyage 
 
 to the Moon, Captain P would have been right in 
 
 oflFering himself for inspection, ready with three months' 
 provisions in his haversack, wings at his back, the new 
 patent air-generator in his pocket, to resist the rarefaction
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 
 
 "^He's ballasted with flying sledges," 
 "The saints preserve the Arctic hedges ! 
 " Some gallons of Sir Humphrey's acid," 
 " Just half a pint makes ocean placid ;" 
 
 115 
 
 of the upper regions, and a map of the course by Bishop 
 Wilkins in his better hand. But the grand affair rests 
 with the advisers, promoters, and profilers — the onus must 
 be borne by those who felt so enamoured of territoiy, that 
 they looked for it twenty degrees beyond the possible 
 climates of life ; and the more they failed the more they 
 looked. And all this in the teeth of all experience, in 
 the outcry of every man who had been in the Arctic Seas, 
 and in scorn of all science. The true expedition must 
 be by land, and this was told to the ship-people from the 
 beginning. Little fat Franldin would have ascertained in 
 a week more than aU that could have been settled by all 
 the years of ship-freezing and pantomime-playing since 
 
 I 2
 
 116 MAY FAIR. 
 
 *' A liquid, with a Bramah stopper, 
 For raising" — *' Brushwood upon copper.' 
 '• A set of patent music-boxes 
 To lure the buffaloes and foxes ; 
 French Avatches for the Polar frows, 
 The new steam-acting Perkins' ploughs ; 
 The seeds of all the favourite spices, 
 The last machines for making ices. — 
 The cargo quite a thing of tact-'' 
 — " Sir ! listen, if you like a fact : 
 
 the flood. The Captain is now gone to try his fortune in 
 another style; and if he will find out for us of what the 
 Pole is made, or whether there is any Pole at all, a matter 
 long doubted in the Pump-room at Bath, and at present 
 forming the chief conversation of that accomplished city, 
 we shall be at last obliged to him.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER- 
 
 x'^fter three niontlis' ice-parading, 
 After three months' masquerading, 
 After three months' knocks and bumps 
 That bring his lugger to her stumps ; 
 After loss of pipes and spoons, 
 Deficit of pantaloons ; 
 Hairbreadth scapes of white bear paws, 
 Sentimental loves of squaws ; 
 Just as he espied the channel, 
 Brought to his last yard of flannel; 
 All his best cigars burnt out. 
 Winds all whistling "right about;" 
 Quarter-day you '11 have him back. 
 With his volume in his pack. 
 
 Out the wonder comes at last 
 Wondering how it came so fast — 
 
 117
 
 118 MAY FAIR. 
 
 . All the world, including M-rr-y, 
 In a philosophic flurry; 
 AU the botanizing belles, 
 All whom B-n-de provides with smells , 
 Priest of all the chemic loves, 
 Lovely in his kidskin gloves ; 
 All the twaddlers of the Alfred, 
 All the quarter and the half -read ; 
 All the paper-headed members 
 Shivering over learning's embers ; 
 All Parnassus' wither'd shrubs, 
 All the sages of the Clubs ; 
 All the doldrum F R. S.'s, 
 Deep in duck^veed, straws, and cresses ; 
 Worthy measurers of dust — 
 Worthy of Sir Josepli's bust.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNEK. 
 
 119 
 
 Worthy to complete the ranks 
 Of tlie mighty name of B-nk-s, 
 Deep in nondescript descriptions. 
 Puzzling as their own Egyptians ; 
 All the wiseacres on filberts. 
 All the \vorld of D— s G-lb-rts ; 
 All the guilty candle-hurnerS; 
 
 F-tt-ns, S-b-nes, D-ws-n T s; 
 
 Lecturers on a gnat's proboscis. 
 Oracles in mire and mosses ; 
 Hunters up of Autographs— 
 At whose labours mankind laughs ; 
 Delving; through the hideous scribbles 
 
 Of forgotten knaves and fribbles. 
 
 All thy tribe, L — d Ab-rd-n, 
 Sense and nonsense stuck between ;
 
 120 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Wise in all things dead and rotten, 
 Useful as a herring shotten ; 
 Solemn beggars, in whose bags 
 All the gathering is rags. 
 Learning's resurrection-men, 
 Wielders of the church-yard pen, 
 Worthy of the plundered lead — 
 Worms, that feed but on the dead : 
 Sweeps, that never lift their eyes 
 Where the flames of Learning rise ; 
 But beside its altar's foot / 
 
 Fill their pouches with the soot. 
 All the crazing, and the crazed. 
 Hurry all — to be amazed ! 
 
 Page by page unrolls before ye 
 Britain's Argonautic glory ;
 
 THE AFTER-DINNKll. 
 
 How the grand Discovery Fleet, 
 Several months sail'd several feet. — 
 " Sunday, hanging o'er the stove. 
 Thought the vessel vieant to move. 
 IMonday, rather felt the frost ; 
 Tuesday, thump'd, and crost, and tost ; 
 Wednesday, kick'd from post to pillar, 
 Knock'd the nozzle off the tiller ; 
 Thursday, white bears in the distance, 
 Kill'd, long shots, severe resistance ; 
 Ate a sailor once or twice — 
 
 White bears seldom over nice. 
 
 Friday, Mercury at zero. 
 
 Every soul on board a hero. 
 
 Saturday, all cased in rime. 
 
 Scarcely thavv'd at pudding-time ; 
 
 121
 
 122 
 
 MAY FAIK. 
 
 Every nose of land or able. 
 Living ices at the table ; 
 Crystallizing in a row, 
 Fine as Jarrin's'' Christmas show. 
 
 But the keenest was to come : 
 Muse of History be dumb ! 
 Though the passage lay in sight. 
 Somewhere to the left or right ; 
 
 * 1 have, I pledge myself as a public man and a patriot, 
 exarfuined every system that has done honour to the noble 
 Science of Gastronomy, and as a matter of equal justice 
 and gratification I must give my opinion in favour of Jar- 
 rin, in the whole department of Marmalade, &c. His 
 book I keep upon my pillow, as Alexander kept the Iliad 
 for his midnight insj)iration. Ude I know, a more mateh- 
 less manager of the cuisine was never under noble roof; 
 popularity followed his soups ; and his volume is the su- 
 preme ornament of my library. — (S — n.)
 
 THE AFTEU-DINNER. 
 
 Or behind them, or before them, 
 Home the scoundrel breezes bore them. 
 But next summer 'twill be found, 
 Who will bet ten thousand jiound ? 
 
 But there 's something for the blues. 
 Grieving for their two pound twos. 
 Not a squaw but has a story. 
 Not a flea but skips before ye. 
 You 've a list of every needle. 
 That could soul or body wheedle. 
 Tare and tret of every quid, 
 That for dog or duckling bitf : 
 How much brandy in her water, 
 Warm'd old Sealskin's oily daughter. 
 Every bill on Monmouth-street, 
 Paid for leagues of genuine sleet : 
 
 123
 
 ]24 
 
 MAY PAIK, 
 
 Every Admiralty name. 
 
 Yet to fill the trump of fame : 
 
 All the mighty officemen, 
 
 Perch'd on stock, and rock, and fen ; 
 
 Puzzling all the blubber hordes. 
 
 With Lords — alas ! no longer Lords. 
 
 There (every dog will have his day,)* 
 
 Bold C-b-n towers through fog and spray ; 
 
 * This distribution of territory was first conceived, to do 
 him justice, by Captain Ross; who, to do him justice 
 again, was a very smart, ingenious, and injured officer. 
 But it may be fairly questioned, and will no doubt become 
 a subject of national remonstrance in the earliest Esqui- 
 maux Parliament, particularly if the Polar circle should 
 be so far advanced in civilization as to be looking round 
 the world for some nation to pelt with snowballs. — " What 
 right," will the Esquimaux Ambassador say, " can a British
 
 THE AFXER-DINNER. 125 
 
 H-pe boasts a marshy and gallant IM-re 
 Is monarch of a mile of shore : 
 Ill-omen 'd M-lv-lle has his isle, 
 Grim as his own paternal pile ; 
 Where the great scion of D-nd-s 
 May graze his goose^ and ride his ass : 
 
 marauder have to distribute the titles of the Arctic Em- 
 pire ? or what right can he have to inflict upon it the ob- 
 scure appellations of the officials of a power forty degrees 
 South of the only climate where man is to be found in his 
 original dignity, the land flowing with oil^ clothed in 
 ermine, lighted by the glitter of the Aurora ; and by a sun- 
 shine that throws the decrepit day of the South into con- 
 tempt ; not of twelve hours, but of four thousand !" Let 
 the Admiralty look to it, and abolish their usurpations in 
 good time.
 
 126 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Nay, not a messenger or clerk, 
 But in some mire has made his mark. 
 And stamp'd hj friendship* s broadest arrow. 
 Looms through eternal mists Cape B-rr-w. 
 
 " B caught at last ?"— " Yes, limed hr life,* 
 
 Condemn'd to virtue and a wife." 
 " Too happy dog ! he now relaxes 
 His purse-strings but to pay his taxes : 
 A gentle hermit in his cell. 
 He pokes the fire, and pulls the bell ; 
 
 * The actual ceremony has been made an affair of some 
 scepticism among a particular set; and undoubtedly, for 
 tlie present, like American news, or like the new Ministry, 
 or as the R-g-rs (always inimitable) adds, "like the little 
 girls in St. James's Parish, it wants conjirmation."
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 12) 
 
 Upon his knee his babies dandles^, 
 Concocts the tea, and snufFs the candles ; 
 Scarce in the mirror gives a glance. 
 Lets even his ringlets take their chance ; 
 Cares not a farthing if the Craven 
 Was lost by jockeyship or spavin ; 
 If, at the paying of the stakes. 
 
 The doer or the done was R ; 
 
 In fact, has turn'd a new \i^MjiA B<dl, 
 A rustic pattern to us all." 
 
 " * Sweet M^rc<aid«tti, if such ladies 
 Could often be invoiced from Cadiz, — 
 
 * The prettiest importation that we have had since the 
 war, Notliing is more remarkable than the extraordinary
 
 J 28 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Such raven locks, such sparkling eyes^ 
 Were voted in the home supplies ; 
 Such fairy feet, such taper fingers — 
 They'd make the fortune of the bringers : 
 Even I, vi^ho dread the name of wife. 
 Might order — per the good ship, F . 
 
 jll-luck or infirm taste of the whole tribe of our military, 
 naval, civil, and exploratory persons on the Continent, in 
 the matter of wives. They seem to have been acted on 
 by a curious felicity in the selection of ugliness ; and there 
 is no doubt that we have returned the compliment very 
 eifectually in the helpmates with which we have punished 
 the whiskered lovers of English guineas. The traffic in 
 the live-stock is the counterpart of the traffic in the dead. 
 The Englishman sends abroad his faded manufactures, 
 and gets rid of them at any price. The Continental re- 
 turns them with varnished pictures, mutilated statues, 
 cracked vases, and mummies.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNEU. 1^" 
 
 'Tis pleasant, in this world of fools. 
 To look on Nature's finer tools. 
 To see the light of jetty eyes 
 Take Bond -street heroes by surprise; 
 Till the white-heat of beauty's fire 
 Melts down the dandy to the squire. 
 'Tis pleasant, when, like mother Eve's, 
 Spring makes her petticoat of leaves. 
 To see him run the homely round 
 Of husbands fairly in the pound. 
 How lightly in thy ear-drums B<111* 
 The names of R-s and L-n-x fall ! 
 
 * This gentleman's taste in cabs and cravats first distin- 
 guished him. For a time he was remarkably in flower 
 and narrowly escaped being at once the beau of the season, 
 a legislator for seven years, and a Benedick for life, or 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 MAY PAIR. 
 
 Not caring for the world a button. 
 
 You brew your beer, and kill your mutton ; 
 
 At morn, costmned in fustian breeches, 
 
 You watch your architects of ditches ; 
 
 Receive returns of hens and cocks. 
 
 Put corn and duck eggs under locks ; 
 
 the capriofr-^crr/ihe most captivating and capricious of 
 high-b^n enslavers : but destiny is irresistible, and it was 
 his destiny to be pierced by the blackest pair of eyes 
 within the memory of man ; to have become a scorner of 
 supremacy in the cravat system; and to have finally 
 subsided into the most hospitable of coimtry gentlemen. 
 His claret is first-rate ; his preserve is excellent ; and his 
 menage is superintended by the most select professor of 
 the culinary science on this side of Paris. If he sets up 
 for the county, he shall have my plumper. (Punt. J .)
 
 THE AFTER-DINNEK. 131 
 
 Look sharply to those rogues the grooms. 
 Embezzlers of your mops and brooms. 
 Prove that your talent 's not mistaken 
 In matters relative to bacon ; 
 Trim up the pheasant-stealing sinner. 
 And come exact at five to dinner. 
 
 Then take your evening wine and sitting, 
 Inspector of Senora's knitting ; 
 Or order out your country cab. 
 Give whip and rein to your Queen Mab ; 
 (And scarcely in a poet's dream, 
 A prettier hand e'er touch'd her team ;) 
 And take the wisdom of the village 
 On last year's frost, and next year's tillage. 
 K 2
 
 132 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Hear men. Heaven knows who made their coats 
 
 Discuss the latest price of oats ; 
 
 And drop your summons with the vicar, 
 
 To give his verdict on your liquor. 
 
 Until the sunshine's rosy dip. 
 Faint rival of your lady's lip ; 
 And the breeze across the hill. 
 Warns you that you 're standing still, 
 And a glance towards your oaks 
 Shows your curling household smokes. 
 Shows you that your lamps are lighted. 
 Shows, if you stop, you 11 be benighted. 
 
 Too happy fellow, in those glances 
 
 You 're safe from Fortune's tricksy chances :
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. ]33 
 
 Though 0-tl-nds to the hammer fallj 
 You have two diamonds worth it all ; 
 Nay, should your final shilling vanish. 
 The R — rs vows " you '11 have the Spanish.'* 
 
 Oh clouds ! ye wandering wayward things. 
 Substantial nothings, waveless wings ; 
 Ye thrones of hyacinth and rose. 
 Where spirits in their flight repose ; 
 Ye pearl and purple vales of bliss. 
 Ye islands of the blue abyss. 
 Ye steeds, — whom every laurell'd bard, 
 Has since the deluge rode so hard ; 
 Making, of your manes and tails, 
 Similes for maids and males. 
 Every soul has had a time 
 When he thought himself sublime,
 
 134 MAY FAIR. 
 
 When he dream'd his hour was come, 
 When he must no more be dumb ; 
 Mounted in Apollo's boots. 
 Well supplied with moonlight lutes ; 
 Piled with Venice-hat and feathers. 
 When he should defy all weathers ; ^ 
 With his music of the spheres. 
 Taking mankind by the ears. 
 
 Dan Apollo ! fool- enslaver. 
 
 When I had your worship's fever, 
 
 (But a sort of schoolboy tertian. 
 
 Cured by Newmarket immersion,) 
 
 I have stood at set of sun. 
 
 Cloud-collecting, one by one ; 
 
 Wild with all their twistings, turnings. 
 
 Softenings, sweetenings, fadings, burnings ;
 
 THE AFTER-DINNEU. 135 
 
 Building in each ruddy stain, 
 Glorious '•' Chateaux en Espagne ;" 
 Watching the delicious twilight 
 Peeping from her Eastern skylight ; 
 Like an Andalusian maid 
 Listening to a serenade : 
 Like a vestal freshly sainted, 
 With her cheek half pale, half jiainted ; 
 Like a Turkish beauty showing 
 Through her veil the roses glowing ; 
 Till, 'twas but a softer morn. 
 Silvery rose the Lunar horn. 
 
 Or around her high abode, 
 Tempest, like an ocean, flow d ; 
 Till the lightning's sulphur-gleam 
 Flamed on mountain, vale, and stream ;
 
 13f> 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 And the vaporous upper world 
 Roli'd, like armies downward hurl'd, 
 Titans, by the thunder driven 
 From the sapphire gates of Heaven ; 
 While the swellings of the gale 
 Seem'd their trumpet's broken wail. 
 Then along the mighty blue 
 Bose like flowerets pale and few. 
 Over which a storm had gone, 
 Star and starlet, one by one ; 
 Like the lamps in some high fane, 
 Struggling through the tempest-stain 
 As it vanish'd, richer mustering. 
 Orb on orb in glory clustering ; 
 Till the temple of the night 
 Blazed with the immortal light.
 
 THE AFTER-DINNER. 137 
 
 Trifles— fancy's long past gleams, — 
 
 Boyish, more than boyish dreams ; 
 
 Things of many a year ago — 
 
 Yet what have our years to show. 
 
 With their thousand secret stings. 
 Better than those boyish things ? 
 From our cradles to our shrouds, 
 What are hopes, joys, loves, — but clouds ? 
 
 END OF CANTO III,
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO IV. 
 
 Dangle. — I 'faith I would not have told — hut it's in the 
 ])apers, and your name at full length in the Morning Chro- 
 nicle. 
 
 Pu(f. — Ah ! those damn'd editors never can keep a se- 
 cret. 
 
 Sheridan's Critic.
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 CANTO IV. 
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO 
 
 * Sweet , "by that host of spells 
 
 That break the hearts of all our belles ; 
 
 * Though I never intentionally look into a newspaper, 
 'yet by accident I have observed the name of a lady of 
 I rank annexed to this my fourth Canto. Am I to apolo- 
 ,j^ze or atone for this ? or is not the apology to be looked
 
 142 MAY FAIR. 
 
 By those two lips, a rosy wreath 
 Around those more than pearly teeth ; 
 By those two eyes of living light ; 
 I swear to live thy faithful knight. 
 
 Though all the girls that feed on Greek ; 
 Tliough all the girls that tint a cheek ; 
 
 for in the utter impossibility of doing anything so idle as 
 making common fame my confidante on the occasion. To 
 that lady, however, whom to name is to panegyrise, I desire 
 to make my most anxious acknowledgments j and to assure 
 her that, be the object of my lines what they may, she 
 would deserve a much better bard, though she could not 
 find a more devoted one : but after all, she is not the lady, 
 the fair and fantastic idol, on whose toilette I now offer 
 up those lines, to be turned into yapillotes, if such be her 
 sovereign pleasure.
 
 TIIK iMIDNIGHT DRIVE. 143 
 
 Though all the girls from sixty downwards. 
 That force their gouty fathers townwards ; 
 Though all the girls whom coronets 
 Keep practising in morning sets ; 
 Though all the girls of mathematics ; 
 Though all the Amazons or Attics ; 
 Though all the lovely premature. 
 Devote themselves to work my cure ; — 
 Yet, till the hour I make my will, 
 Thou, thou shalt be my empress still. 
 
 Three Cantos, like Canova's Graces,* 
 Three charmers with three sister-faces. 
 
 * All the world have, of course, admired Canova's 
 •Graces ; whose chief merit is, hov.ever, that they are like 
 'three pretty English school-girls. Italy has certainly no-
 
 144 MAY PAIR. 
 
 Free, fond, and frolic as the wind. 
 By this time have the world entwined 
 Now, o'er my loveliest and my last 
 The lustre of thy smile be cast ; 
 With Beauty's Sovereign on my side, 
 I wish the world were twice as wide. 
 
 Idol, that might'st have sat or stood 
 For Venus rising from the flood ; 
 
 thing to do with them. They want the tragique look that 
 belongs to the higher order of the Italian models. They 
 are happily destitute of that eager affectation, that makes 
 every pretty Frenchwoman on earth look as if she had 
 just escaped from the coulisses of the Opera Comique. 
 Their innocence, sweetness, and touching simplicity, are 
 English, and English alone: — the artist must have dreamed 
 them.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 Fresh sparkling from the morning dip. 
 Ere breeze of earth profaned her lip ; 
 Ere touched her ivory foot the ground. 
 Ere felt her bosom woe or wound. 
 Ere from her locks had dropt a pearl. 
 The model of a " taking girl" — 
 The prettiest pattern of coquette. 
 That ever made man foolish yet : 
 The sweetest sinner of fifteen. 
 That ever play'd coquette or queen. 
 
 145 
 
 *'Tis evening, June in all its might. 
 Broad day, — at ten o'clock at night. 
 
 * One of the most formidable inconveniences of our in- 
 convenient climate. The poets, a race of observers of
 
 146 MAY PAIR. 
 
 Tired of my lord's tenth, tenth told story, 
 Forgetting that the day 's before ye : — 
 
 Nature, who yet see less of her than any other race of 
 mankind, with perhaps the exception of a Cornish miser, 
 or that most imprisoned of prisoners, and most miserable 
 of men, a Lord Chancellor, — talk perpetually of the charms 
 of an English twilight : they might talk as rationally of 
 the charms of a consumption ; the slow decay of day ; the 
 dreary appearance of every thing visible ; the chill, clayey, 
 colourless clouds that absolutely look tired of lingering 
 hour after hour ; and the brown blaze that will keep dis- 
 figuring the dinner-table, that excludes the chandeliers, 
 and utterly destroys the eifect of rouge, dress, and dia- 
 monds. 
 
 Those things are " ordered better'' in the South : the 
 sun there keeps as regular hours as a gouty gentleman ; 
 rises as if his physician prescribed six o'clock, and goes to 
 bed not a minute after his time. Those who have driven
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 Expecting to find earth in gloom, 
 You sally from the heated room. 
 And find, no matter where you drive. 
 The world with vulgars all alive. 
 
 Ye well-bred charms of southern skies. 
 Where daylight by appointment dies ; 
 Where, just as your Siesta 's done, . 
 Dead to a second drops the sun : 
 As dead as ever melo-drame, 
 En";ender"d 'twixt K-n-r-d and L-m-b ; 
 As dead as Antipope professions 
 Of Mister B-nk-s's final sessions. 
 
 147 
 
 through the Alameda of any Spanish town after dusk or 
 have sallied out into the Toledo, will know tlie charm 
 of the contrast — it is a charm, and indescribable. 
 
 I. 2
 
 148 MAY FAIR. 
 
 'Tis sweet Italian Night ; you rise, 
 , The rabble vanish from your eyes : 
 Ten thousand figures round you flit, 
 They 're seen as much as H-rt-n's wit. 
 You hear a whisper, smell cigars, 
 Catch the low twanging of guitars ; 
 And, but where Punch sets up his camp. 
 Or where " Our Lady" lights her lamp. 
 While some sweet face beneath it twinkles. 
 Fresh from its holy water sprinkles ; 
 Or lights and chanting in some chapel. 
 Remind 5'ou that you 're still " cii Naples ;" 
 You 'd think the locomotive hosts 
 Were very easy manner'd ghosts. 
 
 While here, the night will never drop, 
 Go where you will, you meet the shop.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 149 
 
 Whirl to the West, you find the park 
 
 But tiu'n'd a fuller Noah's ark ;— 
 
 Whirl to the North, the favourite spot 
 
 For M* to breakfast and be shot ; 
 
 The feed and light alike are o'er, 
 
 * Chalk Farm is now Chalk Farm no more. 
 
 * Chalk Farm, once the chosen theatre of well-bred 
 'exits. But the shade of honour has been diiven from the 
 iplace by the barbaric invasion of brick ! The unfortunate 
 landlord, who used to calculate on the results of an angiy 
 parliamentary session — the bitterness of the exiled — or the 
 lie direct from the winning-side, with the regularity of an 
 Insurance office, must be in a state of hopeless exaspera- 
 tion. Fashion might as well settle her affairs in the centre 
 of Fleet-street. Language, too, will lose a valued part of its 
 phraseology ; we shall never again hear a Bond-street bel- 
 ligerent characterized as a " Chalk-Farm subject." R-g-rs,
 
 150 MAY FAIR. 
 
 There, Nash, thy plaster town aspires,— 
 Retreat of Moorfields and Black Friars. 
 The stucco fine, the gravel finer ; 
 The lamps divine, the lake diviner. — 
 
 to whom I acknowledge m.y verses indebted for all their 
 lustre, recommends that the landlord should, in memoiy 
 of the departed weapon, hang up for his sign " Ancient i 
 Pistol!" " Heu quanto minus est cum aliis,"&c. As to what t 
 has usurped the classic grounl, I can say but little fromi 
 personal observation. It is rather distant from the world ;j 
 but J suppose a number of \eiy respectable persons haA'e 
 wound up their city matters to club there, and that it may 
 be a sufficiently pleasant retreat from selling ribbons, &c. 
 Crockford's having posted himself there is of itself symp- 
 tomatic of something to be got ; and possibly in a genera- 
 tion or two he may put some of them in circumstances? 
 not to be easily distinguished from those of persons of the? 
 first fashion in Town.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 151 
 
 Tlie whole affair superbly pretty I 
 The whole, — the trader and his city. 
 There pant, uneasy for their life. 
 Fat pair, the alderman and wife; 
 There groans the Genius of some ward, 
 For twelve revolving months, my Lord ! 
 The bulky owner of Molasses 
 Envies his happier brother asses : 
 I'he worthy, rich from porcine slaughter, 
 Curses the day he saw its water ; 
 All round the wretch so ultra fine — 
 *He dreads to stir, sit, sleep, or dine. 
 -•ti _. . ^ u.^ 
 
 J-^^^/ 
 
 * The jNIar^uis, (sooi/to be no INIarquis,) the leader of 
 every thing comme il faut, and giver of the most accom- 
 j)lished dinners on this side of the Equator, has settled 
 
 ;h^i^^^ <^-^/5c, x^^^
 
 li.'i 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 - Yet there, if men their eyes will ope, 
 They 'Jl find en costume a la Hope, 
 
 down in the Regent's Park : it was an absolute mercy ; — 
 not thut the place is to be laughed at as a specimen of the 
 skUl of oiir modern architects, for all the facades are 
 showy, and some are fine and Palladian ; but it has had 
 the misfortune to be delivered over to all the absurdities 
 of an opulent populace, the very pis alter of speculation, 
 all things that no one would suffer any where else, make 
 their experiments there. There stood the Ophthalmic 
 Hospital, which one could not approach within a mile 
 without the chance of paying an eye as the price of the 
 adventure. T]iere explodes the new patent gun, that is 
 to shake the towers of Cronstadt or Constantinople, of 
 which my Lord JMarcais carries a pattern in his pocket, 
 "along -with the Garter, as an alternative for the Emperor 
 Nicholas. There winds the Canal to receive all the 
 Thames coal-barges, ;iad love-stricken waiting-maids ! 
 There the London and ■^Minburgh New-Philosophy-Politi-
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 153 
 
 Temptiition fresh from London Wall, 
 The beauty of the Easter ball ; 
 
 cal-Reform-College-Committee, have actually laid hold of 
 a district for some of their nameless purposes ; and there, 
 though the lesser evil, the Zoological Society have de- 
 signed a new Seminary for tigers, leopards, lions, and 
 similar ornamental, useful, and safe assistants to civiliza- 
 tion and the nineteenth century : the whole to be disposed 
 strictly according to their habitats. Jungles are ah-eady in 
 great forwardness ; the boa-constrictor has already ex- 
 pressed his satisfaction at the swamp which has been so 
 ingeniously provided for bun : and the cobra de capellos, 
 tiger-cats, and panthers, wiU feel perfectly at home. — 
 Doubtless, for a while, a few nursery-maids and children in 
 arms will occasionally be missed. A contemplative gen- 
 tleman taking his evening-walk, may be surpz-ised into 
 a very unexpected study of Natural History ; and an in- 
 fiuest may be held on even an alderman found in the
 
 154 MAY PAIH. 
 
 From three months finishing in Prance 
 Return'd, with Death in every glance ; 
 A half De Stael, half Eloise, 
 To trample the piano's keys —   
 To blot black beetles upon paper — 
 To light the " Muse's midnight taper ;" 
 To sigh for " dear Count Strogonoff," 
 (A valet that nigh whisk'd her off;) 
 To dream of " Marquis Romanzini, 
 (You 'd buy the scoundrel for a guinea ;) 
 To heave the breast, and roU the eye. 
 And lisp, " Di tanti palpiti !" 
 
 custody of the " Forest King." But those necessary acci- 
 dents will diminish as Me Regent's Park becomes more 
 exclusively devoted to l^oological science : when none but 
 Professors invade its precincts, of course none but pro- 
 fessors will be eaten.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 155 
 
 Yet, in those cit-infested valleys. 
 
 Before for polar frost he sallies. 
 
 To drive in Tartar skulls the sense 
 
 Of " Honi soit qui mal y pense ;" 
 
 As no man's fitter for this barter. 
 
 Than he who once has " caught a Tartar ;" 
 
 Gay H-tf-d rears his Tuscan dome, 
 
 For lordly fashion's lordliest home. 
 
 Land of the North, enchanting clime. 
 Where Summer sits enthron'd in slime ! 
 Where Winter, quick as winds can blow, 
 O'erlays the aforesaid slime with snow ; 
 And fog, and frost, and mire together. 
 No doubt make very pleasant weather; 
 Ten years are gone (my tears flow fast !) 
 Since on your charms I gazed my last —
 
 156 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Since in all jargons under heaven 
 
 ]\Iy vows were to your charmers given ; 
 
 To swampy Holland's maids of mud- - 
 
 To Denmark's, fish in face and blood ; 
 
 To greasy Teutchland's thick-legged vrows- 
 
 To Sweden's, kindred to their cows ; 
 
 To all diversities of skin. 
 
 Through Peter's realms of oil and gin ; 
 
 Where lovers overhead in love 
 
 Make speeches bottom'd on a stove ; 
 
 And maidens touch'd with mutual flame. 
 
 Return them, — bottom'd on the same. 
 
 H-tf-d, beware of tender passions. 
 
 Until you know the Calmuck fashions ; 
 
 The man caught serenading there. 
 
 Will soon betray a loss of ear.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 1^*7 
 
 Orj if unsnipt the stanza flows. 
 The zephyr mulcts you in a nose ; 
 There Cupid has no time to linger. 
 Each moment costs a toe or finger ; 
 You 're lucky if you quit the place 
 The half-possessor of your face. 
 The maiden that is over nice 
 Will see her love preserved in ice. 
 Transcendent soil of fen and fog. 
 Where man is but a larger frog ! 
 
 * The Haymarket 's a burst of light ; 
 The Opera — mighty Pasta's night ! 
 
 * Pasta, a very powerful performer : since Catalani, the 
 Italian stage has produced no more brilliant and com-
 
 158 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Bold, splendid, tragic, first the song 
 
 Bursts like a cataract along ; 
 
 Then, like a mountain stream subsiding. 
 
 Between its banks of roses gliding, 
 
 The harmony, sweet, solemn, clear. 
 
 In new enchantment bathes the ear. 
 
 Yet noble as her noblest strain. 
 
 The actress o'er us throws the chain ; 
 
 The queenly step, the depth of eye. 
 
 The strife of passion wild and high. 
 
 The art, true nature's matchless art, 
 
 Its strength, its burning source, the heart ; 
 
 manding voice. Her acting is still i*arer upon the stage ; 
 and those who have not seen her Medea and Semiramide 
 have yet to learn the power of combined gesture and 
 song.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 The searching agony of tone, 
 
 ]\Iake all the struggling soul her own. 
 
 The spell dissolved, — I take my rounds ; 
 
 A licensed sportsman on those grounds : 
 
 The rich preserve, that few approach. 
 
 Without a title and a coach ; 
 
 But I, Avho " know the price of stocks," 
 
 Cry " Sesame!" to every box ; 
 
 They know / scorn the charming ties, 
 
 So take my folly as it flies. 
 
 We settle " who escapes to Paris," — 
 
 " Whose in the Austrian box the star is ; 
 
 " What ivonder in the red and yellow 
 
 " Has fix'd thy lorgnette, Count P-lm-Ua ; 
 
 " What whisker'd monster, Mynheer Falck] 
 
 " Holds in such very solemn talk ; 
 
 159
 
 160 MAY FAIR. 
 
 '• Whose cheeks and chin are too much tinted, 
 
 " Whose marriage has been more than hinted ; 
 
 "■ Whom all-resistless P-l-gn-c 
 
 '' Has kept this fortnight on the rack ; 
 
 '^ Whom L-v-n thinks the Belle to-night, 
 
 " (The Prince is always in the right) ; 
 
 " For whom is built the Viscount's villa, — 
 
 " But hark, — 'tis magic, or Erambilla." 
 
 Then drops the eye upon the pit, 
 Where dandies stand, and dowdies sit ; 
 The irksome prison of he-brutes. 
 That to their beds would take their boots ; 
 Where St-nh-pe in the foremost tier. 
 Performs an extra chandelier. 
 Reflecting on his polish'd forehead 
 The light from every stage-lamp borrow'd.
 
 161 
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 * Or, where the Foreign Office nest 
 
 $hews fifty in a box comprest; 
 
 The diplomatic exquisites ! 
 
 Copies of statesmen, beaux, and wits. 
 
 Thus men, ordain'd the world to master 
 
 Give their fac-similes in plaster ; 
 
 * Downing- street has its representative majesty in the 
 Opera House, in the shape of a whole desk-full, I beg 
 pardon, box full of very well-dressed young gentlemen- 
 They attend with great decorum to the performance, carry 
 on their diplomatic etiquette to each other with great 
 gravity, and, unless when the shoe of ajigurante flies into 
 their box, from its peculiar proximity to the stage, or the 
 kettle-drums are engaged in a charge, seem to be happy. 
 Yet it is painful to see them so dismally squeezed to- 
 gether ; though it must be allowed that they suffer with 
 the patience of martyrs. 
 
 M
 
 162 MAY FAIll. 
 
 And Chathams, Wellingtons^ and Naps, 
 Are sold by Savoyards for raps. 
 
 " The Colonel ? yes, he never misses. 
 Since F-fe deserted the coulisses. 
 Why sits he from the crowd aloof, 
 Gazing so fiercely on the roof?" 
 " 'Tis whisper'd that he comes to town 
 Express, to have the house knock'd down. 
 
 * Yet I like thee, pleasant Tr-^^i^ f 
 Though the sages of the Bench 
 
 * The Irish Colonel, one of the pleasantest persons pos- 
 sible at one's table, yet a confoundedly awkward person to 
 let into one's house. His first conception is alwaj'^s, how 
 much it would be improved by being burned, or blown up, 
 or beaten down, or in some way or other scattered into 
 thin air, and swept from the face of earth. Of course.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 163 
 
 Would not give a single stiver 
 For thy bridge along the river ; 
 
 this is in no hostility to you ; for no man has more of the 
 good-nature of his country ahout him ; but the public 
 good must be paramount. He has an improving spirit^ a 
 subversive soul : the besom of destruction is the sceptre of 
 his ambition, as Sheridan said of the French Revolution- 
 ists ; he rejoices " in the wreck of matter, and the crush" 
 of houses. 
 
 Si frarftus illabatur orbis, 
 
 Impavidum ferient ruinae. 
 
 There can be no doubt that he has several plans in his 
 portfolio for the new World; and that he would be 
 charmed by the first symptoms that the old one was going 
 into cinders. 
 
 Yet the Colonel has taste : some of his designs are ex- 
 tremely happy ; and far be it from any man who desires to 
 see fortune, intelligence, and place in society, occupied in 
 
 n 2
 
 164 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Though the dames of Billingsgate 
 Swore to duck thee soon or late ; 
 Though the guardians of the mud 
 Would have srwamp'd thee, ebb or flood ; 
 
 manly and graceful pursuits, to find fault with his occupa- 
 tion. At the same time, I should recommend it to any 
 gentleman who wishes to keep his house over his head, to 
 keep the Colonel's eyes off it if he can. He will other- 
 wise unquestionably find it pointed out in the next plan 
 of some new Square, or Street, or Circus, or Abattoir, as 
 a thing utterly incompatible with the well-being of his 
 Majesty's good City of London. Apsley House had a nar- 
 row escape not long since : but report says, that a company 
 of the First Guards were brought up, with orders to fire 
 on the first man who approached the house with any symp- 
 toms of a surveyor about him. It has stood, and the great 
 Duke has not thus to lament at once the loss of his place 
 and his local habitation : but let minor men beware !
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 165 
 
 Though the grisly men of coals 
 
 Rose in black fan-hatted shoals ; 
 
 Though the sapient aldermen 
 
 Fought thee with ill-spelling pen ; 
 
 Tliough the doubly sapient Mayor ' 
 
 Thunder'd nonsense from the chair ; 
 
 Though against thee spouted Cam, 
 
 (Wolf that crush'd the bleat of L-mb ;) 
 
 Sings the ll-g-rs — " Classic streams, 
 
 Long may the Cam defend the Thames !" 
 
 * Though Whig — Tory — Neuter Jack 
 
 Threw his burden on thy back ; 
 
 * As a politician Lord John has his principles still to 
 settle ; and perhaps no man has a right to blame him 
 much, at a time when Whig and Tory are so pleasantly 
 flung into conjunction, when even the " dii majorum
 
 166 MAY FAIR. 
 
 *Though the man of the Bazaar 
 On thee tum'd his stable war. 
 
 gentium,'' the fiercest champions, the men who had sworn 
 by all the darker divinities, are turned into such happy 
 and harmless lovers of things as they are, that even Sir 
 Frank, " for his part, knows no difference between Whig 
 and Tory V and even says this, without any visible con- 
 sciousness of its effect on the muscles of mankind. But 
 Lord J., removed from his puzzled politics, has qualities 
 that, if clouded, cannot be extinguished by party. He is a 
 poet, a scholar, and when he speaks uncrushed by the con- 
 sciousness of the unnatural union between the son of no- 
 bility and the very refuse of the Radical mire, he is a very 
 interestmg speaker. 
 
 * Mab — a genius for all things, carriage, cab, fish, finance, 
 bank, brick-making, and for that species of eloquence 
 which Sir Joseph Yorke, in his characteristic way, calls 
 general botheration. Waithman's appearance in the House 
 has disturbed his supremacy in news fresh from the City,
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 167 
 
 Libel, paragraph, and plate. 
 Showering round thy patriot pate ; 
 Pealing vengeance in thy ear 
 The whole grande nation houtiquiere. 
 
 I own, I like this easy talking, 
 A kind of Opera sleep-walking ; 
 Just made for lazy brains like mine ! 
 Let wits and sages strive to shine. 
 My loveKest of all lovely things 
 Is woman, angel without wings ; 
 Yet if there's horror beyond human, 
 To me 'tis philosophic woman. 
 
 with which it was his privilege to delight those of less ex- 
 tensive adventure eastward ; and in revenge he has lately 
 set up a haberdasher's shop on a scale large enough to 
 drive the Alderman to despair.
 
 168 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Although you ate j^our primal steaks 
 Among the honest Oxford Greeks, 
 Or suck'd your dose of British port 
 Where Euclid holds by Cam his Court , 
 Or in lerne's " Silent Sister" 
 *Spunged on the vintner and the pistor. 
 
 * The Dublin University has the honour of being called 
 the Silent Sister throughout Europe ; and she has, what is 
 rare in this world of misapplied names, the merit of fuUy 
 deserving the appellation. Yet the Irish in general are 
 the very antipodes of either indolence or stupidity. The 
 Burkes, Sheridans, Currans, and so forth, would be pledges 
 for the capabilities of a people more proverbially Boeotian 
 than [our pleasant brothers beyond the Channel. But the 
 truth is, that the system of the University is utterly inef- 
 fectual in all its shapes, as an exciter and instructor of 
 the national ability. Genius is smothered in mathematics. 
 By an anomaly altogether inconcei\able, the great ab-
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 100 
 
 lerne ! theme of many a line. 
 That never trickled from the Nine ; 
 
 sorbing distinction, the trumpet of fame in the Irish Uni- 
 versity, is an aptness for Algebra. What is the result ? 
 In a nation remarkable for a vividness of conception, 
 which we may detect in the common language of the 
 people ; for a turn of mind which may almost be called 
 classic ; for a spirit, ardour, and ease of language, which 
 make the natural materials of the great orator, writer, 
 and philosopher ; we have nothing but some miserable 
 schoolboy expertness in the rule of three. Tliat there 
 are able intellects to be found among -the professors and 
 students, none can doubt ; but what student does the Irish 
 University send out armed for the great contests of public 
 life? What contribution does its whole body make to 
 even the cause of its struggling and brow-beaten Religion 
 on the spot ! Still less what work uf classical scholarship, 
 or public importance, has it added to the general literature 
 of England ! or still less, to the permanent literature of £u-
 
 170 MAY FAIR. 
 
 lerne, land of bulls and cows, 
 
 Of many an English widow's spouse, 
 
 Of proud and patriot absentees, 
 
 Of rich reversionary fees. 
 
 Of old rebellion's glowing embers .' 
 
 Of just one hundred virtuous Members, 
 
 rope ! Nay, even in the narrow, puzzled, and impotent 
 cii'cle of its own ambition, what has it produced? what 
 discoveries has it made? how many mathematicians has it 
 sent into the world within the last hundred years ? 
 
 The Irishmen of abdity whom we occasionally meet 
 with in London, are no contradiction to this. They have 
 received their " second education" in general English life ; 
 and have been suffered to foUow the natural direction of 
 their minds. Among no class of men are to be found 
 more strenuous deplorers of the disastrous, purblind, and 
 totally unnationai bias of the system of their University.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 171 
 
 As sapient as the dames that bore theni. 
 As modest as their sires before them ; 
 All dumb — of which I 'm no regretter^ 
 (The less that's sometimes said the betten) 
 Yet, when a good thing 's in the wind. 
 No man will think them deaf or blind ; 
 Not but I know they hate a job. 
 Though such might fill a patriot's fob ; 
 Not but I know, in all their garrets 
 They'd scorn to act the treasury parrots ; 
 Or crowd upon a special night. 
 To stand the drill " eyes left or right," 
 Or make the rather thicker calls. 
 In Whitehall when a peerage falls : 
 Yet no twelve men on earth would find 
 Those patriots either deaf or blind !
 
 172 WAY FAIR. 
 
 leruo, true Romance s spot, 
 Alike by Heaven and Earth forgot ! 
 Thy people gayest of the gay, 
 Where every ribbon breeds a fray ! 
 Thy soil the richest of the rich. 
 Where famine huts in every ditch ! 
 Holy dominion of the Pope ! 
 Ruled by the musket and the rope ! 
 Pure gem of the Atlantic flood. 
 With every field, a field of blood ! 
 
 *Yet, seated by an Edinbro' dame 
 Away at once goes all your fame : 
 
 * I remember at the Caledonian ball in Edinburgh, 
 to have been entrapped, by the pastoral look of a very
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. IV^^ 
 
 In vain you 've woo'd the classic muse. 
 You 're nothing in the land of trews ; 
 In vain before your Oxford quorum 
 You 've worked the Typ : Barytonorum, 
 Or all your cerebellum puzzled 
 To find in logic reason muzzled. 
 While Davison the disputations 
 Made all your syllogisms fugacious ; 
 
 pretty girl, into asking her hand for the next dance. In 
 the interval I tried to ascertain how far she had been 
 imbued with the love of roses and lilies, of blue floods 
 and romantic hills. My pretty partner looked at me 
 with utter contempt ! and returned my lucubrations by 
 a very recherche character of Mr. MacuUoch's Political 
 Economics, with an Episode on the Government (»f 
 
 India.
 
 174 MAY FAIR. 
 
 In vain Darii and Bocardo, 
 Unless you 've thumb'd our friend Ricardo ; 
 Your Wisdom's in a genuine stew, 
 Unless you 've read the last Review. 
 What know you of the safety-valve ? 
 How schistus splits, or camels calve ? 
 How modern population thickens ? 
 How stoves increase the breed of chickens ? 
 How nature in her human sluices 
 Makes gastric and th* et cetera juices ? 
 How every blue-bell has its spouse, 
 True to its vegetable vows ? 
 How hornstein, trap, and selenite, 
 Were made before earth saw the light ? 
 How true philosophy exposes 
 The terrible mistakes of Moses ?—
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 175 
 
 How COWS communicate their thoughts ? 
 How all the lights of Earth are Scots ? 
 
 But hush ? — the Deesse of the ballet. 
 The woe and wonder of Fop's-alley, 
 
 Where T^ re in ecstasies 
 
 Forgets the fire of Spanish eyes. 
 She comes ! — Soft, sparkling, like a star, 
 Floats on her sylphid wing, Brocard : 
 Beside the beauty, gay Fleurot 
 Floats, witchery from top to toe. 
 I glance a moment, feel my heart 
 Not meant to act a Rom^n part ; 
 Make my best bow to all the fair. 
 And whirl full gallop to the square. 
 
 Along the streets the chamber-light. 
 Shows toilets busy for the night.
 
 170 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Oh ! for a touch of friend AsmodeuSj 
 A station on some roof commodious ; 
 To watch, without a compound fracture. 
 The sweet, man -killing manufacture ! — 
 There beauty in her mirror grows. 
 Let rivals hate the shape it shows. 
 Now wreathe the brow the raven tresses, 
 A smile the dear effect confesses : 
 Now round the neck the diamonds glitter. 
 No cynic could at this look bitter. 
 On goes the jewel-bound panache ; 
 Her eyes return it flash for flash. 
 The tissued silk, the Brussels lace. 
 What wonder if she like thai face ? — 
 'Tis but plain justice to admire 
 That shape, that step, that eye of fire.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 177 
 
 Last, o'er her shoulders drops the shawl, 
 To hide, in mercy to us all. 
 What,— if I dar'd to speak my mind. 
 Might make, but never meet, me blind. 
 
 There stands a figure for thee, Lawrence, 
 Worth all the belles of Rome or Florence : 
 Thou, whose immortalizing touch, 
 Defies old Time's hard-handed clutch ; — 
 Gives light to eyes, and bloom to lips. 
 That scorn a century's eclij)se, 
 That even when L-c-s-t-r's self is past, 
 Her charms shall round our grandsons cast.— 
 On H-pe's fair brow bid beauty sit, 
 .Flash life from J-rs-y's eye of wit ; 
 
 N
 
 17^ MAY FAIR. 
 
 And show how majesty can fling 
 Its mantle o'er a patriot King. 
 
 Young ladies all, pray take example 
 
 From this, (by no means single sample,) 
 
 Of how much pleasanter 'tis dressing, 
 
 To constitute a ball-room's blessing ; 
 
 Taking from every curl the papers, 
 
 In sight of half a dozen tapers ; 
 
 Giving your beauty between whiles 
 
 Those sweet anticipation smiles. 
 
 By which the bosoms of five hundred, 
 
 Ere morn, shall of their hearts be plunder'd,— 
 
 Than sitting up without a light, 
 
 'Twixt twelve and one o'clock at night ; 
 
 Your way around your chamber stealing. 
 
 O'er drawers and trunks, and toilets reeling ;
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 179 
 
 All trembling, fearing, freezing, hoping, 
 
 In preparations for eloping ! 
 
 I 've known the thing gone through by dozens ; 
 
 It happened to my four first cousins. 
 
 Determined ere her passions cool 
 To play the' irrevocable fool ; 
 Just as the old ones turn their backs. 
 The fair her prettiest Jw^ow* packs ; 
 Was never midnight sent so slow — 
 At length the lover stands below. 
 The letter on the toilet lies. 
 To wipe the household's morning eyes. 
 " Hope — anguish — duty — heart too tender — 
 She 's sure her mother would commend her — 
 N 2
 
 180 
 
 iMAY FAIR. 
 
 Chance — fate — forgive her — or forget her," 
 All know the true elopement letter. 
 
 She listens at the chamber-door. 
 But not a soul will deign to snore ; 
 She trembles at the Avindow's height. 
 The very moon seems up in spite. 
 Till safe on terra firma landed, 
 By Cupid and the lover handed ; 
 Through man-traps, spring-guns, briers, and bram- 
 bles. 
 The pair begin their marriage rambles. 
 Snug in the by-way stands the chaise, 
 Off go the spanking set of bays ; 
 To Scotland turning all their noses. 
 That road being always strew'd with roses.
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 181 
 
 Till fagg'd, and frighted, starved, pursued — 
 
 By bar-maids envied, grooms halloo'd — 
 
 All dust, and heat, and smoke, and smother. 
 
 Already crop-sick of each other —   
 
 Yet for true penitents decreed. 
 
 They reach that Styx of Love — the Tweed. 
 
 For England's vulgar groves and lawns. 
 
 Now Scotia's landscape on them dawns ; 
 
 Beside them steals the muddy rill — 
 
 Above them towers the naked hill ; 
 
 Around them vegetates the hovel. 
 
 Where brutes, both two and four-legg'd, grovel ; 
 
 And lassies gay, with scarlet locks, 
 
 All innocent of shoes and smocks.
 
 182 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 Till shown ill pity to their sighs. 
 
 The Smithy's sacred smolces arise ; 
 
 Where shines the drunken son of Etna, 
 
 The high-priest of thy temple, Gretna. 
 
 Before him stand the culprits pale. 
 
 Dim, dusty, draggled head and tail : 
 
 The lady like a drooping lily, 
 
 'Twixt tear and smile, 'twixt sad and silly ; 
 
 The man, a man, no matter what, 
 
 Love thinks too rapidly for thought. 
 
 Down goes the fee, on goes the ring, 
 
 The little Loves all clap the -wing ; 
 
 The fatal word 's by Vulcan spoken. 
 
 For which they '11 \vish his neck were broken. 
 
 I reach the Rout, find every stair 
 A package of the fainting fair ;
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 183 
 
 Find every inch of every room 
 Cover'd with petticoat and plume ; 
 
 A group of the Fitz chins, J/ //^ Hj^n n c<. 
 
 Rabbies might envy them their skins ^ ^^ — 
 
 The H gh, resistless ^^\vcQ,f/dn^l^^?'<^J^A, 
 
 The glass of fashion, a la rigueur. <^ 
 
 No art of life can make a dance — 
 In vain my lord and lady prance ; 
 The weary shufflers stand stock still. 
 Till dies the death, the choked quadrille. 
 
 Then turning off my cab to B~dl-'s, 
 I glance upon the high-born noodles, 
 That, silent as a ring of Quakers, 
 Melt their right honourable acres ; 
 See the fut Viscount's heavy fist 
 Sweep thousands at two-handed whist ;
 
 184 MAY FAIR. 
 
 While Verjuice, genius of the place, 
 Hunts, like a hound, his wither'd Grace ; 
 And Ovvlface, ghost of other years. 
 Babbles the feats of long-past peers. 
 When ancient Queensberry shook the box, 
 And all men join'd to pigeon Fox. 
 
 Dear Gaming, if my easy rhyme 
 Shall ever reach the true sublime ; 
 If ever from the Muse's rill 
 A drop within my plume distil. 
 That drop be sacred to thy praise. 
 Thou " Love" of noble nights and days ! 
 Gaming ! to thine, ecstatic witch, 
 Aladdin's wand was but a switcli. 
 Let Katterfelto Hohenlohe 
 Work miracles on tooth or toe ;
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 18o 
 
 Rescue from purgatory's fires 
 
 A nun's four bones, much more a friar's ; 
 
 Give flesh and blood to wooden legs. 
 
 Teach Irish hens to lay fresh eggs : 
 
 Or cool the blood, or thin the skulls 
 
 Of patriots of the land of bulls ; 
 
 Or bid old Nick make ropes of sand, — 
 
 You '11 beat his Highness out of hand. 
 
 Delishtful work, to see the stroke 
 
 That shaves a province of its oak ; 
 
 That, where the mighty mansion stood 
 
 A sort of heirloom of the flood. 
 
 That scorn'd the Dane's and Norman's spoil, 
 
 A thing imbedded in the soil ; 
 
 Let but thy sceptre give a twist, 
 
 The walls are melted into mist ;
 
 186 
 
 MAY FAIK. 
 
 The wooded liill^ the teeming plain. 
 Are empty as their master's brain ; 
 While go the lords of hills and valleys 
 To snufF the fishy gales of Calais ; 
 Or reinforce thy sands, Boulogne, 
 With ragged leaders of the ton. 
 
 Or let it give another tweak. 
 The common, bleakest of the bleak. 
 Where not even gipsies make their den, 
 A sallow waste of weed and fen, 
 Some sullen solitude of sand, 
 Some second Bagshot of the land. 
 Where, but a highwayman, or Duke, 
 No man would give a second look ; 
 Wave but thy cue, a palace rises, 
 A wood the native eye surprises ;
 
 THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 
 
 A river through the meadows gushes. 
 You count the vine and peach by bushes ; 
 Along the causeway's narrow'd border 
 A portal, Nash's native order : 
 Sublime whitewasher, great rough caster. 
 The Michael Angelo of plaster ; 
 That, give him but his fling in brick, 
 Defies the Roman and the Greek ; 
 Invites the passing stage-coach noses 
 To drink the otto of its roses. 
 
 While, deep its sacred bowers within 
 Shrined from the world's oppressive din. 
 Cool in the broad verandah's shade. 
 The hero of the scene is laid : 
 Around him shine the works of Buhl, 
 The living bronze, the gold pendule ; 
 
 187
 
 188 
 
 MAY FAIR. 
 
 The Grecian group, the Tuscan vase. 
 The case of humming birds from Mawe's ; 
 The Titian glowing from Madrid, 
 (A Monarch's self was there outbid ;) 
 The Venus starting from her nest, 
 Not Lansdowne has her lighter drest. 
 
 Ye endless vineyards, for whose table 
 Wear ye all hues from white to sable ? 
 Ye mighty orangeries, for whom. 
 Like ladies, lay ye on your bloom ? 
 Ye groves of peach and plum, ye pineries. 
 For whom are worn your birth-day fineries ? 
 Whose hand Patrician dares to cull ye ? 
 Answer, ye perfumed breezes — Gulley !
 
 /THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE. 189 
 
 Gaming ! what charm of lip or, eye 
 Can with thy thousand beauties vie ? 
 From woman's glance, what living flash 
 Rivals the radiance of the cash ? 
 Though woman's tongue in silver flows, 
 Yet gold 's the music of rouleaux. 
 ThoUj that giv'st all the virtues scope. 
 The Hope, that to the last will hope ; 
 The more than soldier's boasted Courage, 
 That goes to ruin without demurrage ; 
 The Love, that makes our neighbour's pelf 
 As dear to all, as to himself ; 
 The Loyalty that, live or die, 
 Still keeps the Sovereign in its eye.
 
 ]90 ' MAY FAIR. 
 
 LENVOY. 
 
 H — 11 — d;, now five fathom deep. 
 
 Send I politics to sleep. 
 
 Longing to enjoy a laugh 
 
 With thee and thy better half. 
 
 Where no literary bevy 
 
 Suffocate yoirr evening levee 
 
 With their bald, disjointed chat, 
 
 Of who wrote this, and Avho stole that ;
 
 L ENVOY. 
 
 Who scribbles in the next Review, 
 Whose wife's a brimstone or a bhie ; 
 Each with his own mysterious hint 
 Of me, before I dipp'd in print. 
 — " A poem, first-rate, high-life tact ; 
 Sublime, yet every word a fact. 
 A most surprising show of vov<;. 
 They say, a leader in the house ; 
 The principles so much the thing. 
 He dined last Sunday with the King." 
 Another sneers, — " The work's seditious, — 
 'Tis true the names are all fictitious ; 
 But should his hits be thrown away. 
 The author's publishing a key !" 
 Another, more emphatic still, 
 A sort of quintessence of quill. 
 
 191
 
 192 MAY FAIR. 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 " The Author's name ? — a thing forbidden, 
 From all particularly hidden. 
 A noble Lord has had the credit, — 
 'Twas said for certain, that he read it ; 
 'Twas fasten'd on a travelled Duke, 
 Of late he has a business look. 
 A Bishop's whisper'd." — " Entre nous, 
 My Lord, the babe was given to you. 
 It has your wit, your brilliant style" — 
 " You make your answer by a smile." 
 " I know, the feeling of the trade is, 
 That, if not yours, it is my lady's." 
 
 The book has forty sires, at least. 
 As far from fact, as west from east. 
 Each marks his man — " A foreign prince, 
 (He fled the country ever since)
 
 l'envoy. 193 
 
 Too poor, he says, to keep his carriage, 
 (Iv'm sure, not beggar 'd by his marriage.'*) 
 — " A minister, a noted wit, / ^L?%''7LUti /* 
 Heir of the mantle dropt by Phtr*"^ /""/^ 
 — "A great commander." — " Right or wrong. 
 You '11 have the thing avow'd, ere long." 
 — " Two Chancellors, an in and out ; 
 They wrote the couplets, turn about," 
 — "A most facetious reverend Dean, CVy^/^ /jfJiJ^ 
 Grown fat with work behind the screen." y 
 — '•' A certain very stately Lord, 
 Much with Lord L-nd-nd-rry bored." 
 Till sick of all the fools together. 
 You turn the talk on wind and weather ; 
 Or seeing on your moveless dial 
 How drags like death your hour of trial, 
 
 o
 
 194 
 
 MAY r/.ni. 
 
 Not bound to bear them (like a wife) 
 You fly to save your ears and life. 
 
 Lot those who* may, the secret tell, — 
 Now women — critics — world — farewell ! 
 
 THE V.KV. 
 
 LONDON: 
 rillNTEC BY S. AND R. BtNTLEY, DORSET §.TREliT.
 
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