| |
| TO 1 tell good stories is extremely pleasant; | |
| To hear or read them, too, is quite agreeable; | |
| And, from the courtier downward to the peasant, | |
| Tales are retail’d by all.—You ’ll even see a belle | |
| Or dandy thus employ’d: so I, at present, | 5 |
| If Dan Apollo will but render me able, | |
| Am much inclined to give you a short specimen | |
| Of what occurr’d to one of the most dressy men. | |
| |
| Authorship now is an improving business; | |
| If one can strike out matters that are novel. | 10 |
| Though authors’ brains will often get a dizziness, | |
| From too much labor, or be forced to grovel | |
| In plagiarisms, undoubtedly it is an ease | |
| To knock out rhyme or prose, whether a hovel | |
| Or palace be the scene of the disturbance | 15 |
| Which we describe, among hats, caps, or turbans. | |
| |
| Yet wonderful it is, I sing and say, | |
| Most marvellous, what ever-varied-changes | |
| Of narrative are dealt out, every day, | |
| As fancy, in her drunken frolics, ranges | 20 |
| Throughout invention’s heaven and hell!—Delay | |
| Is dangerous, however wild and strange is | |
| What I ’m about to write, so I must write it | |
| For fear some other person should indite it. | |
| |
| I sate me down, good folk, to tell a story, | 25 |
| Of which, I own, the truth might be suspected, | |
| Even by credulous people; and, what’s more, I | |
| Freely confess, I cannot recollect it: | |
| But yet it was a vision of such glory | |
| I scarcely can suppose ye would reject it. | 30 |
| ’T was all about a lady and a knight, | |
| Who said and did—what I ’ve forgotten quite | |
| |
| In search of scenes and incidents I read | |
| Near half the old romances, through and through, | |
| Which Southey has brought forward from the dead, | 35 |
| With most Galvanic labor, and anew, | |
| With steel clad wights, in peril was I led, | |
| Till weary of their toils and mine I grew: | |
| So the chief knowledge gather’d from my reading | |
| Is what I ’ll mention as we are proceeding. | 40 |
| |
| I found that many a literary chieftain, | |
| Had cull’d the gems from out this antique treasure; | |
| That what they left was by each humbler thief ta’en, | |
| To put in some new fiction at his leisure; | |
| I found—but guess!—no, you can’t guess my grief ta’en | 45 |
| At finding—Oh, presumption beyond measure!— | |
| That collar-makers—I can scarce get farther | |
| Had actually collar’d poor king Arthur. | |
| |
| I next discover’d, that the folk of quality | |
| Had not, of yore, such numerous expedients | 50 |
| To kill time and themselves, as the plurality | |
| Of modern genteel people. The ingredients | |
| With which they sweeten’d up the cold reality | |
| Were tourneys and such savage kind of pageants, | |
| Wherein legs, arms, and necks oft got a fracture, | 55 |
| Although of the most giant manufacture. | |
| |
| Sad was the situation of the fair, | |
| Long, while a Bolingbroke, or a Plantagenet | |
| Was king in London, (a great lord elsewhere) | |
| When one short week had stupor for an age in it, | 60 |
| To “ladies gay,” who spent the livelong year, | |
| Remote from town, and truly would imagine it | |
| Extravagant to give, in their own halls, | |
| During that livelong year, one dozen balls. | |
| |
| Then was the ton, indeed a weighty matter, | 65 |
| Which fancy moved but every hundred years | |
| To a new pressure! Then a lady, at her | |
| First coming out, wore the same woman’s gears | |
| Which she wore on, (unless she grew much fatter) | |
| Till she was going out; when lo, appears | 70 |
| Her daughter, deck’d in the same antique millinery, | |
| With much manslaughter and intent to kill in her eye. | |
| |
| ’T was better with them, as historians tell us, | |
| In bluff King Hal’s reign, and some time before him, | |
| Though wives dared seldom flirt with civil fellows, | 75 |
| In presence of their husbands, just to bore ’em. | |
| They fear’d to make the horrid creatures jealous, | |
| And females were taught notions of decorum, | |
| Stiff as their stomacher’s tight elongation, | |
| Or neck cloths of this stiff-neck’d generation. | 80 |
| |
| Oh, could they have made books like lady M——n, | |
| What patchwork had we seen of feudal foolery! | |
| Each lady’s head, like that of lady Gorgon, | |
| Had left us hard examples of their drollery, | |
| And we had known the centuries afore-gone, | 85 |
| From banquet-hall quite downward to the scullery! | |
| Would that our dear ancestresses had been crazy, | |
| With some diverting kind of idiosyncrasy. | |
| |
| I bit my nails and pens, and then besprent all | |
| My paper o’er with ink, in thought oppress’d; | 90 |
| Next, I resolved to write an Oriental | |
| Tale, and set out in ‘Travels to the East,’ | |
| Driving away all notions Occidental.— | |
| I form’d a plot, and laid the scene, at last, | |
| Somewhere between Calcutta and Aleppo, | 95 |
| When I bethought me of my old friend Beppo. | |
| |
| Then,—as I opened wide the window-shutter,— | |
| A light broke in on me, as bright as sudden. | |
| Invention’s wings began, at once, to flutter, | |
| (They had been once a goose’s,) so, by Woden, | 100 |
| I sate down, to soar far from dust or gutter, | |
| While my good Genius said: “Pray where ’s the good in | |
| Your knack at rhyming, if its versatility | |
| Can’t afford matter for our risibility? | |
| |
| The Beppo has outdone the Epic style.— | 105 |
| Most modern Epics really are provoking | |
| To sleep—and therefore, in a little while, | |
| The pack hight servum pecus shall have broken | |
| Into full cry;—leave your heroic toil, | |
| And start before them, till you have your book in | 110 |
| The gripe of printer’s demon’s!”—on this hint, | |
| I wrote,—and having written, came to print. | |
| |
| But how to make a story?—There’s the puzzle! | |
| Foregad, we have such multitudes to tell us | |
| Stories on stories, both of those that guzzle | 115 |
| At Helicon, and plain prosaic fellows, | |
| That no one soon shall find a nook to nuzzle | |
| In fiction’s storehouse:—Fate will yet compel us | |
| To be mere readers. O ye geese and ganders, | |
| Your wings shall cease to soar where Fancy wanders. | 120 |
| |
| And here I humbly hint to Dr Brewster, | |
| That if he’d make us a kaleidoscope | |
| To strike new subjects out, at every new stir, | |
| ’T would give poor authors a consoling hope; | |
| For though the muses, when we call them, do stir, | 125 |
| They ’re monstrous indolent, and apt to mope. | |
| The three times three, of late, are growing slatterns, | |
| As I suppose, for want of good new patterns. | |
| |
| I ’ll try to coax one of them now a little | |
| For something queer, good people to revive you. | 130 |
| Some tale of luckless love will not befit ill | |
| Your present taste, and this which now I give you | |
| Will, without question, suit you to a tittle, | |
| If ye are young men and intend to wive you. | |
| Hear then the history, both sad and funny, | 135 |
| Of one who fell to much in love—with money. | |
| |
| This is the love which first inflames the bosom, | |
| When for a penny some dear infant screeches. | |
| This is the love which constantly pursues ’em, | |
| When fellows have got into coat and breeches, | 140 |
| And sigh for guineas,—then sigh for a new sum.— | |
| This lasting passion to all bosoms reaches, | |
| Strengthen’d by age’s weakness:—all love sham is, | |
| Compared with this same ‘auri sacra fames.’ | |
| |
| But hold:—I feel myself too serious now, | 145 |
| And must betake me once more to my bantering, | |
| Telling a tale, according to my vow, | |
| In brisk ottava rima, freely sauntering | |
| After sweet speculations, high and low; | |
| Or, if I may, in a fine frenzy cantering | 150 |
| On reinless Pegasus, athwart whose saddle, | |
| So many Gilpins have now got a straddle. | |
