CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY.

Thou who, when fears attack, Bid'st them avaunt, and Black Care, at the horseman's back Perching, unseatest; Sweet when the morn is grey; Sweet, when they've cleared away Lunch; and at close of day Possibly sweetest: I have a liking old For thee, though manifold Stories, I know, are told, Not to thy credit; How one (or two at most) Drops make a cat a ghost— Useless, except to roast— Doctors have said it: How they who use fusees All grow by slow degrees Brainless as chimpanzees, Meagre as lizards; Go mad, and beat their wives; Plunge (after shocking lives) Razors and carving knives Into their gizzards. Confound such knavish tricks! Yet know I five or six Smokers who freely mix Still with their neighbours; Jones—who, I'm glad to say, Asked leave of Mrs. J.— Daily absorbs a clay After his labours. Cats may have had their goose Cooked by tobacco-juice; Still why deny its use Thoughtfully taken? We're not as tabbies are: Smith, take a fresh cigar! Jones, the tobacco-jar! Here's to thee, Bacon!

In those old days which poets say were golden— (Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves: And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves, Who talk to me 'in language quaint and olden' Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves, Pan with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards, And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:) In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette (Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born. They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet, No fashions varying as the hues of morn. Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate, Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn) And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked, And were no doubt extremely incorrect. Yet do I think their theory was pleasant: And oft, I own, my 'wayward fancy roams' Back to those times, so different from the present; When no one smoked cigars, nor gave At-homes, Nor smote a billiard-ball, nor winged a pheasant, Nor 'did' their hair by means of long-tailed combs, Nor migrated to Brighton once a year, Nor—most astonishing of all—drank Beer. No, they did not drink Beer, 'which brings me to' (As Gilpin said) 'the middle of my song.' Not that 'the middle' is precisely true, Or else I should not tax your patience long: If I had said 'beginning' it might do; But I have a dislike to quoting wrong: I was unlucky—sinned against, not sinning— When Cowper wrote down 'middle' for 'beginning.' So to proceed. That abstinence from Malt Has always struck me as extremely curious. The Greek mind must have had some vital fault, That they should stick to liquors so injurious— (Wine, water, tempered p'raps with Attic salt)— And not at once invent that mild, luxurious, And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion Got on without it, is a startling question. Had they digestions? and an actual body Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on? Were they abstract ideas—(like Tom Noddy And Mr. Briggs)—or men, like Jones and Jackson? Then Nectar—was that beer, or whisky-toddy? Some say the Gaelic mixture, I the Saxon: I think a strict adherence to the latter Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter. Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shows That the real beverage for feasting gods on Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose And also to the palate, known as 'Hodgson.' I know a man—a tailor's son—who rose To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on, (Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,) That that man owed his rise to copious Beer. O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass! Names that should be on every infant's tongue! Shall days and months and years and centuries pass, And still your merits be unrecked, unsung? Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass, And wished that lyre could yet again be strung Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her Misguided sons that 'the best drink was water.' How would he now recant that wild opinion, And sing—as would that I could sing—of you! I was not born (alas!) the 'Muses' minion,' I'm not poetical, not even blue: And he (we know) but strives with waxen pinion, Whoe'er he is that entertains the view Of emulating Pindar, and will be Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea. Oh! when the green slopes of Arcadia burned With all the lustre of the dying day, And on Cithaeron's brow the reaper turned, (Humming, of course, in his delightful way, How Lycidas was dead, and how concerned The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay; And how rock told to rock the dreadful story That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory:) What would that lone and labouring soul have given, At that soft moment, for a pewter pot! How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven, And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot! If his own grandmother had died unshriven, In two short seconds he'd have recked it not; Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath canker'd Hath one unfailing remedy—the Tankard. Coffee is good, and so no doubt is cocoa; Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen: When 'Dulce est desipere in loco' Was written, real Falernian winged the pen. When a rapt audience has encored 'Fra Poco' Or 'Casta Diva,' I have heard that then The Prima Donna, smiling herself out, Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout. But what is coffee, but a noxious berry, Born to keep used-up Londoners awake? What is Falernian, what is Port or Sherry, But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache? Nay stout itself—(though good with oysters, very)— Is not a thing your reading man should take. He that would shine, and petrify his tutor, Should drink draught Allsopp in its 'native pewter.' But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear— A soft and silvery sound—I know it well. Its tinkling tells me that a time is near Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell. O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer, Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell: Seared is (of course) my heart—but unsubdued Is, and shall be, my appetite for food. I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen: But on one statement I may safely venture: That few of our most highly gifted men Have more appreciation of the trencher. I go. One pound of British beef, and then What Mr. Swiveller called 'a modest quencher'; That, home-returning, I may 'soothly say,' 'Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.'

As o'er the hill we roam'd at will, My dog and I together, We mark'd a chaise, by two bright bays Slow-moved along the heather: Two bays arch-neck'd, with tails erect And gold upon their blinkers; And by their side an ass I spied; It was a travelling tinker's. The chaise went by, nor aught cared I; Such things are not in my way; I turn'd me to the tinker, who Was loafing down a by-way: I ask'd him where he lived—a stare Was all I got in answer, As on he trudged: I rightly judged The stare said, 'Where I can, sir.' I ask'd him if he'd take a whiff Of 'bacco; he acceded; He grew communicative too, (A pipe was all he needed,) Till of the tinker's life, I think, I knew as much as he did.

'I loiter down by thorp and town, For any job I'm willing; Take here and there a dusty brown, And here and there a shilling. 'I deal in every ware in turn, I've rings for buddin' Sally That sparkle like those eyes of her'n; I've liquor for the valet. 'I steal from th' parson's strawberry-plots, I hide by th' squire's covers; I teach the sweet young housemaids what's The art of trapping lovers. 'The things I've done 'neath moon and stars Have got me into messes: I've seen the sky through prison bars, I've torn up prison dresses: 'I've sat, I've sigh'd, I've gloom'd, I've glanced With envy at the swallows That through the window slid, and danced (Quite happy) round the gallows; 'But out again I come, and show My face nor care a stiver, For trades are brisk and trades are slow, But mine goes on for ever.'

Thus on he prattled like a babbling brook. Then I, 'The sun hath slipped behind the hill, And my aunt Vivian dines at half-past six.' So in all love we parted; I to the Hall, They to the village. It was noised next noon That chickens had been miss'd at Syllabub Farm.

Introductory. Art thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the budding rose of April? Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned in thine eye? Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud a fair flower, I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne; And in the season it shall 'come out,' yea bloom, the pride of the parterre; Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall pluck it at the last. Of Propriety. Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Polestar Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair; Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society; The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros. Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked; Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice: And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not herself again.— I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the yew, Stood like a slumbering giants shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape, (The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilah-shears of Decorum;) And I said, 'Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!' I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky, And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose; Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch, Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up water: And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder, Must yield to him that danceth and 'moveth in the circles' at Astley's. For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade, And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another: A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure, Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork. Of Friendship. Choose judiciously thy friends; for to discard them is undesirable, Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop thy 'H's.' Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light? Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post? If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind; Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding: So shalt thou become like unto her; and thy manners shall be 'formed,' And thy name shall be a Sesame, at which the doors of the great shall fly open: Thou shalt know every Peer, his arms, and the date of his creation, His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove: Thou shalt kiss the hand of Royalty, and lo! in next morning's papers, Side by side with rumours of wars, and stories of shipwrecks and sieges, Shall appear thy name, and the minutiæ of thy head-dress and petticoat, For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin. Of Reading. Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life: Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet intelligible: Nor Thackeray, for he is a Hogarth, a photographer who flattereth not: Nor Kingsley, for he shall teach thee that thou shouldest not dream, but do. Read incessantly thy Burke; that Burke who, nobler than he of old, Treateth of the Peer and Peeress, the truly Sublime and Beautiful: Likewise study the 'creations' of 'the Prince of modern Romance'; Sigh over Leonard the Martyr, and smile on Pelham the puppy: Learn how 'love is the dram-drinking of existence'; And how we 'invoke, in the Gadara of our still closets, The beautiful ghost of the Ideal, with the simple wand of the pen.' Listen how Maltravers and the orphan 'forgot all but love,' And how Devereux's family chaplain 'made and unmade kings': How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, and a murderer, Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind. So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and master-spirits; And if thou canst not realize the Ideal, thou shalt at least idealize the Real.

You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day— I like to dock the smaller parts-o'-speech, As we curtail the already cur-tail'd cur (You catch the paronomasia, play 'po' words?), Did, rather, i' the pre-Landseerian days. Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern, And clapt it i' my poke, having given for same By way o' chop, swop, barter or exchange— 'Chop' was my snickering dandiprat's own term— One shilling and fourpence, current coin o' the realm. O-n-e one and f-o-u-r four Pence, one and fourpence—you are with me, sir?— What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o' the clock, One day (and what a roaring day it was Go shop or sight-see—bar a spit o' rain!) In February, eighteen sixty nine, Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei Hm—hm—how runs the jargon? being on throne. Such, sir, are all the facts, succinctly put, The basis or substratum—what you will— Of the impending eighty thousand lines. 'Not much in 'em either,' quoth perhaps simple Hodge. But there's a superstructure. Wait a bit. Mark first the rationale of the thing: Hear logic rivel and levigate the deed. That shilling—and for matter o' that, the pence— I had o' course upo' me—wi' me say— (Mecum's the Latin, make a note o' that) When I popp'd pen i' stand, scratch'd ear, wip'd snout, (Let everybody wipe his own himself) Sniff'd—tch!—at snuffbox; tumbled up, he-heed, Haw-haw'd (not hee-haw'd, that's another guess thing:) Then fumbled at, and stumbled out of, door, I shoved the timber ope wi' my omoplat; And in vestibulo, i' the lobby to-wit, (Iacobi Facciolati's rendering, sir,) Donn'd galligaskins, antigropeloes, And so forth; and, complete with hat and gloves, One on and one a-dangle i' my hand, And ombrifuge (Lord love you!), case o' rain, I flopp'd forth, 'sbuddikins! on my own ten toes, (I do assure you there be ten of them,) And went clump-clumping up hill and down dale To find myself o' the sudden i' front o' the boy. Put case I hadn't 'em on me, could I ha' bought This sort-o'-kind-o'-what-you-might-call toy, This pebble-thing, o' the boy-thing? Q.E.D. That's proven without aid from mumping Pope, Sleek porporate or bloated Cardinal. (Isn't it, old Fatchaps? You're in Euclid now.) So, having the shilling—having i' fact a lot— And pence and halfpence, ever so many o' them, I purchased, as I think I said before, The pebble (lapis, lapidis, -di, -dem, -de— What nouns 'crease short i' the genitive, Fatchaps, eh?) O' the boy, a bare-legg'd beggarly son of a gun, For one-and-fourpence. Here we are again. Now Law steps in, bigwigg'd, voluminous-jaw'd; Investigates and re-investigates. Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head. Perpend, sir, all the bearings of the case. At first the coin was mine, the chattel his. But now (by virtue of the said exchange And barter) vice versa all the coin, Per juris operationem, vests I' the boy and his assigns till ding o' doom; (In sæcula sæculo-o-o-orum; I think I hear the Abate mouth out that.) To have and hold the same to him and them.... Confer some idiot on Conveyancing. Whereas the pebble and every part thereof, And all that appertained thereunto, Quodcunque pertinet ad eam rem, (I fancy, sir, my Latin's rather pat) Or shall, will, may, might, can, could, would or should, (Subaudi cætera—clap we to the close— For what's the good of law in a case o' the kind) Is mine to all intents and purposes. This settled, I resume the thread o' the tale. Now for a touch o' the vendor's quality. He says a gen'lman bought a pebble of him, (This pebble i' sooth, sir, which I hold i' my hand)— And paid for't, like a gen'lman, on the nail. 'Did I o'ercharge him a ha'penny? Devil a bit. Fiddlepin's end! Get out, you blazing ass! Gabble o' the goose. Don't bugaboo-baby me! Go double or quits? Yah! tittup! what's the odds?' —There's the transaction view'd i' the vendor's light. Next ask that dumpled hag, stood snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! ὀτοτοτοτοτοῖ, ('Stead which we blurt out Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestickmaker, and Jack and Gill, Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that. Ask the schoolmaster. Take schoolmaster first. He saw a gentleman purchase of a lad A stone, and pay for it rite, on the square, And carry it off per saltum, jauntily, Propria quæ maribus, gentleman's property now (Agreeably to the law explain'd above), In proprium usum, for his private ends. The boy he chuck'd a brown i' the air, and bit I' the face the shilling: heaved a thumping stone At a lean hen that ran cluck clucking by, (And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—what's the Ciceronian phrase?— Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice, Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male—, Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the syntax into verse: Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—ay, 'agrees,' old Fatchaps—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, Genere, i' point o' gender, numero; O' number, et persona, and person. Ut, Instance: Sol ruit, down flops sun, et and, Montes umbrantur, out flounce mountains. Pah! Excuse me, sir, I think I'm going mad. You see the trick on't though, and can yourself Continue the discourse ad libitum. It takes up about eighty thousand lines, A thing imagination boggles at; And might, odds-bobs, sir! in judicious hands, Extend from here to Mesopotamy.

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; Meaning, however, is no great matter) Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween; Through God's own heather we wonned together, I and my Willie (O love my love): I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, And flitterbats wavered alow, above: Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing (Boats in that climate are so polite), And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, And O the sundazzle on bark and bight! Through the rare red heather we danced together, (O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers: I must mention again it was gorgeous weather, Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:— By rises that flushed with their purple favours, Through becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen, We walked and waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars we were both so green. We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie, In fortunate parallels! Butterflies, Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes: Songbirds darted about, some inky As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky— They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds! But they skim over bents which the millstream washes, Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem; They need no parasols, no goloshes; And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them. Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather) That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms And snapped—(it was perfectly charming weather)— Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms: And Willie 'gan sing (O, his notes were fluty; Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged' sea)— Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty Rhymes (better to put it) of 'ancientry': Bowers of flowers encountered showers In William's carol—(O love my Willie!) Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow I quite forget what—say a daffodilly: A nest in a hollow, 'with buds to follow,' I think occurred next in his nimble strain; And clay that was 'kneaden' of course in Eden— A rhyme most novel, I do maintain: Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories, And all least furlable things got 'furled'; Not with any design to conceal their 'glories,' But simply and solely to rhyme with 'world.' * * * * * O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together, this genial weather, And carted, or carried on 'wafts' away, Nor ever again trotted out—ah me! How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!

The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees. The piper he piped on the hill-top high, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) Till the cow said 'I die,' and the goose asked 'Why?' And the dog said nothing, but searched for fleas. The farmer he strove through the square farmyard; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) His last brew of ale was a trifle hard— The connexion of which with the plot one sees. The farmer's daughter hath frank blue eyes; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies, As she sits at her lattice and shells her peas. The farmer's daughter hath ripe red lips; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) If you try to approach her, away she skips Over tables and chairs with apparent ease. The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad, I can't say where, Which wholly consisted of lines like these. Part II. She sat, with her hands 'neath her dimpled cheeks, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And spake not a word. While a lady speaks There is hope, but she didn't even sneeze. She sat, with her hands 'neath her crimson cheeks, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) She gave up mending her father's breeks, And let the cat roll in her new chemise. She sat, with her hands 'neath her burning cheeks, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And gazed at the piper for thirteen weeks; Then she followed him out o'er the misty leas. Her sheep followed her, as their tails did them. (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And this song is considered a perfect gem, And as to the meaning, it's what you please.