WANTED, AZOLA.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 520, 8 December 1888, Page 14

WANTED, AZOLA.

[' London is in want of a writer like Emile Zola. — English paper.] Wanted, a Zola ! They call him pernicious Because he paints Paris in tints that are true ; He's 'loathsome,' forsooth, and deplorably vicious) Because on his canvas all Bkieß are not blue. His taste, too, how vile ! for he searches the gutter, And catches the strays of corruption and vice. What right has a man, with a message to utter, To shock with that message the well-bred and ' nice ?' Wanted, a Zola, to do for our city A similar service— come favour, come frown — To limn without fingers that falter for pity The terrible blots that disfigure our town. A painter with rooted objections to varnish, With brush photographic that never refines, And eye quick to light on the smudges which tarnish The lustre with which our big Babylon shines. Wanted, a Zola, to give without winoing The working man's home as the State lets it stand A picture of squalor, most efrimly convincing That greed reigus supreme as the lord of the land. It's near to his toil— o, the pitiful reason ! Yet one to poor Labour more vital than all ; And so court and alley rot on for a season, Till light is let. in and the rookeries fall. Wanted, a Zola, to draw the attraction The gin-palace boasts while such hutches remain; While comfort at home is the veriest fraction, The Drink Fiend will ne'er have to beckon in vain. . So the hell-draught goes down till the brute-beast ia floated, And all the true man sinks away out of sight. The sequel? Well, that by the neighbours is noted, As screams from a wife ring out clear on the night. Wanted, a Zola, to ruthlessly paint us The gangrene of sin that so ceaselessly eats. To open our eyes of Tartuffe, and acquaint us With shame as it poisons the air of our stre3ts We see 'neath the glas-glare the pitiful traffic— The throng in the mart of pollution grows thick But — nation of hypocrites ! smile on seraphic, And cry that our fancy has played us a trick. Wanted, a Zola, to rouse from their slumbers The optimist slugorards, contented and bland, Who doze without thought of the wreckage that cambers The leugth and the breadth of the great city's strand. Your scribes who use civet abound — one is needed Whose, lines as they flow from bis scapel-like pen, Will force us to dwell on abuses unheeded ; Because they are glossed to the vision of men.