The Bon Gaultier Ballads | Page 3

imagination, to clothe the gibbet and the hulks 'in golden exhalations of the dawn,' and secure for the boozing-ken and the gin-palace that hold upon the general sympathies which has too long been monopolised by the cottage and the drawing-room, has been the aim and the achievement of many recent authors of distinction. How they have succeeded, let the populous state of the public jails attest. The office of 'dubsman' [hangman] has ceased to be a sinecure, and the public and Mr Joseph Hume have the satisfaction of knowing that these useful functionaries have now got something to do for their salaries. The number of their pupils has increased, is increasing, and is not likely to be diminished. But much remains to be done. Many an untenanted cell still echoes only to the sighs of its own loneliness. New jails are rising around us, which require to be filled. The Penitentiary presently erecting at Perth is of the most commodious description.
"In this state of things I have bethought myself of throwing, in the words of Goethe, 'my corn into the great seed-field of time,' in the hope that it may blossom to purposes of great public utility. The aid of poetry has hitherto been but partially employed in the spread of a taste for Conveyancing, especially in its higher branches. Or where the Muse has shown herself, it has been but in the evanescent glimpses of a song. She has plumed her wings for no sustained flight. . . .
"The power of poetry over the heart and impulses of man has been recognised by all writers from Aristotle down to Serjeant Talfourd. In dexterous hands it has been known to subvert a severe chastity by the insinuations of a holy flame, to clothe impurity in vestments 'bright with something of an angel light,' to exalt spleen into elevation of soul, and selfishness into a noble scorn of the world, and, with the ringing cadences of an enthusiastic style, to ennoble the vulgar and to sanctify the low. How much may be done, with an engine of such power, in increasing the numbers of 'The Family' may be conceived. The Muse of Faking, fair daughter of the herald Mercury, claims her place among 'The Mystic Nine.' Her language, erewhile slumbering in the pages of the Flash Dictionary, now lives upon the lips of all, even in the most fashionable circles. Ladies accost crossing-sweepers as 'dubsmen'; whist-players are generally spoken of in gambling families as '_dummy_-hunters'; children in their nursery sports are accustomed to 'nix their dolls'; and the all but universal summons to exertion of every description is 'Fake away!'
"'Words are things,' says Apollonius of Tyana. We cannot be long familiar with a symbol without becoming intimate with that which it expresses. Let the public mind, then, be in the habit of associating these and similar expressions with passages of poetical power, let the ideas they import be imbedded in their hearts and glorified in their imaginations, and the fairest results may with confidence be anticipated."
In song and sonnet and ballad these views were illustrated and enforced. They served the purpose of the ridicule which it was hoped might operate to cure people of the prevailing toleration for the romance of the slums and the thieves' kitchen. Naturally parody was freely used. Wordsworth did not escape. His
"Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour,"
found its echo in
"Turpin, thou shouldst be living at this hour,?England hath need of thee," &c.
And his "Great men have been among us," &c., was perverted into
"Great men have been among us,--Names that lend
A lustre to our calling; better none;?Maclaine, Duval, Dick Turpin, Barrington,?Blueskin and others, who called Sheppard friend.?. . . .?. . . Now, 'tis strange,?We never see such souls as we had then;
Perpetual larcenies and such small change!?No single cracksman paramount, no code,?No master spirit, that will take the road,?But equal dearth of pluck and highwaymen!"
Nor did even Shelley's magnificent sonnet "Ozymandias" escape the profane hand of the burglar poet. He wrote,--
"I met a cracksman coming down the Strand,
Who said, 'A huge Cathedral, piled of stone,?Stands in a churchyard, near St Martin's Le Grand,
Where keeps Saint Paul his sacerdotal throne.?A street runs by it to the northward. There?For cab and bus is writ 'No Thoroughfare,'
The Mayor and Councilmen do so command.?And in that street a shop, with many a box,
Upon whose sign these fateful words I scanned:?'My name is Chubb, who makes the Patent Locks;
Look on my works, ye burglars, and despair!'?Here made he pause, like one that sees a blight
Mar all his hopes, and sighed with drooping air,?'Our game is up, my covies, blow me tight!'"
The versatile genius of the poet was equally at home in the simpler lyric region of the Haynes Bayley school. Taking for his model the favourite drawing-room ballad of