The Snob

Curse of the Commonwealth, leech, parasite!

Whose back none other labor knows than that

Of rubbing smooth the chairs wheron you sat.

The leopard shall not lose his spots-his load

Of hump the camel- nor his warts the toad,-

Nor grows the snob and flunky unexempt

From physic marks of feature,- and contempt

Of honourable men. The smirked grimace,

The high falsetto titter and the face

With in-drawn lip, the up-screwed eyes and nose,

The parrot stock of speech, -the strut, the pose,-

Such are the signs that Nature sets to mock

The rank decadence of her basest stock.

So, done at last! The scornful muse refrains,

Washes her hands defiled in water clear,

And wipes her sandal-soles upon your rear.

Away! Since even snobs must have their due,

She plants a kick upon your greater you.

Herman George Scheffauer

[from 'Of Both Worlds Poems by Herman Scheffauer' (A. M. Robertson, San Francisco, 1903), pp. 111-2.]

On Observing some names of little note recorded in the Biographia Britannica (September, 1780)

Oh, fond attempt to give a deathless lot

To names ignoble, born to be forgot!

In vain, recorded in historic page,

They court the notice of a future age:

Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land

Drop one by one from Fame's neglecting hand;

Lethæan gulfs receive them as they fall,

And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all........"

The Poems of William Cowper. Ed. By John S. Memes, LL.D. Third Edition. (London: Ball, Arnold, & Co. Paternoster Row. A. & C. Black, Edinbuzrgh. 1840), p.350'