A thankless task! to come to you and marYour dwindling appetite for caviar,And so I told him![He calls within.Sir, the critics sneer,And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"!"Too trivial"! or for an instant pauseAnd doubly damn with negligent applause!Impute, in fine, the prowess of the VicarLess to repentance than to too much liquor!Find Louis naught! de Gâtinais inane!Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain,And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine!Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save—You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave.
[He retires behind the curtain and is thrust outagain. He resolves to make the best of it.
The author's obdurate, and bids me sayThat—since the doings of our far-off daySmacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea—His tiny pictures of that tiny timeAim little at the lofty and sublime,And paint no peccadillo as a crime—Since when illegally light midges mate,Or flies purloin, or gnats assassinate,No sane man hales them to the magistrate.
Or so he says. He merely strove to findAnd fix a faithful likeness of mankindAbout its daily business,—to secureNo full-length portrait, but a miniature,—And for it all no moral can procure.
Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew,And beg indulgence—nay, applause—of you.
Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet,And that our idols all had earthen feet;Grant that we made of life a masquerade;And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed;Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,—Our deeds, the parodies of our intent,In neither good nor ill pre-eminent;Grant none of us a Nero,—none a martyr,—All merely so-so.Andde te narratur.