The Sun.
London, England, 1832-04-06 00:00:00

1831 1532

.£21,256 .£'21,256
73,677 ! 73,362
89,125 1 89,125
4,892;236 4,890,357
528,418

82,871
79,708

127.500
90, .77
15,023

LITIRATURI.

THE BORE. A POEM. LONDON, 183!

The family of the Bores is 'one of the most
ancient, respectable, and prolific in the three
kingdoms. Like the gipsies, they are to be met
with every where ; and, like the cholera, they are
modified by circumstances. They edify the
Lords—they clear the House of Commons—
they lull to sleep the drawing-room—they drawl
from the pulpit—prose in the law courts—
Wepistolize," as Gibbon phrases it, with the
Press—write pamphlets for Ridgway, and novels
for Colburn—dress in black, and call themselves
golden prebendaries—in red, and baptize them-
selves military men—in round jacket and top-
boots, and style themselves country gentle-
men—cultivate a circumference, and rejoice
in the title of Alderman—a bag-wig and
black shorts, and bless God, that they are
courtiers ;—every where, in short, and at
all seasons, some branch or other of this
prolific family is to be met with, as though
like Swift's Strulbrugs, they were endowed with
immortality, and like the Genius of Sultan
Misnar, with übiquity.
Of all the Bores, however, whether critical,
clerical, philosophical, political or poetical, your
political one is " beyond compare " the worst. It
is a nuisance to be even in the remotest degree
connected with him—a punishment more than
sufficient to atone for the most flagrant enormity.
But Bores, unluckily, are not confined to per-
sons, they extend also to things ;—for instance,
it is a bore to be compelled to read the Morning
Post; to hear Mr. Irving "give tongue" at the
Caledonian chapel ; to dance in tight pumps at a
ball, with a corn on each toe ; to be roused up
from bed by a cry of " Fire !” on your wedding
Might ; to have your new great coat and hat
stolen at a fashionable evening party ; to be
congratulated on the restoration to perfect
health, of a great-aunt from whom you had vast
expectations, and who, you had flattered-your-
self, was, like the boroughmongers, in extremis ;
to be stopped by a broad-wheeled waggon and
eight horses at the turning of a narrow street,
when you are rushing to your banker's, whose
firm, you have heard, is about to stop payment ;
to receive a grim lawyer's letter, at the very mo-
ment when you are expecting an ecstatic billet-
doux ;—all these things, it must be confessed,
are bores, decided bores ; but oh, how faint,
how trifling, how evanescent is the feeling of
annoyance they excite, compared to that which
you experience on hearing a prosing, thick-
skulled old Tory get up in the House of
Commons, and stultify his audience by the hour
together on the subject of the glorious Consti-
tution Gladly would you take refuge
from such a calamity in sleep, but the
speaker's loud bray forbids. Gladly would
you fly from the scene of affliction, like
Christian, in Pilgrim's Progress, from " The
wrath to come," but the crowded state of the
back galleries prohibits all egress. There is, there,
fore, nothing left for you, but to hear out the
rascal, as hour after hour a Niagara of nonsense
falls in thunder from his lips ; till at length, with
every nerve in your body alive and quivering,
with your mind jaded, your strength exhausted,
heart-sick, brain-sick, desperate, hypochondriacal,
and smarting under an intolerable sense of suf-
fering, you seek your solitary lodging, over-
powered with a hatred of the human race in ge
neral, and of yourself in particular; and as a
necessary consequence growing out of the pecu-
liarities of your condition, you are found the
next morning by your distracted valet in what
the newspapers call "an interesting position,"
that is to say, stretched across the bed, with your
throat cut from ear to ear. We have always
considered the speeches of an Ultra Tory as
strong provocatives to suicide.

The author of the clever little poem before us,
says little or nothing about this particular

species of Bore, wherefore we have endeavoured
in humble prose to supply the deficiency. He

launches indeed a squib or two at them ; but his

muse is a fair vagrant, and ranges over the vast
kingdom of Boredom—the empire of which old
Bankes has lately resigned in favour of his succes-
sor, Sir C. Wetherell—with a speed and a facility
which prove that the bump of " locality" is not
to be met with on her cranium. Bores, the
author seems to think, (and on this delicate
point we shall say nothing,) are fur the most
part of the feminine gender. En voice.

" Blue Stockings too (sure butt for waggery)
Are always rang'd in this category—
They're deep in Hebrew, Greek, and Syria;
Well read in Ovid, by Meziriae ;
Compare the Greek and French Medea,
O'er Herman pore and Dorothea,
And, of quotations nothing chary,
Recite whole scenes from Alfieri ;
Can talk of trade-winds and Etesian—
What martyrs fell by Dioclgsian—
As vers'd in marbles, gems, and bronzes,
As any Fellow of St. John's is—
Scan all the reigns of all the Ptolemies--
By problems prove how high a column is,
And verity each bill they pay
By strictest rules of Algebra—
Class nat'ral orders like Decandolle,
Or, analysing Gluck and Handel,
Show why they brought the seventh or triad in ;
Or talk of alkaloids and iodine ;
Thro' microscopic focus eye a mite,
And speak of mica, quartz, and miemite—
To animals, of names profuse—
Excepting those in common use—
TT
hh
ee y l
use
ofe toa somenu
language
unnol
te aLr
inn' dn
,plebeian
At the fam'd Regent's Park menagerie,
They dub with some new term the casuary,
Or give a name from ornithology
(Glandarius) to the bird we call a jay.
The honest squire is quite disdain'd, •
Who stares, when ask'd when Tarquin reigned ;
• Of Spenser's Queen can't quote one stanza,
Or trace the lineage of Braganza ;
And knows no more about a lexicon
Than Mey have learnt of Manx or Mexican."
The great merit of the " Bore" is the remark-
able ingenuity of the versification. It is a per-
fect Noah's Ark of rhythm. The most incon-

aruous phrases and images are brought, and
made to rhyme, together with an ease and dex-

terity truly Hudibrastic. Most writers move in
fetters when-they versify, their rhymes being the
mere clanking of their chains. Not so with the

author of the " Bore." He proclaims his per-
fect freedom in every couplet. His scholarship,
is far from contemptible ; but he has the
:loosod, sense to let it ooze out, as if accidentally,
itni like the valour
.of Bob Acres at his

fingers' ends, instead of thrusting it vauntingly
and unblushingly under the reader's nose. In

a wrod, `fthe Bore" is a smart, sprightly, inge-

ninus poem, pf the Iludibrastic class, and
set at defiance the Schedule 11. of public
It has besides-the singular advantage of a dedica-
tion to General Phipps—an impassioned amateur
of the Fine Arts, whom we once remember to havt-
seen, at the British Gallery, making the circuit
of about four hundred fine old pictures in some-
thing less than ten minutes. What a blessing it
is to have a quick perception of the Sublime and
Beautiful in art