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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. MAR. u, 191*.
The Cynick hugs his Poverty,
The Pelican her wilderness ; And 'tis the Indian's pride to lie
Naked on frozen Caucasus ; Contentment cannot smart ; stoicks we see Make Torments easy by an apathy.
v. These Menacles upon my arm
I as my Princes favours were [sic] And then, to keep my ancles warm
I have some iron shackles there ; These walls are my garrison, this cell, Which men call jayl, proves but my citadel.
VI.
So he that struck at Jason's life,
Thinking he made his purpose sure,
With a malicious friendly knife Did only wound him to a cure ;
Malice, we see, wants Wit, for what is meant
Mischief, oftimes proves Favour in th' event.
VII.
1 'm in this Cabinet lock't up
Like to some high priz'd Margarite,
Or like the Great Mogul, or Pope, I 'm cloister 'd up from Public sight ;
Retir'dness is a part of Majesty,
And thus, proud Sultan, I 'm as great as thee.
VIII.
Here, Sin for want of food doth starve, When tempting objects are not seen,
And these walls do only serve
To keep Vice out, and not me in ;
Malice of late 's grown charitable, sure,
I 'm not committed, but kept secure.
IX.
When once my Prince afflictions hath
Prosperity doth Treason seem, And then, to smooth so rough a path
I can learn patience, too, from him ; Now, not to suffer shows no loyal heart. When kings want ease, subjects should bear a part
x. What though I cannot see my king
Neither in person, nor in Coin, Yet Contemplation is a thing
Which renders what I have not mine ; My king from me no adamant shall part, Whom I still wear ingraven on my heart.
XL
My Soul 's as free as th' ambient air,
Altho' my baser parts are mew'd, Yet loyal thoughts do still repair .
T' accompany my solitude ; And though Rebellion do by [sic] body bind, None but my king can captivate my mind.
XII. Have you not seen the nightingale
Prisoner-like coop'd in cage, How she does chaunt her wonted tale
In that her narrow hermitage ; Even there her charming melody does prove The perches are her trees, the cage her grove.
XIII.
I am that bird which, they combine
Thus to deprive of liberty, And tho' they do my corps confine,
Yet, maugre Hate, my soul is free ; And, tho' I 'm mew'd, yet will I chirp and sing Disgrace to rebels, honour to my king.
J. B. WILLIAMS.
BIRMINGHAM STATUES AND
MEMORIALS.
THE late meeting of the British Association in Birmingham, the town of Dr. Priestley,. James Watt, and Oliver Lodge, suggests a brief consideration of the Midland capital's public statues and other memorials. It is- remarkable that in so important a centre of industrial and political activity no eques- trian statue has yet been set up, and that, till the other day, of those existing only two- and those the earliest, Nelson (1809) and Peel (1855) were of bronze ; the others being of marble, a material ill suited for statuary in a town where the atmospheric conditions offer a perpetual menace to its- preservation in a state of unsullied purity. There is, however, now a third of bronze Mr. Stirling Lee's statue of the town's first Bishop, Dr. Gore (now Bishop of Oxford),, erected in St. Philip's Gardens, and unveiled on March 6th by the Archbishop of Canter- bury.
A large bronze statue of George IV. cast in Birmingham by Sir Edward Thomason (a fellow- apprentice of Boulton and Watt) in 1823 has never been publicly placed, but only a few years ago was believed to be still in existence in a building situated near the centre of the town. Writing of this lost civic attraction at the time of its creation, a critic remarks :
" It is allowed by men who have a full knowledge of the art to be a fair specimen of easting, and th& likeness has been allowed to be most excellent by all who have witnessed the progress of the model,, standing as it does in all the majesty of truth, and exhibiting a noble specimen of the near approach of Art to the stamp of Nature."
The Thomason works were, in their day, famous among the show-places of the Mid- lands, and were visited in 1830 by the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria. The casting of his Majesty was an event of wide interest locally ; the townspeople thronged the works, " and could with diffi- culty be restrained from entering in over- powering numbers." A picture of the Royal effigy "in all the majesty of truth " reveals a personage in robes of State artistic- ally in keeping with the conventional art productions of its day. Its lack of inspira- tion probably accounts for its relegation to- obscurity. The story of the missing monarch must be a curious one, and its fuller telling would be interesting.
Of a different nature from this are twa attractive figures of a boy and girl, in the school costumes of the period, on the faade
