Classic Poem

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY A COLLEGE TUTOR AT A SUPPER-PARTY

YE Dons and ye Doctors, ye Provosts and Proctors,
—Who are paid to monopolize knowledge,
Come make opposition by voice and petition
—To the radical infidel College;
Come put forth your powers in aid of the towers
—Which boast of their Bishops and Martyrs,
And arm all the terrors of privileged errors
—Which live by the wax of their Charters.
Let Macintosh battle with Canning and Vattel,
—Let Brougham be a friend to the ‘niggers,’
Burdett cure the nation's misrepresentations,
—And Hume cut a figure in figures;
But let them not babble of Greek to the rabble,
—Nor teach the mechanics their letters;
The labouring classes were born to be asses,
—And not to be aping their betters.
'Tis a terrible crisis for Cam and for Isis!
—Fat butchers are learning dissection;
And looking-glass-makers become sabbath-breakers
—To study the rules of reflection;
‘Sin:’ and ‘sin: ’—what sins can be sweeter?
—Are taught to the poor of both sexes,
And weavers and spinners jump up from their dinners
—To flirt with their Y's and their X's.
Chuck-farthing advances the doctrine of chances
—In spite of the staff of the beadle;
And menders of breeches between the long stitches
—Write books on the laws of the needle;
And chandlers all chatter of luminous matter
—Who communicate none to their tallows,
And rogues get a notion of the pendulum's motion
—Which is only of use at the gallows.
The impurest of attics read pure mathematics,
—The ginshops are turned into cloisters,
A Crawford next summer will fill you your rummer,
—A Coplestone open your oysters.
The bells of Old Bailey are practising gaily
—The erudite tones of St. Mary's;
The Minories any day will rear you a Kennedy,
—And Bishopsgate blossom with Airys.
The nature of granites, the tricks of the planets,
—The forces of steams and of gases,
The engines mechanical, the long words botanical,
—The ranging of beetles in classes,
The delicate junctions of symbols and functions,
—The impossible roots of equations—
Are these proper questions for Cockney digestions,
—Fit food for a cit's lucubrations?
The eloquent pages of time-hallowed sages
—Embalmed by some critical German,
Old presents from Brunckius, new futures from Monckius,
—The squabbles of Porson with Hermann,
Your Alphas and Betas, your Canons of Metres,
—Your Infinite Powers of Particles,
Shall these and such-like work make journeymen strike work
—And 'prentices tear up their articles?
But oh! since fair Science will cruelly fly hence
—To smile upon vagrants and gipsies,
Since knights of the hammer must handle their grammar,
—And nightmen account for eclipses,
Our handicraft neighbours shall share in our labours
—If they leave us the whole of the honey,
And the sans-culotte caitiff shall start for the plate, if
—He puts in no claim to plate-money .
Ye Halls, on whose dais the Don of to-day is
—To feed on the beef and the benison,
Ye Common-room glories, where beneficed Tories
—Digest their belief and their venison,
Ye duels scholastic, where quibbles monastic
—Are asserted with none to confute them,
Ye grave Congregations, where frequent taxations
—Are settled with none to dispute them—
Far hence be the season when Radical treason
—Of port and of pudding shall bilk ye,
When the weavers aforesaid shall taste of our boar's head,
—The silk-winders swallow our silky ,
When the mob shall eat faster than any Vice-master,
—The watermen try to out-tope us,
When Campbell shall dish up a bowl of our bishop ,
—Or Brougham and Co. cope with our copus .