6 DAMNATION.

‘ O that mine enemy had written

A book!’ — cried Job:— a fearful curse,

If to the Arab, as the Briton,

‘ Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—

The Devil to Peter wished no worse.

When Peter's next new book found vent,

The Devil to all the first Reviews

A copy of it slyly sent,

With five-pound note as compliment,

And this short notice —‘ Pray abuse.’

Then seriatim, month and quarter,

Appeared such mad tirades.— One said —

‘ Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,

Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,

The last thing as he went to bed.’

Another —‘ Let him shave his head!

Where's Dr. Willis?— Or is he joking?

What does the rascal mean or hope,

No longer imitating Pope,

In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’

One more,‘ Is incest not enough?

And must there be adultery too?

Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!

Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! hell-fire

Is twenty times too good for you.

‘ By that last book of yours WE think

You've double damned yourself to scorn;

We warned you whilst yet on the brink

You stood. From your black name will shrink

The babe that is unborn.’

All these Reviews the Devil made

Up in a parcel, which he had

Safely to Peter's house conveyed.

For carriage, tenpence Peter paid —

Untied them — read them — went half mad.

‘ What!’ cried he,‘ this is my reward

For nights of thought, and days, of toil?

Do poets, but to be abhorred

By men of whom they never heard,

Consume their spirits’ oil?

‘ What have I done to them?— and who

IS Mrs. Foy?‘ Tis very cruel

To speak of me and Betty so!

Adultery! God defend me! Oh!

I've half a mind to fight a duel.

‘ Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting,

‘ Is it my genius, like the moon,

Sets those who stand her face inspecting,

That face within their brain reflecting,

Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?’

For Peter did not know the town,

But thought, as country readers do,

For half a guinea or a crown,

He bought oblivion or renown

From God's own voice in a review.

All Peter did on this occasion

Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.

It is a dangerous invasion

When poets criticize; their station

Is to delight, not pose.

The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair

For Born's translation of Kant's book;

A world of words, tail foremost, where

Right — wrong — false — true — and foul — and fair

As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

Five thousand crammed octavo pages

Of German psychologics,— he

Who his furor verborum assuages

Thereon, deserves just seven months’ wages

More than will e'er be due to me.

I looked on them nine several days,

And then I saw that they were bad;

A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,—

He never read them;— with amaze

I found Sir William Drummond had.

When the book came, the Devil sent

It to P. Verbovale, Esquire,

With a brief note of compliment,

By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,

And set his soul on fire.

Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,

Made him beyond the bottom see

Of truth's clear well — when I and you, Ma'am,

Go, as we shall do, subter humum,

We may know more than he.

Now Peter ran to seed in soul

Into a walking paradox;

For he was neither part nor whole,

Nor good, nor bad — nor knave nor fool;

— Among the woods and rocks

Furious he rode, where late he ran,

Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;

Turned to a formal puritan,

A solemn and unsexual man,—

He half believed “White Obi”.

This steed in vision he would ride,

High trotting over nine-inch bridges,

With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,

Mocking and mowing by his side —

A mad-brained goblin for a guide —

Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.

After these ghastly rides, he came

Home to his heart, and found from thence

Much stolen of its accustomed flame;

His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame

Of their intelligence.

To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;

He was no Whig, he was no Tory;

No Deist and no Christian he;—

He got so subtle, that to be

Nothing, was all his glory.

One single point in his belief

From his organization sprung,

The heart-enrooted faith, the chief

Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,

That‘ Happiness is wrong’;

So thought Calvin and Dominic;

So think their fierce successors, who

Even now would neither stint nor stick

Our flesh from off our bones to pick,

If they might‘ do their do.’

His morals thus were undermined:—

The old Peter — the hard, old Potter —

Was born anew within his mind;

He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,

As when he tramped beside the Otter.

In the death hues of agony

Lambently flashing from a fish,

Now Peter felt amused to see

Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,

Mixed with a certain hungry wish.

So in his Country's dying face

He looked — and, lovely as she lay,

Seeking in vain his last embrace,

Wailing her own abandoned case,

With hardened sneer he turned away:

And coolly to his own soul said;—

‘ Do you not think that we might make

A poem on her when she's dead:—

Or, no — a thought is in my head —

Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:

‘ My wife wants one.— Let who will bury

This mangled corpse! And I and you,

My dearest Soul, will then make merry,

As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—’

‘ Ay — and at last desert me too.’

And so his Soul would not be gay,

But moaned within him; like a fawn

Moaning within a cave, it lay

Wounded and wasting, day by day,

Till all its life of life was gone.

As troubled skies stain waters clear,

The storm in Peter's heart and mind

Now made his verses dark and queer:

They were the ghosts of what they were,

Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

For he now raved enormous folly,

Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,

‘ Twould make George Colman melancholy

To have heard him, like a male Molly,

Chanting those stupid staves.

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse

On Peter while he wrote for freedom,

So soon as in his song they spy

The folly which soothes tyranny,

Praise him, for those who feed‘ em.

‘ He was a man, too great to scan;—

A planet lost in truth's keen rays:—

His virtue, awful and prodigious;—

He was the most sublime, religious,

Pure-minded Poet of these days.’

As soon as he read that, cried Peter,

‘ Eureka! I have found the way

To make a better thing of metre

Than e'er was made by living creature

Up to this blessed day.’

Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—

In one of which he meekly said:

‘ May Carnage and Slaughter,

Thy niece and thy daughter,

May Rapine and Famine,

Thy gorge ever cramming,

Glut thee with living and dead!

‘ May Death and Damnation,

And Consternation,

Flit up from Hell with pure intent!

Slash them at Manchester,

Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;

Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.

‘ Let thy body-guard yeomen

Hew down babes and women,

And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!

When Moloch in Jewry

Munched children with fury,

It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.