As did DOMITIAN'S minion.
PARIS lives yet, pander and parasite
Still flaunt in bold impunity, despite
A custom-freed opinion.

"Dull in the drawing-room, our beardless boys
Can sparkle in the haunts of coarser joys,
Coldness and muteness vanish
When TULLIA dances or when POLLIO sings.
With riotous applause the precinct rings,
There chill restraint they banish.

"Behold Lord LIMPET in his gilded Box,
His well-gloved palms and scarlet silken socks
Actively agitated;
He who erewhile about the ball-room stood
A solemn, weary, whispering thing of wood,
And sneered, and yawned, and waited."

"Wondrous!" I cried. "The youngster's cheeks flush red,
Wide laugh his lips, and swiftly wags his head,
He cheers, he claps, he chuckles.
Can he, the languid lounger limp and faint
Give way to mirth with the mad unrestraint
Of boys with ribs and knuckles?

"Frankly _canaille_ is that dancing chit
Slang and suggestiveness serve her for wit,
And impudence for beauty.
Yet frigid 'Form' melts at her cockney spell,
'Form,' which votes valsing with the reigning belle
An undelightful duty.

"Bounds on the arch-buffoon, with flexile face,
With bagman smartness and batrachian grace.
Is he not sweet and winning?
Mime of the gutter, mimic of the slum,
Muse of the haunts unspeakable, else dumb,
A satyr gross and grinning?

"LIMPET smiled," he said. "SHAKSPEARE'S boldest wit
Leaves LIMPET listless, but each feature lit
At that last comic chorus.
London is full of LIMPETS; clownings please
The well-groom'd mob, though ARISTOPHANES
Would miserably bore us.

"Untile the Town entirely? Nay, good friend,
That were to affright the timid, and offend
The tender and the trustful.
Unlifted yet must lie the dusky screen
That veils the viler features of the scene,
The dread and the disgustful."

"Shadow!" I said, "Civilisation fails,
While surfeits Idleness, and Labour pales.
For all its spread and glitter,
The Titan City lacks its crowning grace
And glory, whilst its pleasure is so base,
Its bondage is so bitter."

"True!" sighed the Shadow, and a softened smile
Seemed to illume the coldness, void of guile,
Of those phantasmal features.
"When from the City's gloom shall flash to light
This truth: The sleek and selfish sybarite
Is meanest of G