The Mad Banker of Amsterdam ;

OR, THE FATE OF THE BRAUNS.

A POEM, IN TWENTY-FOUR CANTOS.

BY WILLIAM WASTLE OF THAT ILK, ESQUIRE.

Member of the Dilettanti, Royal, and Antiquarian Societies, and of the Union and Ben
Water's Clubs of Edinburgh; Honorary Member of the Kunst-und alterthumsliebers
Gesellschaft of Gottingen, and of the Phoenix Terrarum of Amsterdam, &c. &c. &c.
Sexe enchanteur, à qui tout rend hommage,

I.

Si j'ai passé le printemps des amours,
Si, malgre moi, j'ai l'honneur d'etre sage,
Je me souviens encor de ces beaux jours
Ou j'ai subi votre doux esclavage,

Qui n'eut alors enviê mon partage?
La volupté fidèle a mes desirs,
En m'egarant de plaisirs en plaisirs,
Se conformait a mon humeur volage.

*

Oh! croyez moi, sexe fait pour charmer,
Contentez vous d'un si doux avantage,
Et n'allez pas vous laisser enflammer,
Pour les faux biens qui sont à notre usage.
N'enviez point les palmes du genie;

Le ciel vous fit pour dés plus doux combats,
Donnez des lois, et n'en recevez pas.

CANTO VIII.*

Argument.

Will Wastle in a sober mood
Upon the Calton sate,

He shewed the Banker Holyrood,
And scribbled Canto VIII.

Beneath your quickening feet light springs the green
Elastic carpet-glows the living sod

With bright but simple flowers, whose pastoral

sheen

Is free, as if mid Alpine heights ye trod,
Where the bold steps of hunter men have been;
Where chamois, wolf, and elk, have their abode;
And creeping lichens find their lonely lair
Beneath the pine arms' overshadowing bare.

II.

And rocks above you and around are piled,
Hoary and shagged, purple, brown, and gray,
Beneath the shelter of whose antres wild,

Glides narrow on your perilous-seeming way,
Leading the footstep, as the eye, beguiled
From turn to turn, thro' strange diversity
Of opening, widening, and contracting view,
Of ever varying substance, form, and hue.

ANON.

III.

See what a glorious picture lies unrolled

Between you and the ocean's endless smile
Of rippling waves-green wood and greener wold,
Fringing the rocky buckler of the isle,

Whose strength is stern and stedfast, but not
cold-

And yon gay sands, o'er many a golden mile,
Upon whose vanishing and glittering lines
The light and curling foam caressing shines.

IV.

One solitary step-how shifts the scene;

A loftier mountain lifts into the air,
Far up, a bolder sweep of darker green

Than that we tread on. O the broom is fair
That dallies on the brink of yon black screen,
Yon craigs prerupt, which, o'er the murky glare
Of crimsoned smoke, their gloomy ledges shoot,
Like battlements along the mountain root.

* We do not hold ourselves accountable for the caprices of our correspondents, more especially for those of Mr Wastle. We have in vain urged this gentleman to proceed regularly in the publication of his great Poem in the natural order of its Cantos, but he is obstinate and we must needs submit.

EDITOR

The memory of his milling glories past,
The shame, that aught but death should
see him grass'd,

Allfir'd the veteran's pluck-with fury flush'd
Full on his light-limb'd customer he rush'd,
And hammering right and left, with pon-
derous swing,*

Ruffian'd the reeling youngster round the
Ring-

Nor rest, nor pause, nor breathing-time was
given,

But, rapid as the rattling hail from heav'n
Beats on the house-top, showers of RAN-
DAL'S shot+

Around the Trojan's lugs flew, peppering hot!
'Till now ENEAS, fill'd with anxious dread,
Rush'd in between them, and, with words
well bred,

Preserv'd alike the peace and DARES' head, Both which the veteran much inclin'd to break

Then kindly thus the punish'd youth bespake: "Poor Johnny Raw! what madness could impel

So rum a Flat to face so prime a Swell? See'st thou not, boy, THE FANCY, heavenly Maid,

Herself descends to this great Hammerer's
aid,

And, singling him from all her flash adorers,
Shines in his hits, and thunders in his floorers?
Then, yield thee, youth,-nor such a
spooney be,

To think mere man can mill a Deity!"
Thus spoke the Chief-and now the scrim-
mage o'er,

His faithful pals the done-up DARES bore Back to his home, with tottering gams, sunk heart,

And muns and noddle-pink'd in every part.‡ While from his gob the guggling claret gush'd,

And lots of grinders, from their sockets

crush'd,

Forth with the crimson tide in rattling fragments rush'd!

* This phrase is but too applicable to the round hitting of the ancients, who, it appears by the engravings in Mercurialis de Art. Gymnast. knew as little of our straightforward mode as the uninitiated Irish of the present day. I have, by the by, discovered some errors in Mercurialis, as well as in two other modern authors upon Pugilism (viz. Petrus Faber, in his Agonisticon, and that indefatigable classic antiquary, M. Burette, in his "Memoire pour servir à l'Histoire du Pugilat des Anciens" (which I shall have the pleasure of pointing out in my forthcoming "Parallel."

+ A favourite blow of the NONPAREIL'S, so called.

There are two or three Epigrams in the Greek Anthology, ridiculing the state of mutilation and disfigurement to which the pugilists were reduced by their combats. The following four lines are from an Epigram by Lucillius, Lib. 2.

Κοσκινον ἡ κεφαλη σου, Απολλοφανές, γεγένηται,

Η των σητοκοπων βιβλαρίων τα καπω.

Όντως μυρμήκων τρυπήματα λόξα και ορθή,

Γράμματα των λυρικών Λυδία και Φρυγία.

Literally, as follows: "Thy head, O Apollophanes, is perforated like a sieve, or like the leaves of an old worm-eaten book; and the numerous scars, both straight and cross-ways, which have been left upon thy pate by the cistus, very much resemble the score of a Lydian or Phrygian piece of music." Periphrastically, thus:

Your noddle, dear Jack, full of holes like a sieve,

Is so figur'd, and dotted, and scratch'd, I declare,
By your customers' fists, one would almost believe

They had punch'd a whole verse of "the Woodpecker" there!

It ought to be mentioned, that the word “ punching" is used both in boxing and musicengraving.

But aged,* slow, with stiff limbs, tottering much,

And lungs that lack'd the bellows-mender's

touch.

Yet sprightly to the Scratch both Buffers

came,

While ribbers rung from each resounding frame,

And divers digs, and many a ponderous pelt,
Were on their broad bread-baskets heard and
felt.

With roving aim, but aim that rarely miss'd,
Round lugs and oglest flew the frequent fist;
While showers of facers told so deadly well,
That the crush'd jaw-bones crackled as they
fell!

But firmly stood ENTELLUS- and still
bright,

Though bent by age, with all THE FANCY'S
light,

Stopp'd with a skill, and rallied with a fire
Th' Immortal FANCY could alone inspire!
While DARES, shifting round, with looks
of thought,

An opening to the Cove's huge carcass sought,
(Like General PRESTON, in that awful hour,
When on one leg he hopp'd to-take the
Tower!)

And here and there, explor'd with active fin
And skilful feint, some guardless pass to win,
And prove a boring guest when once let in.

And now ENTELLUS, with an eye that

plann'd

Punishing deeds, high rais'd his heavy hand;
But, ere the sledge came down, young Da-
RES spied

Its shadow o'er his brow, and slipp'd aside-
So nimbly slipp'd, that the vain nobber pass'd
Through empty air; and He, so high, so vast,
Who dealt the stroke, came thundering to
the ground!-

Not B-CK-GH-M, himself, with bulkier
sound,§

Uprooted from the field of Whiggish glories,
Fell souse, of late, among the astonish'd
Tories!

Instant the Ring was broke, and shouts and
yells

From Trojan Flashmen and Sicilian Swells Fill'd the wide heav'n-while, touch'd with grief to see

His pal, well-known through many a lark
and spree,

Thus rumly floor'd, the kind ACESTES ran,
And pitying rais'd from earth the game old

man.

Uncow'd, undamag'd to the sport he came,
His limbs all muscle, and his soul all flame.

*Macrobius, in his explanation of the various properties of the number seven, says, that the fifth Hebdomas of man's life (the age of 35) is the completion of his strength; that therefore pugilists, if not successful, usually give over their profession at that time. "Inter pugiles denique hæc consuetudo conservatur, ut quos jam coronavere victoriæ, nihil de se amplius in incrementis virium sperent; qui vero expertes hujus gloriæ usque illo manserunt, a professione discedant." In Somn. Scip. Lib. 1.

Ears and eyes.

+ Arm.

As the uprooted trunk in the original is_said to be "cava," the epithet here ough perhaps to be" hollower sound.”

|| Friend.

VOL. IV.

Party of pleasure and frolic.

4 Z

+ The allusion is to James III. slain near Stirling, as is supposed, by the Laird of Kier, one of the faction of Douglas.

The Earl of Surrey received permission to bear in his coat the Lion of Scotland, pierced with ą dart, in memory of his victory at Flodden Field.

XVII.

Pass over one-he died before his time*-
And look on her whose beauty hath become
A bye-word to all nations in the prime
And flush o' her days-the rose of Christendom,
Shedding such lustre over this cold clime

As never southern knew-she struck men dumb
With the sun-like dazzle of her regal charms,
And stooped a goddess to young Darnley's arms

XVIII.

Fairer than eye may see or tongue express;-
The sweep of centuries hath not ta'en off
The freshness of her famous loveliness,

The savage scowl of party hate-the scoff

Of black-souled bigot have not made her less
Than when she first was taught the queen to doff,
And beamed, all woman, on these halls antique,
Love's liquid eye, and mantling, maddening cheek,

XIX.

No-not all woman-woman, and yet queen
Amidst the very faintness of her sighs-
Wearing her majesty as it had been

A thing she fain would quit, but in her eyes
Enthroned immoveable, sublime, serene,
Woven in her essence by her destinies,
Awing her lover even in the soft hour
Of heart-dissolving passion's prime and power,
XX.

It makes man giddy but to think upon

Such pride of beauty in a queen's caresses;
Yet deem not Mary's eye untroubled shone

Beneath yon glorious canopy of tresses;
Ah no! the household fiend his curse had blown
Upon her radiance, and those old distresses
Had dropt their shadow on her fairest day-
Thy spectre-presage, woeful Fotheringay!

XXI:

The pulse of that high blood that boiled within
Was such as meaner mortals cannot know-
Hardly could aught that pleased appear a sin

Unto a nature that was fashioned so
For sway-when once such torrent might begin
To lap poor reason in its perilous flow,
What wonder that resistance none should keep
Back from the surface of the audacious leap?

XXII.

Perchance the snowy lilies of her breast
Had all been nipped even in their opening bloom,
And scattered into dust by the same pest
Which hung his sable o'er the early tomb

Of Francis-broken thus the delicate rest
Of young confiding love, there was no room
To frame another dream of woof so pure
Whereon the soul might couch in peace secure.+

XXIII.

And so, perchance, what followed-all her years
Of riper, richer, more effulgent glory—
Were but a gaudy mask to cover tears-

And the worst deeds that stain her doleful story,
But the mad tricks of sorrow-and the shears

That cropped those locks of hers, untimely hoary+,
The harbingers of a most welcome steal,
Which lopped for ever that which would not heal.

XXIV.

But upon cold and heartless days she fell,

When men threw charity from faith away;
And even her heavenly face possest no spell,

The demon of their bigot rage to lay;
And she was left to one who loved full well,
And practised all the privilege of sway-
And erred, perchance, as much as Mary did,
Albeit her better craft her errors hid.

* James V.

+ The beautiful ballad, composed by Mary herself on the death of her first husband, the Dauphin might perhaps be adduced in support of this idea, as indeed it already has been by Brantome.

En mon triste et doux chant
D'un ton fort lamentable,
Je jette un œil tranchant
De perte irreparable,
Et in soupirs cuisants

Passe mes meilleurs ans.

Fut il un tel malheur

De dure destineé

Ny si triste douleur

De Dame fortunee,

Qui mon coeur et mon œil
Vois en bierre et cercueil ?

Qui en mon doux printems,
Et fleur de ma jeunesse,
Toutes les peines sens
D'une extreme tristesse
Et rien n'ay plaisir,
Qu'en regret et desir.

Les cheveux etaint dejas blancs, qu'elle ne craignoit pourtant, estant en vie, de les monstrer, ny de les tordre et friser comme quand elle les avoit si beaux, si blonds, et cendrez; car ce n'estoit pas la vieillesse qui les avoit si changez en l'age de trent-cinq ans ; mais c'estoient les ennuys, les triştesses, et maux qu'elle avoit endurez en son Royaune et en sa prison. BRANTOME.