The Rolliad, in Two Parts. George Ellis
Poor CORBETT’s Conscience, tho’ a little loth,
Must blindly gape, and gulp the’ untasted oath;
If he, whose conscience never felt a qualm,
If GROGAN fail the good man’s doubts to calm.
No more shall MORGAN, for his six months’ hire,
Contend, that FOX should share the’ expence of fire;
Whole Sessions shall he croak, nor bear away The price, that paid the silence of a day: No more, till COLLICK some new story hatch, Long-winded ROUS for hours shall praise Dispatch; COLLICK to Whigs and Warrants back shall slink, And ROUS, a Pamphleteer, re-plunge in ink: MURPHY again French Comedies shall steal, Call them his own, and garble, to conceal; Or, pilfering still, and patching without grace His thread-bare shreds of Virgil out of place, With Dress and Scenery, Attitude and Trick, Swords, Daggers, Shouts, and Trumpets in the nick, With Ahs! and Ohs! Starts, Pauses, Rant, and Rage, Give a new GRECIAN DAUGHTER to the stage: But, Oh, SIR CECIL!—Fled to shades again From the proud roofs, which here he raised in vain, He seeks, unhappy! with the Muse to cheer His rising griefs, or drown them in small-beer! Alas! the Muse capricious flies the hour When most we need her, and the beer is sour: Mean time Fox thunders faction uncontroul’d, Crown’d with fresh laurels, from new triumphs bold.
These general evils arising from the termination of the Scrutiny, YOUR HONOUR, I doubt not, will sincerely lament in common with all true lovers of their King and Country. But in addition to these, you, SIR LLOYD, have particular cause to regret, that [4] “the last hair in this tail of procrastination” is plucked. I well know, what eager anxiety you felt to establish the suffrage, which you gave, as the delegate of your Coach-horses: and I unaffectedly condole with you, that you have lost this great opportunity of displaying your unfathomable knowledge and irresistible logic to the confusion of your enemies. How learnedly would you have quoted the memorable instance of Darius, who was elected King of Persia by the casting vote of his Horse! Though indeed the merits of that election have been since impeached, not from any alledged illegality of the vote itself, if it had been fairly given; but because some jockeyship has been suspected, and the voter, it has been said, was bribed the night before the election! How ably too would you have applied the case of Caligula’s horse, who was chosen Consul of Rome! For if he was capable of being elected (you would have said) à fortiori, there could have been no natural impediment to his being an elector; since omne majus continet in se minus, and the trust is certainly greater to fill the first offices of the state, than to have one share among many in appointing to them. Neither can I suppose that you would have omitted so grave and weighty an authority as Captain Gulliver, who, in the course of his voyages, discovered a country, where Horses discharged every Duty of Political Society. You might then have passed to the early history of our own island, and have expatiated on the known veneration in which horses were held by our Saxon Ancestors; who, by the way, are supposed also to have been the founders of Parliaments. You might have touched on their famous standard; digressed to the antiquities of the White Horse, in Berkshire, and other similar monuments in different counties; and from thence have urged the improbability, that when they instituted elections, they should have neglected the rights of an animal, thus highly esteemed and almost sanctified among them. I am afraid indeed, that with all your Religion and Loyalty, you could not have made much use of the White Horse of Death, or the White Horse of Hanover. But, for a bonne bouche, how beautifully might you have introduced your favourite maxim of ubi ratio, ibi jus! and to prove the reason of the thing, how convincingly might you have descanted, in an elegant panegyric on the virtues and abilities of horses, from Xanthus the Grecian Conjuring Horse, whose prophecies are celebrated by Homer, down to the Learned Little Horse over Westminster Bridge! with whom you might have concluded, lamenting that, as he is not an Elector, the Vestry could not have the assistance of one, capable of doing so much more justice to the question than yourself!—Pardon me, SIR LLOYD, that I have thus attempted to follow the supposed course of your oratory. I feel it to be truly inimitable. Yet such was the impression made on my mind by some of YOUR HONOUR’s late reasonings respecting the Scrutiny, that I could not withstand the involuntary impulse of endeavouring, for my own improvement, to attain some faint likeness of that wonderful pertinency and cogency, which I so much admired in the great original.
How shall the neighing kind thy deeds requite,
Great YAHOO Champion of the HOUYHNHNM’s right?
In grateful memory may thy dock-tail pair,
Unarm’d convey thee with sure-footed care.
Oh! may they, gently pacing o’er the stones,
With no rude shock annoy thy batter’d bones,
Crush thy judicial cauliflow’r, and down
Shower the mix’d lard and powder o’er thy gown;
Or in unseemly wrinkles crease that band,
Fair work of fairer LADY KENYON’s hand.
No!—May the pious brutes, with measur’d swing,
Assist the friendly motion of the spring,
While golden dreams of perquisites and fees
Employ thee, slumbering o’er thine own decrees.
But when a Statesman in St. Stephen’s walls
Thy Country claims thee, and the Treasury calls,
To pour thy splendid bile in bitter tide
On hardened sinners who with Fox divide,
Then may they, rattling on in jumbling trot,
With rage and jolting make thee doubly hot,
Fire thy Welch blood, enflamed with zeal and leeks,
And kindle the red terrors of thy cheeks,
Till all thy gather’d wrath in furious fit
On RIGBY bursts—unless he votes with PITT.
I might here, SIR LLOYD, launch into a new panegyric on the subject of this concluding couplet. But in this I shall imitate your moderation, who, for reasons best known to yourself, have long abandoned to MR ROLLE[5] “those loud and repeated calls on notorious defaulters, which will never be forgiven by certain patriots.” Besides, I consider your public-spirited behaviour in the late Election and Scrutiny for Westminster, as the great monument of your fame to all posterity. I have, therefore, dwelt on this—more especially as it was immediately connected with the origin of the ROLLIAD—till my dedication has run to such a length, that I cannot think of detaining your valuable time any longer; unless merely to request your HONOUR’s zealous protection of a work which may be in some sort attributed to you, as its ultimate cause, which is embellished with your portrait, and which now records in this address, the most brilliant exploit of your political glory.
Choak’d by a Roll, ’tis said, that OTWAY died; OTWAY the Tragic Muse’s tender pride. Oh! may my ROLLE to me, thus favour’d, give A better fate;—that I may eat, and live!
I am, YOUR HONOUR’s
Most obedient,
Most respectful,
Most devoted, humble servant,
THE EDITOR.
[1] In a postscript originally subjoined to the eighth Number.
[2] Mr. Rolle said, “he could not be kept all the summer debating about the rights of the Westminster electors. His private concerns were of more importance to him; than his right as a Westminster Elector.”
[3] I shall give the Reader in one continued note, what information I think necessary for understanding these verses. During the six months that the Scrutiny continued in St. Martin’s, the most distinguished exhibition of Mr. Morgan’s talents was the maintenance of an argument, that Mr. Fox ought to pay half the expence of fire in the room where the Witnesses attended. The learned Gentleman is familiarly called Frog, to which I presume the Author alludes in the word croak. Mr. Rous spoke two hours to recommend Expedition. At the time the late Parliament was dissolved, he wrote