Page:The Essays of George Eliot, ed. Sheppard, 1883.djvu/244



He makes no noise in Parliament, 'tis true;

But pays his debts, and visit when 'tis due;

His character and gloves are ever clean,

And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean;

A smile eternal on his lip he wears,

Which equally the wise and worthless shares.

In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief,

Patient of idleness beyond belief,

Most charitably lends the town his face

For ornament in every public place;

As sure as cards he to th' assembly comes',

And is the furniture of drawing-rooms:

"When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free,

And, joined to two, he fails not—to make three;

Narcissus is the glory of his race;

For who does nothing with a better grace?

To deck my list by nature were designed

Such shining expletives of human kind,

Who want, while through blank life they dream along,

Sense to be right and passion to be wrong."

It is but seldom that we find a touch of that easy slyness which gives an additional zest to surprise; but here is an instance:

Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with a psychological mistake as the basis of his satire, attributing all forms of folly to one passion—the love of fame, or vanity—a much grosser mistake, indeed, than Pope's, exaggeration of the extent to which the "ruling passion" determines conduct in the individual. Not that Young is consistent in his mistake. He sometimes implies no more than what is the truth—that the love of fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many.

Young's satires on women are superior to Pope's, which is only saying that they are superior to Pope's greatest failure. We can more frequently pick out a couplet as successful than an entire sketch. Of the too emphatic "Syrena" he says:

Of the diplomatic "Julia:"