To starve, or not to starve? that is the question:―― Whether, Sylvester, thou should’st calmly bear The yearns and gripings of internal wants, Or take up arms against the parish treat, And, wille nille, end it?――To eat;――to glut Thy fill;――and, by this feast, to say thou end’st Those cravings and the thousand rav’nous wants That flesh is heir to――’tis an occupation Devoutly to be wish’d. To eat;――to stuff;―― To gorge, perchance be sick! aye, there’s the rub; For in that yearning state what pangs may come, In easing me of superfluities, Must make me pause:――’tis this alone That bids me curb my longing appetite; Else should I tamely bear fell hunger’s cries, My stomach’s wrongs, my bowels’ piercing shrieks, My greedy eye’s desire, the cook’s delay, Who, insolent in office, jade-like taunts My rav’nous appetite, that sneaking waits, When quickly force might satisfy desire With knife and bodkin? What all endure, And grumbling sweat before the blazing fire, But that the dread of sickness afterwards, That painful operation, from whose course No man is free, affrights my will, And makes me rather bear those gripes I feel, Than fly to such as might await the deed? Thus sickness does make cowards of us all; And thus fell resolution, arm’d by want, Sinks, pale and coward-like, the slave of thought; And mighty feats perform’d with knife and fork Are left untried; so is my craving turn’d! I lose the power of eating.―――― From _Rhapsodies_ by W. H. IRELAND, London; Longman and Rees, 1803. [Concerning this William Henry Ireland, and his Shakespearian forgeries, it will be necessary to speak at length in some future number of _Parodies_, for the present it will suffice to mention that he composed a Tragedy, entitled _Vortigern_, which he passed off as a newly discovered work by Shakespeare. The forgery deceived some of the most learned and able critics of the day, and at length, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was prevailed upon to produce it at Drury Lane Theatre. It was only played once, on the second of April, 1796, when Mr. Kemble appeared as Vortigern, Miss Miller as Rowena, and the beautiful Mrs. Jordan as Flavia. The public, more accurate in their judgment than the critics, good humouredly laughed the piece down, and when Kemble had to speak the line:―― “And when this solemn mockery is o’er,” the audience received it in such a manner that the fate of the tragedy was sealed. Ireland’s ingenious devices and plausible manner had convinced several learned and prominent men of the authenticity of the Shakesperian M.S.S. and, as might have been expected, when the imposition was discovered, there were many bitter caricatures and satires published at his expense. One of these, dated December 1797, is a portrait of Ireland, grasping a volume of Shakespeare, with a motto, taken from the _Maid of the Mill_:―― “Such cursed assurance Is past all endurance.”