Come-on with your spectacles, noble Lord Duke, (Or O'Connell has green ones he haply would lend you,) Read V-sey all o'er (as you can't read a book) And improve by the lesson we, bog-trotters, send you; A lesson, in large Roman characters trac❜d, Whose awful impressions from you and your kin Of blank-sheeted statesmen will ne'er be effac'dUnless, 'stead of paper, you're mere asses' skin. Shall I help you to construe it? ay, by the Gods, Could I risk a translation, you should have a rare one; But pen against sabre is desperate odds, And you, my Lord Duke (as you hinted once), wear one. Again and again I say, read V—sey o'er ;— You will find him worth all the old scrolls of papyrus, That Egypt e'er fill'd with nonsensical lore, Or the learned Champollion e'er wrote of, to tire us. All blank as he was, we've return'd him on hand, Scribbled o'er with a warning to Princes and Dukes, Whose plain, simple drift if they won't understand, Though caress'd at St. James's, they're fit for St. Luke's. Talk of leaves of the Sibyls!-more meaning convey'd is In one single leaf such as now we have spell'd on, Than e'er hath been utter'd by all the old ladies That ever yet spoke, from the Sibyls to Eld-n. THE ANNUAL PILL./ Supposed to be sung by OLD PROSY, the Jew, in the VILL nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, Dat's to purify every ting nashty avay? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let ma say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say! 'Tis so pretty a bolus !—just down let it go, And, at vonce, such a radical shange you vill see, Dat I'd not be surprish'd, like de horse in de show, If your heads all vere found, vere your tailsh ought to be! Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, &c. "Twill cure all Electors, and purge away clear Dat mighty bad itching dey've got in deir hands"Twill cure, too, all Statesmen, of dulness, ma tear, Though the case vas as desperate as poor Mister Dere is noting at all vat dis Pill vill not reach- Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, &c. "Twould be tedious, ma tear, all its peauties to paintBut, among oder tings fundamentally wrong, It vill cure de Proad Pottom*- a common complaint Among M. P.'s and weavers- from sitting too long. Should symptoms of speeching preak out on a dunce (Vat is often de case), it vill stop de disease, And pring avay all de long speeches at vonce, Dat else vould, like tape-worms, come by degrees! Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, Dat's to purify every ting nashty avay? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let me say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say! * Meaning, I presume, Coalition Administrations. "IF" AND "PERHAPS."* OH tidings of freedom! oh accents of hope! 66 If mutely the slave will endure and obey, "Nor clanking his fetters, nor breathing his pains, "His masters, perhaps, at some far distant day, May think (tender tyrants!) of loosening his chains." Wise "if" and "perhaps!"-precious salve for our wounds, If he, who would rule thus o'er manacled mutes, * Written after hearing a celebrated speech in the House of Lords, June 10. 1828, when the motion in favour of Catholic Emancipation, brought forward by the Marquis of Lansdowne, was rejected by the House of Lords. |