Punch (77.1879)

270

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [December 13, 1879.

A PROTECTOR.

Tommy (on a Visit to his Grandmamma in the country). " No fear of Thieves oe Bubglars now, Aunt Maet, with a Man's Hat

and Goat hanging ue in the Hall !"

THE COLOSSUS OT WORDS.

Diminished heads let lesser tonguesters hide ;
He stands, the Word-Colossus, with a stride

Of such portentous stretch,
As e'en the wearer of the seven-league boots
Might envy. Who supremacy disputes
With one who can a nimble compass fetch,
Puck-like, in forty columns, from the Turk
To hypothec, from Beaconsfield's black work
In three distracted continents, unto
The small Midlothian mischiefs of Buccleuch ?

The swift tumultuous torrent,
To Tories and tired editors abhorrent,
Flows on like Phlegethon, a fiery flood
Of vocal lava, scathing, as it flows,
All foes,

Yet lucent as the wells of King Bladud.

How should one hope,
By use of simile or sounding trope,
With such a stream descriptively to cope ?
Lodore's loud water-floods, the brook of Tennyson,
Niagara, an angry woman's tongue,
An Irish mendicant's ironic benison,
And all similitudes e'er said or sung
Suggestive of tumultuous, never stopping,

Onpouring or down-flopping,
Fail wholly, as his wordy war he carries on.
None but himself can furnish fit comparison.
For fire Demosthenes, perchance, may serve,

And Bukke for force and verve,
For grace his friends may count him Ciceronian,
But stintless fluency henceforth's Gladstonian.
Surely, since first the roving Statesman stumped,
The public ear was never so bethumped

With words—words—words
Spontaneous as the jargoning of birds—

And quite ns purposeless, protest his foes.

For eloquence too easily that flows

Wakes in the solid Saxon vague mistrust.

Dullards who pin their faith to Dryasdust,

Cold hearts that shiver at zeal's fervent rush,

Cynics who brand all earnestness as gush,

Who look on principles as pilots risky,

Think right and justice things that, like neat whiskey,

'Tis needful to dilute,
Before the common taste and needs they '11 suit,—
Declare, with air contemptuous or solemn,
Sound wisdom spouts not column upon column,
Like ever-squirting Tritons in a fountain,
But talks precis or epigram—like us.

'Tis a ridiculus mus
That after all is born of this big mountain
Of vapid though exuberant verbosity,
Inspired by sophistry and animosity !
But ear-witched millions at the grumblers laugh,
Satire itself must marvel though it chaff,
And sober judgment, while it well might wish

The oratorio dish
Were quintessentialised to smaller compass,
Yet, midst all party and polemic rumpus,
Sees in the old man eloquent who bears
Blithely the burden of ids seventy years
A true Colossus, firmly poised and bold,
The light of principles to hoist and hold _
Amidst time-serving veerings and vagaries,
And, like the Sun-God of the Rhodian Chares,
While a world's wonder to the common view,

A useful'beacon too.

a sape augury.

The [member of the European Happy Family whose life is most
threatened just now—Turkey.