And, mark me! all my friends of the furry snout

Shall join a chorus shout:

We will be heard-we'll spoil

Your wicked ruination toil.

Insolvency must ensue

To you, sir, you;

Unless you move your opposition shop,
And let me stop.

I have no more to say :-I do not write
In anger, but in sorrow; I must look,
However, to my interests every night,
And they detest your
"Memorandum-book."
If we could join our forces-I should like it;
You do the dialogue, and I the songs:
A voice to me belongs;

(The Editors of the Globe and Traveller ring
With praises of it, when I hourly sing

God save the King.)

If such a bargain could be schemed, I'd strike it;
I think, too, I could do the Welsh old man
In the Youthful Days, if dressed upon your plan;
And the attorney in your Paris trip-

I'm large about the hip!

Now think of this!-for we cannot go on

As next door rivals, that my mind declares:

I must be penniless, or you be gone!

We must live separate, or else have shares.
I am a friend or foe

As you take this;

Let me your profitable hubbub miss, Or be it "Mathews, Elephant, and Co. !”

ADDRESS TO MR. CROSS, OF EXETER 'CHANGE,

་་་

ON THE DEATH OF THE ELEPHANT.9

"'Tis Greece—but living Greece no more."—Giaour.

OH, Mr. Cross!

Permit a sorry stranger to draw near

And shed a tear

(I've shed my shilling) for thy recent loss!
I've been a visitor,

Of old, a sort of a Buffon inquisitor,
Of thy Menagerie-and knew the beast
That is deceased!—

I was the Damon of the gentle giant,

And oft have been,

Like Mr. Kean,

Tenderly fondled by his trunk compliant ;
Whenever I approached, the kindly brute
Flapped his prodigious ears and bent his knees-
It makes me freeze

To think of it!-no chums could better suit,
Exchanging grateful looks for grateful fruit,
For so our former dearness was begun.
I bribed him with an apple, and beguiled
The beast of his affection, like a child ;
And well he loved me till his life was done
(Except when he was wild):

It makes me blush for human friends-but none

I have so truly kept or cheaply won!

Here is his pen!—

The casket-but the jewel is away!

The den is rifled of its denizen

Ah well a day!

This fresh free air breathes nothing of his grossness,
And sets me sighing even for its closeness.
This light one-story

Where, like a cloud, I used to feast my eyes on
The grandeur of his Titan-like horizon,

Tells a dark tale of his departed glory.
The very beasts lament the change, like me.
The shaggy Bison

Leaneth his head dejected on his knee!

Th' Hyena's laugh is hushed, and Monkeys pout;
The Wild Cat frets in a complaining whine,
The Panther paces restlessly about

To walk her sorrow out;

The Lions in a deeper bass repine,

The Kangaroo wrings its sorry short fore paws,
Shrieks come from the Macaws,
The old bald Vulture shakes his naked head,
And pineth for the dead;

The Boa writhes into a double knot;

The keeper groans

While sawing bones,

And looks askance at the deserted spot-
Brutal and rational lament his loss,
The flower of thy beastly family!
Poor Mrs. Cross

Sheds frequent tears into her daily tea,
And weakens her Bohea!

Oh, Mr. Cross, how little it gives birth
To grief, when human greatness goes to earth,
How few lament for Czars !——

But oh the universal heart o'erflowed

At his high mass

Lighted by gas,

When, like Mark Anthony, the keeper showed

The elephantine scars!

Reporters' eyes

Were of an egg-like size,

Men that had never wept for murdered Marrs!
Hard-hearted editors with iron faces

Their sluices all unclosed

And discomposed

Compositors went fretting to their cases!

That grief has left its traces:

The poor old Beef-eater has

gone much grayer

With sheer regret,

And the Gazette

Seems the least trouble of the beasts' Purveyor!

And I too weep!-A dozen of great men
I could have spared without a single tear;
But then

They are renewable from year to year!

Fresh Gents would rise, though Gent resigned the pen : I should not wholly

Despair for six months of another C****,

Nor, though F******** lay on his small bier,
Be melancholy—

But when will such an Elephant appear?
Though Penley were destroyed at Drury Lane,
His like might come again!

Fate might supply

A second Powell if the first should die;

Another Bennet, if the sire were snatched;

Barnes-might be matched;
And Time fill up the gap

Were Parsloe laid upon the green earth's lap;
Even Claremont might be equalled-I could hope
(All human greatness is, alas, so puny!)
For other Egertons-another Pope,

But not another Chunee!

Well! he is dead!

And there's a gap in Nature of eleven
Feet high by seven-

Five living tons !—and I remain-nine stone
Of skin and bone!

It is enough to make me shake my head

And dream of the grave's brink-
'Tis worse to think

How like the Beast's the sorry life I've led!—
A sort of show

Of my poor public self and my sagacity,
To profit the rapacity

Of certain folks in Paternoster Row,
A slavish toil to win an upper story—
And a hard glory

Of wooden beams about a weary brow!
Oh, Mr. C.!

If ever you behold me twirl my pen
To earn a public supper, that is, eat
In the hare street,
Or turn about their literary den-
Shoot me!