Public-domain ebook
by W. Kenrick
Language: en323 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·Humour·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #40188.
The opening · free to read
The author of the following Eclogue, having requested my assistance to introduce it to the world; it was with more indignation than surprize I was informed of your having used your extensive influence over the press to prevent its being advertised in the News-papers. How are you, Sir, concerned in the Lamentation of Roscius for his Nyky? Does your modesty think no man entitled to the appellation of Roscius but yourself? Does Nyky resemble any nick-named favourite of yours? Or does it follow, that if you have cherished an unworthy favourite, you must bear too near a resemblance to him? Qui capit ille facit; beware of self-accusation, where others bring no charge! Or, granting you right in these particulars, by what right or privilege do you, Sir, set up for a licenser of the press? That you have long successfully usurped that privilege, to swell both your fame and fortune, is well known. Not the puffs of the quacks of Bayswater and Chelsea are so numerous and notorious: but by what authority do you take upon you to shut up the general channel, in which writers usher their performances to the public? If they attack either your talents or your character, in utrumque paratus, you are armed to defend yourself. You have, besides your ingenuous countenance and conscious innocence; Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa; Besides this brazen bulwark, I say, you have a ready pen and a long purse. The press is open to the one, and the bar is ever ready to open with the other. For a poor author, not a printer will publish a paragraph, not a pleader will utter a quibble. You have then every advantage in the contest: It is needless, therefore, to endeavour to intimidate your antagonists by countenancing your retainers to threaten their lives! These intimidations, let me tell you Sir, have an ugly, suspicious look. They are besides needless; the genus irritabile vatum want no such personal provocations; Heaven knows, the life of a play-wright, like that of a spider, is in a state of the most slender dependency. It is well for my rhiming friend that his hangs not on so slight a thread. He thinks, nevertheless, that he has reason to complain, as well as the publick, of your having long preferred the flimzy, translated, patch'd-up and mis-altered pieces of your favourite compilers, to the arduous attempts at originality of writers, who have no personal interest with the manager. In particular, he thinks the two pieces, you are projecting to get up next winter, for the emolument of your favorite in disgrace, or to reimburse yourself the money, you may have advanced him, might, for the present at least, be laid aside.
But you will ask me, perhaps, in turn, Sir, what right I have to interfere with the business of other people, or with yours? I will answer you. It is because I think your business, as patentee of a theatre-royal, is not so entirely yours, but that the publick also have some concern in it. You, Sir, indeed have long behaved as if you thought the town itself a purchased appurtenance to the theatre; but, tho' the scenes and machines are yours; nay, tho' you have even found means to make comedians and poets your property; it should be with more caution than you practise, that you extend your various arts to make so scandalous a property of the publick.
Again I answer, it is because I have some regard for my friend, and as much for myself, whom you have treated as ill perhaps as you have done any other writer; while under your auspices, some of the persons stigmatised by the satirist, have frequently combined to do me the most essential injury. But nemo me impune lacessit. Not that I mean now to enter into particulars which may be thought to relate too much to myself and too little to the publick. When I shall have leisure to draw a faithful portraiture of Mr. Garrick, not only from his behaviour to me in particular, but from his conduct towards poets, players and the town in general, I doubt not to convince the most partial of his admirers that he hath accumulated a fortune, as manager, by the meanest and most meretricious devices, and that the theatrical props, which have long supported his exalted reputation, as an actor, have been raised on the ruins of the English stage.
In the mean time, I leave you to amuse yourself with the following jeu d'esprit of my friend; hoping, tho' it be a severe correction for the errours of your past favouritism, it may prove a salutary guide to you for the future. With regard to its publication I hope also to stand excused with the reader for thus interposing to defeat the success of those arts, which you so unfairly practise to prevent, from reaching the public eye, whatever is disagreeable to your own.
I am, Sir, Yours, &c. W. K.
LOVE in the SUDS; A TOWN ECLOGUE. BEING THE LAMENTATION of ROSCIUS FOR THE LOSS of his NYKY.
Dixin' ego vobis, in hôc esse Atticam elegantiam? TER.
O me inselicem!---- ----quæ laudâram quantum luctus habuerint!
PHÆD.
Relative to the Personal Satisfaction, pretended to have been required of the Author of the above Eclogue, by the lamentable ROSCIUS.
Whither away, now, GEORGE[1], into the city, And to the village, must thou bear my ditty. Seek NYKY out, while I in verse complain, And court the Muse to call him back again. Boeotian Nymphs, my favorite verse inspire; As erst ye NYKY taught to strike the lyre. For he like PHOEBUS' self can touch the string, And opera-songs compose--like any thing! What shall I do, now NYKY's fled away? For who like him can either sing or say?
IMITATIONS.
Quo te, Moeri, pedes; an quò via ducit in urbem? Nymphæ, noster amor, Libethrides, nunc mihi carmen, Quale meo Codro, concedite; proxima Phoebi Versibus ille facit.---- Quid facerem?
NOTES.
[1] The brother and constant companion of ROSCIUS; the Mercury of our theatrical Jupiter, whom he dispatches with his divine commands to mortal poets and miserable actors.
For me, alas! who well compos'd the song When lovely PEGGY[2] liv'd, and I was young; By age impair'd, my piping days are done, My memory fails, and ev'n my voice is gone. My feeble notes I yet must strive to raise; Boeotian Muses! aid my feeble lays: A little louder, and yet louder still, Aid me to raise my failing voice at will; Aid me as loud as Hercules did bawl, For Hylas lost, lost NYKY back to call; While London town, and all its suburbs round In echoes, NYKY, NYKY, back resound.
IMITATIONS.
---- ---- Sæpe ego longos Cantando puerum memini me condere soles Nunc oblita mihi tot carmina: vox quoque Moerim Jam fugit ipsa---- Omnia fert ætas, animum quoque. ---- Musæ paulò majora canamus. ---- Hylan nautæ quo fonte relictum Clamassent; ut littus Hyla, Hyla, omne sonaret.
NOTES.
[2] PEGGY WOFFINGTON, on whom our ROSCIUS, then her inamorato, made a famous song, beginning with the following stanza:
Once more I'll tune the vocal shell, To hills and dales my passion tell, A flame which time can never quell, That burns for thee, my Peggy.
Whom fliest thou, frantic youth, and whence thy fear? Blest had there never been a grenadier! Unhappy NYKY, by what frenzy seiz'd, Couldst thou with such a monstrous thing be pleas'd? What, tho' thyself a loving horse-marine,[3] A common foot-soldier's a thing obscene. Not fabled Nymphs, by spleen turn'd into cows, Bellow'd to nasty bulls their amorous vows; Tho' turn'd their loving horns upon each other, Butting in play, as brother might with brother. Unhappy NYKY, whither dost thou stray, Lost to thy friends, o'er hills and far away?
IMITATIONS.
Quem fugis? Ah demens!---- Et fortunatam, si nunquam armenta fuissent, Pasiphaën nivei solatur amore juvenci. Oh, virgo infelix, quæ te dementia cepit? Proetides implêrunt falsis mugitibus agros: At non tum turpes pecudum tamen ulla secuta est Concubitus: quamvis collo timuisset aratrum, Et sæpe in levi quæsisset cornua fronte. Ah, virgo infelix, tu nunc in montibus erras!
NOTES.
Time, however, effects strange things, as the poet says, and many have been the passions which have since agitated, and have been also quelled in the bosom of ROSCIUS.
[3] NYKY is a half-pay officer of marines. A horse-marine is a kind of meretricious HOBBY-HORSE, modò vir modò fæmina.
Yet to Euryalus as Nisus true, So shall thy ROSCIUS, NYKY, prove to you; Whether by impulse mov'd, itself divine, Or so I'm bound to call it, as it's mine, A mighty feat presents itself to view, Which for our mutual gain I yet will do. Mean-time do thou beware, while I bemoan, How far thou trustest seas or lands unknown. To Tyber's stream, or to the banks of Po, Safe in thy love, safe in thy virtue, go; Yet even there with caution be thou kind, And look out sharp and frequently behind. But ah, beware, nor trust, tho' native Mud,[4] The banks of Liffy, or of Shannon's flood; Or there, if driv'n by fate, be hush'd thy strain? Nor of thy wayward lot, nor mine complain.
IMITATIONS.
Nisus ait, "Diine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt Euryale? An sua cuique deus sit dira Cupido? Aut pugnam, aut aliquid jamdudum invadere magnum Mens agitat mihi---- Hàc iter est; tu ne qua manus se attollere nobis A tergo possit, custodi et consule longè."
NOTES.
[4] NYKY it seems was born and bred in Ireland; where his christian name was John. How he came by the Jewish appellation of Isaac is not generally known. Whether it was bestowed upon him for his resemblance to the chosen people, or given him by poetical licence, may possibly be a matter of disquisition for future scholiasts.
Lest female Bacchanals, when flush'd with wine, Serve thee, like Orpheus, for thy song divine; Nay back return, lest my too plaintive verse Entail on me the same Orphean curse; Lest Venus' train of Drury and the Strand Attack my house by water and by land; Hot with their midnight orgies, madly tear My little limbs, and throw them here and there; Casting, enrag'd at my provoking theme, Th' inditing brain into the neighbouring stream: When, as my skull shall float the tide along, Thy much-lov'd name, the burthen of my song, Shall still be stutter'd, later than my breath; NYKY---NYK----NY----till stopt my tongue in death: Through London-bridge shall Wapping NYKY roar, And NYK be even heard to Hampton's shore.[5]
IMITATIONS.
---- ---- Spreto Ciconum quo munere matres Inter sacra deûm, nocturnique orgia Bacchi, Discerptum latos juvenem sparsêre per agros. Tum quoque marmoreâ caput à cervice revulsum, Gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus Volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua Ah miseram Eurydicen anima fugiente, vocabat: Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ!
NOTES.
[5] The celebrated villa of ROSCIUS.
On Hebrus' banks so tuneful Orpheus died; His limbs the fields receiv'd, his head the tide. Nor more its stream renown'd than Thames in fame[6]: Here Catherine Hayes serv'd Goodman Hayes the same. Here on this spot, where now th' Adelphi stands, Was thrown her husband's noddle from her hands; His scatter'd limbs left quiv'ring on the shore; As Thracian wives had play'd their part before. Oh, horrour, horrour! NYKY back return; Nor more for grenadiers imprudent burn.
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
