Читать книгу The Rolliad, in Two Parts - George Ellis - Страница 15

This may appear to some but a paradoxical kind of improvement, which is subversive of order. It must be remembered, however, that the descent of ROLLO to the night-cellar was undoubtedly suggested by the descent of Æneas to hell in the Sixth Book of Virgil; and every classical Critic knows what a noble contempt of order the Roman Poet studiously displays in the review of his countrymen. From Romulus he jumps at once to Augustus; gets back how he can to Numa; goes straight forward to Brutus; takes a short run to Camillus; makes a long stride to Julius Cæsar and Pompey; from Cato retreats again to the Gracchi and the Scipios; and at last arrives in a beautiful zig-zag at Marcellus, with whom he concludes. And this must be right, because it is in Virgil.

A similar confusion, therefore, has now been judiciously introduced by our Author in the Sixth Book of the ROLLIAD. He first singles out some of the great statesmen of the present age; then carries us to church, to hear Dr. Prettyman preach before the Speaker and the pews; and next shows us all that Mr. DUNDAS means to let the public know of the new India Board;—that is to say, the Members of whom it is composed. He now proceeds, where a dull genius would probably have begun, with an accurate description of the House of Commons, preparatory to the exhibition of Mr. ROLLE, and some other of our political heroes, on that theatre of their glory. Maps of the country round Troy have been drawn from the Iliad; and we doubt not, that a plan of St. Stephen’s might now be delineated with the utmost accuracy from the ROLLIAD.

Merlin first ushers Duke ROLLO into the LOBBY: marks the situation of the two entrances; one in the front, the other communicating laterally with the Court of Requests; and points out the topography of the fire-place and the box,

—————————in which

Sits PEARSON, like a pagod in his niche;

The Gomgom PEARSON, whose sonorous lungs

With “Silence! Room there!” drown an hundred tongues.

This passage is in the very spirit of prophecy, which delights to represent things in the most lively manner. We not only see, but hear Pearson in the execution of his office. The language, too, is truly prophetic; unintelligible, perhaps, to those to whom it is addressed, but perfectly clear, full, and forcible to those who live in the time of the accomplishment. Duke ROLLO might reasonably be supposed to stare at the barbarous words “Pagod” and “Gomgom;” but we, who know one to signify an Indian Idol, and the other an Indian Instrument of music, perceive at once the peculiar propriety with which such images are applied to an officer of a House of Commons so completely Indian as the present. A writer of less judgment would have contented himself with comparing Pearson simply to a

Statue in his niche—

and with calling him a Stentor, perhaps in the next line: but such unappropriated similies and metaphors could not satisfy the nice taste of our author.

The description of the Lobby also furnishes an opportunity of interspersing a passage of the tender kind, in praise of the Pomona who attends there with oranges. Our poet calls her HUCSTERIA, and, by a dexterous stroke of art, compares her to Shiptonia, whose amours with ROLLO form the third and fourth books of the ROLLIAD.

Behold the lovely wanton, kind and fair,

As bright SHIPTONIA, late thy amorous care!

Mark how her winning smiles, and ’witching eyes,

On yonder unfledg’d orator she tries!

Mark, with what grace she offers to his hand

The tempting orange, pride of China’s land!

This gives rise to a panegyric on the medical virtues of oranges, and an oblique censure on the indecent practice of our young Senators, who come down drunk from the eating-room, to sleep in the gallery.

O! take, wise youth, the’ Hesperian fruit, of use

Thy lungs to cherish with balsamic juice.

With this thy parch’d roof moisten; nor consume

Thy hours and guineas in the eating-room,

Till, full of claret, down with wild uproar

You reel, and, stretch’d along the gallery, snore.

From this the poet naturally slides into a general caution against the vice of drunkenness, which he more particularly enforces, by the instance of Mr. PITT’s late peril, from the farmer at Wandsworth.

Ah! think, what danger on debauch attends:

Let Pitt, once drunk, preach temp’rance to his friends;

How, as he wander’d darkling o’er the plain,

His reason drown’d in JENKINSON’s champaigne,

A rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood,

Had shed a Premier’s for a robber’s blood.

We have been thus minute in tracing the transitions in this inimitable passage, as they display, in a superior degree, the wonderful skill of our poet, who could thus bring together an orange-girl, and the present pure and immaculate Minister; a connection, which, it is more than probable, few of our readers would in any wise have suspected.

———————Ex fumo dare lucem

Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.

From the Lobby we are next led into the several committee-rooms and other offices adjoining; and among the rest, MERLIN, like a noble Lord, whose diary was some time since printed, “takes occasion to inspect the water-closets,”

Where offerings, worthy of those altars, lie,

Speech, letter, narrative, remark, reply;

With dead-born taxes, innocent of ill,

With cancell’d clauses of the India bill:

There pious NORTHCOTE’s meek rebukes, and here

The labour’d nothings of the SCRUTINEER;

And reams on reams of tracts, that, without pain,

Incessant spring from SCOTT’s prolific brain.

Yet wherefore to this age should names be known,

But heard, and then forgotten in their own?

Turn then, my son, &c. &c.

This passage will probably surprise many of our readers, who must have discovered our author to be, as every good and wise man must be, firmly attached to the present system. It was natural for Dante to send his enemies to hell; but it seems strange that our poet should place the writings of his own friends and fellow-labourers in a water-closet. It has indeed been hinted to us, that it might arise from envy, to find some of them better rewarded for their exertions in the cause, than himself. But though great minds have sometimes been subject to this passion, we cannot suppose it to have influenced the author of the ROLLIAD in the present instance. For in that case we doubt not he would have shown more tenderness to his fellow-sufferer, the unfortunate Mr. NORTHCOTE, who, after sacrificing his time, degrading his profession, and hazarding his ears twice or thrice every week, for these two or three years past, has at length confessed his patriotism weary of employing his talents for the good of his country, without receiving the reward of his labours. To confess the truth, we ourselves think the apparent singularity of the poet’s conduct on this occasion, may be readily ascribed to that independence of superior genius, which we noticed in our last number. We there remarked, with what becoming freedom he spoke to the Minister himself; and in the passage now before us, we may find traces of the same spirit, in the allusions to the coal-tax, gauze-tax, and ribbon-tax, as well as the unexampled alterations and corrections of the celebrated India-bill. Why then should it appear extraordinary, that he should take the same liberty with two or three brother-authors, which he had before taken with their master; and without scruple intimate, what he and every one else must think of their productions, notwithstanding he may possess all possible charity for the good intention of their endeavours?

We cannot dismiss these criticisms, without observing on the concluding lines; how happily our author, here again, as before, by the mention of Shiptonia, contrives to recal our attention to the personages more immediately before us, MERLIN and DUKE ROLLO!

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