1831.] [ 385 ] 



CONFESSIONS OF A COWARD. 



" A coward I a most devout coward ! religious in it !" 



Twelfth JVigftt. 



ANYTHING in reason will I adventure for a lady's love circumnavi- 

 gate the terraqueous globe with Mr. Buckingham sail with Captain 

 Parry to the North Pole fast with Mr. Perceval pass an hour in an 

 oven with M. Chabert suffer myself to be rubbed by Mr. St. John 

 Long or read Moore's Life of Byron from cover to cover but stand 

 an adversary's fire at Battersea Fields, or Chalk Farm that I will not 

 do ! No ! the power of woman I own, but her omnipotence I deny ; 

 or, as I once poetically expressed it 



Beauty's bright heaven has many a starry eye, 

 Shines many a radiant orb in Beauty's sky ; 

 But well I ween there glitters not the dame 

 Whose glance could fire me with a warrior's flame ; 

 Not Loveliness herself, with all her charms, 

 Could nerve my spirit to a deed of arms. 



Yes, truly ! such are my sentiments ; and you see they can be couched 

 in rhyme, as well as the most valorous and knightly. Were Venus to 

 be the guerdon of the achievement, I would not exchange a shot with 

 any lord or gentleman in the king's dominions. I will do anything for 

 Beatrice but challenge Claudio. Whether I shall ever be " crowned," 

 or not, is uncertain ; but certes it will never be for " deserts in arms ;" 

 and as to the " bubble reputation," if ever I seek it, rely on it, it will 

 be somewhere else than " in the cannon's mouth" ay, or the pistol's 

 mouth either. A pistol differs from a cannon only as a young lion dif- 

 fers from an old one ; and I would just as soon be devoured by the king 

 of the forest himself, as by a younger branch of the royal family. No 

 pistol for me ! I hold it, with honest David in the play, to be a <( bloody- 

 minded animal j" and the much-abused nobleman, who several hundred 

 years ago remarked, 



" that it was great pity so it was 



That villanous saltpetre should be digged 

 Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, 

 Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed 

 So cowardly" 



took a view of military affairs in which I concur with all my heart, soul, 

 and strength. 



It may be asked, how I dare to make an avowal so certain to bring 

 down upon my head the sentence of outlawry from every fashionable 

 circle. " Do I not know," it will be said, " that to the lovely and the 

 brave the character I give of myself is equally detestable ? that I had 

 better be known in polite society as a traitor or a parricide, than as a 

 craven in the field, much less a person who would prefer the most inglo- 

 rious compromise imaginable to a mortal arbitrement at twelve paces ?'' 

 A reasonable question, gentle reader ! But, if you wait to the end of 

 these Confessions, you will find an answer ; you will see that, commu- 

 nicative as I am on other points, with respect to my " local habitation 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 64. 3D 



