And there the Gorgon image plants,-
Palladium of the termagants.
He formed it of the rudest ore
That lay in his exhaustless store,
Nor from the crackling furnace drew,
Which still the breath of genius blew,
Till (to preserve the bright allusion)
The mass was in a state of fusion.
Then cast it in a Grecian mould,
Once modelled from a living scold;
When from her shelly prison burst
That finished vixen, Kate the curst.
If practice e'er with precept tallies
Could Shakespeare set down aught in malice?
From Nature all his forms he drew
And held the mirror to her view;
And if an ugly wart arose,
Or freckle upon Nature's nose,
He flattered not the unsightly flaw,
But marked and copied what he saw ;
Strictly fulfilling all his duties
Alike to blemishes and beauties:
So that in Shakespeare's time 'tis plain
The Katherines were scolds in grain,
No females louder, fiercer, worse.
Now contemplate the bright reverse;
And say amid the countless names
Borne by contemporary dames,—
Exotics, fetched from distant nations,
Or good old English appellations,-
Names hunted out from ancient books,
Or found 'mid dairy-maids and cooks,
Genteel, familiar, or pedantic,
Grecian, Roman, or romantic,
Christian, Infidel or Jew,
Heroines, fabulous or true,
Ruths, Rebeccas, Rachels, Sarahs,
Charlottes, Harriets, Emmas, Claras,
Auroras, Helens, Daphnes, Delias,
Martias, Portias and Cornelias,
Nannys, Fannys, Jennys, Hettys,
Dollys, Mollys, Biddys, Bettys,
Sacharissas, Melusinas,
Dulcibellas, Celestinas,—
Say is there one more free from blame,
One that enjoys a fairer fame,
One more endowed with Christian graces,
(Although I say it to our faces,
And flattery we don't delight in),
Than Catherine at this present writing?
Where then can all the difference be?
Where but between the K and C?
Between the graceful curving line
We now prefix to atherine,
Which seems to keep in mild police,
Those rebel syllables in peace,
Describing in the line of duty
Both physical and moral beauty.
And that impracticable K
Who led them all so much astray?
Was never seen in black and white
A character more full of spite!
That stubborn back, to bend unskilful,
So perpendicularly wilful!
With angles hideous to behold
Like the sharp elbows of a scold,
In attitude, when words shall fail
To fight their battles tooth and nail.
In page the first you're sagely told
That "all that glitters is not gold;"
Fain would I quote one proverb more,—
"N'éveillez pas le chat qui dort."
Here some will smile as if suspicious
The simile was injudicious.
Because in C A T they trace
Alliance with the feline race.
But we the name alone inherit,
C has the latter, K the spirit;
And woe betide the man who tries,
Whether or no the spirit dies!
Though dormant long, it yet survives
With its full complement of lives;
The nature of the beast is still
To scratch and claw if not to kill;
For royal cats to low-born wrangling
Will superadd the gift of strangling.
Witness in modern times the fate
Of that unhappy potentate,
Who from his palace near the Pole
Where the chill waves of Neva roll,
Was snatched, while yet alive and merry,
And sent ou board old Charon's ferry,
The Styx he traversed execrating
A Katherine of his own creating.
In evil hour this simple Czar
Impelled by some malignant star
Bestowed upon his new Czarina
The fatal name of Katerina ;
And as Monseigneur l'Archevêque
Chose to baptize her à la Grecque,
"Twas Katerina with a K:
He rued it to his dying day.
Nay died, as I observed before,
The sooner on that very score.
The Princess quickly learnt her cue,
Improved upon the part of shrew,
And as the plot began to thicken,
She rung his head off like a chicken;
In short this despot of a wife
Robbed the poor man of crown and life;
And robbing Peter paid not Paul,
But cleared the stage of great and small.
Besides these genial pleasantries, many shorter poems on local and temporary subjects enlivened the
brilliant circle of which Miss Catherine Fanshawe formed so precious an ornament. Many have perished, as occasional verses will perish, however happy. I insert one specimen to show how her lively fancy could embellish the merest trifle.
When the Regent's Park was first laid out, she parodied the two well-known lines from Pope's "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady:"
"Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow,
Here the first roses of the year shall blow,"
and by only altering one word of the first line, and a single letter of the second, changed their entire meaning, and rendered them applicable to the new resort of the Londoners:
"Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow,
Here the first noses of the year shall blow."
One wonders what Pope would have thought of such a parody. It is really a great honour. But would he have thought so?
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING-ROBERT BROWNING.
MARRIED poets! Charming words are these, significant of congenial gifts, congenial labours, congenial tastes;-quiet and sweet resources of mind and of heart, a long future of happiness live in those two words. And the reality is as rare as it is charming. Married authors we have had of all ages and of all countries; from the Daciers, standing stiff and stately under their learning, as if it were a load, down to the Guizots, whose story is so pretty, that it would sound like a romance to all who did not know how often romance looks pale beside reality; from the ducal pair of Newcastle, walking stately and stiff under their strawberry-leafed coronets, to William and Mary Howitt, ornaments of a sect to whom coronets are an abomination. Married authors have been plentiful as blackberries, but married poets have been rare indeed! The last instance, too, was rather a warning than an example. When Caroline Bowles changed her own loved and honoured name to become the wife of the great and good man Robert Southey, all seemed to promise fairly, but a slow and fatal disease had seized him even before the wedding
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