m^Mfi'- 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 1555.D4P3 1851 
 
 Parnassus in pillorv-A satire.By Motley 
 
 3 1924 021 989 417 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021989417 
 
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 PASNASSUS IN PILLOEI. 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
PARNASSUS IN PILLOEY. 
 
 A SATIRE. 
 
 MOTLEY MANNEES, ESQUIEE. 
 
 "L6D1I me your sabs." 
 
 Shakspbabb. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ADEIANCE, SHERMAN b. CO., 2 ASTOR HOUSE 
 
 1851. 
 
 -@ 
 
i 
 
 Entered, aeeording to Act of CoDgress, ia the year 1850, 
 in the derlt'o Office of the Diatrict Court for the Southern District of New York, 
 
 S, Craighead, Printer and Stereotypary 
 112 Fulton Street, New York. 
 
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 PAENASSUS IN PILLOET. 
 
 / 
 O, THOU who whilome, with unsparing jibe 
 And scorching satire, lashed the scribbling tribe ; 
 Thou, who on Roman pimp and parasite 
 Didst pour the vials of thy righteous spite ; — 
 Imperial Horace ! let thy task be mine — 
 Let truth and justice sanctify my line 1 
 
 And thou ! relentless Draco of the schools, 
 
 Whose laws were scored upon the backs of fools ! 
 
 Thou bi-tongued genius, from whose magic lips 
 
 Poison for knaves, for good men honey, drips ; 
 
 Thou Poet-Lacon, withering with a verb, 
 
 And reining folly with a figure's curb, — 
 
 Thou of the Dunciad ! animate my strain ; 
 
 For vain my task if 'tis not in thy vein ! 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
A foe more miscliievous mine eyes appals : 
 Thus when the hydra's heads were struck to earth, 
 The dust that formed them gave them fresher birth. 
 Ah, gentle muse, if e'er with ardent fire, 
 Thou seek'st to gild our cis-atlantic lyre, 
 How must thy lips with heavenly satire smile. 
 To note the hands which now that harp defile ! 
 How must thy gaze, as o'er our glorious landscape 
 It roves, from Florida's far reef to Ann's cape, — 
 How must it blink to mark the phrensied eyes 
 Of myriad bards clairvoyant through the skies ! 
 Oh, hapless land of mine ! whose country-presses 
 Labor with poets and with poetesses ; 
 Where Helicon is quaflfed like beer at table, 
 And Pegasus is " hitched " in every stable ; 
 Where each smart dunce presumes to print a journal, 
 And every journalist is dubbed a " colonel ;" 
 Where lovesick girls on chalk and water thrive, 
 And prove, by singing, they're unfit to wive ; 
 
PARNASSUS IN PILLOBT. 5 
 
 Where Gray might Miltons by the score compute — 
 " Inglorious " all, but, ah '. by no means " mute." 
 
 And, whom to pounce on first ? O vengeful muse ! 
 Faith, they 're so near aUke, 'tis hard to choose. 
 A stereotyped and ancient form they bear — 
 Like sheepskin smallclothes of a century's wear. 
 Jack Ketch, when felons are about to die, 
 Divides their garments — but so wiU not I ; 
 Though rainbow-hued, like Joseph's coat, their dress, 
 Should all exchange, could scarce fit each one less : 
 Each eyes his fellow's garb with crafty glare — 
 Some well known patch he recognizes there : 
 Some button stolen where he stole his own — 
 Some diamond-brooch, with ostentation shown, 
 Which he will swear is paste, and in a trice, 
 Prove that he bought one like it, at half-price. 
 Motley dud mean in truth these bipeds be — 
 A scurvier set ne'er marched through Coventry. 
 
And what inflames mine anger as I gaze, 
 
 His stolen shreds each knave with pride displays : 
 
 This one wears breeches that might make his 
 
 shroud — 
 This in a child's caul his huge head would crowd ; 
 This dabbles daintily with French fahrique — 
 This wears a helmet o'er his visage sleek : 
 All stolen — all misused, and brought to waste ! 
 Gods ! if they must thieve, why not thieve with taste? 
 
 But, hold ! are these in truth Columbia's bards ? — 
 
 Do such assume the muse's high regards ? 
 
 Are there no souls where loud Niagara roars ? — 
 
 No hearts on Mississippi's sounding shores ? 
 
 Are there no ears where tempests rend the skies ? — 
 
 No eyes where forests gleam with myriad dyes ? 
 
 No harps where every air is melody ? — 
 
 Are there no songs where every voice is free ? 
 
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# ^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. Y 
 
 List, O, my muse ! amid the jargon dire 
 
 Of screeching voice and worse than tuneless lyre ; 
 
 'Mid all the din which racks our addled brains, 
 
 I hear the rippling rivers of sweet strains : 
 
 I hear where, trembling through the leafy glen, 
 
 The poet's soul talks melody with men : 
 
 I feel young Bryant — ^in his dreamy youth — 
 
 Anoint my heart with loveliness and truth : 
 
 I thrill with Halleck's ancient clasp of fire. 
 
 And bow my heart' to " Harvard's " golden lyre ; 
 
 While clarion sounds that swing beneath the stars. 
 
 And crashing thoughts, hke battling symetars. 
 
 Roll round me from the mighty harps of those 
 
 "Wiose songs are victories over Freedom's, foes. 
 
 Well, well ! it may be that, amid the masses 
 Who in our journals write themselves down asses ; 
 It may be there exist some score or better 
 Of bards as well in spirit as in letter. 
 
 # 
 
# . J % 
 
 8 PARJifASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 With these I've nought to do — or, if I scan them, 
 To prove they've brains, it needs be I trepan them. 
 I come here as a critic — as a satirist — 
 Whether I argue right or wrong, whose matter is't ? 
 " Norfolk ! we must have knocks !" — whose head's 
 
 not equal 
 To the encounter, may regret the sequel ! 
 
 Poetry has its " amateurs " — who wile 
 Their listless leisure with the muse's smile; 
 Who simper sweetly in a Milton's tongue,' 
 And lisp the lofly themes that Homer sung : 
 Merely for pastime — really but in sport^- 
 To " try the hand " — or " keep it in " — in short 
 To show that if their own fame they had built on. 
 Homer had superseded been, and Milton. 
 
 Our country swarms with bards who've " crossed the 
 
 water,'' 
 And think their native land earth's meanest quarter : 
 
 ^ — : ^ 
 
1^ — . — % 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 9 
 
 Bards who have heard the gondoliers sing Tasso, 
 Seen Arabs eat, and Indians throw the lasso ; 
 Men who have travelled, and of course must know 
 All sorts of flowers tiat on Parnassus grow. 
 Your " graceful " bards are these — your " versifiers," 
 Whose garlands are all roses and no briers ; 
 Who steam to Havre — take the Rhone or Rhine, 
 Ascend Mont Blanc half-way — then stop and dine ; 
 Muse (just like Byron) on the Bridge of Sighs, 
 Quote Rogers freely, prate of golden skies. 
 Eat maccaroni, ask where " Peter's keys " are — (") 
 Find out what's meant by " dead as Julius Caesar ;" 
 Take notes (on railroads) of the towns they ride 
 
 through, 
 (Until they get the " Traveller's Pocket Guide " 
 
 through ;) 
 Then home return, and (may the gods forgive 
 
 them !) 
 Print books whose leather shall at least outlive them. 
 
 % — @ 
 
^ — ^ 
 
 10 PARNASSUS IW PILLORY. 
 
 These good men are not dangerous — ^no I far from it, 
 Though each esteems himself a star or comet. 
 And, faith, their muse describes eccentric orbits, 
 As if their Pegasus had need of jawbits ; 
 With" foreign " airs " their " sales " are best inflated, 
 " Puflfe " are they sure of who with wind are freighted ; 
 Truly your travelled bard is fortune's favorite, 
 He sees the world, and makes the public pay for it. 
 
 The Public — huge, half-reasoning, hke an elephant. 
 Of its own good is half the time irrelevant ; 
 It takes on trust a book that Griswold edits, 
 And quarterly reviews lik« gospel credits ; 
 It hath an ostrich maw, and can digest 
 Sticks, stocks, and stones, and all with equal zest ; 
 For Harper's pictured " Bible," throngs it his shop, 
 Or seeks like mad the " trial " of some bishop ; 
 Swallows " John Donkey's " sad attempts at humor. 
 And thinks Frost's books as wise as those of Numa. 
 
 # 
 
But revenons d, nos moutons — tliat's sheep — 
 Return we to our — bards — who've crossed the deep: 
 Our travel-poets — whom we well may call so, 
 For he who reads their travels, travails also ; 
 Our cognoscenti, whom we all should follow. 
 As cousins-german to the real Apollo ; 
 Whose muse, in corkscrew curls and boddice waist. 
 Waltzes or polks, by finger-tips embraced ; 
 While with her nose retrouss6e and most haughty. 
 She lisps — " now. Mister Writer, don't be naughty !" 
 
 What time Nat Willis, in the daily papers, 
 Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers ;(^) 
 What time, in sooth, his " Mirror " flashed its rays. 
 Like Barnum's " drummond " on the Broadway gaze ; 
 When lisping Misses, fresh from seminaries, 
 Worshipped " mi-boy " and " brigadier ',' as lares ; 
 When youngsters mad — (scribendi cacoeihes) 
 Found that Castalia's stream was drugged like 
 Lethe's ; — 
 
.@- 
 
 12 PARNASSUS IN PILLORT. 
 
 Then Bayakd Taylor— protege of Natty, 
 Dixon-like "walked" into the " literati ;"(') 
 And first to proper use his genius put, 
 Like ballet-girls, by showing " Views a-Foot." 
 
 Taylor's a pushing and industrious youth. 
 And so deserves — that I should tell the truth ; 
 I wish him well, and own that I'm not sorry at 
 His late great hit, as Barnum's poet-laureate ; 
 If the high station suits his muse, why let it — 
 And for the prize — I wish that he may get it ! 
 Taylor's a youth of promise and good sense. 
 But for his genius — " it's no consequence !" 
 He'll do to oscillate when the air quite still is, 
 'Twixt Horace Greeley and Maecenas Willis ; 
 His •' knapsack " yarn, however, is worth unravelling. 
 By all who'd learn the cheapest modes of travelling ; 
 'Tis snug, as down the glorious Rhine one floats. 
 To know one's passage only costs ten grotes ; 
 
 -@ 
 
# 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 13 
 
 'Tis nice, while viewing St Peter's, to be told I 
 Can get good buttered buns for just two soldi ; 
 So Taylor's muse presents a physiognomy 
 Invaluable to lovers of economy. 
 
 Here's Tuokerman — calm, sentimental, placid — 
 A Roman punch, without the strength or acid, 
 While Taylor cheapens feres and prices lava, 
 Tuokerman at " La Scala " murmurs " brava." 
 A dehcate muse is his — genteel, exclusive- 
 Marvelling, no doubt, why critics are abusive ; 
 'Tis vulgar (as Lord Chesterfield admonished) 
 To let folks see us startled or astonished ; 
 And T., (a well-bred, gentlemanly poet,) 
 If he has feeling, never lets us know it. 
 He sees Niagara, and says — " I declare !" 
 Applauds a thunder-storm, with — " Pretty fair !" 
 Eeads Milton listlessly, with half-closed hds. 
 And wonders if the devil wore white kids ; 
 
 •# ^ "-- — -— ■ # 
 
Likes us to know that he has been to Italy — 
 Thinks that Vesuvius does eruptions prettily ; 
 Whistles " II Figaro " — quotes scraps of Dante— 
 A Yankee transcript of the dilettante 
 
 We have our ballad-poets^(Lord preserve us !) 
 Song-mongers, sonneteers, and minstrels " nervous." 
 When " woodman " Morkis wished to " spare that 
 
 tree," 
 Surely no seer's prophetic eyes had he ; 
 Else had he known that blockheads without number 
 Would from his luckless stock the country lumber ; 
 Smooth, unctuous Mokris — bard and brigadier — 
 (Alas ! that Morris can't be more is clear ;) 
 A household poet, whose domestic muse 
 Is soft as milk, and sage as Mother Goose ; 
 Whose lyrics (sought for with a kind of rabies,) 
 Like " Sherman's Drops," are cried for by the babies. 
 Ah ! luckless bard ! why did his hydra-blood 
 
^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORT. 15 
 
 Raise from our soil so fierce a ballad-brood ? 
 Why are tbe hapless men of music-stores ( ) 
 Dogged by a race of Yankee troubadours ? 
 Why is the yardstick slighted for the lyre — 
 The pestle melted by poetic fire ? 
 Our watchmen's sleep disturbed by vocal woes, 
 Guhar'd, caiarrh'd, by red-haired Romeos ? 
 Why but because each whining snob has learned 
 How feet are measured and how tunes are turned ; 
 Cipher with songs his master's ledger spoils— 
 Snip puts to press his sonnets as he moils ; 
 Crispin with thread poetic waxeth strong, 
 And Chip, who dovetailed wood, now dovetails song ; 
 And all because — (forgive, dread Apollo !) 
 Where Morris leads, Tom, Dick, and Hal must 
 
 follow ; 
 Aping his strain with throats all cracked and wheezy, 
 " If Morris sings," cry they — " sure, singing's easy!" 
 
 # @ 
 
# 
 
 16 PARNASSUS IN PILLOEY. 
 
 'Tis said that to another pen belongs 
 The authorship of Morris's best songs ; 
 But sure am I, no charity's in this — 
 For if he's not the author, sonu one is ; 
 Matters it little who incurs the name, 
 Poor human nature suffers still thfe same ! 
 Some one first led (to set our rhymesters crazy) 
 This dance — (or morris-dance, or not, is hazy ;) 
 Some one cried " Besom 1" and, behold, the word 
 A thousand watery fiends from slumber stirred ; 
 Till now, alas ! (as in the northman's (°) fable,) 
 To stop the flood no human power is able. 
 
 We have our Dramatists — from " Brutus " Patne, 
 Though Bird, and Conrad, down to — think again ! 
 Can we say dovm from those I just have mentioned? 
 (This question's asked because I'm good-intentioned, 
 And wouldn't for the world a quarrel breed), 
 Well, down to Boker — and the martial Eeid, 
 
 m —m 
 
# — — — ^ .^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 17 
 
 Who fought for glofy,grub, and Jackson's medal, (') 
 And wrote "Love's Martyr," which he used to peddle. 
 
 I believe in Uncle Sam— I believe in dollars — 
 I believe in mad dogs and phonetic scholars ; 
 I believe in Sheba's queen— «he of the bath, whose 
 Story I've read — I believe in Corny Matthews ; 
 And more than this, I believe that he called "Puffer," 
 Than those who laugh at him is ten times tougher. 
 What though our Murdoch, rash but patriotic, 
 Damned native plays in preference to exotic ; 
 What though no " Witchcraft " saved poor Puffer's 
 
 name. 
 And " Jacob " (*) built no ladder for his fame ; 
 Though adverse fates foredoom his best intents, 
 And even his hits are chalked as accidents ; 
 Yet I'll maintain, with all my heart and will, 
 Matthews deserves well of his country still ; 
 I trow booksellers are his worst revilers, 
 
18 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 He's barked at by those curs ycleped " compilers ;" 
 The hate of many honest souls he bears, 
 Because his egotism beats even theirs ; 
 Yet for their hate, I hate thee not, Cornelius, — 
 (Faith, for these things I like thee — tanto melius) — 
 I like thee, spite of all thy dam-ned plays. 
 Thy " weak inventions " — as King Richard says — 
 I like thee, for that those who'd bite thy heel, 
 First had good cause that heel's full weight to feel ; 
 I like thee for that thou hast richly flayed. 
 With good goose-quill, the thin-skins of " the trade;" 
 I like thee that thou dar'st to strike and stand 
 For " Author's Rights '' — so " Puffer " — here's my 
 hand! (°) 
 
 There are two reeds — for aught 1 know, two hundred. 
 But two, par excellence, who might my fun dread ; 
 There's Read (a-d) le petit — bard and artist, 
 And Reid (i-d) bigger, if not the smartest ; 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
J^ . — . ^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLOKT. 19 
 
 " Poor Scholar " is the latter's nom de plume 
 
 (Most candid he this title to assume) ; 
 
 He wrote a play — (Bulwer, some said^ wrote part, or 
 
 Shakspeare, perhaps), and christened it " Love's 
 Martyr.'' 
 
 'Twas played — half-damn'd — and then, in despera- 
 tion, 
 
 The author sealed its doom — by publication ; 
 
 A thing unwise — all men of sense must say so : 
 
 I've had a dozen damn'd — and let them stay so. 
 
 Rbid was a poet bom — I have his word on't. 
 Bom in the Green Isle, though by no means verdant ; 
 His " Broken-Hearted " poem — neutral-tinted — 
 Wherever Reid abides is always printed ; 
 He steered for Hungary (") ere that land was undone. 
 And, doubtless, now is living snug in London ; 
 If so, the news ere long will be imparted. 
 That " Punch " is publishing his " Broken-Hearted." 
 , ^ 
 
Who's next upon the mimic scene ? Ahj truly, 
 'Twere well, my muse, you come to Enolish duly. 
 Gtiswold, whose voice in poetry's oracul&f, 
 Whose awful fiat stamps each bard's vernacular ; 
 Griswold opines that Tosi ycleped " The Rhymer,'* 
 On steep Parnassus yet may be a climber, 
 And proves by one most nautical " Ben Bolt," 
 That " Donkey-John" 's of Pegasus a colt; (") 
 I'll not deny — for they may read who run — 
 That by Dunn English is the Enghsh done ; 
 His " Bolt " may bar Griswoldian criticism. 
 But I must scan him through a Satire's prism ; 
 So without gloves, and yet no thought to knuckle, 
 With " Don Key Haughty " for a space I'll buckle. 
 
 This " Rhymer's " critic-lash, in sooth they tell us, 
 Cuts like a knout — (i'faith, my muse grows jealous ;) 
 Surnamed " The Bitter " he — his threatening growl. 
 Greeting young Orpheus like a Cerberus-howl— 
 
 ^ 
 
(Young Orpheus fresh from college or the counter, 
 With harp in hand, to catch a muse and mount her ;) 
 A critic he, whose " out-and-slash " is mighty, 
 A bard whose flights it must be owned are flighty ; 
 A dramatist whose tragic muse has flitted, 
 Proud o'er the pit — but only to be pitied ! 
 
 I pr'ythee, Tom, what mill supplies thy paper ? 
 What gas-house furnishes thy " midnight taper ?" 
 Hast thou Briareus' arms, or, with antennsB, 
 Dost grasp a thousand pens, to turn a peniiy ? 
 I heard a speech to-day — 'twas English wrote it, 
 The journal's leader — they from English quote it ; 
 I bought a book — Dunn English on the cover ; 
 I sung a song — lo ! English as a lover. 
 Lawyer, and doctor, farmer, bard, and playwright, 
 0, motley Tom ! in one thing, pr'ythee, stay right ! 
 Waste not thyself pursuing shadowy vapors. 
 Cut not thy real work — but cut thy capers ! 
 
 %- 
 
Shape for thy Future's years some work whose might 
 Shall mock the tasks which now thy powers invite ; 
 Strike the brave harp for man — or break its strings ; 
 For Heaven hears only when a full heart sings. 
 
 Here's Byron-BoKEK, with a slight mustache : 
 Be careful, pen ! attempt no combat rash ; 
 Else, with a rage that shall o'erwhelm ev'n yours, 
 BoKER may, Byron-like, review reviewers. 
 Yet, in good sooth, perhaps for Borer's sake, 
 'Twere well to rouse the lion with a shake ; 
 Byron, when flogged, eschewed his schoolboy trash. 
 Who knows but Boker — faith ! I'll try the lash. 
 
 Now, 'pon my sacred word — 'tis with a sigh 
 
 I lift the flagellating rods on high ; 
 
 Like the stern Trappist strike I — though afresh 
 
 At every blow, bleed my own tender flesh ; 
 
 Chastening whom most we love, we can't be mild. 
 
 Lest, whilst we "spare the rod," we "spoil the child." 
 
Bokek's a young man still — he wrote Calaynos, 
 For a young man 'twas not a crime too heinous ; 
 There's a rich vein of bloodshed running through it — 
 (The pit at " Sadler's Wells " took kindly to it ;) {") 
 Next he exhumed — I mean^ he took from Hume, 
 A headless tale of bride and Bluebeard groom ; 
 "And last, to show the Public how he braved it, 
 Brought "The Betrothal" out — and barely saved it. 
 His verse is well enough — smooth, classic, measured — 
 (Addison's style is one that should be treasured ;) 
 True, there's no life where art the subject warps, 
 But, as the crones say, " 'tis a handsome corpse ;" 
 BoKBR of bards is not the first nor last. 
 He's growing — ^haply, though, he grows too fast ; 
 If poets seek the muse's bright empyrean, 
 They'll first do well to reach the heart's criterion ; 
 Lay their foundation on good rocks — not water — 
 Then build like Cheops — ^if they've bricks and mortar; 
 So BoKER — if he'll mind me to the letter, 
 
 # 
 
(I can advise, because I write much better,) 
 Will tear to shreds his bookish rules, and write, 
 As Corny Matthews does, with all his might ; 
 Then, if he charms not all the public noddles, 
 We'll know it is his own fault, not his model's. 
 
 Bokeb's in Philadelphia — Matthew Carey 
 Sold books in that " Emporium Literary ;'' 
 Big newspapers and Ladies' Magazines 
 Are published there ; the markets furnish greens 
 Much earlier than those of northern cities ; 
 There flourish puffs poetic, and love-ditties ; 
 " Colonel Fitzgerald" prints the " City Item," 
 And rowdies find that juries won't indict 'em. 
 
 I know not why — and surely 'tis a pity, 
 The pen is penury in Penn's great city ; 
 Songs make a man sans all things — nay, what 
 worse is, 
 
 # ■■ # 
 
t^ — . ___ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 25 
 
 Verse, in an adverse ratio, brings reverses. 
 Would the poor author live by books, perchance he 
 Will find that Grub-street is no thing of fancy ; 
 Does he serve Graham ? " Graham bread " he 
 
 shares ; 
 Toils he for Godey ? many a goad he bears ; 
 Would he the editorial tripod court ? 
 Nev?spaper columns will no roof support. 
 Ah, luckless wretch ! wouldst thou escape a hovel ? 
 Edit " Paul Pry," or write a " blood-red " novel ; 
 Eschew all modesty — let sense go hang : 
 Write shilling legends for the " Killer " gang ; 
 Argue like mad, some question undisputed ; 
 Swear you're a heaven-born genius persecuted; 
 Mix in due quantities your brass and lead, 
 And " swap " the " bogus " for your daily bread ! 
 Then shall each peddling bookman call you "Nepos,'' 
 Your name be bless'd in " Literary Depots." 
 
 @ ■_ ; ^ 
 
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 26 PARNASSUS IN PILLOBY. 
 
 Amid the Babel-tongues of Philadelphia, 
 There's one young man who always gains himself ear: 
 Tolerably 'cute, though not at all good-looking, 
 Books, birds, pies, poems, he's expert in cooking ; 
 To-day he'll read his " greatest " poem, for your 
 Especial good — anon, he'll be your lawyer ; 
 One day, as " Harry Harkaway," he'll shoot you 
 As many quails or reedbirds as may suit you ; 
 The next, discourse upon the arts or music. 
 Until he prattles both himself and you sick ; 
 Or till he proves, in every subject pitched on, 
 That earth boasts one more " admirable Crichton." (") 
 
 " Endymion !" may his pipe still keep its tune ! 
 Endymion — Hirst, who sleeps beneath the moon ; 
 With " Blackstone '' pillowing his majestic head, (") 
 That head which, all unlike his works, is red ; 
 Cold Hirst — who says he " never feels a line 
 He sings '' — (his readers believe him, ye Nine !) 
 
 ^ — Sg 
 
Time was -wlien, dormant ia the stripling's breast, 
 Trochee was silent — mute was anapaest ; 
 Time was, ere luckless Helicon he drank. 
 When all his verses, like his briefs, were blank ; 
 His thoughts unnumbered, noteless all his time, 
 And dull-set as his voice his dulcet rhyme ; 
 But chance, or circumstance, or whimsic fate, 
 By curious accidents makes mortals great ; 
 And thus it chanced, or came to pass, in sooth. 
 That Sully painted " Shakspeare in his youth ;" 
 With " hyacinth hair " and beard of amber hue. 
 Expansive brow, and eyes half-brown, half-blue. 
 Hirst was a connoisseur in painting then, 
 And Sully's picture met his critic ken ; 
 The young man murmurs, starts, and rubs his eyes : 
 Egad ! the portrait takes him by surprise ; 
 The brow he marks — -the amber beard he sees, 
 " Shakspeare and I," he cries, " are like as peas !" 
 
 ^ 
 
la truth, " 'twas passing strange," the stripling 
 
 thought, 
 Such " counterfeit presentment " here was wi'ought : 
 Endyraion's embryo — Avon's mighty bard — 
 Which sat to Sully, faith, to tell was hard. 
 Pregnant, no doubt, of some tremendous fame. 
 One's hair was red — and t'other's much the same ; 
 That lofty brow— that nose—" By all the Nine !" 
 Cries Hirst, " His locks are hyacinth — so are mine ! 
 If thus kind Nature marks her duplicate. 
 Egad ! I'll take to poems, and be great ; 
 I'll write till none shall know which bard is which, 
 Shakspeare may die — but there's a vacant niche ; 
 
 And " Lo ! Parnassus heard the dread resolve : 
 
 Hjrst Uves ! the Future will his fame evolve 1 
 
 This satirizing's tedious — though I force not 
 The reader to endure it — 0, of course not ! 
 I'm satisfied they'll read it whom I quiz, 
 
 m 
 
And those not named will read to see who is ; 
 Be glad, then, friends, whose genius is not known — 
 Be glad my work's not still-born like your oWn ; 
 Since through my potent pen you'll gain, in verity, 
 Mention at least in most remote posterity. 
 
 Posterity ! the race of fools and dummies. 
 
 Who'll crowd the Future with the Present's 
 
 mummies ; 
 Who'll read my books and hundreds worse than 
 
 mine. 
 And swear each mouldering author was divine ; 
 While in their very midst — unknown or spurned — 
 Dwell mightier minds than all the Past inurned. 
 Posterity — ^I count your praise and blame, 
 For all the good they'll do me, much the same ; 
 You'll give ten dollars for my antograph ; 
 (Which now in Wall street will not bring the half) ; 
 Yet even this tribute should not make me vain — 
 
 I # ^ # 
 
@ : . ^ 
 
 30 PARNASSUS IN PILLOBT. 
 
 Great Barnum's signature may twenty gain ; 
 0, golden goal ! 0, prize to fire the soul, 
 Posterity may all tlie Smiths enrol ! 
 
 Now will plump platitude, with pitying smile. 
 
 Point me to history's teeming minster-aisle — 
 
 Show me the tombs and effigies of men 
 
 Who wrought their memories Tvith the glorious pen ; 
 
 With magpie glibness prate each deathless name. 
 
 And cry, " behold ! Posterity and Fame !" 
 
 O, bitter jest that marks with marble lie 
 
 The lowly earth where genius sank to die ; 
 
 O, mocking sympathy, which shrines the dead. 
 
 Yet spurns the living with unheeding tread. 
 
 Great heaven ! could Intellect its wrongs disclose. 
 Vain, vain the gauge that measures mortal woes ; 
 All sighs, all tears, were powerless to declare 
 The almighty griefs which one poor soul can bear ; 
 
@ ' ^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 31 
 
 Behold, the Athenian sage his hemlock drains, 
 And, mark, the Roman opes his withered veins ; 
 Lo ! from the Pisan's breast how torture chokes 
 The lie, which straight his stouter soul revokes ! 
 Look, where Geneva mocks a martyr's cries, (") 
 Or Smithfield's flames in lurid horror rise 1 
 Behold ! — yet vainly by the gleaming axe, 
 By galling chains, by dungeons, fagots, racks — 
 Vainly ye strive to measure or reveal 
 A p'assing shade of what the soul can feel. 
 Not poison tortured Socrates, alone : 
 He saw the altars of his faith o'erthrown ; 
 The chains that crushed poor Gahleo's frame, 
 Were weak to those which sank his soul in shame ! 
 Monarchs may lose their thrones, yet life retain : 
 Genius dethroned ne'er hfts her brow again.' 
 
 0, Mind ! immortal in thy suffering ! — Heart ! 
 Which of all agony true kindred art ! 
 
 m 
 
^ . _ @ 
 
 32 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 How would my feeble pen drop bloody tears, 
 Could it but chronicle the Soul's sad years ; 
 Could it but marshal from their nameless graves, 
 The helot-host of intellectual slaves ; 
 The unnumbered martyrs to the Titan's fate, 
 Which dooms to suffering him who would create. 
 Through the soul's desert backward as we turn, 
 How much of power — of impotence — we learn ! 
 What glorious love is mingled with what lust — 
 What awful moniunents we meet — what dust ! " 
 Souls that held heaven within their cherub clasp, 
 Dragged downwards by an earthly demon's grasp ; 
 And seraph minds that read the Eternal's throne. 
 Like shivered stars o'er brooding chaos strown. 
 
 But hold 1 I'm far too serious, and must bring 
 My Phoebus-team demurely to the ring : 
 The ring where each one treads the other's track. 
 And Truth, the clown, is jeered by all the pack ; 
 
 j^ (^ 
 
Satire, plain satire, is my avocation : 
 Points are my periods — ^pims my peroration. 
 
 The British critics — ^be it to their glory, 
 When they abuse us, do it con amove ; 
 There's no half-way about your bulldog pure, 
 And there's no nonsense with your " Scotch 
 
 reviewer." 
 Heaven knows how often we've been whipped like 
 
 curs. 
 By those to whom we've knelt as w6rshippers ; 
 Heaven only knows how oft, hke froward chitlings. 
 Our authors have been snubbed by British witlings ; 
 Our mountains ranked as mole-hills — our immense 
 And awful forests styled " Virginny fence ;" 
 Our virtues all but damned with faintest praise, 
 And our faults blazoned to the widest gaze ! 
 I find no fault with them — they praise us rarely ; 
 As for abuse — ^we're open to it fairly ; 
 
-® 
 
 34 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 But faith, it galls me, and I'll not deny it. 
 To mark our own most deferential quiet ; 
 To note the whining, deprecative air 
 With which we beg for praise, or censure bear; 
 Shrink back in terror if our gifts they spurn, 
 And if they smite one cheek, the other turn ; — 
 Begging that they'll excuse a patient dunce, 
 Who, if he could, would ofifer both at once. 
 
 There's no use in denying it — the Yankee 
 (Though in the way of business, cute and cranky ; 
 Though true as steel, and quick as any rocket). 
 Is seldom keenly touched,- save through his pocket. 
 One war more bloody, even, than dishonest. 
 We'd 'scaped, had " Montezuma's Halls " been 
 
 non est ; — 
 Our Indian raids had ne'er brought shame or glory. 
 Had not old Plutus whispered " territory." 
 And many a wrong, I'll wager, would be righted ; 
 ^ . , ^ 
 
And many a right would have its wrongs requited ; 
 And many a truth from error's cloud would flash, — 
 Could we be sure such things would "pay" in " cash." 
 But, as regards our books, and those who make them. 
 For all our country cares, the de'il may take them : 
 Matters it little to our sapient statesmen, 
 What power annihilates, or what creates men ; 
 So that with " congress-prog " you duly ply 'em 
 " Gin gratis — and eight dollars each per 4iem." (") 
 
 Now, by my troth — if these same legislators 
 Were called, point-blank, a set of heartless traitors ; 
 Willing to sell their country's fame for fat hire, — 
 They'd doubtless, cry, " You lie !" (") to this, my 
 
 satire. 
 Yet, if they sleep and snore, whilst, unawares, 
 The enemy in our goodly field sows tares ; 
 If watch nor ward they keep upon our borders. 
 Pray, can they well be called eflScient warders ? 
 
 #- 
 
36 PAENAS8US IN PILLOUr. 
 
 How, then, if broadcast o'er our land reprinted. 
 Books of all climes are strown with hand unstinted ; 
 Books such as sap our freedom's dearest life, 
 Books with the cant of kings and Jesuits rife ; 
 Books such as virtuous wives would blush to name, 
 Books that destroy a maiden's sense of shame ! 
 How, then, if on the plastic mind of youth. 
 Falsehood is grafted in the place of truth ; 
 False taste infused — false views of right and wrong, 
 False love, false law, false sermons, and false song ! 
 
 Far be it from me to say that all these ills 
 Flow from the poisoned points of foreign quills ; 
 Far be it from me to shield from righteous scorn. 
 The race of blackguard authors native-born ; 
 Wretches, who, ghoul-like, feed on carrion clay. 
 And scent a crime as vultures scent their prey ; 
 Whose leprous minds can track a felon's course ; 
 Or trace a harlot's vices to their source ; 
 
# — . @ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 37 
 
 Scarce can these men demand my reprobation, 
 Thank heaven ! their works are their own sure dam- 
 nation. 
 
 I say, not, then, that foreign pens alone 
 
 Inflict the moral wrongs 'neath which we groan ; 
 
 But, tell me, ye who do our thinking for us, 
 
 Whom ballot-boxes kindly station o'er us ; 
 
 Tell us if evils such as represented, 
 
 Might not, by timely laws, have been prevented ; — 
 
 Tell us if Reynolds, Paul de Kock, or Sand, 
 
 Would e'er have gained a foothold in our land. 
 
 If ribald wit, or senseless atheism, 
 
 Could e'er have charmed us with delusive prism ; 
 
 Had our good Yankee " pubhshers at sight," 
 
 Been forced to buy " the author's copyright." 
 
 Why has our yellow-covered literature 
 
 Poured o'er the land its influence impure ? 
 
 Why, but because 'twas " cheap " — its profits sure ! 
 
 m- ■ 
 
33 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 Why was the infamous De Kock translated, 
 And cast abroad with rankest poison freighted ? 
 Why, but because our bookmen " speculated !" 
 On what ? On manners, morals, virtue, sense ! 
 Souls might be lost — but bookmen turned their 
 pence ! 
 
 Oh, Justice ! why are still thine altars rotten 1-r- 
 Could Intellect protected be, like cotton ; 
 Could Mind heget per cent, like capital, — 
 Then might we be what else we never shall ; 
 Then would our heaven-appointed " men of letters " 
 Be freed from iron want's degrading fetters ; 
 Then might the thoughts of noble souls illume 
 The poor man's hut, the rich man's drawing-room ; 
 While, from the light its filth could ne'er endure, 
 Would shrink our '' yellow-covered literature !" 
 But, ah ! while Bulwer, Dickens, James, or Jerrold, 
 Costs scarcely more than Bennett's "double Herald ;" 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
@ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 39 
 
 How can we hope our country's mind to nourish, 
 Or look for Yankee Uterature to flourish ? 
 
 Oh, " Yankee literature !" Oh, tripe ! Oh, treacle ! 
 
 What can I say our publishers to tickle ? 
 
 How shall I make my humblest, prettiest bow. 
 
 To deprecate their rage, and 'scape a row ? 
 
 Oh, Harper ! mayor ! temperance-man ! church- 
 member ! 
 
 Our household-prop — our hearth-stone's brightest 
 ember ; 
 
 What could we do without thy mammoth-presses ? 
 
 Thy Grub — no ! Cliff-street's hasty-pudding messes ! 
 
 'Tis no man's fault — (I clear friend Harper of it). 
 That foreign books are cheap, and pay a profit ; 
 He did not hire Dumas, or Paul de Kock, 
 To jest at truth — at decency to mock ; 
 A publisher who'd mend his country's morals, 
 
 ^ ^ ^ 
 
With his own bread and butter madly quarrels. 
 He's not to know if books work ill or well — 
 The question he must ask, is — " will they sell 3" 
 And if to-day he prints a moral libel, 
 To-morrow squares the account — he prints a bible ! 
 
 And here, Oh, Virtue ! which art daily shamed. 
 Oh, Honesty ! which scarcely now art named ! 
 Oh, Truth ! which art the veil of direst wrong, 
 Give me to plead your cause in this my song ! 
 Shall Foster prostitute a graceful pen. 
 To " slice up " outcast hags, and outlawed men ? 
 Shall " BtJNTLiNE " rave, and Wilkes his " pigeons " 
 
 lure, 
 And Ann-street's presses swell the common-sewer ! 
 Shall ribald sheets their pandering pimps engage. 
 While Mose and Jakey prop a crumbling stage ; 
 Shall " these things be," and yet nor voice nor pen. 
 Scourge as with snakes the morals and the men ? 
 
 fS> 
 
PAENASSU8 IN PILLORT. 41 
 
 No ! thougb I loathe the quarry — let me speed 
 One shaft at least against the scorpion breed ! 
 
 Upas ! thy deadly venom hath but the art 
 To chill the warmth of some poor human heart ! 
 Plague ! thou canst blister flesh and torture limb, 
 'Till the pulse slackens and the eye grows dim ; 
 Simoom ! thy blast, swift-scouring o'er the plain. 
 May fire the blood and scorch the withering brain ! 
 But ye are bounded in your fearful power. 
 Your field the limits of hfe's little hour ; 
 Trembles your empire on each fleeting breath. 
 Your pangs, your perils, have their term in death ! 
 
 Not so the Upas of a venal Press, — 
 The Plague — ^the Simoom — of licentiousness ; 
 Weak is the death to mortal sense confined^ 
 That only kiUs which kills the immortal mind I 
 
@ 
 
 42 PARNASSUS IN PILLOEY. 
 
 Poison and Pest can but the clay control : 
 An impure Press hath power to slay the soul ! 
 
 O, matron ! kneeling by thy slumbering child, 
 Dare not to hope his mind is undefiled. 
 List ! in his restless dreams his thoughts betray 
 What books he reads by stealth from day to day ; 
 Hush I is it " Crusoe " from his lips that falls ? 
 No ! " Ellen Jewett " (") his sleeping sense recalls. 
 O, maiden ! speak ! why now that volume crush 
 Beneath thy pillow ? — why that conscious blush ? 
 Fearest thou the book may shame a mother's eye ? 
 God help thee, maiden ! there is danger nigh ! 
 
 And ye who pander — ^ye whose reeking souls, 
 No love refines — no law nor shame controls ; 
 Ye on whose tongues the words of virtue dwell. 
 While in your hearts distil the dews of hell ! 
 Ye moral scavengers — who drag each sink 
 
 @- 
 
For food — whose hearts are blacker than your ink ; 
 Tremble ! the crimes which ye to strength have 
 
 nursed, 
 Shall, through your children, make you doubly 
 
 cursed ! 
 
 Avaunt the theme ! O Pegasus the skittish ! 
 Return we to our cjitic friends — the British ; 
 The British, whom our universal nation 
 Whips each July-the-Fourth in loud oration : 
 The British, whoso worm-eaten statutes rule us. 
 Whose precedents decide — whose models school us ; 
 Whose nod we bow to — whose award we fight for ; 
 Whose stamp our actors seek — our authors write for. 
 True, we have beaten Bull in many a battle — 
 But then Bull beats us in his Durham cattle ; 
 True, we have plucked from him old Neptune's 
 
 trident, 
 But then his " Punch " can give our ribs a sly dint ; 
 
 ^- 
 
So, though we could with greatest ease outstrip her, 
 His lugger makes a tender of our clipper ! 
 
 I'm far from wishing, fellow bards, to plague you, 
 But, faith, 'tis fun to note your Anglo-ague ; 
 To see you march, manoeuvre, crawl, or leap, — 
 Dance or lie down, sing, curse, pray, laugh, or weep ; 
 Just as the wires which rule your changes antic. 
 Are pulled by merry-andrews transatlantic. 
 I must not laugh — no ! I'll espouse your quarrel! 
 (Heaven knows ye can't afford to lose one Jaurel 1) 
 They say (a wicked libel this of course is), 
 They say ye steal, O bards, from British sources, 
 
 'Tis monstrous ! what 1 shall British critics prate, 
 Of plagiaries — and say we imitate 3 
 Who dares assert that Keats was read by Hirst, 
 Or " Tibia " by his mother well was nursed ? 
 Who so foolhardy as to hint that Moore 
 
@ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 45 
 
 Wrote Hoffman's melodies ten years before ? 
 Who says that Sargent strips Corneille's poor 
 
 " Cid," 
 That Benjamin in Camoens once was hid ; 
 That Emerson, like Coleridge, reads the Germans, 
 And Dawes's poems sound like Taylor's sermons ? 
 Who says Lunt's lead with Byron's gold was 
 
 soldered ? — 
 That Wordsworth dribbles through meandering- 
 
 Stoddard ? 
 Or who aflarms that Harvard grants its benison 
 To those alone who canonize Saint — Tennyson ? 
 
 I'to mentioned Read ; his song is very well, 
 Maugre its " miner " key in " Hazeldell ;'' 
 I've heard his puns full oft use common sense ill, 
 And had my hkeness taken by his pencil ; 
 Soft " T. B. E." — the " tibia " of our wits — 
 Wbosa dehcate muse on fairy footsteps flits ; 
 
 ®— : ^ 
 
The " Doric " Rbad ■who in his paint-shop wooes 
 With dainty food, his sentimental muse : 
 Tempts her with titbits from a thousand "marts," (") 
 The tongues of nightingales and cuckoos' hearts ; 
 Trembles, and faints, and dies, in every line, 
 And draws the web of fancy — superfine ; 
 Paints a new blush upon the damask rose, 
 And o'er its leaves some rare patchoulis throws ; 
 Tears ofif the G string from his pretty harp, 
 And strikes the flat notes rather than the sharp : 
 Fearful of falls, his wings he would control. 
 And dofife the Spartan for the Sybarite soul. C") 
 
 God made the Poet for his instrument : 
 
 His harp, his heart, are never given — but lent ; 
 
 And all that heaven requires for rental-fee, 
 
 Is to give harp and heart their natural key. 
 
 Tibia ! thy song is like thy body — little : 
 
 Thy fame, I fear me, like thy friendships — brittle : 
 
 #- 
 
Wouldst thou be honored ? drop thy quibbling quill, 
 Eschew thy love, dove, dart, and daffodil ; 
 Fling 'mid the stars thy songs, if bard thou art. 
 Or sink them in the wondrous human heart : 
 Then mayst thou soar among the immortal few — 
 In spite of satires — or the " Whig Review." ("*) 
 
 Speaking of stars, attend, O muse most pliant, 
 To our acknowledged loadstar — ^Mister Bryant! 
 Whose powers I've always viewed with school-boy 
 
 deference, 
 As far as earhest school-boy dates have reference ; 
 Whose flights I've marked as most etherial things, 
 Sure that he used no Cretan's waxen wings ; 
 Whose shrine I've knelt at, in true orthodoxy. 
 Certain the bard was Dan Apollo's proxy. 
 My fingers tremble, and my pulse grows faint ; 
 Awful the task a noonday sun to paint ! 
 Fain would I praise this laureate of our nation, 
 
 ^ : ^ 
 
Were not all praise but supererogation ; 
 
 He is so fixed a fact — so constellated — 
 
 Like bankrupts' debts, he can't be overrated : 
 
 His name's a sad, sponsorial misnomer — 
 
 Had nature spoken, he'd been christened — Homer. 
 
 What time our presidential politics 
 Count game much less by honors than by tricks ; 
 When Rynders wields, like Hercules, his " club," {'') 
 And social Greeley peeps from cynic tub, — 
 Then Bryant — poet-laureate — nature's boast — 
 Treads the old party-lines, from Post to Post ; [") 
 New-nibs his pen to brand new truth as schism, 
 And damns all isms, but safe conservatism. 
 
 Now, by my modesty I I hke friend Bryant : 
 But as a man : I can't endure a giant : 
 I like his landscapes — mountains, woods, and copses. 
 And freely own, he's " death on " Thanatopsis ; 
 
 -^ 
 
!^_ ^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 49 
 
 But, with due deference, I can see no justice 
 In making him a classical Procrustes ; [") 
 And lopping hapless bards of heel and head, 
 To fit them for his gas-inflated bed. 
 I thank him kindly for his blankest verse — 
 I've seen much better — but I've seen still worse ; 
 I bless him for his homoeopathic stanzas — 
 His apopKthegma, clear as Sancho Pauza's ; 
 I'll own in fact he's Brobdignagiah — but. 
 Just so was Gulliver — in Lilliput ! 
 Yet will I grant that he a new Antseus is — ('') 
 But, '' gracious 1 Max !"^ — no apotheosis 1 
 
 In the old time — the time that never tarries — 
 We owned a bard who sang of Mark Bozzaris : 
 Bozzaris is no more — and dead is Astor — 
 I wish the last had ne'er been Hallkck's master. 
 Trade, hke Medusa, turns the heart to stone, 
 And jarring sounds destroy the harp's sweet tone. 
 
@ 
 
 50 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 Figures our bard still hath, but tropes I doubt, 
 Invoices plenty, but no voice comes out. 
 Bozzaris died by steel, but gold could slay 
 The man through whom Bozzaris lives for aye ; 
 Astor was mightier than the dreaming " Turk," 
 Mequiescat in pace — Astor's clerk ! 
 
 Where is Park Benjamin ? In sooth, 'tis wond'rous. 
 He sings not — ^yet the stones are silent under us ! 
 Where is that bard whose madrigals in Gotham, 
 Took root so deep that still the newsboys know them ? 
 Where are his sonnets, and his songs rhapsodical. 
 That whilome graced each infant periodical ? 
 Once (when a hero none presumed to doubt him) 
 He failed with journals — now they fail without him,; 
 Once, as a sort of editorial Warwick, ("') 
 He built up paper thrones — " alas ! poor Yorick !" 
 Where is he now ? I'll give — my word upon it — 
 This book (when finished) for his "last, best sonnet." 
 
 # 
 
PARNASSUS IN PILLORT. 51 
 
 Eoom for om- " Lakers !" — 0, sweet Windeiinere ! 
 Surely the winds do waft thine essence here. 
 List the Home Journal — Fashion's weekly creditor ! 
 We must make room for Stoddard ! cries its editor. 
 Stoddard we will : if Nat be thine example, 
 Thoa'lt need in truth an area most ample : 
 Room where the banyan growth of self-conceit 
 May twine its downward branches round thy feet ; 
 Room where the ghosts of time and talent slain, 
 Like afreets damn'd, shall haunt thy desert brain.(") 
 If Nat's high patronage thy muse would try, 
 Room thou wilt have — like Uncle Toby's fly ; 
 But if, in bold reliance on thyself 
 Thou layest thy maudhn seniors on the shelf, 
 If with the Orphean lute thou fingerest well, 
 Thou'lt dare the flames of even a critic's hell, — (") 
 Reckless of Duyckinck — braving Griswold's doom — 
 Then may the world award thy genius " room !" 
 
 ^ 
 
# : ^ 
 
 52 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 What time some British critic lost his dinner, 
 Charles Fbnno Hoffman was reviewed, (poor 
 
 sinner !) 
 To whom he may this peril of his neck owe 
 I know not — only that they called him " Echo ;" (") 
 And he (to prove such cruel critics wrong) 
 Published anew a budget of his song. 
 Ah, luckless man ! Had he but burnt — ^not printed. 
 He might those wags have nicely circumvented, 
 
 Alas, poor Hoffman ! Griswold thinks his lyrics 
 Equal to Waller's " richest " songs, or Herrick's ! C") 
 If this be true, O Rufe ! which thou assurest, 
 T hope I'll see of neither bard his poorest. 
 Ah, Doctor Griswold ! I've a shrewd suspicion, 
 That Hoffman owes to friendship his position : 
 That some past service may have earned for wages 
 Your bed-procrustean of some fourteen pages ; 
 In short, that some old friendly claim may owe its 
 
 ^ 1^ 
 
PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. S3 
 
 Cancelment to the influence of your " Poets ;" 
 And thus that Hoffman, through his Mend, the 
 
 "Doctor," 
 Stands among freshman bards a sort of " proctor."(") 
 
 " Sparkling and bright" is Hoffman's soul, they say, 
 Where kindly fancies rule with gentle sway ; 
 But that he be, as Griswold's book declares, 
 A bard with whom no Yankee bard compares : 
 That, in his puling love songs, he can thrill 
 One heart where English sways a score at will ; 
 That all the sparkling fireflies of his lyre 
 Can glow like Taylor's " Bison-track " of fire ; 
 That even with Morris (could I say much worse ?) 
 His muse can measure in domestic verse, — 
 If in denying these things I'm outvoted, 
 I leave the matter to — ^the authors quoted. 
 
 " Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb " 
 The " Giant's Causeway " of Gothamie rhyme f 
 
 m 
 
@ 
 
 54 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 Once Percfval in classic numbers swept 
 The harp which since so sluggishly has slept : 
 His " Genius waking" first our bosoms stirred, 
 To mock each after year with " hope deferred ;" 
 And now, " forgetful of his once bright fame,'' 
 He grasps, content, the shadow of a name. 
 Who shall his mute and stringless harp attune ? — 
 Not even thrice-classic Clements — or Bethune! 
 
 When Parson Pierpont, in Bostonian pulpit, 
 Fought like a matador in Spanish bull-pit ; 
 And, heedless all of fire-bolts round his steeple, (") 
 Bolted cold water at his graceless people, — 
 Then, rivalling Pierpont, broken hearts to solace. 
 The charms of " Adam's ale" were sung by Wal- 
 lace : {") 
 Sung with most fearful lungs and nerves unshaken, 
 Till Preissnitz soon for Orpheus was mistaken ; 
 Till cisterns seemed the Muses' penetralia. 
 And aqueducts the only true Castalia. 
 
 ^ 
 
O, Wallace ! " man of Ross " — not now, as then, 
 Thy tyro-fingers grasp a feeble pen : 
 Not now, with lisping lovelays on thy tongue, 
 Need'st thou repeat what haply scores have sung ; 
 Nor studied phrase nor measured strain should bind 
 The upward soarings of thy natural mind ; 
 No senseless arrogance nor weak distrust 
 Should crarap thy powers with egoistic rust. 
 Wouldst grasp success ? then count it shame to 
 
 doubt ! 
 Genius hast thou ? — like murder, it " will out." 
 If heavenly Phoebus yields to thee his team, 
 Or if thy muse, like Cutter's, goes by " steam ;" ('*) 
 If fierce as Neal's, thy red-hot language glows, 
 Or softly drips, like milk-and-water Coe's ; 
 If Griswold shrine thee, or if Graham scorn, 
 Be sure that Jove o'ersees the poet-born. 
 Assert thy claims, though all the critics carp. 
 Take " heart of grace," and strike the sounding harp : 
 
56 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 If the world laughs, why let the world go hang, — 
 It laughed and sneered, when glorious Dante sang 1 
 
 I almost passed by Willis — " ab, miboy ! 
 
 Foine morning ! da-da !" Faith, I wish him joy — 
 
 He's forty-three years old — ^in good condition — 
 
 And, positively, he has gained *' position." 
 
 Gad 1 what a polish " upper-ten-donii " gives 
 
 This executioner of adjectives ; 
 
 This man who strangles English worse than 
 
 Thuggists, 
 And turns " the trade " to trunkmakers or druggists ; 
 Labors on tragic plays, that draw no tiers — 
 Writes imder bridges, and tells tales of peers ; (") 
 His subjects whey — his language sugared curds : 
 Gods I what a dose ! — had he to " eat his words." 
 Hi^ " Sacred poems," like a rogue's confessions, 
 Gain him indulgence for his worst transgressions : 
 His " fugitive attempts " will doubtless live — 
 @ ■ ^ 
 
^ — ■ # 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 57 
 
 Oil ! that more works of his were fugitive ! 
 Fate to his fame a ticklish place has given, 
 Like Mah'met's cofiBn, 'twixt the earth and heaven ; 
 But be it as it will — let come what may — 
 Nat is a star : his works — ^the milky-way ! 
 
 " Why so severe on Willis ?" Julia cries, 
 (Who reads De Trobriand in an English guise ;) {") 
 Why so severe ? Because my muse must make 
 Example stern for injured Poesy's sake. 
 Not that Nat Willis curls his yellow hair — 
 Not that his sense can breathe but perfumed air — 
 Not that he plays the ape or ass, I mourn. 
 For ape and ass are worth not even my scorn. 
 But that, with mind, and soul, and haply heart, 
 He yet hath stooped to act the fopling's part ; 
 Trifled with all he might have been, to be 
 The blasi editor — at forty-three ; 
 
 Flung off the chaplet which his boyhood won, 
 
 8* 
 
 -m 
 
% -. ^ 
 
 58 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 To wear the fool's cap of a " man of ton !" 
 I lash not Willis even for this his crime — 
 Through him I strike the bastard tribe of rhjrme ; 
 The race o'er whom, in his own native power, 
 Jove-lilje 'mid satyrs, might this Willis tower ! 
 0, muse ! whose awful presence we have felt. 
 Whose genial smiles our raptured senses melt ; 
 Ah, when thy glorious heart is big with love, 
 Why do thy chosen children recreant prove ? 
 Fly from the arms which might sustain their souls. 
 And plunge from heaven to grub the earth like 
 
 moles ? 
 O, awful Nature ! thou whose generous blood, 
 Like the strange pelican's, revives her brood ! 
 Whose life through death still fructifies again, 
 Moulding from dragons' teeth its arm6d men ! ("■) 
 How is thy truth profaned and brought to shame, 
 When gewgaw fashion props an author's feme ; 
 
 ^— — O 
 
When mincing phrase usurps the place of sense, 
 And reason yields to rhyme the precedence ! , 
 
 Pause, honest pen ! thy fervor makes thee stray : 
 
 Pause, ere injustice desecrates thy lay ; 
 
 Though all Pandora's ills be Poesy's lot, 
 
 Hope lingers still, upheld by Freeman Scott ! ("') 
 
 O, patriot Scott ! thy eagle flights I sing. 
 
 That top Parnassus with untiring wing. 
 
 No more shall Hopkinson Columbia hail-^ 
 
 Freneau and Paine henceforth are voted stale ; 
 
 Even Emmons " pales his inefiectual fires," 
 
 For Freeman Scott hath struck the sounding wjres. 
 
 The Union saved his monument shall be — 
 
 And all posterity exists" Scott free!" 
 
 Nature's a jealous mistress, and who wooes 
 Her smiles, must grant her passion all its dues ; 
 She hates coquettish airs, but yields her zone 
 
 ^ . ^ m 
 
Freely to him who clasps it to his own. 
 Though Pike shall bawl for her (unequal odds 1) 
 His most ungodly " Hymns to all the Gkids';" 
 Though LuNT, like Jove with Dan^e of old, 
 Woo her with showerings from his " Age of Gold ;' 
 Though SiMMs, \yith Ponce de Leon's madness rife, 
 Swear that in " Florida " lies endless life ; (") 
 Though light-horse Street, with Indian lasso slack. 
 Should seek to bind her pillioned at his back ; 
 Though HosMER, ambushed in some tangled glen, 
 Like awkward Pan, would pipe her to his dfti ; 
 She flies — or, laughing at the daring elf, 
 Bids Echo answer — while she hides herself 1 
 
 Yet, haply, Nature gives not all the slip : 
 HoYT pilfers kisses from her glowing lip — 
 HoTT, who with wooings so demure and meek, 
 Secures the fame he scarcely seems to seek ; 
 With quiet curb constrains his champing thought, 
 
Nor gives the bridle even when he ought. 
 Fearing, Uije_ Raleigh, danger if he climb, ('") 
 He spoils his native tune by serving time ! 
 'Tis wrong, friend Hott ! no poet passive lives ! 
 Blows he may bear — but blows he likewise gives. 
 Thy "Blacksmith" forged true armor for thy 
 
 breast : (") 
 Rise now, and cast thy trenchant lance in rest ! 
 Of stalwart hearts the cause of man hath need, 
 'Twere shame to follow, Ralph ! if thou canst 
 Jead! 
 
 Ho ! Lyon ! cynosure of fortune's cornea. 
 And Poet-Laureate of California ! 
 Bard of " Eureka " and of " Lyonsdale "— (") 
 Most " learned Theban !" I do bid thee hail ! 
 O, Caleb ! thou, the brightness of whose star. 
 Even Bayard Taylor's radiance could not mar ; 
 Whose genius, burning for a deathless fame, 
 Linked the Pacific with thine own great name, (") 
 
 -# 
 
62 PARNASSUS IN VI LLORY . 
 
 What boots it, Caleb, if thy rivals sore 
 Malign thy " bear " by calling it a bore ? (") 
 What reeks thy muse, if jealous withngs say 
 She's mongrel-bred — ^in Persia and Cathay ! (*°) 
 They laugh who win, and thou canst sing as well, 
 And, faith, I think thy prancing rhymes will sell 
 For just as much — and bring thee thrice the pity. 
 As if they'd passed, like Taylor's, through banditti. (") 
 
 Speaking of China, or Cathay the old, 
 
 (Where each man duplicates his neighbor'Anould,) 
 
 Brings to my mind — (a natural transition — ) 
 
 That town of most Confucian erudition. 
 
 Where dwell " One Hundred Orators " in glory, (") 
 
 And lives that polymathio wonder. Story 1 
 
 China is all the world — her sons celestial : 
 
 Outside barbarians are no more than bestial ; 
 
 So Boston, like the ancient land of hyson — 
 
 Counts all barbarian beyond her horizon ! 
 
@ _ . )^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 63 
 
 Her Whipples out-Macawlay Mac himself — 
 Her Emersons assign Carlyle the shelf; 
 Her EvERETTS, her Bkownsons, and her Channings, 
 Are worth a score of Foxes, Pitts, and Cannings ; 
 In short, her Lowells, Longfellows, and Tappans, 
 Are good celestials as Chinese or Japans. 
 
 No lead can fathom Boston's mental deep, 
 No alien thought can scale her learning's steep : 
 No fancy strains to that she does not reach, 
 And none may learn save haply she shall teach ; 
 Of Fame's broad temple Boston keeps the portal, 
 And Boston's bards alone are dubbed immortal — • 
 Even though her dingy bookstores, it is said. 
 Are one great sepulchre of " sheeted dead." 
 Behold ! " Mat. Lee," the pirate, killed a horse : 
 The horse came back again — a " spirit-corse ;"' (*") 
 And so does Dana, who, for many a year. 
 On Wiley's book-shelves found a quiet bier. 
 
^ 
 
 64 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 If thus in Boston mumraied books are prized, 
 Great Jove ! even Spraoue may yet bo galvanized ; 
 Who knows what prodigies may yet be noted, 
 Where Peter Parley sings, and Fields is quoted ; 
 Fields, with his whistle piping forth the throng 
 Of bards who wait his judgment on their song. 
 
 When hawks to melody attune their throats, 
 Tremble we may for Philomela's notes ; 
 So when " the trade " essay the Poet's powers. 
 Well may we fear for this poor trade of ours. 
 The hapless muse her hard-won myrtle yields. 
 When bookmen brave her in their barren fields ; 
 When Grub-street practises the gentle art, 
 And Ticknor claims Apollo's counier-jiaxt. 
 Ah, Jamie Fields ! thy verse I'll not berate, — 
 Bostonia's Helicon is — Cochituate ; — (") 
 Why should we mourn, in these teetotal times. 
 That water-level is the gauge of rhymes ? 
 
# 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 65 
 
 Eich are thy covers — ^ink and paper good : 
 So we'll forgive the inside platitude ; 
 Thy verses sell — else had they not been printed, 
 Thy brass transmutes to gold, as good as minted. 
 Bookmen in sooth should make the best of bards. 
 As faro-bankers hold the winning cards ; 
 Write, Jamie, write — for then (I smile to say it) 
 The bard will get per cent. — the bookman pay it. 
 
 O, Doctor Holmes ! 0, funny Doctor Holmes ! 
 Out of thy mouth Cochituate fairly foams ; 
 Most glittering froth — ^until the gas is freed — 
 But then, alas ! a " venerable bead." 
 Doctor ! I like thee, and admire the zest 
 With which the world believes that thou canst jest ; 
 Thy puns, like hares, still double as they run. 
 And track themselves by scenting their own fun ; 
 Till earthed at last the jokes o'er which we sorrowed. 
 The burrowed rabbits seem but rarebits borrowed ; 
 
 -m 
 
Yet still, remorseless, you our patience try, 
 And sell your ink to prove our incubi. ('") 
 
 Dear Doctor ! take a fool's advice, and make 
 No more bad puns for shabby Harvard's sake ; 
 And, Doctor — (here a timely hint I'll drop) — 
 Talk no more science — i. e. — " sink the shop ;" 
 Epsom with Attic salt I hate to find — 
 True wit's no drug — so, pr'ythee, scour thy mind ; 
 Leave ganglions to Bell — and pills to Buchan, 
 And, as Saxe wrote a satire, try if you can. 
 Do this — do something, or I'm much impressed. 
 Your " Last Leaf" will be thought by all your best I 
 
 Cantab Longfellow ! — belle-lettri professor— 
 Of" Washington's Head Quarters'' sole possessor; 
 Beloved by booksellers, adored of " sophs " — 
 Lo ! at thy name my muse her bonnet doflfs ; 
 
 ^, _ ^ 
 
Yet, in the miglity name of Law, I venture 
 
 For debt thou owest the world to make debenture. 
 
 Not for the debts thou owest a score or less 
 
 Of foreign bards who now wear Yankee dress ; 
 
 Not for thy clippings of old rusty coins — 
 
 Thy head enriches what thy hand purloins ; 
 
 Not for thy thought-webs cribbed from monkish 
 
 looms — 
 They're better in thy tomes than in their tombs ; 
 Thy alchemy has made much gold from lead. 
 So, " let the dead past bury " all " its dead ;" 
 For ancient wounds let silence be the suture — 
 I ask a debt thou owest the awful future ! 
 
 Art and position^ Hal, make thee a poet, 
 If Nature lends her signet, pray, let's know it ; 
 Haply thy Harvard fame immortal seems, 
 Haply thy name and verse be synonyms. 
 
 # 
 
Yet, if thou wouldst thy proper glory reach, 
 I say to thee, as Lear says, — " mend thy speech !" 
 Cast ofif thy dressing-gown, and gird thy loins — 
 And learn what Deity on spng enjoins ; 
 Thou hast portrayed ideal wrongs and woes, 
 Now, by my harp ! canst real wrongs disclose ? 
 Thou hast drawn tears for miseries long forgotten. 
 Canst thou find nothing in our time that's rotten ? 
 O, that the churchyfrd past were ransacked less ! — 
 These ghouls, the poets, then might mankind bless : 
 If the old catacombs were left to moulder, 
 Gold mines of thought we'd.find ere Pan grew older. 
 
 Behold young Lowkll 1 in whose soul there lies 
 Fathoms below where his own vision pries, 
 A grand new world, of power, of love, of light, 
 Which yet may flame — a star athwart our sight ; 
 If the dull shocks of life's chaotic wave 
 Wash not away the orb which now they lave ; 
 
 # 
 
PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 69 
 
 O, Lowell ! now sententious — now most wordy — 
 Thy harp Cremona half — half hurdy-gurdy ; 
 Wouldst thou arise, and climb the steeps of heaven ? 
 Sandals and staflf are for thy journey given ; 
 Wouldst thou embrace the poet-preacher's lot ? 
 Nor purse nor scrip will lift thy steps a jot ! 
 Forth on the highways of the general mind, 
 Thy soul must walk, in oneness with mankind. 
 Thou hast done well, but thou canst yet do better, 
 And winning credit, make the world thy debtor ; 
 Pour out thy heart — albeit with flaws and fractures : 
 Give us thyself — no " Lowell manufactures ;" 
 Then shall thy heart-thought vibrate through our 
 
 pulse, 
 And all thy songs be milestones of results. 
 But if, in thy true eagle-like aspirings. 
 The "mousing-owl " of Harvard choke thy choirings ; 
 If, haply, drugged with Tennysonian theme, 
 Thy genius stoop to dally and to dream ; 
 
 # '■ 
 
If — worse than all — fanaticism clods 
 
 The song -which is Humanity's — and God's ; — 
 
 Then may no satire of thy being tell ! 
 
 Then, Lowell 1 to thy fame " a long farewell 1" 
 
 Hark ! Whittiee's sledge upon the hearts of men 
 
 Beats in continual music — " ten-pound-ten !" 
 
 Sworn foe of " institutions patriarchal," 
 
 Black ground, he finds, gives gems a brighter sparkle. 
 
 Lo ! how he comes, with earnest heart and loyal. 
 
 Flanked by his ordnance for a battle royal ; 
 
 Swinging a club might stagger Hercules, 
 
 To dash the mites from off a mouldering cheese ; 
 
 Roaring Uke Stentor from his brazen throat, 
 
 To drown some snappish spaniel's yejping note ; 
 
 Ah,'WHiTTiBR ! Fighting Friend ! I like thy verse — 
 
 Thy wholesale blessing and thy wholesale curse ; 
 
 I prize the spirit which exalts thy strain, 
 
 And joy when truth impels thy blows amain ; 
 
 ^ 
 
m — _ j^ 
 
 PABNASStJS IN PILLOBT. 71 
 
 But, really, friend ! I cannot help suspecting 
 Though writing's good, there's merit in correcting ! 
 Hahnemann likes best " the thirtieth dilution," (") 
 But poetry scarce bears so much diffusion ; 
 The homoeopathic thought (though' truth sublime) 
 Dies through materia medica of rhyme ; 
 So, Whittier, give less lexicon, and more 
 Good thought — of which no doubt thou hast a store. 
 Give us, if thou wouldst sing a flying slave, 
 Just as few bars as he or she would crave ; 
 And if on " Ichabod " thou launchest malison, ('") 
 Make it no longer than two books of Alison. 
 And, further, Whittier, " an thou lovest me," 
 Let thy chief subject for a while go free ; — 
 Or else, (how frail " Othello's occupation 1") 
 When slavery falls, will fall thine avocation ! 
 Living the black man's friend, i'faith, thou'lt die so : 
 A paraphrase of Wilmot's great proviso ! 
 
Whittier, adieu ! my blows I would not spare, 
 For when I strike, I strike who best can bear ; 
 Oft in this rhyme of mine I lash full hard 
 The man whom much I love, as friend and bard ; 
 Even as the leech, inspired by science pure, 
 Albeit he probe and cauterize — must cure I 
 
 Trimountain ! long hast thou the Mecca been 
 Of rhyming hadgees garbed in natural green ! 
 Trimountain ! Kaaba — reverently kissed 
 By Yankee bards — ^their " blarney-stone " I wist. (") 
 To thee comes Denison — to thee came Doane ; 
 M'Lellan, Pike, and Sprague, were all thine own : 
 Pierpont and Everett sung for thee their strains. 
 And savage Snelling flogged them for their pains. 
 Ah, me ! if once thou hadst such magnet skill 
 Our bards to sway — I pray thee, use it still 1 
 Wake as of old the three-stringed Yankee lyres, 
 And sound the pitchpipe of New England choirs ; 
 
 @ 
 
Ask if John Neal no longer feels tKe flame 
 With which he lit of yore the bonfire fame ? 
 Or heads no more his charging lines to ride, 
 Booted and spurred through all the country wide ? 
 Time was when, vocal as his " fierce grey bird," 
 la parish-schools his shrieking lays were heard ; 
 And embryo poets felt their quickening life. 
 When " Pierpont's Readers " woke the classic strife ! 
 Mellifluous PiERPONT, whose Horatian odes 
 Were counted heaviest among urchins' loads ; 
 When, parsing thee, they saw their trials past, 
 Nor valued gems so painfully amassed. 
 Ah, many a gem indeed hath been encased 
 By Pierpont's industry and Pierpont's taste ; — 
 And many a gem in quiet beauty glows, 
 (Which Griswold ne'er would venture to disclose,) 
 Where Burleigh's songs, attuned with placid love, 
 Rose from his lips to blend with those above ; 
 
 ^ 
 
#- 
 
 74 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 Where Dawes' melodious childhood passed away, 
 And Woodworth's genius framed its virgin lay. 
 
 'Tis a coincidence worth special credit, 
 That Sargent should the "Boston Transcript " edit ; 
 Strange the " poetic justice " does not strike him, 
 (I throw the hint out, as I rather like him, 
 Because my favorite bards his muse rehearses,) 
 Of putting " Boston Transcript " on his verses. 
 Poor man ! I mourn his euphuistic grammar, 
 I mourn "Velasco," and the " Standard Drama ;" (") 
 I mourn — but, no ! I wish him fame sincerely : 
 " Athens the modem " dubs her poets yearly ; 
 Perhaps at " Annual Odes " he'll distance Sprague, 
 Or bafHe Emerson with problems vague ; — 
 Perchance, like Pierpout, prove 'tis wrong to tipple, 
 Or ape Macaulay, like sententious Whipple ! 
 
 O, Emerson ! some transatlantic Solon 
 (As a discoverer sure he rivals Colon,) 
 
 @ 
 
# ^ — ^ 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORT. 15 
 
 Has found that in thy brain — commodious quarters — 
 Lives all the poesy this side of the waters. (") 
 Ah, me ! methinks this critic spiritual 
 Has proved thy favorite creed that man is dual ; 
 Would that his research might reveal the fact 
 Of thy poetic essence — all intact ! 
 Would that the Heart-Beat of the Avfful Whole 
 Could pulse distinct, and gauge thy Breadth of Soul ; 
 Till Sense Incarnate, robed in Suns like Ammon, 
 Might permeate, and throb through Space— ^-and— 
 gammon. 
 
 Speaking of gammon — I destroyed, last night — 
 (In several vain attempts to strike a light) 
 Destroyed, ye gods ! a work that would have burst 
 Like sunlight o'er the world — out-rhyming Hirst ; 
 Out-mouthing Liint — out-agonizing Emerson — 
 Out hold! the idea brings increasing tremors on. 
 
 It was a poem upon the softer gender — 
 Sublime, unique, expressive, touching, tender ; 
 
© .^ 
 
 76 PARNASSUS IN PILLORT. 
 
 Such adjectives ! such nouns ! such punctuation ! — 
 Such awful strength ! and such alliteration ! 
 In it sweet Edith May, with true abandon, 
 Was placed some twenty pegs above poor Landon ; 
 SiGOUENEY plucked from Hemans' brow the myrtle, 
 And Hale was Sappho — with a longer kirtle ; — 
 Greenwood was Norton and De Stael united, 
 And Blessington for Mistress Neal was slighted. 
 To some nine more I gave the Muses' names. 
 As PiERsoN, SwissHELM, and such like dames." 
 Alas ! that such a poem — on bards so gentle — 
 Was lost by conflagration accidental ; — 
 Griswold alone, in some bright spirit-flashes, 
 pan raise this Yankee phoenix from its ashes. (") 
 
 But, apropos — when poetry's " the fashion," 
 ■Women and men alike must feel the passion : 
 Verse-writing 's very nice on gilt-edged vellum. 
 Crow-quilled by some young literary Pelham. 
 
 ^ : . 
 
Let women write — their will 'tis useless balking : 
 They do less harm by writing than by talking ! 
 Write — write ! but, oh, I charge each rhyming 
 
 daughter. 
 Let not the men purloin your milk and water [ 
 
 Ho ! for the West ! the boundless, buoyant West 1 
 'Tis monstrous dull when poetry's the quest ; 
 Where Mississippi's awful grandeurs roll 
 Like an eternal anthem through the soul ; — 
 Where tombs of empires rise in nameless woe, 
 Colossal epics of the tribes below ; — 
 Where leaped the Mammoth, with a bound terrific, 
 From Rocky Mountains to the far Pacific ; (") 
 Where border-frays that beat old Scottish forays, 
 Impromptu duels and red Indian soirees, — 
 ABd all that makes the human hair most vertical. 
 As common-place transactions are assert-ical ; (") 
 
 # 
 
Sure, in a clime so stirring and romantic, 
 
 The muse and Pegasus must both grow frantic. 
 
 Frantic ! ah, np ! the West, with sage reflection, 
 Confines her muse to pinafore subjection ; 
 And save when Prbntice, after hock and soda. 
 Invokes his muse as Fingal conjured Loda ; — 
 Wielding the falchion of his classic wit 
 To oust the phantoms that around him flit ; 
 Unconscious all, that while, with accents loud. 
 He wooes his muse, his muse is but a cloud : — 
 And save when Gallagher, with trenchant stroke. 
 Cleaves through a wrong as woodmen rend an oak ; 
 And, haply, rising from the flat inane, 
 Pipes on the airs of heaven a golderi strain : — 
 Save and except, at times, some bulbul notes, 
 Fresh from a few sequestered maidens' throats. 
 That sometimes please and sometimes strangely jar — 
 I know not where our western poets are. 
 ^ ■ # 
 
m 
 
 PARNASSUS IN PILLORY. 19 
 
 Not Obton soars to strike the highest chord — ■ 
 Nor Georgic Chivers, nor Legar^, nor Lord ! 
 When the great lUad of the sunset land 
 Is writ, it must be by a Homer's hand : 
 'Till then, low-brooding through its busy Ufe, 
 The Western Poem shall be Manhood's Strife ! 
 Loud as the thunders of thy surging woods, 
 Broad and majestic as thine awful floods. 
 Deep as thy soundless caves, O mighty West ! — 
 Thus be thy song — an ocean in thy breast ! 
 
 Best thee, mine Harp ! my wearied hand I fling, 
 With scarce an impulse, o'er each quivering string ! 
 My thankless task hath reached its natural term — 
 Wisdom its fruit — though Folly was its germ. 
 Not mine to scathe with bitter jest the heart, 
 Or reckless launch the slanderer's jealous dart ; — 
 Not mine to prostitute the gift of song, 
 To wreak revenge for real or fancied wrong ; 
 
 m 
 
% ^ — -^ 
 
 80 PABNASSUS IN PILLORY. 
 
 Behind my jest no covert malice slept — 
 
 From out my praise no inuendo crept ; 
 
 An honest Anglo-Saxon round of blows 
 
 I've dealt alike upon my friends and foes ; 
 
 And if I struck full ofl within the guard — 
 
 Be sure, I might have struck ten times as hard ! 
 
 -# 
 
^ 
 
 NOTE 3 
 
 (1) 
 
 Convened them all, then broke each harp and head. 
 
 Page 3. 
 
 The massacre of the Welsh bards occurred under Ed- 
 ward I. 
 
 (2.) 
 
 ask inhere " Peter's keys " are.— Fage 9. 
 
 It is currently reported that a question like this was pro- 
 pounded by a well-known travelling litterateur, after being 
 shown through the Vatican. 
 
 (3.) 
 Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers. — Fage 11, 
 It was a masterly stroke in " mi-boy " to advertise his 
 patrons in this manner ; but not quite so profitable, we 
 opine, as Beau Brummell would have made it. Genius is 
 sometimes unequal. 
 
 (4.) 
 Dixon-like, " walked" into the " literati." — Page 12. 
 
 George Washington Dixon, the pedestrian was, like many 
 great men, before his time. J. B. T. seized the dotard by the 
 forelock and became what he is : the " glorious Chester 
 county farmer-boy." — Vide Graham's prospectus for 1851. 
 
84 NOTES. 
 
 (5.) 
 
 Why are the hapless men of music-stores. — Page 15. 
 
 O, Walker, Hall, and Fiot 1 
 O music-printing trio! 
 For buUads furnished free, O 
 Sing, jubilate Deo } 
 
 (6.) ' :?' 
 
 tJie northman's fable. — Page 1 6. 
 
 This I believe is a German legend, but it has become 
 classic to ascribe such things to the " Saga." 
 
 0-) 
 
 Who fought for glory, grub, and Jackson's medal. — 
 Page 17. 
 
 This T. Mayne Reid was an adventurous young Irish- 
 man, both in literature and the camp. He applied for the 
 medal bequeathed by Gen. Jackson, to the " bravest man 
 of the next war.'' Certainly no stronger proof of his bold- 
 ness could be required than the application itself. 
 
 (8.) 
 
 What though no " Witchcraft " saved poor Puffer's name, 
 And Jacob, — Page 17. 
 
 Neither of these plays (" Witchcraft," and " Jacob Leis- 
 ler ") was produced under the author's name, but their want 
 of success led to the belief that " C. M." wrote them. 
 
i^- 
 
 85 
 
 (9.) 
 
 For " Author'^ Rights " — Page 18. 
 
 Cornelius Matthews has always contended stoutly for an 
 
 " International Copyright Law," and for this, if for no other 
 
 merit, should be cherished by every friend of his country's 
 
 literature. 
 
 (10.) 
 He steered for Hungary. — Page 19. 
 With all bis eccentric egotism, Reid was a gallant 
 soldier ; and I bad hoped that Hungary would prove a 
 surer field of honor for him than Mexico. 
 
 (II.) 
 
 That " Donkey John " 's of Pegasus a colt. — Page 20. 
 
 " John Donkey " was a funny periodical issued in Phila- 
 delphia. It was the best attempt at a " Punch " our dys- 
 peptic jokers have yet perpetrated. Had it been less 
 meritorious, it had been longer-lived. English was the 
 principal writer He is a most incongruous author — has 
 written some of the best things in the language, and some 
 of the worst. 
 
 (12.) 
 The pit at " Sadler's Wells" took kindly to it. — Page 23. 
 Calaynos was played with success at " Sadler's Wells " 
 (the " Chatham " of London,) adapted doubtless to the taste 
 of the audience by British " paste and scissors." 
 
 1^— ^ 4 
 
(13.) 
 That earth boasts one more " admirable Crichton." — 
 
 Page 26. 
 
 Some pronounce the Scotchman's name Cri-ton j an 
 error — proved by my rhyme. 
 
 (14.) 
 With "Blackstone" pillowing his majestic head. — Page 26. 
 Hirst is a lawyer in good practice — so his literary 
 vagaries are not seriously detrimental to himself. He is 
 counted a " dead shot " in the sporting line ; is a bird- 
 fancier, connoisseur in art, an amateur seedsman and florist ; 
 might be famous as a politician if he would try ; in short, a 
 Figaro, a Caleb Quotem, and — the " author of Endymion." 
 
 (15.) 
 tiOok where Geneva mocks a martyr's cries. — Page 31. 
 If Servetus, Seneca, or any of the thousand martyrs to an 
 idea, could have been consoled by the certainty that their 
 thoughts would survive them, the bed of torture might have 
 seemed a couch of roses. While Hope sustains genius, she 
 is invulnerable : Despair is her agony and death-travail. 
 
 (16.) 
 " Gin gratis — and eight dollars each per diem." — Page 35. 
 This is a portion of a lampoon which some Michael 
 Steno, who had not the fear of greatness before his eyes, 
 wrote on the doors of the Senate chamber, at Washington, 
 on a certain ocoasion when Congress had adjourned to 
 attend the races. 
 
 m- 
 
(17.) 
 " You lie .'"—Page 35. 
 A well-known Congressional expletive. 
 
 (18.) 
 No ! " Ellen Jewett " his sleeping sense recalls. — Page 42. 
 
 The " life " of this wretched woman is one of the least 
 objectionable of the class of books alluded to ; the life of a 
 courtezan murdered by a libertine. What a comment is it 
 upon public taste, that such works should command exten- 
 sive sale ! 
 
 (19.) 
 Tempts her with titbits from a thousand " marts."— 
 
 Page 46. 
 
 I have distinguished this last word by quotation marks, 
 inasmuch as it has been so often used by Read in his poems 
 that I conceive he has earned a pre-emption right to it. 
 
 (20.) 
 
 And doffs the Spartan for the Sybarite soul. — Page 46. 
 
 If the Sybarite was incommoded by a roseleaf placed 
 
 under his couch, I fear my young friend " Tibia " will 
 
 hardly recover from the levity with which the satirist 
 
 alludes to bis mimosa-like genius. 
 
 (21.) 
 In spite of satires — or the " Whig Beview." — Page 47. 
 The "American Review" criticised Read with great 
 acrimony — and injustice. 
 
 @ 
 
(22.) 
 
 When Syndrrs wields, like Hercules, his " club." — 
 Page 48. 
 
 The " Empire Club," a political organization, was long, 
 if it be not at present, swayed by the notorious Captain 
 Rynders : holding its meetings, as is well known to moat 
 politicians, at Tammany Hall, New York. 
 
 (23.) 
 Treads the old party-lines from Post to Post. — Page 48. 
 
 Bryant is the editor of the " New York Evening Post," 
 a stanch partizan journal, devoted to the democratic side 
 of politics. 
 
 (24.) 
 In making him a classical Procrustes. — Page 49. 
 The coolness with which this old robber lopped or 
 stretched his hapless guests, to proportion them to the 
 dimensions of his iron bedstead, was not a bad antetype of 
 the modern sang-froid which reduces all orders of genius 
 to a standard medium. When will the world come to 
 Mrs. Malaprop's conclusion respecting " comparisons'!" 
 
 (25.) 
 
 a new Antatus is. — Page 49. 
 
 My apology for the introduction of this classic giant 
 must be the capital rhyme he affords. 
 
 m 
 
(26.) 
 
 a sort of editorial Warwici. — Page 50. 
 
 It was, I believe, reckoned of the last importance to 
 the early vitality of mammoth literary sheets, printed some 
 years back, that P. B. should at least dry-nurse them. 
 
 (27.) 
 
 Like afreets damned. — Page 51. 
 
 Afreets, according to eastern superstition, are evil spirits 
 haunting desert places ; once angels, but condemned to 
 suffer for their neglect of high duties. 
 
 (28.) 
 
 a critic's AcH.-;— Page 51. 
 
 Orpheus himself never attempted so deep a descent as 
 this ; but by the time Stoddard gets through with the 
 Plutonian epic he is now writing, he will probably be 
 acclimated to the most intense kind of caloric. 
 
 (29.) 
 they called him " Echo." — Page 52. 
 
 An article, charging Hoffman with plagiarism, imitation 
 of Moore, etc., appeared in an English magazine, whereupon 
 he printed a collection of his poems, under the title of 
 "The Echo ,-" decidedly a too suggestive title, as it turned 
 out. 
 
 #- 
 
!^- 
 
 90 NOTES, 
 
 (30.) 
 Equal to Waller's " richest" songs, or Herrick's. — Page 52. 
 A bona-ftde " opinion as is an opinion," by that eminent 
 D D. M.D. and LL.D. — the author of " Griswold's Poeta 
 and Poetry of America." See art. Hoffman. 
 
 (31.) 
 
 a sort of " proctor." — Page 53. 
 
 A " proctor " is a college officer. I make this explana- 
 tion that no malicious reader may seek to discover any 
 sinister allusion to the bard of that name. Hoffman is at 
 least not Barry Cornwall's " Echo "—and never will be. 
 
 (32.) 
 
 fire-bolts round his steeple. — Page 54. 
 
 Pierpont was at one time engaged in a fierce controversy 
 with his parishioners, many of whom, being interested in 
 the very profitable vocation of distilling, naturally took 
 umbrage at their pastor's zeal in the cause of temperance. 
 Many futile efforts were made to oust the reverend poet 
 from his pulpit, which I think he held by a life-tenure. I 
 forget how the matter ended, but recollect the steeple of 
 HoUis street church was twice struck by lightning during 
 the division of the flock. 
 
 33.) 
 
 The charms of " Adam's Ale " were sung by Wallace.— 
 
 Page 54. 
 
 A volume of Cold Water Melodies, written by Wallace, 
 was plinted at Boston in 1840, or thereabouts. 
 
 ■m 
 
(34.) 
 
 Or if thy muse, like Cutter's, goes by " steam." — Page 55. 
 
 The " Song of Steam," by Geoi;ge W. Cutter, is one of 
 the most vigorous lyrics in the language. 
 
 (35.) 
 
 — — tells tales of peers. — Page 56. 
 
 Was it "Jottings down in London," or some other 
 of Willis's gossip, that rehearsed the dinner-talk of English 
 nobility '! Can anybody recollect 1 
 
 (36.) 
 
 ^ Be Trohriand. — Page 57. 
 
 De Trohriand conducted with much ability the " Eeviie 
 de Nouveau Monde" — rendered into copious English 
 through the Home Journal ; in spite of which it — deceased. 
 
 (37.) 
 
 Moulding from dragon^ teeth its armed men. — Page 58. 
 
 I admire the beauty of this classical myth. It is a 
 blessed thing that nature works out her own beautiful 
 results, through the most unshapely means. Who knows 
 but that the spectacle of a talented man making a show of 
 himself, may be ordained on the principle which led the 
 ancient Lacedemonians to exhibit an inebriated slave to 
 their children — to disgust them with the sin of drunkenppss 1 
 
 #- 
 
i^ ______ — i^ 
 
 92 NOTES. 
 
 (38.) 
 
 Hope lingers still, upheld by Freeman Scott. — Page 59. 
 
 Scott ia a modern Curtius, who threw himself into the 
 gulf of nullification, and (in a Pickwickian sense) saved 
 the country. He wrote a " Song for the Union," and 
 offered a prize of $50 for appropriate music, to which it 
 was in fact sung, at the great union meeting of 15,000 
 unterrified patriots in the Chinese Museum, Philadelphia. 
 He deserves immortality — and shall have it. 
 
 (39.) 
 
 Swear that in " Florida " lies endless life. — Page 60. 
 
 Of" Florida," (as of most American epics) very little is 
 known — nor whether "Florida water" be its principal 
 component ; so I am not particularly clear about the 
 ihimortal destiny of its author. 
 
 (40.) 
 
 Fearing, like Raleigh, danger if he climb. — Page 61. 
 
 Sir Walter's celebrated couplet, and Queen Elizabeth's 
 rejoinder, are so well known that their repetition here 
 would scarcely be worth the space occupied. 
 
 (41.) 
 Thy " Blacksmith." — Page 61. 
 The " Blacksmith's Night," is one of Hoyt's best poems. 
 
(42.) 
 
 £ard of " Eureka " and of " Lgonsdale." — Page 61. 
 
 " Caleb Lyon of Lyonsdale " is a modern troubadour ; 
 penning at San Francisco a lyric for the " Eureka State " — 
 chanting semi-Spanish ballads through South America — 
 apostrophizing Jenny Liud in Gotham, and " stumping " 
 himself into the " Assembly " by poetic speech-making in 
 general. The Hon, W. O. Butler's " Boat-Horn " nearly 
 gained that gentleman the Vice-Presidency ; and if " the 
 Hon. Caleb Lyon " should run for the Chief Magistracy, 
 I would not bet against his chances. 
 
 (43.) 
 
 Linked the Pacific with thine own great name. — Page 61. 
 
 Among the achievements of Lyon must not be forgotten 
 
 the design of the California state seal — ^for which he received 
 
 $1,000 and a place in the " golden archives." This is even 
 
 better than being " sung in all the churches," like General 
 
 Geo. P. Morris. 
 
 (44.) 
 
 Malign thy " bear" by calling it a bore. — Page 62. 
 A " grizzly bear " formed part of the seal design men- 
 tioned above. The Mexicans in California were first 
 defeated by the Americans, under a flag with this device. 
 
 (45.) 
 
 in Persia and Cathay. — Page 62. 
 
 The bard of Lyonsdale is noted for his translations from 
 Hafiz the Persian, and Souohong-Bohea (if we quote 
 right), the Shanghai bard. 
 
 @ 
 
(46.) 
 As if they'd passed, like Taylor's, through banditti, — 
 
 Page 62. 
 
 We cannot think that our young Bayard emulated the 
 chevalier " sans peur et sans reproche," in hig Mexican 
 adventure with brigands. But then all our poets are not 
 expected to be Koerners ; or, perhaps, Taylor's fame (unlike 
 that of Ariosto) had not preceded him among the " moon's 
 minions." 
 
 (47.) 
 
 Where dwell " One Hundred Orators" in glory. — Page 62. 
 
 The " Boston Post " published a biographic sketch of 
 
 Edwin P. Whipple, as the first of a manuscript, entitled 
 
 the " Hundred Boston Orators." Heaven help the next 
 
 generation ! 
 
 (48.) 
 
 a " spirit-corse." — Page 63. 
 
 See " The Buccaneer" for this delectable compound. 
 
 (49.) 
 
 Cochituate. — Page 64. 
 
 The Cochituate water (as any Bostonian will assure you) 
 is a perfectly innocent beverage. 
 
 (50.) 
 
 our incuhi. — Page 66. 
 
 For the perpetration of these enontiities, I plead in excuse 
 my desire to present the reader with a sample of the 
 doctor's own assortment. 
 
 ^ 
 
p — ■ % 
 
 NOTES. 95 
 
 (51.) 
 The "thirtieth dilution," — Page 71. 
 
 The " thirtieth dilution " is said to be the best proportion 
 in homcBopathy. 
 
 (52.) 
 And if on " Ichabod " thou launchest malison. — Page 71 . 
 
 " Ichabod " was the caption of a poem which, in no half- 
 way strain, arraigned a celebrated statesman for his reputed 
 backslidings. I regretted this, because, while I hold poetry 
 to be a fitting medium for the promulgation of great truth, 
 defence of humanity, liberty, etc., I hardly esteem it the 
 proper vehicle of equivocal personalities or censorious 
 strictures. The true poet is of no ism nor creed, per se. 
 Whittier is a true poet: — but it is not in his negrophilism that 
 this fact is most apparent. James Russell Lowell — ditto. 
 
 (53.) 
 
 Trimountain ! Kaaha — reverently kissed. — Page 72. 
 
 Blackstone was the founder of the " Modem Athens." 
 The Kaaba is a " black stone " at Mecca, held in high 
 veneration by all true Moslems, on whom a pilgrimage to 
 Mecca confers the title of " hadgee," and the distinction of 
 wearing a green turban. The " blarney stone " is familiar 
 to those authors who deal much with publishers. 
 
 (54.) 
 
 The " Standard Drama." — Page 74. 
 
 This is an unfortunate publication. The authors of 
 " Velasco " and " Puffer Hopkins " have severally " edited " 
 it. Whose turn next ? Boker's? 
 
 ^ @ 
 
96 NOTES. 
 
 (55.) 
 
 all the poesy this side of the waters. — Page 75. 
 
 It was asserted by a British Review that Emetson ia the 
 only true American poet. 
 
 (56.) 
 
 this Yankee Phcenix. — Page 76. 
 
 What a capital satirist Griswold would make — handling 
 " The Female Poets !" 
 
 (57.) 
 Where leaped the Mammoth with a hound terrific. 
 From Rocky Mountains to the far Pacific. — Paj;e 77. 
 For a succinct account of this famous leap, vide Hirst's 
 " Coming of the Mammoth." 
 
 (58.) 
 
 astert-ical. — ^Page 78. 
 
 A Willisian license. 
 
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