CHARLES MORRIS.
[Captain Morris was born in 1740, and died in 1832).
IN London I never know what I'd be at,
Enraptured with this, and enchanted with that;
I'm wild with the sweets of variety's plan,
And Life seems a blessing too happy for man.
But the Country, Lord help me! sets all matters right,
So calm and composing from morning to night;
Oh! it settles the spirits when nothing is seen
But an ass on a common, a goose on a green.
In town if it rain, why it damps not our hope,
The eye has her choice, and the fancy her scope;
What harm though it pour whole nights or whole days?
It spoils not our prospects, or stops not our ways.
In the country what bliss, when it rains in the fields,
To live on the transports that shuttlecock yields;
Or go crawling from window to window, to see
A pig on a dunghill, or crow on a tree!
In London, if folks ill together are put,
A bore may be dropped, and a quiz may be cut;
We change without end; and if lazy or ill,
All wants are at hand, and all wishes at will.
In the country you're nailed, like a pale in the park,
To some stick of a neighbour that's crammed in the ark;
And 'tis odds, if you're hurt, or in fits tumble down,
You reach death ere the doctor can reach you from town.
In London how easy we visit and meet !
Gay pleasure's the theme, and sweet smiles are our treat :
Our morning's a round of good-humoured delight,
And we rattle, in comfort, to pleasure at night.
In the country, how sprightly our visits we make
Through ten miles of mud, for Formality's sake!
With the coachman in drink, and the moon in a fog,
And no thought in our head but a ditch or a bog.
In London the spirits are cheerful and light,
All places are gay and all faces are bright;
We've ever new joys, and, revived by each whim,
Each day on a fresh tide of pleasure we swim.
But how gay in the country! what summer delight
To be waiting for winter from morning to night!
Then the fret of impatience gives exquisite glee
To relish the sweet rural subjects we see.
In town we've no use for the skies overhead,
For when the sun rises then we go to bed;
And as to that old-fashioned virgin the moon,
She shines out of season, like satin in June.
In the country these planets delightfully glare
Just to show us the object we want isn't there;`
Oh how cheering and gay, when their beauties arise,
To sit and gaze round with the tears in one's eyes!
But 'tis in the country alone we can find
That happy resource, that relief of the mind,
When, drove to despair, our last efforts we make,
And drag the old fish-pond, for novelty's sake:
Indeed I must own, 'tis a pleasure complete
To see ladies well draggled and wet in their feet;
But what is all that to the transport we feel
When we capture, in triumph, two toads and an eel?
I have heard, though, that love in a cottage is sweet,
When two hearts in one link of soft sympathy meet :
That's to come-for as yet I, alas! am a swain
Who require, I own it, more links to my chain.
Your magpies and stock-doves may flirt among trees,
And chatter their transports in groves, if they please :
But a house is much more to my taste than a tree,
And for groves, Oh! a good grove of chimneys for me!
In the country, if Cupid should find a man out,
The poor tortured victim mopes hopeless about;
But in London, thank Heaven! our peace is secure,
Where for one eye to kill there's a thousand to cure.
I know love's a devil, too subtle to spy,
That shoots through the soul from the beam of an eye ;
But in London these devils so quick fly about
That a new devil still drives an old devil out.
In town let me live then, in town let me die,
For in truth I can't relish the country, not I!
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
Oh give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!
[Born at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, in 1745, daughter of a village schoolmaster; died at Clifton in 1833. The talents of Hannah excited attention at a very early age, and she set up a good day-school, and afterwards a boardingschool. Her first printed work was the drama entitled The Search after Happiness; this was followed by Sacred Dramas, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, and a number of other works having for the most part a directly religious or didactic object].
THE BAS BLEU; OR, CONVERSATION.
The following trifle owes its birth and name to the mistake of a Foreigner of distinction, who gave the literal appellation of the Bas-bleu to a small party of friends who had been often called, by way of pleasantry, the Blue Stockings. These little Societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were composed of persons distinguished, in general, for their rank, talents, or respectable character, who met frequently at Mrs. Vesey's and at a few other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from other parties but that the company did not play at cards.
May the author be permitted to bear her grateful testimony (which will not be suspected of flattery now that most of the persons named in this Poem are gone down to the grave) to the many pleasant and instructive hours she had the honour to pass in this company; in which learning was as little disfigured by pedantry, good taste as little tinctured by affectation, and general conversation as little disgraced by calumny, levity, and the other censurable errors with which it is too commonly tainted, as has perhaps been known in any Society.
VESEY! of Verse the judge and friend! ́
A while my idle strain attend.
Not with the days of early Greece
I mean to ope my slender piece;
The rare Symposium to proclaim
Which crowned the Athenians' social name;
Or how Aspasia's parties shone,
The first Bas-bleu at Athens known;
Where Socrates unbending sat,
With Alcibiades in chat,
And Pericles vouchsafed to mix
Taste, wit, and mirth, with politics.
Nor need I stop my tale to show,
At least to readers such as you,
How all that Rome esteemed polite
Supped with Lucullus every night;
Lucullus, who, from Pontus come,
Brought conquests and brought cherries home.
Name but the suppers in the Apollo,
What classic images will follow!
How wit flew round, while each might take
Conchylia from the Lucrine lake;
And Attic salt, and Garum sauce,
And lettuce from the isle of Cos;
The first and last from Greece transplanted,-
Used here because the rhyme I wanted,
How pheasants' heads with cost collected,
And phenicopters, stood neglected,
To laugh at Scipio's lucky hit,
Pompey's bon-mot, or Cæsar's wit.
Intemperance, listening to the tale,
Forgot the mullet growing stale;
And Admiration balanced hung
'Twixt peacocks' brains and Tully's tongue.
I shall not stop to dwell on these,
But be as epic as I please,
And plunge at once in medias res.
To prove the privilege I plead,
I'll quote some Greek I cannot read ;
Stunned by Authority, you yield,
And I, not reason, keep the field.
Long was Society o'er-run
By Whist, that desolating Hun;
Long did Quadrille 2 despotic sit,
That Vandal of colloquial wit;
And Conversation's setting light
Lay half obscured in Gothic night.
At length the mental shades decline;
Colloquial wit begins to shine;
Genius prevails, and Conversation
Emerges into Reformation.
The vanquished triple crown to you,
Boscawen sage, bright Montagu,
Divided fell; your cares in haste
Rescued the ravaged realms of Taste.
And Lyttelton's accomplished name,
And witty Pulteney, shared the fame;
The men not bound by pedant rules,
Nor ladies Précieuses ridicules;
For polished Walpole showed the way,
How Wits may be both learn'd and gay;
And Carter taught the female train
The deeply wise are never vain ;
And she, who Shakspeare's wrongs redressed,
Proved that the brightest are the best.
This just deduction still they drew,
And well they practised what they knew.
Nor taste nor wit deserves applause,
Unless, still true to critic laws,
Good Sense, of faculties the best,
Inspire and regulate the rest.
1 Seneca says, that in his time the Romans were arrived at such a pitch of luxury that the mullet was reckoned stale which did not die in the hands of the guest.
Oh how unlike the wit that fell,
Rambouillet, at thy quaint hotel;
Where point, and turn, and equivoque,
Distorted every word they spoke !
All so intolerably bright,
Plain Common Sense was put to flight;
Each speaker so ingenious ever,
'Twas tiresome to be quite so clever.
There twisted Wit forgot to please,
And Mode and Figure banished ease;
No votive altar smoked to thee,
Chaste Queen, divine Simplicity;
But forced Conceit which ever fails,
And stiff Antithesis, prevails.
Uneasy rivalry destroys
Society's unlaboured joys.
Nature, of stilts and fetters tired,
Impatient from the Wits retired;
Long time the exile houseless strayed,
Till Sévigné received the maid.
Though here she comes to bless our isle,
Not universal is her smile.
Muse! snatch the lyre which Cambridge strung,
When he the empty ball-room sung;
'Tis tuned above thy pitch, I doubt,
And thou no music wouldst draw out;
Yet in a lower note presume
To sing the full, dull Drawing-room.
Where the dire Circle keeps its station,
Each common phrase is an oration;
And cracking fans, and whispering Misses,
Compose their Conversation blisses.
The Matron marks the goodly show,
While the tall daughter eyes the Beau-
The frigid Beau! Ah! luckless fair,
'Tis not for you that studied air;
Ah! not for you that sidelong glance,
And all that charming nonchalance;
Ah! not for you the three long hours'
He worshipped the "Cosmetic powers;'
That finished head which breathes perfume,
And kills the nerves of half the room;
And all the murders meant to lie
In that large, languishing, grey eye.
Desist-less wild the attempt would be
To warm the snows of Rhodope.
1 These grave and formal parties now scarcely exist, having been swallowed
up in the reigning multitudinous assemblies.
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