For stalwart knights, a puny race
In stays, with locks _en papillote_,
While cuirass, cuisses, greaves give place
To silk-net _Tights_, and long-tail'd Coat.
Worse changes still! now, well-a-day!
A few cant phrases learnt by rote
Each beardless booby spouts away,
A Solon, in a long-tail'd Coat.
Prates of "The march of intellect"--
--"The schoolmaster" _a Patriote_
So noble, who could ere suspect
Had just put on a long-tail'd Coat?
Alack! Alack! that every thick-
skull'd lad must find an antidote
For England's woes, because, like Dick.
He has put on a long-tail'd Coat.
But lo! my rhymes begin to fail,
Nor can I longer time devote;
Thus rhyme and time cut short the _tale_,
The _long tale_ of Dick's long-tail'd Coat.
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
* * * * *
SIR JOHN HAWKINS'S HISTORY OF MUSIC.
The fate of this work was decided like that of many more important things,
by a trifle, a word, a pun. A ballad, chanted by a fille-de-chambre,
undermined the colossal power of Alberoni; a single line of Frederic the
Second, reflecting not on the politics but the poetry of a French
minister, plunged France into the seven years' war; and a pun condemned
Sir John Hawkins's sixteen years' labour to long obscurity and oblivion.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41