The coteries, and, as in Banquo’s glass,
At great assemblies or in parties small,
He saw ten thousand living authors pass,
That being about their average numeral;
Also the eighty “greatest living poets,”894
As every paltry magazine can show it’s.
LV
In twice five years the “greatest living poet,”
Like to the champion in the fisty ring,
Is called on to support his claim, or show it,
Although ’tis an imaginary thing.
Even I—albeit I’m sure I did not know it,
Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king—
Was reckoned, a considerable time,
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.895
LVI
But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipzig, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain:896
La Belle Alliance of dunces down at zero,
Now that the Lion’s fallen, may rise again:
But I will fall at least as fell my Hero;
Nor reign at all, or as a monarch reign;
Or to some lonely isle of gaolers go,
With turncoat Southey for my turnkey Lowe.897
LVII
Sir Walter reigned before me; Moore and Campbell
Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Zion’s hill must ramble
With poets almost clergymen, or wholly;
And Pegasus has a psalmodic amble
Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,898899
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol—“by these hilts!”900
LVIII
Still he excels that artificial hard
Labourer in the same vineyard, though the vine
Yields him but vinegar for his reward.—
That neutralised dull Dorus of the Nine;
That swarthy Sporus, neither man nor bard;
That ox of verse, who ploughs for every line:—
Cambyses’ roaring Romans beat at least
The howling Hebrews of Cybele’s priest.—901
LIX
Then there’s my gentle Euphues—who, they say,902
Sets up for being a sort of moral me;903
He’ll find it rather difficult some day
To turn out both, or either, it may be.
Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway;
And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three;
And that deep-mouthed Boeotian “Savage Landor”904
Has taken for a swan rogue Southey’s gander.
LX
John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.905
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,906907
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.
LXI
The list grows long of live and dead pretenders
To that which none will gain—or none will know
The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders
His last award, will have the long grass grow
Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders.
If I might augur, I should rate but low
Their chances;—they’re too numerous, like the thirty908
Mock tyrants, when Rome’s annals waxed but dirty.
LXII
This is the literary lower empire,
Where the praetorian bands take up the matter;—
A “dreadful trade,” like his who “gathers samphire,”909
The insolent soldiery to soothe and flatter,
With the same feelings as you’d coax a vampire.
Now, were I once at home, and in good satire,
I’d try conclusions with those Janizaries,
And show them what an intellectual war is.
LXIII
I think I know a trick or two, would turn
Their flanks;—but it is hardly worth my while,
With such small gear to give myself concern:
Indeed I’ve not the necessary bile;
My natural temper’s really aught but stern,
And even my Muse’s worst reproof’s a smile;
And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy,
And glides away, assured she never hurts ye.
LXIV
My Juan, whom I left in deadly peril
Amongst live poets and blue ladies, passed
With some small profit through that field so sterile,
Being tired in time—and, neither least nor last,
Left it before he had been treated very ill;
And henceforth found himself more gaily classed
Amongst the higher spirits of the day,
The Sun’s true son, no vapour, but a ray.
LXV
His morns he passed in business—which dissected,
Was, like all business, a laborious nothing
That leads to lassitude, the most infected
And Centaur Nessus garb of mortal clothing,910
And on our sofas makes us lie dejected,
And talk in tender horrors of our loathing
All kinds of toil, save for our country’s good—
Which grows no better, though ’tis time it should.
LXVI
His afternoons he passed in visits, luncheons,
Lounging and boxing; and the twilight hour
In riding round those vegetable puncheons
Called “Parks,” where there is neither fruit nor flower
Enough to gratify a bee’s slight munchings;
But after all it is the only “bower”911
(In Moore’s phrase) where the fashionable fair
Can form a slight acquaintance with fresh air.
LXVII
Then dress, then dinner, then awakes the world!
Then glare the lamps, then whirl the wheels, then roar
Through street and square fast flashing chariots hurled
Like harnessed meteors; then along the floor
Chalk mimics painting; then festoons are twirled;
Then roll the brazen thunders of the door,
Which opens to the thousand happy few
An earthly Paradise of Or Molu.
LXVIII
There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink
With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz,
The only dance which teaches girls to think,912
Makes one in love even with its very faults.
Saloon, room, hall, o’erflow beyond their brink,
And long the latest of arrivals halts,
’Midst royal dukes and dames condemned to climb,
And gain an inch of staircase at a time.
LXIX
Thrice happy he who, after a survey
Of the good company, can win a corner,
A door that’s in or boudoir out of the way,
Where he may fix himself like small “Jack Horner,”
And let the Babel round run as it may,
And look on as a mourner, or a scorner,
Or an approver, or a mere spectator,
Yawning a little as the night grows later.
