He poised a lengthy ladder on his chin,
And whistled as he bore it up and down.
A figuranté next, with nodding plume,
Upon a rope that stretch'd across the room
He danced, unto the music of a pair
Of castanets, along its slender length,
Then headlong cast himself with all his strength,
And swung, suspended by his tail, in air:—
A sight at which his friends were so much aw'd
They hardly had the courage to applaud.
In short, as juggler, mountebank, or mime,
His style of acting was pronounced sublime;
And even when he made, by sleight of hand,
The cards to come and vanish at command,
You would have sworn, if you had seen the trick,
That he had dealt directly with old Nick.
At length the ape, ambitious to complete
His triumph, undertook the crowning feat—
His master's masterpiece—which so surpass'd
The others, that the juggler, as a treat,
On all occasions kept it to the last.
A sheet was hung between his friends and him,
The lights extinguish'd and the room made dim;
When after a confused preamble, which
Awoke attention to the highest pitch,
He took a magic lantern from its place,
And drawing through the groove each pictured glass,
With an exceeding gravity of face
Announced the different figures that should pass.
"Here comes a king," he cried, "and there a queen;"
But not a glimpse of either could be seen.
" Now stately towers," "now ships upon the main;"
But still the keenest optics stared in vain.
No mystic ring expanded in the gloom,
No form of glory flitted through the room,
But all was darkness; and the blundering ape
Had wellnigh got into a serious scrape:
For, disappointed by his incapacity,
The friends of pug proceeded in their rage
To show some striking symptoms of pugnacity,
And pelt him with derision from the stage.
But, in the very thickest of the din,
The juggler, who had luckily come in,
Rebuked the ape's stupidity, and cried,
"No wonder that the audience are benighted,
And all thy boasted visions undescried;
For, lo, the magic lantern is not lighted!"
Thus let me drop into each author's ear
A piece of counsel—"Keep your meaning clear,
Your statements lucid; for of this be sure,
That dulness only ever is obscure."
V. THE GOAT AND THE HORSE.
1.
A goat, with feet that danced and head that sway'd
In modulated measure to the sound
Of a sweet violin, which, deftly play'd,
Awoke the blandest echoes all around,
Had listen'd long, when, with an air of pride,
He thus address'd a horse which stood beside:
