TC-JS [JOST], 27 Sept. Addr: Falmouth. MS: NLS 531.40. Pbd: A. Carlyle, CMSB 247–48, where the address is wrongly given as Clifton.

1. Sterling had sent TC the following lampoon, which TC sent on to Thomas Spedding; see TC to TSS, 30 Sept. It is not clear why he calls it a “Lithograph.”

Falmouth / Septr. 22 — 1841

If thou would'st not be hawked at by Wisdom's own Owl
Or scared to ghost by a Cerberus growl,
Thou shalt believe in despite of all mirth
Our age is the worst that has e'er been on earth.

Thou shalt believe that Mahommed the seer
Is the teacher whom Christians ought most to revere,
That from pure self-denial he slaughtered the foe
And chastely kept wives by the dozen for show.

Thou shalt believe too that Oliver Cromwell
Was by no means a hypocrite skilful to hum well,
And he governed 3 realms by no law but the sword
From no motive in life but the fear of the Lord.

Thou shalt not believe the black cherub Piquetti
Has in not exhumed all that's formal & petty,
Has relieved human life from a Right and a Wrong,
And for Duty's dull psalm taught a bacchanal Song.

Thou shalt believe that the boundless I AM
Has no real opponent in nature but Sham
And the honest denial of Law & of Duty
If not quite a Virtue is doubtless a Beauty

Thou shalt believe that the saffron-hued gloom
Which replaces at present life's manifold gloom,
Is from Earth's unexampled affliction with bile,
And is not from the jaundice of Thomas Carlyle.

This shalt thou believe maugre all thy Conceits
Or be trivial as Socrates doltish as Keats,
A fribble Chimera & vain simulacrum
A blustering Pinchbeck-atom, & nature's Os Sacrum.

P.S. Where are you?

TC gave this the title (in the margin) “Sterling's Epistle to T. C.” and noted his own doggerel lines sent in this reply (MS: John Spedding).

2. “To be human is to err; to be Sterling is to educate”; cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism 525.