PHOTOGRAPHIC PHENOMENA, OR THE NEW SCHOOL OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING.
"Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur!"--HENRY IV. "My lords, be seated."--_Speech from the Throne._
Now sit, if ye have courage, cousins all! Sit, all ye grandmamas, wives, aunts, and mothers; Daughters and sisters, widows, brides, and nieces; In bonnets, braids, caps, tippets, or pelisses, The muff, mantilla, boa, scarf, or shawl! Sit all ye uncles, godpapas, and brothers, Fathers and nephews, sons, and next of kin, Husbands, half-brother's cousin's sires, and others; Be you as Science young, or old as Sin: Turn, Persian-like, your faces to the sun! And have each one His portrait done, Finish'd, one may say, before it's begun.
Nor you alone, Oh! slight acquaintances! or blood relations! But sit, oh! public Benefactors, Whose portraits are hung up by Corporations. Ye Rulers of the likeness-loving nations, Ascend you now the Photographic throne, And snatch from Time the precious mornings claim'd By artists famed (In the Court Circular you'll find them named). Sit too, ye laurell'd Heroes, whom detractors Would rank below the statesman and the bard! Sit also, all ye Actors, Whose fame would else die with you, which is hard: Whose _Falstaffs_ here will never _Slenders_ prove. So true the art is! M.P.'s, for one brief moment cease to move; And you who stand as Leaders of great Parties, Be sitting Members! Ye intellectual Marchers, sit resign'd! And oh! ye Authors, men of dazzling mind, Perchance with faces foggy as November's, Pray sit! Apollo turned R.A. The other day, Making a most decided hit. They say. Ph[oe]bus himself--he has become a Shee! (Morning will rank among the Knights full soon) And while the Moon, Who only draws the tides, is clean outdone, The Stars are all astonishment to see Earth--sitting for her portrait--to the Sun!
It's all very fine, is it not, oh! ye Nine? To tell us this planet is going too fast, On a comet-like track through the wilderness vast: Instead of collision, and chances of splitting In contact with stars rushing down the wrong line, The world at this moment can't get on--for sitting: And Earth, like the Lady enchanted in _Comus_, Fix'd fast to her chair With a dignified air, Is expecting to sit for a century there; Much wondering, possibly, half in despair, How the deuce she's to find her way back to her domus.