’He’s so innate a cockney, that had he been born
Where plain bare-skin’s the only full-dress that is worn,
He’d have given his own such an air that you’d say
’T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. 
His nature’s a glass of champagne with the foam on ’t,
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;
So his best things are done in the flush of the moment;
If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it, 720
But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it. 
He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness,
If he would not sometimes leave the r out of sprightfulness;
And he ought to let Scripture alone—­’tis self-slaughter,
For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. 
He’d have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid,
Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid,
His wit running up as Canary ran down,—­
The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town.

’Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 730
Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban
(The Church of Socinus, I mean),—­his opinions
Being So-(ultra)-cinian, they shocked the Socinians: 
They believed—­faith, I’m puzzled—­I think I may call
Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
Or something of that sort; I know they all went
For a general union of total dissent: 
He went a step farther; without cough or hem,
He frankly avowed he believed not in them;
And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 740
From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. 
There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right
Of privately judging means simply that light
Has been granted to me, for deciding on you;
And in happier times, before Atheism grew,
The deed contained clauses for cooking you too: 
Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot
With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut,
And we all entertain a secure private notion,
That our Thus far! will have a great weight with the ocean,
’Twas so with our liberal Christians:  they bore 751
With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore;
They brandished their worn theological birches,
Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches,
And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail
With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale;
They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See,
And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.;
But he turned up his nose at their mumming and shamming,
And cared (shall I say?) not a d——­ for their damming; 760
So they first read him out of their church, and next minute
Turned round and declared he had never been in it. 
But the ban was too small or the man was too big,
For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig
(He scarce looks like a man who would stay treated shabbily,
Sophroniscus’ son’s head o’er the