The Bards of the Tyne
Published in the Tyne Mercury Newspaper, under the Signature of C.P. (Charles Purvis.)
Tune—Newcastle Beer.
Ye sons of Parnassus, whose brains are inspir’d
With envy or madness, dame dullness, or wine,
Who wish to be flatter’d, or prais’d, or admir’d,
Leave thinking, and fly to the banks of the Tyne:
No wit is requir’d
To make you admir’d,
Let doggrel run limping thro’ each crippled line;
No humour degrades,
Nor genius pervades
The verses sublime of our Bards of the Tyne.
No soft flowing numbers must ravish the senses,
Whose soothing meanders a ditty would stain
A muse with such drowsy materials dispenses,
Whilst Grub-street’s quintessence will squeese from the brain:
How sweetly the strains
Must thrill thro’ the veins,
When Sandgate and Bedlam together combine;
Or “Oxygen Gas,”
From the pipe of an ass,
Rarifies the dence brains of our Bards of the Tyne.
With rhymers our Theatre’s always surrounded,
Whose Bellman taught lays set the house in a roar:
Common sense stands aghast, thunder-struck and confounded,
While Dullness brays out from its Gall’ry, Encore!
Then, big with applause,
Crack’s Scotch ell of jaws14
Sets forth a hoarse bawling, so purely divine,
That hydras or bears
Might prick up their ears,
And howl out in concert with Bards of the Tyne.
Notes
14 Alluding to the character of Crack, in the farce of the Turnpike Gate, where Mr Noble performed with true spirit.