Here, then, adieu! while yet some well-graced parts
May fix an ancient favourite in your hearts,
Not quite to be forgotten, even when
You look on better actors, younger men:
And if your bosoms own this kindly debt
Of old remembrance, how shall mine forget-
O, how forget!how oft I hither came
In anxious hope, how oft return'd with fame!
How oft around your circle this weak hand
Has waved immmortal Shakspeare's magic wand,
Till the full burst of inspiration came,
And I have felt, and you have fann'd the flame!
By mem❜ry treasured, while her reign endures,
Those hours must live and all their charms are
yours.
O favour'd Land! renown'd for arts and arms, For manly talent, and for female charms, Could this full bosom prompt the sinking line, What fervent benedictions now were thine! But my last part is play'd, my knell is rung, When e'en your praise falls faltering from my tongue; And all that you can hear, or I can tell,
Is Friends and Patrons, hail, and FARE YOU WELL.
THE QUEST OF SULTAUN SOLIMAUN.
O, FOR a glance of that gay Muse's eye,
That lighten'd on Bandello's laughing tale,
And twinkled with a lustre shrewd and sly,
When Giam Battista bade her vision hail!-
Yet fear not, ladies, the naïve detail
Given by the natives of that land canorous;
Italian license loves to leap the pale,
We Britons have the fear of shame before us, And, if not wise in mirth, at least must be decorous.
In the far eastern clime, no great while since,
Lived Sultaun Solimaun, a mighty prince,
Whose eyes, as oft as they perform'd their round,
Beheld all others' fix'd upon the ground;
1 [First published in "The Sale Room, No. V.," February 1, 1817.]
The hint of the following tale is taken from La Camiscia Magica, a novel of Giam Battista Casti.
Whose ears received the same unvaried phrase,
"Sultaun! thy vassal hears, and he obeys!"
All have their tastes-this may the fancy strike
Of such grave folks as pomp and grandeur like;
For me, I love the honest heart and warm
Of Monarch who can amble round his farm,
Or, when the toil of state no more annoys,
In chimney corner seek domestic joys-
I love a prince will bid the bottle pass,
Exchanging with his subjects glance and glass;
In fitting time, can, gayest of the gay,
Keep up the jest, and mingle in the lay-
Such Monarchs best our free-born humours suit,
But Despots must be stately, stern, and mute.
This Solimaun, Serendib had in sway-
And where's Serendib? may some critic say.—
Good lack, mine honest friend, consult the chart,
Scare not my Pegasus before I start!
If Rennell has it not, you'll find, mayhap,
'The isle laid down in Captain Sindbad's map,-
Famed mariner! whose merciless narrations
Drove every friend and kinsman out of patience,
Till, fain to find a guest who thought them shorter,
He deign'd to tell them over to a porter —1
The last edition see, by Long. and Co.,
Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers in the Row.
Serendib found, deem not my tale a fiction-
This Sultaun, whether lacking contradiction-
[See the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.]
(A sort of stimulant which hath its uses,
To raise the spirits and reform the juices,
-Sovereign specific for all sorts of cures
In my wife's practice, and perhaps in yours,)
The Sultaun lacking this same wholesome bitter,
Or cordial smooth for prince's palate fitter-
Or if some Mollah had hag-rid his dreams
With Degial, Ginnistan, and such wild themes.
Belonging to the Mollah's subtle craft,
I wot not-but the Sultaun never laugh'd,
Scarce ate or drank, and took a melancholy
That scorn'd all remedy profane or holy;
In his long list of melancholies, mad,
Or mazed, or dumb, hath Burton none so bad.'
Physicians soon arrived, sage, ware, and tried,
As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room;
With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed,
Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside,
And then in solemn accent spoke their doom,
"His majesty is very far from well."
Then each to work with his specific fell:
The Hakim Ibrahim instanter brought
His unguent Mahazzim al Zerdukkaut,
While Roompot, a practitioner more wily,
Relied on his Munaskif al fillfily.2
More and yet more in deep array appear,
And some the front assail, and some the rear;
[See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.]
2 For these hard words see D'Herbelot, or the learned editor
of the Recipes of Avicenna.
VOL. V.32
Their remedies to reinforce and vary,
Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary;
Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown chary,
Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labour,
Some hint about a bowstring or a sabre.
There lack'd, I promise you, no longer speeches,
To rid the palace of those learned leeches.
Then was the council call'd-by their advice, (They deem'd the matter ticklish all, and nice,
And sought to shift it off from their own shoulders,) Tartars and couriers in all speed were sent, To call a sort of Eastern Parliament
Of feudatory chieftains and freeholdersSuch have the Persians at this very day, My gallant Malcolm calls them couroultai; I'm not prepared to show in this slight song That to Serendib the same forms belong,E'en let the learn'd go search, and tell me if I'm wrong.
The Omrahs, each with hand on scymitar,
Gave, like Sempronius, still their voice for war—
"The sabre of the Sultaun in its sheath
Too long has slept, nor own'd the work of death;
Let the Tambourgi bid his signal rattle,
Bang the loud gong, and raise the shout of battle!
This dreary cloud that dims our sovereign's day,
Shall from his kindied bosom flit away,
1 See Sir John Malcolm's admirable History of Persia,
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