ode to perry,

the inventor of the patent perryan pen.

“in this good work, penn appears the greatest, usefullest of god’s instruments. firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men, ready to embrace the hand of jew, christian or mahometan,—heavy with the german, light with the italian, oblique with the english, upright with the roman, backward in coming forward with the hebrew,—in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great penn.”

perry’s characteristics of a settler.

i.

o! patent, pen-inventing perrian perry!

friend of the goose and gander,

that now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,

cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,

about the happy fen,

untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,

for which they chant thy praise all britain through,

from goose-green unto gander-cleugh!—

ii.

friend to all author-kind—

whether of poet or of proser,—

thou art composer unto the composer

of pens,—yea, patent vehicles for mind

to carry it on jaunts, or more extensive

perrygrinations through the realms of thought;

each plying from the comic to the pensive,

an omnibus of intellectual sort!

[pg 133]

iii.

modern improvements in their course we feel;

and while to iron-railroads heavy wares,

dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,

mind flies on steel,

to penrith, penrhyn, even to penzance.

nay, penetrates, perchance,

to pennsylvania, or without rash vaunts,

to where the penguin haunts!

iv.

in times bygone, when each man cut his quill

with little perryan skill,

what horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade

appear’d the writing implements home-made!

what pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out,

slit or unslit, with many a various snout,

aquiline, roman, crooked, square, and snubby,

stumpy and stubby;

some capable of ladye-billets neat,

some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk,

and some to grub down peter stubbs his mark,

or smudge through some illegible receipt;

others in florid caligraphic plans,

equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans!

v.

to try in any common inkstands, then,

with all their miscellaneous stocks,

to find a decent pen,

was like a dip into a lucky box:

you drew,—and got one very curly,

and split like endive in some hurly-burly;

[pg 134]

the next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;

the third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;

the fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,

turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail;

and last, not least, by way of a relief,

a stump that master richard, james, or john,

had tried his candle-cookery upon,

making “roast-beef!”

vi.

not so thy perryan pens!

true to their m’s and n’s,

they do not with a whizzing zig-zag split,

straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,

or drop large dots,

huge fullstop blots,

where even semicolons were unfit.

they will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge

in sable sludge—

nay, bought at proper “patent perryan” shops,

they write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;

compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry—

for when the editor, whose pains compile

the grown-up annual, or the juvenile,

vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s,

but lays “by the most celebrated pens,”

what means he but thy patent pens, my perry?

vii.

pleasant they are to feel!

so firm! so flexible! composed of steel

so finely temper’d—fit for tenderest miss

to give her passion breath,

or kings to sign the warrant stern of death—

[pg 135]

but their supremest merit still is this,

write with them all your days,

tragedy, comedy, all kinds of plays—

(no dramatist should ever be without ’em)—

and, just conceive the bliss,—

there is so little of the goose aboot ’em,

one’s safe from any hiss!

viii.

ah! who can paint that first great awful night,

big with a blessing or a blight,

when the poor dramatist, all fume and fret,

fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,

ferment, fault-fearing, faintness—more f’s yet:

flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,—

add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;

funeral, fate-foreboding—sits in doubt,

or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,

to see his play upon the stage come out;

no stage to him! it is thalia’s carriage,

and he is sitting on the spikes behind it,

striving to look as if he didn’t mind it!

ix.

witness how beazley vents upon his hat

his nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:

he kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,

squeezes and twists it up, until the felt

that went a beaver in, comes out a rat!

miss mitford had mis-givings, and in fright,

upon rienzi’s night,

gnaw’d up one long kid glove, and all her bag,

quite to a rag.

[pg 136]

knowles has confess’d he trembled as for life

afraid of his own “wife;”

poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail

of water backing him, all down his spine,—

“the ice-brook’s temper”—pleasant to the chine!

for fear that simpson and his co. should fail.

did lord glengall not frame a mental pray’r,

wishing devoutly he was lord knows where?

nay, did not jerrold, in enormous drouth,

while doubtful of nell gwynne’s eventful luck,

squeeze out and suck

more oranges with his one fevered mouth,

than nelly had to hawk from north to south?

yea, buckstone, changing colour like a mullet,

refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,

from his best friend, an ice,

lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet.

x.

doth punning peake not sit upon the points

of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints,

during their trial?

’tis past denial.

and does not pocock, feeling, like a peacock,

all eyes upon him, turn to very meacock?

and does not planché, tremulous and blank,

meanwhile his personages tread the boards,

seem goaded by sharp swords,

and call’d upon himself to “walk the plank?”

as for the dances, charles and george to boot,

what have they more

of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,

than bear that capers on a hotted floor?

[pg 137]

xi.

thus pending—does not mathews, at sad shift

for voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny?—

serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?—

and kenny think he’s going to kilkenny?—

haynes bayly feel old ditto, with the note

of cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple

about his arms, and adam’s apples

big as a fine dutch codling in his throat?

did rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire

or not to take a jump into the fire?

did wade feel as composed as music can?

and was not bernard his own nervous man?

lastly, don’t farley, a bewildered elf,

quake at the pantomime he loves to cater,

and ere its changes ring, transform himself?—

a frightful mug of human delf?

a spirit-bottle—empty of “the cratur”?

a leaden-platter ready for the shelf?

a thunderstruck dumb-waiter?

xii.

to clench the fact,

myself once guilty, of one small rash act,

committed at the surrey

quite in a hurry,

felt all this flurry,

corporal worry,

and spiritual scurry,

dram-devil—attic curry!

all going well

from prompter’s bell,

until befel

[pg 138]

a hissing at some dull imperfect dunce—

there’s no denying,

i felt in all four elements at once!

my head was swimming, while my arms were flying,

my legs for running—all the rest was frying!