The Village and The Newspaper | Page 9

then roam abroad for more.
No anxious virgin flies to "fair Tweed-side;"?No injured husband mourns his faithless bride;?No duel dooms the fiery youth to bleed;?But through the town transpires each vent'rous deed.?Should some fair frail one drive her prancing pair?Where rival peers contend to please the fair;?When, with new force, she aids her conquering eyes,?And beauty decks, with all that beauty buys:?Quickly we learn whose heart her influence feels,?Whose acres melt before her glowing wheels.
To these a thousand idle themes succeed,?Deeds of all kinds, and comments to each deed.?Here stocks, the state barometers, we view,?That rise or fall by causes known to few;?Promotion's ladder who goes up or down;?Who wed, or who seduced, amuse the town;?What new-born heir has made his father blest;?What heir exults, his father now at rest;?That ample list the Tyburn-herald gives,?And each known knave, who still for Tyburn lives.
So grows the work, and now the printer tries?His powers no more, but leans on his allies.
When lo! the advertising tribe succeed,?Pay to be read, yet find but few will read;?And chief th' illustrious race, whose drops and pills?Have patent powers to vanquish human ills:?These, with their cures, a constant aid remain,?To bless the pale composer's fertile brain;?Fertile it is, but still the noblest soil?Requires some pause, some intervals from toil;?And they at least a certain ease obtain?From Katterfelto's skill, and Graham's glowing strain.
I too must aid, and pay to see my name?Hung in these dirty avenues to fame;?Nor pay in vain, if aught the Muse has seen,?And sung, could make these avenues more clean;?Could stop one slander ere it found its way,?And give to public scorn its helpless prey.?By the same aid, the Stage invites her friends,?And kindly tells the banquet she intends;?Thither from real life the many run,?With Siddons weep, or laugh with Abingdon;?Pleased in fictitious joy or grief, to see?The mimic passion with their own agree;?To steal a few enchanted hours away?From self, and drop the curtain on the day.
But who can steal from self that wretched wight?Whose darling work is tried some fatal night??Most wretched man! when, bane to every bliss,?He hears the serpent-critic's rising hiss;?Then groans succeed; nor traitors on the wheel?Can feel like him, or have such pangs to feel.?Nor end they here: next day he reads his fall?In every paper; critics are they all:?He sees his branded name with wild affright,?And hears again the cat-calls of the night.
Such help the STAGE affords: a larger space?Is fill'd by PUFFS and all the puffing race.?Physic had once alone the lofty style,?The well-known boast, that ceased to raise a smile:?Now all the province of that tribe invade,?And we abound in quacks of every trade.
The simple barber, once an honest name,?Cervantes founded, Fielding raised his fame:?Barber no more--a gay perfumer comes,?On whose soft cheek his own cosmetic blooms;?Here he appears, each simple mind to move,?And advertises beauty, grace, and love.?"Come, faded belles, who would your youth renew,?And learn the wonders of Olympian dew;?Restore the roses that begin to faint,?Nor think celestial washes vulgar paint;?Your former features, airs, and arts assume,?Circassian virtues, with Circassian bloom.?Come, battered beaux, whose locks are turned to gray,?And crop Discretion's lying badge away;?Read where they vend these smart engaging things,?These flaxen frontlets with elastic springs;?No female eye the fair deception sees,?Not Nature's self so natural as these."
Such are their arts, but not confined to them,?The muse impartial most her sons condemn:?For they, degenerate! join the venal throng,?And puff a lazy Pegasus along:?More guilty these, by Nature less design'd?For little arts that suit the vulgar kind.?That barbers' boys, who would to trade advance,?Wish us to call them smart Friseurs from France:?That he who builds a chop-house, on his door?Paints "The true old original Blue Boar!"-
These are the arts by which a thousand live,?Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive:-?But when, amidst this rabble rout, we find?A puffing poet to his honour blind;?Who slily drops quotations all about?Packet or post, and points their merit out;?Who advertises what reviewers say,?With sham editions every second day;?Who dares not trust his praises out of sight,?But hurries into fame with all his might;?Although the verse some transient praise obtains,?Contempt is all the anxious poet gains.
Now Puffs exhausted, Advertisements past,?Their Correspondents stand exposed at last;?These are a numerous tribe, to fame unknown,?Who for the public good forego their own;?Who volunteers in paper-war engage,?With double portion of their party's rage:?Such are the Bruti, Decii, who appear?Wooing the printer for admission here;?Whose generous souls can condescend to pray?For leave to throw their precious time away.
Oh! cruel WOODFALL! when a patriot draws?His gray-goose quill in his dear country's cause,?To vex and maul a ministerial race,?Can thy stern soul refuse the champion place??Alas! thou know'st not with what anxious heart?He longs his best-loved labours to impart;?How he has sent them to thy brethren round,?And still the same unkind reception found:?At length indignant