"Bold was the man, and fenc'd in ev'ry part /With oak, and ten-fold brass about the heart, / To build a play who tortur'd first his brain, / And then dar'd launch it on this stormy main."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for P. Vaillant
Date
1764
Metaphor
"Bold was the man, and fenc'd in ev'ry part /With oak, and ten-fold brass about the heart, / To build a play who tortur'd first his brain, / And then dar'd launch it on this stormy main."
Metaphor in Context
Bold was the man, and fenc'd in ev'ry part
With oak, and ten-fold brass about the heart,
To build a play who tortur'd first his brain,
And then dar'd launch it on this stormy main
.
What tho', at first, he spreads his little sails
To Heav'n's indulgent and propitious gales,
As the land gradual lessens to his eye
He finds a troubled sea, and low'ring sky:
Envy, detraction, calumny, and spite,
Raise a worse storm than when the winds unite.
Around his bark, in many a dang'rous shoal,
Those monsters of the deep, the critics, prowl.
"She's a weak vessel, for these seas unfit,
"And has on board her not a spice of wit:
"She's French-built too; of foreign make," they cry;
Like geese still cackling that the Gauls are nigh.
If thrown on rocks by the hoarse dashing wave,
Th' unhappy crew no hand is stretch'd to save;
But round the wreck, like Moors, with furious joy,
The witlings crowd--to murder and destroy.
These are known dangers; and, still full as certain,
The bard meets other ills behind the curtain.
Little you think, ere yet you fix his fate,
What previous mischiefs there in ambush wait;
What plagues arise from all the mimic throng:
"My part's too short;--and, Sir, my part's too long."
This calls for incident; that repartee.
"Down the back-stairs pen an escape for me.
"Give me a ladder, Mr. Bayes, of rope;
"I love to wear the breeches, and elope.
"Something for me the groundlings ears to split.
"Write a dark closet, or a fainting-fit.
"Fix Woodward in some whimsical disgrace:
"Or be facetious with Ned Shuter's face."
This is our way; and yet our bard to night
Removes each obstacle, and springs to light.
Some scenes, we hope, he brings to nature true;
Some gleams of humour, and a moral too;
But no strange monsters offers to your view:
No forms, grotesque and wild, are here at strife:
He boasts an etching from the real life;
Exerts his efforts, in a polish'd age,
To drive the Smithfield muses from the stage;
By easy dialogue would win your praise,
And on fair decency graft all his bayes.
Provenance
Searching "heart" and "brass" in HDIS (Drama)
Citation
2 entries in ESTC (1764).

No One's Enemy but His Own. A Comedy in Three Acts, As It Is Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden. (London: Printed for P. Vaillant, facing Southampton-Street, in the Strand, 1764). <Link to ESTC>
Theme
Horace, Book I, Ode iii
Date of Entry
06/03/2005

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.