Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer:
Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown,
Her sun of ancient glory going down,
Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair:
What wonder should the billows overwhelm
A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew,
"Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?"
Yet, no!--we will not fear; the loathing realm
At length has burst its chains; a motley few,
The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel,
The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand
No more besiege our Zion's citadel:
But high in hope comes on this nobler band
For God, the sovereign, and our father-land.
That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and
therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes
to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in
regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a
subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found
lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to
whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in
old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to
blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast
myself free, a citizen of no mean city--my commission signed by duty--my
counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the
liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family
of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites
blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my
target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon
the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere
lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men,
were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of
their fraternity.
But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to
intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the
occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken,
uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its
presumption
Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek,
As duty prompts and loyalty commands,
To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak.
Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee
Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty,
Setting thee ruler over many lands;
Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek:
And many people, nations, languages,
Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands;
Them next to bless, to prosper and to please,
Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease:
Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state
The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great:
So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences!
And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the
largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and
thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in
regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to
confess--(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale
Joe-Millerism?)--the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall
give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour
acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in
the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind
Maeonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the
majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's
own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance,
wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place
prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels;
in the '_Corsair_,' the '_Childe_,' and the '_Don_,' no one can mistake
the hero-author; Southey's works, Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full
of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least
equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with
instances illustrious as those, so with all humbler followers, the
skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships:
an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amusements,
business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and
qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing
individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with
choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate,
in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it
from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of
sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered
sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning
here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon;
for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time
antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my
muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly
avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this
avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may
ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic?
List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for
authorship