The Rolliad Part 3

The next character is most ingeniously described, but like a former one, containing some _personal_ allusions, requires, in order to be fully understood, a more intimate acquaintance with the exterior qualifications of the gentleman in question, than can have fallen to the lot of every reader. All who have had the pleasure of seeing him, however, will immediately acknowledge the resemblance of the portrait.

See next advance, in knowing FLETCHER's stead, A youth, who boasts no common share of head; What plenteous stores of knowledge may contain The s.p.a.cious tenement of GRENVILLE's brain!

Nature, in all her dispensations wise, Who form'd his head-piece of so vast a size, Hath not, 'tis true, neglected to bestow Its due proportion to the part below; And hence we reason, that, to serve the state, His top and bottom may have equal weight.

Every reader will naturally conceive, that in the description of the princ.i.p.al person of the board, the author has exerted the whole force of his genius, and he will not find his expectations disappointed; he has reserved him for the last, and has judiciously evaded disgracing him by a comparison with any other, upon the principle, no doubt, quoted from Mr. Theobald, by that excellent critic, Martinus Scriblerus:

"None but himself can be his parallel."

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD.

As he has drawn this character at considerable length, we shall content ourselves with selecting some few of the most striking pa.s.sages, whatever may be the difficulty of selecting where almost the whole is equally beautiful. The grandeur of the opening prepares the mind for the sublime sensations suitable to the dignity of a subject so exalted:

Above the rest, majestically great, Behold the infant Atlas of the state, The matchless miracle of modern days, In whom Britannia to the world displays A sight to make surrounding nations stare; A kingdom trusted to a school-boy's care.

It is to be observed to the credit of our author, that, although his political principles are unquestionably favourable to the present happy government, he does not scruple, with that boldness which ever characterises real genius, to animadvert with freedom on persons of the most elevated rank and station; and he has accordingly interspersed his commendations of our favourite young Minister with much excellent and reasonable counsel, fore-warning him of the dangers to which he is by his situation exposed. After having mentioned his introduction into public life, and concurred in that admirable panegyric of his immaculate virtues, made in the House of Commons by a n.o.ble Lord already celebrated in the poem, upon which he has the following observation:

------As MULGRAVE, who so fit To chaunt the praises of ingenious PITT?

The nymph unhackney'd and unknown abroad, Is thus commended by the hackney'd bawd.

The dupe enraptur'd, views her fancied charms, And clasps the maiden mischief to his arms, Till dire disease reveals the truth too late: O grant my country, Heav'n, a milder fate!

he attends him to the high and distinguished station he now so ably fills, and, in a nervous strain of manly eloquence, describes the defects of character and conduct to which his situation, and the means by which he came to it, render him peculiarly liable. The spirit of the following lines is remarkable:

Oft in one bosom may be found allied, Excess of meanness, and excess of pride: Oft may the Statesman, in St. Stephen's brave, Sink in St. James's to an abject slave; Erect and proud at Westminster, may fall Prostrate and pitiful at Leadenhall; In word a giant, though a dwarf in deed, Be led by others while he seems to lead.

He afterwards with great force describes the lamentable state of humiliation into which he may fall from his present pinnacle of greatness, by too great a subserviency to those from whom he has derived it, and appeals to his pride in the following beautiful exclamation:

Shall CHATHAM's offspring basely beg support, Now from the India, now St. James's court; With pow'r admiring Senates to bewitch, Now kiss a Monarch's--now a Merchant's breech; And prove a pupil of St. Omer's school, Of either KINSON, AT. or JEN. the tool?

Though cold and cautious criticism may perhaps stare at the boldness of the concluding line, we will venture to p.r.o.nounce it the most masterly stroke of the sublime to be met with in this, or any other poem. It may be justly said, as Mr. Pope has so happily expressed it--

"To s.n.a.t.c.h a grace beyond the reach of art."

ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

As we despair of offering any thing equal to this lofty flight of genius to the reader of true taste, we shall conclude with recommending to him the immediate perusal of the whole poem, and, in the name of an admiring public, returning our heart-felt thanks to the wonderful author of this invaluable work.

_NUMBER VI._

In our two last numbers we were happy to give our readers the earliest relish of those additional beauties, with which the nineteenth and twentieth impressions of the ROLLIAD are enriched. And these interpolations we doubt not have been sufficiently admired for their intrinsic merit, even in their detached state, as we gave them. But what superior satisfaction must they have afforded to those who have read them in their proper places! They are parts of a whole, and as such wonderfully improve the effect of the general design, by an agreeable interruption of prosaic regularity.

This may appear to some but a paradoxical kind of improvement, which is subversive of order. It must be remembered, however, that the descent of ROLLO to the night-cellar was undoubtedly suggested by the descent of aeneas to h.e.l.l in the Sixth Book of Virgil; and every cla.s.sical Critic knows what a n.o.ble contempt of order the Roman Poet studiously displays in the review of his countrymen. From Romulus he jumps at once to Augustus; gets back how he can to Numa; goes straight forward to Brutus; takes a short run to Camillus; makes a long stride to Julius Caesar and Pompey; from Cato retreats again to the Gracchi and the Scipios; and at last arrives in a beautiful zig-zag at Marcellus, with whom he concludes. And this must be right, because it is in Virgil.

A similar confusion, therefore, has now been judiciously introduced by our Author in the Sixth Book of the ROLLIAD. He first singles out some of the great statesmen of the present age; then carries us to church, to hear Dr. Prettyman preach before the Speaker and the pews; and next shows us all that Mr. DUNDAS means to let the public know of the new India Board;--that is to say, the Members of whom it is composed. He now proceeds, where a dull genius would probably have begun, with an accurate description of the House of Commons, preparatory to the exhibition of Mr. ROLLE, and some other of our political heroes, on that theatre of their glory. Maps of the country round Troy have been drawn from the Iliad; and we doubt not, that a plan of St. Stephen's might now be delineated with the utmost accuracy from the ROLLIAD.

Merlin first ushers Duke ROLLO into the LOBBY: marks the situation of the two entrances; one in the front, the other communicating laterally with the Court of Requests; and points out the topography of the fire-place and the box,

------ ------ ------in which Sits PEARSON, like a paG.o.d in his niche; The Gomgom PEARSON, whose sonorous lungs With "Silence! Room there!" drown an hundred tongues.

This pa.s.sage is in the very spirit of prophecy, which delights to represent things in the most lively manner. We not only see, but hear Pearson in the execution of his office. The language, too, is truly prophetic; unintelligible, perhaps, to those to whom it is addressed, but perfectly clear, full, and forcible to those who live in the time of the accomplishment. Duke ROLLO might reasonably be supposed to stare at the barbarous words "_PaG.o.d_" and "_Gomgom_;" but we, who know one to signify an Indian Idol, and the other an Indian Instrument of music, perceive at once the peculiar propriety with which such images are applied to an officer of a House of Commons so completely Indian as the present. A writer of less judgment would have contented himself with comparing Pearson simply to a

Statue in his niche--

and with calling him a Stentor, perhaps in the next line: but such unappropriated similies and metaphors could not satisfy the nice taste of our author.

The description of the Lobby also furnishes an opportunity of interspersing a pa.s.sage of the tender kind, in praise of the Pomona who attends there with oranges. Our poet calls her HUCSTERIA, and, by a dexterous stroke of art, compares her to s.h.i.+ptonia, whose amours with ROLLO form the third and fourth books of the ROLLIAD.

Behold the lovely wanton, kind and fair, As bright s.h.i.+PTONIA, late thy amorous care!

Mark how her winning smiles, and 'witching eyes, On yonder unfledg'd orator she tries!

Mark, with what grace she offers to his hand The tempting orange, pride of China's land!

This gives rise to a panegyric on the medical virtues of oranges, and an oblique censure on the indecent practice of our young Senators, who come down drunk from the eating-room, to sleep in the gallery.

O! take, wise youth, the' Hesperian fruit, of use Thy lungs to cherish with balsamic juice.

With this thy parch'd roof moisten; nor consume Thy hours and guineas in the eating-room, Till, full of claret, down with wild uproar You reel, and, stretch'd along the gallery, snore.

From this the poet naturally slides into a general caution against the vice of drunkenness, which he more particularly enforces, by the instance of Mr. PITT's late peril, from the farmer at Wandsworth.

Ah! think, what danger on debauch attends: Let Pitt, once drunk, preach temp'rance to his friends; How, as he wander'd darkling o'er the plain, His reason drown'd in JENKINSON's champaigne, A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, Had shed a Premier's for a robber's blood.

We have been thus minute in tracing the transitions in this inimitable pa.s.sage, as they display, in a superior degree, the wonderful skill of our poet, who could thus bring together an orange-girl, and the present pure and immaculate Minister; a connection, which, it is more than probable, few of our readers would in any wise have suspected.

--------------Ex fumo dare lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.

From the Lobby we are next led into the several committee-rooms and other offices adjoining; and among the rest, MERLIN, like a n.o.ble Lord, whose diary was some time since printed, "takes occasion to inspect the water-closets,"

Where offerings, worthy of those altars, lie, Speech, letter, narrative, remark, reply; With dead-born taxes, innocent of ill, With cancell'd clauses of the India bill: There pious NORTHCOTE's meek rebukes, and here The labour'd nothings of the SCRUTINEER; And reams on reams of tracts, that, without pain, Incessant spring from SCOTT's prolific brain.

Yet wherefore to this age should names be known, But heard, and then forgotten in their own?

Turn then, my son, &c. &c.

This pa.s.sage will probably surprise many of our readers, who must have discovered our author to be, as every good and wise man must be, firmly attached to the present system. It was natural for Dante to send his enemies to h.e.l.l; but it seems strange that our poet should place the writings of his own friends and fellow-labourers in a water-closet. It has indeed been hinted to us, that it might arise from envy, to find some of them better rewarded for their exertions in the cause, than himself. But though great minds have sometimes been subject to this pa.s.sion, we cannot suppose it to have influenced the author of the ROLLIAD in the present instance. For in that case we doubt not he would have shown more tenderness to his fellow-sufferer, the unfortunate Mr. NORTHCOTE, who, after sacrificing his time, degrading his profession, and hazarding his ears twice or thrice every week, for these two or three years past, has at length confessed his patriotism weary of employing his talents for the good of his country, without receiving the reward of his labours. To confess the truth, we ourselves think the apparent singularity of the poet's conduct on this occasion, may be readily ascribed to that independence of superior genius, which we noticed in our last number. We there remarked, with what becoming freedom he spoke to the Minister himself; and in the pa.s.sage now before us, we may find traces of the same spirit, in the allusions to the coal-tax, gauze-tax, and ribbon-tax, as well as the unexampled alterations and corrections of the celebrated India-bill.

Why then should it appear extraordinary, that he should take the same liberty with two or three brother-authors, which he had before taken with their master; and without scruple intimate, what he and every one else must think of their productions, notwithstanding he may possess all possible charity for the good intention of their endeavours?

We cannot dismiss these criticisms, without observing on the concluding lines; how happily our author, here again, as before, by the mention of s.h.i.+ptonia, contrives to recal our attention to the personages more immediately before us, MERLIN and DUKE ROLLO!

_NUMBER VII._

We come now to the _Sanctum Sanctorum_, the Holy of Holies, where the glory of political integrity s.h.i.+nes visibly, since the shrine has been purified from Lord J. CAVENDISH, Mr. FOLJAMBE, Sir C. BUNBURY, Mr.

c.o.kE, Mr. BAKER, Major HARTLEY, and the rest of its pollutions. To drop our metaphor, after making a minute survey of the Lobby, peeping into the Eating-room, and inspecting the Water-closets, we are at length admitted into the House itself. The transition here is peculiarly grand and solemn. MERLIN, having corrected himself for wasting so much time on insignificant objects,

(Yet wherefore to this age should names be known, But heard, and then forgotten in their own?)

immediately directs the attention of Rollo to the doors of the house, which are represented in the vision, as opening at that moment to gratify the hero's curiosity; then the prophet suddenly cries out, in the language of ancient Religion,

------Procul, o procul este profani!

Turn then, my son, where to thy hallow'd eye Yon doors unfold--Let none profane he nigh!