Article from Notes & Queries 3rd S. XII. Nov.9, 1867

Date: 1867 [unknown]
Location: Windsor, Berkshire, England
Surname/tag: Stocker

The following account, concerning Herbert Stocker is quoted in Notes & Queries 3rd S. XII. Nov.9, 1867 from Knights Quarterly Magazine, 1823, i.194:-

"Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty?" inquired Frazer. "Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico? That, my most noble cynic, says Gerard, is a prodigious personage. Shall birthdays and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel? He, Sir, is Herbertus Stockhore, who first called upon his muses in the good old days of Paul Whitehead, -- run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and fires--and is now [1823] hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate. Ask Peterson about him, he is writing a quarto on his life and genius.

He ascended his heaven of invention, said Peterson, before the vulgar arts of reading and writing, which are banishing all poetry from the world, could clip his wings. He was an adventurous soldier in his boyhood; but, having addicted himself to matrimony and the muses, settled as a bricklayers labourer at Windsor. His meditations on the housetops soon grew into form and substance; and about the year 1780, he aspired, with all the impudence of Shadwell, and a little of the pride of Petrarch, to the laurel crown of Eton. From that day he has worn his honours on his "Cibberian forehead" without a rival.

And what is his style of composition? said Fraser.

Vastly naive and original, though the character of the age is sometime impressed upon his productions. For the first three odes, ere the school of Pope was extinct, he was a compiler of regular couplets, such as:-

"Ye dames of honour and lords of high renown,
Who came to visit us at Eton town."

During the next nine years, when the remembrance of Collins and Gray was working a glorious change in the popular mind, he ascended to Pindarics, and closed his lyrics with some such pious invocation as this:-

"And now well sing
God save the King,
And send him long to reign,
That he may come
To have some fun
At Montem once again."

During the first twelve years of the present century, the influence of the Lake school was visible in his productions. In my great work I shall give an elaborate dissertation on his imitations of the high priests of that worship; but I must now content myself with a single illustration:-

"Theres Ensign Rennell, tall and proud,
Doth stand upon the hill,
And waves the flag to all the crowd,
Who much admire his skill.
And here I sit upon my ass,
Who lops his shaggy ears;
Mild thing! he lets the gentry pass,
Nor heeds the carriages and peers."

He was once infected (but it was a venial sin) by the heresies of the cockney school; and was betrayed, by the contagion of evil example, into the following conceits:-

"Behold Admiral Keate of the terrestrial crew, Who teaches Greek, Latin, and likewise Hebrew; He has taught Captain Dampier, the first in the race, Swirling his hat with a feathery grace, Cookson the Marshal, and Willoughby, of size, Making minor Sergeant-Majors in looking-glass eyes."

But he at length returned to his own pure and original style; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present Ode which is very pathetic, and almost Shakespearian:-

"Farewell you gay and happy throng!
Farewell my Muse! farewell my song!
Farewell Salthill! farewell brave Captain!"

Yet, may it be long before he goes hence and is no more seen! May he limp, like his rhymes, for at least a dozen years; for National Schools have utterly annihilated our hopes of a successor!

Paterson finished his apostrophe at a lucky juncture; for the band struck up, and the procession began to move.