FullReads

XII.

I like thy Kenilworth–but I’m not going
To take a Retrospective Re-Review
Of all thy dainty novels–merely showing
The old familiar faces of a few,
The question to renew,
How thou canst leave such deeds without a name,
Forego the unclaim’d Dividends of fame,
Forego the smiles of literary houris–
Mid-Lothian’s trump, and Fife’s shrill note of praise,
And all the Carse of Gowrie’s,
When thou might’st have thy statue in Cromarty–
Or see thy image on Italian trays,
Betwixt Queen Caroline and Buonaparte,
Be painted by the Titian of R.A’s,
Or vie in signboards with the Royal Guelph!
P’rhaps have thy bust set cheek by jowl with Homer’s,
P’rhaps send out plaster proxies of thyself
To other Englands with Australian roamers–
Mayhap, in Literary Owhyhee
Displace the native wooden gods, or be
The china-Lar of a Canadian shelf!

XIII.

It is not modesty that bids thee hide–
She never wastes her blushes out of sight:
It is not to invite
The world’s decision, for thy fame is tried,–
And thy fair deeds are scatter’d far and wide,
Even royal heads are with thy readers reckon’d,–
From men in trencher caps to trencher scholars
In crimson collars,
And learned serjeants in the Forty-Second!
Whither by land or sea art thou not beckon’d?
Mayhap exported from the Frith of Forth,
Defying distance and its dim control;
Perhaps read about Stromness, and reckon’d worth
A brace of Miltons for capacious soul–
Perhaps studied in the whalers, further north,
And set above ten Shakspeares near the pole!

XIV.

Oh, when thou writest by Aladdin’s lamp,
With such a giant genius at command,
Forever at thy stamp,
To fill thy treasury from Fairy Land,
When haply thou might’st ask the pearly hand
Of some great British Vizier’s eldest daughter,
Tho’ princes sought her,
And lead her in procession hymeneal,
Oh, why dost thou remain a Beau Ideal!
Why stay, a ghost, on the Lethean Wharf,
Envelop’d in Scotch mist and gloomy fogs?
Why, but because thou art some puny Dwarf,
Some hopeless Imp, like Biquet with the Tuft,
Fearing, for all thy wit, to be rebuff’d,
Or bullied by our great reviewing Gogs?

XV.

What in this masquing age
Maketh Unknowns so many and so shy?
What but the critic’s page?
One hath a cast, he hides from the world’s eye;
Another hath a wen,–he won’t show where;
A third has sandy hair,
A hunch upon his back, or legs awry,
Things for a vile reviewer to espy!
Another hath a mangel-wurzel nose,–
Finally, this is dimpled,
Like a pale crumpet face, or that is pimpled,
Things for a monthly critic to expose–
Nay, what is thy own case–that being small,
Thou choosest to be nobody at all!

XVI.

Well, thou art prudent, with such puny bones–
E’en like Elshender, the mysterious elf,
That shadowy revelation of thyself–
To build thee a small hut of haunted stones–
For certainly the first pernicious man
That ever saw thee, would quickly draw thee
In some vile literary caravan–
Shown for a shilling
Would be thy killing,
Think of Crachami’s miserable span!
No tinier frame the tiny spark could dwell in
Than there it fell in–
But when she felt herself a show, she tried
To shrink from the world’s eye, poor dwarf! and died!

XVII.

O since it was thy fortune to be born
A dwarf on some Scotch Inch, and then to flinch
From all the Gog-like jostle of great men,
Still with thy small crow pen
Amuse and charm thy lonely hours forlorn–
Still Scottish story daintily adorn,
Be still a shade–and when this age is fled,
When we poor sons and daughters of reality
Are in our graves forgotten and quite dead,
And Time destroys our mottoes of morality–
The lithographic hand of Old Mortality
Shall still restore thy emblem on the stone,
A featureless death’s head,
And rob Oblivion ev’n of the Unknown!