What is Fame? 481 



And thy proud heart's immortal sport 

 Is lost in claret, hock, or port. 

 Again, some literary lord 

 Thy marble bust with care may hoard, 

 Giving it a station meet, 

 Because he knows a bust can't eat 

 (Tis strange that human nature's known 

 Less kind to man than chiselled stone !) 

 And then the all-divine translation 

 May waft thy name to distant nation; 

 'Tis something yet, when all is o'er, 

 For Russian slave, or German boor, 

 To give a veto" right," or " wrong,*' 

 ft Sublime,'' or " blasphemous," thy song. 

 Yet, in a senate-house debate 

 (As beet-root beautifies a plate 

 Of salad for a supper- course), 

 Thy lines may deck a green discourse ; 



Quoted in very timely season, , 



To save by rhyme when lost to reason ; 

 Then, if thou'st been a civil beast, 

 Nor gored a king, nor tost a priest, 

 Nor lived of courts and place a scorner, 

 Thou'lt stand in stone in Poet's Corner ; 

 Gaped at by 'prentice, clown, or tabby, 

 Who brings her nieces to the Abbey ; 

 Be shewn for halfpence, like the bear 

 Or monster of a city fair. 

 And, should thy portrait e'er be printed 

 To grace thy book, thou may'st be stinted 

 Ee'n of thy comeliness of feature, 

 And made a squint-eyed, high-cheek'd creature 

 Thy placid visage crimped and smug, 

 And Roman nose transformed to pug. 



This, this is Fame to be well bound, 

 Sold for the sixtieth of a pound. 

 Now spoken of by petit-maitre 

 Now lost in cry of" wine" and " waiter/' 

 By peer well prized thy carved-out head, 

 Which, living, perhaps had wanted bread ; 

 Cited to aid a new taxation, 

 To stuff a king, and starve a nation ; 

 A statue raised above thy grave, 

 To tell the world thou wert no knave, 

 beholders of thy sacred haunt, 

 A Sunday lout and sapient aunt. 

 A privilege before the great 

 To keep thy back of marble straight. 

 To rival monsters of the town, 

 And wear thy nasus upside down. 



This, this is Fame ! O flattering ill ! 

 Bards, cut to toothpicks every quill. 



D. W, J. 



M-.M. New Series VOL. IV. No. 23. 3 Q 



