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Title: Alarming Intelligence!
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
REVOLUTION IN THE DICTIONARY--ONE _GALT_ AT THE HEAD OF IT.
God preserve us!--there's nothing now safe from assault;--
Thrones toppling around, churches brought to the hammer;
And accounts have just reached us that one Mr. _Galt_
Has declared open war against English and Grammar!
He had long been suspected of some such design,
And, the better his wicked intents to arrive at,
Had lately 'mong Colburn's troops of _the line_
(The penny-a-line men) enlisted as private.
There schooled, with a rabble of words at command,
Scotch, English and slang in promiscuous alliance.
He at length against Syntax has taken his stand,
And sets all the Nine Parts of Speech at defiance.
Next advices, no doubt, further facts will afford:
In the mean time the danger most imminent grows,
He has taken the Life of one eminent Lord,
And whom he'll _next_ murder the Lord only knows.
_Wednesday evening_.
Since our last, matters, luckily, look more serene;
Tho' the rebel, 'tis stated, to aid his defection,
Has seized a great Powder--no, Puff Magazine,
And the explosions are dreadful in every direction.
What his meaning exactly is, nobody knows,
As he talks (in a strain of intense botheration)
Of lyrical "ichor,"[1] "gelatinous" prose,[2]
And a mixture called amber immortalization.[3]
_Now_, he raves of a bard he once happened to meet,
Seated high "among rattlings" and churning a sonnet;[4]
_Now_, talks of a mystery, wrapt in a sheet,
With a halo (by way of a nightcap) upon it![5]
We shudder in tracing these terrible lines;
Something bad they must mean, tho' we can't make it out;
For whate'er may be guessed of Galt's secret designs,
That they're all _Anti_-English no Christian can doubt.
NOTES:
[1] "That dark disease ichor which colored her effusions."--GALT'S _Life of Byron_.
[2] "The gelatinous character of their effusions." _Ibid_.
[3] "The poetical embalmment or rather amber immortalization."--
_Ibid_.
[4] "Sitting amidst the shrouds and rattlings, churning an inarticulate melody."--_Ibid_.
[5] "He was a mystery in a winding sheet, crowned with a halo."--_Ibid_.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Alarming Intelligence!
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