TO A SPIDER RUNNING ACROSS A ROOM

[First published in The Liberal, No. III, 1823. Not reprinted.]

THOU poisonous rascal, running at this rate

O'er the perplexing desert of a mat,

Scrambling and scuttling on thy scratchy legs,
Like a scared miser with his money-bags;

Thou thief-thou scamp-thou hideous much in little,
Bearing away the plunder of a spital,-
Caitiff of corners,-doer of dark deeds,

Mere lump of poison lifted on starved threads,

That while they run, go shuddering here and there,
As if abhorring what they're forced to bear,
Like an old bloated tyrant, whom his slaves
Bear from the gaping of a thousand graves,
And take to some vile corner of a court,
Where felons of his filthy race resort,-

Dost see

I have thee now;-I have thee here, full blown,
Thou lost old wretch, benighted by the noon!
What dost thou say? What dost thou think?
Providence hanging o'er thee, to wit, me ?
Dost fear? Dost shrink with all thine eyes to view
The shadowing threat of mine avenging shoe?
Now, now it comes;-one pang,-and thou wilt lie
Flat as the sole that treads thy gorged impurity.
Yet hold-why should I do it? why should I,
Who in my infidel fidelity,

Believer in the love, though not the wrath,
Have spared so many crawlers o'er my path,—
Why should I trample here, and like a beast,
Settle this humblest of them all and least ?

The vagrant never injured me or mine,

And as to flies, Collyer himself must dine.

Wrote no critiques, stabbed at no heart divine,

Flies may be killed as speedily as mutton,

And your black spider's not your blackest glutton.

The vermin's a frank vermin, after all;

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Makes no pretence to a benignant call;
Does not hold up a hideous white hand,

To tickle grandams to his promised land;

Nor pulls white handkerchiefs from out his blackness,

To wipe the tears,-that gave a surfeit slackness.

He's not the Laureat, not my turned old Bob;

Not Bull the brute, nor Gazetteer the grub:

He does not 'profess Poetry', like Mill;
Music, like Buzby; nor, what's higher still,
'Moral Philosophy', like wicked Will.
He swells, I grant, and 'tis with poison too;
But not, toad-eating Muddyford, like you:

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He plunders, and runs off, but not like Theod.,
To make amends by slandering for King Ehud :
He skulks; but 'tis not as dear Ally' does,
To pry and pounce on females, and keep close
At fingers only that can pull a nose.

Honest the rogue is, in his way, hey, Groly?-
And does not call his snares and slaughtersHoly';
Nor like the Russian that insulted Spain,

Cry Manners', and affect the gentleman.

He holds to what he is, like her that bore him,

A spider, as his father was before him.

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'Twas Cowl, not he, that by old Gizzard's fire,

Born of a man, turned reptile and mere liar,

And changed his shape with his own fright, as mothers,

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Their tender burthen incomplete, change others.

And have I spared the very worst of these

A thousand times, and all for their own ease,

Let them crawl on, and winked at Gizzard's self,

To tread out thee, poor emblematic elf?
Thee, whose worst vice is, that thy hang-dog looks
Remind us of his face, not of his books,
For all the poison, clubbed from all thy race,
Could not do that: you're safe from that disgrace.
Have I, these five years, spared the dog a stick,
Cut for his special use, and reasonably thick,
Now, because prose had felled him just before;
Then, to oblige the very heart he tore ;
Then, from conniving to suppose him human,
Two-legged, and one that had a serving-woman ;
Then, because some one saw him in a shiver,
Which shewed, if not a heart, he had a liver;
And then, because they said the dog was dying,
His very symptoms being given to lying?
Have I done this? Have I endured e'en Murrain,
Whom even his own face finds past enduring,

Trying to slip aside from him, and cut him,

When honest men ask questions that don't suit him?
Have I let strut, behind their dunghill screens,
All the brisk crowers in Scotch magazines,
Who take for day their crackling Northern Lights,
And scream, and scratch, and keep it up o' nights,
Braggarts with beaten plumes, and sensual hypocrites?
Him too who feeds them, and in whom there run

All Curll's and Osborne's melted brass in one,

(Blackguard, thought wrong by the young trade, but wronger By those whose consciences have eaten longer,)—

Have I spared him, when, with a true rogue's awe

Not of the truth or justice, but the law,

He lay before my feet, and proffered me

His rascal money for indemnity?

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In scorn I let him go, just taught, it seems,
How to call people more ingenious names;
For which, I own, I merit the reproofs

Of all the world, but those who read his huffs.

Go, you poor wretch,-I mean the spider; go, And take care how you bite Sir Hudson Lowe.

ULTRA-CREPIDARIUS

A SATIRE ON WILLIAM GIFFORD

[First published as separate pamphlet 1823; not reprinted.] Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;

The rest is all but leather and prunella.-POPE.

Assume a barbarous tyranny, to handle

The Muses worse than Ostrogoth or Vandal ;
Make them submit to verdict and report,

And stand or fall to th' orders of a court.-BUTLer.

'Tis now about fifty or sixty years since,
(The date of a charming old boy of a Prince)

Since the feathered god Mercury happened to lose
A thing no less precious than one of his shoes:

I say no less precious, because in the mention
The artist has made of this very invention,

(Old Homer, who furnished the gods with such things)
He says, 'twas immortal, of gold, and had wings.
The latter indeed are as famous as Love's,
And they rivalled in hue even Venus's doves;
For at every fresh turn, and least touch into light,

Which the clear God of Eloquence took in his flight,
They varied their colours in fifty directions,
And perfectly dazzled with brilliant reflections.

'I wonder,' said Mercury,-putting his head
One rosy-faced morning from Venus's bed,-
'I wonder, my dear Cytherea,-don't you?—
What can have become of that rogue of a shoe.

I've searched every corner to make myself certain,
And lifted, I'm sure, ev'ry possible curtain,
And how I'm to manage, by Jove, I don't know,
For manage I must, and to earth I must go.

'Tis now a whole week since I lost it; and here,

Like a dove whom your urchin has crippled, my dear,

Have I loitered, and fluttered, and looked in those eyes,
While Juno keeps venting her crabbed surprise;

And Apollo, with all that fine faith in his air,

Asks me daily accounts of Rousseau and Voltaire,

And Jove (whom it's awkward to risk such a thing with)
Has not enough thunder to frighten a king with.

G

So there then-now don't look so kind, I beseech you,
Or else I shall stay a week longer, you witch you-
I can't ask the gods; but I'll search once again
For this fugitive shoe, and if still it's in vain,

I must try to make something a while of sheer leather,
And match with a mortal my fair widowed feather.'

So saying, the God put a leg out of bed,
And summoned his winged cap on to his head;

And the widow in question flew smack round his foot,
And up he was getting to end his pursuit,
When Venus said softly (so softly, that he

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Turned about on his elbow)-'What! go without me?'

Now the fact was, that Venus, who always would please a
Fine wit, had been reading the New Eloisa,
And having prodigiously felt and admired it,
Couldn't but say so to him who inspired it.
Therefore, to take the due steps for expressing
Her sense of such very well-worded caressing,'

She had sent down to earth this same Shoe with an errand
To get a new pair at Ashburton for her, and
Not think of returning without what it went for,
Unless by its master especially sent for.

The Shoe made a scrape; and concluding the thing
Had been settled 'twixt her and his master, took wing;
And never ceased beating through sunshine and rain,
Now clasped in a cloud, and now loosened again,
Till it came to Ashburton, where something so odd
Seemed to strike it, it could not help saying, 'My God!'

I know not precisely how much of this matter
Was mentioned, when Mercury sparkled round at her;
But Venus proposed, that as one Shoe was fled,
Her good easy virtue should help him instead.
'You know, love,' said she, "tis as light as a feather;
And so I'll be guide, and we'll go down together.'

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I leave you to fancy how little he checked her:
They chalked out their journey, got up, took their nectar ;
And then, with his arm round her waist, and his eyes
Looking thanks upon hers, came away from the skies.
I cannot, I own, say he came much the faster,
How earnest soever he looked and embraced her;
But never before, though a God of much grace,
Had he come with such fine overlooking of face;
And as she travelled seldom herself in this style,
With a lover beside her, and clasped all the while,
'Tis said that the earth was remarkably moved :
Even marriers for money imagined they loved :

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Yes, inanimate things fell exchanging caresses,
Till Princes embraced their own legal Princesses:
Not one pair of birds or respectable brutes,
Nay, not one of gloves, but, they say, followed suits,
And the bishops but walked in the steps of their boots.

All felt but one Shoe.-O ye gods from above,
Who descended that day with your wit and your love,
Assist now my theme, which grows dark at the touch,
That I neither may honour nor hate it too much!
Yes, all but one Shoe: not the shoe that was missing,
For that one, as much as lay in it, loved kissing;
But one, which as Venus and Mercury put up
Somewhere at Ashburton, nigh tripped her sweet foot up.

The kind Goddess (one of whose charmingest qualities
'Tis, at a small thing, to reckon how small it is)
Laughed, and said, 'Well, who'd have thought this of you,
With that drag in your aspect, my poor little Shoe?
Here, come kiss my foot, as a proof we agree :'

But the Shoe huffed,-as who should say, 'Don't talk to me.' 'It wants comprehension,' said Mercury, surely,

And yet there seems life in it, though it looks poorly.

Int'rest, I dare say, will make something of it:

My strange little friend, don't you know your own profit ? '
Aye, aye, well enough,' said the Shoe in a tone

Of uneasy contempt, 'twixt a creak and a groan;

'I was made for a Squire; and my instinct has told me,

That if through the dirt with discretion I hold me,

My service, some day, will be under an Earl,

Which I think's something higher than you and your girl.'

At this, the two Deities set up a shout,

Which made all the neighbours leap up and look out:
For they thought 'twas the players with music at least,
Or that London, or Heaven, was come from the east.
But the Shoe, deaf and blind to all beautiful things,
Scarce showed more emotion than if 'twere a king's:
It did, indeed, slightly perk up its two straps,
Like the ears of an ass, when he's sulky, and snaps.

The lovers perceived that it knew not their rank,

Or 'twould no more have spurned 'em than kicked at the bank 'Twas this that amused 'em. But pray, Sir,' said they,

'What induced your high Heel-tap to get in our way?

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'Why, I can't bear,' returned this most cross-grained of leathers, 'To look at your shoe there, tricked out in such feathers. Why need any shoe be more gifted than I?

There was just such another '-(here Venus looked sly,
And Hermes guessed all she'd omitted to say)—
'Here was just such another came mincing this way,

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