The Rolliad, in Two Parts. George Ellis
For, should not chaste example save from ill,
There’s still a refuge in the other’s pill.
With a sketch equally brief and masterly as the above, he describes his hopes on the other branch of his division.
The body politic no more shall grieve
The motley stains that dire corruptions leave;
No dang’rous humours shall infest the state,
Nor rotten Members hasten Britain’s fate.
Our author who, notwithstanding his usual and characteristic gravity, has yet not un-frequently an obvious tendency to the sportive, condescends now to take notice of a rumour, which in these times had been universally circulated, that Sir Samuel bad parted with his specific, and disposed of it to a gentleman often mentioned, and always with infinite and due respect, in the ROLLIAD, namely, Mr. Dundas.—Upon this he addresses Sir Samuel with equal truth and good-humour in the following couplet:
Then shall thy med’cine boast its native bent,
Then spread its genuine blessing—to prevent.
Our readers cannot but know, it was by the means of a nostrum, emphatically called a Specific, that Mr. Dundas so long contrived to prevent the constitutional lues of a Parliamentary Reform. The author, however, does not profess, to give implicit credit to the fact of Sir Samuel’s having ungratefully disposed of his favourite recipe, the happy source of his livelihood and fame; the more so, as it appears that Mr. Dundas had found the very word specific sufficient for protracting a dreadful political evil on the three several instances of its application. Under this impression of the thing, the poet strongly recommends Sir Samuel to go on in the prosecution of his original profession, and thus expresses his wish upon the occasion, with the correct transcript of which we shall close the history of this great man:
In those snug corners be thy skill display’d,
Where Nature’s tribute modestly is paid:
Or near fam’d Temple-bar may some good dame, }
Herself past sport, but yet a friend to game, }
Disperse thy bills, and eternize thy fame. }
MERLIN now calls the attention of our hero to a man whom there is little doubt this country will long remember, and still less, that they will have abundant reason for so doing, namely, Mr. SECRETARY ORDE. It may seem odd by what latent association our author was led to appeal next to the Right Honourable Secretary, immediately after the description of a Quack Doctor; but let it be recollected in the first place, to the honour of Sir Samuel Hannay, that he is, perhaps, the only man of his order that ever had a place in the British House of Commons; and in the second, that there are some leading circumstances in the character of Mr. Orde, which will intitle him to rank under the very same description as the worthy Baronet himself. We all know that the most famous of all physicians, Le Medecin malgré lui, is represented by Moliere, as a mart who changes the seat of the heart, and reverses the intire position of the vital parts of the human body. Now let it be asked, has not Mr. Orde done this most completely and effectually with respect to the general body of the state? Has he not transferred the heart of the empire? Has he not changed its circulation, and altered the situation of the vital part of the whole, from the left to the right, from the one side to the other, from Great Britain to Ireland?—Surely no one will deny this; and therefore none will be now ignorant of the natural gradation of thought, by which our author was led, from the contemplation of Sir Samuel Hannay, to the character of Mr. Orde.
We know not whether it be worth remarking, that the term Le Medecin malgré lui, has been translated into English with the usual incivility of that people to every thing foreign, by the uncourtly phrase of Mock Doctor. We trust, however, that no one will think it applicable in this interpretation to Mr. Orde, as it is pretty evident he has displayed no mockery in his State Practices, but has performed the character of Moliere’s Medecin, even beyond the notion of the original; by having effected in sad and sober truth, to the full as complete a change in the position of the Cœur de l’Empire, as the lively fancy of the dramatist had imputed to his physician, with respect to the human body, in mere speculative joke.
With a great many apologies for so long a note, we proceed now to the much more pleasant part of our duty—that of transcribing from this excellent composition; and proceed to the description of Mr. Orde’s person, which the poet commences thus:
Tall and erect, unmeaning, mute, and pale,
O’er his blank face no gleams of thought prevail;
Wan as the man in classic story fam’d,
Who told old PRIAM that his Ilion flam’d;
Yet soon the time will come when speak he hall,
And at his voice another Ilion fall!
The excellence of this description consists as that of a portrait always must, in a most scrupulous and inveterate attention to likeness.—Those who know the original, will not question the accuracy of resemblance on this occasion. The idea conveyed in the last line,
And at his voice another Ilion fall,
is a spirited imitation of the fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, of Virgil, and a most statesmanlike anticipation of the future fate of England.
The author now takes an opportunity of shewing the profundity of his learning in British history. He goes on to say,
CÆSAR, we know, with anxious effort try’d
To swell, with Britain’s name, his triumph’s pride:
Oft he essay’d, but still essay’d in vain;
Great in herself, she mock’d the menac’d chain.
But fruitless all—for what was CÆSAR’s sword
To thy all-conquering speeches, mighty ORDE!!!
Our author cannot so far resist his classical propensity in this place, as to refrain from the following allusion; which, however, must be confessed at least, to be applied with justice.
AMPHION’s lyre, they say, could raise a town;
ORDE’s elocution pulls a Nation down.
He proceeds with equal spirit and erudition to another circumstance in the earlier periods of English history,
The lab’ring bosom of the teeming North
Long pour’d, in vain, her valiant offspring forth;
For GOTH or VANDAL, once on British shore,
Relax’d his nerve, and conquer’d states no more.
Not so the VANDAL of the modern time,
This latter offspring of the Northern clime;
He, with a breath, gives Britain’s wealth away,
And smiles, triumphant, o’er her setting ray.
It will be necessary to observe here, that after much enquiry and very laborious search, as to the birth-place of the Right Honourable Secretary (for the honour of which, however difficult now to discover, Hibernia’s cities will, doubtless, hereafter contend) we found that he was born in NORTHUMBERLAND; which, added to other circumstances, clearly establishes the applicability of the description of the word Goth, &c. and particularly in the lines where he calls him the
———VANDAL of the modern time,
The latter offspring of the Northern clime.
Having investigated, with an acumen and minuteness seldom incident to genius, and very rarely met with in the sublimer poetry, all the circumstances attending an event which he emphatically describes as the Revolution of seventeen hundred and eighty-five, he makes the following address to the English:
No more, ye English, high in classic pride,
The phrase uncouth of Ireland’s sons deride;