He went above-a solitary mounter
Up gloomy stairs-and saw a pensive group
Of hapless fowls-
Cranes, vultures, owls,
In fact, it was a sort of Poultry-Compter,
Where feather'd prisoners were doom'd to droop:
Here sat an eagle, forc'd to make a stoop,
Not from the skies, but his impending roof;
And there aloof,
A pining ostrich, moping in a coop;
With other samples of the bird creation,
All cag'd against their powers and their wills,
And cramp'd in such a space, the longest bills
Were plainly bills of least accommodation.
In truth, it was a very ugly scene
To fall to any liberator's share,
To see those winged fowls, that once had been
Free as the wind, no freer than fixed air.
His temper little mended,
Pug from this Bird-cage Walk at last descended Unto the lion and the elephant,
To see all nature's Free List thus suspended,
And beasts depriv'd of what she had intended.
They could not even prey
A hardship always reckon'd quite prodigious.
Thus he revolv'd-
To give them freedom, civil and religious.
That night there were no country cousins, raw
From Wales, to view the lion and his kin:
The keeper's eyes were fix'd upon a saw;
The saw was fix'd upon a bullock's shin:
Meanwhile with stealthy paw,
Pug hastened to withdraw
The bolt that kept the king of brutes within.
Now, monarch of the forest! thou shalt win
Precious enfranchisement-thy bolts are undone;
Thou art no longer a degraded creature,
But loose to roam with liberty and nature;
And free of all the jungles about London-
All Hampstead's heathy desert lies before thee !
Methinks I see thee bound from Cross's ark,
Full of the native instinct that comes o'er thee,
And turn a ranger
Of Hounslow Forest, and the Regent's Park-
Thin Rhodes's cows-the mail-coach steeds endanger,
And gobble parish watchman after dark :-
Methinks I see thee, with the early lark,
Stealing to Merlin's cave—(thy cave.)—Alas,
That such bright visions should not come to pass!
Alas, for freedom, and for freedom's hero!
Alas, for liberty of life and limb!
For Pug had only half unbolted Nero,
When Nero bolted him!
'Tis strange how like a very dunce,
Man-with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he
Has had, till lately, of Phrenology-
A science that by simple dint of
Head-combing he should find a hint of,
When scratching o'er those little pole-hills,
The faculties throw up like mole-hills ;—
A science that, in very spite
Of all his teeth, ne'er came to light,
For though he knew his skull had grinders,
Still there turn'd up no organ finders,
Still sages wrote, and ages fled,
And no man's head came in his head-
Not even the pate of Erra Pater,
Knew aught about its pia mater.
At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him
I don't know but it might be Spurzheim–
Tho' native of a dull and slow land,
And makes partition of our Poll-land,
At our Acquisitiveness guesses,
And all those necessary nesses
Indicative of human habits,
All burrowing in the head like rabbits.
Thus Veneration, he made known,
Had got a lodging at the Crown:
And Music (see Deville's example)
A set of chambers in the Temple:
That Language taught the tongues close by.
And took in pupils thro' the eye,
Close by his neighbour Computation,
Who taught the eyebrows numeration.
The science thus-to speak in fit
Terms-having struggled from its nit,
Was seiz'd on by a swarm of Scotchmen
Those scientifical hotch-potch men,
Who have at least a penny dip
And wallop in all doctorship,
Just as in making broth they smatter
By bobbing twenty things in water:
These men, I say, make quick appliance
And close, to phrenologic science;
For of all learned themes whatever,
That schools and colleges deliver,
There's none they love so near the bodles,
As analyzing their own noddles;
Thus in a trice each northern blockhead
Had got his fingers in his shock head,
And of his bumps was babbling yet worse
Than poor Miss Capulet's dry wet-nurse;
Till having been sufficient rangers
Of their own heads, they took to strangers',
And found in Presbyterians' polls
The things they hated in their souls;
For Presbyterians hear with passion
Of organs join'd with veneration.
No kind there was of human pumpkin,
But at its bumps it had a bumpkin;
Down to the very lowest gullion,
And oiliest scull of oily scullion.
No great man died but this they did do,
They begg'd his cranium of his widow :
No murderer died by law disaster,
But they took off his sconce in plaster ;
For thereon they could show depending,
"The head and front of his offending,"
How that his philanthropic bump
Was master'd by a baser lump;
For every bump (these wags insist)
Has its direct antagonist,
Each striving stoutly to prevail,
Like horses knotted tail to tail;
And many a stiff and sturdy battle
Occurs between these adverse cattle,
The secret cause, beyond all question,
Of aches ascribed to indigestion,—
Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivals
Tugging together like sheer devils,
Till one gets mastery good or sinister,
And comes in like a new prime-minister.
Each bias in some master node is :-
What takes M'Adam where a road is,
To hammer little pebbles less?
His organ of destructiveness.
What makes great Joseph so encumber
Debate? a lumping lump of Number:
Or Malthus rail at babies so?
The smallness of his Philopro-
What severs man and wife? a simple
Defect of the Adhesive pimple :
Or makes weak women go astray?
Their bumps are more in fault than they,
These facts being found and set in order
By grave M.D.'s beyond the Border,
To make them for some months eternal,
Were enter'd monthly in a journal,
That many a northern sage still writes in,
And throws his little Northern Lights in,
And proves and proves about the phrenos,
A great deal more than I or he knows,
How Music suffers, par exemple,
By wearing tight hats round the temple ;
What ills great boxers have to fear
From blisters put behind the ear:
And how a porter's Veneration
Is hurt by porter's occupation:
Whether shillelaghs in reality
May deaden Individuality:
Or tongs and poker be creative
Of alterations in th' Amative:
If falls from scaffolds make us less
Inclin'd to all Constructiveness:
With more such matters, all applying
To heads-and therefore headifying.
"Sweet Memory, wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail."
COME, my Crony, let's think upon far-away days,
And lift up a little Oblivion's veil ;
Let's consider the past with a lingering gaze,
Like a peacock whose eyes are inclined to his tail.
Ay, come, let us turn our attention behind,
Like those critics whose heads are so heavy, I fear,
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