Читать книгу The Rolliad, in Two Parts - George Ellis - Страница 6

It was originally my intention to have dedicated the CRITICISMS on the ROLLIAD, as the ROLLIAD itself is dedicated, to the illustrious character, from whose hereditary name the Poem derives its title; and[1], as I some time since apprized the public, I had actually obtained his permission to lay this little work at his feet. No sooner, however, was he made acquainted with my after-thought of inscribing my book to your honour, but, with the liberality, which ever marks a great mind, he wrote to me of his own accord, declaring his compleat acquiescence in the propriety of the alteration. For if I may take the liberty of transcribing his own ingenuous and modest expression, “I am myself,” said he, “but a simple Rolle; SIR LLOYD KENYON is a Master of Rolls.”

Great ROLLO’s heir, whose cough, whose laugh, whose groan,

The’ Antæus EDMUND has so oft o’erthrown:

Whose cry of “question” silenc’d CHARLES’s sense;

That cry, more powerful than PITT’s eloquence;

Ev’n he, thus high in glory, as in birth,

Yields willing way to thy superior worth.

Indeed, if I had not been so happy as to receive this express sanction of Mr. ROLLE’s concurrence, I should nevertheless have thought myself justified in presuming it, from the very distinguished testimony which he has lately borne to your merits, by taking a demi-rampant of YOUR HONOUR for his crest; a circumstance, in my opinion, so highly complimentary to your honour, that I was studious to have it as extensively known as possible. I have therefore given directions to my Publisher, to exhibit your portrait, with the ROLLE ARMS, and Motto, by way of Vignette in the Title Page; that displayed, as I trust it will be, at the Window of every Bookseller in Great-Britain, it may thus attract the admiration of the most incurious, as they pass along the streets. This solicitude, to diffuse the knowledge of your person, as widely as your fame, may possibly occasion some little distress to your modesty; yet permit me to hope, SIR LLOYD, that the motive will plead my pardon; and, perhaps, even win the approbation of your smile; if you can be supposed to smile without offence to the gravity of that nature, which seems from your very birth to have marked you for a Judge.

Behold the’ Engraver’s mimic labours trace

The sober image of that sapient face:

See him, in each peculiar charm exact,

Below dilate it, and above contract;

For Nature thus, inverting her design,

From vulgar ovals hath distinguish’d thine:

See him each nicer character supply,

The pert no-meaning puckering round the eye,

The mouth in plaits precise demurely clos’d,

Each order’d feature, and each line compos’d,

Where Wisdom sits a-squat, in starch disguise,

Like Dulness couch’d, to catch us by surprise.

And now he spreads around thy pomp of wig,

In owl-like pride of legal honour’s big;

That wig, which once of curl on curl profuse,

In well-kept buckle stiff, and smugly spruce,

Deck’d the plain Pleader; then in nobler taste,

With well-frizz’d bush the’ Attorney-General grac’d;

And widely waving now with ampler flow,

Still with thy titles and thy fame shall grow,

Behold, SIR LLOYD, and while with fond delight

The dear resemblance feasts thy partial sight,

Smile, if thou canst; and, smiling on this book,

Cast the glad omen of one favouring look.

But it is on public grounds, that I principally wish to vindicate my choice of YOUR HONOUR for my Patron. The ROLLIAD, I have reason to believe, owed its existence to the [2] memorable speech of the Member of Devonshire on the first Discussion of the Westminster Scrutiny, when he so emphatically proved himself the genuine descendant of DUKE ROLLO; and in the noble contempt which he avowed, for the boasted rights of Electors, seemed to breathe the very soul of his great progenitor, who came to extirpate the liberties of Englishmen with the sword. It must be remembered, however, that Your Honour ministered the occasion to his glory. You, SIR LLOYD, have ever been reputed the immediate Author of the Scrutiny. Your opinion is said to have been privately consulted on the framing of the Return; and your public defence of the High-Bailiff’s proceeding, notoriously furnished MR. ROLLO, and the other friends of the Minister, with all the little argument, which they advanced against the objected exigency of the Writ. You taught them to reverence that holy thing, the Conscience of a Returning Officer, above all Law, Precedent, Analogy, Public Expediency, and the popular Right of Representation, to which our Forefathers erroneously paid religious respect, as to the most sacred franchise of our Constitution. You prevailed on them to manifest an impartiality singularly honourable; and to prefer the sanctity of this single Conscience, to a round dozen of the most immaculate consciences, chosen in the purest possible manner from their own pure House of Commons.

Thine is the glorious measure; thine alone:

Thee father of the Scrutiny, we own.

Ah! without thee what treasures had we lost,

More worth than twenty Scrutinies would cost!

To’ instruct the Vestry, and convince the House,

What Law from MURPHY! what plain sense from ROUS!

What wit from MULGRAVE! from DUNDAS, what truth!

What perfect virtue from the VIRTUOUS YOUTH!

What deep research from ARDEN the profound!

What argument from BEARCROFT ever sound!

By MUNCASTER, what generous offers made;

By HARDINGE, what arithmetic display’d!

And, oh! what rhetoric, from MAHON that broke

In printed speeches, which he never spoke!

Ah! without thee, what worth neglected long,

Had wanted still its dearest meed of song!

In vain high-blooded ROLLE, unknown to fame,

Had boasted still the honours of his name:

In vain had exercis’d his noble spleen

On BURKE and FOX—the ROLLIAD had not been.

But, alas! SIR LLOYD, at the very moment, while I am writing, intelligence has reached me, that the Scrutiny is at an end. Your favourite measure is no more. The child of your affection has met a sudden and a violent fate. I trust, however, that “the Ghost of the departed Scrutiny” (in the bold but beautiful language of MR. DUNDAS) will yet haunt the spot, where it was brought forth, where it was fostered, and where it fell. Like the Ghost of Hamlet it shall be a perturbed spirit, though it may not come in a questionable shape. It shall fleet before the eyes of those to whom it was dear, to admonish them, how they rush into future dangers; to make known the secret of its private hoards; or to confess to them the sins of its former days, and to implore their piety, that they would give peace to its shade, by making just reparation. Perhaps too, it may sometimes visit the murderer, like the ghost of Banquo, to dash his joys. It cannot indeed rise up in its proper form to push him from his seat, yet it may assume some other formidable appearance to be his eternal tormentor. These, however, are but visionary consolations, while every loyal bosom must feel substantial affliction from the late iniquitous vote, tyrannically compelling the High-Bailiff to make a return after an enquiry of nine months only; especially when you had so lately armed him with all power necessary to make his enquiry effectual.

[3] Ah! how shall I the’ unrighteous vote bewail?

Again corrupt Majorities prevail.

Poor CORBETT’s Conscience, tho’ a little loth,

Must blindly gape, and gulp the’ untasted oath;

If he, whose conscience never felt a qualm,

If GROGAN fail the good man’s doubts to calm.

No more shall MORGAN, for his six months’ hire,

Contend, that FOX should share the’ expence of fire;

Whole Sessions shall he croak, nor bear away The price, that paid the silence of a day: No more, till COLLICK some new story hatch, Long-winded ROUS for hours shall praise Dispatch; COLLICK to Whigs and Warrants back shall slink, And ROUS, a Pamphleteer, re-plunge in ink: MURPHY again French Comedies shall steal, Call them his own, and garble, to conceal; Or, pilfering still, and patching without grace His thread-bare shreds of Virgil out of place, With Dress and Scenery, Attitude and Trick, Swords, Daggers, Shouts, and Trumpets in the nick, With Ahs! and Ohs! Starts, Pauses, Rant, and Rage, Give a new GRECIAN DAUGHTER to the stage: But, Oh, SIR CECIL!—Fled to shades again From the proud roofs, which here he raised in vain, He seeks, unhappy! with the Muse to cheer His rising griefs, or drown them in small-beer! Alas! the Muse capricious flies the hour When most we need her, and the beer is sour: Mean time Fox thunders faction uncontroul’d, Crown’d with fresh laurels, from new triumphs bold.

These general evils arising from the termination of the Scrutiny, YOUR HONOUR, I doubt not, will sincerely lament in common with all true lovers of their King and Country. But in addition to these, you, SIR LLOYD, have particular cause to regret, that [4] “the last hair in this tail of procrastination” is plucked. I well know, what eager anxiety you felt to establish the suffrage, which you gave, as the delegate of your Coach-horses: and I unaffectedly condole with you, that you have lost this great opportunity of displaying your unfathomable knowledge and irresistible logic to the confusion of your enemies. How learnedly would you have quoted the memorable instance of Darius, who was elected King of Persia by the casting vote of his Horse! Though indeed the merits of that election have been since impeached, not from any alledged illegality of the vote itself, if it had been fairly given; but because some jockeyship has been suspected, and the voter, it has been said, was bribed the night before the election! How ably too would you have applied the case of Caligula’s horse, who was chosen Consul of Rome! For if he was capable of being elected (you would have said) à fortiori, there could have been no natural impediment to his being an elector; since omne majus continet in se minus, and the trust is certainly greater to fill the first offices of the state, than to have one share among many in appointing to them. Neither can I suppose that you would have omitted so grave and weighty an authority as Captain Gulliver, who, in the course of his voyages, discovered a country, where Horses discharged every Duty of Political Society. You might then have passed to the early history of our own island, and have expatiated on the known veneration in which horses were held by our Saxon Ancestors; who, by the way, are supposed also to have been the founders of Parliaments. You might have touched on their famous standard; digressed to the antiquities of the White Horse, in Berkshire, and other similar monuments in different counties; and from thence have urged the improbability, that when they instituted elections, they should have neglected the rights of an animal, thus highly esteemed and almost sanctified among them. I am afraid indeed, that with all your Religion and Loyalty, you could not have made much use of the White Horse of Death, or the White Horse of Hanover. But, for a bonne bouche, how beautifully might you have introduced your favourite maxim of ubi ratio, ibi jus! and to prove the reason of the thing, how convincingly might you have descanted, in an elegant panegyric on the virtues and abilities of horses, from Xanthus the Grecian Conjuring Horse, whose prophecies are celebrated by Homer, down to the Learned Little Horse over Westminster Bridge! with whom you might have concluded, lamenting that, as he is not an Elector, the Vestry could not have the assistance of one, capable of doing so much more justice to the question than yourself!—Pardon me, SIR LLOYD, that I have thus attempted to follow the supposed course of your oratory. I feel it to be truly inimitable. Yet such was the impression made on my mind by some of YOUR HONOUR’s late reasonings respecting the Scrutiny, that I could not withstand the involuntary impulse of endeavouring, for my own improvement, to attain some faint likeness of that wonderful pertinency and cogency, which I so much admired in the great original.

How shall the neighing kind thy deeds requite,

Great YAHOO Champion of the HOUYHNHNM’s right?

In grateful memory may thy dock-tail pair,

Unarm’d convey thee with sure-footed care.

Oh! may they, gently pacing o’er the stones,

With no rude shock annoy thy batter’d bones,

Crush thy judicial cauliflow’r, and down

Shower the mix’d lard and powder o’er thy gown;

Or in unseemly wrinkles crease that band,

Fair work of fairer LADY KENYON’s hand.

No!—May the pious brutes, with measur’d swing,

Assist the friendly motion of the spring,

While golden dreams of perquisites and fees

Employ thee, slumbering o’er thine own decrees.

But when a Statesman in St. Stephen’s walls

Thy Country claims thee, and the Treasury calls,

To pour thy splendid bile in bitter tide

On hardened sinners who with Fox divide,

Then may they, rattling on in jumbling trot,

With rage and jolting make thee doubly hot,

Fire thy Welch blood, enflamed with zeal and leeks,

And kindle the red terrors of thy cheeks,

Till all thy gather’d wrath in furious fit

On RIGBY bursts—unless he votes with PITT.

I might here, SIR LLOYD, launch into a new panegyric on the subject of this concluding couplet. But in this I shall imitate your moderation, who, for reasons best known to yourself, have long abandoned to MR ROLLE[5] “those loud and repeated calls on notorious defaulters, which will never be forgiven by certain patriots.” Besides, I consider your public-spirited behaviour in the late Election and Scrutiny for Westminster, as the great monument of your fame to all posterity. I have, therefore, dwelt on this—more especially as it was immediately connected with the origin of the ROLLIAD—till my dedication has run to such a length, that I cannot think of detaining your valuable time any longer; unless merely to request your HONOUR’s zealous protection of a work which may be in some sort attributed to you, as its ultimate cause, which is embellished with your portrait, and which now records in this address, the most brilliant exploit of your political glory.

Choak’d by a Roll, ’tis said, that OTWAY died; OTWAY the Tragic Muse’s tender pride. Oh! may my ROLLE to me, thus favour’d, give A better fate;—that I may eat, and live!

I am, YOUR HONOUR’s

Most obedient,

Most respectful,

Most devoted, humble servant,

THE EDITOR.

[1] In a postscript originally subjoined to the eighth Number.

[2] Mr. Rolle said, “he could not be kept all the summer debating about the rights of the Westminster electors. His private concerns were of more importance to him; than his right as a Westminster Elector.”

[3] I shall give the Reader in one continued note, what information I think necessary for understanding these verses. During the six months that the Scrutiny continued in St. Martin’s, the most distinguished exhibition of Mr. Morgan’s talents was the maintenance of an argument, that Mr. Fox ought to pay half the expence of fire in the room where the Witnesses attended. The learned Gentleman is familiarly called Frog, to which I presume the Author alludes in the word croak. Mr. Rous spoke two hours to recommend Expedition. At the time the late Parliament was dissolved, he wrote two Pamphlets in favour of the Ministry. I have forgot the titles of these pamphlets, as probably the reader has too, if he ever knew them. However, I can assure him of the fact.—Mr. Collick, the Witness-General of Sir Cecil Wray, is a Hair-Merchant and Justice of Peace. Sir Cecil’s taste both for Poetry and Small-beer are well known, as is the present unfinished state of his newly-fronted house in Pall-Mall.

[4] “This appears to be the last hair in the tail of procrastination” The Master of the Rolls, who first used this phrase, is a most eloquent speaker. See Lord Mulg. Essays on Eloquence, Vol. II.

[5] Mr. Ridgway tells me, he thinks there is something like these words in one of the Reviews, where the ROLLIAD is criticised.

SHORT ACCOUNT

OF THE FAMILY OF THE

ROLLOS, now ROLLES, FAITHFULLY EXTRACTED FROM THE RECORDS OF THE HERALD’S OFFICE.

JOHN ROLLE, Esq. is descended from the ancient Duke ROLLO, of Normandy; ROLLO passed over into Britain, anno 983, where he soon begat another ROLLO, upon the wife of a Saxon drummer. Our young ROLLO was distinguished by his gigantic stature, and, as we learn from ODERICUS VITALIS, was slain by Hildebrand, the Danish Champion, in a fit of jealousy. We find in Camden, that the race of the ROLLOS fell into adversity in the reign of Stephen, and in the succeeding reign, GASPAR DE ROLLO was an Ostler in Denbighshire.—But during the unhappy contests of York and Lancaster, William de Wyrcester, and the continuator of the annals of Croyland, have it, that the ROLLOS became Scheriffes of Devon. “Scheriffi Devonienses ROLLI fuerunt”—and in another passage, “arrestaverunt Debitores plurime ROLLORUM”—hence a doubt in Fabian, whether this ROLLO was not Bailiff, ipse potius quam Scheriffus. From this period, however, they gradually advanced in circumstances; ROLLO, in Henry the VIIIth, being amerced in 800 marks for pilfering two manchetts of beef from the King’s buttery, the which, saith Selden, facillime payavit.

In 7th and 8th of Phil. and Mar. three ROLLOS indeed were gibetted for piracy, and from that date the family changed the final O of the name into an E. In the latter annals of the ROLLOS now ROLLES, but little of consequence is handed down to us. We have it that TIMOTHY ROLLE of Plympton, in the 8th of Queen Anne, endowed three alms-houses in said town. JEREMIAH his second son was counted the fattest man of his day, and DOROTHEA ROLLE his third cousin died of a terrible dysentery. From this period the ROLLES have burst upon public notice, with such a blaze of splendour, as renders all further accounts of this illustrious race entirely unnecessary.