Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/218

210 :The tea return'd an answer to the hailing "I'm journeying from the east unto the west, From China unto Europe's distant land, Where I'm an article in high demand." "And I," rejoin'd the sage, "unlike to thee, Am from the west, and sailing eastwardly To China, where, for wholesomeness and flavour, As food or physic, I'm in mighty favour; For though my countrymen, I blush to say,
 * My European countrymen, despise

And fling me as a worthless weed away,
 * The Chinaman is, Heaven be praised! more wise.

He has a sage tooth in his head, and knows The pleasure and relief my leaf bestows; In fact, I take precedence over thee, And hit his taste, friend Tea, unto a T.

"But fare-thee-well! and speed thee with the gale
 * To Europe, where the tables will be turn'd;

Where young and old will hail thee; and inhale,
 * And thou wilt be adored as I was spurn'd;

For every nation, howsoever loth To praise an article of native growth, Is prompt enough to purchase and applaud Whatever comes unto it from abroad."

And thus—although I grant that general good Results from commerce rightly understood, And that the intercourse of mind with mind, Like other commerce, should be unconfined— I blame the man whose scholarship is shown In every country's authors save his own; Who prizes, if from Paris or from Rome, The very talent that he scorns at home; And, while he overrates Racine or Tasso, Disdains to read one line of Garcilasso.

Some critics, of the coward sort,
 * With mute servility succumb

To living authors; for, in short, The risk, the fear of a retort
 * Compels them to be dumb.

But, like the gouls of eastern lore,
 * These critics batten on the dead;

And when each author is no more To whom they meanly quail'd of yore,
 * Attack him without dread.

A story, which in other days
 * I often heard my grandam tell—

So often, that her rambling phrase Is printed on my mind portrays
 * This kind of critics well.

An owl one morn—but, sooth to say,
 * I am not telling it aright;

For owls are birds that love to stay Within their secret homes by day,
 * And only fly by night.—

An owl one night profanely flew
 * Into a church, and chanced to see

A lamp or lantern—but the two Are much alike, and one will do,
 * Whichever it might be.

And yet, methinks, anent the pair,
 * It was, if I remember well,