Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems - Thomas Green Fessenden - Страница 5
ARGUMENT.
ОглавлениеGreat Doctor Caustic is a sage
Whose merit gilds this iron age,
And who deserves, as you’ll discover
When you have conn’d this canto over,
For grand discoveries and inventions,
A dozen peerages and pensions;
But, having met with rubs and breakers,
From Perkins’ metal mischief makers;
With but three halfpence in his pocket,
In verses blazing like sky rocket,
He first sets forth in this petition
His high deserts but low condition.
From garret high, with cobwebs hung,
The poorest wight that ever sung,
Most gentle Sirs, I come before ye,
To tell a lamentable story.
What makes my sorry case the sadder,
I once stood high on Fortune’s ladder;[1]
From whence contrive the fickle jilt did,
That your petitioner should be tilted.
And soon th’ unconscionable flirt,
Will tread me fairly in the dirt,
Unless, perchance, these pithy lays
Procure me pence as well as praise.
Already doom’d to hard quill-driving,
’Gainst spectred poverty still striving,
When e’er I doze, from vigils pale,
Dame Fancy locks me fast in jail.
Necessity, though I am no wit,
Compels me now to turn a poet;
Not born, but made, by transmutation,
And chymick process, call’d—starvation!
Though poet’s trade, of all that I know,
Requires the least of ready rhino,
I find a deficit of cash is
An obstacle to cutting dashes.
For gods and godesses, who traffic
In cantos, odes, and lays seraphic,
Who erst Arcadian whistle blew sharp,
Or now attune Apollo’s jews-harp,
Have sworn they will not loan me, gratis,
Their jingling sing-song apparatus,
Nor teach me how, nor where to chime in
My tintinabulum of rhyming.[2]
What then occurs? A lucky hit—
I’ve found a substitute for wit;
On Homer’s pinions mounting high,
I’ll drink Pierian puddle dry.[3]
Beddoes (bless the good doctor) has
Sent me a bag full of his gas,[4]
Which snuffed the nose up, makes wit brighter,
And eke a dunce an airy writer.
With this a brother bard, inflated,
Was so stupendously elated,
He tower’d, like Garnerin’s balloon,
Nor stopp’d, like half wits, at the moon:
But scarce had breath’d three times before he
Was hous’d in heaven’s high upper story,[5]
Where mortals none but poets enter,
Above where Mah’met’s ass dar’d venture.
Strange things he saw, and those who know him
Have said that, in his Epic Poem,[6]
To be complete within a year hence,
They’ll make a terrible appearance.
And now, to set my verses going,
Like “Joan of Arc,” sublimely flowing,
I’ll follow Southey’s bold exemple,
And snuff a sconce full, for a sample.
Good Sir, enough! enough already!
No more, for Heaven’s sake!—steady!—steady!
Confound your stuff!—why how you sweat me!
I’d rather swallow all mount Etna!
How swiftly turns this giddy world round,
Like tortur’d top, by truant twirl’d round;
While Nature’s capers wild amaze me,
The beldam’s crack’d or Caustic crazy![7]
I’m larger grown from head to tail
Than mammoth, elephant, or whale!—
Now feel a “tangible extension”
Of semi-infinite dimension!—
Inflated with supreme intensity,
I fill three quarters of immensity!
Should Phœbus come this way, no doubt,
But I could blow his candle out!
This earth’s a little dirty planet,
And I’ll no longer help to man it,
But off will flutter, in a tangent,
And make a harum scarum range on’t!
Stand ye appall’d! quake! quiver! quail!
For lo I stride a comet’s tail!
If my deserts you fail t’ acknowledge,
I’ll drive it plump against your college!
But if your Esculapian band
Approach my highness, cap in hand,
And show vast tokens of humility,
I’ll treat your world with due civility.
But now, alas! a wicked wag
Has pull’d away the gaseous bag:
From heaven, where thron’d, like Jove I sat,
I’m fall’n! fall’n! fall’n! down, flat! flat! flat![8]
Thus, as the ancient story goes,
When o’er Avernus flew the crows,
They were so stench’d in half a minute,
They giddy grew and tumbled in it:
And thus a blade, who is too handy
To help himself to wine or brandy,
At first gets higher, then gets lower,
Then tumbles dead drunk on the floor!
Such would have been my sad case, if
I’d taken half another tiff;
And even now, I cannot swear,
I’m not as mad as a March hare!
How these confounded gases serve us!
But Beddoes says that I am nervous,
And that this oxyd gas of nitre
Is bad for such a nervous writer!
Indeed, Sir, Doctor, very odd it is
That you should deal in such commodities,
Which drive a man beside his wits,
And women to hysteric fits![9]
Now, since this wildering gas inflation
Is not the thing for inspiration,
I’ll take a glass of cordial gin,
Ere my sad story I begin;
And then proceed with courage stout,
From “hard-bound brains” to hammer out
My case forlorn, in doleful ditty,
To melt your worships’ hearts to pity.
Sirs, I have been in high condition,
A right respectable Physician;
And passed, with men of shrewd discerning,
For wight of most prodigious learning;
For I could quote, with flippant ease,
Grave Galen and Hippocrates,
Brown, Cullen, Sydenham and such men,
Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen.[10]
In all disorders was so clever,
From tooth ache, up to yellow fever,
That I by learned men was reckon’d
Don Esculapius the second!
No case to me was problematic;
Pains topical or symptomatic,
From aching head, to gouty toes,
The hidden cause I could disclose.
Minute examiner of Nature,
And most sagacious operator,
I could descern, prescribe, apply
And cure[11] disease in louse’s eye.
And insects smaller, ten degrees
Than those which float in summer’s breeze,
Drugg’d with cathartics and emetics,
Then doctor’d off with diuretics.
I had a curious little lancet,
Your worship could not help but fancy it,
By which I show’d with skill surprising,
The whole art of flea-botomizing!—
And with it oft inoculated
(At which friend Jenner’ll be elated)
Flies, fleas, and gnats, with cow-pock matter,
And not one soul took small-pox a’ter!—
Could take a microscopic mite,
Invisible to naked sight;
Ad infinitum, could divide it,
For times unnumber’d have I tried it.
With optic glass, of great utility,
Could make the essence of nihility
To cut a most enormous figure,
As big as St Paul’s church, or bigger!
Could tell, and never be mistaken,
What future oaks were in an acorn;
And even calculate, at pleasure,
The cubic inches they would measure.
Scotland could never boast a wight,
Could match OURSELF at second sight.[12]
Nor Wales a wizard, who so well
Could destiny’s decrees foretel.
For we’d a precious knack at seeing,
Not only matters not in being,
But ever and anon would still be
Foreseeing things which never will be—[13]
Great manufacturer of weather
Nine Lapland witches, clubb’d together,
With all the elements a stewing,
Are not our match at tempest brewing.
For many a popular almanac,
Within say half a century back,
We foretold every shine and storm
Which heaven can burnish or deform.
Though no two calendars agreed,
All were infallible indeed;
Of course no conjurer can stand higher
Than Caustic as a prophesier.
Discover’d worlds within the pale
Of tip-end of a tadpole’s tail,
And took possession of the same
In our good friend, Sir Joseph’s name;[14]
And soon shall publish, by subscription,
A topographical description
Of worlds aforesaid, which shall go forth
In fool’s cap folio, gilt, and so forth,—
Could tell how far a careless fly
Might chance to turn this globe awry,
If flitting round, in giddy circuit,
With leg or wing, he kick or jerk it!—[15]
The mystic characters of Nature,
We read like Spurtzheim or Lavater,
To us her lineaments are labels,
Which stare like capitals on play bills.
From bearings of the different osses,
And shapes of forehead, chin, proboscis,
The frons and occiput’s topography,
Can write a man’s complete biography.
Have drawn nine million diagrams,
Which wags denominate flim flams,
Though worth your worshipful reliance
For shortest outlines of the science.
By dint of scientific thumps
Made famous phrenologic bumps,
And always found the effect was greater
Than when such bumps were made by nature.
Developements, thus manufactured,
Caused many a thick skull to be fractured
But pity well deserves defiance
When e’er she thwarts the march of science.
Thus Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, and others,
Our revolutionizing brothers,
Got up French freedom’s cruel farces,
And made worse bumps than ours in masses.
And Godwin, too, in substance said,
Our bodies politic must be bled;
Man’s only mode of melioration
Is doctoring off one generation,—[16]
And substituting in its place
A spotless super-human race,
Pure as an unborn infant’s dream,
Of moonshine made, and moved by steam.
We have for sale the seeds of bumps,
Which, dibbled in the heads of gumps,
Take root without the aid of thumps
And grow as large as camels’ humps.
Can take a wicked ugly tyke,
And every organ we dislike
Pull out or drive in, at a venture,
Thus change each bump to an indenture.
Protuberant destructiveness,
Placed in our phrenologic press,
Is render’d, by its power immense,
Exuberant benevolence.
In infancy, in half a trice,
We thus extinguish every vice,
Before it has had time to harden,
As easily as weed a garden.
We keep fine faculties ready made,
Thus beat dame Nature at her trade
Of manufacturing mental powers,
For hers are not half up to ours.
We make a thing we call Nousometer,
Or Phrenological Micrometer;
The grand quintessence of inventions
For measuring the mind’s dimensions.
This shows men’s vices and propensities,
Their aggravations and intensities,
By marks indelible, and plain-
Ly legible as that on Cain.
Nousometers, our hope and trust is,
Will supersede our courts of justice,
By proving guilt in all gradations,
In style of Euclid’s demonstrations.
To crown our cheap mode of conviction
By ready punishment’s infliction,
The rabblement will string up gratis
The convicts of our apparatus.
By said machine and foresaid books,
Rogues, stigmatized with hanging looks,
We whip and kick and hang ad libitum,
Or take the liberty to gibbet ’em.
If you’re dissatisfied with that,
Our all-efficient verbum sat
Will presto raise almighty mobs,
Inured to cruel dirty jobs.
Those LL. D.s’ of Lynch’s law[17]
Don’t value dignity a straw,
Will thump your worships into chowder
To save expense of ropes and powder.
Those ne plus ultras of atrocity,
By blind and tiger-like ferocity
Disgraceful deeds and ruthless ravages
Have shown themselves outrageous savages.
Yet, whereas Justice has’nt yet hung them,
Nor showers of grape-shot rain’d among them,
We’ll use the rogues, when we think best,
For executing our behest.
Thus reptiles of the worst descriptions
Coerced the obstinate Egyptians;
And serpents erst by stings and bites
Punish’d backsliding Israelites.
Judge Lynch, thou dephlegmated evil,
Double distill’d essence of the devil,
Total depravity, we would
Hit you still harder if we could.
It makes one truly melancholic
To see your mobs, most diabolic,
Plunder and murder, with impunity,
Innocent members of community.
You talk of liberty, what stuff!
A mob’s a monarch, sure enough,
And one true liberty most dreads,
A tyrant with ten thousand heads.
There is no despot in creation
However high and firm his station,
Who feels not more responsibility
Than Lynch’s terrible mobility.
Our institutes of education
Are under moral obligation
To use said implement of ours
For graduating mental powers.
This criminal and dunce detector
May save from many a useless lecture,
From toiling quarter after quarter
In filling riddle sieves with water.
We license none for teaching schools,
Unless by Gall’s and Spurzheim’s rules
We find his sconce, in every section,
Bears phrenological inspection.
We apprehended Brougham’s schoolmaster,
And took his head sheer off—in plaster,
And found his bumps with ours accord
Before we let him “go abroad.”
Our said mind-measurer may be set
To sound the cunningest coquette,
And ascertain by mensuration
The limits of her inclination.
Heu quantum suff, we are afraid this
Developement will shock the ladies;
But, hush, my dears, for time to come,
No mummy ever was more mum.
Our far-famed system also suits
The physiology of brutes;
Its application never fails
From mammoth down to snakes and snails.
Have fourteen folios, stereotypes
Call’d craniology of snipes,[18]
All which will figure, with propriety,
In annals of a learn’d society.
As manufacturing Phrenologist
Our articles need no apologist,
Because our skill is ten times greater,
As said before, than that of Nature.
Nature, although in some things clever,
Has but the fulcrum and the lever
To her friend Doctor Caustic given,
To elevate this world to heaven.
We have made many a clever notion
To perpetrate perpetual motion
Which went to perpetuity’s borders,
Then stopp’d a bit for further orders.
Though said machines would hardly trace
The farthest links of time or space,
We never knew them fail to wend
Quite to eternity’s hither end.
For women, uglier than Gorgons,
We manufacture beauty’s organs,
And give them splendid shapes and faces
Which might be envied by the Graces.
Pimples like pepper pods, warts like squashes,
Vanish before our beauty washes;[19]
By help of corsets, stays and boddices,
We transform dowdies into goddesses.[20]
Nice ladies’ minds we manufacture,
Cast in a mould without a fracture,
And sell the precious things in lots,
An art we learn’d of Doctor Watts.
And o’er the shop where these are made,
In nine inch letters is portray’d,
Fine female faculties form’d and furnished,
With genteel educations burnished.
This shop supplies the place, no doubt,
Of seminaries talk’d about,
But never put in operation,
Fitted for female education.[21]
We fabricate spruce dandy noddies,
With souls adapted to their bodies,
To wit so exquisitely small
They might as well have none at all.[22]
When we discern an abstract right,
We press it ever main and might;
Hold all correct, which suits our fancies,
And never yield to circumstances.
We cannot brook the serpentine,
Our march is onward, one straight line,
Nor flood nor fire impedes our way,
Lickitacut—devil to pay!
We prompt or sanction all procedures
Of Slavery-Abolition-Leaders,
Who “go ahead” with more display
Than a whirlwind’s march o’er a dusty way.
Though southern blacks, to all appearances,
Are injured by our interferences,
Still right is right, your most obedient
Cares not a fig about th’ expedient.
Let loose the blacks at any rate,
Without delay, without debate,
Their clanging chains asunder snap
Suddenly as by thunder clap.
Huzza then, for amalgamation
To change our “dough-faced population,”
In course of one more generation,
To a nice copper-color’d nation.
Reader it may be you’re a lady,
Fair as the blush of morn in May day,—
And not much smitten with our plan
Of union with a color’d man.
Bah! bah! my dear, I tell you this is
The silliest of prejudices;
Cupid will duly elevate him,
And Hymen will amalgamate him.
Thus one Othello was, you know,
Black as the plumage of a crow,
And yet the white Miss Desdemona
Loved him as well as flies love honey.
The car of Venus, bards have sung,
Was drawn by doves, when I was young,
But then, were black birds substituted,
Ourself for one were better suited.
We’re rather darkish hued ourself,
Yet will annihilate the elf,
Who says in earnest, or in jokes
We’re not as good as whiter folks.
The only color of objection
To our said tawny predilection
Is this, ’t will ruin the machinery
Of amatory poets’ scenery.
Bright eyes, pink lips, and cheeks of roses,
Lily-complexions, Grecian noses,
Fine necks, and so forth, alabasters,
No more be themes for poetasters.
But then the Muse’s votary may
In rhymes like these his fair portray,—
My Phillis has a natural varnish
Which time nor accident can’t tarnish;
No sickly, pale, unripen’d maid,
“Dyed in the wool,” she cannot fade;
Essence of ebony and logwood,
And sweeter than the flowers of dogwood.
Lives there a bard who would not glory
In such epistles amatory,
Possessing that uncommon quality,
A sprinkling of originality.
On advocates of colonization
Shower demi-johns of indignation!—
Annihilate the knaves and dolts,
With Caustic’s Patent Thunderbolts!
And, be it known, with due civility,
To our Columbian nobility,
Fewer black hearts and more black faces
Would much improve their waning races.
To lose our jetty population
Would take the shine from our great nation,
And make us all like old shoes, lacking
A coat of Day and Martin’s blacking.
We’re glad to find New England beauties
For black men’s rights and white men’s duties
Enlisting their resistless charms,
For all men yield to ladies’ arms.
Do, dears, make us your generalissimo,
An all important trust that is, you know,
And we the hero, who can fill it
With dazzling glory, if you will it.
Bostonia’s beautiful brigade,
With Doctor Caustic’s flag display’d,
Suppose you make a general levy
To swell the columns of your bevy.
Bright key-stones of the Social Arch,
Left foot foremost, forward march!
Our spunk is up, our prowess ample
On anti-union rogues to trample.
Ourself will lead the ladies’ army on,
Charge at its head like Scott’s brave Marmion;
You fight as angels fought before
In heaven, so Milton says, of yore.
The swart south shivers like a leaf,
M’Stuffie shoots himself for grief
At finding all resistance vain,
As battling with a hurricane.
We hold in utter execration
What ’s styled the Temperance Reformation.
To live without good alcohol
Is tantamount to tol-de-rol;—
For nine tenths of our doctors’ fees
From Bacchanalian devotees
And votaries of Sir Richard Rum
Have ever, and will ever come.
Incipient inebriation
From vinous alcoholization
Is indispensable now-a-days
To make our patriotism blaze.
Dinner harangues would be so so,
Stump oratory would not go
If wine and whiskey did not aid
The speechifying and parade.
And where’s the patriot, who boasts
Of excellent cold water toasts?
If such things were, and had some merit,
They must be destitute of spirit.
If Temperance should turn the scale,
And total abstinence prevail,
Rhyme-mongers would be flatter still,
A million lines, not worth a mill.
Lord Byron’s verse, so highly prized,
Had fail’d to be immortalized,
Unless the noble bard had been
Exalted on the wings of gin.
As to Anacreontic lays,
A Moore could make no more displays,
Ay, Thomas Moore could never more
Make Bacchanalians shout encore.
If Temperance chaps wont suffer wine
Nor gin t’ inspire the maudlin nine,
Some verse by critics dubb’d divine
Will seem almost as flat as mine.
Horace says dulce est desipere,[23]
Drink till your way home’s rather slippery,
But don’t indulge in gross ebriety,
Save in the very best society.
The lower orders too, we think,
Unless addicted to strong drink,
Might rise to riches and renown,
Thus turn society up side down.
Let paupers, therefore, swig away,
With gin and whiskey soak their clay,
For beggars, somebody says or sings,
When drunk as lords are rich as kings.
And if by temperance and frugality,
Shoe binding should be changed to quality,
The mounting mobocratic masses
May over-top US UPPER CLASSES.
The readiest way to keep them down
Is this, give every jade and clown
“Lots” of intoxicating stuff,
Gin, whiskey, and new rum enough;
And in that case, I’ll bet my eyes,
The rogues will never, never rise;
Though placed in heaven, they could not fail
To be Sir Richard Rum’s canaille.
If ardent spirit is not handy,
Cider’s almost as good as brandy,
And strong beer serves to drench one’s dust,
And keep alive the drunkard’s thirst.
There’s nothing like intoxication
To thin off extra population,
And keep it at respectful distance
Behind the means of man’s subsistence.
By your good leave, I question whether
War, famine, pestilence, together,
Could fill, of alcohol, the place,
In doctoring off the human race.
Then, paltry pauper, swig away,
With gin and whiskey soak your clay,
Till you’ve diluted it to mortar,
Á filthy mass of mud and water.
Drink till th’ experiment you make
Of how much liquid fire ’twill take
To make a drunkard burn like tinder,
And change a nuisance to a cinder.
The devil, as Milton represented,
Gunpowder, long ago invented;
But genius always finds its level,
And man, of course, has beaten the devil.
The wight, who alcohol found out,
Surpass’d the fiend, beyond a doubt;
He, therefore, merits more renown,
And ought to wear a hotter crown.
We live on vegetable diet,
And will not let a man be quiet,
Unless the evidence is ample
That he is copying our example.
Though brother Graham, it is said,
Stuffs christians with unbolted bread,
Our belly timber, quite as good,
Is made of any kind of wood.[24]
You know the common farmer takes
His white oak wood for fencing stakes,
But Lady Caustic fits in style,
Superior white oak steaks, to broil.
She’s famous, too, for white oak cheese,
Harder than granite, ten degrees;
So hard that we’re obliged to take it
To some trip-hammer works to break it.
Good hemlock bark philosophized
In soup, by epicures is prized,
A paste of button-wood, quoth I,
Is cap-a-pie to cap a pie.
A stick of bass-wood, being bevill’d
By gastronomic art bedevill’d,
Or served as Welchmen cook their cheese,
A man of taste will always please.
From saw dust, bran and pebble stones,
And quantum suff. of pounded bones,
We form the most delicious dishes
That e’er indulged the gourmand’s wishes.
When our great plans are brought to pass,
Mankind en masse may go to grass;
And every rover, will moreover,
Enjoy his lot like pig in clover.
We next crave liberty to mention
Another wonderful invention;
A sort of stenographic still,
Alias a Patent Author’s mill.
We fill its hopper with a set
Of letters of the alphabet,
And turn out eulogies, orations,
Or themes for July celebrations,—
News, both domestic and extraneous,
Essays, and extracts miscellaneous,
We manufacture by the means
Of said superlative machines.
This last invention also reaches
To making Congress members’ speeches;
Would they adopt it, though we’ve said it,
T’would cent per cent enhance their credit.
We hammer’d out a lawyer’s jaw mill,
Which went by water like a saw-mill
With so much clamor, fire and fury,
It thunderstruck the judge and jury.
A syllogism, which embraces
All knotty, complicated cases,
We fabricated and applied
To every cause which could be tried.
Oft have I quench’d man’s vital spark:
“The soul’s old cottage,” cold and dark,
Again, in spite of death, our grand ill,
Illumed as one would light a candle.[25]
Display’d a mode in Latin thesis
To pick the human frame to pieces;
The parts deposit by themselves,
Like mineral specimens on shelves;—
And having scour’d off every particle
Which clogg’d the motions of the article,
The vital functions to restore
To healthier action than before.[26]
Thus, brother Ovid said or sung once,
The Gods of old folks could make young ones[27]
By process, not one whit acuter,
Than making new pots from old pewter.
So famed Aldini, erst in France,
Led dead folks down a country-dance,
And made them rigadoon and chasse
As well as when alive, I dare say!
And I once offer’d, very prettily,
To patch up Frenchmen kill’d in Italy,
Though shot, or stabb’d, or hack’d with fell blows,
As wives patch coats when out at elbows!
Profoundly versed in chymic science,
I could bid matter’s law defiance;
Was up to nature, or beyond her,
In mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder![28]
And by a shock of electricity,
(I tell the truth without duplicity)
I did (what won’t again be soon done)
E’en fairly knock the man in the moon down![29]
On ocean’s bottom we can travel,
Thorough mud and thorough gravel;
While over head hoarse tempests hurtle
With more adroitness than a turtle.
Priestly first caused our head to teem
With this most eligible scheme,
Supplied us vital air, which stuff
We took like macaroni snuff.[30]
Encamp’d beneath a huge ice island,
For nineteen years we didn’t come nigh land,
And could have staid, as well as not,
E’en had the sea been boiling hot.
In car triumphant, drawn by whales,
Tackled to their tremendous tails,
We rode sublime, and claim’d a right
To everything which hove in sight.
Old Neptune’s realm, ’tis our intent,
To make a Yankee-settlement,
And if Britannia interferes[31]
We’il twist her ugly lion’s ears.
An Iceland burning mountain’s gorge
We metamorphos’d to a forge,
And made therein as many as
Ten thousand tons of solid gas.
This we can let off at our leisure,
Like Shakspeare’s conjurer, wield at pleasure
The explosive elements of thunder,
With power to rive the globe asunder.
And if the theory of Babbage[32]
Is worth a single head of cabbage,
This grand plenipotent gas of ours
Will supersede all moving powers.
With this will drive aerial cars,
Send hourly coaches to the stars,
A lightning opposition line
Would be a snail compared to mine.
We seized the moon, by mickle strength,
And brought her down, within arm’s length,—
And made her, under our protection,
Submit to critical inspection.
Her Natural History and Topography,
With plates of Pendleton’s lithography,
We mean to print and publish soon,
And call it Mirror of the Moon.
Like us, was never man besides
To calculate aerial tides;
Though Volney undertook to do it
He wanted science to go through it.[33]
But we can let your worships know
Which way, next year the wind will blow,
And indicate without verbosity,
The measure of its mean velocity.
We gagg’d sage Darwin’s polar bear,
And would not let him “vomit air;”[34]
Thus spoil’d the Boreal ventilator,
And made a vacuum at the equator.
And then, by Doctor Priestley’s aid,
A vital atmosphere was made,
And stretch’d abroad, and found to answer,
From Capricorn quite on to Cancer.
We set an air balloon in motion
To float on th’ atmospheric ocean,
Annex’d a log, which never fail’d,
To give the distance which it sail’d:
And form’d a rudder, I assure it ye,
By which we steer’d with great security,
And could make good our destination
To any harbor in creation.
And we had nineteen pair of oars,
All mann’d with philosophic rowers,
Could therefore sail without a breeze,
Or stem a hurricane with ease.[35]
We now make public our intention
By aid of said superb invention,
To send a well arm’d air balloon
To take and colonize the moon.
A most inveterate believer
In foreign source of yellow fever,
We say his sconce must be fuliginous,
Who holds that plague to be indigenous.
As to th’ extent of its dominion
We’ll give our medical opinion;
When next we greet your worships, please
To give security for fees.
This dire disorder is contagious
And its contagion is outrageous,[36]
’Twill rage like wild-fire, anywhere,
On dryest soil, in purest air.
It is an animalcule, which
Is propagated like the itch,—
Communicated like small pox,
But can’t be bred in dirty docks.
From patient’s breath an emanation,
By contact or approximation
It may, as learned men have stated,
Be everywhere disseminated.
From friends infected, children, wives,
Let all men scamper then, for lives;
The wretches shun like Charon’s ferry,
And leave the dead themselves to bury.
’T is true some simpletons have said
A kind of fever may be bred
By heat conjoin’d with putrefaction,
Which suits contagionists to a fraction.
They tell you, if these causes may
Produce the plague in Africa,
It would, to common sense, appear
They might effect the fever here.
That true philosophy expects
From all like causes like effects;
For Nature never play’d a prank
To cheat us, like a mountebank.
But these dull dolts don’t understand
That in “Columbia’s happy land,”
Nature, for sake of “Freedom’s cause,”
Will set aside her general laws.
Said yellow fever can endure
Nothing offensive or impure,
Bad water or mephitic air
Or dead cats in a thoroughfare.
Therefore, good cits, in sultry weather
Collect your dirtiness together,
And then contrive to lodge it pretty
Nigh to the centre of the city.
The fever, meeting such a mound,
Will turn about and quit the ground,
And leave the fortunate dirt-protected
Inhabitants, quite uninfected.
Filth, on earth’s surface, it is clear,
Its like attracts from th’ atmosphere,
And always leaves a pure vicinity,
By laws of chemical affinity.[37]
Our citizens, their next resource
Should cause a “social intercourse,”
By perforating banks and bounds
’Twixt vaults and wells and burying-grounds.
For such good management ensures
Against expense in digging sewers;
Because a well, ’tis very plain,
Serve all its neighborhood for a drain.
These things accomplish’d ’twill be very
Correct their relatives to bury
Scarce under ground, in the most populous
And busy part of the metropolis.
For ’twould be decorous, at least.
In memory of the dear deceased,
At once to answer two good ends,
To drink to and to drink our friends.
Thus Artemisia, ’twas I think,
Made her dead husband diet drink,
And thereby, probably enough,
Saved gallipots of doctor’s stuff.
Proceed to scoop each populous place in
To something very like a basin,
And let the centre of your mart
Be on or near the lowest part.
Well, after all these things are finish’d,
Let no man’s efforts be diminish’d,
But this good maxim keep in view,
That nought is done if aught’s to do.
Then fall too, gentlemen, and grub
Up every root and tree and shrub,
Each trace of vegetation found
In town and out, for ten miles round.
Your “useful labors” to complete
In every square, side-walk and street,
By way of ornament then please
To set out Bohun Upas trees.
If after all the fiend we find
Is not to emigrate inclined,
But like too many a foreign caitiff
Declares on oath he is a native,
To counteract him, my advice is
To tow us down the polar ices,
And when a field or two is brought us,
’Twill drive him into winter quarters.
This thing your worships well know can
Be done on Doctor Darwin’s plan,
And ’tis the best work, past a doubt,
Our gun boats can be set about.
Paulo majora nunc canamus,[38]
And hope the public will not blame us
If we should soar, (’tis our intention,)
Above your worship’s comprehension.
We’ve form’d the most tremendous plan,
Which ever stretch’d the mind of man,
And which to nothing less aspires
Than making moons from central fires.
If theories of Doctor Hutton
Be worth the shadow of a button,
And Doctor Darwin has not blunder’d,
We’ll turn out full moons by the hundred.[39]
We mean to bore us, at a venture,
Some auger-holes through Hutton’s centre,
Thus give an unexpected vent
To Hutton’s fires in prison pent.
We’ll fan his furnace by a pair
Of bellows made of Franklin’s air,[40]
For air, (a truth Count Rumford knew well,)
Contains the very soul of fuel.
Then pour in suddenly the ocean
To add eclat to our explosion;—
Water, your worships know, or may know,
Adds terribly to a volcano.
Each orifice will then give birth
To grand satellites of earth,
Disploded dreadfully, dear me!
Like Darwin’s moon from southern sea.
How will the universe admire,
When my vast bickering globes of fire,
In grand Darwinian style shall rise,
Like flying mountains through the skies.
Though said sublime explosions must
Destroy good Doctor Burnet’s crust,[41]
By Parker’s cement we’ll endeavor[42]
To make his shell as good as ever.
Now when we’ve made our batch of moons,
Philosophers, unless they’re loons,
Will, though we’re such a surly gnostic,
Name one of them “Great Doctor Caustic!”
These, among many, are but few
Of mighty things that I could do;
All which I’ll state, if ’tis your pleasure,
Much more at large when more at leisure.
Now, it appears, from what I state here,
My plans for mending human nature
Entitle me to take the chair
From Rousseau, Godwin, or Voltaire.
They are of most immense utility;
All tend to man’s perfectibility;
And if pursued, I dare to venture ye,
He’ll be an angel in a century.
Although St Pierre, a knowing chap,
Deserves a feather in his cap
For having boldly set his foot on
The foolish trash of Isaac Newton;[43]
Contrived a scheme, which very nice is,
For making tides of polar ices;
And fed old Ocean’s tub with fountains,
From arctic and antarctic mountains.
Though Mister Godwin told us how
To make a clever sort of plough,[44]
Which would e’en set itself to work,
And plough an acre in a jerk.
Though Price’s projects are so clever,
They show us how to live for ever[45]
Unless we blunder, to our cost,
And break our heads against a post!
Though Darwin, thinking to dismay us,
Made dreadful clattering in chaos,
And form’d, with horrid quakes t’ assist him,
His new exploded solar system.[46]
Though Volney, having in his view,
First peer’d our continent through and through,[47]
Left us a specimen of the quality
Of graduated French morality.[48]
Though Priestley manufactured souls,
For which we had him o’er the coals,
A thing we had forgot to mention,
For making use of our invention.
Buffon, with other wonders done,
A comet dash’d athwart the sun,
And, hitting off a flaming slice,
Our earth created in a trice.
These wights, when taken altogether,
Are but the shadow of a feather
Compared with Caustic, even as
A puff of hydrogenous gas.
Should you pronounce my systems lax
For want of some astringent facts,
I’ll knock you down, by my surprising
New method of philosophizing.
I first a fine new system form,
Which none can either sap or storm;
Then, to support my favorite plan,
I muster all the facts I can.
To make my theories defensible,
Whereas some facts are indispensable,
From east, west, north and south I rake ’em,
And when not ready made—I make them!!
Thus, for posterity’s behoof,
We’ve made our systems bullet proof:
Assailing us with ire red hot,
Is battering walls with pigeon shot.
But I, in spite of my renown,
Alas! am harrass’d, hunted down;
Completely damn’d, the simple fact is,
By Perkins’s Metallic Practice![49]
Our should-be wise and learn’d societies
Are guilty of great improprieties,
In treating me in manner scandalous,
As if I were a very Vandal; thus
Determined, as I have no doubt,
My sun of genius to put out,
Which, once extinct, they think that so ’tis
Their glow-worm lights may claim some notice.
Such hum-drum heads and hollow hearts
Pretend, forsooth, t’ encourage arts!
But that pretence, in every sense is
The flimsiest of all pretences.
Those noble spirited Macenases
To me have shown the greatest meannesses;
Have granted me for these things said all,
Not one half-penny, nor a medal!!!
