Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Giuseppino

William H. Bradley (1802–1825)

TO tell good stories is extremely pleasant;

To hear or read them, too, is quite agreeable;

And, from the courtier downward to the peasant,

Tales are retail’d by all.—You ’ll even see a belle

Or dandy thus employ’d: so I, at present,

If Dan Apollo will but render me able,

Am much inclined to give you a short specimen

Of what occurr’d to one of the most dressy men.

Authorship now is an improving business;

If one can strike out matters that are novel.

Though authors’ brains will often get a dizziness,

From too much labor, or be forced to grovel

In plagiarisms, undoubtedly it is an ease

To knock out rhyme or prose, whether a hovel

Or palace be the scene of the disturbance

Which we describe, among hats, caps, or turbans.

Yet wonderful it is, I sing and say,

Most marvellous, what ever-varied-changes

Of narrative are dealt out, every day,

As fancy, in her drunken frolics, ranges

Throughout invention’s heaven and hell!—Delay

Is dangerous, however wild and strange is

What I ’m about to write, so I must write it

For fear some other person should indite it.

I sate me down, good folk, to tell a story,

Of which, I own, the truth might be suspected,

Even by credulous people; and, what’s more, I

Freely confess, I cannot recollect it:

But yet it was a vision of such glory

I scarcely can suppose ye would reject it.

’T was all about a lady and a knight,

Who said and did—what I ’ve forgotten quite

In search of scenes and incidents I read

Near half the old romances, through and through,

Which Southey has brought forward from the dead,

With most Galvanic labor, and anew,

With steel clad wights, in peril was I led,

Till weary of their toils and mine I grew:

So the chief knowledge gather’d from my reading

Is what I ’ll mention as we are proceeding.

I found that many a literary chieftain,

Had cull’d the gems from out this antique treasure;

That what they left was by each humbler thief ta’en,

To put in some new fiction at his leisure;

I found—but guess!—no, you can’t guess my grief ta’en

At finding—Oh, presumption beyond measure!—

That collar-makers—I can scarce get farther

Had actually collar’d poor king Arthur.

I next discover’d, that the folk of quality

Had not, of yore, such numerous expedients

To kill time and themselves, as the plurality

Of modern genteel people. The ingredients

With which they sweeten’d up the cold reality

Were tourneys and such savage kind of pageants,

Wherein legs, arms, and necks oft got a fracture,

Although of the most giant manufacture.

Sad was the situation of the fair,

Long, while a Bolingbroke, or a Plantagenet

Was king in London, (a great lord elsewhere)

When one short week had stupor for an age in it,

To “ladies gay,” who spent the livelong year,

Remote from town, and truly would imagine it

Extravagant to give, in their own halls,

During that livelong year, one dozen balls.

Then was the ton, indeed a weighty matter,

Which fancy moved but every hundred years

To a new pressure! Then a lady, at her

First coming out, wore the same woman’s gears

Which she wore on, (unless she grew much fatter)

Till she was going out; when lo, appears

Her daughter, deck’d in the same antique millinery,

With much manslaughter and intent to kill in her eye.

’T was better with them, as historians tell us,

In bluff King Hal’s reign, and some time before him,

Though wives dared seldom flirt with civil fellows,

In presence of their husbands, just to bore ’em.

They fear’d to make the horrid creatures jealous,

And females were taught notions of decorum,

Stiff as their stomacher’s tight elongation,

Or neck cloths of this stiff-neck’d generation.

Oh, could they have made books like lady M——n,

What patchwork had we seen of feudal foolery!

Each lady’s head, like that of lady Gorgon,

Had left us hard examples of their drollery,

And we had known the centuries afore-gone,

From banquet-hall quite downward to the scullery!

Would that our dear ancestresses had been crazy,

With some diverting kind of idiosyncrasy.

I bit my nails and pens, and then besprent all

My paper o’er with ink, in thought oppress’d;

Next, I resolved to write an Oriental

Tale, and set out in ‘Travels to the East,’

Driving away all notions Occidental.—

I form’d a plot, and laid the scene, at last,

Somewhere between Calcutta and Aleppo,

When I bethought me of my old friend Beppo.

Then,—as I opened wide the window-shutter,—

A light broke in on me, as bright as sudden.

Invention’s wings began, at once, to flutter,

(They had been once a goose’s,) so, by Woden,

I sate down, to soar far from dust or gutter,

While my good Genius said: “Pray where ’s the good in

Your knack at rhyming, if its versatility

Can’t afford matter for our risibility?

The Beppo has outdone the Epic style.—

Most modern Epics really are provoking

To sleep—and therefore, in a little while,

The pack hight servum pecus shall have broken

Into full cry;—leave your heroic toil,

And start before them, till you have your book in

The gripe of printer’s demon’s!”—on this hint,

I wrote,—and having written, came to print.

But how to make a story?—There’s the puzzle!

Foregad, we have such multitudes to tell us

Stories on stories, both of those that guzzle

At Helicon, and plain prosaic fellows,

That no one soon shall find a nook to nuzzle

In fiction’s storehouse:—Fate will yet compel us

To be mere readers. O ye geese and ganders,

Your wings shall cease to soar where Fancy wanders.

And here I humbly hint to Dr Brewster,

That if he’d make us a kaleidoscope

To strike new subjects out, at every new stir,

’T would give poor authors a consoling hope;

For though the muses, when we call them, do stir,

They ’re monstrous indolent, and apt to mope.

The three times three, of late, are growing slatterns,

As I suppose, for want of good new patterns.

I ’ll try to coax one of them now a little

For something queer, good people to revive you.

Some tale of luckless love will not befit ill

Your present taste, and this which now I give you

Will, without question, suit you to a tittle,

If ye are young men and intend to wive you.

Hear then the history, both sad and funny,

Of one who fell to much in love—with money.

This is the love which first inflames the bosom,

When for a penny some dear infant screeches.

This is the love which constantly pursues ’em,

When fellows have got into coat and breeches,

And sigh for guineas,—then sigh for a new sum.—

This lasting passion to all bosoms reaches,

Strengthen’d by age’s weakness:—all love sham is,

Compared with this same ‘auri sacra fames.’

But hold:—I feel myself too serious now,

And must betake me once more to my bantering,

Telling a tale, according to my vow,

In brisk ottava rima, freely sauntering

After sweet speculations, high and low;

Or, if I may, in a fine frenzy cantering

On reinless Pegasus, athwart whose saddle,

So many Gilpins have now got a straddle.