Among the follies and vices of mankind, there is nothing more
remarkable or ridiculous than the continual effort, among all classes
and kinds of people--savage, civilized, and pseudo-civilized--to
increase or impart beauty and comeliness to their forms and features.
Through what various and opposite means is this cherished object
pursued! This savage tattoos his cheeks--that smooths and oils them,
and would esteem the gratuitous tattoonry of the small-pox a graver
misfortune than all the pain attendant on the disease.
The Indians on our Western border are wont to assume the character of
the bear, the panther, or some "other interesting beast of prey," and
place their ambition in enacting the look and conduct of such beast to
the life--and "to the death."
The belle of that age is surrounded by a vast circumvallation of
hoop--of this, is pinched into a narrow breastwork of steel and
whale-bone.
To cramp the feet into unnatural littleness is now the sad task of
those who, to be beautiful, are willing to suffer the tortures of the
thumb-screw--or the toe-screw, (it matters not.) The fashion changes,
and long pointed shapeless boots deform the human foot.
In no age--in no condition, can men and women be persuaded that God
Almighty has made them well,--albeit he hath "made man after his own
image," and woman much better than man.
They must fall to reforming their forms by some fanciful deformity.
But the innovation stops not here. Thus far it might be borne. The
human form cannot be wholly changed by all the ingenuity of vanity and
fashion. It must still retain its principal attributes, and lose not
all its lustre. Not so with manners. They are more plastic. From
fashion and human folly they accordingly suffer most. Fashion is the
sworn foe of nature, and in this field there is no natural bound to its
triumphs.
On the face of the earth, or in the waters, there is no animal to my
feelings so wholly hateful as a modern exquisite: a wretch that has put
off his natural aspect to put on a clay mask, hard, ungainly,
inflexible, of lifeless mud--which no Prometheus could vivify: a thing
which can boast neither the humor of the monkey, nor the fierce
respectability of the wild beast,--not the usefulness of the
tame--still less the dignity and bearing of a man.
Sometime since, after sauntering an evening through a ball room, in
which some such caricatures of men were existing, I went home and
vented my rage in the following doggerel:
The Indignant Rhymes of a Natural Proser.
Oh! Muse, assist me in my strain!
Your Museship I would entertain
With a poetic flagellation:
Assist me Muse, to lay the lash on,
With pen formed from a dog-wood switch,
Fit to chastise a dunce: with pitch
For ink, and bull's hide parchment handy;
Now aid me, Muse, and we'll chastise a dandy.
That petty, puny, paltry, pretty thing--
In form a wasp, but destitute of sting;
Vain as a peacock, soulless as a gnat,
Brainless as soulless, finical as flat:
Of apes the ape most awkward and most vile--
Jackall of monkeys, and without jacko's wile.
The jackall serves none but the noblest beast,
But this base thing takes lessons from the least.
As Egypt's sons did bow the knee of yore,
And worship apes, the eternal God before--
He, in god image framed, with godlike mind,
Would be a god--of Egypt's monkey kind.
A traveller sage! Europe he hath explored--
His mistress fashion, and an ape his lord.
No dignity finds he in native man,
Acting and thinking after nature's plan;
No wisdom, save in artificial fools--
Nature's apostates--slaves to senseless rules:
No beauty sees he, save in gold and lace,
A made up figure, and a painted face;
And no politeness, save in mere grimace.
Go! thou vile satire on the human race;
Go! _on all fours_, and seek thy proper place:
Go! thing too mean for any mighty ill--
Go! petty monster, "pay thy tailor's bill."
For the Southern Literary Messenger.