VIII.

In search of scenes and incidents I read

Near half the old romances through and through, Which Southey has brought backward from the dead,

With most Galvanic labour; and, anew,

With steel-clad wights in peril was I led,

Till weary of their toils and mine I grew :
So the chief knowledge gathered from my reading
Is what I'll mention as we are proceeding.

IX.

I found that many a literary chieftain

Had culled 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 collared poor King Arthur.

X.

I next discovered, 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 sweetened up the cold reality

Were tourneys and such savage kinds of pageants, Wherein legs, arms, and necks oft got a fracture,

Although of the most giant manufacture.

XI.

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.

XII.

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, decked in the same antique millinery, With much manslaughter and intent to kill in her eye.

XIII.

"Twas 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 feared 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-necked generation.

XIV.

Where was their Almack's?-How the deuce did mothers

Get off their plaguy daughters in those days? Were they allowed to fool with younger brothers, While still unwed? Had their mammas no ways of finding out one's income,-or, what bothers

Much more, one's debts? Did every trifle raise Ill-natured chatterings from Slander's rookery? And were their albums all stuffed full of cookery?

XV.

The men of rank, in those times, when they wanted
To make a figure, struck with Glory's charms,
Scarce ever with their neighbours' wives gallanted,
Because they seldom were on visiting terms

With the said neighbours; but, like souls undaunted,
They sought but to be clasped in iron arms,
Till having killed some hundreds, and robbed more,

They grew much greater than they were before.

XVI.

Good rest to them!-If 'twere not for the rages,
The feudal jars and uproars, and spoliations,
In which they toiled for Honor's bubble wages,
What had become of all the modern nations?
But for those Malthuses of earlier ages,

We'd have such overflowing populations,

Mothers their supernumerary brats

Should drown, precisely as we drown young cats.

XVII.

And had those gentles, by unlucky chances,
Behaved with more good humour, as they ought,

Nor been so fond of handling swords and lances,
And other tools wherewith Death's work is wrought,
Where had been all our verse and prose romances,

Tragedies, tales of wonder, and what not?

For my part, I'm quite glad, that martial rivalry
Produced such ruffians in the days of chivalry.