“You said, in your acknowledgment of my late versicles, that you had never been be-rhymed before. This startled me into the recollection that I had myself once before made free with you in that way; but where the evidence was of my presumption, I could not remember. The verses however, written some three or four years ago, have just turned up, and here they are for you. I forgot, by the bye, to tell you that, a day or two after my return from Combe Florey
* Sir Henry Holland’s youngest daughter. |
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 289 |
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“And still let us laugh, preach the world as it may,
Where the cream of the joke is, the swarm will soon
follow;
Heroics are very fine things in their way,
But the laugh, at the long-run, will carry it
hollow.
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“Yes, Jocus! gay god, whom the Gentiles supplied,
And whose worship not even among Christians
declines;
In our senates thou’st languish’d, since Sheridan died,
But Sydney
still keeps thee alive in our shrines.
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“Rare Sydney! thrice
honour’d the stall where he sits,
And be his every honour he deigneth to climb at!
Had England a hierarchy form’d all of wits,
Whom, but Sydney, would
England proclaim as its primate?
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“And long may he flourish, frank, merry, and brave,
While he laughs, all is safe; but, when Sydney grows grave,
We shall then think the Church is in danger
indeed.”
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