Would Noble Lords lose in your Lordship's orations. Short, thick and blustrous, like a day in November,* speeches Fame herself, that most famous reporter, ne'er reaches. Lo! Patience beholds you contemn her brief reign, And Time, that all-panting toil'd after in vain, (Like the Beldam who raced for a smock with her grandchild) Drops and cries: 'Were such lungs e'er assign'd to a man-child?' really or figuratively; and we cannot guess what species Lord Grenville's eloquence may be supposed to resemble, unless, indeed, it be Cowslip wine. A slashing critic to whom we read the manuscript, proposed to read, "What a plenty of flowers-what initiations!" and supposes it may allude indiscriminately to poppy flowers, or flour of brimstone. The most modest emendation, perhaps, would be this-for Vintage read Ventage. * We cannot sufficiently admire the accuracy of this simile. For as Lord Grenville, though short, is certainly not the shortest man in the House, even so is it with the days in November. Your strokes at her vitals pale Truth has confess'd, And Zeal unresisted entempests your breast! * Though some noble Lords may be wishing to sup, Your merit self-conscious, my Lord, keeps you up, Unextinguish'd and swoln, as a balloon of paper Keeps aloft by the smoke of its own farthing taper. Ye SIXTEENS† of Scotland, your snuffs ye must trim; Your Geminies, fix'd stars of England! grow dim, * An evident plagiarism of the ex-Bishop's from Dr. John son : "Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, †This line and the following are involved in an almost Lycophrontic tenebricosity. On repeating them, however, to an Illuminant, whose confidence I possess, he informed me (and he ought to know, for he is a Tallow-chandler by trade) that certain candles go by the name of sixteens. This explains the whole, the Scotch Peers are destined to burn out-and so are candles! The English are perpetual," and are therefore styled Fixed Stars! The word Geminies is, we confess, still obscure to us; though we venture to suggest that it may perhaps be a metaphor (daringly sublime) for the two eyes which noble Lords do in general possess. It is certainly used by the poet Fletcher in this sense, in the 31st stanza of his Purple Island: "What! shall I then need seek a patron out, And but for a form long establish'd, no doubt Apropos, my dear Lord! a ridiculous blunder coat is On observing a star that appear'd in BOOTES! When the whole truth was this (O those ignorant brutes!) Your Lordship had made his appearance in boots. You, my Lord, with your star, sat in boots, and the Spanish Ambassador thereupon thought fit to vanish. But perhaps, dear my Lord, among other worse crimes, The whole was no more than a lie of The Times. Indeed printing in general-but for the taxes, silence. This printing, my Lord-but 'tis useless to mention What we both of us think—'twas a cursed invention, And Germany might have been honestly prouder corous; Yet their presses and types I could shiver in splinters, Those Printers' black devils! those devils of Printers ! In case of a peace-but perhaps it were better master, Has found out a new sort of basilicon plaister. I've intruded already too long on your leisure; To pause, and resume the remainder to-morrow. 158 A STRANGER MINSTREL.* [WRITTEN TO MRS. ROBINSON, A FEW WEEKS BEFORE HER DEATH.] S As late on Skiddaw's † mount I lay supine, *Memoirs of the late Mrs. Robinson, written by herself. With some posthumous pieces. Lond. 1801, vol. iv. pp. 141-144; Poetical Works of the late Mrs. Mary Robinson, Lond. 1806; vol. 1., xlviii-li. [Now first included in any collection of Coleridge's Poems.] † Skiddaw-1801. § chasms so deep-il. wrinkle-ib. sunshine-ib. |