HISTORY OF VANBRUGH'S HOUSE.
WHEN Mother Clud had rose from play,
And call'd to take the cards away,
Van saw, but seem'd not to regard,
How Miss pick'd every painted card,
And, busy both with hand and eye,
Soon rear'd a house two stories high.
Van's genius, without thought or lecture,
Is hugely turn'd to architecture;
He view'd the edifice, and smiled,
Vow'd it was pretty for a child :
It was so perfect in its kind,
He kept the model in his mind.
But when he found the boys at play,
And saw them dabbling in their clay,
He stood behind a stall to lurk,
And mark the progress of their work;
With true delight observed them all
Raking up mud to build a wall;
The plan he much admired, and took
The model in his table-book ;
Thought himself now exactly skill'd,
And so resolved a house to build,
A real house, with rooms and stairs,
Five times at least as big as theirs;
Taller than Miss's by two yards;
Not a sham thing of clay or cards:
And so he did; for in a while
He built up such a monstrous pile,
That no two chairmen could be found
Able to lift it from the ground.
Still at Whitehall it stands in view,
Just in the place where first it grew;
There all the little schoolboys run,
Envying to see themselves outdone.
From such deep rudiments as these
Van is become, by due degrees,
For building famed, and justly reckon'd
At court, Vitruvius the Second:
No wonder, since wise authors show
That best foundations must be low:
And now the duke has wisely ta'en him
To be his architect at Blenheim.
But, raillery for once apart,
If this rule holds in every art,
Of if his grace were no more skill'd in
The art of battering walls than building,
We might expect to see next year
A mouse-trap-man chief engineer.
DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING. 1712.
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach:
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own:
The slipshod 'prentice from his master's door
Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor:
Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dexterous airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs:
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel's edge, where wheels had worn the
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drown'd in shriller notes of chimney sweep:
Duns at his Lordship's gate began to meet,
And brick-dust Moll had scream'd through half
the street:
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
SID HAMET THE MAGICIAN'S ROD.
THE Rod was but a harmless wand
While Moses held it in his hand,
But soon as e'er he laid it down,
"Twas a devouring serpent grown.
Our great Magician, Hamet Sid,
Reverses what the prophet did;
His Rod was honest English wood,
That senseless in a corner stood,
Till, metamorphosed by his grasp,
It grew an all-devouring asp;
Would hiss, and sting, and roll, and twist,
By the mere virtue of his fist;
But when he laid it down, as quick
Resumed the figure of a stick.
So to her midnight-feast the hag
Rides on a broomstick for a nag,
That, raised by magic of her breech,
O'er sea and land conveys the witch,
But with the morning-dawn resumes
The peaceful state of common brooms.
They tell us something strange and odd
About a certain magic rod,
That, bending down its top, divines
Whene'er the soil has golden mines;
Where there are none it stands erect,
Scorning to show the least respect:
As ready was the wand of Sid
To bend where golden mines were hid;
In Scottish hills found precious ore,
Where none e'er look'd for it before;
And by a gentle bow divined
How well a cully's purse was lined;
To a forlorn and broken rake,
Stood without motion, like a stake.
The rod of Hermes was renown'd
For charms above and under ground;
To sleep could mortal eyelids fix,
And drive departed souls to Styx:
That rod was just a type of Sid's,
Which o'er a British senate's lids
Could scatter opium full as well,
And drive as many souls to hell.
Sid's Rod was slender, white, and tall,
Which oft he used to fish withal;
A plaice was fasten'd to the hook,
And many score of gudgeons took;
Yet still so happy was his fate,
He caught his fish, and saved his bait.
Sid's brethren of the conjuring tribe
A circle with their rods describe,
Which proves a magical redoubt
To keep mischievous spirits out.
Sid's Rod was of a larger stride,
And made a circle thrice as wide,
Where spirits throng'd with hideous din,
And he stood there to take them in;
But when the' enchanted rod was broke,
They vanish'd in a stinking smoke.
Achilles' sceptre was of wood,
Like Sid's, but nothing near so good,
That down from ancestors divine
Transmitted to the hero's line,
Thence, through a long descent of kings,
Came an heir-loom, as Homer sings.
Though this description looks so big,
That sceptre was a sapless twig,
Which from the fatal day, when first
It left the forest where 'twas nursed,
As Homer tells us o'er and o'er,
Nor leaf, nor fruit, nor blossom bore.
Sid's sceptre, full of juice, did shoot
In golden boughs and golden fruit;
And he, the dragon, never sleeping,
Guarded each fair Hesperian pippin.
No hobbyhorse with gorgeous top,
The dearest in Charles Mather's shop,
Or glittering tinsel of May Fair,
Could with this Rod of Sid compare.
Dear Sid! then, why wert thou so mad
To break thy Rod like naughty lad?
You should have kiss'd it in your distress,
And then return'd it to your mistress,
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