A rusty link of ministerial chain,
A living glory of the present reign,
Vers'd in the arts of ammunition bread,
He wav'd a red wheat manchet round his head :
David-ap-Howel, furious, wild, and young,
From the same line as royal Madoc sprung,
Occur'd, the object of his bursting ire,
And on his nose receiv'd the weapon dire :
A double river of congealing blood,
O'erflows his garter with a purple flood
Mad as a bull by daring mastiffs tore,
When ladies scream and greasy butchers roar ;
Mad as B-rg-e when groping through the park,
He kiss'd his own dear lady in the dark;
The lineal representative of kings,
A carving weapon seiz'd and up he springs :
A weapon long in cruel murders stain'd,
For mangling captive carcases ordain'd.
But Fortune, Providence, or what you will,
To lay the rising scenes of horror still;
In Fero's person seiz'd a shining pot,
Where bubbled scrips, and contracts flaming hot :
In the fierce Cambrian's breeches drains it dry,
The chapel totters with the shrieking cry,
Loud as the mob's reiterated yell,
When Sawny rose, and mighty Chatham fell.
Flaccus the glory of a masquerade;
Whose every action is of trifles made:
At Grafton's well-stor'd table ever found;
Like Grafton too for every vice renown'd.
Grafton to whose immortal sense we owe,
The blood which will from civil discord flow:
Who swells each grievance, lengthens every tax,
Blind to the rip'ning vengeance of the axe.
Flaccus, the youthful, degagée and gay,
With eye of pity, saw the dreary fray:
Amidst the greasy horrors of the fight,
He trembled for his suit of virgin white.
Fond of his eloquence, and easy flow
Of talk verbose whose meaning none can know :
He mounts the table, but thro' eager haste,
His foot upon a sinoaking court-pie plac'd :
The burning liquid penetrates his shoe,
Swift from the rostrum the declaimer flew,
But learnedly heroic he disdains
To spoil his pretty countenance with strains.
Remounted on the table, now he stands,
Waves his high powder'd-head and ruffled hands.
"Friends! Let this clang of hostile fury cease,
Ill it becomes the plenipos of peace :
Shall olios, for internal battle drest,
Like bullets outward perforate the breast;
Shall jav'lin bottles blood ætherial spill;
Shall luscious turtle without surfeit kill ?"
More had he said: when from Doglostock flung,
A custard pudding trembled on his tongue :
And, ah! misfortunes seldom come alone,
Great Twitcher rising seiz'd a polish'd bone;
Upon his breast the oily weapon clangs;
Headlong he falls, propell'd by thick'ning bangs.
The prince of trimmers, for his magic fam'd,
Quarlendorgongos by infernals nam'd:
By mortals Alavat in common stil'd;
Nurs'd in a furnace, Nox and Neptune's child :
Bursting with rage, a weighty bottle caught,
With crimson blood and weighty spirits fraught;
To Doxo's head the gurgling woe he sends,
Doxo made mighty in his mighty friends.
Upon his front the stubborn vessel sounds,
Back from his harder front the bottle bounds:
He fell. The royal Madoc rising up,
Repos'd him weary on his painful crup:
The head of Doxo, first projecting down,
Thunders upon the kingly Cambrian's crown:
The sanguine tumour swells; again he falls;
On his broad chest the bulky Doxo sprawls.
Tyro the sage, the sensible, the strong,
As yet unnotic'd in the muse-taught song.
Tyro, for necromancy far renown'd,
A greater adept than Agrippa found;
Oft as his phantom reasons interven'd,
De Viris pension'd, the defaulter screen'd;
Another C-rt-t remains in Cl-;
In Fl-the-r fifty Jefferies appear;
Tyro stood neuter, till the champions tir'd,
In languid attitudes a truce desir'd.
Long was the bloody fight; confusion dire
Has hid some circumstances from the lyre:
Suffice it, that each hero kiss'd the ground,
Tyro excepted for old laws renown'd;
Who stretching his authoritative hand,
Loudly thus issu'd forth his dread command.
Peace, wrangling senators, and placemen, peace, In the King's name, let hostile vengeance cease!" Aghast the champions hear the furious sound, The fallen unmolested leave the ground. "What fury, nobles, occupies your breast? What, patriot spirits, has your minds possest? Nor honorary gifts, nor pensions, please, Say, are you Covent-Garden patentees ! How? wist you not what ancient sages said, The council quarrels, and the poor have bread. See this court-pie with twenty thousand drest; Be every thought of enmity at rest:
Divide it and be friends again," he said:
The council god return'd; and discord fled.*
• Growing up separate and alien, in a great degree, from the social interests and sentiments which bind men together, Chatterton was habitually ready and watchful for occasions to practise on their weakness and folly, and to indulge a propensity to annoyance by satire. He would play off the witty malice, no matter who was the object. He was a very Ishmael with this weapon. It is somewhere his own confession, that, when the mood was on him, he spared neither foe nor friend. Very greatly amusing as it may well be believed that his company was, when he chose to give it, nobody was safe against having his name, with his peculiarities, his hobby, his vanity, hitched into some sarcastic stanza.-ECLECTIC REVIEW.
JOYLESS I seek the solitary shade,
Where dusky Contemplation veils the scene, The dark retreat (of leafless branches made) Where sick'ning sorrow wets the yellow'd green.
The darksome ruins of some sacred cell,
Where erst the sons of Superstition trod,
Tott'ring upon the mossy meadow, tell
We better know, but less adore our God.
Now, as I mournful tread the gloomy cave,
Thro' the wide window (once with mysteries dight)
The distant forest, and the darken'd wave
Of the swoln Avon ravishes my sight.
But see the thick'ning veil of evening's drawn,
The azure changes to a sable blue;
The rapt'ring prospects fly the less'ning lawn,
And Nature seems to mourn the dying view.
Self-sprighted Fear creeps silent thro' the gloom,
Starts at the rust'ling leaf, and rolls his eyes;
Aghast with horror, when he views the tomb,
With every torment of a hell he flies.
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