There the green emerald, there cornelians glow, And rich carbuncles pour eternal light; With all that India and Peru can shew, Or Labrador can give so flaming bright, To the charm'd mariner's half-dazzled sight. The coral-paved baths with diamonds blaze: And all that can the female heart delight Of fair attire, the last recess displays, And all that Luxury can ask her eye surveys.
Now through the hall melodious music stole,
And selt-prepar'd the splendid banquet stands,
Self-pour'd the nectar sparkles in the bowl:
The lute and viol, touch'd by unseen hands,
Aid the soft voices of the choral bands.
O'er the full board a brighter lustre beams
Than Persia's monarch at his feasts commands;
For sweet refreshment all inviting seems
To taste celestial food, and pure ambrosial streams.
But when meek eve hung out her dewy star,
And gently veil'd with gradual hand the sky,
Lo! the bright folding doors retiring far
Display to Psyche's captivated eye
All that voluptuous ease could e'er supply,
To sooth the spirits in serene repose.
Beneath the velvet's purple canopy,
Divinely form'd, a downy couch arose,
While alabaster lamps a milky light disclose,
HERE sits J P——————, and could I but find
A pallet well charg'd with the colours of mind,
I should venture to paint, with inadequate plan,
The lights and the shades of this great, little man.
Achilles, 'tis said, had a skin made of steel,
And was callous to all, save the kibe on his heel;
But our friend feels, all over, the sting or the smart,
And wherever you touch, 'tis a pulse from the heart.
With such sense, and such soreness, I can't understand
Why he ne'er feels an itch-in the palm of the hand.
Acute, argumentative, agile, yet strong,
With a heart ever right and a head seldom wrong;
With passions too prompt to sit quiet and still;
In his principles fix'd, with a wandering will;
Perplex'd in his creed, and too apt, so to tell us;
In his friendships a little too lovingly jealous;
Still eager to get or to give satisfaction,
He drives after motives and misses the action.
No axiom so clear, but he'll make it more plain;
No action so fair, but he likes to explain.
Too nice in the right, too sincere for profession,
And with meaning so full that he fails in expression
For when crowds of ideas all strive to rush out,
Each must elbow his neighbour and shove him about;
But his life and his language have masculine merit,
Both are deeply impress'd with the print of his spirit.
It burns in his eyes, it enlarges his frame,
And it tempers his clay, not with water, but flame.
His words burst asunder the shackling of art,
And the pen that he writes with is dipt in his heart.
"Tis not from a fountain like this you can draw
Any languid harangue of loquacious law;
Tis clear sense gushing out, unconfined, uncompress'd,
From the pure and perennial spring in the breast.
When all was at sea, all confusion and fear,
Like the seaman's small needle he shew'd how to steer;
Nor ever declin'd from the patriot direction,
"Till the lightning of Grattan once hurt the attraction; But the transient dip, and the slight deviation, Prove the needle points true in its natural station.
No prancing, curvetting, episcopal poney,
No desk petit-maitre, no church macaroni,
(With his curl carv'd as stiff as the top of the crozier, And manners more pliant and loose than an osier); But tall and erect, and with resolute air,
And with head that disdains e'en one hypocrite hair, Here stands W--m C- -ll, the STEM of our table, A column of prelacy, stately and stable;
The capital, doric-and doric, the base,
It excels more in strength than Corinthian grace.
Without flourish, or freeze, or Parisian plaster,
A pillar for use, not a shewy pilaster.
Buch a pillar, when Samson was called out for sport, Perhaps might have sav'd the whole Philistine court. SAM might crack all his sinews, and bow with his weight,
But WILL would uphold both the church and the
On all who dare shake that convenient alliance,
He bends his black brows, and he scowls a defiance.
Yet forgets, while he thunders against reformation,
That what is establishment was innovation.
Qur patriots, alas! are all dwarfish and weak,
Too puny to make aristocracy quake;
But O! could thy principles change to the Whig,
Coulds't thou throw them as readily off as thy wig,
That old tyrant, called Custom, in vain would resist!
The momentum of such a republican fist:
His strong castle would tumble, like Jericho's wall, of And his talisman broken, the giant must fall.
More solid than shining, more weighty than wordy,
In the right, very stout: in the wrong, very sturdy.
Both sudden and sure, in the grasp of conception,
But too fond of the rule, to admit the exception.
Too tenacious in tenet to sport an opinion,
Each dogma with him has despotic dominion.
Too apt to mistake argumentative strife,
And to lay down a word as he'd lay down his life.
He takes always good aim, but too quick in the timing,
He flushes the bird, and his temper burns priming.
His heart always flames with good fuel, well fed,
But it sends up, at times, a thick smoke to the head;
And 'till that clears away, 'tis not easy to know
The fact or the motive, the friend or the foe.
Then take up this tankard of rough, massy plate,
Not for fashion preferr'd, but for value and weight;
When you lift up the cover, then think of our Vicar,
And take a hard pull at the orthodox liquor,
That keeps hale and hearty in every climate,
And makes the poor Curate as proud as the Primate
But when genius and judgment are called to the feast,'
Make the trio complete and cement them with taste;
And for taste let me call on our courtly COLLECTORY
Not the king of his company, but the protector;
Who, with easy hilarity, knows how to sit
In a family compact with wisdom and wit;
With the art to know much, without seeming to know it,
Joins the art to have wit, without straining to shew it.
For his mind not case-harden'd by form or profession,
Always yields, with a spring-and impels, by concession.
True politeness, like sense, is begotten, not made,
But all our professions smell strong of a trade.
All vocation is craft, both the black and the scarlet,
The doctor, the pleader, the judge, and the harlot.
No collector of medals, or fossils so fine,
He gather's good fellows around his good wine.
No collector of shells, or of stuff'd alligators,
But of two-leg'd, unfeather'd, erect mutton-eaters,
That join heart in hand to drive round the decanter,
While the bishop hob-nobs with the lowly dissenter.
Here the puddle of party ne'er rises in riot,
But the oil of urbanity keeps the waves quiet.
Neither faction nor feud his good humour espouses,
He's the happy Mercutio who curses both houses.
With a pretty plump place, and a cellar well stor❜d,
Makes his bow to the bench, and his bow to the board..
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