The Rolliad, in Two Parts. George Ellis

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       Thee father of the Scrutiny, we own.

       Ah! without thee what treasures had we lost,

       More worth than twenty Scrutinies would cost!

       To’ instruct the Vestry, and convince the House,

       What Law from MURPHY! what plain sense from ROUS!

       What wit from MULGRAVE! from DUNDAS, what truth!

       What perfect virtue from the VIRTUOUS YOUTH!

       What deep research from ARDEN the profound!

       What argument from BEARCROFT ever sound!

       By MUNCASTER, what generous offers made;

       By HARDINGE, what arithmetic display’d!

       And, oh! what rhetoric, from MAHON that broke

       In printed speeches, which he never spoke!

       Ah! without thee, what worth neglected long,

       Had wanted still its dearest meed of song!

       In vain high-blooded ROLLE, unknown to fame,

       Had boasted still the honours of his name:

       In vain had exercis’d his noble spleen

       On BURKE and FOX—the ROLLIAD had not been.

      But, alas! SIR LLOYD, at the very moment, while I am writing, intelligence has reached me, that the Scrutiny is at an end. Your favourite measure is no more. The child of your affection has met a sudden and a violent fate. I trust, however, that “the Ghost of the departed Scrutiny” (in the bold but beautiful language of MR. DUNDAS) will yet haunt the spot, where it was brought forth, where it was fostered, and where it fell. Like the Ghost of Hamlet it shall be a perturbed spirit, though it may not come in a questionable shape. It shall fleet before the eyes of those to whom it was dear, to admonish them, how they rush into future dangers; to make known the secret of its private hoards; or to confess to them the sins of its former days, and to implore their piety, that they would give peace to its shade, by making just reparation. Perhaps too, it may sometimes visit the murderer, like the ghost of Banquo, to dash his joys. It cannot indeed rise up in its proper form to push him from his seat, yet it may assume some other formidable appearance to be his eternal tormentor. These, however, are but visionary consolations, while every loyal bosom must feel substantial affliction from the late iniquitous vote, tyrannically compelling the High-Bailiff to make a return after an enquiry of nine months only; especially when you had so lately armed him with all power necessary to make his enquiry effectual.

      [3] Ah! how shall I the’ unrighteous vote bewail?

       Again corrupt Majorities prevail.

       Poor CORBETT’s Conscience, tho’ a little loth,

       Must blindly gape, and gulp the’ untasted oath;

       If he, whose conscience never felt a qualm,

       If GROGAN fail the good man’s doubts to calm.

       No more shall MORGAN, for his six months’ hire,

       Contend, that FOX should share the’ expence of fire;

       Whole Sessions shall he croak, nor bear away The price, that paid the silence of a day: No more, till COLLICK some new story hatch, Long-winded ROUS for hours shall praise Dispatch; COLLICK to Whigs and Warrants back shall slink, And ROUS, a Pamphleteer, re-plunge in ink: MURPHY again French Comedies shall steal, Call them his own, and garble, to conceal; Or, pilfering still, and patching without grace His thread-bare shreds of Virgil out of place, With Dress and Scenery, Attitude and Trick, Swords, Daggers, Shouts, and Trumpets in the nick, With Ahs! and Ohs! Starts, Pauses, Rant, and Rage, Give a new GRECIAN DAUGHTER to the stage: But, Oh, SIR CECIL!—Fled to shades again From the proud roofs, which here he raised in vain, He seeks, unhappy! with the Muse to cheer His rising griefs, or drown them in small-beer! Alas! the Muse capricious flies the hour When most we need her, and the beer is sour: Mean time Fox thunders faction uncontroul’d, Crown’d with fresh laurels, from new triumphs bold.

      These general evils arising from the termination of the Scrutiny, YOUR HONOUR, I doubt not, will sincerely lament in common with all true lovers of their King and Country. But in addition to these, you, SIR LLOYD, have particular cause to regret, that [4] “the last hair in this tail of procrastination” is plucked. I well know, what eager anxiety you felt to establish the suffrage, which you gave, as the delegate of your Coach-horses: and I unaffectedly condole with you, that you have lost this great opportunity of displaying your unfathomable knowledge and irresistible logic to the confusion of your enemies. How learnedly would you have quoted the memorable instance of Darius, who was elected King of Persia by the casting vote of his Horse! Though indeed the merits of that election have been since impeached, not from any alledged illegality of the vote itself, if it had been fairly given; but because some jockeyship has been suspected, and the voter, it has been said, was bribed the night before the election! How ably too would you have applied the case of Caligula’s horse, who was chosen Consul of Rome! For if he was capable of being elected (you would have said) à fortiori, there could have been no natural impediment to his being an elector; since omne majus continet in se minus, and the trust is certainly greater to fill the first offices of the state, than to have one share among many in appointing to them. Neither can I suppose that you would have omitted so grave and weighty an authority as Captain Gulliver, who, in the course of his voyages, discovered a country, where Horses discharged every Duty of Political Society. You might then have passed to the early history of our own island, and have expatiated on the known veneration in which horses were held by our Saxon Ancestors; who, by the way, are supposed also to have been the founders of Parliaments. You might have touched on their famous standard; digressed to the antiquities of the White Horse, in Berkshire, and other similar monuments in different counties; and from thence have urged the improbability, that when they instituted elections, they should have neglected the rights of an animal, thus highly esteemed and almost sanctified among them. I am afraid indeed, that with all your Religion and Loyalty, you could not have made much use of the White Horse of Death, or the White Horse of Hanover. But, for a bonne bouche, how beautifully might you have introduced your favourite maxim of ubi ratio, ibi jus! and to prove the reason of the thing, how convincingly might you have descanted, in an elegant panegyric on the virtues and abilities of horses, from Xanthus the Grecian Conjuring Horse, whose prophecies are celebrated by Homer, down to the Learned Little Horse over Westminster Bridge! with whom you might have concluded, lamenting that, as he is not an Elector, the Vestry could not have the assistance of one, capable of doing so much more justice to the question than yourself!—Pardon me, SIR LLOYD, that I have thus attempted to follow the supposed course of your oratory. I feel it to be truly inimitable. Yet such was the impression made on my mind by some of YOUR HONOUR’s late reasonings respecting the Scrutiny, that I could not withstand the involuntary impulse of endeavouring, for my own improvement, to attain some faint likeness of that wonderful pertinency and cogency, which I so much admired in the great original.

      How shall the neighing kind thy deeds requite,

       Great YAHOO Champion of the HOUYHNHNM’s right?

       In grateful memory may thy dock-tail pair,

       Unarm’d convey thee with sure-footed care.

       Oh! may they, gently pacing o’er the stones,

       With no rude shock annoy thy batter’d bones,

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