"His paramount aim was to make the world better by the
humanising influences of literature."--_Professor Jebb on
Erasmus._
FRIEND of COLET and of MORE,
Genial wit and learned scholar,
Never pedant, prig, or bore.
Dulness and the Mighty Dollar
Rule too much our world of books;
Slang, sensation, crass stupidity;
Talk of "oof" and prate of "spooks,"
Sciolism, sheer aridity;
Smartness, which is folly decked
In true humour's cast-off raiment,
Clap-trap which has never recked
Aught save chance of praise and payment;
These our literature infest,
No ERASMUS now arising,
Style to purge and taste to test
In the way of "humanising."
Could you but come back to us,
How you'd flay sensation-mongers,
Gird at gush, and flout at fuss,
Chasten morbid thirsts and hungers:
Puncture philosophic sham,
"Blugginess," the coarse erotic;
Show up callow Cockney "cram,"
Logic shallow, thought chaotic;
Lash our later Euphuism,
And the pseudo-Ciceronian;
Rottenness of "Realism,"
Battening in its bogs Serbonian.
Thanks, O philosophic JEBB!
In this age of advertising,
Literature, at a low ebb,
Needs a little "humanising."
* * * * *
"ON, STANLEY!"--The officer whom the explorer did not take with him
was his left TENNANT.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "'SHADOWING' MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT."]
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE MODERN CORNELIA.
[CORNELIA, daughter of SCIPIO AFRICANUS, and wife of SEMPRONIUS
GRACCHUS, when a lady displayed her jewels to her, pointed to her two
sons, exclaiming, "These are _my_ jewels!"]
]
"THESE ARE MY JEWELS."
TIMOUR-MAMMON'S triumph's full
In this grace-abandoned creature.
Look at her! A tawdry trull,
Blear of eye and blurred of feature
From the cult of her god--Drink!
HEROD'S cruel self might shrink
From a--Mother, calculating
On her children's loss, awaiting
With impatience their last breath,
And the devilish gains of Death.
Such as she, her cronies cry,
Are "In luck when children die!"
Luck! The luck of willing loss.
Children dead bring in the dross.
Little SARAH'S pale and sickly;
Death is near, but comes not quickly,
Art may hasten his slow tread.
Blows, exposure, hunger, pain,
Are auxiliaries of gain,
Gain that comes "when SARAH's dead,"
When to death her "friends" have done her.
"We have got four pounds upon her,"
Babbles little SARAH'S brother,
Echoing the modern Mother.
WEMYSS the wise advises "thrift,"
As the only thing to lift
Labour from the Sweater's slough.
Laws, he swears, are wholly vain;
Thought may scheme, and Love may strain
Fruitlessly to raise the brow
Of the poor above the slime
Of starvation, suffering, crime.
Thrift's the thing! Well, here is thrift!
Children,--they are fortune's gift.
Motherhood to rear them strives?
Not so; it _insures their lives_!
Burial Insurance comes
As a boon unto the slums.
The insurance love may fix
At five pounds, or even six;
A child's funeral costs a pound,
And the balance means--drinks round!
Here's the luck of loss, a luck
Care may hasten. Blows are struck,
Raiment stinted, food denied,
Hunger and exposure tried;
Infants overlain--by chance!
Is it not a Moloch dance?
Modern Motherhood, plus Drink,
Beats old MOAB, will not shrink
From child-sacrifice to win,
Not a false god's smile, but Gin!
Children are possessions, truly,
To be sold, and paid for, duly,
Pledged like other property,
Bringing interest--when they die.
Modern CORNELIA! That is she,
With a semi-drunken glee
Aping, all unconsciously,
The proud Roman mother's vaunt.
"See _my_ jewels! What I want--
Dress, and drink, and selfish ease,
I can win at will--through these."
What was it little BOBBY said?
"We'll get four pounds when SARAH's dead!"
Golden-tongued PETERBOROUGH, flay
The harpies with your burning breath;
And you, brave WAUGH, assist to stay
This plague of fiends who thrive on death.
Cut short the course of callous crime
Of this CORNELIA of our time!
* * * * *