From isle to isle, from city unto city, Urging her flight from the far Chersonese To fabulous Solyma, and the Ætnean Isle, Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock, And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez, Æolia and Elysium, and thy shores, Parthenope, which now, alas! are free! And through the fortunate Saturnian land, Into the darkness of the West. Mammon. But if This Gadfly should drive Iona hither? Purganax. Gods! what an if! but there is my gray RAT: So thin with want, he can crawl in and out Of any narrow chink and filthy hole, My eldest son Chrysaor, because he Attended public meetings, and would always Stand prating there of commerce, public faith, Economy, and unadulterate coin, And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills, Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina, And married her to the gallows.1 Purganax. A good match! Mammon. A high connection, Purganax. The bridegroom Is of a very ancient family, Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, And he shall creep into her dressing. And has great influence in both Houses; And room, Mammon. My dear friend, where are your wits? as if She does not always toast a piece of cheese -oh! He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond, New married people should not kiss in public; But the poor souls love one another so! And bait the trap? and rats, when lean | And then my little grandchildren, the To crawl through such chinks enough Purganax. a leech But my LEECH gibbets, Promising children as you ever saw,The young playing at hanging, the elder learning Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round How to hold radicals. rings, Capaciously expatiative, which make And clings, and pulls-a horse-leech, whose deep maw The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, And who, till full, will cling for ever. taught too, They are well For every gibbet says its catechism [A most tremendous humming is heard. Purganax. Ha! what do I hear? Enter the GADFLY. Mammon. Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding. Gadfly. Hum! hum! hum! the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps Of the mountains, I come, 1 "If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone." CYMBELINE. The torch of discord with its fiery hair; If separate it would please me better, queens! Swellfoot is wived! though parted by That pleasure I well The very name of wife had conjugal And made a charge with those battalions Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with Called, from their dress and grin, the Purganax. impanel But I must first A jury of the pigs. Swellfoot. Pack them then. attack Like so many rhinoceroses, and then tusks And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe, Bore her in triumph to the public stye. ground Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin, Purganax. Or fattening some few And they all whisk their tails aloft, and And their young boars white and red Went to the garret of the swineherd's Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking Which overlooks the stye, and made a long cauliflowers Between the ears of the old ones; and Harangue (all words) to the assembled They are persuaded, that by the inherent Of delicacy, mercy, judgment, law, But for my art.-Behold this BAG! it is The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge, On which our spies skulked in ovation through The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: A bane so much the deadlier fills it now, As calumny is worse than death,-for here The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch ; All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor, And over it the Primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism :-"Be thou called The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, To savage, foul, and fierce deformity. No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Of other wives and husbands than their own The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps! Behold their face with unaverted eyes! not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!"— This is a perilous liquor;-good my Lords. [SWELLFOOT approaches to touch the GREEN BAG. Beware! for God's sake, beware!-if you should break The seal, and touch the fatal liquorPurganax. There, Give it to me. I have been used to handle All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty Only desires to see the colour of it. Mammon. Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the stye, and make the pigs Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG Are the true test of guilt or innocence. And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her To manifest deformity like guilt. If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is ; Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest And they will see her flying through the So bright that she will dim the noonday The glorious constitution of these styes Subsists, and shall subsist. The lean sun; Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. see them pig rates Grow with the growing populace of swine, The taxes, that true source of piggishness I'll wager you will (How can I find a more appropriate term Climbing upon the thatch of their low To include religion, morals, peace, and Of one another's ears between their Does the revenue, that great spring of all teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab, The patronage, and pensions, and by payments, Which free-born pigs regard with jealous eyes, Make them a solemn speech to this Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, All the land's produce will be merged in taxes, effect: I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honour of our goddess And the revenue will amount to |