Punch and Judy. 
*Twere better far to look on thee, than gaze 
At all the tinsel splendours of the stage, 
While either patent puppet-show displays 
Such monstrous births to our degenerate age :— 
Thou better claim’st the eye, that fondly strays 
O’er Harriette’s or her Julia’s wanton page, 
Filled with known names, that boys may shew the book 
As the best answer to a sire’s rebuke, 
Thou hast more satisfaction for the mind 
Than wordy volumes of philosophy,— 
That fountain filled with doubts of every kind, 
While all its springs of certain truth are dry ;— 
And if the reader fail this fact to find, 
In politics or ethics, let them try 
Esthetics, metaphysics, or phrenology, 
Or any other alogy or ology. 
Punch ! thow art fairly worth the three professions 
(We leave the Church), War, Physic and the Bar. 
To place renown in those sublime transgressions, 
Rape, murder, pillage, is the work of War ; 
To prostitute the mind in court, or sessions, 
Is what must raise the Lawyer above par ; 
And where’s the Physic, that long life ensures, 
Nor kills at least as many as it cures ? 
And truly, Punch, it doth appear to me, 
Though the remark may savour of ill-nature,— 
That there’s more wit and pleasantry in thee, 
Than in nine-tenths of modern literature ! 
Not but, though Byron sleeps, our land may see 
Some giants yet in intellectual stature :— 
But what, alas ! are they among so many ?— 
Yet none I name, and therefore hurt not any. 
For literary warfare is, Heaven knows, 
A savage thing, and borrows from the stews 
Weapons, whose filthy wounds are worse than blows, ° 
And sadly shame the votaries of the muse : 
Besides, its front when my next epic shews, 
I wish it to be puffed in the Reviews, 
Wherefore, in general, of the writing tribe 
Myself the humble servant I subscribe, 
The Gallery of the Commons I’ve frequented, 
And heard long speeches—loudly cheered ones, too ;— 
Ihave withdrawn me—somewhat discontented— 
From Halls and public meetings not a few. 
And now, my Punch, between ourselyes be yented 
The rash conclusion which at last I drew, 
That many a weightier object may usurp us, 
That is, our time—to quite as little purpose! 
Again, I have been squeezed in a hot room— 
As Wordsworth has it, in a parlour crammed— 
Amid a mass of feathers and perfume, 
Bright gems, and rustling satins, fairly jammed 
Till I have felt the fulness of that doom, 
(What words, oh Wordsworth,) “ silent and all damn’d:” 
While flowed around the common pretty, prattle,, 
As somé would say—or others, “ tittle-tattle.” y...4 40» 
U.M. New Series.—Vot. Il. No. 10. 3 F 
401 
