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 REJECTED ADDRESSES: 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE NEW THEATRUM POETARUM. 
 
 BY 
 
 .- JAMES SMITH & HORACE SMITH. 
 
 1 Fireil that the Hot >e reject him ! — 'Sdcath, VM-yrmi it, 
 And shame the Foolfi ! : ' Poi'F. 
 
 TWENTY-FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMAKLE STEEET. 
 
 1855.
 
 "I think the 'Rejected Addresses* by far the best thing of the kind since 
 ' The Rolliad,' and wish you had published them. Tell the author ' I forgive 
 him , were he twenty times over our satirist;' and think his imitations not at 
 all inferior to the famous ones of Hawkins Browne." 
 
 Lokd Byron to Mr. Murray, Oct. 19, 1812. 
 
 " I like the volume of 'Rejected Addresses' better and better." 
 
 Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Oct. 23, 1812. 
 
 "I take the 'Rejected Addresses' to be the very best imitations (and often 
 of difficult originals) that ever were made ; and considering their great extent 
 and variety, to indicate a talent to which I do not know where to look for a 
 parallel. Some few of them descend to the level of parodies ; but by far the 
 greater part are of a much higher description." 
 
 Lord Jeffrey (in 1843), Note in Essays, iv. 470.
 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO 
 
 THE TWENTY-SECOND EDITION. 
 
 James Smith and Hokace Smith, authors of the Rejected 
 Addresses; or, Tlie New Theatrum Poetarum, were the sons 
 of Robert Smith, solicitor to the Board of Ordnance. James 
 was horn at Xo. 36, Basinghall Street, London, on the 10th 
 of February, 1775 ; and Horace in the same house on the 
 31st of December, 1779. 
 
 James waS educated under the Rev. Mr. Burford at 
 Chigwell in Essex ; articled to his father on leaving school, 
 subsequently taken into partnership with him, and eventually 
 succeeded to his father's business, as well as his appointment 
 of solicitor to the Ordnance. Horace received the same edu- 
 cation as his brother, became a member of the Stock Exchange 
 in London, acquired a fortune, and retired with his wife and 
 family to Brighton. James, who lived and died single, was 
 the author of several small copies of verses, since collected 
 by his brother; and Horace was the author of " Brambletye 
 House," a novel in three volumes, well received at the time 
 of its publication. 
 
 The work by which the brothers are best known, and by 
 which they will long continue to be remembered, is the 
 Rejected Addresses. This delightful volume — one of the 
 luckiest hits in literature — appeared on the re-opening of 
 Drury Lane Theatre, in Octol er, 1812 ; the idea, as Horace 
 relates, having been casually started by the late Mr. Ward, 
 secretary to the theatre, exactly six weeks before the night 
 when the opening Address was to be spoken. The hint thus
 
 IV ADVEETISEMENT TO TWENTY-SECOND EDITION. 
 
 thrown out was eagerly adopted. The brothers arranged 
 what authors they should respectively imitate ; and James 
 executed his portion in London, and Horace the remainder at 
 Cheltenham. James supplied the imitations of Wordsworth, 
 Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and Cobbett, and Nos. 14, 16, 
 18, 19, and 20. The Byron was a joint effusion — James 
 contributing the first stanza, and Horace the remainder. 
 The Fitzgerald, the Sir Walter Scott, &c, were by Horace. 
 The corrections which each supplied to the compositions of 
 the other seldom exceeded verbal alterations or the addition 
 of a few lines. 
 
 The copyright, which had been originally offered to 
 Mr. Murray for 201., and refused without even looking at 
 the MS.,* was purchased by that gentleman in 1819, after 
 the book had run through sixteen editions, for 131?. 
 
 James Smith died at his house, No. 27, Craven Street, 
 Strand, on the 24th December, 1839, in the 65th year of his 
 age ; and was buried in the vaults of the church of St. Mar- 
 tin's in the Fields. Horace died at Tunbridge Wells, on the 
 12th of July, 1849, in the 70th year of his age, and was buried 
 in the churchyard of Trinity Church, Tunbridge Wells. 
 
 P. C. 
 
 * See Note at p. xiv. 
 
 1851.
 
 . PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION. 
 
 On the 14th of August, 1812, the following advertisement 
 appeared in most of the daily papers : — 
 
 " Rebuilding of Drury Lane Theatre. 
 
 " The Committee are desirous of promoting a free and fair 
 •competition for an Address to be spoken upon the opening of 
 the Theatre, .which will take place on the 10th of October 
 next. They have, therefore, thought fit to announce to the 
 public, that they will be glad to receive any such composi- 
 tions, addressed to their Secretary, at the Treasury-office, in 
 Drury Lane, on or before the 10th of September, sealed up, 
 with a distinguishing word, number, or motto, on the cover, 
 corresponding with the inscription on a separate sealed paper, 
 containing tbe name of the author, which will not be opened 
 unless containing the name of the successful candidate." 
 
 Upon the propriety of this plan men's minds were, as they 
 usually are upon matters of moment, much divided. Some 
 thought it a fair promise of the future intention of the Com- 
 mittee to abolish that phalanx of authors who usurp the 
 stage, to the exclusion of a large assortment of dramatic 
 talent blushing unseen in the background ; while others con- 
 tended that the scheme would prevent men of real eminence 
 from descending into an amphitheatre in which all Grub 
 Street (that is to say, all London and Westminster) would 
 be arrayed against them. The event has proved both parties 
 to be in a degree right, and in a degree wrong. One hun- 
 dred and twelve Addresses have been sent in, each sealed
 
 VI PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 and signed, and mottoed, " as per order," some written by 
 men of great, some by men of little, and some by men of 
 no talent. 
 
 Many of the public prints have censured the taste of the 
 Committee, in thus contracting for Addresses as they would 
 for nails — by the gross ; but it is surprising that none should 
 have censured their temerity. One hundred and eleven of the 
 Addresses must, of course, be unsuccessful : to each of the 
 authors, thus infallibly classed with the genus irritabile, it 
 would be very hard to deuy six stanch friends, who consider 
 his the best of all possible Addresses, and whose tongues will 
 be as ready to laud him as to hiss his adversary. These, 
 with the potent aid of the bard himself, make seven foes 
 per address ; and thus will be created seven hundred and 
 seventy-seven implacable auditors, prepared to condemn the 
 strains of Apollo himself — a band of adversaries which no 
 prudent manager would think of exasperating. 
 
 But, leaving the Committee to encounter the responsibility 
 they have incurred, the public have at least to thank them 
 for ascertaining and establishing one point, which might 
 otherwise have admitted of controversy. When it is consi- 
 dered that many amateur writers have been discouraged from 
 becoming competitors, and that few, if any, of the professional 
 authors can afford to write for nothing, and, of course, have 
 not been candidates for the honorary prize at Drury Lane, 
 we may confidently pronounce that, as far as regards number, 
 the present is undoubtedly the Augustan age of English 
 poetry. Whether or not this distinction will be extended to 
 the quality of its productions, must be decided at the tribunal 
 of posterity ; though the natural anxiety of our authors on 
 this score ought to be considerably diminished when they 
 reflect how few will, in all probability, be had up for judgment. 
 
 It is not necessary for the Editor to mention the manner in 
 which he became possessed of this " fair sample of the present 
 state of poetry in Great Britain." It was his first intention 
 to publish the whole ; but a little reflection convinced him 
 that, by so doing, he might depress the good, without ele-
 
 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. vii 
 
 vating the bad. He has therefore culled what had the 
 appearance of flowers, from what possessed the reality of 
 weeds, and is extremely sorry that, in so doing, he has dimi- 
 nished his collection to twenty-one. Those which he has 
 rejected may possibly make their appearance in a separate 
 volume, or they may be admitted as volunteers in the files 
 of some of the newspapers ; or, at all events, they are sure of 
 being received among the awkward squad of the Magazines. 
 In general, they bear a close resemblance to each other ; 
 thirty of them contain extravagant compliments to the im- 
 mortal Wellington and the indefatigable Whitbread ; and, as 
 the last-mentioned gentleman is said to dislike praise in the 
 exact proportion in which he deserves it, these laudatory 
 writers have probably been only building a wall against 
 which they might run their own heads. 
 
 The Editor here begs leave to advance a few words in 
 behalf of that useful and much abused bird the Phoenix ; 
 and in so doipg he is biassed by no partiality, as he assures 
 the reader he not only never saw one, but (mirabile dictul) 
 never caged one, in a simile, in the whole course of his life. 
 Xot less than sixty-nine of the competitors have invoked the 
 aid of this native of Arabia ; but as, from their manner of 
 using him after they had caught him, he does not by any 
 means appear to have been a native of Arabia Felix, the 
 Editor has left the proprietors to treat with Mr. Polito, and 
 refused to receive this rara avis, or black swan, into the 
 present collection. One exception occurs, in which the ad- 
 mirable treatment of this feathered incombustible entitles 
 the author to great praise : that Address has been preserved, 
 and in the ensuing pages takes the lead, to which its dignity 
 entitles it. 
 
 Perhaps the reason why several of the subjoined produc- 
 tions of the Mu&x Lonihnenses have failed of selection, 
 may be discovered in their being penned in a metre unusual 
 upon occasions of this sort, and in their not being written 
 with that attention to stage effect, the want of which, like 
 want of manners in the concerns of life, is more prejudicial
 
 Vlll PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 than a deficiency of talent. There is an art of writing for 
 the Theatre, technically called touch and go, which is in- 
 dispensable when we consider the small quantum of patience 
 which so motley an assemblage as a London audience can be 
 expected to afford. All the contributors have been very 
 exact in sending their initials and mottoes. Those belonging 
 to the present collection have been carefully preserved, and 
 each has been affixed to its respective poem. The letters 
 that accompanied the Addresses having been honourably 
 destroyed unopened, it is impossible to state the real authors 
 with any certainty ; but the ingenious reader, after comparing 
 the initials with the motto, and both with the poem, may 
 form his own conclusions. 
 
 The Editor does not anticipate any disapprobation from thus 
 giving publicity to a small portion of the Rejected Addresses ; 
 for unless he is widely mistaken in assigning the respective 
 authors, the fame of each individual is established on much 
 too firm a basis to be shaken by so trifling and evanescent a 
 publication as the present : 
 
 ■ neque ego illi detrahere ausim 
 
 Hsrentem capiti multa cum laude corouam. 
 
 Of the numerous pieces already sent to the Committee for 
 performance, he has only availed himself of three vocal Tra- 
 vesties, which .he has selected, not for their merit, but simply 
 for their brevity. Above one hundred spectacles, melodramas, 
 operas, and pantomimes have been transmitted, besides the 
 two first acts of one legitimate comedy. Some of these 
 evince considerable smartness of manual dialogue, and several 
 brilliant repartees of chairs, tables, and other inanimate wits ; 
 but the authors seem to have forgotten that in the new 
 Drury Lane the audience can hear as well as see. Of late 
 our theatres have been so constructed, that John Bull has 
 been compelled to have very long ears, or none at all ; to keep 
 them dangling about his skull like discarded servants, while 
 his eyes were gazing at pieballs and elephants, or else to 
 stretch them out to an asinine length to catch the congenial 
 sound of braying trumpets. An auricular revolution is, we
 
 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. IX 
 
 trust, about to take place ; and as many people have been 
 much puzzled to define the meaning of the new era, of which 
 we have heard so much, we venture to pronounce that, as far 
 as regards Drury Lane Theatre, the new era means the reign 
 of ears. If the past affords any pledge for the future, we 
 may confidently expect from the Committee of that House 
 every thing that can be accomplished by the union of taste 
 and assiduity. 
 
 [" We have no conjectures to offer as to the anonymous author of 
 this amusiDg little volume. He who is such a master of disguises may 
 easily he supposed to have been successful in concealing himself and, 
 with the power of assuming so many styles, is not likely to be de- 
 tected by his own. We should guess, however, that he had not written 
 a great deal in his own character — that his natural style was neither 
 very lofty nor very grave — and that he rather indulges a partiality for 
 puns and verbal pleasantries. We marvel why he has shut out Camp- 
 bell and Rogers from his theatre of living poets, and confidently expect 
 to have our curiosity, in this and in all other particulars, very speedily 
 gratified, when the applause of the country shall induce him to take 
 off his mask."] 
 
 Lord Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review for Nov. 1812.
 
 PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 PEE FACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH EDITION.* 
 
 In the present publishing era, when books are like the mul- 
 titudinous waves of the advancing sea, some of which make 
 no impression whatever upon the sand, while the superficial 
 traces left by others are destined to be perpetually obliterated 
 by their successors, almost as soon as they are found, the 
 authors of the Rejected Addresses may well feel flattered, 
 after a lapse of twenty years, and the sale of seventeen large 
 editions, in receiving an application to write a Preface to a 
 new and more handsome impression. In diminution, how- 
 ever, of any overweening vanity which they might be dis- 
 posed to indulge on this occasion, they cannot but admit the 
 truth of the remark made by a particularly candid and good- 
 natured friend, who kindly reminded them, that if their little 
 work has hitherto floated upon the stream of time, while so 
 many others of much greater weight and value have sunk to 
 rise no more, it has been solely indebted for its buoyancy 
 to that specific levity which enables feathers, straws, and 
 similar trifles to defer their submersion until they have 
 become thoroughly saturated with the waters of oblivion, 
 when they quickly meet the fate which they had long before 
 merited. 
 
 Our ingenuous and ingenious friend furthermore observed, 
 
 * [l2mo., 1833. The first published by Mr. Murray. The 
 " Preface" was written by Horace Smith ; the "Notes" to the Poems 
 by James Smith.]
 
 PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. XI 
 ^ 
 
 that the demolition of Drury Lane Theatre by fire, its recon- 
 structiorf under the auspices of the celebrated Mr. Whit- 
 bread,* the reward offered by the Committee for an opening 
 address, and the public recitation of a poem composed ex- 
 pressly for the occasion by Lord Byron, one of the most 
 popular writers of the age, formed an extraordinary concur- 
 rence of circumstances which could not fail to insure the 
 success of the Rejected Addresses, while it has subsequently 
 served to fix them in the memory of the public, so far at 
 least as a poor immortality of twenty years can be said to 
 have effected that object. In fact, continued our impartial 
 and affectionate monitor, your little work owes its present 
 obscure existence entirely to the accidents that have sur- 
 rounded and embalmed it, — even as flies, and other worthless 
 insects, may long survive their natural date of extinction, 
 if they chance to be preserved in amber, or any similar 
 substance. 
 
 The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare — 
 But wonder how the devil they got there !— Pope. 
 
 With the natural affection of parents for the offspring of 
 their own brains, we ventured to hint that some portion of 
 our success might perhaps be attributable to the maimer in 
 which the different imitations were executed ; but our worthy 
 friend protested that his sincere regard for us, as well as for 
 the cause of truth, compelled him to reject our claim, and to 
 pronounce that, when once the idea had been conceived, all 
 the rest followed as a matter of course, and might have been 
 executed by any other hands not less felicitously than by 
 our own. 
 
 Willingly leaving this matter to the decision of the public, 
 since we cannot be umpires in our own cause, we proceed to 
 detail such circumstances attending the writing and publica- 
 tion of our little work, as may literally meet the wishes, of 
 the present proprietor of the copyright, who has applied to 
 us for a gossiping Preface. Were we disposed lo be grave 
 
 * [Samuel Whitbread, M.P. He died by his own band in 1815.]
 
 Xll PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 and didactic, which is as foreign to our mood as it was twenty- 
 years ago, we might draw the attention of the reader, in a 
 fine sententious paragraph, to the trifles upon which the fate 
 of empires, as well as a four-and-sixpenny volume of paro- 
 dies, occasionally hangs in trembling balance. No sooner 
 was the idea of our work conceived, than it was about to be 
 abandoned in embryo, from the apprehension that we had no 
 time to mature and bring it forth, as it was indispensable 
 that it should be written, printed, and published by the 
 opening of Drury Lane Theatre, which would only allow us 
 an interval of six weeks, and we had both of us other avoca- 
 tions that precluded us from the full command of even that 
 limited period. Encouraged, however, by the conviction 
 that the thought was a good one, and by the hope of making 
 a lucky hit, we set to work con amore, our very hurry not 
 improbably enabling us to strike out at a heat what we might 
 have failed to produce so well, had we possessed time enough 
 to hammer it into more careful and elaborate form. 
 
 Our first difficulty, that of selection, was by no means a 
 light one. Some of our most eminent poets — such, for in- 
 stance, as Rogers and Campbell — presented so much beauty, 
 harmony, and proportion in their writings, both as to style 
 and sentiment, that if we had attempted to caricature them, 
 nobody would have recognised the likeness ; and if we had 
 endeavoured to give a servile copy of their manner, it would 
 only have amounted, at best, to a tame and unamusing 
 portrait, which it was not our object to present. Although 
 fully aware that their names would, in the theatrical phrase, 
 have conferred great strength upon our bill, we were reluct- 
 antly compelled to forego them, and to confine ourselves to 
 writers whose style and habit of thought, being more marked 
 and peculiar, was more capable of exaggeration and distortion. 
 To avoid politics and personality, to imitate the turn of 
 mind as well as the phraseology of our originals, and, at all 
 events, to raise a harmless laugh, were our main objects ; in 
 the attainment of which united aims, we were sometimes 
 hurried into extravagance, by attaching much more import-
 
 PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. Xlll 
 
 mce to the last than to the two first. In no instance were 
 we thus betrayed into a greater injustice than in the case of 
 Mr. Wordsworth— the touching sentiment, profound wisdom, 
 and copious harmony of whose loftier writings we left unno- 
 ticed, in the desire of burlesquing them ; while we pounced 
 upon his popular ballads, and exerted ourselves to push their 
 simplicity into puerility and silliness. With pride and 
 pleasure do we now claim to be ranked among the most 
 ardent admirers of this true poet ; and if he himself could 
 see the state of his works, which are ever at our right hand, 
 he would, perhaps, receive the manifest evidences they 
 exhibit of constant reference and delighted re-perusal, as 
 some sort of amende honorable for the unfairness of which we 
 were guilty when we were less conversant with the higher 
 inspirations of his muse. To Mr. Coleridge, and others of 
 our originals, we must also do a tardy act of justice, by 
 declaring that our burlesque of their peculiarities has never 
 blinded °us to those beauties and talents which are beyond 
 the reach of all ridicule. 
 
 One of us * had written a genuine Address for the occa- 
 sion, which was sent to the Committee, and shared the fate 
 it merited, in being rejected. To swell the bulk, or rather 
 to diminish the tenuity of our little work, we added it to the 
 Imitations ; and prefixing the initials of S. T. P. for the pur- 
 pose of puzzling the critics, were not a little amused, in the 
 sequel, by tbe many guesses and conjectures into which we 
 had ensnared some of our readers. We could even enjoy the 
 mysticism, qualified as it was by the poor compliment, that 
 our carefully written Address exhibited no "very prominent 
 trait of absurdity," when we saw it thus noticed in the Edin- 
 burgh Review for November 1812 :-" An Address by S. T. P. 
 we can make nothing of; and professing our ignorance of the 
 
 * [This was Horatio, the writer of the present Preface. The enve- 
 lope which enclosed his Address to the Committee was sold with two 
 volumes of the original Addresses at Mr. Wins on s sal e Dec . 14, 
 1849, and was inscribed inside " Horatio Smith, 36, BaanghaU 
 Street."]
 
 XIV PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 author designated by these letters, we can only add, that the 
 Address, though a little affected, and not very full of mean- 
 ing, has no very prominent trait of absurdity, that we can 
 detect ; and might have been adopted and spoken, so far as 
 we can perceive, without any hazard of ridicule. In our 
 simplicity we consider it as a very decent, mellifluous, occa- 
 sional prologue ; and do not understand how it has found its 
 way into its present company." 
 
 Urged forward by hurry, and trusting to chance, two very 
 bad coadjutors in any enterprise, we at length congratulated 
 ourselves on having completed our task in time to have it 
 printed and published by the opening of the theatre. But 
 alas ! our difficulties, so far from being surmounted, seemed 
 only to be beginning. Strangers to the arcana of the book- 
 sellers' trade, and unacquainted with their almost invincible 
 objection to single volumes of low price, especially when 
 tendered by writers who have acquired no previous name, we 
 little anticipated that they would refuse to publish our 
 Rejected Addresses, even although we asked nothing for the 
 copyright. Such, however, proved to be the case. Our 
 manuscript was perused and returned to us by several of the 
 most eminent publishers.* Well do we remember betaking 
 ourselves to one of the craft in Bond-street, whom we found 
 in a back parlour, with his gouty leg propped upon a cushion, 
 in spite of which warning he diluted his luncheon with 
 frequent glasses of Madeira. " What have you already 
 written ? " was his first question — an interrogatory to which 
 we had been subjected in almost every instance. " Nothing 
 by which we can be known." " Then I am afraid to under- 
 
 * [The passage, as originally written, continued thus : " and among 
 others, so difficult is it to form a correct judgment in catering to the 
 public taste, by the very bibliopolist who has now, after an interval 
 of twenty [only seven] years, purchased the copyright from a brother 
 bookseller, and ventured upon the present edition." To this, on the 
 proof-sheet, the late Mr. Murray appended the following note : — " I 
 never saw or even had the MS. in my possession ; but knowing that 
 Mr. Smith was brother-in-law to Mr. Cadell, I took it for granted 
 that the MS. had been previously offered to him and declined." 
 Mr. H. Smith consequently drew his pen through the passage.]
 
 PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. XV 
 
 take the publication." We presumed timidly to suggest 
 that every writer must have a beginning, and that to refuse 
 to publish for him until he had acquired a name, was to 
 imitate the sapient mother who cautioned her son against 
 going into the water until he could swim. " An old joke — 
 a regular Joe ! " exclaimed our companion, tossing off another 
 bumper. " Still older than Joe Miller," was our reply ; 
 " for, if we mistake not, it is the very first anecdote in the 
 facetiae of Hierocles." " Ha, sirs ! " resumed the bibliopo- 
 list, "you are learned, are you? So, soh !— Well, leave 
 your manuscript with me ; I will look it over to-night, and 
 give you an answer to-morrow." Punctual as the clock we 
 presented ourselves at his door on the following morning, 
 when our papers were returned to us with the observation — 
 " These trifles are really not deficient in smartness ; they are 
 well, vastly well, for beginners ; but they will never do — 
 never. They would not pay for advertising, and without it 
 I should not sell fifty copies." 
 
 This was discouraging enough. If the most experienced 
 publishers feared to be out of pocket by the work, it was 
 manifest, a fortiori, that its writers ran a risk of being still 
 more heavy losers, should they undertake the publication on 
 their own account. We had no objection to raise a laugh at 
 the expense of others ; but to do it at our own cost, uncer- 
 tain as we were to what extent we might be involved, had 
 never entered into our contemplation. In this dilemma, our 
 Addresses, now in every sense rejected, might probably have 
 never seen the light, had not some good angel whispered us 
 to betake ourselves to Mr. John Miller, a dramatic publisher, 
 then residing in Bow Street, Covent Garden. No sooner had 
 this gentleman looked over our manuscript, than he imme- 
 diately offered to take upon himself all the risk of publication, 
 and to give us half the profits, should there he any ; a liberal 
 proposition, with which we gladly closed. So rapid and 
 decided was its success, at which none were more unfeignedly 
 astonished than its authors, that Mr. Miller advised us to 
 collect some Imitations of Horace, which had appeared anony-
 
 XVI PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 mously in the Monthly Mirror* offering to publish them 
 upon the same terms. We did so accordingly ; and as new 
 editions of the Rejected Addresses were called for in quick 
 succession, we were shortly enabled to sell our half copyright 
 in the two works to Mr. Miller for one thousand pounds i ! 
 We have entered into this unimportant detail, not to gratify 
 any vanity of our own, but to encourage such literary be- 
 ginners as may be placed in similar circumstances ; as well 
 as to impress upon publishers the propriety of giving more 
 consideration to the possible merit of the works submitted to 
 them, than to the mere magic of a name. 
 
 To the credit of the genus irritabile be it recorded, that 
 not one of those whom we had parodied or burlesqued ever 
 betrayed the least soreness on the occasion, or refused to join 
 in the laugh that we had occasioned. With most of them we 
 subsequently formed acquaintanceship ; while some honoured 
 us with an intimacy which still continues, where it has not 
 been severed by the rude hand of Death. Alas ' it is painful 
 to reflect, that of the twelve writers whom we presumed to 
 imitate, five are now no more ; the list of the deceased being 
 unhappily swelled by the most illustrious of all, the clarum 
 eivenerabile nomen of Sir Walter Scott! From that distin- 
 guished writer, whose transcendent talents were only to be 
 equalled by his virtues and his amiability, we received favours 
 and notice, both public and private, which it will be difficult 
 to forget, because we had not the smallest claim upon his 
 kindness. " I certainly must have written this myself !" 
 said that fine-tempered man to one of the authors, pointing 
 to the description of the Fire, " although I forget upon what 
 occasion." Lydia White,t a literary lady who was prone to 
 
 * [Between 1807 and 1810. The Monthly Mirror was edited by 
 Edward Du Bois, author of " My Pocket-Book," and by Thomas 
 Hill ; the original Paul Pry ; and the Hull of Mr. Theodore Hook's 
 novel of " Gilbert Gurney."] 
 
 [f Miss Lydia White, celebrated for her lively wit and for her blue- 
 stocking parties, unrivalled, it is said, in "the soft realm of blue May 
 Fair." She died in 1827, and is mentioned in the diaries of Scott and 
 Byron.]
 
 PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. XVU 
 
 feed the lions of the day, invited one of us to dinner ; but, 
 recollectnig afterwards that William Spencer* formed one of 
 the party, wrote to the latter to put him off, telling him that 
 a man was to be at her table whom he " would not like to 
 meet." " Pray, who is this whom I should not like to meet ?" 
 inquired the poet. " !" answered the lady, " one of those 
 men who have made that shameful attack upon you ! " "The 
 very man upon earth I should like to know !" rejoined the 
 lively and careless bard. The two individuals accordingly 
 met, and have continued fast friends ever since. Lord Byron, 
 too, wrote thus to Mr. Murray from Italy— " Tell him I forgive 
 him, were he twenty times over our satirist." 
 
 It may not be amiss to notice, in this place, one criticism 
 of a Leicestershire clergyman, which may be pronounced 
 unique : " I do not see why they should have been rejected," 
 observed the matter-of-fact annotator ; "I think some of them 
 very good !" Upon the whole, few have been the instances, 
 in the acrimonious history of literature, where a malicious 
 pleasantry like the Rejected Addresses — which the parties 
 ridiculed might well consider more annoying than a direct 
 satire — instead of being met by querulous bitterness or petu- 
 lant retaliation, has procured for its authors the acquaintance, 
 or conciliated the good- will, of those whom they had the most 
 audaciously burlesqued. 
 
 In commenting on a work, however trifling, which has 
 survived the lapse of twenty years, an author may almost 
 claim the privileged garrulity of age ; yet even in a pro- 
 fessedly gossiping Preface, we begin to fear that we are 
 exceeding our commission, and abusing the patience of the 
 reader. If we are doing so, we might urge extenuating cir- 
 cumstances, which will explain, though they may not excuse, 
 our diffuseness. To one of us the totally unexpected success 
 of this little work proved an important event, since it mainly 
 decided him, some years afterwards, to embark in the literary 
 career which the continued favour of that novel-reading world 
 
 [* See note on " The Beautiful Incendiary," p. 5G.] 
 
 b
 
 XV1U PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 lias rendered both pleasant and profitable to him. This is 
 the first, as it will probably be the last, occasion upon which 
 we shall ever intrude ourselves personally on the public notice ; 
 and we trust that our now doing so will stand excused by the 
 reasons we have adduced. 
 
 London, March, 1833,
 
 CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page Written by 
 
 I. LOYAL EFFUSION. BY W. T. F 1 Horace. 
 
 II. THE BABY'S DEBUT. BY W. W 5 James. 
 
 III. AN ADDRESS WITHOUT A PHCENIX. BY S. T. P. 10 Horace. 
 
 I James 
 and 
 Horace. 
 
 V. HAMPSHIRE FARMER'S ADDRESS. BY W. C. . 20 James. 
 
 VI. the livejg lustres, by T. M 25 Horace. 
 
 vn. the rebuilding, by r. S 28 James. 
 
 viii. drury's dirge, by laura matilda . . 38 Horace. 
 
 ix. a tale of drury lane, by w. s. . . . 42 Horace. 
 
 x. Johnson's ghost 51 Horace. 
 
 XI. THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. BY THE HON. 
 
 w. s 56 Horace. 
 
 XII. fire AND ale. by M. G. L 61 Horace. 
 
 XIII. PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. BY S. T. C. . . . 65 James. 
 
 XIV. DRURY LANE HUSTINGS 69 James. 
 
 XV. ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. BY DR. B. . .72 Horace. 
 
 XVI. THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. BY EDITOR OF 
 
 M> P 81 James. 
 
 XVII. THE THEATRE. BY THE REV. G. C. . . .85 JaiMS. 
 
 XVIII. MACBETH TRAVESTIE. BY MOMUS MEDLAR . 94 James. 
 
 XIX. STRANGER TRAVESTIE. BY DITTO ... 96 JamCS. 
 
 XX. GEORGE BARNWELL TRAVESTIE. BY DITTO . 98 James. 
 
 xxi. punch's apotheosis, by t. H 102 Horace.
 
 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 i. 
 
 LOYAL EFFUSION. 
 
 By W. T. F. 
 
 [WILLIAM THOMAS FITZGERALD.] 
 [Mr. Fitzgerald died 9th July, 1829, aged 70.] 
 
 " The first piece, under the name of the loyal Mr. Fitzgerald, though as good 
 we suppose as the original, is not very interesting. Whether it be very like 
 Mr. Fitzgerald or not, however, it must be allowed that the vulgarity, servility, 
 and gross absurdity of the newspaper scribblers is well rendered." — Jeffkey, 
 Edinburgh Review. 
 
 WxLLUai Thomas Fitzgerald. — The annotator's first personal knowledge of 
 this gentleman was at Harry Greville's Pic-Nic Theatre, in Tottenham-street, 
 where he personated Zanga in a wig too small for his head. The second tune 
 of seeing him was at the table of old Lord Dudley, who familiarly called him 
 Fitz, but forgot to name him in his will. The Viscount's son (recently deceased), 
 however, liberally supplied the omission by a donation of five thousand pounds. 
 The third and last time of encountering him was at an anniversary dinner of 
 the Literary Fund, at the Freemasons' Tavern. Both parties, as two of the 
 stewards, met their brethren in a small room about half an hour before dinner. 
 The lampooner, out of delicacy, kept aloof from the poet. The latter, however, 
 made up to him, when the following dialogue took place : 
 
 Fitzgerald (with good humour). " Mr. , I mean to recite after dinner." 
 
 Mr. . " I)o you ?" 
 
 Fitzgerald. " Yes: you'll have more of 'God bless the Regent and the 
 Duke of York!'" 
 
 The whole <>f this imitation, after a lapse of twenty years, appears to the 
 Authors too personal and sarcastic ; but they may shelter themselves under a 
 very broad mantle : 
 
 " Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 
 Hi < ■•< iking couplets in a tavern-hall."— Byron. 
 
 Fitzgerald actually sent in an address to the Committee on the 31st of Au- 
 gust, 1812. It was published among the other Genuine Jitji cted Addresses, in 
 one volume, in that year. The following is an extract: — 
 
 " Tin' troubled -hade of Garrick, hovering near, 
 Dropl on the burning pile a pitying tear." 
 
 What a pity that, 'like Sterne's recoi II 'lid not succeed in blotting 
 
 the fire out for ever : That Calling, why not adopt Gulliver's remedy? 
 
 B
 
 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 I. 
 
 LOYAL EFFUSION. 
 
 Quicquid dicunt, laudo : id rursum si negant, 
 Laudo id quoque." Terence. 
 
 Hail, glorious edifice, stupendous ivvork ! 
 God bless the Regent and the Duke of York ! 
 
 Ye Muses ! by whose aid I cried down Fox, 
 Grant me in Drary Lane a private box, 
 Where I may loll, cry Bravo ! and profess 
 The boundless powers of England's glorious press ; 
 While Afric's sons exclaim, from shore to shore, 
 " Quashee ma boo! " — the slave-trade is no more ! 
 
 In fair Arabia (happy once, now stony, 
 Since ruined by that arch apostate Boney), 
 A Phcenix late was caught : the Arab host 
 Long ponder' d — part would boil it, part would roast ; 
 But while they ponder, up the pot-lid flies, 
 Fledged, beak'd, and claw'd, alive they see him rise 
 To heaven, and caw defiance in the skies. 
 So Drury, first in roasting flames consumed, 
 Then by old renters to hot water doom'd, 
 By Wyatt's * trowel patted, plump and sleek, 
 Soars without wings, and caws without a beak. 
 Gallia's stern despot shall in vain advance 
 From Paris, the metropolis of France ; 
 By this day month the monster shall not gain 
 A foot of land in Portugal or Spain. 
 
 * [Mr. B. Wyatt, architect of Drury Lane Theatre, son of .lames 
 Wyatt, architect of the Pantheon.]
 
 LOYAL EFFUSION. 
 
 See Wellington in Salamanca's field 
 
 Forces his favourite general to yield, 
 
 Breaks through his lines, and leaves his boasted Mar- 
 
 mont 
 Expiring on the plain without his arm on ; 
 Madrid he enters at the cannon's mouth, 
 And then the villages still further south. 
 Base Buonaparte, fill'd with deadly ire, 
 Sets, one by one, our playhouses on fire. 
 Some years ago he pounced with deadly glee on 
 The Opera House, then burnt down the Pantheon ; 
 Nay, still unsated, in a coat of flames, 
 Next at Millbank he cross'd the river Thames ; 
 Thv hatch, O Halfpenny ! * pass'd in a trice, 
 Boil'd some black pitch, and burnt down Astley's twice ; 
 Then buzzing on through ether with a vile hum, 
 Tum'd to the left hand, fronting the Asylum, 
 And burnt the Royal Circus in a hurry — 
 ('Twas call'd the Circus then, but now the Surrey). 
 Who burnt (confound his soul !) the houses twain 
 Of Covent Garden and of Drury Lane ? f 
 Who, while the British squadron lay off Cork, 
 (God bless the Regent and the Duke of York !) 
 With a foul earthquake ravaged the Caraccas, 
 And raised the price of dry goods and tobaccos? 
 Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise ? 
 Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies? 
 
 * In plain English, the Halfpenny hatch, then a footway through 
 fields ; but now, as the same bards sing elsewhere — 
 
 " St. George's Fields are fields no more, 
 The trowel supersedes the plough ; 
 Swamps, huge and Inundate ol yore, 
 
 Are changed to civic villas now." 
 
 t [Covent Garden Theatre was burnt down 20th September, 18)8 ; 
 Drury Lane Theatre (as before stated) 24th February, 1809.] 
 
 B 2
 
 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Who thought in flames St. James's court to pinch ? * 
 Who burnt the wardrobe of poor Lady Finch ? — 
 Why he, who, forging for this isle a yoke, 
 Reminds me of a line I lately spoke, 
 " The tree of freedom is the British oak." 
 
 Bless every man possess' d of aught to give ; 
 Long may Long Tylney Wellesley Long Pole live ; j 
 God bless the Army, bless their coats of scarlet, 
 God bless the Navy, bless the Princess Charlotte ; 
 God bless the Guards, though worsted Gallia scoff, 
 God bless their pig-tails, though they 're now cut off; 
 And, oh ! in Downing Street should Old Nick revel, 
 England's prime minister, then bless the devil ! 
 
 * [The east end of St. James's Palace was destroyed by fire, 21 Jan., 
 1809. The wardrobe of Lady Charlotte Finch (alluded to in the next 
 line) was burnt in the fire.] 
 
 f [The Honourable William Wellesley Pole, now (1854) Earl of 
 Mornington, married, 14th March, 1812, Catherine, daughter and heir 
 of Sir James Tylney Long, Bart. ; upon which occasion he assumed 
 the additional names of Tylney and Long.]
 
 THE BABY'S DEBUT. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE BABY'S DEBUT* 
 
 By W. W. 
 
 [WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.] 
 Mr. Wordsworth died 23rd April, 1S50, in his S2ud year.j 
 
 *' Thy lisping prattle and thy mincing gait, 
 All thy false mimic fooleries I ha te ; 
 For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she 
 Who is right foolish hath the better plea ; 
 Nature's true Idiot I prefer to thee " 
 
 Cl-MBERLAXD. 
 
 \J3pokcn in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, 
 who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel HugJies, 
 her uncle's porter.'] 
 
 My brother Jack was nine in May,j 
 And I was eight on New-year's-day ; 
 
 * ["The author does not, in this instance, attempt to copy any of the 
 higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry ; but has succeeded per- 
 fectly in the imitation of his mawkish affectations of childish simplicity 
 and nursery stammering. We hope it will make him ashamed of his 
 Alice Fell, and the greater part of his last volumes — of which it is by 
 no means a parody, but a very fair, and indeed we think a flattering, 
 imitation." — Jeffrey, Edinb 
 
 t Jack and Xancy, as it was afterwards remarked to the Authors, 
 are here made to come into the world at periods not sufficiently remote. 
 The writers were then bachelors. One of them [ James], unfortunately, 
 still continues so, as he has thus recorded in his niece's album: 
 
 " Should 1 seek Hymen's tie, 
 As a poet 1 die — 
 
 Y ■ B I my distresses! 
 
 For what little 
 
 IB ai my name 
 
 Is derived from Rejt ■ ted AMresses." 
 
 The blunder, notwithstanding, remains unrectified, The reader of
 
 KEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 So in Kate Wilson's shop 
 Papa (he 's my papa and Jack's) 
 Bought me, last week, a doll of wax. 
 
 And brother Jack a top. 
 
 Jack 's in the pouts, and this it is, — 
 He thinks mine came to more than his ; 
 
 So to my drawer he goes, 
 Takes out the doll, and, O, my stars ! 
 He pokes her head between the bars, 
 
 And melts off half her nose ! 
 
 Quite cross, a bit of string I beg, 
 And tie it to his peg-top's peg, 
 
 And bang, with might and main, 
 Its head against the parlour-door : 
 Off flies the head, and hits the floor, 
 
 And breaks a window-pane. 
 
 This made him cry with rage and spite : 
 Well, let him cry, it serves him right. 
 
 A pretty thing, forsooth ! 
 If he 's to melt, all scalding hot, 
 Half my doll's nose, and I am not 
 
 To draw his peg-top's tooth ! 
 
 Aunt Hannah heard the window break, 
 And cried, " O naughty Nancy Lake, 
 
 Thus to distress your aunt : 
 No Drury-Lane for you to-day ! " 
 And while papa said, " Pooh, she may ! " 
 
 Mamma said, " No, she sha'n't ! " 
 
 poetry is always dissatisfied with emendations : they sound discordantly 
 upon the ear, like a modern song, by Bishop or Braham, introduced in 
 Love in a Village.
 
 THE BABY S DEBUT. 
 
 Well, after many a sad reproach, 
 They got into a hackney coach, 
 
 And trotted down the street. 
 I saw them go : one horse was blind, 
 The tails of both hung down behind, 
 
 Their shoes were on their feet. 
 
 The chaise in which poor brother Bill 
 Used to be drawn to Pentonville, 
 
 Stood in the lumber-room : 
 I wiped the dust from off the top, 
 While Molly mopp'd it with a mop, 
 
 And brushed it with a broom. 
 
 My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, 
 Came in at six to black the shoes, 
 
 (I always talk to Sam :) 
 So what does he, but takes, and drags 
 Me in the chaise along the flags, 
 
 And leaves me where I am. 
 
 My father's Avails are made of brick, 
 But not so tall, and not so thick 
 
 As these ; and, goodness me ! 
 My father's beams are made of wood, 
 But never, never half so good 
 
 As those that now I see. 
 
 What a large floor ! 'tis like a town ! 
 The carpet, when they lay it down. 
 
 Won't hide it, I 'II be bound ; 
 And there 's a row of lamps ! — ray eye ! 
 How they do blaze ! I wonder why 
 
 They keep them on the ground.
 
 8 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 At first I caught hold of the wing, 
 And kept away ; but Mr. Thing- 
 
 um bob, the prompter man, 
 Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, 
 And said, " Go on, my pretty love ; 
 
 Speak to 'em, little Nan. 
 
 " You 've only got to curtsey, whisp- 
 er, hold your chin up, laugh, and lisp, 
 
 And then you 're sure to take : 
 I 've known the day when brats, not quite 
 Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night ; * 
 
 Then why not Nancy Lake ? " 
 
 But while I 'm speaking, where 's papa ? 
 And where 's my aunt? and where 's mamma? 
 
 Where 's Jack ? O, there they sit ! 
 They smile, they nod ; I '11 go my ways, 
 And order round poor Billy's chaise, 
 
 To join them in the pit. ' 
 
 # 
 
 This alludes to the Young Betty mania. The writer was in the 
 stage-bos at the height of this young gentleman's popularity. One of 
 the other occupants offered, in a loud voice, to prove that Young Betty 
 did not understand Shakespeare. "Silence!" was the cry; but he 
 still proceeded. "Turn him out!" was the next ejaculation. He 
 still vociferated " He does not understand Shakespeare ;" and was 
 consequently shouldered into the lobby. " I'll prove it to you," said 
 the critic to the doorkeeper. " Prove what, sir?" " That he does 
 not understand Shakespeare." This was Moliere's housemaid with a 
 vengeance. 
 
 Young Betty may now [1833] be seen walking about town — a 
 portly personage, aged about forty — clad in a furred and frogged 
 surtout ; probably muttering to himself (as he has been at college), 
 " mihi prateritos !" &c. [He is still alive, 1854. Master Betty, 
 or the " Young Roscius," was born in 1791, and made his first appear- 
 ance on a London stage as Achmet in " Barbarossa," at Covent Garden 
 Theatre, on the 1st of December, 1804. He was, therefore, "not 
 quite thirteen." He lasted two seasons.]
 
 THE BABY'S DEBUT. 
 
 And now, good gentlefolks, I go 
 To join mamma, and see the show ; 
 
 So, bidding you adieu, 
 I curtsey, like a pretty miss, 
 And if you '11 blow to me a kiss, 
 
 I '11 blow a kiss to you. 
 
 [Bloics a kiss, and exit.1
 
 10 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 III. 
 
 AN ADDRESS WITHOUT A PHOENIX * 
 
 By S. T. P.f 
 
 " This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked." 
 
 Wliat Tou Will. 
 
 What stately vision mocks my waking sense ? 
 
 Hence, dear delusion, sweet enchantment, hence ! 
 
 Ha ! is it real ? — can my doubts be vain ? 
 
 It is, it is, and Drury lives again ! 
 
 Around each grateful veteran attends, 
 
 Eager to rush and gratulate his friends, 
 
 Friends whose kind looks, retraced with proud delight, 
 
 Endear the past, and make the future bright : 
 
 Yes, generous patrons, your returning smile 
 
 Blesses our toils, and consecrates our pile. 
 
 When last we met, Fate's unrelenting hand 
 Already grasped the devastating brand ; 
 Slow crept the silent flame, ensnared its prize, 
 Then burst resistless to the astonished skies. 
 
 * [A "Phoenix" was perhaps excusable. The first theatre in 
 Drury Lane was called " The Cock-pit or Phcenix Theatre." Whit- 
 bread himself wrote an address, it is said, for the occasion ; like the 
 others, it had of course a Phoenix*. " But Whitbread," said Sheridan, 
 " made more of the bird than any of them ; he entered into par- 
 ticulars, and described its wings, beak, tail, &c. ; in short, it was a 
 poulterer's description of a Phcenix."] 
 
 f For an account of this anonymous gentleman, see Preface, xiii.
 
 AN ADDEESS WITHOUT A PHCEXIX. 11 
 
 The glowing walls, disrobed of scenic pride, 
 In trembling conflict stemmed the burning tide, 
 Till crackling, blazing, rocking to its fall, 
 Down rushed the thundering roof, and buried all ! 
 
 Where late the sister Muses sweetly sung, 
 And raptured thousands on their music hung, 
 "Where Wit and Wisdom shone, by Beauty graced, 
 Sat lonely Silence, empress of the waste ; 
 And still had reigned — but he, whose voice can raise 
 More magic wonders than Amphion's lays, 
 Bade jarring bands with friendly zeal engage 
 To rear the prostrate glories of the stage. 
 Up leaped the Muses at the potent spell, 
 And Dairy's genius saw his temple swell ; 
 Worthv, we hope, the British Drama's cause, 
 Worthy of British arts, and your applause. 
 
 Guided by you, our earnest aims presume 
 To renovate the Drama with the dome ; 
 The scenes of Shakespeare and our bards of old 
 With due observance splendidly unfold, 
 Yet raise and foster with parental hand 
 The living talent of our native land. 
 O ! may we still, to sense and nature true, 
 Delight the many, nor oflend the few. 
 Though varying tastes our changeful Drama claim, 
 Still be its moral tendency the same, 
 To win by precept, by example warn, 
 To brand the front of Vice with pointed scorn, 
 And Virtue's smiling brows with votive wreaths adom.
 
 12 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CUI BONO? 
 
 By LORD B.* 
 
 [LORD BYRON.] 
 [Lord Byron died 19th April, 1824, in his 37th year.] 
 
 Sated with home, of wife, of children tired. 
 The restless soul is driven abroad to roam ; j" 
 Sated abroad, all seen, yet nought admired, 
 The restless soul is driven to ramble home ; 
 
 * " The author has succeeded better in copying the melody and 
 misanthropic sentiments of Childe Harold, than the nervous and 
 impetuous diction in which his noble biographer has embodied them. 
 The attempt, however, indicates very considerable power ; and the 
 flow of the verse and the construction of the poetical period are imi- 
 tated with no ordinary skill." — Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 ■f This would seem to show that poet and prophet are synonymous, 
 the noble bard having afterwards returned to England, and again 
 quitted it, under domestic circumstances painfully notorious. His 
 good-humoured forgiveness of the Authors has already been alluded to 
 in the Preface. Nothing of this illustrious poet, however trivial, 
 can be otherwise than interesting. " We knew him well." At 
 Mr. Murray's dinner-table the annotator met him and Sir John 
 Malcolm. Lord Byron talked of intending to travel in Persia. " What 
 must I do when I set off?" said he to Sir John. "Cut off your 
 buttons!" "My buttons! what, these metal ones?" "Yes; the 
 Persians are in the main very honest fellows; but if you go thus 
 bedizened, you will infallibly be murdered for your buttons !" At a 
 dinner at Monk Lewis's chambers in the Albany, Lord Byron expressed 
 to the writer his determination not to go there again, adding, " I
 
 CUI BONO ? 13 
 
 never will dine with a middle-aged man who fills up his table with 
 young ensigns, and has looking-glass panels to his book-eases." Lord 
 Byron, when one of the Drury-lane Committee of Management, chal- 
 lenged the writer to sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the 
 praises of Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, who, by-the-bye, was hissed off 
 the stao-e for an imputed intimacy of which she was quite innocent. 
 The contest ran as follows : 
 
 " Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre, 
 Pour forth your amorous ditty, 
 But first profound, in duty bound, 
 
 Applaud the new Committee ; 
 Their scenic art from Thespis' cart 
 
 All jaded nags discarding, 
 To Loudon drove this tmeen of love, 
 , Enchanting Jlrs. ilardyn. 
 
 » Though tides of love around her rove, 
 1 fear she '11 choose Pactolus — 
 • In that bright surge bards ne'er immerge, 
 So I must e'en swim solus. 
 ' Out, out, alas 1' ill-fated gas, 
 
 That shiu'st roimd Covent Garden, 
 Thy ray how fiat, cum pared with that 
 From eye of Mrs. Mardyn ! " 
 
 And so on. The reader has, no doubt, already discovered " which is 
 the justice, and which is the thief." 
 
 Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white 
 sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it ; a black coat and waist- 
 coat, and very broad white trousers to hide his lame foot — these 
 were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the evening. His 
 watch-chaiu had a number of small gold seals appended to it, and was 
 looped up to a button of his waistcoat. His face was void of colour; 
 he wore no whiskers. His eyes were grey, fringed with long black 
 lashes; and his air was imposing, but rather supercilious. He under- 
 valued David Hume; denvinc his claim to genius on account of his 
 bulk, and calling him, from the Heroic Epistle, 
 
 " The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty." 
 
 One of this extraordinaiy man's allegations was, that " fat is an oily 
 dropsy." To stave oil' its visitation, he frequently chewed tobacco in 
 lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the gastric juice of the 
 stomach, and prevented hunger. " Pass your hand down my side," 
 said his Lordship to the writer; " can you count my ribs?" " Every 
 one of them." "lam delighted to hear you say so. I called last 
 
 week on Lady- • ; 'Ah, Lord Byron,' said she, 'how fat you 
 
 grow !' But you know Lady is fond of savin- spiteful tin: 
 
 Let this gossip be summed up with the words of Lo I srfield, in 
 
 his character of Bolingbroke : " Upon the whole, on a survey of this 
 extraordinary character, what can we say, but ' Alas, poor human 
 nature!'" 
 
 His
 
 14 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Sated with both, beneath new Drury's dome 
 The fiend Ennui awhile consents to pine, 
 There growls, and curses, like a deadly Gnome, 
 Scorning to view fantastic Columbine, 
 Viewing with scorn and hate the nonsense of the Nine.* 
 
 II. 
 
 Ye reckless dupes, who hither wend your way 
 To gaze on puppets in a painted dome, 
 Pursuing pastimes glittering to betray, 
 Like falling stars in life's eternal gloom, 
 What seek ye here ? Joy's evanescent bloom ? 
 Woe 's me ! the brightest wreaths she ever gave 
 Are but as flowers that decorate a tomb. 
 Man's heart, the mournful urn o'er which they wave, 
 Is sacred to despair, its pedestal the grave. 
 
 in. 
 Has life so little store of real woes, 
 That here ye wend to taste fictitious grief? 
 
 His favourite Pope's description of man is applicable to Byron 
 individually : 
 
 " Chaos of thought and passion all confused, 
 Still by himself abused or disabused ; 
 Created part to rise and part to fall, 
 Great lord of ail things, yet a slave to all ; 
 Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled — 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world." 
 
 The writer never heard him allude to his deformed foot except 
 upon one occasion, when, entering the green-room of Drury-lane, he 
 found Lord Byron alone, the younger Byrne and Miss Smith the 
 dancer having just left him, after an angry conference about upas seul. 
 " Had you been here a minute sooner," said Lord B., " you would 
 have heard a question about dancing referred to me : — me! (looking 
 mournfully downward) whom fate from my birth has prohibited from 
 taking a single step." 
 
 * [The first stanza (see Preface) was w r ritten by James Smith ; 
 the remainder by Horace.]
 
 CUIBOXO? 15 
 
 Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, 
 Ye court the lying drama for relief? 
 Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief: 
 Or if one tolerable page appears 
 In folly's volume, 'tis the actor's leaf, 
 Who dries his own by drawing others' tears, 
 And, raising present mirth, makes glad his future years. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Albeit, how like Young Betty* doth he flee ! 
 Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, 
 He liveth onlv in man's present e'e ; 
 His life a flash, his memory a dream, 
 Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream. 
 Yet what are they, the learned and the great? 
 Awhile of longer wonderment the theme ! 
 Who shall presume to prophesy their date, 
 Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty of fate ? 
 
 This goodly pile, upheaved by Wyatt's toil, 
 Perchance than Holland's edifice f more fleet, 
 Again red Lemnos' artisan may spoil : 
 The fire-alarm and midnight drum may beat, 
 
 * [See Note, p. 8.] 
 
 f " Holland's edifice." The late theatre was built by Holland the 
 architect. The writer visited it on the night of its opening [April 21, 
 1794-]. The performances were Macbeth and the Virgin Unmasked. 
 Between the play and the farce, an excellent epilogue, written by 
 George Colman, was excellently spoken by Miss Farren. It referred 
 to the iron curtain which was, in the event of fire, to be let down 
 between the stage and the audience, and which accordingly descended, 
 by way of experiment, leaving Miss Farren between the lamps and the 
 curtain. The fair speaker informed the audience, that should the 
 fire break out on the stage (where it usually originates), it would 
 thus be kept from the spectators ; adding, with great solemnity —
 
 16 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 And all bestrewed ysmoking at your feet ! 
 Start ye ? perchance Death's angel may be sent 
 Ere from the flaming temple ye retreat : 
 And ye who met, on revel idlesse bent, 
 May find, in pleasure's fane, your grave and monument. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Your debts mount high — ye plunge in deeper waste; 
 The tradesman duns — no warning voice ye hear ; 
 The plaintiff sues — to public shows ye haste ; 
 The bailiff threats — ye feel no idle fear. 
 Who can arrest your prodigal career ? 
 Who can keep down the levity of youth ? 
 What sound can startle age's stubborn ear? 
 
 "No! we assure our generous benefactors 
 'Twill only burn the scenery and the actors ! " 
 
 A tank of water was afterwards exhibited, in the course of the 
 epilogue, in which a wherry was rowed by a real live man, the band 
 playing — 
 
 " And did you not hear of a jolly young waterman ?" 
 Miss Farren reciting — 
 
 " Sit still, there 's nothing in it, 
 
 We '11 undertake to drown you in a single minute." 
 
 " vain thought!" as Othello says. Notwithstanding the boast in 
 the epilogue— 
 
 " Blow, wind — come, rack, in ages yet unborn, 
 Our castle's strength shall laugh a siege to scorn " — 
 
 the theatre fell a victim to the flames within fifteen years from the 
 prognostic ! These preparations against fire always presuppose pre- 
 sence of mind and promptness in those who are to put them into 
 action. They remind one of the dialogue, in Morton's Speed the 
 Plough, between Sir Able Handy and his son Bob: 
 
 " Bob. Zounds, the castle's on fire ! 
 
 Sir A. Yes. 
 
 Bob. Where's your patent liquid for extinguishing fire ? 
 
 Sir A. It is not mixed. 
 
 Bob. Then where' s your patent fire-escape ? 
 
 Sir A. It is not fixed. 
 
 Bob. You are never at a loss ? 
 
 Sir A. Never. 
 
 Bob. Then what do you mean to do ? 
 
 Sir A. I don't know."
 
 CUI BONO ? 17 
 
 "Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth 
 Men true to falsehood's voice, false to the voice of 
 truth? 
 
 VII. 
 
 To thee, blest saint ! who doffed thy skin to make 
 The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, 
 We dedicate the pile — arise ! awake ! — 
 Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy 
 Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, 
 Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth 
 With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy ! 
 While, vibrating in unbelieving tooth,* 
 Harps twang in Drury's walls, and make her boards a 
 booth. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March ? 
 And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl ? 
 And what is Rolla ? Cupid steeped in starch, 
 Orlando's helmet in Augustin's cowl. 
 Shakespeare, how true thine adage " fair is foul ! " 
 To him whose soul is with fruition fraught, 
 The song of Braham is an Irish howl, 
 Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, 
 And nought is everything, and everything is nought. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Sons of Parnassus ! whom I view above, 
 Not laurel-crown'd, but clad in rusty black; 
 
 * A rather obscure mode of expression for Jeics'-harp; which 
 some etymologists allege, by the way, to be a corruption of Jaus'-l&rp, 
 No connection, therefore, with King David. 
 
 C
 
 18 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove, 
 But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack ; 
 What reams of foolscap, while youi brains ye rack, 
 Ye mar to make again ! for sure, ere long, 
 Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track, 
 Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng, 
 And reproduce, in rags, the rags ye blot in song. 
 
 x. 
 
 So fares the follower in the Muses' train ; 
 He toils to starve, and only lives in death ; 
 We slight him, till our patronage is vain, 
 Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, 
 And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe — 
 Oh ! with what tragic horror would he start 
 (Could he be conjured from the grave beneath) 
 To find the stage again a Thespian cart, 
 And elephants and colts down trampling Shakespeare's 
 art! 
 
 XI. 
 
 Hence, pedant Nature ! with thy Grecian rules ! 
 Centaurs (not fabulous) those rules efface ; 
 Back, sister Muses, to your native schools ; 
 Here booted grooms usurp Apollo's place, 
 Hoofs shame the boards that Garrick used to grace, 
 The play of limbs succeeds the play of wit, 
 Man yields the drama to the Hou'yn'm race, 
 His prompter spurs, his licenser the bit, 
 The stage a stable-yard, a jockey-club the pit. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Is it for these ye rear this proud abode ? 
 Js it for these your superstition seeks
 
 CUIBONO? 19 
 
 To build a temple worthy of a god, 
 To laud a monkey, or to worship leeks ? 
 Then be the stage, to recompense your freaks, 
 A motley chaos, jumbling age and ranks, 
 Where Punch, the lignum-vitse Roscius, squeaks, 
 And Wisdom weeps, and Folly plays his pranks, 
 And moody Madness laughs and hugs the chain he 
 clanks. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 EEJEOTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 V. 
 
 HAMPSHIRE FARMER'S ADDRESS. 
 
 By W. C. 
 
 [WILLIAM COBBETT.J 
 [Mr. Cobbett died 18th June, 1835, aged 73.] 
 
 TO THE SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE 
 OF DRURY-LANE PLAYHOUSE. 
 Sir, 
 
 To the gewgaw fetters of rhyme (invented by the 
 
 monks to enslave the people) I have a rooted objection. 
 I have therefore written an address for your Theatre in 
 plain, homespun, yeoman's prose ; in the doing whereof I 
 hope I am swayed by nothing but an independent wish to 
 open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repetition 
 of the dramatic bamboozling they have hitherto laboured 
 under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make 
 use of it, I don't want any such aristocratic reward as a 
 piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a dog 
 and a jackass fighting for a ha'p' worth of gilt gingerbread, 
 or any such Bartholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is that 
 the door-keepers of your play-house may take all the sets 
 of my Register * now on hand, and force every body who 
 enters your doors to buy one, giving afterwards a debtor 
 and creditor account of what they have received, post-paid, 
 
 * [The Weekly Register, which he kept up without the failure of a 
 single week from its first publication till his death — a period of above 
 thirty-three years.]
 
 HAMPSHIRE FARMER'S ADDRESS. 21 
 
 and in due course remitting me the money and unsold 
 Eegisters, carriage-paid. 
 
 I am, &c. 
 
 W. C. 
 
 IN THE CHARACTER OF A HAMPSHIRE 
 FARMER. 
 
 ! Babida qui concitus irsi 
 
 Implevit pariter temis latratibus auras, 
 t Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros." — Ovid. 
 
 Most thinking People, 
 "\Vhen persons address an audience from the stage, it is 
 usual, either in words or gesture, to say, " Ladies and 
 Gentlemen, your servant." If I were base enough, mean 
 enough, paltry enough, and brute beast enough, to follow 
 that fashion, I should tell two lies in a breath. In the 
 first place, you are not Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope 
 something better, that is to say, honest men and women ; 
 and in the next place, if you were ever so much ladies, and 
 ever so much gentlemen, I am not, nor ever will be, your 
 humble servant. You see me here, most thinking people, 
 by mere chance. I have not been within the doors of a 
 playhouse before for these ten years ; nor, till that abomi- 
 nable custom of taking money at the doors is discontinued, 
 will I ever sanction a theatre with my presence. The 
 stage-door is the only gate of freedom in the whole edifice, 
 and through that I made my way from Bagshaw's * in 
 Brydges Street, to accost you. Look about you. Are 
 you not all comfortable ? Nay, never slink, mun ; speak 
 out, if you are dissatisfied, and tell me so before I leave 
 town. You are now (thanks to Mr. Whithread) got 
 into a large, comfortable house. Not into a gimcrack- 
 
 * Bagshaw". At that time the publisher of Cobbett'-; Register.
 
 22 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 palace ; not into a Solomon's temple ; not into a frost-work 
 of Brobdignag filigree ; but into a plain, honest, homely, 
 industrious, wholesome, broicn brick playhouse. You have 
 been struggling for independence and elbow-room these 
 three years ; and who gave it you ? Who helped you out 
 of Lilliput ? Who routed you from a rat-hole five inches 
 by four, to perch you in a palace ? Again and again I 
 answer, Mr. Whitbreacl. You might have sweltered in 
 that place with the Greek name * till doomsday, and 
 neither Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Canning, no, nor the 
 Marquess Wellesley, would have turned a trowel to help 
 you out ! Remember that. Never forget that. Eead it 
 to your children, and to your children's children ! And 
 now, most thinking people, cast your- eyes over my head to 
 what the builder (I beg his pardon, the architect) calls 
 the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to 
 keep the people in the dark. No veluti in speculum. 
 Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for 
 they ought to die, ay and be damned to boot ! The 
 Covent Garden manager tried that, and a pretty business 
 he made of it ! When a man says veluti in speculum, he 
 is called a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man 
 who cries 0. P. a man of letters t6o ? You ran your 
 O. P. against his veluti in speculum, and pray which beat? 
 I prophesied that, though I never told any body. I take 
 it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and 
 child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally and 
 respectively in Little Russell Street, and cast their, his, 
 her, and its eyes on the outside of this building before they 
 paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brick- 
 
 * The old Lyceum Theatre, pulled down by Mr. Arnold. That 
 since destroyed by fire [16th Feb., 1830] was erected on its site. 
 [The Drury Lane Company performed at the Lyceum till the house 
 was rebuilt.]
 
 HAMPSHIRE FARMER'S ADDRESS. 23 
 
 work, English Audience! Look at the brick-work! All 
 plain and smooth like a quakers' meeting. None of your 
 Egyptian pyramids, to entomb subscribers' capitals. No 
 overgrown colonnades of stone,* like an alderman's gouty 
 legs in white cotton stockings, fit only to use as rammers 
 for paving Tottenham Court Road. This house is neither 
 after the model of a temple in Athens, no, nor a temple in 
 Moorfidds, but it is built to act English plays in : and, 
 provided you have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, 
 .1 daresay you wouldn't break your hearts if the outside 
 were as plain, as the pikestaff I used to carry when I was 
 a sergeant. Apropos, as the French valets say, who cut 
 their masters' throats f — apropos, a word about dresses. 
 You must, many of you, have seen what I have read a 
 description of, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, 
 with more gold and silver plastered on their doublets than 
 would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and 
 flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, 
 (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed 
 that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with 
 here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, 
 a cotton gown, and a mob cap (as the court parasites call 
 it ; — it will be well for them if, one of these days, they 
 don't wear a mob cap — I mean a white cap, with a mob to 
 look at them) ; and Macbeth is to appear in an honest 
 yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. 
 Not /SWamanca; no, nor Talavera neither, my most 
 Noble Marquess ; but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff 
 
 * [The present colonnade in Link- Russell Street formed no part of 
 the original design, and was erected only a few year's back.] 
 
 j- An allusion to a murder then recently committed on Barnes 
 Terrace. [The murder (22nd July, 1812 i of the Count and l 
 D'Antraigues (distantly related to the Bourbons), by a servant oul of 
 livery of the name of Laurence — an Italian or riedmoutese, who 
 made away with himself immediately after.]
 
 24 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 breeches. This is right; this is as it should be. Most 
 thinking people, I have heard you much abused. There is 
 not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a 
 rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your 
 teeth You are called the mob; and when they have 
 made you out to be the mob, you are called the scum of 
 the people, and the dregs of the people. I should like to 
 know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth — 
 not cheap soup, Mr. Wilberforce — not soup for the poor, 
 at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horses' legs, brick- 
 dust, and old shoes, was denominated — but plain, whole- 
 some, patriotic beef or mutton broth ; take this, examine 
 it, and you will find — mind, I don't vouch for the fact, 
 but I am told — you will find the dregs at the bottom, and 
 the scum at the top. I will endeavour to explain this to 
 you : England is a large earthenware pipkin ; John Bull is 
 the beef thrown into it ; taxes are the hot water he boils 
 in ; rotten boroughs are the fuel that blazes under this 
 same pipkin ; parliament is the ladle that stirs the hodge- 
 podge, and sometimes . But, hold ! I don't wish to 
 
 pay Mr. Netoman * a second visit. I leave you better off 
 than you have been this many a day : you have a good 
 house over your head ; you have beat the French in Spain ; 
 the harvest has turned out well ; the comet keeps its dis- 
 tance ; \ and red slippers are hawked about in Constanti- 
 nople for next to nothing ; and for all this, again and again 
 I tell you, you are indebted to Mr. Whitbread ! ! ! 
 
 * At that time keeper of Newgate. The present superintendent 
 (1833) is styled Governor! 
 
 f A portentous one that made its appearance in the year 1811 ; in 
 the midst of the war, 
 
 " with fear of change 
 Perplexing nations."
 
 THE LIVING LUSTRES. 25 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE LIVING LUSTEES. 
 
 By T. M.* 
 
 [THOMAS MOORE.] 
 [Mr. Moore died 26th February, 1852, in his 73rd year.] 
 
 " Jam te juvaverit 
 Viros relinquere, 
 Doctasque conjugis 
 Sinu quiescere." 
 
 Sir T. More. 
 
 I. 
 
 O why should our dull retrospective addresses 
 Fall damp as wet blankets on Drary Lane fire ? 
 
 Away with blue devils, away with distresses, 
 And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Let artists decide on the beauties of Drury, 
 The richest to me is when woman is there ; 
 
 The question of houses I leave to the jury ; 
 The fairest to me is the house of the fair. 
 
 * " The Living Lustres appears to us a very fair imitation of the 
 fonts tic verues which that ingenious person, Mr. Moore, indites when 
 he is merely gallant, and, resisting the lures of voluptuousness, is not 
 enough in earnest to be tender." — JEFFBEY, Edinburgh R< " ' .
 
 26 EEJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 III. 
 
 When woman's soft smile all our senses bewilders, 
 And gilds, while it carves, her dear form on the heart, 
 
 What need has New Druiy of carvers and gilders ? 
 With Nature so bounteous, why call upon Art? 
 
 IV. 
 
 How well would our actors attend to their duties, 
 Our house save in oil, and our authors in wit, 
 
 In lieu of yon lamps, if a row of young beauties 
 
 Glanced light from their eyes between us and the pit ? 
 
 V. 
 
 The apples that grew on the fruit-tree of knowledge 
 By woman were pluck'd, and she still wears the prize, 
 
 To tempt us in theatre, senate, or college — 
 I mean the love-apples that bloom in the eyes. 
 
 VT. 
 
 There too is the lash which, all statutes controlling, 
 Still governs the slaves that are made by the fair ; 
 
 For man is the pupil, who, while her eye 's rolling, 
 Is lifted to rapture, or sunk in despair. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Bloom, Theatre, bloom, in the roseate blushes 
 Of beauty illumed by a love-breathing smile ! 
 
 And flourish, ye pillars,* as gi-een as the rushes 
 That pillow the nymphs of the Emerald Isle ! 
 
 * This alludes to two massive pillars of verd antique which then 
 flanked the proscenium, but which have since been removed. Their 
 colour reminds the bard of the Emerald Isle, and this causes him 
 {more suo) to fly off at a tangent, and Hibemicise the rest of the 
 poem.
 
 THE LIVING LUSTRES. 27 
 
 vin. 
 For dear is the Emerald Isle of the ocean, 
 
 Whose daughters are fair as the foam of the wave, 
 "Whose sons, unaccustom'd to rebel commotion, 
 
 Tho' joyous, are sober — tho' peaceful, are brave. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The shamrock their olive, sworn foe to a quarrel, 
 Protects from the thunder and lightning of rows ; 
 
 Their sprig of shillelagh is nothing but laurel, 
 Which flourishes rapidly over their brows. 
 
 x. 
 O ! soon shall they burst the tyrannical shackles 
 
 Which each panting bosom indignantly names, 
 Until not one goose at the capital cackles 
 
 Against the grand question of Catholic claims. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And then shall each Paddy, who once on the LifFey 
 Perchance held the helm of some mackerel-hoy, 
 
 Hold the helm of the state, and dispense in a jiffy 
 More fishes than ever he caught when a boy. 
 
 XII. 
 
 And those who now quit their hods, shovels, and barrows, 
 In crowds to the bar of some ale-house to flock, 
 
 When bred to our bar shall be Gibbses and Garrows, 
 Assume the silk gown, and discard the smock-frock. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 For Erin surpasses the daughters of Neptune, 
 
 As Dian outshines each encircling star; 
 And the .spheres of the heavens could never have kept tune 
 
 Till set to the music of Erin-go-bragh !
 
 28 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE REBUILDING. 
 
 By R. S.* 
 
 [ROBERT SOUTHEY.] 
 
 [Mr. Southey died March 13, 1843, in his 69th year.] 
 
 " Per audaces nova dithyrambos 
 
 "Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur 
 Lege solutis." Hoeat. 
 
 {Spoken by a Glendoveer.] 
 
 I am a blessed Glendoveer :j" 
 'Tis mine to speak, and yours to hear. 
 
 Midnight,J yet not a nose 
 From Tower-hill to Piccadilly snored ! 
 
 Midnight, yet not a nose 
 From Indra drew the essence of repose ! 
 
 * " The Rebuilding is in the name of Mr. Southey, and is one of 
 the best in the collection. It is in the style of the Kehama of that 
 multifarious author, and is supposed to be spoken in the character of 
 one of his Glendoveers. The imitation of the diction and measure, 
 we think, is nearly almost perfect ; and the descriptions as good as 
 the original. It opens with an account of the burning of the old 
 theatre, formed upon the pattern of the Funeral of Arvalan." — 
 Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 f For the Glendoveer, and the rest of the dramatis persona; of this 
 imitation, the reader is referred to the " Curse of Kehama." 
 J [" Midnight, and yet no eye 
 Through all the Imperial City closed in sleep." 
 
 Southey.]
 
 THE KEBUILDING. 29 
 
 See with what crimson fury, 
 By Indra fann'd, the god of fire ascends the walls of Drury ! 
 
 Tops of houses, blue with lead, 
 
 Bend beneath the landlord's tread. 
 
 Master and 'prentice, serving-man and lord, 
 
 Nailor and tailor, 
 
 Grazier and brazier, 
 
 Through streets and alleys pour'd — 
 
 All, all abroad to gaze, 
 
 And wonder at the blaze. 
 
 Thick calf, fat foot, and slim knee, 
 
 Mounted on roof and chimney,* 
 
 The mighty roast, the mighty stew 
 
 To see ; 
 
 As if the dismal view 
 
 Were but to them a Brentford jubilee. 
 
 Vainly, all-radiant Surya, sire of Phaeton 
 
 " (By Greeks call'd Apollo |), 
 
 Hollow 
 
 * This couplet was introduced by the Authors by way of bravado, 
 in answer to one who alleged that the English language contained no 
 rhyme to chimney. 
 
 \ Apollo. A 'gigantic wooden figure of this deity was erected on 
 the roof. The writer (horrescit referens!) is old enough to recol- 
 lect the time when it was first placed there. Old Bishop, then one 
 of the masters of Merchant Tailors' School, wrote an epigram upon 
 the occasion, which, referring to the aforesaid figure, concluded thus : 
 
 " Above he fills up Shakespeare's place, 
 Ami Shakespeare tills up his below." 
 
 Very antithetical; but quaere as to the meaning? The writer, like 
 Pluto, "long puzzled his brain" to find it out, till he was immersed 
 "in a lower deep" by hearing Madame de Stael say, at the table of 
 the late Lord billon, " Buonaparte is not a man, but a system." 
 Inquiry was made in the course of the evening of Sir .lames Mackintosh 
 as to what the lady meant? lie answered, " Mass I I cannot tell." 
 Madame de Stael repeats this apophthegm in her work on Germany. 
 It is probably understood there.
 
 30 EEJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 Sounds from thy harp proceed; 
 
 Combustible as reed, 
 
 The tongue of Vulcan licks thy wooden legs : 
 
 From Drury's top, dissever'd from thy pegs, 
 
 Thou tumblest, 
 
 Humblest, 
 
 Where late thy bright effulgence shone on high ; 
 
 While, by thy somerset excited, fly 
 
 Ten million 
 
 Billion 
 
 Sparks from the pit, to gem the sable sky. 
 
 Now come the men of fire to quench the fires : 
 
 To Russell Street see Globe and Atlas run, 
 
 Hope gallops first, and second Sun ; 
 
 On flying heel, 
 
 See Hand-in-Hand 
 
 O'ertake the band ! 
 
 View with what glowing wheel 
 
 He nicks 
 
 Phoenix ! 
 
 While Albion scampers from Bridge Street, Blackfriars— 
 
 Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 
 
 Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 
 
 They shout and they bellow again and again. 
 
 All, all in vain ! 
 
 Water turns steam ; 
 
 Each blazing beam 
 
 Hisses defiance to the eddying spout : 
 
 It seems but too plain that nothing can put it out ! 
 
 Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 
 
 See, Drury Lane expires ! 
 
 Pent in by smoke-dried beams, twelve moons or more,
 
 THE REBUILDING. 31 
 
 Shorn of his ray, 
 Surya in durance lay : 
 The workmen heard him shout, 
 But thought it would not pay 
 To dig him out. 
 When lo ! terrific Yamen, lord of hell, 
 Solemn as lead, 
 Judge of the dead, 
 Sworn foe to witticism, 
 By men call'd criticism, 
 - Came passing by that way : 
 Rise ! cried the fiend, behold a sight of gladness ! 
 Behold the rival theatre ! 
 I Ve set 0. P. at her,* 
 
 * 0. P. This personage, who is alleged to have growled like a 
 bull-dog, requires rather a lengthened note, for the edification of the 
 rising generation. The " horns, rattles, drums," with which he is 
 accompanied, are no inventions of the poet. The new Covent Garden 
 Theatre opened on the 18th Sept., 1809, when a ciy of " Old Prices " 
 (afterwards diminished to 0. P,) burst out from every part of the 
 house. This continued and increased in violence till the 23rd, when 
 rattles, drums, whistles, and cat-calls having completely drowned the 
 voices of the actors, Mr. Kemble, the stage-manager, came forward 
 and said that a committee of gentlemen had undertaken to examine 
 the finances of the concern, and that until they were prepared with 
 their report the theatre would continue closed. " Name them !" was 
 shouted from all sides. The nanus were declared, viz., Sir Charles 
 Price, the Solicitor-General, the Recorder of London, the Governor of 
 the Bank, and Mr. Angerstein. "All shareholders!" bawled a wag 
 from the gallery. In a few days the theatre re-opened: the public 
 paid no attention to the report of the referees, and the tumult was 
 renewed for several weeks with even increased violence. The pro- 
 prietors now sent in hired bruisers, to mill the refractory into sub- 
 jection. This irritated most of their former frien Is, and, amongst the 
 rest, the aunotator, who accordingly wrote the song of " Heigh-ho, 
 say:- Kemble," which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung 
 under .Mr. Kemble's house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner 
 
 :i at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the strand, to celel 
 tb. victory obtained by W. Clifford in bis action against Brandon the 
 per, for assaulting him fur wearing the letters 0. P. in his hat. 
 
 At
 
 32 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Who, like a bull-dog bold, 
 Growls and fastens on his hold. 
 The many-headed rabble roar in madness ; 
 
 Thy rival staggers : come and spy her 
 
 Deep in the mud as thou art in the mire. 
 
 So saying, in his arms he caught the beaming one, 
 
 And crossing Russell Street, 
 
 He placed him on his feet 
 
 'Neath Covent Garden dome. Sudden a sound, 
 
 As of the bricklayers of Babel, rose : 
 
 Horns, rattles, drums, tin trumpets, sheets of copper, 
 
 Punches and slaps, thwacks of all sorts and sizes, 
 
 From the knobb'd bludgeon to the taper switch,* 
 
 At this dinner Mr. Kemble attended, and matters were compromised 
 by allowing the advanced price (seven shillings) to the boxes. The 
 writer remembers a former riot of a similar sort at the same theatre 
 (in the year 1792), when the price to the boxes was raised from five 
 shillings to six. That tumult, however, only lasted three nights. 
 
 * " From the knobb'd bludgeon to the taper switch." This image 
 is not the creation of the poets : it sprang from reality. The Authors 
 happened to be at the Royal Circus when " God save the King" was 
 called for, accompanied by a cry of " Stand up!" and "Hats off!" 
 An inebriated naval lieutenant, perceiving a gentleman in an adjoining 
 box slow to obey the call, struck his hat off with his stick, exclaiming, 
 " Take off your hat, sir ! " The other thus assaulted proved to be, 
 unluckily for the lieutenant, Lord Camelford, the celebrated bruiser 
 and duellist. A set-to in the lobby was the consequence, where his 
 lordship quickly proved victorious. " The devil is not so black as he 
 is painted," said one of the Authors to the other ; " let us call upon 
 Lord Camelford, and tell him that we were witnesses of his being first 
 assaulted." The visit was paid on the ensuing morning at Lord 
 Camelford's lodgings, in Bond-street. Over the fire-place in the 
 drawing-room were ornaments strongly expressive of the pugnacity of 
 the peer. A long thick bludgeon lay horizontally supported by two 
 brass hooks. Above this was placed parallel one of lesser dimensions, 
 until a pyramid of weapons gradually arose, tapering to a horsewhip : 
 " Thus all below was strength, and all above was grace." 
 
 Lord Camelford received his visitants with great civility, and 
 thanked them warmly for the call ; adding, that their evidence would 
 be material, it being his intention to indict the lieutenant for an
 
 THE REBUILDING. 33 
 
 Ran echoing round the walls ; paper placards 
 
 Blotted the lamps, boots brown with mud the benches ; 
 
 A sea of heads roll'd roaring in the pit ; 
 
 On paper wings O. P.'s 
 
 Reclin'd in lettered ease ; 
 
 While shout and scoff, 
 
 Ya! ya! off! off! 
 
 Like thunderbolt on Surya's ear-drum fell, 
 
 And seemed to paint 
 
 The savage oddities of Saint 
 
 Bartholomew in hell. 
 
 Tears dimm'd the god of light — 
 
 " Bear me back, Yamen, from this hideous sight ; 
 
 Bear me back, Yamen, I grow sick, 
 
 Oh ! bury me again in brick ; 
 
 Shall I on New Drury tremble, 
 
 TobeO. P.'dlikeKemble? 
 
 No, 
 
 Better remain by rubbish guarded, 
 
 Than thus hubbubish groan placarded ; 
 
 Bear me back, Yamen, bear me quick, 
 
 And bury me again in brick." 
 
 Obedient Yamen 
 
 Answered, "Amen," 
 
 And did 
 
 As he was bid. 
 
 There lay the buried god, and Time 
 Seemed to decree eternity of lime ; 
 
 assault. "All I can say m return is this," exclaimed the peer with 
 t. cordiality, " if ever I see you engaged in :i row, upon my Boul 
 I'll stand by you." The Authors expressed tfa thankful for 
 
 so potent an ally, and departed. In about a fortnight afb 
 [March 7, 1804] Lord Camelford was shot in a duel nth tfr, I 
 
 D
 
 34 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 But pity, like a dew-drop, gently prest 
 
 Almighty Veeshnoo's * adamantine breast : 
 
 He, the preserver, ardent still 
 
 To do whate'er he says he will, 
 
 From South-hill wing'd his way, 
 
 To raise the drooping lord of day. 
 
 All earthly spells the busy one o'erpower'd ; 
 
 He treats with men of all conditions, 
 
 Poets and players, tradesmen and musicians ; 
 
 Nay, even ventures 
 
 To attack the renters, 
 
 Old and new : 
 
 A list he gets 
 
 Of claims and debts, 
 
 And deems nought done, while aught remains to do. 
 
 Yamen beheld, and wither'd at the sight ; 
 
 Long had he aim'd the sunbeam to control, 
 
 For light was hateful to his soul : 
 
 " Go on !" cried the hellish one, yellow with spite, 
 
 " Go on !" cried the hellish one, yellow with spleen, 
 
 " Thy toils of the morning, like Ithaca's queen, 
 
 I '11 toil to undo every night." 
 
 Ye sons of song, rejoice ! 
 
 Veeshnoo has still'd the jarring elements, 
 
 The spheres hymn music ; 
 
 Again the god of day 
 
 Peeps forth with trembling ray, 
 
 Wakes, from their humid caves, the sleeping Nine, 
 
 And pours at intervals a strain divine. 
 
 " I have an iron yet in the fire," cried Yamen ; 
 
 * Veeshnoo. The late Mr. Whitbread.
 
 THE REBUILDING. 35 
 
 " The vollied flame rides in my breath, 
 
 My blast is elemental death ; 
 
 This hand shall tear your paper bonds to pieces ; 
 
 Ingross your deeds, assignments, leases, 
 
 My breath shall every line erase 
 
 Soon as I blow the blaze." 
 
 The lawyers are met at the Crown and Anchor, 
 
 And Yamen's visage grows blanker and blanker ; 
 
 The lawyers are met at the Anchor and Crown, 
 
 And Yamen's cheek is a russety brown: 
 
 Veeshnoo, now thy work proceeds ; 
 
 The solicitor reads, 
 
 And, merit of merit ! 
 
 Red wax and green ferret 
 
 Are fixed at the foot of the deeds ! 
 
 Yamen beheld and shiver' d ; 
 
 His finger and thumb were crarhp'd ; 
 
 His ear by the flea in 't was bitten, 
 
 When he saw by the lawyer's clerk written, 
 
 Sealed and delivered, "I 
 
 Being first duly stamped. ) 
 
 " Now for my turn ! " the demon cries, and blows 
 
 A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose. 
 
 Ah ! bootless aim ! the critic fiend, 
 
 Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell, 
 
 Is judged in his turn ; 
 
 Parchment won't burn ! 
 
 His schemes of vengeance are dissolved in air, 
 
 Parchment won't tear ! ! 
 
 Is it not written in the Himakoot book 
 (That mighty Baly from Kehama took), 
 
 d2
 
 36 REJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 " Who blows on pounce 
 Must the Swerga renounce? " 
 It is ! it is ! Yamen, thine hour is nigh : 
 Like as an eagle claws an asp, 
 Veeshnoo has caught him in his mighty grasp, 
 And hurl'd him, in spite of his shrieks and his squalls, 
 Whizzing aloft, like the Temple fountain, 
 Three times as high as Meru mountain, 
 
 Which is 
 Ninety-nine times as high as St. Paul's. 
 
 Descending, he twisted like Levy the Jew,* 
 
 Who a durable grave meant 
 
 To dig in the pavement 
 
 Of Monument- yard : 
 
 To earth by the laws of attraction he flew, 
 
 And he fell, and he fell 
 
 To the regions of hell ; 
 
 Nine centuries bounced he from cavern to rock, 
 
 And his head, as he tumbled, went nickety-nock, 
 
 Like a pebble in Carisbrook well. 
 
 Now Veeshnoo turn'd round to a capering varlet, 
 
 Array'd in blue and white and scarlet, 
 
 And cried, " Oh ! brown of slipper as of hat ! 
 
 Lend me, Harlequin, tlry bat ! " 
 
 He seized the wooden sword, and smote the earth ; 
 
 When lo ! upstarting into birth 
 
 * Levy. An insolvent Israelite who [18th January, 1810] threw 
 himself from the top of the Monument a short time before. An inha- 
 bitant of Monument-yard informed the writer that he happened to be 
 standing at his door talking to a neighbour, and looking up at the top 
 of the pillar, exclaimed, " Why, here's the flag coming down." 
 "Flag!" answered the other, " it's a man." The words were hardly 
 uttered when the suicide fell within ten feet of the speakers.
 
 THE REBUILDING. 37 
 
 A fabric, gorgeous to behold, 
 Outshone in elegance the old, 
 And Veeshnoo saw, and cried, " Hail, playhouse mine !" 
 Then, bending his head, to Surya he said, 
 
 " Soon as thy maiden sister Di 
 
 Caps with her copper lid the dark blue sky, 
 
 And through the fissures of her clouded fan 
 
 Peeps at the naughty monster man, 
 
 Go mount yon edifice, 
 
 And show thy steady face 
 
 In renovated pride, 
 
 More bright, more glorious than before!" 
 
 But ah ! coy Surya still felt a twinge, 
 
 Still smarted from his former singe ; 
 
 And to Veeshnoo replied, 
 
 In a tone rather gruff, 
 
 " No, thank you ! one tumble's enough !"
 
 38 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DKUEY'S DIRGE.* 
 
 By LAURA MATILDA, f 
 
 " Yon praise our sires ; but though they wrote with force, 
 Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse : 
 We want their strength, agreed ; but we atone 
 For that, and more, by sweetness all our own." — Giffokd. 
 
 I. 
 
 BALMY Zephyrs, lightly flitting, 
 Shade me with your azure wing ; 
 
 On Parnassus' summit sitting, 
 Aid me, Clio, while I sing. 
 
 n. 
 
 Softly slept the dome of Drury 
 
 O'er the empyreal crest, 
 When Alecto's sister-fury 
 
 Softly slumb'ring sunk to rest. 
 
 * " ' Drury's Dirge,' by Laura Matilda, is not of the first quality. 
 The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very nonsensical — as was 
 intended ; but they are not so good as Swift's celebrated Song by a 
 Person of Quality ; and are so exactly in the same measure, and on 
 the same plan, that it is impossible to avoid making the comparison." — 
 Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 ■f The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to continue 
 anonymous.
 
 drury's dirge. 
 
 III. 
 
 Lo! from Lemnos limping lamely, 
 Lags the lowly Lord of Fire, 
 
 Cytherea yielding tamely 
 
 To the Cyclops dark and dire. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness, 
 Dulcet joys and sports of youth, 
 
 Soon must yield to haughty sadness; 
 Mercy holds the veil to Truth. 
 
 See Erostratus the second 
 
 Fires again Diana's fane ; 
 By the Fates from Orcus beckon'd, 
 
 Clouds envelope Drury Lane. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Lurid smoke and frank suspicion 
 Hand in hand reluctant dance : 
 
 While the God fulfils his mission, 
 Chivalry, resign thy lance. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Hark ! the engines blandly thunder, 
 Fleecy clouds dishevell'd lie, 
 
 And the firemen, mute with wonder, 
 On the son of Saturn cry.
 
 40 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 See the bird of Amnion sailing, 
 Perches on the engine's peak, 
 
 And, the Eagle firemen hailing, 
 
 Soothes them with its bickering beak. 
 
 is. 
 
 Juno saw, and mad with malice, 
 Lost the prize that Paris gave : 
 
 Jealousy's ensanguined chalice 
 Mantling pours the orient wave. 
 
 x. 
 
 Pan beheld Patroclus dying, 
 
 Nox to Niobe was turn'd ; 
 From Busiris Bacchus flying, 
 
 Saw his Semele inurn'd. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Thus fell Dairy's lofty glory, 
 
 Levell'd with the shuddering stones ; 
 Mars, with tresses black and gory, 
 
 Drinks the dew of pearly groans. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Hark ! what soft Eolian numbers 
 Gem the blushes of the morn ! 
 
 Break, Amphion, break your slumbers, 
 Nature's ringlets deck the thorn.
 
 drury's dirge. 41 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Ha ! I hear the strain erratic 
 
 Dimly glance from pole to pole ; 
 
 Raptures sweet and dreams ecstatic 
 Fire my everlasting soul. 
 
 xrv. 
 
 
 
 Where is Cupid's crimson motion ? 
 
 Billowy ecstasy of woe, 
 Bear me straight, meandering ocean. 
 
 Where the stagnant torrents flow 
 
 o 
 
 XV. 
 
 Blood in every vein is gushing, 
 Vixen vengeance lulls my heart ; 
 
 See, the Gorgon gang is rushing ! 
 Never, never let us part !
 
 42 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A TALE OF DRUKY LANE. 
 
 By W. S.* 
 
 [SIR WALTER SCOTT.] 
 [Sir Walter Scott died 21st September, 1832, in his 62nd year.] 
 
 [To be spoken by Mr. Kemble, in a suit of the Black Prince's 
 armour, borrowed from the Tov:er.~\ 
 
 Survey this shield, all bossy bright — 
 
 These cuisses twain behold ! 
 
 Look on my form in armour dight 
 
 Of steel inlaid with gold ; 
 
 My knees are stiff in iron buckles, 
 
 Stiff spikes of steel protect my knuckles. 
 
 * From the parody of Walter Scott we know not what to select — 
 it is all good. The effect of the fire on the town, and the description 
 of a fireman in his official apparel, may be quoted as amusing speci- 
 mens of the misapplication of the style and metre of Mr. Scott's 
 admirable romances. — Quarterly Review. 
 
 " ' A Tale of Drury,' by Walter Scott, is, upon the whole, admirably 
 executed ; though the introduction is rather tame. The burning is 
 described with the mighty minstrel's characteristic love of localities. . . 
 The catastrophe is described with a spirit not unworthy of the name 
 so venturously assumed by the describer." — Jeffrey, Edinburgh 
 Review. 
 
 " Thus he went on, stringing one extravagance upon another, in 
 the style his books of chivalry had taught him, and imitating, as near 
 as he could, their very phrase." — Don Quixote^ 
 
 a Sir Walter Scott informed the aunotator, that at one time he intended to 
 print his collected works, and had pitched upon this identical quotation as a 
 motto ;— a proof that sometimes great wits jump with little ones.
 
 A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 43 
 
 These once belong'd to sable prince, 
 Who never did in battle wince ; 
 With valour tart as pungent quince, 
 
 He slew the vaunting Gaul. 
 Rest there awhile, my bearded lance, 
 While from green curtain I advance 
 To yon foot-lights— no trivial dance,* 
 And tell the town what sad mischance 
 
 Did Drury Lane befall. 
 
 THE SIGHT. 
 
 On fair Augusta's f towers and trees 
 Flitted the silent midnight breeze, 
 Curling the foliage as it pass'd, 
 Which from the moon-tipp'd plumage cast 
 A spangled light, like dancing spray, 
 Then re-assumed its still array ; 
 When, as night's lamp unclouded hung, 
 And down its full effulgence flung, 
 It shed such soft and balmy power 
 That cot and castle, hall and bower, 
 And spire and dome, and turret height, 
 Appeared to slumber in the light. 
 From Henry's chapel, Rufus' hall, 
 To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul ; 
 
 * Alluding to the then great distance between the picture-frame, 
 in which the green curtain was set, and the band. For a justification 
 of this, see below—" De. Johnson." 
 
 f [The old name for London : 
 
 For poets you can never want 'em 
 
 Spread through Augusta Tiinobantum.— flwiH. 
 
 Thomson in his " Seasons" calls it "huge Augusta."]
 
 44 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 From Knightsbridge, Pancras, Camden Town, 
 
 To Redrifle, Shad well, Horsleydown, 
 
 No voice was heard, no eye unclosed, 
 
 But all in deepest sleep reposed. 
 
 They might have thought, who gazed around 
 
 Amid a silence so profound, 
 
 It made the senses thrill, 
 That 'twas no place inhabited, 
 But some vast city of the dead — 
 
 All was so hush'd and still. 
 
 THE BURNING. 
 
 As Chaos, which, by heavenly doom, 
 Had slept in everlasting gloom, 
 Started with terror and surprise 
 When light first flash'd upon her eyes — 
 So London's sons in nightcap woke, 
 
 In bed-gown woke her dames ; 
 For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, 
 And twice ten hundred voices spoke — 
 
 " The playhouse is in flames ! " 
 And, lo ! where Catherine Street extends, 
 A fiery tail its lustre lends 
 
 To every window-pane ; 
 Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, 
 And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, 
 And Covent Garden kennels sport 
 
 A bright ensanguined drain ; 
 Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, 
 Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the height 
 
 Where Patent Shot they sell ; 
 The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, 
 Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall,
 
 A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 45 
 
 The Ticket-Porters' House of Call, 
 Old Bedlam, close by London Wall,* 
 Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal, 
 
 And Richardson's Hotel. 
 Nor these alone, but far and wide, 
 Across red Thames's gleaming tide, 
 To distant fields the blaze was borne, 
 And daisy white and hoary thorn 
 In borrow'd lustre seem'd to sham 
 The rose or red sweet Wil-li-am. 
 To those who on the hills around 
 Beheld the flames from Drury's mound, 
 
 As from a lofty altar rise, 
 It seem'd that nations did conspire 
 To offer to the god of fire 
 
 Some vast, stupendous sacrifice ! 
 The summon'cl firemen woke at call, 
 And hied them to their stations all : 
 Starting from short and broken snooze, 
 Each sought his pond'rous hobnail'd shoes, 
 But first his worsted hosen plied, 
 Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed, 
 
 His nether bulk embraced ; 
 Then jacket thick, of red or blue, 
 Whose massy shoulder gave to view 
 The badge of each respective crew, 
 
 * Old Bedlam, at that time, stood "close by London Wall." It 
 ult after the model of the Tuileries, which is said to have given 
 
 the French king great offence. In trout of it M .nil, 
 
 with broad gravel walks crossing each other at i . Tin je 
 
 thf writer well recollects ; and Rivaz, an nnderwriter at Lloyd' 
 told him that he remembered when the met ' London would 
 
 parade these walks on a summer evening with their wives and 
 daughters. But now, as a punning brother hard sin , 
 ■' MoorfiekU arc fields no more."
 
 46 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 In tin or copper traced. 
 The engines thunder' d through the street, 
 Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete, 
 And torches glared, and clattering feet 
 
 Along the pavement paced. 
 And one, the leader of the band, 
 From Charing Cross along the Strand, 
 Like stag by beagles hunted hard, 
 Ran till he stopp'd at Vin'gar Yard.* 
 The burning badge his shoulder bore, 
 The belt and oil-skin hat he wore, 
 The cane he had, his men to bang, 
 Show'd foreman of the British gang — 
 His name was Higginbottom. Now 
 'Tis meet that I should tell you how 
 
 The others came in view : 
 The Hand-in-Hand the race begun, f 
 Then came the Phoenix and the Sun, 
 Th' Exchange, where old insurers run, 
 
 The Eagle, where the new ; 
 With these came Rumford, Bumford, Cole, 
 Robins from Hockley in the Hole, 
 Lawson and Dawson, cheek by jowl, 
 
 Crump from St. Giles's Pound : 
 Whitford and Mitford join'd the train, 
 Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane, 
 And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain 
 
 * [A narrow passage immediately adjoining Drury Lane Theatre, 
 and so called from the vineyard attached to Covent or Convent 
 Garden.] 
 
 f [The Hand-in-Hand Insurance Office was one of the very first 
 insurance offices established in London. To make the engineer of the 
 office thus early in the race is a piece of historical accuracy intended, 
 it is said, on the part of the writer.]
 
 A TALE OF DRURY LA1STE. 47 
 
 Before the plug was found. 
 Hobson and Jobson did not sleep, 
 But ah ! no trophy could they reap, 
 For both were in the Donjon Keep 
 
 Of Bridewell's gloomy mound ! 
 
 E'en Higginbottom now was posed, 
 For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed ; 
 AVithont, within, in hideous show, 
 Devouring flames resistless glow, 
 And blazing rafters downward go, 
 And never halloo " Heads below ! " 
 
 Nor notice give at all. 
 The firemen terrified are slow 
 To bid the pumping torrent flow, 
 
 For fear the roof should fall. 
 Back, Robins, back ! Crump, stand aloof! 
 Whitford, keep near the walls ! 
 Huggins, regard your own behoof, 
 For, lo ! the blazing rocking roof 
 Down, down in thunder falls ! 
 An awful pause succeeds the stroke, 
 And o'er the ruins volumed smoke, 
 Rolling around its pitchy shroud, 
 Conceal'd them from th' astonish'd crowd. 
 At length the mist awhile was clear'd, 
 When lo ! amid the wreck uprear'd, 
 Gradual a moving head appear'd, 
 
 And Eagle firemen knew 
 'Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered, 
 
 The foreman of their crew. 
 Loud shouted all in signs of woe, 
 " A Muggins !" to the rescue, ho ! "
 
 48 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 And pour'd the hissing tide : 
 Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain, 
 And strove and struggled all in vain, 
 For, rallying but to fall again, 
 
 He totter'd, sunk, and died ! 
 
 Did none attempt, before he fell, 
 To succour one they loved so well ? 
 Yes, Higginbottom did aspire 
 (His fireman's soul was all on fire) 
 
 His brother chief to save ; 
 But ah ! his reckless generous ire 
 
 Served but to share his grave ! 
 'Mid blazing beams and scalding streams, 
 Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke, 
 
 Where Muggins broke before ; 
 But sulphry stench and boiling drench 
 Destroying sight o'erwhelm'd him quite, 
 
 He sunk to rise no more. 
 Still o'er his head, while fate he braved, 
 His whizzing water-pipe he waved ; 
 " Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps, 
 " You, Clutterbuck, come stir your stumps, 
 " Why are you in such doleful dumps ? 
 " A fireman, and afraid of bumps ! — 
 " What are they fear'd on ? fools ! 'od rot 'em !" 
 Were the last words of Higginbottom.* 
 
 THE REVIVAL. 
 
 Peace to his soul ! new prospects bloom, 
 And toil rebuilds what fires consume ! 
 
 * [Charge, Chester, charge ! On, Stanley, on ! 
 Were the last words of Marmion.l
 
 A TALE OE DRURY LAXE. 49 
 
 Eat we and drink we, be our ditty, 
 " Joy to the managing committee ! " 
 Eat we and drink we, join to rum 
 Roast beef and pudding of the plum ! 
 Forth from thy nook, John Horner, come, 
 With bread of ginger brown thy thumb, 
 
 For this is Drury's gay day: 
 Roll, roll thy hoop, and twirl thy tops, 
 And buy, to glad thy smiling chops, 
 Crisp parliament with lollypops, 
 
 And fingers of the Lady. 
 
 Didst mark, how toil'd the busy train, 
 From morn to eve, till Drury Lane 
 Leap'd like a roebuck from the plain? 
 Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again, 
 
 And nimble workmen trod ; 
 To realise bold Wyatt's plan 
 Rush'd many a howling Irishman ; 
 Loud clatter'd many a porter-can, 
 And many a ragamuffin clan 
 
 With trowel and with hod. 
 
 Drury revives ! her rounded pate 
 Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate ; 
 She " wings the midway air" elate, 
 
 As magpie, crow, or chough ; 
 White paint her modish visage smears, 
 Yellow and pointed are her ears, 
 No pendent portico appi 
 Dangling beneath, for Whitbread's shears* 
 
 Have cut die bauble off. 
 
 * WhJtbi An economical experiment of that gentle- 
 
 man. The present portico, towards Brydges-street, was afterwards 
 
 E
 
 50 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Yes, she exalts her stately head; 
 
 And, but that solid bulk outspread 
 
 Opposed you on your onward tread, 
 
 And posts and pillars warranted 
 
 That all was true that Wyatt said, 
 
 You might have deemed her walls so thick 
 
 Were not composed of stone or brick, 
 
 But all a phantom, all a trick, 
 
 Of brain disturb'd and fancy sick, 
 
 So high she soars, so vast, so quick ! 
 
 erected under the lesseeship of Elliston, whose portrait in the Exhi- 
 bition was thus noticed in the Examiner : " Portrait of the great 
 Lessee, in his favourite character of Mr. Elliston."
 
 Johnson's ghost. 5 1 
 
 x. 
 
 JOHNSON'S GHOST.* 
 
 [Ghost of Br. Johnson rises from trap-door P. S., and Ghost of 
 Boswell front trap-door 0. P. The latter bows respectfully to the 
 House, and obsequiously to the Doctor's Ghost, and retires.'] 
 
 Doctor's Ghost loquitur. 
 
 That which was organised by the moral ability of one 
 has been executed by the physical efforts of many, and 
 Drury Lane Theatre is now complete. Of that part 
 behind the curtain, which has not yet been destined to 
 glow beneath the brush of the varaisher, or vibrate to the 
 hammer of the carpenter, little is thought by the public, 
 and little need be said by the committee. Truth, however, 
 is not to be sacrificed for the accommodation of either; 
 and he who should pronounce that our edifice has received 
 its final embellishment would be disseminating falsehood 
 without incurring favour, and risking the disgrace of 
 detection without participating the advantage of success. 
 
 * "Samuel Johnson is not so good: the measure and solemnity of 
 itences, in all the limite<l variety of their structure, are i 
 imitated with singular skill ; but the diction is caricatured in a 
 vulgar and unpleasing degree. To make Johnson call a door ' 
 
 and its knocker and bell its ' frappant and tintinnabi 
 appendages,' is neither just nor humorous; and we are surprised that 
 ft writer who lias given such extraordinary proi 
 finer ridicule and faireT imitati looped to a vein of 
 
 pleasantry so low, ami so long i o exhat I '.- pecially as, in other 
 | piece, he has shown how well q 
 
 both to cat ■ of in- ori in J, 
 
 Th" beginning, for example, we think i
 
 52 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Professions lavishly effused and parsimoniously verified 
 are alike inconsistent with the precepts of innate rectitude 
 and the practice of external policy : let it not then be con- 
 jectured that because we are unassuming, we are imbecile ; 
 that forbearance is any indication of despondency, or 
 humility of demerit. He that is the most assured cf 
 success will make the fewest appeals to favour, and where 
 nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due will 
 be withheld. A swelling opening is too often succeeded 
 by an insignificant conclusion. Parturient mountains have 
 ere now produced muscipular abortions ; and the auditor 
 who compares incipient grandeur with final vulgarity is 
 reminded of the pious hawkers of Constantinople, who 
 solemnly perambulate her streets, exclaiming, " In the 
 name of the Prophet — figs !" 
 
 Of many who think themselves wise, and of some who 
 are thought wise by others, the exertions are directed 
 to the revival of mouldering and obscure dramas; to 
 endeavours to exalt that which is now rare only because it 
 was always worthless, and whose deterioration, while it 
 condemned it to living obscurity, by a strange obliquity 
 of moral perception constitutes its title to posthumous 
 renown. To embody the flying colours of folly, to arrest 
 evanescence, to give to bubbles the globular consistency as 
 well as form, to exhibit on the stage the piebald denizen 
 of the stable, and the half-reasoning parent of combs, to 
 display the brisk locomotion of Columbine, or the tortuous 
 attitudinizing of Punch ;■ — these are the occupations of 
 others, whose ambition, limited to the applause of un- 
 intellectual fatuity, is too innocuous for the application of 
 satire, and too humble for the incitement of jealousy. 
 
 Our refectory will be found to contain every species of 
 fruit, from the cooling nectarine and luscious peach to the
 
 JOHNSON'S GHOST. 53 
 
 puny pippin and the noxious nut. There Indolence may- 
 repose, and Inebriety revel; and the spruce apprentice, 
 rushing in at second account, may there chatter with 
 impunity ; debarred, by a barrier of brick and mortar, from 
 marring that scenic interest in others, which nature and edu- 
 cation have disqualified him from comprehending himself. 
 
 Permanent stage-doors we have none. That which is 
 permanent cannot be removed, for, if removed, it soon 
 ceases to be permanent. What stationary absurdity can 
 vie with that ligneous barricado, which, decorated with 
 Frappant and tintinnabulant appendages, now serves as the 
 entrance of the lowly cottage, and now as the exit of 
 a. lady's bed-chamber ; at one time insinuating plastic 
 Harlequin into a butcher's shop, and, at another, yawning, 
 as a flood-gate, to precipitate the Cyprians of St. Giles's 
 into the embraces of Macheath? To elude this glaring 
 absurdity, to give to each respective mansion the door 
 which the carpenter would doubtless have given, we vary 
 our portal with the varying scene, passing from deal to 
 mahogany, and from mahogany to oak, as the opposite 
 claims of cottage, palace, or castle may appear to require. 
 
 Amid the general hum of gratulation which flatters us 
 in front, it is fit that some regard should be paid to the 
 murmurs of despondence that assail us in the rear. They, 
 is I have elsewhere expressed it, " who live to please," 
 should not have their own pleasures entirely overlooked. 
 rhe children of Thespisare general in their censures of the 
 architect, in having placed the locality of exit at SU( h a 
 iistance from the oily irradiators which now dazzle the 
 jyes of him who addresses you. I am, cries the Queen of 
 rerrors, robbed of my fair proportions. When the king- 
 silling Thane hints to the breathless auditory the murders 
 be means to perpetrate, in the castle of Macduff, "ere his
 
 54 KEJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 purpose cool ;" so vast is the interval he has to travel 
 before he can escape from the stage, that his purpose has 
 even time to freeze. Your condition, cries the Muse of 
 Smiles, is hard, but it is cygnet's down in comparison 
 with mine. The peerless peer of capers and congees * has 
 laid it down as a rule, that the best good thing uttered by 
 the morning visitor should conduct him rapidly to the 
 doorway, last impressions vying in durability with first. 
 But when, on this boarded elongation, it falls to my lot to 
 say a good thing, to ejaculate "keep moving," or to chant 
 " hie hoc horum'genitivo" many are the moments that must 
 elapse ere I can hide myself from public vision in the 
 recesses of O.P. or P.S. 
 
 To objections like these, captiously urged and querulously 
 maintained, it is time that equity should conclusively reply. 
 Deviation from scenic propriety has only to vituperate itself 
 for the consequences it generates. Let the actor consider 
 the line of exit as that line beyond which he should not 
 soar in quest of spurious applause: let him reflect, that 
 in proportion as he advances to the lamps, he recedes 
 from nature ; that the truncheon of Hotspur acquires no 
 additional charm from encountering the cheek of beauty in 
 the stage-box ; and that the bravura of Mandane may 
 produce effect, although the throat of her who warbles it 
 should not overhang the orchestra. The Jove of the 
 modern critical Olympus, Lord Mayor of the theatric sky,f 
 
 * The celebrated Lord Chesterfield, whose Letters to his Son, ac- 
 cording to Dr. Johnson, inculcate " the manners of a dancing-master 
 and the morals of a ," &c. 
 
 f Lord Mayor of the theatric sky. This alludes to Leigh Hunt, 
 who, in The Examiner, at this time kept the actors in hot water. 
 Dr. Johnson's argument is, like many of his other arguments, specious, 
 but untenable ; that which it defends has since been abandoned as 
 impracticable. Mr. Whi thread contended that the actor was like a 
 portrait in a picture, and accordingly placed the green curtain in a
 
 Johnson's ghost. 55 
 
 has, ex cathedra, asserted that a natural actor looks upon 
 the audience part of the theatre as the third side of the 
 chamber he inhabits. Surely, of the third wall thus 
 fancifully erected, our actors should, by ridicule or reason, 
 be withheld from knocking their heads against the stucco. 
 
 Time forcibly reminds me that all things which have a 
 limit must be brought to a conclusion. Let me, ere that 
 conclusion arrives, recall to your recollection, that the 
 pillars which rise on either side of me, blooming in virid 
 antiquity, like two massy evergreens, had yet slumbered in 
 their native quarry but for the ardent exertions of the 
 individual who called them into life : to his never-slumber- 
 ing talents you are indebted for whatever pleasure this haunt 
 of the Muses is calculated to afford. If, in defiance of 
 chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of the temple of Diana 
 yet survives in the name of Erostratus, surely we may 
 confidently predict that the rebuilder of the temple of 
 Apollo will stand recorded to distant posterity in that 
 of — Samuel Whitbread. 
 
 gilded frame remote from the foot-lights ; alleging that no performer 
 should mar the illusion by stepping out of the frame. Dowton was 
 the first actor who, like Manfred's ancestor in the Castle of Otranto, 
 took the liberty of abandoning the canon. " Don't tell me of frames 
 and pictures," ejaculated the testy comedian ; " if I can't be heard by 
 the audience in the frame, I'll walk out of it !" The proscenium has 
 since been new-modelled, and the actors thereby brought nearer to the 
 audience.
 
 56 EEJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 XI. 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIAKY* 
 
 By THE HON. W. S. 
 
 [THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER.] 
 [Mr. Spencer died at Paris in October, 1834, aged 65.] 
 
 Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas.— Vikgil. 
 
 Scene draws, and discovers a Lady asleep on a couch. 
 
 Enter Philander. 
 
 PHILANDER. 
 
 I. 
 Sobriety, cease to be sober,! 
 
 Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve ; 
 
 * " ' The Beautiful Incendiary,' by the Honourable W. Spencer, is 
 al?o an imitation of great merit. The flashy, fashionable, artificial 
 style of this writer, with his confident and extravagant compliments, 
 can scarcely be said to be parodied in such lines." — Jeffrey, Edin- 
 burgh Review. 
 
 f Sobriety, &c. The good-humour of the poet upon occasion of 
 this parody has been noticed in the Preface. " It's all very well for 
 once," said he afterwards, in comic confidence, at his villa at Petersham, 
 " but don't do it again. I had been almost forgotten when you 
 revived me ; and now all the newspapers and reviews ring with ' this 
 fashionable, trashy author.' " The sand and " filings of glass," 
 mentioned in the last stanza, are referable to the well-known verses 
 of the poet apologising to a lady for having paid an unconscionably 
 long morning visit; and where, alluding to Time, he says — 
 
 " All his sands are diamond sparks, 
 That glitter as they pass." 
 
 Few men in society have more "gladdened life" than this poet. 
 
 He now [1833] resides in Paris, and may thence make the grand
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. 57 
 
 All hail to this tenth of October, 
 
 One thousand eight hundred and twelve !* 
 
 Ha ! whom do my peepers remark ? 
 'Tis Hebe with Jupiter's jug ; 
 
 O no, 'tis the pride of the Park, 
 Fair Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 II. 
 
 > Whv, beautiful nymph, do you close 
 
 The- curtain that fringes your eye ? 
 Why veil in the clouds of repose 
 
 The sun that should brighten our sky ? 
 Perhaps jealous Venus has oiled 
 
 Your hair with some opiate drug, 
 Not choosing her charms should be foiled 
 
 By Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 m. 
 But ah ! whv awaken the blaze 
 
 Those bright burning-glasses contain, 
 Whose lens with concentrated rays 
 
 Proved fatal to old Drury Lane ? 
 'Twas all accidental, they cry, — 
 
 Away with the flimsy humbug ! 
 'Twas fired by a flash from the eye 
 
 Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thy glance can in us raise a flame, 
 Then why should old Drury be free ? 
 
 Our doom and its doom are the same, 
 Both subject to beauty's decree. 
 
 tour without an interpreter Bpeaking, as he does, French, Italian, 
 and German, aa fluently as English. 
 
 * [loth of October, 1812, the day of opening.]
 
 58 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 No candles the workmen consumed 
 When deep in the ruins they dug ; 
 
 Thy flash still their progress illumed, 
 Sweet Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 V. 
 
 Thy face a rich fire-place displays : 
 
 The mantel-piece marble — thy brows ; 
 Thine eyes are the bright beaming blaze ; 
 
 Thy bib, which no trespass allows, 
 The fender's tall barrier marks ; 
 
 Thy tippet 's the fire-quelling rug, 
 Which serves to extinguish the sparks 
 
 Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Countess a lily appears, 
 
 Whose tresses the pearl-drops emboss ; 
 
 The Marchioness, blooming in years, 
 A rose-bud enveloped in moss ; 
 
 But thou art the sweet passion-flower, 
 For who would not slavery hug, 
 
 To pass but one exquisite horn- 
 In the arms of Elizabeth Mugg ? 
 
 vn. 
 
 When at Court, or some Dowager's rout, 
 
 Her diamond aigrette meets our view, 
 She looks like a glow-worm dressed out, 
 
 Or tulips bespangled with dew. 
 Her two lips denied to man's suit 
 
 Are shared with her favourite Pug ; 
 What lord would not change with the brute, 
 
 To live with Elizabeth Mugg?
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL IXCEXDLIRY. 59 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Could the stage be a large vis-a-vis, 
 
 Reserved for the polished and great, 
 Where each happy lover might see 
 
 The nymph he adores tete-a-tete ; 
 No longer I 'd gaze on the ground, 
 
 And the load of despondency lug, 
 For I 'd book myself all the year round 
 
 To ride with the sweet Lady Mugg. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Yes, she in herself is a host, 
 
 And if she were here all alone, 
 Our house might nocturnally boast 
 
 A bumper of fashion and ton. 
 Again should it burst in a blaze, 
 
 In vain would they ply Congreve's plug,* 
 For nought could extinguish the rays 
 
 From the glance of divine Lady Mugg. 
 
 x. 
 
 O could I as Harlequin frisk, 
 
 And thou be my Columbine fair, 
 My wand should with one magic whisk 
 
 Transport us to Hanover Square : 
 St. George's should lend us its shrine, 
 
 The parson his shoulders might shrug, 
 But a licence should force him to join 
 
 My hand in the hand of my Mugg. 
 
 * Congreve's plug. The late Sir William Congreve had made a 
 model of Drury Lane Theatre, to which was affixed an engine that, in 
 erenl of fire, was made to play from the Btage into ''very box in the 
 house. The writer, accompanied by Theodore Hook, went to see the 
 
 *
 
 GO EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Court-plaster the weapons should tip, 
 
 By Cupid shot down from above, 
 Which, cut into spots for thy lip, 
 
 Should still barb the arrows of love. 
 The God who from others flies quick, 
 
 With us should be slow as a slug ; 
 As close as a leech he should stick 
 
 To me and Elizabeth Mugg. 
 
 XII. 
 
 For Time would, with us, 'stead of sand, 
 
 Put filings of steel in his glass, 
 To dry up the blots of his hand, 
 
 And spangle life's page as they pass. 
 Since all flesh is grass ere 'tis hay,* 
 
 O may I in clover live snug, 
 And when old Time mows me away, 
 
 Be stacked with defunct Lady Mugg ! 
 
 model at Sir William's house in Cecil-street. "Now I'll duck 
 Whitbread!" said Hook, seizing the water-pipe whilst he spoke, and 
 sending a torrent of water into the brewer's box. 
 * See Byron, afterwards, in Don Juan : — 
 
 " For flesh is grass, which Time mows clown to hay." 
 
 But as Johnson says of Dryden, " His known wealth was so great, he 
 might borrow without any impeachment of his credit."
 
 FIRE AJSTD ALE. 61 
 
 XII. 
 
 FIKE AND ALE. 
 
 By M. G. L. 
 
 [MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS.] 
 [Mr. Lewis died 14th May, 1818, in his 43rd year.] 
 
 " ' Fire and Ale,' by M. 6. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the 
 ipirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very 
 ust representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has 
 mpressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror." 
 -Jeffijet, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 Matthew Gregory Lewis, commonly called Monk Lewis, from his once 
 
 >opular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of 
 
 hat fraternity, a disagreeable one— verbose, disputatious, and paradoxical. 
 
 •lis Monk and Cor elevated him into fame; and he continued to 
 
 vrite ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mis. Radoliffe, he 
 
 juite overstocked the market. Lew is visited hi= estates in Jamaica, and came 
 
 tly negro-bitten. He promulgated a new code of laws in the 
 
 lland, lor the government cf his sable subjects: one may serve for a specimen: 
 
 ive who commits murder shall have I nfmed 
 
 hree days and nights in a dark room." Upon occasion of printing these paro- 
 
 xik Lewis said to Lady HTolland], " Many of them are very fair, but 
 
 nine is not at all like ; they i. me write burlesque, which I never do." 
 
 ' You don't know your own t .-.end the lady. 
 
 Lewis sptly described himself, as to externals, in the verses affixed to his 
 
 as having 
 
 " A graceless form and dwarfish stature." 
 . counte- 
 
 lance. In talkini ibil of drawing the fore-finger of 
 
 dgrighl ss his right eye-lid. Ii> affected, In conversation, a sort ol 
 
 1. dr.iv, linj; tone : young Barlow e, 
 irho had but a slight knowled] fthel eluded, 
 
 rum their cadences, that they wire little better than fools — "Just a born 
 rry the actor ased to say. 1 hi meward 
 
 Yom Jamaica, owing to a 
 
 ly "his own mere motion." He WTOte various plays, with various su 
 no had admirable notions ol ruction, bul of his 
 
 3 and incidents wi of his dialogue.
 
 62 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 XII. 
 
 FIRE AND ALE. 
 
 Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum.— Virgil. 
 
 My palate is parched with Pierian thirst, 
 Away to Parnassus I 'm beckoned ; 
 List, warriors and dames, while my lay is rehearsed, 
 I sing of the singe of Miss Drury the first, 
 And the birth of Miss Drury the second. 
 
 The Fire King, one day, rather amorous felt ; 
 
 He mounted his hot copper filly ; 
 His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt 
 Was made of cast iron, for fear it should melt 
 
 With the heat of the copper colt's belly. 
 
 Sure never was skin half so scalding as his ! 
 
 When an infant 'twas ecpially horrid ; 
 For the water, when he was baptized, gave a fizz, 
 And bubbled and simmer' d and started off, whizz ! 
 
 As soon as it sprinkled his forehead. 
 
 O ! then there was glitter and fire in each eye, 
 
 For two living coals were the symbols ; 
 His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry, 
 It rattled against them, as though you should try 
 To play the piano in thimbles.
 
 FIRE AND ALE. 63 
 
 From his nostrils a lava sulphureous flows, 
 
 Which scorches wherever it lingers ; 
 A. snivelling fellow he 's call'd by his foes, 
 For he can't raise his paw up to blow his red nose 
 
 For fear it should blister his fingers. 
 
 His wig is of flames curling over his head, 
 
 Well powder'd with white smoking ashes; 
 ELe drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead, 
 Uream of tartar? and dines on hot spice gingerbread, 
 Which black from the oven he gnashes. 
 
 Each fire-nymph his kiss from her countenance shields, 
 
 'T would soon set her cheekbone a frying ; 
 3e spit in the Tenter-Ground near Spital-fields, 
 i^nd the hole that it burnt, and the chalk that it yields, 
 Make a capital lime-kiln for drying. 
 
 IfVTien he open'd his mouth, out there issued a blast, 
 
 (Nota bene, I do not mean swearing,) 
 Jut the noise that it made, and the heat that it cast, 
 [ 've heard it from those who have seen it, surpass'd 
 A shot manufactory flaring. 
 
 3e blazed, and he blazed, as he gallop'd to snatch 
 
 His bride, little dreaming of danger ; 
 3is whip was a torch, and his spur was a match, 
 \nd over the horse's left eve was a patch, 
 To keep it from burning the manger. 
 
 A.nd who is the housemaid he means to enthral 
 
 In his cinder-producing alliance? 
 Tis Drury-Lane Playhouse, so wide and so tall, 
 Who, like other combustible ladies, must fell, 
 
 If she cannot set sparks at defiance.
 
 64 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Oa his warming-pan kneepan he clattering roll'd, 
 
 And the housemaid his hand would have taken, 
 But his hand, like his passion, was too hot to hold, 
 And she soon let it go, but her new ring of gold 
 All melted, like butter or bacon ! 
 
 Oh ! then she look'd sour, and indeed well she might, 
 
 For Vinegar Yard was before her ; 
 But, spite of her shrieks, the ignipotent knight, 
 Enrobing the maid in a flame of gas light, 
 
 To the skies in a sky-rocket bore her. 
 
 Look ! look ! 'tis the Ale King, so stately and starch, 
 
 Whose votaries scorn to be sober; 
 He pops from his vat, like a cedar or larch ; 
 Brown-stout is his doublet, he hops in his march, 
 
 And frolhs at the mouth in October. 
 
 His spear is a spigot, his shield is a bung ; 
 
 He taps where the housemaid no more is, 
 When lo ! at his magical bidding, upsprung 
 A second Miss Drury, tall, tidy, and young, 
 
 And sported in loco sororis. 
 
 Back, lurid in air, for a second regale, 
 
 The Cinder King, hot with desire, 
 To Brydges Street hied ; but the Monarch of Ale, 
 With uplifted spigot and faucet, and pail, 
 
 Thus chided the Monarch of Fire : 
 
 " Vile tyrant, beware of the ferment I brew ; 
 
 " I rule the roast here, dash the wig o' me ! 
 "If, spite of your marriage with Old Drury, you 
 " Come here with your tiuderbox, courting the New, 
 
 " I '11 have you indicted for bigamy ! "
 
 PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 65 
 
 XIII. 
 
 PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS.* 
 
 By S. T. C. 
 [Samuel Taylor Coleridge.] 
 
 [Mr. Coleridge died 25th July, 1834, in his 62nd year.] 
 
 Hie velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim 
 
 Credebat libris ; neque si male cesserat, usquam 
 
 Decurrens alio, neque si bene. Hor. 
 
 My pensive Public, wherefore look you sad ? 
 I had a grandmother, she kept a donkey 
 To carry to the mart her crockery ware, 
 And when that donkey look'd me in the face, 
 His face was sad ! and you are sad, my Public ! 
 
 Joy should be yours : this tenth day of October 
 Again assembles us in Drury Lane. 
 Long wept my eye to see the timber planks 
 That hid our ruins ; many a day I cried, 
 
 * " Mr. Coleridge will not, we fear, be as much entertained as we 
 were with his ' Playhouse Musings,' which begin with characteristic 
 pathos and simplicity, and put us much in mind of the affecting story 
 of old Poulter's mare." — Quarterly Review. 
 
 " ' Playhouse Musings/ by Mr. Coleridge, a piece which is unques- 
 tionably Lakish, though we cannot say that we recognise in it any of 
 the peculiar traits of that powerful and misdirected genius whose name 
 it has borrowed. We rather think, however, that the tuneful brother- 
 hood will consider it as a respectable eclogue." — JEFFREY, Edinburgh 
 Review.
 
 6Q REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Ah me ! I fear they never will rebuild it ! 
 Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, 
 As along Charles Street I prepared to walk, 
 Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, 
 I heard a trowel tick against a brick. 
 I look'd me up, and straight a parapet 
 Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. 
 Joy to thee, Drury ! to myself I said : 
 He of Blackfriars' Road,* who hymned thy downfall 
 In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied 
 That flames, like those from prostrate Solyma, 
 Would scorch the hand that ventured to rebuild thee, 
 Has proved a lying prophet. From that hoar, 
 As leisure offer'd, close to Mr. Spring's 
 Box-office door, I 've stood and eyed the builders. 
 They had a plan to render less their labours ; 
 Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder 
 With hodded heads, but these stretch'd forth a pole 
 From the wall's pinnacle, they plac'd a pulley 
 Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley ; 
 To this a basket dangled ; mortar and bricks 
 Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, 
 And in the empty basket workmen twain 
 Precipitate, unhurt, accosted earth. 
 
 Oh ! 'twas a goodly sound, to hear the people 
 Who watch'd the work, express their various thoughts ! 
 While some believed it never would be finish'd, 
 Some, on the contrary, believed it would. 
 
 * " He of Blackfriars' Eoad," viz. the late Rev. Rowland Hill, wh< 
 is said to have preached a sermon congratulating his congregation 01 
 the catastrophe. [See before : — 
 
 Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, 
 Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the height 
 Where Patent Shot they sell.]
 
 PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 67 
 
 I 've heard our front that faces Druiy Lane 
 Much criticised ; they say 'tis vulgar brick-work, 
 A mimic manufactory of floor-cloth. 
 One of the morning papers wish'd that front 
 Cemented like the front in Brydges Street ; 
 As it now looks, they call it Wyatt's Mermaid, 
 A handsome woman with a fish's tail. 
 
 ' White is the steeple of St. Bride's in Fleet Street ; 
 The Albion (aS its name denotes) is white ; 
 Morgan and Saunders' shop for chairs and tables 
 Gleams like a snow-ball in the setting sun ; 
 White is Whitehall. But not St. Bride's in Fleet Street, 
 The spotless Albion, Morgan, no, nor Saunders, 
 Nor white Whitehall, is white as Drury's face. 
 
 Oh, Mr. Whitbread !* fie upon you, sir ! 
 I think you should have built a colonnade ; 
 When tender Beauty, looking for her coach, 
 Protrudes her gloveless hand, perceives the shower 
 And draws the tippet closer round her throat, 
 Perchance her coach stands half a dozen off, 
 And, ere she mounts the step, the oozing mud 
 Soaks through her pale kid slipper. On the morrow 
 She coughs at breakfast, and her gruff papa 
 Cries, " There you go ! this comes of playhouses !" 
 To build no portico is penny wise : 
 If uven grant it prove not in the end pound foolish ! 
 
 Hail to thee, Drury ! Queen of Theatres ! 
 What is the Regency in Tottenham Street, 
 
 * " Oh, Mr. Whitbread !" Sir William Grant, then Master of the 
 Roll-:, repeated this passage aloud at a Lord Major's dinner, to the no 
 
 small astonishment 01 the writer, who happened to sit within ear-shot. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 The Royal Amphitheatre of Arts, 
 
 Astley's, Olympic, or the Sans Pareil, 
 
 Compared with thee ? Yet when I view thee push'd 
 
 Back from the narrow street that christened thee, 
 
 I know not why they call thee Drary Lane. 
 
 Amid the freaks that modern fashion sanctions, 
 
 It grieves me much to see live animals 
 
 Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit, 
 
 Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig ; 
 
 Fie on such tricks ! Johnson, the machinist 
 
 Of former Drury, imitated life 
 
 Quite to the life. The Elephant in Blue Beard, 
 
 Stuff'd by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis, 
 
 As spruce as he who roar'd in Padmanaba.* 
 
 Nought born on earth should die. On hackney stands 
 
 I reverence the coachman who cries " Gee," 
 
 And spares the lash. When I behold a spider 
 
 Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm, 
 
 Or view a butcher with horn-handled knife 
 
 Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton, 
 
 Indeed, indeed, I 'm very, very sick ! 
 
 [Exit hastily. 
 
 * " Padmanaba," viz., in a pantomime called Harlequin in Pad- 
 manaba. This elephant [Chunee], some years afterwards, was exhi- 
 bited over Exeter 'Change, where, the reader will remember, it was 
 found necessary [March, 1826] to destroy the poor animal by dis- 
 charges of musketry. When he made his entrance in the pantomime 
 above mentioned, Johnson, the machinist of the rival house, exclaimed, 
 " I should be very sorry if I could not make a better elephant than 
 that !" Johnson was right: we go to the theatre to be pleased with 
 the skill of the imitator, and not to look at the reality.
 
 DRURY-LANE HUSTINGS. 69 
 
 X1Y. 
 
 DRURY-LANE HUSTINGS. 
 
 A New Halfpenny Ballad. 
 
 By a PIC-NIC poet.* 
 
 This is the very age of promise : To promise is most courtly and fashionable. 
 'erformance is a kind of will or testament, which argues a great sickness in 
 is judgment that makes it.— Truox of Athens. 
 
 [lb be sung by Mr. Johnstone in the character of Looney 
 
 M'TWOLTEE.] 
 
 Jr. Jack, your address, says the Prompter to me, 
 >o I gave him my card — No, that a'nt it, says he ; 
 ris your public address. Oh ! says I, never fear, 
 f address you are bother 'd for, only look here. 
 
 [Puts on hat affectedly, 
 
 Tol de rol lol, &c 
 n. 
 
 Vith Drurys for sartin we '11 never have done, 
 Ve 've built up another, and yet there 's but one; 
 "he old one was best, yet I 'd say, if I durst, 
 n he new one is better — the last is the first. 
 
 Tol de rol, <^< . 
 
 * [" ' A New Halfpenny Ballad,' by a Pic-Nic Poet, is a good imi- 
 ition of what was not worth imitating thai tremendous mixture oi 
 
 ulgarity, i i a e, impudem e, and miserable puns, which, under the 
 
 Bine of humorous songs, rouses our polite audiences to a far bi 
 itch of rapture than Garrici or Siddons ever was able to inspire." — 
 
 .!f.]
 
 70 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 ill. 
 
 These pillars are call'd by a Frenchified word, 
 A something that 's jumbled of antique and verd ; 
 The boxes may show us some verdant antiques, 
 Some old harridans who beplaster their cheeks. 
 
 Tol de rol, &c 
 
 IV. 
 
 Only look how high Tragedy, Comedy, stick, 
 Lest their rivals, the horses, should give them a kick ! 
 If you will not descend when our authors beseech ye, 
 You '11 stop there for life, for I 'm sure they can 't reach ye 
 
 Tol de rol, &c 
 
 Each one shilling god within reach of a nod is, 
 And plain are the charms of each gallery goddess — 
 You, Brandy-fac'd Moll, don't be looking askew, 
 When I talk'd of a goddess I didn't mean you. 
 
 Tol de rol, &c 
 
 VI. 
 
 Our stage is so prettily fashion'd for viewing, 
 The whole house can see what the whole house is doing : 
 'Tis just like the Hustings, we kick up a bother ; 
 But saying is one thing, and doing 's another. 
 
 Tol de rol, &c 
 
 VII. 
 
 We 've many new houses, and some of them rum ones, 
 But the newest of all is the new House of Commons ; 
 'Tis a rickety sort of a bantling, I'm told, 
 It will die of old age when it 's seven years old. 
 
 Tol de rol, &c
 
 DRURY-LANE HUSTINGS. 71 
 
 VIII. 
 
 As I don't know on whom the election will fall, 
 3 move in return for returning them all ; 
 But for fear Mr. Speaker my meaning should miss, 
 Ihe house that I wish 'em to sit in is this. 
 
 Tol de rol, &c. 
 
 IX. 
 
 .,et us cheer oht great Commoner, but for whose aid 
 vVe all should have gone with short commons to bed ; 
 And since he has saved all the fat from the fire, 
 I move that the house be call'd Whitbread's Entire.* 
 
 Tol de rol, &c. 
 
 * [Mr. Whitbread — it need hardly be added for the present genera- 
 tion of Londoners— was a celebrated brewer. Fifty years hence, and 
 the allusion in the text may require a note which, perhaps, even now 
 (1854), is scarcely out of place.]
 
 72 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 XV. 
 
 AECHITECTUEAL ATOMS. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY DR. B. 
 
 [DR. THOMAS EUSB7, MUS. DOC.] 
 
 Dr. Busby gave living recitations of his translation of Lucretius, with tea 
 and bread-and-butter. He sent in a real Address to the Drury Lane Com- 
 mittee, which was really rejected. The present imitation professes to be 
 recited by the translator's son. The poet here, again, was a prophet. A few 
 evenings after the opening of the Theatre, Dr. Busby sat with his son in one 
 of the stage-boxes. The latter, to the astonishment of the audience, at the 
 end of the play, stepped from the box upon the stage, with his father's real 
 rejected address in his hand, and began to recite it as follows : — 
 
 " When energising objects men pursue, 
 What are the prodigies they cannot do ?' 
 
 Raymond, the stage-manager, accompanied by a constable, at this moment 
 walked upon the stage, and handed away the juvenile dilettante performer. 
 
 The Doctor's classical translation was thus noticed in one of the newspapers 
 of the day, in the column of births : — " Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne- 
 street, Dr. Busby of a still-bom Lucretius." [Busby's Monologue was parodied 
 by Lord Byron : see Byron's Works, p. 553.] 
 
 " In one single point the parodist has failed — there is a certain Dr. Busby, 
 whose supposed address is a translation called ' Architectural Atoms, intended 
 to be recited by the translator's son.' Unluckily, however, for the wag who 
 had prepared this fun, the genuine serious absurdity of Dr. Busby and his son 
 has cast all his humour into the shade. The Doctor from the boxes, and the 
 son from the stage, have actually endeavoured, it seems, to recite addresses, 
 which they call monologues and unalogues ; and which, for extravagant folly, 
 tnmid meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of parody at utter 
 defiance." — Quarterly Meview. 
 
 " Of ' Architectural Atoms,' translated by Dr. Busby, we can say very little 
 more than that they appear to us to be far more capable of combining into 
 good poetry than the few lines we were able to read of the learned Doctor's 
 genuine address in the newspapers. They might pass, indeed, for a very 
 tolerable imitation of Darwin."— Jeffkes-, Edinburgh Beview.
 
 ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 73 
 
 XV. 
 
 AECHITECTUEAL ATOMS. 
 
 Lege, Dick, Lege!— Joseph Andrews. 
 
 To be recited by the Translators Son. 
 
 LWAY, fond dupes ! who, smit with sacred lore, 
 Mosaic dreams in Genesis explore, 
 )oat with Copernicus, or darkling stray 
 With Newton, Ptolemy, or Tycho Brahe ! 
 ro you I sing not, for I sing of truth, 
 'rimeval systems, and creation's youth ; 
 Such as of old, with magic wisdom fraught, 
 nspired Lucretius to the Latians taught. 
 
 I sing how casual bricks, in airy climb, 
 Encounter' d casual cow-hair, casual lime ; 
 low rafters, borne through wondering clouds elate, 
 £iss'd in their slope blue elemental slate, 
 Hasp'd solid beams in chance-directed fury, 
 ^.nd gave to birth our renovated Drury. 
 
 Thee, son of Jove ! whose sceptre was confess'd, 
 Where fair iEolia springs from Tethys' breast; 
 rhence on Olympus, 'mid celestials placed, 
 jtod of THE Winds, and Ether's boundless wast< — 
 rhee I invoke ! Ohpuffiay bold design, 
 Prompt the bright thought, and swell th' harmonious line ;
 
 74 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Uphold my pinions, and nay verse inspire 
 With Winsor's* patent gas, or wind of fire, 
 In whose pure blaze thy embryo form enroll'd, 
 The dark enlightens, and enchafes the cold. 
 
 But, while I court thy gifts, be mine to shun 
 The deprecated prize Ulysses won ; 
 Who, sailing homeward from thy breezy shore, 
 The prison' d winds in skins of parchment bore. 
 Speeds the fleet bark till o'er the billowy green 
 The azure heights of Ithaca are seen ; 
 But while with favouring gales her way she wins, 
 His curious comrades ope the mystic skins ; 
 When, lo ! the rescued winds, with boisterous sweep, 
 Roar to the clouds and lash the rocking deep ; 
 Heaves the smote vessel in the howling blast, 
 Splits the stretch'd sail, and cracks the tottering mast. 
 Launch'd on a plank, the buoyant hero rides 
 Where ebon Afric stems the sable tides, 
 While his duck'd comrades o'er the ocean fly, 
 And sleep not in the whole skins they untie. 
 
 * '' Winsor's patent gas "—at that time in its infancy. The firs 
 place illumined by it was [Jan. 28, 1807] the Carlton-house side o 
 Pall Mall ; the second, Bishopsgate Street. The writer attended 
 lecture given by the inventor : the charge of admittance was thre 
 shillings, but, as the inventor was about to apply to parliament 
 members of both houses were admitted gratis. The writer and 
 fellow-jester assumed the parts of senators at a short notice. " Mem 
 bers of parliament !" was their important ejaculation at the door o 
 entrance. " What places, gentlemen?" " Old Saram and Bridge 
 water." " Walk in, gentlemen." Luckily, the real Simon Pure 
 did not attend. This Pall Mall illumination was further noticed ii 
 Horace in London : — 
 
 " And Winsor lights, with flame of gas, 
 Home, to King's Place, his mother.''
 
 ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 75 
 
 So, when to raise the wind some lawyer tries, 
 Mysterious skins of parchment meet our eyes ; 
 On speeds the smiling suit — " Pleas of our Lord 
 The King" shine sable on the wide record; 
 Nods the prunella'd bar, attorneys smile, 
 And syren jurors flatter to beguile ; 
 Till stript — nonsuited — he is doom'd to toss 
 In legal shipwreck and redeemless loss ! 
 Eucky if, like Ulysses, he can keep 
 His head above the waters of the deep. 
 
 iEolian monarch ! Emperor of Puffs ! 
 We modern sailors dread not thy rebuffs ; 
 See to thy golden shore promiscuous come 
 Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb ; 
 Fools are their bankers — a prolific line, 
 And every mortal malady 's a mine. 
 Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill, 
 Flies to the printer's devil with his bill, 
 Whose Midas touch can gild his ass's ears, 
 And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. 
 And lo ! a second miracle is thine, 
 For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine. 
 Where Day and Martin's patent blacking roll'd. 
 Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold ; 
 Laugh the sly wizards, glorying in their stealth, 
 Quit the black art, and loll in lazy wealth. 
 See Britain's Algerines, the lottery fry, 
 Win annual tribute by the annual lie ! 
 Aided by thee — but whither do I stray ? — 
 Court, city, borough, own thy sovereign sway ; 
 An age of pufls an age of gold succeeds, 
 And windy bubbles are the spawn it breeds.
 
 76 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 If such thy power, O hear the Muse's prayer ! 
 Swell thy loud lungs and wave thy wings of air ; 
 Spread, viewless giant, all thy arms of mist 
 Like windmill-sails to bring the poet grist ; 
 As erst thy roaring son, with eddying gale, 
 Whirl'd Orithyia from her native vale — ■ 
 So, while Lucretian wonders I rehearse, 
 Augusta's sons shall patronise my verse. 
 
 I sing of Atoms, whose creative brain, 
 With eddying impulse, built new Drury Lane ; 
 Not to the labours of subservient man, 
 To no young Wyatt appertains the plan — 
 We mortals stalk, like horses in a mill, 
 Impassive media of atomic will ; 
 Ye stare ! then Truth's broad talisman discern — 
 'Tis demonstration speaks — attend, and learn ! 
 
 From floating elements in chaos hurl'd, 
 Self-form'd of atoms, sprang the infant world : 
 No great First Cause inspired the happy plot, 
 But all was matter — and no matter what. 
 Atoms, attracted by some law occult, 
 Settling in spheres, the globe was the result ; 
 Pure child of Chance, which still directs the ball, 
 As rotatory atoms rise or fall. 
 In ether launch'd, the peopled bubble floats, 
 A mass of particles and confluent motes, 
 So nicely poised, that if one atom flings 
 Its weight away, aloft the planet springs, 
 And wings its course through realms of boundless space, 
 Outstripping comets in eccentric race.
 
 ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 77 
 
 A.dd but one atom more, it sinks outright 
 Down to the realms of Tartarus and night. 
 What waters melt or scorching fires consume, 
 [n different forms their being re-assume : 
 Hence can no change arise, except in name, 
 For weight and substance ever are the same. 
 
 Thus with the flames that from old Drury rise 
 [te elements primeval sought the skies ; 
 There pendulous to wait the happy hour 
 When new attractions should restore their power : 
 So, in this procreant theatre elate, 
 Echoes unborn their future life await ; 
 Here embryo sounds in ether lie conceal'd, 
 Like words in northern atmosphere congeal'd. 
 Here many a foetus laugh and half encore 
 Clings to the roof, or creeps along the floor ; 
 By puffs concipient some in ether flit, 
 And soar in bravos from the thundering pit ; 
 Some forth on ticket-nights* from tradesmen break, 
 To mar the actor they design to make ; 
 "While some this mortal life abortive miss, 
 Crush'd by a groan, or strangled by a hiss. 
 So, when " Dog's-meat" re-echoes through the streets, 
 Rush sympathetic dogs from their retreats, 
 Beam with bright blaze their supplicating eyes, 
 Sink their hind-legs, ascend their joyful cries ; 
 
 * " Ticket-nights." This phrase is probably unintelligible to the 
 untheatrica] portion of the community, which may now be said to be 
 all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the 
 inferior actors club for a benefit : each distributes as many tickets of 
 admission as he is able among his friends. A motley assemblage is 
 the consequence; and as each actor is encouraged by his own set, who 
 an: nol in general play-going people, the applause comes (as Chester- 
 field says of Pope's attempts at witj " generally unseasonably, and too 
 often unsuccessfully."
 
 78 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Each, wild with hope, and maddening to prevail. 
 Points the pleased ear, and wags the expectant tail. 
 
 Ye fallen bricks ! in Drury's fire calcined, 
 Since doom'd to slumber, couch'd upon the wind, 
 Sweet was the horn - , when, tempted by your freaks, 
 Congenial trowels smooth'd your yellow cheeks. 
 Float dulcet serenades upon the ear, 
 Bends every atom from its ruddy sphere, 
 Twinkles each eye, and, peeping from its veil, 
 Marks in the adverse crowd its destined male. 
 The oblong beauties clap their hands of grit, 
 And brick-dust titterings on the breezes flit ; 
 Then down they rush in amatory race, 
 Their dusty bridegrooms eager to embrace. 
 Some choose old lovers, some decide for new, 
 But each, when fix'd, is to her station true. 
 Thus various bricks are made, as tastes invite — 
 The red, the grey, the dingy, or the white. 
 
 Perhaps some half-baked rover, frank and free, 
 To alien beauty bends the lawless knee, 
 But of unhallow'd fascinations sick, 
 Soon quits his Cyprian for his married brick ; 
 The Dido atom calls and scolds in vain, 
 No crisp JEneas soothes the widow's pain. 
 
 So in Cheapside, what time Aurora peeps, 
 A mingled noise of dustmen, milk, and sweeps 
 Falls on the housemaid's ear : amazed she stands, 
 Then opes the door with cinder-sabled hands, 
 And "Matches" calls. The dustman, bubbled flat, 
 Thinks 'tis for him, and doffs his fan-tail'd hat;
 
 ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 79 
 
 'he milkman, whom her second cries assail, 
 Vith sudden sink unyokes the clinking pail ; 
 low louder grown, by turns she screams and weeps — 
 ilas ! her screaming only brings the sweeps, 
 weeps but put out — she wants to raise a flame, 
 ind calls for matches, but 'tis still the same. 
 itoms and housemaids! mark the moral true — 
 f once ye go astray, no match for you ! 
 
 As atoms in one mass united mix, 
 o bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks ; 
 ome in the cellar view, perchance, on high, 
 'air chimney chums on beds of mortar lie ; 
 Inamour'd of the sympathetic clod, 
 ,eaps the red bridegroom to the labourer's hod : 
 md up the ladder bears the workman, taught 
 'o think he bears the bricks — mistaken thought ! 
 L proof behold ! if near the top they find 
 'he nymphs or broken-corner'd or unkind, 
 »ack to the base, " resulting with a bound," * 
 'hey bear their bleeding carriers to the ground ! 
 
 So legends tell along the lofty hill 
 aced the twin heroes, gallant Jack and Jill ; 
 >n trudged the Gemini to reach the rail 
 iiat shields the well's top from the expectant pail, 
 Vhen, ah ! Jack falls ; and, rolling in the rear, 
 ill feels the attraction of his kindred sphere ; 
 lead over heels begins his toppling track, 
 'hrows sympathetic somersets with Jack, 
 ind at the mountain's base bobs plump against him, whack! 
 
 * [Originally : — " Back to the bottom leaping with a bound," altered 
 i 1833.]
 
 80 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Ye living atoms, who unconscious sit, 
 Jumbled by chance in gallery, box, and pit, 
 For you no Peter opes the fabled door, 
 No churlish Charon plies the shadowy oar ; 
 Breathe but a space, and Boreas' casual sweep 
 Shall bear your scatter'd corses o'er the deep, 
 To gorge the greedy elements, and mix 
 With water, marl, and clay, and stones, and sticks ; 
 While, charged with fancied souls, sticks, stones, and cl; 
 Shall take your seats, and hiss or clap the play. 
 
 O happy age ! when convert Christians read 
 No sacred writings but the Pagan creed — 
 O happy age ! when, spurning Newton's dreams, 
 Our poets' sons recite Lucretian themes, 
 Abjure the idle systems of their youth, 
 And turn again to atoms and to truth ; — 
 O happier still ! when England's dauntless dames, 
 Awed by no chaste alarms, no latent shames, 
 The bard's fourth book unblushingly peruse, 
 And learn the rampant lessons of the stews ! 
 
 All hail, Lucretius ! renovated sage ! 
 Unfold the modest mystics of thy page ; 
 Return no more to thy sepulchral shelf, 
 But live, kind bard — that I may live myself !
 
 THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 81 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THEATKICAL ALAEM-BELL. 
 
 By THE EDITOR OF THE M. P.* 
 [morning post.] 
 
 " Bounce, Jupiter, bounce!" — O'Haea. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 As it is now the universally-admitted, and indeed 
 prottv-generally-suspected, aim of Mr. Whitbread and the 
 infamous, bloodthirsty, and, in fact, illiberal faction to which 
 he belongs, to burn to the ground this free and happy- 
 Protestant city, and establish himself in St. James's Palace, 
 his fellow committeemen have thought it their duty to 
 watch the principles of a theatre built under his auspices. 
 ] information they have received from an undoubted 
 authority — particularly from an old fruit-woman who has 
 turned king's evidence, and whose name, for obvious 
 . we forbear to mention, though we have had it 
 ks in our possession — has induced them to intro- 
 duce various reforms — not such reforms i - the vil faction 
 glamour for, meaning thereby revolution, but such reforms 
 
 * " Tliis jpurnal was, at the period in question, rather remarkable 
 
 for the i hetoricians c ti . The 
 
 Bard of Avon may be quoted in justification of its adoption, when he 
 
 arms against a sea, and I ubble in the mouth 
 
 °o ' . in the year 1812, congratulate d if j 
 
 upon having stripped it's mask and discovered his 
 
 . thai it was high time to give the hydra-head of 
 
 Taction a >-\\, on the knuckles!"
 
 82 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 as are necessary to preserve the glorious constitution of tin 
 only free, happy, and prosperous country now left upoi 
 the face of the earth. From the valuable and authentii 
 source above alluded to, we have learnt that a sanguinary 
 plot has been formed by some United Irishmen, combinec 
 with a gang of Luddites, and a special committee sent ove: 
 by the Pope at the instigation of the beastly Corsican fiend 
 for destroying all the loyal part of the audience on th< 
 anniversary of that deeply -to-be-abhorred-and-highly-to-be 
 blamed stratagem, the Gunpowder Plot, which falls this 
 year on Thursday the fifth of November. The whole i; 
 under the direction of a delegated committee of O. P.'s 
 whose treasonable exploits at Covent Garden you all recol- 
 lect, and all of whom would have been hung from th< 
 chandeliers at that time, but for the mistaken lenity o: 
 Government. At a given signal, a well-known O. P. was 
 to cry "Out from the gallery, "Nosey! Music!" where- 
 upon all the O. P.'s were to produce from their inside 
 pockets a long pair of shears, edged with felt, to prevem 
 their making any noise, manufactured expressly by a wretel 
 at Birmingham, one of Mr. Brougham's evidences, and now 
 in custody. With these they were to cut off the heads o: 
 all the loyal N. P.'s in the house, without distinction of se? 
 or age. At the signal, similarly given, of " Throw hirr 
 over !" which it now appears always alluded to the over- 
 throw of our never-sufficiently-enough-to-be-deeply-and- 
 universally-to-be-venerated constitution, all the heads of the 
 N. P.'s were to be thrown at the fiddlers, to prevent theu 
 appearing in evidence, or perhaps as a false and illiberal 
 insinuation that they have no heads of their own. All thai 
 we know of the further designs of these incendiaries is, 
 that they are by-a-great-deal-too-much-too-horrible-to-be- 
 mentioned.
 
 THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 83 
 
 The Manager has acted with his usual promptitude on 
 this trying occasion. He has contracted for 300 tons of 
 gunpowder, which are at this moment placed in a small 
 barrel under the pit; and a descendant of Guv Faux, 
 assisted by Col. Congreve, has undertaken to blow up 
 the house, when necessary, in so novel and ingenious a 
 manner, that every 0. P. shall be annihilated, while not a 
 whisker of the N. P.'s shall be singed. This strikingly 
 displays the advantages of loyalty and attachment to govern- 
 ment. Several other hints have been taken from the the- 
 atrical regulations of the not-a-bit-the-less-on-that-account- 
 to-be-universally-execrated monster Bonaparte. A park of 
 artillery, provided with chain-shot, is to be stationed on the 
 stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any indication 
 of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts 
 for the large space between the curtain and the lamps) ; 
 and the public will participate our satisfaction in learning 
 that the indecorous custom of landing up with the hat on 
 is to be abolished, as the Bow-street officers are provided 
 with daggers, and have orders to stab all such persons to 
 the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons' Hall. Gentle- 
 men who cough are only to be slightly wounded. Fruit- 
 women bawling " Bill of the Play ! " are to be forthwith 
 shot, for which purpose soldiers will be stationed in the 
 dips, and ball-cartridge is to be served out with the 
 lemonade. If any of the spectators happen to sneeze or 
 spit, they are to be transported for life ; and any person 
 who is so tall as to prevent another seeing, is to be dragged 
 out and sent on board the tender, or, by an instrument to 
 ken out of the pocket of Procrustes, to be forthwith 
 cut shorter, either at tli'' head or foot, according as his own 
 convenience may dictate. 
 
 Thus, ladies and gentlemen, have the committee, through 
 
 c 2
 
 84 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 my medium, set forth the not-in-a-hurry-to-be-paralleled 
 plan they have adopted for preserving order and decorum 
 within the walls of their magnificent edifice. Nor have 
 they, while attentive to their own concerns, by any means 
 overlooked those of the cities of London and Westminster. 
 Finding on enumeration that they have, with a with-two- 
 hands-and-one-tongue-to be-applauded liberality, contracted 
 for more gunpowder than they want, they have parted 
 with the surplus to the mattock-carrying and hustings- 
 hammering high-bailiff of Westminster,, who has, with his 
 own shovel, dug a large hole in the front of the parish- 
 church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, that, upon the least 
 symptom of ill-breeding in the mob at the general election, 
 the whole of the market may be blown itup the air. This, 
 ladies and gentlemen, may at first make provisions" me, but 
 we pledge the credit of our theatre that they will soon fall 
 again, and people be supplied, as usual, with vegetables, in 
 thein-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-Saturday- 
 night-lighted-up-with-lamps market of Covent Garden. 
 
 I should expatiate more largely on the other advantages 
 of the glorious constitution of these by-the-whole-of-Europe- 
 envied realms, but T am called away to take an account of 
 the ladies and other artificial flowers at a fashionable rout, 
 of which a full and particular account will hereafter appear. 
 For the present, my fashionable intelligence is scanty, on 
 account of the opening of Drury Lane ; and the ladies and 
 gentlemen who honour me will not be surprised to find 
 nothing under my usual head ! !
 
 THE THEATRE. 85 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 
 
 By THE REV. G. C. 
 
 • [THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE.] 
 [Mr. Crabbe died 3rd February, 1832, in bis 78th year.] 
 
 The Rev. George Ckabbe. — The writers first interview with this poet, 
 who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William 
 Spencer's villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish 
 poii'l, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d'eau 
 like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist, 
 exclaimed, with a good-humoured laugh, "Ah! my old enemy, how do you 
 do ?" In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his 
 popularity in London ; adding, " In my own village they think nothing of me." 
 The subject happening to be the inroads of time upon beauty, the writer 
 quoted the following lines : — 
 
 -ix years had pass'd, and forty ere the six, 
 
 When Time began to play his usual tricks : 
 
 My locks, once comely in a virgin's sight, 
 
 Lucks of pure brown, now felt th' encroaching white ; 
 
 ( ; radual each day 1 liked my horses less, 
 
 My dinner more — I learnt to play at chess." 
 
 "That's very good!" cried the bard; — "whose is it?" "Your own." 
 "Indeed! hah! well, I had quite forgotten it." Was this affectation, or wag 
 it ii. . t ? In sooth, he seemed to push simplicity to puerility. This imitation 
 contained in manuscript the following lines, after describing certain Sunday 
 newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at anew play, and who 
 were rather heated in their politics: — 
 
 " Hard is the- task who edits— thankless job! — 
 A Sunday Journal lor the factious mob: 
 With bitter paragraph and caustic jest, 
 He gives to turbuleno I tie daj ol rest ; 
 Cond mn'd, this week, rash rancour to Instil, 
 Or thrown aside, the next, for one who ^^ ill : 
 Alike undone or if he pi ai -^ or rail 
 (For this ''' tj . thai his Bale), 
 
 He sink i al last, in 
 J! loud for libel, and it dun, I. for debt."
 
 86 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 They were, however, never printed; being, on reflection, considered too 
 serious for the occasion. 
 
 It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write with such 
 vigour, should descend to such lines as the following :— 
 
 " Something had happen'd wrong about a bill 
 "Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill ; 
 So, to amend it, 1 was told to go 
 And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co." 
 
 Surely " Emanuel Jennings," compared with the above, rises to sublimity. 
 
 [" ' The Theatre,' by the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, is the best piece 
 in the collection. It is an exquisite and most masterly imitation, not only of 
 the peculiar style, but of the taste, temper, and manner of description of that 
 most original author ; and can hardly be said to be in any respect a caricature 
 of that style or manner — except in the excessive profusion of puns and verbal 
 jingles — which, though undoubtedly to be ranked among his characteristics, 
 are never so thick so'.vn in liis original works as in this admirable imitation. 
 It does not aim, of course, at any shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity, but 
 seems to us to be a singularly faithful copy of his passages of mere descrip- 
 tion." — Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.]
 
 THE THEATRE. 87 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE THEATRE. 
 
 "Nil intentatuni nostri liquere poetae, 
 Ne£ minimum meruere decus, vestigia Grjeca 
 Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta.' - Hon. 
 
 A PREFACE OF APOLOGIES. 
 
 If the following poem should be fortunate enough to be 
 selected for the opening address, a few words of expla- 
 nation may be deemed necessary, on my part, to avert 
 invidious misrepresentation. The animadversion I have 
 thought it right to make on the noise created by tuning 
 the orchestra will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any 
 of the gentlemen employed in the band. It is to be 
 desired that they would keep their instruments ready 
 tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accom- 
 modation to many well-meaning persons who frequent the 
 theatre, who, not being blest with the ear of St. Cecilia, 
 mistake the tuning for the overture, and think the latter 
 concluded before it is begun. 
 
 ■ " One fiddle will 
 
 Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still," 
 
 was originally written " one hautboy will ; " but, having 
 providentially been informed, when this poem was on the 
 point of being sent off, that there is but one hautboy in 
 tliu band, I averted the storm of popular and managerial
 
 88 EEJECTED ADDEESSES. 
 
 indignation from the head of its blower : as it now stands, 
 " one fiddle " among many, the faulty individual will, I 
 hope, escape detection. The story of the flying play-bill 
 is calculated to expose a practice much" too common, of 
 pinning play-bills to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, 
 I fear, not pinning them at all. If these lines save one 
 play-bill only from the fate I have recorded, I shall not 
 deem my labour ill employed. The concluding episode of 
 Patrick Jennings glances at the boorish fashion of wearing 
 the hat in the one-shilling gallery. Had Jennings thrust 
 his between his feet at the commencement t)f the play, he 
 might have leaned forward with impunity, and the catas- 
 trophe I relate would not have occurred. The line of 
 handkerchiefs formed to enable him to recover his loss, is 
 purposely so crossed in texture and materials as to mislead 
 the reader in respect to the real owner of any one of them : 
 for, in the statistical view of life and manners which I 
 occasionally present, my clerical profession has taught me 
 how extremely improper it would be, by any allusion, 
 however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to 
 any individual, however foolish or wicked. 
 
 G. C. 
 
 [You were more feeling than I was, when you read the excellent 
 parodies of the young mtn who wrote the " Kejected Addresses." 
 There is a little ill-nature — and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved 
 ill-nature — in their prefatory address ; but in their versification they 
 have done me admirably. They are extraordinary men ; but it is easier 
 to imitate style than to furnish matter. — Ckabbe ( Works, 1 vol. Ed., 
 p. 81).]
 
 THE THEATEE. 89 
 
 THE THEATEE. 
 
 uterior of a Theatre described. — Pit gradually fills. — The Check- 
 taker. — Pit full. — The Orchestra tuned. — One riddle rather dila- 
 tory. — Is reproved — and repents. — Evolutions of a Playbill. — Its 
 final Settlement on the Spikes. — The Gods taken to task — and why. 
 . — Motley Group of Play -goers. — Holywell Street, St. Pancras. — 
 Emanuel Jennipgs binds his Son apprentice — not in London — and 
 why.— Episode of the Hat. 
 
 Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six, 
 )ur long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks, 
 fouch'd by the lamplighter's Promethean art, 
 Start into light, and make the lighter start ; 
 to see red Phoebus through the gallery-pane 
 Hnge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane ; 
 kVhile gradual parties fill our widen' d pit, 
 Lad gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit. 
 
 At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease; 
 Distant or near, they settle where they please ; 
 3ut when the multitude contracts the span, 
 \nd seats are rare, they settle where they can. 
 
 Now the full benches to late-comers doom 
 !fo room for standing, miscall'd standing-room. 
 
 Hark ! the check-taker moody silence breaks, 
 \nd bawling " Pit full ! " gives the check he takes ; 
 pet onward still the gathering numbers cram, 
 Jontending crowders shout the frequent damn, 
 \nd all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam. 
 
 See to their dusks Apollo's sons repair — 
 swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair!
 
 90 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 In unison their various tones to tune, 
 
 Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon ; 
 
 In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute, 
 
 Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute, 
 
 Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp, 
 
 Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp; 
 
 Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in, 
 
 Attunes to order the chaotic din. 
 
 Now all seems hush'd — but no, one fiddle will 
 
 Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still. 
 
 Foil'd in his crash, the leader of the clan 
 
 Reproves with frowns the dilatory man : 
 
 Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow, 
 
 Nods a new signal, and away they go. 
 
 Perchance, while pit and gallery cry " Hats oft'! " 
 And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, 
 Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love 
 Drops, reft of pin, her play-bill from above ; 
 Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, 
 Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap ; 
 But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, 
 And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers ; 
 Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl, 
 It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl, 
 Who from his powder' d pate the intruder strikes, 
 And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes. 
 
 Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues ? 
 Who 's that calls " Silence ! " with such leathern lungs ? 
 He who, in quest of quiet, " Silence ! " hoots, 
 Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes. 
 
 What various swains our motley walls contain !— 
 Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane ;
 
 THE THEATKE. 91 
 
 Bankers from Paper Buildings here r - esort, 
 
 Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court ; 
 
 From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain, 
 
 Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane ; 
 
 rhe lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark, 
 
 rhe full-price master, and the half-price clerk ; 
 
 Boys who long linger at the gallery-door, 
 
 With pence twice five — they want but twopence more ; 
 
 rill some Samaritan the twopence spares, 
 
 \nd sends them jumping up the gallery-stairs. 
 
 Critics we boast who ne'er their malice balk, 
 3ut talk their minds — we wish they 'd mind their talk; 
 3ig-worded bullies, who by quarrels live — 
 Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give ; 
 lews from St. Mary Axe,* for jobs so wary, , 
 rhat for old clothes they 'd even axe St. Mary ; 
 \.nd bucks with pockets empty as their pate, 
 .,ax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait ; 
 /Vho oft, when we our house lock up, carouse 
 With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house. 
 
 Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow, 
 /Vhere scowling Fortune seem'd to threaten woe. 
 
 John Richard William Alexander Dwyer 
 Vas footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire ; 
 Jut when John Dwyer listed in the Blues, 
 Emanuel Jennings polish'd Stubbs's shoes. 
 Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy 
 Ip as a corn-cutter — a safe employ ; 
 n Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred 
 At number twenty-seven, it is said), 
 'acing the pump, and near the Granby's Head: 
 
 * [A street and parish in Lime Street Ward, London — chiefly 
 ihabited by Jews.]
 
 92 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 He would have bound him to some shop in town, 
 But with a premium he could not come down. 
 Pat was the urchin's name — a red-hair'd youth, 
 Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth. 
 
 Silence, ye gods ! to keep your tongues in awe, 
 The Muse shall tell an accident she saw. 
 
 Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, 
 But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat 
 Down from the gallery the beaver flew, 
 And spurn' d the one to settle in the two. 
 How shall he act ? Pay at the gallery-door 
 Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four ? 
 Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait, 
 And gain his hat again at half-past eight? 
 Now, while his fears anticipate a thief, 
 John Mullens whispers, " Take my handkerchief." 
 " Thank you," cries Pat; "but one won't make a line.' 1 
 "Take mine," cried "Wilson; and cried Stokes, " Ta 
 
 mine." 
 A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, 
 Where Spitalfields with real India vies. 
 Like Iris" bow down darts the painted clue, 
 Starr'd, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, 
 Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. 
 George Green below, with palpitating hand, 
 Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band — 
 Upsoars the prize ! The youth, with joy unfeign'd, 
 Regain'd the felt, and felt what he regain'd ; 
 While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat 
 Made a low bow, and touch M the ransom'd hat.
 
 TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE. 93 
 
 XVIII. XIX. XX. 
 
 TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF THE 
 NEW DRURY LANE THEATRE.* 
 
 fEXTLEMEX, 
 
 Happening to be wool-gathering at the foot 
 f Mount Parnassus, I was suddenly seized with a violent 
 •avestie in the head. The first symptoms I felt were 
 weral triple rhymes floating about my brain, accompanied 
 y a singing in my throat, which quickly communicated 
 self to the ears of everybody about me, and made me a 
 urthen to my friends and a torment to Doctor Apollo • 
 aree of whose favourite servants — that is to say, Macbeth, 
 is butcher ; Mrs. Haller, his cook ; and George Barnwell, 
 is book-keeper — I waylaid in one of my fits of insanity, 
 nd mauled after a very frightful fashion. In this woeful 
 risis, I accidentally heard of your invaluable New Patent 
 lissing Pit, which cures every disorder incident to Grub 
 Street. I send you inclosed a more detailed specimen of 
 ay case : if you could mould it into the shape of an 
 ddress, to be said or sung on the first night of your per- 
 •jrmance, I have no doubt that I should feel the immediate 
 fleets of your invaluable New Patent Hissing Pit, of 
 ditch they tell me one hiss is a dose. 
 
 I am, &c, 
 
 Momus Medlar. 
 
 * "We come next to three ludicrous parodies — of the story of 
 i' ind of the d .>. ;er-scene in Macbeth, 
 
 ofMomus Medial-. Thej are , we think, 
 
 I that sort of thing can be, and remind us of the happier efforts of 
 'oluian, whose less ries are professedly copied in the 
 
 ait piece in the volume." — JEFFREY, Edinburgh
 
 94 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 CASE, No. I. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 [Enter Macbeth in a red, nightcap. Page following with a torch. 
 
 Go, boy, and thy good mistress tell 
 
 (She knows that my purpose is cruel), 
 I 'd thank her to tingle her bell 
 
 As soon as she 's heated my gruel. 
 Go, get thee to bed and repose — 
 
 To sit up so late is a scandal ; 
 But ere you have ta'en off your clothes, 
 
 Be sure that you put out that candle. 
 
 Ri fol de rol tol de rol lol. 
 
 My stars, in the air here 's a knife ! 
 
 I 'm sure it cannot be a hum ; 
 I '11 catch at the handle, add's life ! 
 
 And then I shall not cut my thumb. 
 I 've got him ! — no, at him again ! 
 
 Come, come, I 'm not fond of these jokes ; 
 This must be some blade of the brain — 
 
 Those witches are given to hoax. 
 
 I Ve one in my pocket, I know, 
 
 My wife left on purpose behind her : 
 
 She bought this of Teddy-high-ho, 
 The poor Caledonian grinder.
 
 MACBETH TEAVESTIE. 95 
 
 I see thee again ! o'er thy middle 
 
 Large drops of red blood now are spill' d, 
 
 Just as much as to say, diddle diddle, 
 Good Duncan, pray come and be kill'd. 
 
 It leads to his chamber, I swear ; 
 
 I tremble and quake every joint — 
 No dog at the scent of a hare 
 
 Ever yet made a cleverer point. 
 Ah, no ! 'twas a dagger of straw — 
 
 Give me blinkers, to save me from starting ; 
 The knife that I thought that I saw 
 
 Was nought but my eye, Betty Martin. 
 
 Now o'er this terrestrial hive 
 
 A life paralytic is spread ; 
 For while the one half is alive, 
 
 The other is sleepy and dead. 
 King Duncan, in grand majesty, 
 
 Has got my state-bed for a snooze ; 
 I 've lent him my slippers, so I 
 
 May certainly stand in his shoes. 
 
 Blow softly, ye murmuring gales ! 
 
 Ye feet, rouse no echo in walking ! 
 For though a dead man tells no tales, 
 
 Dead walls are much given to talking. 
 This knife shall be in at the death — 
 
 I '11 stick him, then off safely get ! 
 Cries the world, this could not Vic Macbeth, 
 
 For he 'd ne'er stick at anything yet.
 
 96 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 Hark, hark ! 'tis the signal, by goles ! 
 
 It sounds like a funeral knell ; 
 O, hear it not, Duncan ! it tolls 
 
 To call thee to heaven or hell. 
 Or if you to heaven won't fly, 
 
 But rather prefer Pluto's ether, 
 Only wait a few years till I die, 
 
 And we '11 go to the devil together. 
 
 Ri fol de rol, &c. 
 
 CASE, No. II. 
 
 THE STRANGER* 
 
 Who has e'er been at Drury must needs know the Strang* 
 A wailing old Methodist, gloomy and wan, 
 A husband suspicious — his wife acted Ranger, 
 She took to her heels, and left poor Hypocon. 
 Her martial gallant swore that truth was a libel, 
 That marriage was thraldom, elopement no sin ; 
 Quoth she, I remember the words of my Bible — 
 My spouse is a Stranger, and I '11 take him in. 
 With my sentimental ibus lachrymae roar' em, 
 And pathos and bathos delightful to see ; 
 And chop and change ribs, a-la-mode Germanorum, 
 And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee. 
 
 * [A translation from Kotzebue by Thompson, and first acted 
 Dr'iiy Lane, 24th March, 1798. Mrs. Siddons was famous in the p 
 of Mrs. Haller.]
 
 STRANGER TRAVESTIE. 97 
 
 b keep up her dignity no longer rich enough, 
 Hiere was her plate? — why, 'twas laid on the shelf; 
 [er land fuller's earth, and her great riches kitchen- 
 stuff— 
 •ressing the dinner instead of herself, 
 fc> longer permitted in diamonds to sparkle, 
 tow plain Mrs. Haller, of servants the dread, 
 Vith a heart full of grief, and a pan full of charcoal, 
 he lighted the company up to then bed. 
 
 licensed at her -flight, her poor Hubby in dudgeon 
 
 loam'd after his rib in a gig and a pout, 
 
 'ill, tired with his journey, the peevish curmudgeon 
 
 at down and blubber' d just like a church-spout. 
 
 >ne day, on a bench as dejected and sad he laid, 
 
 [earing a squash, he cried, Damn it, what 's that ? 
 
 rwas a child of the count's, in whose service lived 
 
 Adelaide, 
 loused in the river, and squall' d like a cat. 
 
 laving drawn his young excellence up to the bank, it 
 Lppear'd that himself was all dripping, I swear ; 
 Jo wonder he soon became dry as a blanket, 
 Exposed as he was to the count's son and heir. 
 )ear Sir, quoth the count, in reward of your valour, 
 !"o show that my gratitude is not mere talk, 
 fou shall eat a beefsteak with my cook, Mrs. Haller, 
 Jut from the rump with her own knife and fork. 
 
 Jehold, now the count gave the Stranger a dinner, 
 A'ith gunpowder-tea, which you know brings a ball, 
 ^nd, thin as he was, that he might not grow thinner, 
 Je made of the Stranger no stranger at all. 
 
 H
 
 98 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 At dinner fair Adelaide brought up a chicken — 
 A bird that she never had met with before ; 
 But, seeing him, screarn'd, and was carried off kicking, 
 And he bang'd his nob 'gainst the opposite door. 
 
 To finish my tale without roundaboutation, 
 Young master and missee besieged their papa ; 
 They sung a quartetto in grand blubberation — 
 The Stranger cried Oh ! Mrs. Haller cried Ah ! 
 Though pathos and sentiment largely are dealt in, 
 I have no good moral to give in exchange ; 
 For though she, as a cook, might be given to melting, 
 The Stranger's behaviour was certainly strange, 
 With this sentimentalibus lachrymae roar 'em, 
 And pathos and bathos delightful to see, 
 And chop and change ribs, a-la-mode Germanorum, 
 And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee. 
 
 CASE, No. III. 
 
 GEORGE BARNWELL.* 
 
 George Barnwell stood at the shop-door, 
 
 A customer hoping to find, sir; 
 
 His apron was hanging before, 
 
 But the tail of his coat was behind, sir. 
 
 * [See Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii. ; an 
 Lillo's tragedy, "The London Merchant; or, the History of Georg 
 Barnwell." 8vo. 1731.]
 
 GEORGE BARNWELL TRAVESTIE. 99 
 
 A lady, so painted and smart, 
 Cried, Sir, I 've exhausted my stock o' late ; 
 I 've got nothing left but a groat — 
 Could you give me four penn'orth of chocolate ? 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 Her face was rouged up to the eyes, 
 Which made her look prouder and prouder ; 
 His hair stood on end with surprise, 
 And hers with pomatum and powder. 
 The business was soon understood ; 
 The lady, who wish'd to be more rich, 
 Cries, Sweet sir, my name is Milwood, 
 And I lodge at the Gunner's in Shoreditch. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 Now nightly he stole out, good lack ! 
 And into her lodging would pop, sir ; 
 And often forgot to come back, 
 Leaving master to shut up the shop, sir. 
 Her beauty his wits did bereave — 
 Determined to be quite the crack 0, 
 He lounged at the Adam and Eve, 
 And call'd for his gin and tobacco. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 And now — for the truth must be told, 
 
 Though none of a 'prentice should speak ill — 
 
 He stole from the till all the gold, 
 
 And ate the lump-sugar and treacle. 
 
 In vain did his master exclaim, 
 
 Dear George, don't engage with that dragon ; 
 
 She '11 lead you to sorrow and shame, 
 
 And leave you the devil a rag on. 
 
 Your rum ti, &c. 
 H 2
 
 100 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 In vain he entreats and implores 
 The weak and incurable ninny, 
 So kicks him at last out of doors, 
 And Georgy soon spends his last guinea. 
 His uncle, whose generous purse 
 Had often relieved him, as I know, 
 Now finding him grow worse and worse, 
 Kefused to come down with the rhino. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 Cried Milwood, whose cruel heart's core 
 Was so flinty that nothing could shock it, 
 If ye mean to come here any more, 
 Pray come with more cash in your pocket : 
 Make Nunky surrender his dibs, 
 Rub his pate with a pair of lead towels, 
 Or stick a knife into his ribs — 
 I '11 warrant he '11 then show some bowels. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 A pistol he got from his love — 
 'Twas loaded with powder and bullet ; 
 He trudged off to Camberwell Grove, 
 But wanted the courage to pull it. 
 There 's Nunky as fat as a hog, 
 While I am as lean as a lizard ; 
 Here 's at you, you stingy old dog ! — 
 And he whips a long knife in his gizzard. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 All you who attend to my song, 
 
 A terrible end of the farce shall see, 
 
 If you join the inquisitive throng 
 
 That follow'd poor George to the Marshalsea.
 
 GEORGE BARNWELL TRAVESTIE. 10 1 
 
 If Mil wood were here, dash my wigs, 
 Quoth he, I would pummel and lam her well ; 
 Had I stuck to my prunes and figs, 
 I ne'er had stuck Isunky at Camberwell. 
 
 Rum ti, &c. 
 
 Their bodies were never cut down ; 
 For granny relates with amazement, 
 A witch bore 'em over the town, 
 And hung -them on Thorowgood's casement. 
 The neighbours, I 've heard the folks say, 
 The miracle noisily brag on ; 
 And the shop is, to this very day, 
 The sign of the George and the Dragon. 
 
 Rum ti, &c.
 
 102 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 PUNCH'S APOTHEOSIS. 
 
 By T. H.* 
 [Mr. Hook died 24th August, 1841, in his 53rd year.] 
 
 " Rhymes the rudders are of verses, 
 With which, like ships, they steer their courses." 
 
 HUDIBRAS. 
 
 Scene draws, and discovers Punch on a throne, surrounded by Lear, 
 Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Othello, George Barnwell, 
 Hamlet, Ghost, Macheath, Juliet, Friar, Apothecary, 
 Romeo, and Falstaff. — Punch descends and addresses them in 
 the following 
 
 RECITATIVE. 
 
 As manager of horses Mr. Merryman is, 
 
 So I with you am master of the ceremonies — 
 
 These grand rejoicings. Let me see, how name ye 
 
 'em?— 
 Oh, in Greek lingo 'tis E-pi-thalamium. 
 October's tenth it is : toss up each hat to-day, 
 And celebrate with shouts our opening Saturday ! 
 
 * Theodore Hook, at that time a very young man, and the com- 
 panion of the annotator in many wild frolics. The cleverness of his 
 subsequent prose compositions has cast his early stage songs into 
 oblivion. This parody was, in the second edition, transferred from 
 Colman to Hook.
 
 punch's apotheosis. 103 
 
 On this great night 'tis settled by our manager, 
 
 That we, to please great Johnny Bull, should plan a jeer, 
 
 Dance a bang-up theatrical cotillion, 
 
 And put on tuneful Pegasus a pillion ; 
 
 That every soul, whether or not a cough he has, 
 
 May kick like Harlequin, and sing like Orpheus. 
 
 So come, ye pupils of Sir John Gallini,* 
 
 Spin up a tetotum like Angiolini : f 
 
 That John and Mrs. Bull, from ale and tea-houses, 
 
 May shout huzza for Punch's Apotheosis ! 
 
 They dance and sing. 
 Air, " Sure such a day." — Tom Thumb. 
 
 LEAR. 
 
 Dance, Regan ! dance, with Cordelia and Goneril — 
 Down the middle, up again, poussette, and cross ; 
 Stop, Cordelia ! do not tread upon her heel, 
 Regan feeds on coltsfoot, and kicks like a horse. 
 See, she twists her mutton fists like Molyneux or Beel- 
 zebub, 
 And t'other's clack, who pats her back, is louder far than 
 
 hell's hubbub. 
 They tweak my nose, and round it goes — I fear they '11 
 
 break the ridge of it, 
 Or leave it all just like Vauxhall, with only half the bridge 
 
 of it.J 
 
 * Then Director of the Opera House. 
 + At that time the chief dancer at this establishment. 
 X Vauxhall Bridge then, like the Thames Tunnel at present [1833], 
 stood suspended in the middle of that river.
 
 104 EEJECTED ADDRESSES. 
 
 OMNES. 
 
 Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
 Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 LADY MACBETH. 
 
 / kill'd the king ; my husband is a heavy dunce ; 
 He left the grooms unmassacred, then massacred the stud. 
 One loves long gloves ; for mittens, like king's evidence, 
 Let truth with the fingers out, and won't hide blood. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 When spoonys on two knees implore the aid of sorcery, 
 To suit their wicked purposes they quickly put the laws 
 
 awry; 
 With Adam I in wife may vie, for none could tell the use 
 
 of her, 
 Except to cheapen golden pippins hawk'd about by Lucifer. 
 
 OMNES. 
 
 Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
 Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 OTHELLO. 
 
 Wife, come to life, forgive what your black lover did, 
 Spit the feathers from your mouth, and munch roast beef; 
 Iago he may go and be toss'd in the coverlet 
 That smother'd you, because you pawn'd my handkerchief. 
 
 GEORGE BARNWELL. 
 
 Why, neger, so eager about your rib immaculate ? 
 Milwood shows for hanging us they 've got an ugly knack 
 o' late;
 
 punch's apotheosis. 105 
 
 If on beauty 'stead of duty but one peeper bent he sees, 
 Satan waits with Dolly baits to hook in us apprentices. 
 
 OMNES. 
 
 Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
 Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 I 'm Hamlet in* camlet ; my ap and peri-helia 
 
 The moon can fix, which lunatics makes sharp or flat. 
 
 I stuck by ill luck, enamour'd of Ophelia, 
 
 Old Polony like a sausage, and exclaim' d, " Rat, rat ! 
 
 GHOST. 
 
 Let Gertrude sup the poison'd cup— no more I '11 be an 
 
 actor in 
 Such sorry food, but drink home-brew'd of Whitbread's 
 
 manufacturing. 
 
 MACHEATH. 
 
 I'll Polly it, and folly it, and dance it quite the dandy O; 
 But as for tunes, I have but one, and that is Drops of 
 Brandy O. 
 
 OMNES. 
 
 Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
 Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 JULIET. 
 
 1 'm Juliet Capulet, who took a dose of hellebore — 
 A hell-of-a-bore I found it to put on a pall.
 
 106 KEJECTED ADDKESSES. 
 
 FRIAR. 
 
 And I am the friar, who so corpulent a belly bore. 
 
 APOTHECARY. 
 
 And that is why poor skinny I have none at all. 
 
 ROMEO. 
 
 I 'm the resurrection-man, of buried bodies amorous. 
 
 FALSTAFF. 
 
 I 'm fagg'd to death, and out of breath, and am for quiet 
 
 clamorous ; 
 For though my paunch is round and stanch, I ne'er begin 
 
 to feel it ere I 
 Feel that I have no stomach left for entertainment military. 
 
 OMNES. 
 
 Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
 
 Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 
 
 [Exeunt dancing. 
 
 THE END.
 
 CONDON : 
 
 PIUNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, 
 
 AND CHARING CROSS.
 
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