Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, And Nature to criticise still as you read,-- The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. “He’s so innate a cockney, that had he been born Where plain bare skin’s the only full-dress that is worn, He’d have given his own such an air that you’d say ’T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. His nature’s a glass of champagne with the foam on ’t, As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flush of the moment; If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it andshake it, But, the fixed air once gone, he can never remake it. He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness, If he would not sometimes leave the _r_ out of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone--’tis self-slaughter, For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. He’d have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,-- The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town. “Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban (The Church of Socinus, I mean),--his opinions Being So- (ultra) -cinian, they shocked the Socinians; They believed--faith, I’m puzzled--I think I may call Their belief a believing in nothing at all, Or something of that sort; I know they all went For a general union of total dissent: He went a step farther; without cough or hem, He frankly avowed he believed not in them; And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right Of privately judging means simply that light Has been granted to me for deciding on _you_; And in happier times, before Atheism grew, The deed contained clauses for cooking you too: Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut, And we all entertain a secure private notion, That our _Thus far!_ will have a great weight with the ocean. ’Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore; They brandished their worn theological birches, Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale; They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.; But he turned up his nose at their mumming and shamming, And cared (shall I say?) not a d---- for their damming; So they first read him out of their church, and next minute Turned round and declared he had never been in it. But the ban was too small or the man was too big,