THE PUPPET-SHOW:

A TALE.

Snatch'd, not selected, as you go,
The heroine of the puppet-show;
In every outward grace refin'd,
And destitute of nought but mind;
If skill'd in every polish'd art,
She wants simplicity of heart;
On her for bliss if you depend,
Without the means you seek the end;
You seek, o'erturning nature's laws,
A consequence, without a cause;
A downward pyramid you place,
The point inverted for the base.

Blame your own work, not fate; nor rail
If bliss so ill secur'd should fail.
'Tis after fancied good to roam,
'Tis bringing Punch to live at home.

While faith a constant light supplies,
And virtue cheers the darkest skies.
To bless the matrimonial hours
Must three joint leaders club their powers,
GOOD-NATURE, PIETY, and SENSE,
Must their confederate aids dispense.
As the soft powers of oil assuage
Of ocean's waves the furious rage;
Lull to repose the boiling tide,
And the rough billows bid subside;
Till every angry motion sleep,
And softest tremblings hush the deep:
Good-nature! thus thy charms control
The tumults of the troubled soul:
By labour worn, by care opprest,
On thee the wearied head shall rest;

And you, bright nymphs! who bless our From business and distraction free,

eyes,

With all that art, that taste supplies;
Learn that accomplisments, at best,
Are but the garnish in life's feast;
And tho' your transient guests may praise
Your showy board on gala days:

Yet, while you treat each frippery sinner
With mere deserts, and call 'em dinner,
Your lord who lives at home, still feels
The want of more substantial meals;
Of sense and worth, which every hour
Enlarge Affection's growing power;
Of worth, not emulous of praise,
Of sense, not kept for gala days,
O! in the highest, happiest lot,
By woman be it ne'er forgot,
That human life's no Isthmian game,
Where sports and shows must purchase fame.
Tho' at the puppet-show he shone,
Punch was poor company alone.
Life is no round of jocund hours,
Of garlands gay, and festive bowers;
Even to the young, to whom I sing,
Its serious business life will bring.
Tho' bright the suns which now appear
To gild your cloudless atmosphere,
Oft, unawares, some direful storm,
Serenest skies may soon deform:
In dim Affliction's dreary hour
The flash of mirth must lose it's power;

Delighted, shall return to thee;
To thee the aching heart shall cling,
And find that peace it does not bring.

And while the light and empty fair,
Form'd for the ball-room's dazzling glare;
Abroad, of speech, so prompt and rapid,
At home, so vacant and so vapid;
Of every puppet-show the life,

At home, a dull and tasteless wife;-
The mind with sense and knowledge stor'd
Can counsel, or can soothe its lord;
His varied joys or sorrows feel,
And share the pains it cannot heal.

But, Piety! without thy aid,
Love's fairest prospects soon must fade.
Blest architect! rear'd by thy hands,
Connubial Concord's temple stands.
Tho' Wit, tho' Genius, raise the pile,
Tho' Taste assist, tho' Talents smile,
Tho' Fashion, while her wreaths she wine,
Her light Corinthian columns join;
Still the frail structure Fancy rears,
A tottering house of cards appears;
Some sudden gust, nor rare the case,
May shake the building to its base,
Unless, bless'd Piety! thou join,
Thy keystone to ensure the shrine;
Unless, to guard against surprises,
On thy broad arch the temple rises.

THE BAS BLEU; OR, CONVERSATION.

ADDRESSED TO MRS. VESEY.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE following trifle owes its birth and name to the mistake of a foreigner of distinction, who gave the literal appellation of the Bas-bleu to a small party of friends, who had been often called, by way of pleasantry, the Blue Stockings. These little societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were composed of persons distinguished, in general, for their rank, talents, or respectable character, who met frequently at Mrs. Vesey's, and at a few other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from other parties, but that the company did not play at cards.

May the author be permitted to bear her grateful testimony (which will not be suspected of flattery, now that most of the persons named in this poem are gone down to the grave) to the many pleasant and instructive hours she had the honour to pass in this company; in which learning was as little disfigured by pedantry, good taste as little tinctured by affectation, and general conversation as little disgraced by calumny, levity, and the other censurable errors with which it is too commonly tainted, as has perhaps been known in any society.

VESEY! of verse the judge and friend!
Awhile my idle strain attend:
Not with the days of early Greece,
I mean to ope my slender piece;
The rare Symposium to proclaim

Which crown'd th' Athenian's social name;
Or how ASPASIA's parties shone,
The first Bas-bleu at Athens known;
Where SOCRATES unbending sat,
With ALCIBIADES in chat;

And PERICLES Vouchsafed to mix
Taste, wit, and mirth, with politics.
Nor need 1 stop my tale, to show,
At least to readers such as you,
How all that Rome esteem'd polite,
Supp'd with LuCULLUS every night;
LUCULLUS, who, from Pontus come,
Brought conquests, and brought cherries
home.

Name but the suppers in th' Appollo,
What classics images will follow!

And she, whom SHAKSPEARE's wrongs redrest,

Prov'd that the brightest are the best.
This just deduction still they drew,
And well they practis'd what they knew;
Nor taste, nor wit, deserves applause,
Unless still true to critic laws;
Good sense, of faculties the best,
Inspire and regulate the rest.

O! how unlike the wit that fell,
RAMBOUILLET! at thy quaint hotel;
Where point, and turn, and equivoque
Distorted every word they spoke!
All so intolerably bright,

Plain Common Sense was put to flight;
Each speaker, so ingenious ever,
'Twas tiresome to be quite so clever ;
There twisted Wit forgot to please,
And Mood and Figure banish'd ease;
No votive altar smok'd to thee,
Chaste queen, divine Simplicity!

How wit flew round, while each might take But forc'd Conceit, which ever fails,

Conchylia from the Lucrine lake;
And Attic salt; and Garum sauce,
And lettuce from the isle of Cos;
The first and last from Greece transplanted,
Us'd here-because the rhyme I wanted:
How pheasant's heads, with cost collected,
And phennicopters stood neglected.
To laugh at SCIPIO's lucky hit,
POMPEY'S bon-mot, or CESAR'S wit!
Intemperance, list'ning to the tale,
Forgot the mullet growing stale;
And Admiration balanc'd, hung
'Twixt PEACOCKS' brains, and TULLY'S
tongue.

I shall not stop to dwell on these,
But be as epic as I please,

And plunge at once in medias res.
To prove the privilege I plead,
-I'll quote from Greek I cannot read;
Stunn'd by Authority, you yield,
And I, not Reason, keep the field.
Long was Society o'er-run
By Whist, that desolating Hun;
Long did Quadrille despotic sit,
That vandal of colloquial Wit:
And Conversation's setting light
Lay half-obscur'd in Gothic night;
At length the mental shades decline,
Colloquial Wit begins to shine;
Genius prevails, and Conversation
Emerges into Reformation.

The vanquish'd triple crown to you,
BOSCAWEN sage, bright MONTAGU,
Divided, fell;-your cares in haste
Rescued the ravag'd realms of Taste;
And LITTLETON's accomplished name,
And witty PULTNEY shar'd the fame;
The men, not bound by pedant rules,
Nor ladiest Precieuses ridicules;
For polish'd WALPOLE show'd the way,
How wits may be both learn'd and gay;
And CARTER taught the female train,
The deeply wise are never vain ;

Seneca says, that in his time the Romans were arrived at such a pitch of luxury, that the mullet was reckoned stale which did not die in the hands of the guest.

+ See Moliere's comedy.

And stiff Antithesis prevails;
Uneasy Rivalry destroys
Society's unlaboured joys:
NATURE, of stilts and fetters tir'd,
Impatient from the wits retir'd,
Long time the exile, houseless stray'd
'Till SEVIGNE receiv'd the maid.

Though here she comes to bless our isle,
Not universal is her smile.

Muse! snatch the lyre which CAMBRIDGE
strung,

When he the empty ball-room sung;
'Tis tun'd above thy pitch, I doubt,
And thou no music would'st draw out;
Yet, in a lower note, presume
To sing the full, dull drawing room.)

Where the dire circle keeps its station,
Each commom phrase is an oration;
And cracking fans, and whisp'ring misses,
Compose their conversation blisses.
The matron marks the goodly show,
While the tall daughter eyes the beau-
The frigid beau! ah! luckless fair,
'Tis not for you that studied air;
Ah! not for you that sidelong glance,
And all that charming nonchalance;
Ah; not for you the three long hours
He worship'd the cosmetic powers;'
That finish'd head which breathes perfume,
And kills the nerves of half the room;
And all the murders meant to lie
In that large, languishing, gray eye;
Desist;-less wild th' attempt would be,
To warm the snows of Rhodope :

The society at the hotel de Rambouillet, though composed of the most polite and ingenious persons in France, was much tainted with affectation and false taste. See Voiture, Menage, &c.

The late earl of Mansfield told the author, that when he was ambassador at Paris, he was assured that it had not been unusual for those persons of a purer taste who frequented these assemblies, to come out from their society so weary of wit and laboured ingenuity, that they used to express the comfort they felt in their emancipation. by saying, "Allons! faisons des so lecismes !"

exist, having been swallowed up in the reigning These grave and formal parties now scarcely multitudinous assemblies.

Too cold to feel, too proud to feign,
For him you're wise and fair in vain ;
In vain to charm him you intend,
Self is his object, aim, and end.

Chill shade of that affected peer,
Who dreaded mirth, come safely here!
For here no vulgar joy effaces
Thy rage for polish, ton, and graces.
Cold Ceremony's leaden hand,
Waves o'er the room her poppy wand;
Arrives the stranger; every guest
Conspires to torture the distrest:
At once they rise-so have I seen-
You guess the simile I mean,
Take what comparison you please,
The crowded streets, the swarming bees,
The pebbles on the shore that lie,
The stars which form the galaxy;
These serve t' embellish what is said,
And show, besides, that one has read ;-
At once they rise-th' astonish'd guest
Back in a corner slinks, distrest;
Scar'd at the many bowing round,
And shock'd at her own voice's sound,
Forgot the thing she meant to say,
Her words, half-uttered die away;
In sweet oblivion down she sinks,
And of her next appointment thinks.
While her loud neighbour on the right,
Boasts what she has to do to night,
So very much, you'd swear her pride is
To match the labours of ALCIDES;
'Tis true, in hyperbolic measure,
She nobly calls her labours Pleasure;
In this unlike ALCMENA's son,
She never means they should be done;
Her fancy of no limits dreams,
No ne plus ultra stops her schemes;
Twelve! she'd have scorn'd the paltry round,
No pillars would have mark'd her bound;
CALPE and ABYLA, in vain

Had nodded cross th' opposing main;
A circumnavigator she

On Ton's illimitable sea.

We pass the pleasures vast and various,
Of routs, not social, but gregarious;
Where high heroic self-denial
Sustains her self-inflicted trial.
Day lab'rers! what an easy life,
To feed ten children and a wife!
No-I may juster pity spare
To the night lab'rer's keener care;
And, pleas'd, to gentler scenes retreat,
Where Conversation holds her seat.

Small were that art which would ensure
The circle's boasted quadrature!
See VESEY'S* plastic genius make
A circle every figure take;

Nay, shapes and forins, which would defy
All science of Geometry;
Isosceles, and parallel,

Names, hard to speak, and hard to spell !
Th' enchantress wav'd her hand, and spoke!
Her potent wand the circle broke;
The social spirits hover round,
And bless the liberated ground.

*This amiable lady was remarkable for her talent in breaking the formality of a circle, by inviting her parties to form themselves into little separate groups.

Here, rigid CATO, awful sage!
Bold censor of a thoughtless age,
Once dealt his pointed moral round,
And, not unheeded, fell the sound;
The Muse his honour'd memory weeps,
For CATO now with Roscius sleeps!
Here once HORTENSIUS* lov'd to sit,
Apostate now from social wit:
Ah! why in wrangling senates waste
The noblest parts, the happiest taste?
Why democratic thunders wield,
And quit the Muses' calmer field?
Ask you what charms this gift dispense?
'Tis the strong spell of COMMON SENSE.
Away dull Ceremony flew,

And with her bore Detraction too.

Nor only geometric art,
Does this presiding power impart;
But chymists too, who want the essence,
Which makes or mars all coalescence,
Of her the secret rare might get,
How different kinds amalgamate:
And he, who wilder studies chose,
Finds here a new metempsychose;
How forms can other forms assume,
Within her Pythagoric room;
Or be, and stranger is th' event,
The very things which Nature meant ;
Nor strive by art and affectation,
To cross their genuine destination.
Here sober duchesses are seen,
Chaste wits, and critics void of spleen ;
Physicians, fraught with real science,
And whigs and tories in alliance;
Poets, fulfilling Christian duties,
Just lawyers, reasonable beauties;
Bishops who preach, and peers who pay,
And countesses who seldom play;
Learn'd antiquaries, who from College,
Reject the rust, and bring the knowledge;
And, hear it. Age, believe it, Youth,-
Polemics, really seeking truth;
And travellers of that rare tribe,
Who've seen the countries they describe;
Who study'd there, so strange their plan,
Not plants, nor herbs alone, but man ;
While travellers, of other notions,
Scale mountain tops, and traverse oceans;
As if, so much these themes engross,
The study of mankind, was moss.
Ladies who point, nor think me partial,
An epigram as well as MARSHAL ;
Yet in all female worth succeed,
As well as those who cannot read.

Right pleasant were the task, I ween,
To name the groups which fill the scene;
But rhyme's of such fastidious nature,
She proudly scorns all nomenclature,
Nor grace our northern names her lips,
Like HOMER's catalogue of ships.

Once-faithful Memory! heave a sigh,
Here Roscius gladden'd every eye.
Why comes not MARO? Far from town,
He rears the urn to Taste, and BROWN,
Plants cypress round the tomb of GRAY,
Or decks his English garden gay;
Whose mingled sweets exhale perfume,
And promise a perennial bloom.

*This was written in the year 1787, when Mr Edmund Burke had joined the then opposition.