(
Λ Ι Θ Ο Φ Ω Ν Η
Μ Α ) :
BEING SOME OF THE
MARVELLOUS SAYINGS OF A PETRAL PORTION OF
FLEET STREET,
TO
DOCTOR POLYGLOTT, PH.D.,
BY
FRANK BAKER, D.O.N.
“Tolle,
Lege.”—
ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY.
1865.
WILLIAM STEVENS, PRINTER,
37, BELL YARD,
TEMPLE BAR.
D E D I C A T I O N.
TO MY OLD FRIEND
THE AUTHOR OF “THE GENTLE
THESE LINES,
UNGENTLE
REGRETFULLY DEDICATED,
HE BEING
WHO, IN A SPIRITLESS
HOWEVER UNSUCCESSFULLY OR
SUCCESSFULLY,
TO INSTIL
SPIRIT
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., drinks
with a certain No-shire squire,
QUOTH Charley Wode, “Friend Polyglott,
Come, canny mon, and take your pot-
Luck at my house; we’ll have a chat
’Bout
Done! not that I enjoy his tales,
Like M‘Quhae’s snakes with ’ternal tales
(Though better than old John-Bull stories
Of Whigs defunct and buried Tories),
Yet there’s a charm within his wine
That masters stronger minds than mine, 10
And at his den you sometimes meet
With curry fit for man to eat—
With Tokay neat and
And Port unknowing of log-wood.
Reader, would’st read how much we ate
Of entrées, entremets, et cæt.?
No? Pass we on then. I’ll but state,
For four good hours en tête-à-tête,
Like old sheep and young bull, we sat,
Striving in wine, smoking cheroots, 20
Talking of Lowrys, Reids, and Chutes,
And other sun-baked Indian croûtes,
Bummelows, Bungalows, and Banchoots.
Eight was the zero of stagnation;
At nine began some conversation,
At twelve a dash of disputation,
Peppered with slight inebriation;
At two I rose, about to wend
My ways, when, lo! my No-shire friend
Sank slowly down in
sight of Port. 30
I ’gan to whistle Il s’endort:
Mon oiseau jaune est endormi—
Charley’s as fou’ as fou’ can be.
I feared to see the creature led
Or carried to the nuptial bed:
And, Heavens! might SHE not be near,
In cap, curl-papers, and night-gear?
I rang the bell—all slept—’twas late—
whom he leaves in liquor;
Took hat, and softly ganged my gait.
Now, let me tell
you, reader, ’tisn’t 40
Corporeal exercise most pleasant,
When raw night-air, than pea-soup thicker,
Adds fuel to the flames of liquor,
Without a guide to steer your feet
Through “mazy error” of square and street,
And in the morning find you’ve strayed
Into the station’s “pendant shade.”*
wanders about,
Still roamed on I till reached a door
Whence streamed the light in ruddy shower,
And band proclaiming ball was
there. 50
’Twas
* “With
mazy error under pendant shades.”—F. B.
So, standing ’mid the vulgar crowd,
I watched the fair, the great, the proud
That hustled in, when glad surprise
Awaited these my languid eyes.
and beholds a beauty.
The pink silk hood Her head was on
Did make a sweet comparison
With brow as pure, as clear, as bright
As Boreal dawn on Polar night,
With lips whose crimson strove to hide 60
Gems all unknown to
With eyes as myosotis blue,
With cheeks of peachy down and hue,
And locks whose semi-liquid gold
Over the ivory shoulders rolled.
Not “low” her dress, yet cunning eye
’Neath gauzy texture could descry
Two silvery orbs, that rose and fell
With
Intoxicating to the brain 70
As flowers that breathe from Persian plain,†
Whereon to rest one moment brief
Were worth a life of pain and grief;
And, though fast closed in iron cage—
Venetian padlock of the age—
The poetry of motion told
Of all by envious flounce and fold
Concealed: each step of nameless grace
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., incon- tinently
falls in love,
Taught glowing Fancy’s glance to trace
A falling waist, on whose soft round 80
No lacing wrinkle might be found
* The
† The wild Narcissus, whose scent
is believed to be highly aphrodisiac.—F. B.
(Nor waspish elegance affright
Thorwaldsen’s or Canova’s sight),
And rising hips and migniard feet—
Ankle for Dian’s
buskin meet—
Gastrocunemius——
Cease, Muse! to tell
The things my mem’ry holds too well.
I bowed before the Thing Divine
As pilgrim sighting holy shrine,
And straight my ’chanted spirit soared 90
To dizzy regions late explored
By Mister Hume—A.B.—C.D.*—all
The rout yclept spiritual.
A church of emeralds I see!
An altar-tower lit brilliantly;
A steeple, too, the pave inlaid
With richest tints of light and shade;
A “deal of purple,” arched pews;
And all the “blacks” methinks are
“blues.”
Now throngs the murex-robèd crowd, 100
A-chanting anthems long and loud,
And children, garbed in purest white,
Kneel with wreathed heads before the
light.
I, too, am there, with “Thing Divine,”
Bending before the marble shrine,
While spirit-parson’s sleepy drone
Maketh me hers and her my own.
When sudden on my raptured sight
Falls deadly and discharming blight—
* “From
Matter to Spirit.” By C. D. With
a Preface by A. B. London: Longmans. 1863.—F. B.
Such
blight as Eurus loves to fling 110
O’er gladsome crop in genial spring.
Fast by
the side of “Thing Divine,”
when he sees a mother-in-law,
By spirit-parson fresh made mine,
In
apparition grim—I saw
The
middle-aged British mother-in-law!!!
* * * * *
The pink silk hood her head was on
Did make
a triste comparison
With
blossomed brow and green-grey eyes,
And
cheeks bespread with vinous dyes,
And mouth
and nose—all, all, in fine, 120
Caricature of ‘Thing Divine.’
Full low the Doppelgänger’s
dress*
Of moire and tulle, in last distress
To
decorate the massive charms
Displayed
to manhood’s shrinking arms;
Large loom’d her waist ’spite pinching stays,
As
man-o’-war in by-gone days;
And, ah! her feet were broader far
Than beauty’s heel in Mullingar.
Circular
all from toe to head, 130
Pond’rous of
framework, as if bred
On
streaky loin and juicy steak;
And, when
she walked, she seemed to shake
With
elephantine tread the ground.†
Sternly, grimly,
she gazed around,
Terribly
calm, in much flesh strong,
Upon the
junior, lighter throng,
* A person’s “double,”
not inappropriately applied to one’s wife’s mother.—F. B.
† I have read something
like this in “Our Old Home,” by Nat. Hawthorne.
And loudly whispered, “Who’s that feller?”
“Come! none of this, Louise, I tell yer!”
And “Thing Divine” averted head, 140
And I, heart-broken, turned and fled.
He then be- holds a Vision of Judgment,
And, flying, ’scaped my soul once
more;
But not this time, as erst, to soar
Into Tranceland: deep down it fell,
Like pebble dropped in Car’sbrooke* well,
Till reached a place whose fit compare
Was furnished lodgings ’bout
In dire September’s atmosphere,
When Town is desert, dismal, drear—
With box-like hall, a ladder stair,
150
Small windows cheating rooms of
air,
With comforts comfortless that find
Such favour in the island mind
Bestuffed, and nicknack babery o’er,
Of
Whilst legibly on the tight-fit
“Respectability” was writ.
And last appeared on that dread stage
That mother-in-law of middle age,
Whose stony glare had strength to say, 160
“Here lord am I! who dare me nay?”
While voices dread rang in mine ear,
“Wretch! thy eternal home is here:
Though dread the doom, ’tis e’en too
good
For one that dines and drinks with Wode!”
and faints.
My heart was ice, my head swam round,
I sank aniented on the ground.
* In the
Stunned by the fall, awhile I lay
Awaiting th’ advent of the day,
Or pervent of a cab; but, no, 170
Nor day would come nor cab would go
By; so, with m’ elbows on my knees,
I, blessing, sat, and groaned in glees,
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., is ad- dressed by a stone,
When sudden from the stony earth
Gruff accents checked my dreary mirth:
“Man! I’m a stone in
What clod of clay be you that sits
O’ top o’ me with that broad base
Of yours offending nose and face?”
I felt as if a
corking-pin 180
Were thrust my os
coccygis in;
But, being, when in wineity,
Addicted to divinity,
Thus, musing, sat: “And so the
stones
Vocabulate in human tones!
and moralizes,
Sermons in stones—sermo, sermonis—
I see the drift! some speech in stone is,
A power occult and hidden deep,
As spark within the flint asleep.”
Another bellow made me bound 190
Giddily from the angry ground.
I rubbed my eyes, as well I might,
when a won- drous
spectacle is seen.
For mortal orbs ne’er saw such light
Up and adown the lengthy street,
For tardy progress called the Fleet,
The pave was quick with human heads
And faces, whites, blacks, browns, and reds,
All, all alive—all packed and stowed
Like th’ umbrellas of rain-wet crowd.
So travellers tell at Afric court, 200
Where scores of men are slain for sport,
On clean-cut necks pates ranged in
row
Out of the earth appear to grow,*
“Pol,” having sat upon a live
stone,
Or as Cabrera loved to place
His captives buried to the face,
And cracked their
skulls with sportive bowls.
Amid that mob of
checks and jowls
In infinite variety
But only one attracted me.
A very Hindu face was his 210
I rose from off; a tawny phiz,
Eyes almond-shaped and opaline,
Parrot-beaked nose, brow high and lean,
Clearly the high-caste Aryan,
thus describes him;
Maxillaries Turanian;
A lipless mouth and lanky hair,
Vanishing chin en Robespierre,
Mustachio thin and beard as spare,
With careless scrutinizing leer,
And phantom of a vicious sneer: 220
Mixture of Duresse
and Finesse
Was his physiognomy I guess.
Vexed by my
stare, the thing uncouth
Wriggled its nose, puckered its
mouth.
asks him who he is,
Cried I, “Are ye a stone or man?
Who buried ye alive like Pan-
dit, or the Jogees that expose
To canine insult
reverend nose?Ӡ
The only answer was a scowl,
With a prolonged and angry growl, 230
* “
† Major Moor’s “Hindoo Pantheon”
will explain the meaning of these vivo-sepultures.—F. B.
Which seemed, methought, at length to take
The form of
words. “For Brahma’s sake!”
Cried I, “if you must speak, speak out!
Pray what are you,
and what about?”
and receives a dark reply.
He groaned and muttered, “B’r sire
at
Headstone of Yakub
bin Rebecca†—
Too bad! too
bad!—ah! ah!—some day
Pay off old scores. Stare?—well you may!”
I quaked, the
wretch, ’twas very clear,
If called in witness to appear 240
Against me, probably would try
To work me some foul injury;
And thus, to soothe his vicious
rage,
I tried the Hebrew’s counsel sage,
Called him the
Sphinx, Memnon, and Serapion;
Diana of th’ Ephesians’ joy,
And so forth.
Still, cold,
careless, coy,
He held his peace and sometimes
grumbled,
And, in strange tongues, some hard
words
mumbled; 250
But, by soft speech, the world-wise say,
At length, by flattery, the Stone is molli- fied,
From hearts of stone wrath melts away.
At length the face began to smile,
And laughed outright to see a tile
Hurled down upon the trottoir way
By some tom-cat
in am’rous play.
The ghastly cachinnation o’er,
I found him milder than before;
* The Black Stone at
† The Rabbins
assign high rank in the petral kingdom to Jacob’s
pillow-stone on the night of vision.—F. B.
And, though his words were somewhat coarse,
As there was sense in his discourse
260
I’ve ventured, Reader, hat to fling
High up in book-craft’s bruising ring,
Peel me,
shake hands, set to my task,
And in fair field no favour ask.
and speaks out his grievances
modern day.
(Lapis loquitur.)
“Alas and oh! oh and alas!
How times
and manners come and pass!
Time was (before the Jew Peter,
Quixote-like,
rode down Jupiter
And
Company on keen and canty
Apocalypsean Rosinante, 270
With back
well hunched and lance at rest
In search
of fame and eke of grist,
Which
saintly sinner e’er deems best
Himself
to grind, himself digest,
Not leave
to stones) mankind has gone
Many a
mile to buss a stone;
But now
you are so clever grown,
You know
so much before unknown,
There’s
not a boy would kiss the Pope’s
Petrals* for all
his key-bunch opes, 280
Or burn
one tallow
to as good a
Pebble as
e’er satin Pagoda:
You look
on holy Salagram
As if it were a silly sham;
You stick
cigars in god Buddh’s fists;
You hang
your hats on Venus’ wrists;
You dare
to say of serpent stone
‘’Tis but a bit of rotten bone;’
* Alluding, I suppose, to the petrous
portion of the human bone.—F. B.
You
scribble Brown on Odin’s breast,
You break
Egeria’s nose in jest. 290
Oh you
Saxon Iconoclasts!
Enjoy
your sport whilst th’ epoch
lasts;
Those
stones (like damns) have had their
day,
You deem:
we’ll have one more I say.
This eve
I heard a
(Alas! poor Burk!) telling a cad,
His
friend, ‘I’ve drunk a pot o’ beer
Off an
Apollo
The other
scalpel-meat forgot
Not to
remark as off he shot 300
How great
a thing had ‘gone to pot;’—
I only
hope next time he gorges
Dinner, it may be at
Here I broke in. “How comes it th’ art
So manly
a stone in brain and heart,
With
mortal language, human passions,
Knowledge
of manners, customs, fashions?
How
comes——”
I stopped: an ugly sneer
Made him
far uglier appear;
He held
me with that angry frown, 310
The Stone becomes very Spinoza-like and Pantheis- tical,
and
And looked me up and stared me down;
Then
thus:
“Doth darkling bat’s eye scan
The Pyramid’s stupendous plan?
And may
your molish ken extend
To Nature’s far, mysterious end?
You
breathe and move, you see and hear,
Smile,
touch, and feel, lose hope and fear,
From
which you’re pleased to predicate
A
category animate
Anent
yourselves, and this you lend 320
To things that with your nature
blend.
But pray,
what sage hath yet been able
To separate brute from vegetable?
And who
the difference hath shown
’Twixt lowest plant and highest stone?
Your
kingdoms trine* make matters worse:
Such mappings-out
are wisdom’s curse.
Vainly
division may diverse:
All are
but One—One Universe.
The
essence of existing things, 330
The germ
from which world-matter springs,
All links
in that
eternal chain
That
girds the sky, the earth, the main,
Whose nicest
consequence between
Nor joint
nor gap was ever seen;
And
Life—’tis but a ray of one
Creation’s
vivifying
sun,
The Ens that is, was, and shall be,
Through time untimed—eternity!”
“Indeed,” gaped I; “how very strange! 340
Nought new they say
’neath sun’s wide range!”†
“No quoting, sir,” cried he, “old
saws,
Of
blundering th’ effectual cause,
Drowning
Stupidity’s own straws;
‘Nought new beneath the sun!’ a fact
Of th’ order fairly termed Abstract.
While
things be new to me and thee,
What need
care we how old they be?”
ends with the tale of his me- tamorphosis.
He asked, and then, in accent
strong,
Trolled
in mine ear the following song:— 350
* Viz., animal, vegetable, mineral.—F. B.
† “No, nor under the
grandson!” quoth George Selwyn.—F. B.
SONG.
(1)
“When last I was a Brahman man
My ardent fancy ever ran
From earth’s dull scene, Time’s
weary round,
To realms eternal—heavenly ground;
(2)
“And where by day my footstep trod
I felt the presence of a god:
Blue
Varuna* skimmed the purple main,
(3)
“Gay Indra†
spanned the crystal air,
And Shiva braided Durga’s hair 360
Where golden Meru‡
rises high
His front to fan the sapphire sky;
(4)
“And nightly in my blissful dreams
I sat by
Where Swarga’s§
gate wide open lay
And Narga
decked with lurid day.
(5)
“But, ah! one
thought escaped my mind:
I had no reck of kith or kind!
This drew upon me from above
The wrath of Kama, God of Love. 370
* Оυρανος,
originally nightly heaven, and presently,
by analogy of the aqueous and the atmospheric, God of the Ocean.—F. B.
†
Iris, the rainbow.—F. B.
‡
The Hindu
§ Swarga is one of the Hindu heavens, Narga
one of the hells.—F. B.
(6)
“I loved—yes, I! Ah, let me tell
The fatal charms by which I fell!
Her form the tam’risk’s waving shoot,
Her breast the cocoa’s youngling fruit;
(7)
“Her eyes were jetty, jet her hair,
O’ershading face like lotus fair;
Her lips were rubies, guarding
flowers
Of jasmine dewed with vernal
showers.
(8)
“And yet this goddess drew her birth
From vilest region of the earth. 380
A Pariah’s widow!—better die
Than ’dure such shame! at first thought I.
(9)
“But
Up to the head with fatal aim;
The deadly weapon through me flew,
Diffusing venom dire and new.
(10)
“It boots not more; you see me now
The victim of a broken vow:
Pass’d from the funeral pile, I found
Myself a stone
beneath the ground. 390
(11)
Dread change! sad fate! to line the street—
A thing for tramp of boorish feet!
How can I cease to grunt and groan,
A Brahman once,
and now a stone?
(12)
“But ever and anon my tongue
With more than mortal strength is strung;
Then must I tell, however coy,
All that befel Ram Mohun Roy.”*
He stopped.
I listened to him, sore posed
To see the
Ram thus metamorphosed. 400
At length it
took effect that song,
Though many a trill made ’t deadly long,
And yet,
despite that length, it stole
Into my heart; a tear would roll
Adown my cheek in bitterness.
I, too, my bygones must confess.
DIRGE.
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., “reci- procates.”
“I also swore to love a face
And form where beauty strove with grace,
And raven hair, black varnished blue,
A brow that robbed the cygnet’s
hue, 410
Orbs that beshamed the fawnlet’s eyne,
And lips like rose-buds damp with rain.
Ah! where is she? ah! where are they—
The charms that stole my heart away?
“She’s fatten’d like a
feather bed,
Her cheeks with beefy hue are red,
Her eyes are tarnished, and her nose
Affection
for high diet shows;
* N.B.—Must not be confounded with the modern Bengali philosopher of that name.—F. B.
The voice like music wont to flow
Is now a kind of vaccine low. 420
Cupid, and all ye gods above,
Is this the thing I used to love?”
The Stone re- sumes
the sub- ject,
with his future hopes,
“Pass on,” cried he, in angry tone,
“And leave we womankind alone.
’Twas my own fault. But, man, you see,
I’ve not thrown off humanity
When mem’ry pangs me on to hate
Reminders of my human state.
Yet so
wills Fate. This era o’er,
I shall become a grass or flower 430
(The state which every noodle knows is
Classic’ly termed Metempsychosis,
Which sticklers for Latinization
Prefer to call Soul-transmigration),
And, rising through each gradual term,
Reanimate me in the worm,
And, passing him, ascend again
Into the beast that roams the plain,
Till, from the cow, that high’st degree,
I claim once more Brahminity, 440
When, haply ’scaping all temptation,
meanwhile supporting the
superiority of stone to clay (or man),
I win the crown—Annihilation.
Meanwhile, I cannot see why we
Of you and yours despised should be.
The pride of princes hoists them high,
Paupers like poets* smite the sky!
We both are sons of mother Earth;
But I’m a scion of antique birth,
* As Horace says, “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.”—F.
B.
Whilst you, as all your sages say,
Are little clods of red-brown clay,* 450
Mere Pleistocene accumulations
That never learned your proper stations.
At least two thousand years ago
They cut me for a stone, I know,
By slow degrees and weary; an
Operation Cæsarian
Tore me from old Dame Portland’s flank,
Here to be ranged with lengthy rank
Of brotherhood, upon whose head
You things of mud are meant to tread. 460
But man hath taught himself to deem
Cream of creation—happy dream!
An ancient people said that we
Stones once renewed humanity,
Prayed by Deucalion and his wife
From mineral to mammalian life.
Anatomists, they say, have shown
Petrosity in human bone;
And well
I know we still are part
Of human head and manly heart. 470
But, though, methinks, the metal lead
Have cut us out of human head
(Phenomenon which came to pass
When human sconce got ‘front of brass’),
Your hearts remain ours ever; still
They do us nought but work our ill.
By Pyrrha! but you are unwise
To treat apologies
as lies,
And not attempt to recognise
The moral which the tale implies.” 480
* Adamical theory.—F. B.
“Two thousand years, you say, are gone
Since first you found yourself a stone.
I wish you kindly would relate
Th’ adventures of your petral state.
and, yielding to “Pol.’s” re- quest, speaks, not as the Ram, but as a stone.
I long to know the career all
Of such intelligent mineral.”
“One talks,” said he, in softer tone,
“Willingly self not I alone;
And, could we stones confabulate,
The Fleet
would be in blockade state. 490
But, since you wish to hear my tale,
List till the marvel waxeth stale.
As old Ram Mohun Roy from me
Man hears not for a century.
No syllable of by-gone deed
From these my lips may now proceed;
A stone of stones am I, and all
My talk must be petrifical:
Th’ antiquity of family
Confers upon me high degree,— 500
Stone versus mud and mire and clay,
Ashes and dust, and live
decay.
I teach the
past—the future, too,
’Tis mine to spread for
human view—
For ‘old experience doth attain
To something of prophetic strain.’
Ombharbhuvaswara!”*
At the long word
The head sank down as if interred;
No sight was seen, no sound was heard,
Save the Policeman on his beat, 510
Drowsily lounging
down the street.
* The essence of the
Vedas.—F. B.
So melt in morning’s bright’ning hours
The Fay Morgana’s
mirage bowers;
So, as the Arab thinks
to gain
The
Where towers and walls were seen to stand,
The Stone’s history phy- sical;
He finds a field of burning sand.
“Some million centuries or so*—
I won’t swear to an age or two—
Have sped since, starting from my trance, 520
I burst the ocean’s hot expanse,
And, scrutinising round me, threw
Wild looks upon the novel view.
Pray where were you at that
dread time,
When, cradled in my bed of lime,
Delivered by Earth’s siesmal throes,
I to this
world first showed my nose?
Why, in essentiá—a logical
Lie meaning you were not at all.
’Tis true; e’en I can’t recollect 530
When atomies did first collect,
Compelled to general glomeration
By inorganic gravitation;
Nor was it gi’n to me to see
Those nuclei of nebulæ
Whence suns and stars and satellites
Sprang like th’ innumerable mites
Which haunt a Stilton cheese;—’tis true
These things are known to us by you.
Another epoch passed away 540
Of centrifuge-attraction sway;
* Thus here the “Vestiges of
Creation” are fully confirmed by modern revelation. But we live in an age of great discoveries.—F. B.
When the Frigorics did contract
Diffused mass to globe compact.
I am too young to call to mind
When primal crust began to bind
Earth’s cooling surface, when the sea
Put forth
zoophytic progeny,
When land appeared in sandstone steeps
And
fishes swam the shrinking deeps,
When
giant forests strove to rise 550
And sweet
lymph fell from milder
skies.
Nor knew I even what was meant
By organic law ‘Development’—
How, from the Monad’s starting point,
Began a chain whose latest joint
Ever put forth another link,
Till
matter learned to speak and think;
How, ’scaped from the primeval sea,
Grass became herb, herb shrub, shrub tree;
How fishes crawled to birds, and these 560
To beasts (like you) by slow degrees.
My infant intellect began
T’ act when the archetypes of man,
Dawn of a still advancing day,
wherein he abuses man- kind,
Apes, sported o’er the marl and clay.
“’Tis very little that we owe
To th’ Indian Archipelago,
Where I am told sprang you men, a
Branch breed of the Quadrumana.
Ah, what
a sight were you when first 570
By freak of matter Adam* burst
Through Simian womb! Scant then man’s prate
Of human nature’s high estate.
* Meaning not the Genesetic Adam, but the first human “produce of aggregation
and fit apposition of matter.”—F. B.
Yet, though his limbs with pile were
rough,
And though his tail was long enough
(You smile,
reformed orang-utang!
Have I not seen th’ appendage hang
About
your ends, till wear and tear
Curtailed the terminating hair?
Type of the subtype Simiadæ! 580
King of the genus Chimpanzee!
There! feel the place! ’tis even now
In
loco if not in statu
quo),
Th’ apesses treated with disdain—
Half-handed
thing with double brain,
With brow protruding all before,
Trachea formed to squeak and roar,
With shortened arms and thumbless feet,
Circular paunch, and rounded seat;
That chattered with such couthless sound, 590
And walked, not crawled, upon the ground.
deriving man from monads and
monkeys.
Such your forefather.
Yet, when he
Was grown to lusty puberty,
Superior
ingenuity
Taught him with score of apes to mate,
And thus his kind to propagate.
Nor ever dreamed the creature in
Polygamy to spy a sin.
Certes, in those days, abnormal cause
Affected propagation’s laws; 600
For even he, your sire, amazed,
On his distorted offspring gazed,
Self-asking when the things would cease
To stalk like cranes and gab like geese.
Now you have tales enough to hide
Your origin and salve your pride
(E’en as the bastard Romans say
Their founders’ mother was not ‘gay’)—
How man hath soul, and brute instinct,
Making th’
identical distinct; 610
How human gab was heavenly gift,
And not
at first a clumsy shift
T’ express by varying sounds the vain
Ideas that haunt idiotic brain;
How language dropped right from the skies,
Pali or Hebrew (each tribe tries
To prove its own the primal speech);
How deigned the Lord himself to teach
The proper names of things to man:
Wonderful wisdom! precious plan!” 620
Seeing his wrath, I thought it best
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., at- tempts to soothe him by a show
of learning,
To yield, and in mild tone suggest,
“True, Petrus! true; ’tis evident
Socrates knew development.*
So Moses, if I read him right,
Made his first man hermaphrodite,†
And learned Moslem scribes indite
Long list of kings pre-Adamite;
And note we not in Hebrew tongue
Ramash is an old snake or a long- 630
tailed ape?‡ and so the Hanuman§
Of
* Supposed to be foreshadowed in the Platonic doctrine of the
“archetypes existing previous to the world.”—F. B.
† Amply commented upon by the pious Mme. de Bourignon, by Mirabeau (Erot. Bib.), and by
‡ This is the opinion of the learned Dr. Adam Clarke, the
Methodist, in his Polyglottal Commentary, which wants
nothing but an elementary knowledge of language.—F. B.
§ The Hindu Monkey-god.—F. B.
and is grossly insulted in the
matters of Ana- logy, Etymo- logy, and Hebrew.
“Thanks for your etymologies,
Which, garnished with analogies,
Are mines of error. Pray don’t quote
Hebrew to
me; of old I know’t
To be a lingo you admire,
Because it claims origin higher,
More mystic, than its Arab sire;
Yet ’tis a pauper dialect, 640
Scant, clumsy, rude, such as select
Nations once civilized to speak
As modern Maniotes maim old Greek.*
“Enough of this! How times are changed
Since all the tribes of Tellus ranged
Their own domains, so joyful when
Our mother Earth was clear of men!”
With a portentous Burleigh shake
Of head, he paused awhile to take
A breathing time, and thus pursued 650
The Stone ex- ults
over the coming dis- appearance of man from earth,
The subject in his bitterest mood:
“Now, man! suppose the glove once
more
Had some convulsion as of yore—
Enough to
exterminate the pest
Of nature and to spare the rest—
What a glad scene my mental eye
Through the dark future doth espy!
“See granite, mica, gneiss, and talc
In spiritual voices talk:
* Les Juifs firent
donc, de l’histoire et de la fable moderne, ce que leurs
fripiers font de leurs vieux habits: ils les retournent et les vendent comme neufs le plus chèrement qu’ils peuvent.”—Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Art. “Abraham,” Section II.—F. B.
‘By the Tamim!* friend Adamantus, 660
Those wretched worms no longer want us.
Can’t you, oh! can’t you recollect
How oft your brilliancy hath deckt
The mummied breast of ancient maid,
Whom every stout Hibernian blade
Compared with you? So hard! so pure!
So bright!—what is she now? Manure!’
“See oaks and elms, and thorns, and trees,
All chattering in the evening breeze:
‘We’re rid of men, the spiteful brutes,— 670
Who now dare cut our harmless throats?
Friend Quercus, recollect how oft
You said the things were very soft
To boast their hearts of oak! O Lud!
The
little vermin spawned of mud!
The flimsy, frail, unlasting wretches,
Hollow as canes, short-lived as vetches!’
“See, horses, asses, elephants,
All hurry to their ancient haunts,
Whilst each unto his neighbour says, 680
‘Four-footed dear! what jolly days
Compared with those when wicked man
Claimed as his right our hides to tan.
With all their airs and graces, pray,
By great Borak!† say what were they?
Asses with curtailed ears—a sign
Most manifest of wrath Divine!’
“Thus general nature, blessing, raises
Its myriad voice in grateful praises.”
* Urim and Thummim
vulgarly called, the Jewish stone oracle.—F. B.
† The miraculous quadruped that carried Mahomet to heaven.—F.
B.
He groaned and looked most lachry-
mose 690
As he ran o’er earth’s present woes,
Then, hemming twice or thrice with
might,
These words threw out to darksome night:
ODE.
and mourns the day when he was
an in- nocent
child- stone.
“Alas that life should come to this!
O for those days—those days of bliss
Amid the happy stones that fill
The precincts of my natal hill!
Delightful spot
Of shadowy glen and silvery rill,
Where soft wind blows, sweet birdies
thrill
700
The senses with unartly trill.
Ah, ne’er forgot
That place where ’twas my joy of old
To watch bright
Morn her charms unfold
And evening suns rain showers of gold;
And still I lay
Whilst deepening shadows closed around,
To silence hushing harsher sound,
Till, rising o’er the tufted mound,
Poured
the moon’s ray. 710
Far from the haunts of hateful men,
Not shackled in this iron den,
Ever, shall ever come again
That happy day?
Ah, no! my soul is callous, cold,
Recast in
the rough world’s hard mould:
Vice and sin’s bitter streams have rolled
O’er my dark heart,
Whose innocency’s charm is gone—
Fled for ever, for aye undone: 720
Gone——”
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., fires up
at this general denunciation of his kind.
“By the stones! the
lyre sublime
Of Orpheus sang to walls sans lime!
What sentiments! Ungodly thief,
Wouldst steal away all man’s belief
In man? Wouldst impiously destroy
Rational hope of heavenly joy?
Wouldst, like the wicked boy at play,
With every throw some poor thing slay?
Pause, O profane! Draw thou not near!——”
“Prate to your purl, bepreach your
beer; 730
I have had enough, thou human mole!
The Stone replies by a vile insinuation,
Of Jeremiad and Carmagnole:
I, fellow, am a mineral,
And not a lying animal.”
“Hem!” quoth I; “quit the theme
awhile
Since it appears to stir your bile:
’Tis very evident you yield
No willing ear to
But, touching falsehood, tell me, pray,
And “Pol.” asks if men never
lie.
Do stones ne’er lie—is’t this you say? 740
Take Pharaoh’s case: we know that he
Died sputt’ring
in the
And yet some fibbing Pyramid stones
Venture t’ assert his flesh and bones
Were pickled, dried, and laid in salt
In all the Pharaohs’ family vault;
Not to quote certain bits of brick
And plaster, with the which a wick-
ed ‘Resident’* hath tried to show a
Grave error in the flood of Noah, 750
And Daniel’s beasts hath dared to call,
Like all his book, apochryphal
By means of certain funny form
Of Scripture
known as ‘cuneiform.’”
“Your wits, man, are again at fault;
The Stone argues that stones are more truthful than men.
Or, rather, seem disguised in malt:
We tell the lie involuntary—
That is, what you put in we carry.
Who ever saw epitaph true?
But epitaphs are writ by you. 760
E’en so Empedocles’ pet birds
Twittered in lies their master’s words;
And, as for Pharaoh, I was not
In
Facts as
they were, not as you wrote;
Yet would I rather, by your leave,
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., quotes
the proverb, “Facts are stubborn things.”
In stones than in your books believe.”
“Facts, Stone, are stubborn things, ’tis said!”
“‘Facts stubborn things?’ thou leather-head!
Facts are chameleons, whose tint 770
Varies with every accident:
Each, prism-like, hath three obvious sides,†
which the Stone dis- proves.
And facets ten or more besides.
Events are like the sunny light
On mirrors falling clear and bright
Through windows of a varied hue,
Now yellow seen, now red, now blue.
* This, I presume,
alludes to a learned and gallant knight long resident at Bagdad.—F. B.
† Meaning, I suppose,
the right, the wrong, and the mixed.—F. B.
Those mirrors are the minds no vice
Obscures and dyes no prejudice;
And yet, however lucid, they 780
Must, in some measure, stain the ray,
And, in transmitting, must refract—
I mean distort—the beam and fact,
Because its pure effulgence pours
Thro’ Matter’s dark or darkened doors.
All other minds your common sense
(If to such rarity you’ve pretence)
Tells t’ you that, intentionally
Or not, they err most commonly.
Facts, figures, and statistics
claim 790
“Pol.” at- tempts to prove fact after the
fashion of a modern divine, and is rebuked.
For hardest lying highest fame.”
I laughed, and, forthwith raising thick-
Soled boot, administered a kick,
Asking if he considerèd
That kick a fact. His brow waxed red
(M sometimes salon-savan has
The grace to do when proved an ass),
And thus he cried, “Thou hast a style
Of argument that stirs the bile:
The venerable ad captandum 800
Quibbles and quirks thrown out at random
Against the high intelligent mind
Of unbreech’d boy or small-girl-kind.*
Sir, you confound the physical
and moral worlds,—the actual
And known with the unknown,—the tried
With the untried: this I deride
* So the Rev. Sydney Smith proved at dinner to
a sceptical Frenchman the existence of a deity by asking if
the pie made itself—a style of argument much admired by Lady Holland.—Minor. F. B.
As merest folly. You deduce
From this a formula to use
In that creation: there’s your wrong, 810
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., ex- citedly
asks concerning “Truth,” and is answered.
Wherein you stand so stiff and strong.”
“What, then, you mean to say, you ruth-
less wretch, there’s no
such thing as truth?”
“Truth, sir, ’s a lady strangely made,
As centaur, Pan, merman or maid;
In general, a Protean dame
Never for two brief hours the same—
Now throned in heaven, first of all
Spirits hyper-angelical;
Now driven by sheer destitution 820
To lend herself to prostitution;
And mainly, though good soul at heart,
A ‘heathen in the carnal part’*—
That is to say, she can’t resist,
Temptation when lewd men insist.”
“This I deny!——”
“Well, well, the proof
Of pudding is its eating—oaf!
Your mind is like the oyster-shells
They use, as old Tavernier tells,
For windows in
the East. But these 830
Remarks are but par parenthèse.
Another illustration take:
If, at this hour, an aged rake
Should pass, he’d swear you’re sitting here
Waiting till friendly wife appear.
Such is his fact: the doctors, mind,
In sickness an excuse
would find,
* Even as the great Pope says:—
“A sad, good Christian she at heart,
A very heathen in the carnal part.”—F. B.
While No. o of letter E
Deems you as great a prig as he;
And I, e’en I, who see you’re drunk 840
As new-made cornet or old punk,
Can’t,
for the life of me, divine
If you’re disguised in beer or wine.”
“Now you impugn physical fact!”
“No, sir! I merely show how act
Men’s inner men. I but object
To views
of ‘facts’ which e’er affect
Fact to
the viewer, not the thing
Itself. This is the
source whence spring
Those doubts and blunderings that show 850
Now little humans truly know.
Why need I prove that each man’s thought
Is each man’s fact, to others nought?
Yet, mark
me, no one dubitates
Himself, or owns he errs. He rates
Against his
fellows’ folly, they
At his;
and both are right, I say.
How many
a noted fact of old
Was a known lie when first ’twas
told?”
“Basta!” cried I, “thou minor
prophet, 860
Thy tenets yield nor joy nor profit.
A better faith you
cannot give;
So leave
me in my own to live!”
“Just as you like, ’tis you that
proses
Of truth and Adam, facts and Moses;
And, as for metaphysics, Lord
Help the old fool that coined the
word!
Back to my tale:
The Stone’s history (poli- tical).
When ancient Brut*
(The
grandson of that pious put
Who, with his sire and wife and boy, 870
So
bravely ran from burning
Doomed to
toil, travel, and intrigue
By Juno and the Fates in league)
Had ploughed the seas in devious path,
A toy to
adverse
He landed in this isle, deposed
His household gods, and, somewhat posed
To give
his huts appropriate name,
Selected ‘Troynovant,’ which same [880
Means, in
old French, New Troy.† He died
(As most men do), and gratified
His heirs with an inheritance
Of wold and waste in wide expanse.
Some forty generations went
Ere great king Lud
matured th’ intent
To fence about his
timber town
(Now ‘august chamber of the crown’)
With a stone wall. By ’s high command
We all appeared—a goodly band,
Not by
the power of fiddle drawn, 890
But borne on Britons’ arms of brawn.
Commenced my political
Education (as it you call)
When barbarous Cassibelan
Before the
conquering Roman ran,
* So the French are descended from Hector, and the
Bretons from Tubal.—F. B.
† It is truly gratifying to find out all our old legends so
historically valuable: the text should effectually gag all those “shallow
infidels” whose notion of History is a mixture of Doubt and Denial.—F. B.
And ended with fat George—when Fate,
In pity of my lowly state,
To this my place promoted me—
My present standing, sir, you see.
The Stone’s history (moral and political) in the days of
Boadicea;
“Now mark me when I tell where I 900
First heard the thing men call a lie—
An arrant lie.
Didst ever see a
Trustworthy account of Boadicea?”
“Why, not precisely; but, as far
As
That noble woman waged (in car
With scythes) against the pack of boast-
ful dogs that seized our cliff-bound coast,
Dared slay our Druids, slaver, spit
on
The freckled face of freeborn Briton, 910
Nor feared audacious tricks to try on
That noble beast the British Lion.”
“What! are ye paid to do jaw-work,
Like Sheridan or wordy Burke?
No? Then do give the Deuce his dues
When there’s no object to refuse
Justice. Plautinus, as I live,
Was not one half the bandit Clive,
Hastings, Dalhousie,
or Napier
Were, each within his proper sphere. 920
preferring the policy of Pagan
Rome to
Maxims forbidding her to pick
Quarrels or
pretexts when her cash
Ran low: she dealt no high-flown trash
’Nent ‘principles,’ which, in your creed,
Gipsying life appears to lead:
Sent for
when wanted, and, when not,
Sans ceremony told to trot.
* Mrs. Markham’s “History of England.”—F. B.
Philanthropy to foreign states, 930
Making her fraternize (don’t snigger!)
With red-skin, tawny, fair, and nigger.
Philanthropy, so pure and bright,
Makes pagan Hindu Christian knight.
(Kneel down, Sir Jung Bahadoor; vow,
By the five products of the cow,*
To do thy
knight’s devoir, and be
Flower of Christian chivalry:
Sing, ‘Dies iræ, dies illa
Solbet Balneum in fabillâ.’ 940
That day
of philanthropic wrath
To dust
and ashes turned the
Old
Where ye, loved shepherds, meet to bawl
Politico-religion
To
long-eared flocks that urge ye on:
Armed with which tools her robber horde
Went forth, unrecking right and wrong,
To spare the weak, debel the strong.†
It ever was
To rob the rich, to strip the fool.
And so do
you. But she forgot
To
plunder subjects; you do not.
Lastly, she robbed her fellow-men
Like warrior—you like highwaymen.
She scorned to harm a fallen foe;
You sit
upon his breast and show
* Milk, curds, butter, and the two egesta,
which are holy things.—F. B.
† “Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.”—F. B.
Your teeth, till, faint with fear and pain,
He lets his bag and baggage be ta’en. 960
accusing Eng- land of land- stealing.
The end, of course, was all the same;
But she won fame and you win shame.
Thieves of the world, that spoil wholesale
And plunder on the largest scale!
Who so unblushed ye that
you dare
To all the globe your crime declare?
Boast of your drum-beat circling earth
With—sorry sound!—its martial mirth?
Boast that your bit of bunting brands
So many scores of stolen strands— 970
Stains with its blood the Orient seas,
And taints the Occidental breeze—
Like some ill-omened goblin haunts
Creation’s
Your ‘brave kind of expressions’?* Most
Christian country, this your boast?”
“Have you no proofs?” cried I——
“Yes! clear,”
Said he, “as e’er met eye or ear.
Look at th’ unfortunate Chinese,
Who lost their Sycee and their teas 980
Because
they showed some odium
To Fanqui’s† filthy opium;
See
In scale of nations sunk so low—
That lovely land to which were given
The choicest blessings under heaven,
Till ravening Saxon, like simoom,
With fire and sword brought death and doom,
* Bacon. —F. B.
† Foreign devil, as the Celestials appropriately term the
outer barbarians. —F.
B.
And, lo! a wretched starv’ling brood
From horse-dung picks disgusting food;* 990
Whilst, in the Commons,
Clears every bench to
Of old, the Red Man in the West,
How different his lot, how blest,
How happy in his wigwam home!
By Saxon’s poisonous pox and rum
Now what a vile and ruined race!
A few years more its every trace
Will vanish clear from Earth’s fair face,
Except in books and
by-gone tales 1000
Of squaws, scalps, tomahawks, and trails.
Witness th’ old Turk, Mahomet Ali,
Whom Malcolm† stuffed with many a lie,
Striving in vain to make him deem
You links ’twixt men and seraphim;
Yet scarce ten years had ’lapsed before
You tried
to seize his little store
Of piastres, that the East might ’count
You plunderers Lord Paramount,
And kiss the hand outstretched to burk 1010
Incipient feud ’twixt Turk and Turk.
Had the Hawaiian known his fate,
A hundred Cooks had slaked his hate,‡
Each
child had murd’rous hand imbrued
In circumnavigating blood.
O’er far
Of aborigines a score
* Which, if we may
believe travellers, is often the case—F. B.
† Sir John Malcolm,
Governor of
‡ Capt. Cook, the
circumnavigator, was murdered for pulling down a hut that was under “taboo.”—F. B.
Now wanders (where, some years ago,
A hundred
thousand souls could show),
Australian-like, exterminate 1020
By your corrosive sublimate.
And now again your tricks you try
On Japanese
and Maori:
Because they choose to live in peace,
Nor lend a ready back to fleece,
You arm yourselves with fire and steel
Their towns to burn, their lands to steal,
High raising the ennobling cry
Of Cotton and Christianity;
And, armed with these, each man of sense 1030
Ascribes
his course to
Favouring your
pre-eminence,
And
purposing to occupy
The globe
with Anglo-Saxon fry—
One
marvels how! one wonders why!
Man,
And own herself a bungling fool!
“Return we to this theme anon:
I’ll now enlighten you upon
The
subject of my lie; you’ll call 1040
It, perhaps, unintentional.
“Came Boadicea in her chariot
(With scythes), between Susan and Harriet
(Who had been kissed), tastily decked
In woad with theatrical effect,
T’ harangue
her blustering ruffian
Tricoloured crew barbarian.
BOADICEA’S SPEECH.
The Stone then recites Boa- dicea’s
speech,
“‘Britons!
there stands the impious band
That came from far Italian land,
From rich
To lord it o’er our hide-made homes:
Their skins are dark, while yours are fair;
They wear the toga, you go bare.
Are these the reasons why they dare
Doom us to slavery—to despair?
Cursed by the Druids’ God be he
That toils the free-born man t’ unfree!
And, oh! may that foul nation claim
Eternal heritage of shame
That comes, in strength of arms, to seek 1060
Dominion o’er the weak! O speak!
Ye Britons, can you bear to see
The first-fruits of their works in me,—
The once proud mother, happy wife,
Now widowed, tainted, sick of life?
Shall woman’s jewel and man’s boast
Fall to yon vile invading host?
In Britons’ veins, while life-drops flow,
Shall Britons stoop to slavery? No!
Now bare the brand and stretch the spear, 1070
To fight for all to mortal dear;
And every blow shall show the charm
That nerves, that guides, the freeman’s arm!’
* * * *
A sullen murmur, low at first,
Into the
deafening slogan burst,
And rose on high the stormy cry
Of ‘On to death or victory!’
* * * *
and tells how he heard his
first lie;
I learnt the goodly lesson there
That patriot prate ’s worth weight of air;
They eat their words as if nutrition 1080
Resulted from the deglutition.
Lord, how they swore to smash and slay
The foe, then turned and ran away
Helter-skelter, all quicker than
Your Sepoys in
Now patriots wisely bare no swords,
But draw with might the vocal chords,
And in heroic tantrums e’er rage
For pay and pension and peerage.
lashing out at modern
patriotism,
Wouldst see thy patriots cut and run? — 1090
Cut but their pence, the work is done!
Soldiers and sailors have one case:
Only for Dative care an ace;
The Ablative of their declension
Is fighting sine pay and pension.
“But honour? ——”
honour,
“Honour, fool! ne’er
shut
The gaping mouth of sabre-cut;
Nor will e’en eighteenpence a-day
The loss of arm or leg defray.
A score of Smiths at
All proved themselves good men and true:
Some fought and ’scaped, some fought and fell;
Yet who the difference now can tell
glory,
’Twixt glorious Jack and glorious Bill?
Few heads in this day glory addles
With empty praise—five-shilling medals,
Of which you’ve grown so liberal
(Though once so stingy*) that they’re all
But worthless, since each private owns
and medals.
A bag of browns or silver crowns 1110
Whose very weight ’s enough to try
The mettle of your chivalry.
* Witness the
Who cares to bear the thorax rib on
Two inches of a rainbow ribbon,
Unless they be the tapes that dub
Captain C.B., not meant for cub
Officer, vulgò called a sub?
And even these are now grown cheap
Since gained by squatting ’hind a heap
Of stuff where commissariat cattle 1120
Dr. Polyglott, Ph.D., much
admires the Stone’s learn- ing.
Are sheltered from the rage of battle.”*
Again I marvelled at his store
Of politic and national lore——
“Man, you forget my age, my sense,
My memory, my experience,
My study of the crowd that meets
The Stone explains his education;
Eternally in
The herd of male and female talkers,
M.P.’s, directors, priests, street-walkers,
Mercators, students,
politicians, 1130
Men mid-wives, actors, peers, physicians,
Judges, preachers, soldiers, literary
Bards and bas-bleus, loquacious very;
To be brief, every specimen
Of microcosm, women and men
Talking, laughing, roaring, ranting,
Prosing, rhyming, praying, canting,
Proving, arguing, recanting,
Lying, cheating, blessing, damning,
Flatt’ring,
quizzing, showing, shamming, 1140
Conning, learning, pumping, cramming
One another (what else God knows!)
Over my triturated nose.
* This practice probably dates from Sir Charles Napier’s
battle of Meeanee.—F. B.