178 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



and Laureate to the Academy." Beginning with the 

 painters of the day (1782), he assailed in turn every 

 public man from the King downward. Every bit of 

 gossip whatsoever was sure to be repeated in the version 

 of Peter Pindar. He seemed incapable of praising any 

 one. Unlike the gentle genuine humorist, he could 

 palliate nothing. Derision was the beginning, and de- 

 rision was the end. The versification was marvellously 

 good, yet the eternal sneer reduced it to twaddle. 



After the King, and the members of his Ministry, and 

 some of the Royal Academicians, Sir Joseph Banks was 

 Peter's favourite quarry. 



" High o'er the world Sir Joseph soars sublime, 

 The great and fertile subject of my Rhyme," etc. 



He is a peg from which hangs a selection of hints 

 which can serve for throwing in at any juncture. 



" Go to the fields, and gain a nation's Thanks, 

 Catch Grasshoppers and Butterflies for Banks." 



Generally, we learn that Banks made of the Royal 

 Society a Fly Club, and tried to amuse them with frogs, 

 and flies, and grasshoppers, and weed-and-birds'-nest- 

 hunting ; that he was overbearing, and kept the mem- 

 bers awake by loud strokes of his official hammer ; that 

 he sometimes swore ; that he was " too common, too 

 ignorant, and too vain for the chair of Newton." He 

 was a lime-and-mortar Knight, whatever that may mean. 

 He proposed the plan of a throne for himself, " and 

 benches for foreign Princes and Ambassadors beneath 



John Opie, whose merit he foresaw and resolved to encourage. Some 

 kind of partnership between them existed for a time. At length, finding 

 London would neither have him as a priest nor as a physician, he took to 

 his pen, and carried the town by storm, with " Lyric odes to the Royal 

 Academicians for 1782." His verse is by no means discreditable, except 

 for its daring personalities, and some indecencies which we could not 

 now endure. 



