called on by so distinguished an antiquary, he will, no doubt, sing. And first let me propose the "Liberty of the Press " and the "Cork Chronicle,"-nine times nine, standing. Hurra! Jack Bellew's Song. AIR" O weep for the hour!" Oh! the muse shed a tear With a hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came! Lady Jeffery's ghost Left the Stygian coast, And shriek'd the live-long night for her grandson's shame. And we know full well Who bought the castle furniture and fixtures, O! ('Twas enough to break one's heart!) All the statues made of lead, and the pictures, O! Sir Thomas Deane, knight, Whom the people have no reason to thank at all; Nor the fox be looking out from the banquet-hall. At every wainscoting and grate, Where bold King Charles the Twelfth Hung, before his portrait went upon a journey, O! For going to law was sitch, That they bound him long before to an attorney, O! To which a debt of gratitude Pat Lardner owes : The genius who to fame by dint of blarney rose. SCOTT. I thank you, Mr. Bellew, for your excellent ode on that most lamentable subject: it must have been an evil day for Blarney. BELLEW. A day to be blotted out of the annals of Innisfail-a day of calamity and downfal. The nightingale never sang so plaintively in "the groves," the dove or the "gentle plover" were not heard "in the afternoon," the fishes wept in the deepest recesses of the lake, and strange sounds were said to issue from "the cave where no daylight enters.”—Let me have a squeeze of lemon. SCOTT. But what became of the "statues gracing this noble mansion ?" BELLEW. Sir Thomas Deane bought "Nebuchadnezzar," and the town-clerk, one Besnard, bought "Julius Cæsar." Sir Thomas of late years had taken to devotion, and consequently coveted the leaden effigy of that Assyrian king, of whom Daniel tells us such strange things; but it turned out that the graven image was a likeness of Hercules, after all! so that, having put up the statue in his lawn at Blackrock, the wags have since called his villa "Herculaneum." Like that personage of whom Tommy Moore sings, in his pretty poem about a sculptor's shop, who made a similar qui pro quo. What's the verse, Corbet? CORBET. "He came to buy Jonah, and took away Jove!" O'MEARA. There is nothing very wonderful in that. In St. Peter's at Rome we have an old statue of Jupiter (a capital antique bronze it is), which, with the addition of "keys" and some other modern improvements, makes an excellent figure of the prince of the apostles. PROUT. Swift says that Jupiter was originally a mere corruption of "Jew Peter." You have given an edition of the Dean, Sir Walter ? SCOTT. Yes; but to return to your Blarney statue: I wonder the peasantry did not rescue, vi et armis, the ornaments of their immortal groves from the grasp of the barbarians. I happened to be in Paris when the allies took away the sculptured treasures of the Louvre, and the Venetian horses of the Carrousel; and I well remember the indignation of the sons of France. Pray what was the connexion between Blarney Castle and Charles XII. of Sweden ? BELLEW. One of the Jeffery family served with distinction under the gallant Swede, and had received the royal portrait on his return to his native country, after a successful campaign against the Czar Peter. The picture was swindled out of Blarney by an attorney, to satisfy the costs of a law-suit. OLDEN. The Czar Peter was a consummate politician; but when he chopped off the beards of the Russians, and forced his subjects by penal laws to shave their chins, he acted very unwisely; he should have procured a supply of eukeirogeneion, and effected his object by smooth means. CORBET. Come, Olden, let us have one of your songs about that wonderful discovery. OLDEN. I'll willingly give you an ode in praise of the incomparable lather; but I think it fair to state that my song, like my eukeirogeneion, is a modern imitation of a Greek original: you shall hear it in both languages. He'd find, To his mind, Εν κλυσματ' ουτω τῳδε In a twinkling the mop would have all Κυτους αφρῳ τουτουι disappear'd. Εν ακαρεί το θειον Νεβυχαδναισαρ (φυλης PROUT. I don't think it fair that Frank Cresswell should say nothing all the evening. Up, up, my boy! give us a speech or a stave of some kind or other. Have you never been at school? Come, let us have "Norval on the Grampian hills," or something or other. Thus apostrophized, O Queen! I put my wits together; and, anxious to contribute my quota to the common fund of classic enjoyment, I selected the immortal ode of Campbell, and gave a Latin translation in rhyme as well as I could. |