"Ut sunt divorum, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo."
_Latin Grammar_.
Did you ever look
In Mr. Tooke,
For Homer's gods and goddesses?
The males in the air,
So big and so bare,
And the girls without their bodices.
There was Jupiter Zeus,
Who play'd the deuce,
A rampant blade and a tough one;
But Denis bold,
Stole his coat of gold,
And rigg'd him out in a stuff one,
Juno, when old,
Was a bit of a scold,
And rul'd Jove _jure divino_;
When he went gallivaunting,
His steps she kept haunting,[4]
And she play'd, too, the devil with Ino.
Minerva bright
Was a blue-stocking wight,
Who lodg'd among the Attics;
And, like Lady V.
From the men did flee,
To study the mathematics.
Great Mars, we're told,
Was a grenadier bold,
Who Vulcan sorely cuckold;
When to Rome he went,
He his children sent
To a she-wolf to be suckled.
_Midas_.
Sol, the rat-catcher,[5]
Was a great body-snatcher,
And with his bow and arrows
He _Burked_, through the trees,
Master Niobes,
As though they had been cock sparrows.
Diana, his sister,
When nobody kiss'd her,
Was a saint, (at least a semi one,)
Yet the vixen Scandal
Made a terrible handle
Of her friendship for Eudymion.
Full many a feat
Did Hercules neat,
The least our credit draws on;
Jesting Momus, so sly,
Said, "'Tis all my eye,"
And he call'd him Baron Munchausen.
Fair Bacchus's face
Many signs did grace,
(They were not painted by Zeuxis:)
Of his brewing trade
He a mystery made,[6]
Like our Calverts and our Meuxes.
There was Mistress Venus,
(I say it between us,)
For virtue cared not a farden:
There never was seen
Such a drabbish quean
In the parish of Covent Garden.
Hermes cunning
Poor Argus funning,
He made him drink like a buffer;
To his great surprise
Sew'd up all his eyes,
And stole away his heifer.
A bar-maid's place
Was Hebe's grace,
Till Jupiter did trick her;
He turn'd her away,
And made Ganimede stay
To pour him out his liquor.
Ceres in life
Was a farmer's wife,
But she doubtless kept a jolly house;
For Rumour speaks,
She was had by the Beaks
To swear her son Triptolemus.[7]
Miss Proserpine
She thought herself fine,
But when all her plans miscarried,
She the Devil did wed,
And took him to bed,
Sooner than not be married.
But the worst of the gods,
Beyond all odds,
It cannot be denied, oh!
Is that first of matchmakers,
That prince of housebreakers,
The urchin, Dan Cupido.
_New Monthly Magazine_.
[4] "I'll search out the haunts
Of your fav'rite gallants,
And into cows metamorphose 'em."
[5] Apollo Smintheus. He destroyed a great many rats in Phrygia,
and was probably the first "rat-catcher to the King."--_Vet.
Schol_.
[6] "Mystica vannus Isacchi." This was either a porter-brewer's
dray, or more probably the _Van_ of his druggist.--_Scriblerus_.
[7] There is some difference of opinion concerning this fact:
the lady, like so many others in her interesting situation,
passed through the adventure under an _alias_. But that Ceres
and Terra were the same, no reasonable person will doubt: and
there can be no _serious_ objection to the little _trip_ being
thus ascribed to the goddess in question.--_Scriblerus_.
* * * * *
"THE SEASON" IN TOWN.
_Theodore_.--I don't know how you could prevent people from living half
the year in town.
_Tickler_.--I have no objection to their living half the year in town,
as you call it, if they can live in such a hell upon earth, of dust,
noise, and misery. Only think of the Dolphin water in the solar
microscope!
_Theodore_.--I know nothing of the water of London personally.
_Odoherty_.--Nor I; but I take it, we both have a notion of its brandy
and water.
_Tickler_.--'Tis, in fact, their duty to be a good deal in London. But
I'll tell you what I do object to, and what I rather think are evils of
modern date, or at any rate, of very rapid recent growth. First, I
object to their living those months of the year in which it is _contra
bonos mores_ to be in London, not in their paternal mansions, but at
those little bastardly abortions, which they call watering-places--their
Leamingtons, their Cheltenhams, their Brighthelmstones.
_Theodore_.--Brighton, my dear rustic Brighton!
_Odoherty_.--Synopicé.
_Shepherd_.--What's your wull, Sir Morgan? It does no staun' wi' me.
_Theodore_.--A horrid spot, certainly--but possessing large
conveniences, sir, for particular purposes. For example, sir, the
balcony on the drawing-room floor commonly runs on the same level all
round the square--which in the Brighthelmstonic dialect, sir, means a
three-sided figure. The advantage is obvious,
_Shepherd_.--Och, sirs! och, sirs! what wull this world come to!
_Theodore_.--The truth is, sir, that people _comme il faut_ cannot well
submit to the total change of society and manners implied in a removal
from Whitehall or Mayfair to some absurd old antediluvian chateau, sir,
boxed up among beeches and rooks. Sir, only think of the small Squires
with the red faces, sir, and the grand white waistcoats down to their
hips--and the dames, sir, with their wigs, and their simpers, and their
visible pockets--and the damsels, blushing things in white muslin, with
sky-blue sashes and ribbons, and mufflers and things--and the sons, sir,
the promising young gentlemen, sir--and the doctor, and the lawyer--and
the parson. So you disapprove of Brighton, Mr. Tickler?
_Tickler_.--Brighthelmstone, when I knew it, was a pleasant fishing
village--what like it is now, I know not; but what I detest in the great
folks of your time, is, that insane selfishness which makes them prefer
any place, however abominable, where they can herd together in their
little exquisite coteries, to the noblest mansions surrounded with the
noblest domains, where they cannot exist without being more or less
exposed to the company of people not exactly belonging to their own
particular sect. How can society hang together long in a country where
the Corinthian capital takes so much pains to unrift itself from the
pillar? Now-a-day, sir, your great lord, commonly speaking, spends but a
month or six weeks in his ancestral abode; and even when he is there, he
surrounds himself studiously with a cursed town-crew, a pack of St.
James's Street fops, and Mayfair chatterers and intriguers, who give
themselves airs enough to turn the stomachs of the plain squirearchy and
their womankind, and render a visit to the castle a perfect nuisance.
_Theodore (aside to Mullion.)_--A prejudiced old prig!
_Tickler_.--They seem to spare no pains to show that they consider the
country as valuable merely for rent and game--the duties of the
magistracy are a bore--county meetings are a bore--a farce, I believe,
was the word--the assizes are a cursed bore--fox-hunting itself is a
bore, unless in Leicestershire, where the noble sportsmen, from all the
winds of heaven cluster together, and think with ineffable contempt of
the old-fashioned chase, in which the great man mingled with gentle and
simple, and all comers--sporting is a bore, unless in a regular
_battue_, when a dozen lordlings murder pheasants by the thousand,
without hearing the cock of one impatrician fowling-piece--except indeed
some dandy poet, or philosopher, or punster, has been admitted to make
sport to the Philistines. In short, every thing is a bore that brings
the dons into personal collision of any kind with people that don't
belong to the world.
_Odoherty_.--The world is getting pretty distinct from the nation, I
admit, and I doubt if much love is lost between them.--_Blackwood's
Magazine_.
* * * * *