When last you left your Woodbridge pretty, To stare at sights, and see the City, If I your meaning understood, You wish'd a Picture, cheap, but good; The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy; To suit a Poet's quiet study, Where Books and Prints for delectation Hang, rather than vain ostentation. The subject? what I pleased, if comely; But something scriptural and homely: A sober Piece, not gay or wanton, For winter fire-sides to descant on; The theme so scrupulously handled, A Quaker might look on unscandal'd; Such as might satisfy Ann Knight, And classic Mitford just not fright. Just such a one I've found, and send it; If liked, I give--if not, but lend it. The moral? nothing can be sounder. The fable? 'tis its own expounder-- A Mother teaching to her Chit Some good book, and explaining it. He, silly urchin, tired of lesson, His learning seems to lay small stress on, But seems to hear not what he hears; Thrusting his fingers in his ears, Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one, In honest parable of Bunyan. His working Sister, more sedate, Listens; but in a kind of state, The painter meant for steadiness; But has a tinge of sullenness; And, at first sight, she seems to brook As ill her needle, as he his book. This is the Picture. For the Frame-- 'Tis not ill-suited to the same; Oak-carved, not gilt, for fear of falling; Old-fashion'd; plain, yet not appalling; And broad brimm'd, as the Owner's Calling.
It was not Obstinate, by the way, who thrust his fingers in his ears, but Christian.
"Hence a _certain line_"--line 16, I suppose.
Martin's "Belshazzar." "Belshazzar's Feast," by John Martin (1789-1854), had been exhibited for some years and had created an immense impression. Lamb subjected Martin's work to a minute analysis a few years later (see the _Elia_ essay on the "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art," Vol. II.). Barton did not give up Martin in consequence of this letter. The frontispiece to his _New Year's Eve_, 1828, is by that painter, and the volume contains eulogistic poems upon him, one beginning--
"Baskervil's"--John Baskerville (1706-1775), the printer, famous for his folio edition of the Bible, 1763.
Doctor William Kitchiner--the author of _Apicius Redivious; or, The Cook's Oracle_, 1817.]