Читать книгу My Commonplace Book онлайн

111 страница из 124

Its tinkling tells me that a time is near

Precious to me—it is the Dinner Bell.

O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,

Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:

Seared is, of course, my heart—but unsubdued

Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.

I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen;

But on one statement I may safely venture:

That few of our most highly gifted men

Have more appreciation of the trencher.

I go. One pound of British beef, and then

What Mr. Swiveller called a “modest quencher”;

That, “home-returning,” I may “soothly say,”

“Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day.”

C. S. Calverley (Beer).

These are the two last verses of a parody on Byron. In each of the last three lines there is a literary reference. The first, of course, is to the happy-go-lucky Dick Swiveller of Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop.

The next reference is to the amusing story about Sir Walter Scott that became known about the time Calverley was writing (1862). Scott, in his description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight (“Lay of the Last Minstrel”) says: