iiiiiiiiniii! eorge; in 111 nminnnnT HSb 1 i RINS' l!l!liili^ I 1, J! ..tH..t.j»!.i.,.tl'.-.i>,.,il.ii.iii!,ij.i:.i.ii i ! H H 1 !Uiiitliiiii!iiUtliii!):t iiMiiiiHittiiitiittniniUiitHUiUiiir LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class ■ /Q'i'Q THE LAUGHING AUDIENCE BROAD GRINS MY NIGHTGOWN & SLIPPERS AND OTHER HUMOROUS WORKS GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER A NEW EDITION wiT^ A ,f50ntispie<;:f LONDON CHATTO & WIND US 1S98 « •. * *, .•*.'..' CONTENTS. PAGM Memoie of Geoege Colman the Youngee . . I Preface to the "Iron Chest," 1796 .... 14 Advertisement to the Reader 31 Postscript 33 The " Iron Chest" 36 My Nightgown and Slippebs 63 Preface to my Nightgown and Slippers . . -65 Advertisement ........ 66 The Maid of the Moor ; or, the Water Fiends . . 71 The Newcastle Apothecary ..... 78 Lodgings for Single Gentlemen . . . . 8[ Beoad Geins 85 The Knight and the Friar 87 Sir Thomas Eipingham's Sonnet on his Lady . . 91 The Elder Brother 117 Poetical Vagaeies 127 An Ode to We, a Hackneyed Critic . . . .129 Low Ambition ; or, the Life and Death of Mr. Daw . 132 A Reckoning with Time 138 The Lady OF the Weeck ; OB, Castle Blaeneygig . 149 Dedication ........ 151 Advertisement 152 Song 159 Banquet Song 166 Song of the Bridegroom 179 Song . . . 190 Two PaESONS; OB, THE TaLE OF A ShIBT . . . I99 Vagaeies Vindicated ; oe, Hypoceitic Hypeeceitics 219 Advertisement . . . . . . .221 Appendix to Vagaries Vindicated .... 252 ECCENTEICITIES FOE EdINBUEGH ..... 263 Advertisement ....... 265 '7'^ 1517 iv CONTENTS. PAGE A Lamentation 267 Advertisement ....... 272 FlEE I OE THE SUN-POZEE 273 Me. Champeenoune 296 The Luminous Histoeian ; oe, Leaening in Love 303 London IIuealitt ; oe, Miss Bunn and Mes. Bunt 318 Ballads and Songs 325 The Marvellous Physicians .... 327 Song ...... . . 333 Song 333 Song . . . ■ 334 Tippet's Song 334 Captain's Song 335 Captain's Song 335 The Mercer's Song 336 John and Betty 337 Up and Down 338 Cupid • 339 The Country Girl • 339 Polly the Chambermaid ..... • 341 Song ......... 341 TheCit . . " 342 Song ........ • 343 Song at a Wedding , 343 Epilogue ........ • 345 Sir Marmaduke • 347 Song ■ 348 The Traveller and the Widow .... • 349 Song • 350 Duet ^ . • 351 Song. — Down by the River .... • 351 Lines Written at the Inn at Bedfont • 352 Epilogue to the Maid of Bristol • 353 Paddy O'Kaffaity's Song to an Old Coquette . • 354 Song • 355 Rachael . 356 Song ■ 357 Song ........ 358 Corporal Causey • 359 CONTENTS. V PAGB Mynheer Vandunk 360 Song on Woman .... 360 Song ...... 361 Song ...... 362 Song ...... 362 Epilogue to " Ways and Means" 3^4 Prologue for Mr. Jones's Masquerade 365 An Address to the Present Year, Eighteei 1 Hundred and ^N'ineteen .... 367 Address at Drury Lane . 369 Lydia's Song .... . 371 Oh ! when ray Farm is Taken . 372 Damon and Phyllis . 374 The Guardian • 375 Unfortunate Miss Bailey . 575 Hero and Leander . 377 The Guitar 377 Song ..... . 378 Song 379 Song ..... • 379 Bluebeard .... 380 Ibrahim's Song 381 Adeline. — The Petticoat . . 382 The Valiant Hero . . 382 The Red Rose .... • 383 Song • 384 Villagers' Song . 385 Song. — Moderation and Alteration 386 Silent Love .... • 3S7 Nehemiah Flam • 387 Beneath the Elm Tree . 388 Song . 389 Pegasus Puncheon . • 390 Epilogue to " John Bull" • 391 Song ..... . 393 Duet. — Sadi and Agnes . 394 The Muleteer .... • 395 Song ..... . 395 Chorus ^f Goatherds 396 VI COXTEXTS. Faint and Wearily Agnes Goatherds:' Song A Medley Song. — Judy O'Elannikin Caleb Quotem Song Song Duet Song Rondeau Song Song Song Song Song Song Thimble's Wife Random Records and Anecdotes Prospectus of my Random Records Smoking for Corns Colman — no Calm Mrs. Fountain . Puddings . A Dose of Senna The Higgler's Cart Take awiy the River Taming oi" the Shrew Indecency of Terence An Introduction to Dr. Johnson Goldsmith Foote's Wooden Leg Gibbon At the Next Plague . The Elephant-maker The " Oxford Sausage" Fog and Sun . John Hall Stevenson Footc and Colman the Elder CONTENTS. Vll A Tour to the North of England Oxford .... Bonnell Thornton . Stratford-on-Avon . The Devil's - Cocken Hall . Westminster School " Georgius Colmanus" Reminiscences of a Freshman Poet Harding . Doctor Graham and the Temple of Health Kiddy Davies . Banishment to Aberdeen . Foote's Ostentation . An Expensive Dinner Brechin and Laurencekirk Aberdeen " The Man of the People" The Laird of Col . Daffy's Elixir . A Nautical Play Tonjours Perdrix Gifford and Colman . Apres vous The North Pole The Woolsack . A Dead Wall . Ell or Inch ? . . . Authorship Ah ! where is my Honour now A Bad Actor . Eyes and no Eyes . A Rowland for an Oliver . 438 438 440 442 442 442 445 445 446 454 454 457 458 461 462 465 467 477 479 481 481 481 483 483 484 484 484 485 485 485 486 486 487 Index ..,...•••• 488 MEMOIR OF GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. MEMOIR OF GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. GEORGE COLMAN the Younger belonged to a genial school of himiorists, now unhappily ex- tinct, whose frank and cordial gaiety took the reader along with them in one uninterrupted stream of merri- ment and joyous fun, as superior to the sickl}'^ hot-house witticisms of the present day as the generous beverage of Champagne is to the smallest of small beer. No apology, therefore, is needed for the present reprint of his famous tales in verse, and ballads : they excited the delight and laughter of our grandsires, and cannot prove unacceptable to readers of the present generation wherever true wit is appreciated and enjoyed. George Colman was born on the 21st of October, 1762. His father was the friend and intimate of nearly all the chief literary men of the time,' of Johnson, Garrick, Gibbon, Reynolds, and all that circle with which Boswell has made us so familiar. He was the associate of Lloyd and Bonnell Thornton in the Connoisseur ; he produced a translation of Terence remarkable for its ease, grace, and scholarship — a translation which has not yet been super- seded ; and he ranks as one of the foremost dramatists of the eighteenth century. To distinguish himself from his father, and avoid all possibility of confusion, the subject B 2 4 MEMOIR OF [1782. of the present memoir always styled himself GEORGE CO LM AN the YOUNGER, and continued to do so long after his father's death, and when he himself had attained a ripe old age. His first recollection was of the death of his grand- mother, Mrs. Francis Colman, for Avhom he remembered mourning in a black sash, tied round the waist of a white linen frock. The next impression on his infant mind was caused by no less a person than David Garrick, of whom he thus speaks : — " Garrick was so intimate with my father, soon after I was born, that my knowledge of him was too early for me to recollect w4ien it commenced ; it would be like the remembrance of my first seeing a tree, or any other object which presents itself to vision, at our beginning to look about us." Colman has himself related, in his own exquisite and inimitable way, many anecdotes of his early days at Westminster and Oxford, and of his banishment for two years to Aberdeen, in consequence of an over-abundant sowing of wild oats at the English University. It was in the barren and uncongenial soil of North Britain that he first began to try his wings as a dramatist and poet. Among the rarest of rare books coveted by the curious collector is a poem which Colman printed and published at Aberdeen in 1782, under the title of " The Man of the People," a boyish satire upon Fox, in which that statesman was " blackened as black as the devil himself." Colman seems in his inaturer years to have been thoroughly ashamed of this juvenile production, and it doubtless has no value whatever except as a literary curiosity. The twng, however, had been bent in a dramatic direc- tion ; and the young tree was mainly inclined to the stage. Colman's poem accordingly had scarcely appeared in 17S2.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 5 print -when he had finished a musical farce, which he entitled " The Female Dramatist," and transmitted to his fixtlier. The principal character was borrowed from Mrs. Metaphor, in Smollett's " lloderick Random." "It puzzled the managerial papa," says Colman ; *'hc thought it had some promise ; but that it was too crude to risk, as regularly accepted by the theatre : so it was- brought out, anoivjmoushj, on the benefit night of Jewell, the treasurer, August i6th, 1782. " Little is expected from novelties produced at a benefit ; and considering the apathy with which they are usually received, I may without vanity state, that this fierce was noticed in a very conspicuous manner — for it was wicom- monly hissed in the course of its performance. The audience, I was told, laughed a good deal in various parts of the piece ; but there were passages in it to excite disapprobation ; and much too broad to have escaped the erasing hand of the examiner of plays in the present day. "On perusing the manuscript after a long lapse of time, I threw ' The Female Dramatist ' into the flames, as a fit companion for ' The Man of the People ;' and if this consumed couple had belonged to any author but myself, he would not perhaps have had the folly or candour (or whatever else it may be called) to rake up their ashes."* Undismayed by these failures, Colman proceeded, not * Colman's recollection as to some matters appears to have beea very faulty, or the paper on which he had written Avas made of the imperishable asbestos, and was not only purified by its transmission through the flames, but had absolutely become a twin phrpnix, as among the manuscripts in the collection of the Duke of Dcvonshiie there were two copies of '' The Female Dramatist"' in the author's autograph . — Peak e . 6 MEMOIR OF [1783. long arierwards, from a, two-act iarce to a three-act coiiiecly. " This last," he says, " was entitled ' Two to One,' tlie first of my publicly avowed dramas. It was sent to town early in 1783, two-thirds of it having been finished on the preceding Christmas. Hence it will appear to the reader, should he think it worth Avhile to recur to dates, in the matters which I have related, that I was guilty of a poeni, a farce, and a play (such as they were), in the course of twelve months — the first two crimes having been committed in my twentieth year, and the third nearly accomplished before I had entered my twenty-first. " ' Two to One' was immediately accepted by my sire for his ensuing season in the Haymarket ; but by some accident not performed till the season afterwards, when I had returned to town, and witnessed its first representa- tion. Its success was very flattering, and the play had a run.'''' Colman has given an amusing description in his " Kandom Eecords" of the loose way in which this piece was constructed. " I had no materials for a plot, further than the common- pi. ice foundation of a marriage projected by parents, con- trary to the secret view^s and wishes of the parties to be united ; and. which of course is to be obviated by the usual series of stratagems, accidents, and equivoques. Alas ! what those stratagems, &c., were to be, or how the second scene was to be conducted, I had not any idea ■while I was writing the first. But having finished the first, I hurried on into the second with as little forecast about the third ; and so on from scene to scene, spinning out stage business (as it is termed) as I went along, and scribbling at haphazard, ' as humours and conceits might [govern/ till I came to the conclusion of act one. 1784 ] GROKGE CO I.MAN THE YOUNGER. 7 '' One act completed, enabled mc to proceed some- ^vhat less at random in the two acts to como. by obliging me to consider a little about the means of continuing, and then unravelling, the perplexities I had already created; still I persevered, as to whole acts, in the same want of regular plan which had marked my progress in respect to scenes ; at Christmas, however, I found that I had floundered through two-thirds of a three-act piece, which I called a musical comedy, under the title of ' Two to One.' In this improvident way I have written all my dramas which are not founded eitlier on some historical incident, or on some story or anecdote which I have met with in print ; and of those thus founded, I never made out a scheme of progressive action before I began upon the dialogue." This play was introduced to the public by a prologue in verse written by Colman the Elder, in which he speaks of his son as a "chip of the old block." It was performed for the first time on June 19th, 1784.* In this year Colman made a short tour in France* Returning to London, " I found my father," he says, * This piece gave rise to the following ingenious epigram : — "To George Colman, Esq., juu., on the deserved success of his Comedy, * Two to One.' *" Another writes because his father writ, A.nd proves himself a bastard by his wit :' So Young declaims — but you, by right divine, Can claim a just, hereditary line ; By learning tutor'd as by fancy nursed, A George the Second sprung from George the First.'** The words of the songs only were printed in 1784, but a transcript of the piece with Colman's autograph corrections is now in the Duke of Devoushire's ''Collections of the Eaglish Drama." 8 MEMOIR OF [1784. " slill firm in his resolution of making me a barrister; but aware of my flights, poetical and others, he Avas not quite so sanguine, in the fond hope of seeing me on the AVoolsack, as many an old simple soul is who sends his plodding prodigy to the Inns of Court. He had been upon the alert, in my absence, to effect his intentions ; and had taken chambers for me, up two pair of stairs, in the Temple, having first entered my name as a student at Lincoln's Inn ; where I afterwards kept a few Terms by eating oysters ; a custom taken, I suppose, from the Fable, and truly emblematical of a law-student's future practice ; the whole process consisting in swallowing up the fish, and leaving the shells. " To the above-mentioned apartments (in the King's Bench Walk) my sire consigned me ; having first sprinkled them with a prudential paucity of second-hand moveables — a tent bed, two tables, half a dozen chairs, and a carpet as much too scanty for the boards as Sheridan's * rivulet of rhyme' for its ' meadow of margin :' to these he added about ten-pounds' worth of Law Books which had been given to him in his own early Lincoln's Inn days, by Lord Bath ; with which he told me (mentioning the sum he should allow me, iwo tempore), I must work out my fortunes ; then, enjoining me to lahour hard, he left town lij^on a party of pleasured We now come to Colman's clandestine marriage. He had contracted an intimacy with Miss Catherine IMorris, an actress belonging to the Haymarket Theatre, vv-hich intimacy the father considered it not advisable for him to continue. No sooner, however, had the elder Colman left ais son in the Temple and joined his party, than the immediate consequence was that he joined in a second trip to Scotland with Miss Morris, whom he married at Gretna Green, October 3, 1784. This occasioned something lySS.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER, 9 like a hard run on the sum allowed him itro tempore^ and the apprehensions of his father's resentment on learnin--* his improvidence, impelled a silence on the transaction, for Avhich no favourable opportunity of disclosure occurred till November, 178S, when, with the father's sanction, they were publicly married on the loth of that month at Chelsea Church, and the affair was openly avowed. We grieve to say that Colman hardly ever mentions his father without an overt or covert sneer, as in the above passage. It is to be feared that filial reverence was not one of his strong points. Elated by the success of his first comedy, Colman now set to work to produce another. " I conceived," he writes, '• that having once felt the pulse of the public, I was thoroughly acquainted with its constitution ; that I had taken measure of the town's taste, and knowing now exactly how to fit it, I could lead the playgoing world in a string. ' Oho !' said I, mentally, 'if "Two to One"' has tickled them so much, I shall tickle them a great deal more the next time.' So down I sat^ again to be most inveterately comical, and even to outdo' ^i\'SI.hY. " I did outdo myself, at a furious rate ! I doubled all the faults of my first composition in my second. Instead of splashing carelessly Avith a light brush, I now delibe- rately laid it on with a trowel ; to say nothing of the flimsiness and improbability of my plot, I laboured so much to sparkle in dialogue, studied so deeply for anti- theses, quibbles, and puns — • And glitteiiDg thoughts struck out at every line,' that I produced a very puerile and contemptible per- formance — a second musical comedy in three acts, under the title of ' Turk and No Tm^k.' " 10 MEMOIR OF [1787. " This piece, however, was received much better than it deserved, and Avithont one dissentient voice. It was acted, however, only ten nights, in the summer of 1785 ; and to the very sh'ght scratch my amour 2)7V2)re re- ceived — but which I would not confess, scarcely to myself — I applied the flattering unction, from Horace, of ' clecies repetita 2'>l(^-cehit.^ But I could not be so blinded by youthful coxcombry as not to suspect that I had been a little mistaken in the measure I had taken of the towny Such were the first attempts of one who was destined in a few years to be acknowledged as the foremost dramatic writer of his ao:e. In the summer of 1787 Colman produced his excellent drama of " Inkle and Yarico." He thus alludes to it : — " The opera of ' Inkle and Yarico ' owes its origin to a page or two in the Bpectator ; in these, and other instances, where I adopted less limited though not extensive ground- works, I found, or fancied I found, that, however eligible the subjects which I borrowed, if the loans had been larger I should have been duller, " Critics have been pleased to observe, that it was a good hit when I made Inkle offer Yarico for sale to the person whom he aftervrards discovers to be his intended father-in-law. The hit, good or bad, only occurred to me when I came to that part of the pieca in which it is introduced, and arose from the accidental turn which I had given to previous scenes ; as it is not in the original story, it v,''Ould in all j)robability not Iiave occurred to me while coldly preparing an elaborate prospectus ; and such a prospectus once made, it is ten to one that I should have followed it mechanically." The rising dramatist did not, however, find it all smooth Friilins:. " After the commencement," he says, ''of my course as 1794-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. n an avowed author for the stage, the first clicck whicli my ardour experienced was in the production of my fourth phiy, called ' Ways and Means,' which encountered some opposition on the night of its probation. This op- position was by no means what sailors would call a downright gale of wind ; but the weather was squallij^ and not at all pleasant to a young navigator who had per- formed three jDrevious voyages in 2)erfcctly untroubled waters. The little vessel, however, rode it out gallantly. " The epilogue too (written by myself) was taken in high dudgeon by the newspaper writers, whom it some- what impoliticly ridiculed, and they joined common cause by endeavouring to run down the piece, with nuich acrimony, in almost all their journals." A review"' of it in its printed form says, " This is a play of considerable merit, abounding in wit and well- drawn characters. The plot is simple, but clear, lively, and probable. The character of Sir David Dunder is well imagined, and naturally supported throughout. The dialogue is neat, and well suited to the respective dramatis personam. The author tells us [in a preface] that in this piece laugh and Avhim were his objects ; and the mirth and good humour of his audience, whatever malice and misrepresentation may affirm to the contrary, have con- vinced him that his design is accomplished." On the 14th of August, 1794, Colman the Elder died at Paddington, at the age of sixty-two, after eight years of great physical suffering and mental alienation. His melancholy disorder began in 1786 by an hemiplegia. In 1789 he was struck with paralysis, which nearly de- prived him of the use of one side of his body, and in a * «< Biograpbia Dramatica," edit. 1S12, vol. iii. p 39; 12 MEMOIR OF [1795. sliort time afterwards he exhibited unquestionable proofs of mental derangement, thus furnishing a rather deplorable instance that the best intellects and finest talents have but a precarious tenure in our frail and feverish being. It was found necessary to place ]\Ir. Colman under proper care at PadJington, and the conduct of the theatre devolved uj)on his son. ''Having purchased the Haymarket Theatre on the demise of my father," says George Colman the Younger, " I continued to manage it as my own. During such pro- gression, up to the year 1796 inclusive, I scribbled many dramas for the Haymarket, and one for Drury Lane ; in almost all of which the younger Bannister, being engaged at both theatres, performed a j^rominent character ; so that for most of the thirteen years I have enumerated, he was of the greatest importance to my theatrical pros- perity in my double capacity of author and manager ; while I was of some service to him, by supplying him with new characters. These reciprocal interests made us of course such close colleagues, that our almost daily con- sultations promoted amity, -while they forwarded business. " Immediately after my father's demise," continues Col- man, " I opened the Haymarket Theatre, in 1795, "^^ith an occasional piece,* which contains a ridicule, a good- natured one I hope, on the extended dimensions of the two principal London play-houses, wherein I say, in a son^ alludino; to them : — 'O " *Wbeu people appear Quite unable to hear, 'Tis undoubtedly needless to talk * " New Hay at tlie Old Market ;" tbe first scene of wblcli is still acted under the title of " Sylvester Daggerwood." 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 13 and that — " * 'Twere belter they begau On the new invented plan, And with telegraphs transmitted us the plot.' " The new large houses soon found the necessity of recurring to that ' magnificence of spectacle ' of which my father speaks ; they introduced white oxen, horses, clei)hants, both sham and real ; and the song above quoted ends with the following verse : — "Cut our House here's so small That we've no need to bawl, And the summer will rapidly j^ass, So we hope you'll think fit To hear the Actors a bit, Till the Elephants and Bulls come from grass : Then let Shakspeare and Jonson go hang, go hang ! Let your Otv.-ays and Drydens go drown ! Give tliem but Elephants and White bulls enough, And they'll take in all the town, Brave boys !" The year 1796 was remarkable in the life of Colman for the production and failure of his play entitled "The Iron Chest," at Drury Lane Theatre. Its non-success was attri- buted by the author to Mr. Kemble, the original representa- tive of Sir Edward Mortimer. Colman was so sore on this subject at the period, that he commemorated his bitterness in a preface prefixed to the phay — which we have thought it well to reprint here, as a literary curiosity, and as illus- trating an interesting portion of Colman's dramatic career — written with a pen which assimilated in its texture to the iron instrument presented, by the devil to Father Ambrosio, in Monk Lewis's romance. This caustic record was subsequently suppressed; both author and actor having relinquished a mutunl animosity, which in its character and conduct could reflect but little credit on either. 14 MEMOIR OF [1796. ''preface to 'the iron chest/ 1796. " Hiivino; been for some time a labourer in tlie drama, and finding it necessary to continue my labours, I cannot help endeavouring to guard the joast from misrepresentation, lesfc my supineness may injure the future. Conscious that a prejudice has been raised against the play which I now submit to the reader, and conscious how far I am innocent of raising it, it were stupid to sit down in silence, and thus tacitly acknowledge myself guilty of dulness ; dumbly confess I have been deficient in the knowledge of my trade, damn myself for a bungling workman, and fix a disrepute upon every article which may hereafter come from my hands. " Thanks to you, ladies and gentlemen ! you have been kind customers to me ; and I am proud to say that you have stamped a fashion upon my goods. Base, indeed, and ungrateful were the attempt, after your favours, so long received and continued, to impose upon you a clumsy commodity, and boast it to be ware of the first quality that I ever put up to sale ! No — on the word of an honest man, I have bestowed no small pains upon this ' Iron Chest,' which I offer you. Inspect it ; examine it : you see the maker's name is upon it. I do not say it is perfect ; I do not pretend to tell you it is of the highest polisli ; there is no occasion for that — many of my brethren have presented you with mere linings for chests, and you have been content. But I trust you will find that my ' Iron Chest ' will hold together, that it is tolerably sound, and fit for all the purposes for which it was intended. " Then how came it to fall to pieces after four days' wear ? I will explain that. But alas 1 alas I my heart 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN HIE YOUNGEk. 15 clotli yearn when I tliiiik on the task ^vhicll circumstance lias thrust upon me. " Now, by the Spirit of Peace, I swear ! were I not still doomed to explore the rugged windings of tlie drama, I would wrap myself in mute philosophy, and repose calmly under the dark shade of my grievance, rather than endure the pain and trouble of this explanation. I cannot, hoAvevcr, cry ' Let the world slide !' I must pursue my journey, and be active to clear away the obstacles that impede my progress. " I am too callous now to be annoyed by those innume- rable gnats and insects who daily dart their impotent stings on the literary traveller ; and too knowing to dis- mount and waste my time in whipping grasshoppers. But here is a scowling, sullen, black bull right athwart my road— a monster of magnitude, of the Boeotian breed, perplexing me in my wanderings through the entangled labyrinth of Drury ! He stands sulkily before, with sides seemingly impenetrable to any lash, and tougher than the Dun Cow of Warwick ! His front out-fronting the brazen bull of Perillus ! He has bellowed, gentlemen ! Yea, he hath bellowed a dismal sound ! A hollow, unvaried tone, heaved from his very midriff, and striking the listener with torpor ! Would I could pass the animal quietly, for my own sake — and for his, by Jupiter ! I repeat it, I would not willingly harm the bull. I delight not in baiting him. I would jog as gently by him as by the ass that grazes on the common ; but he has obstinately blocked up my way — he has already tossed and gored me severely. I must make an effort, or he batters me down and leaves me Lo bite the dust. " The weapon I must use is not of that brilliant and keen quality which, in a skilful hand, neatly cuts up the sub- ject, to the delight and admiration of the bystanders. It 1 6 MEMOIR OE [i79^J- is a homely cudgel of narrative ; a 1 )Iunt baton of matter of fact ; affording little display of art in the Avielder ; and so heavy in its nature, that it can merely claim the merit of being ajipropriate to the opponent at whom it is levelled. •• Pray stand clear ! for I shall handle this club vilely : and if any one come in my way he may chance to get a rap which I did not intend to bestow upon him. Good venal and venomous gentlemen, who dabble in ink for pay or from pique, and who have dubbed yourselves critics^ keep your distance now ! Run home to your garrets ! — Fools ! ye are but Ephemera at best; and will die soon enough, in the paltry course of your insignificant natures, without thrusting your ears (if there be any left you) into the heat of this perilous action. Avaunt ! — well, M'ell, stay if ye are bent upon it, and be pert and busy ; your folly to me is of no moment.* " I hasten now to my narrative. " I agreed to write the following play at the instance of the chief proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre,f who uncon- ditionally agreed to pay me a certain sum for my labour : and this certain sum, being much larger than any, I be- lieve, hitherto offered on similar occasions, created no small jealousy among the Parnassian Sans-culottes ; several of whom have of late been vapidly industrious to level to the muddy surface of their own Castalian ditch so aristocratico-dramatic a bargainer. The play, as fast as written (piecemeal), was put into rehearsal ; but let * *' Ye who uiipartlally and conscientiously sit in diurnal judgment upon modern dramatists, apply not this to yourselves. It aims only at the malevolent, the. mean, and the ignorant, who are t^^e disgrace of your order." t Richard Brinsley Sutridan.— Ed. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 17 it here bo noted, gentle reader ! that a rehearsal in Dniry Lane (I mean as far as relates to this ' Iron Chest') is lucus a non Uicendo. They yclep it a rehearsal, I conjecture, because they do not rehearse. I call the loved shade of Garrick to -witness; nay, I call the less loved presence of the then actii jj manager to avow, that there never was one fair rehearsal of the play. Never one rehearsal wherein one, or two, or more of the performers very essential to the piece were not absent : and all the re- hearsals which I attended so slovenly and irregular, that the ragged master of a theatrical barn might have blushed for the want of discipline in the pompous director of his majesty's servants, at the vast and astonishing new-erected Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. " It is well known to those conversant with the business of the stage that no perfect judgment can be formed of the length of a play, apparent to the spectator, nor of the general effect intended to be produced, until the private repetitions, among the actors, have reduced the business into something like lucidus ordo — then comes the time for the judicious author to take up liis pruniiig-knife or handle his hatchet. Then he goes lustily to work, my masters ! upon his curtailments or additions ; his trans- positions, his loppings, his parings, trimmings, dockings, &c. &c. As in the writing, so in the rehearsal. " * Ordinis hsec virtus erit et venus, aut ego fallor ; Ut jam nunc dicat, jam nunc deoentia dici Pleraque differat, et prcesens in tempus oraittat : Hoc amet, hoc spernat, promissi carminis Auctor.' *'But woe is me ! while I was patiently waiting the ex- pected crisis, a circumst-ance occurred which compelled me to watch a crisis of a less agreeable nature. A fever at- tacked me as I sat beneath the damp dome of Drury, and drove me, malgre moi, to bed ; where I lay during a week c 1 8 ^ MEMOIR OF [1796. till three hours before the play was exhibited. In addition to the unavoidable injury arising from the author's absence, Mr. Kemble, the acting manager and principal performer in the piece, was, and had been for a few days previous to my own illness, confined to his chamber by indisposition. I lay little stress indeed upon his temporary incapacity to perform his managerial duty ; his mode of discharging it hitherto was productive of little benefit to me ; still it was some drawback, for were a mere log thrown amidst a Thespian community, and nominated its dull and ponderous ruler, still the block, while in its place, would carry some sway with it ; but his non-attendance as an actor, so much engaged in the play, was particularly detrimental. " Nay, even the composer of the music — and here let me breathe a sigh to the memory of departed worth and genius as I write the name of Storace — even he could not preside in his department. He Avas preparing an early flight to that abode of harmony where choirs of angels swell the note of welcome to an honest and congenial spirit. " Here then was a direct stop to the business. No such thing. The troops proceeded without leaders : in the dark, messieurs ! ' sans eyes, sans everything.' The prompter, it is true, a kind of non-commissioned officer, headed the corps, and a curious march was made of it ! " But lo! two days, or three (I forget which), previous to the public representation, up rose King Kemble ! like Somnus from his ebon bed, to distribute his dozing direc- tions among his subjects. *' ' Tarda gravitate jacentes Vix oculos tollens ; Summaque percutiens nutanti pectora mento, Excussit, tandem, sibi se ; cnbitoque levatus,' &c. " He came, saw, and pronounced the piece to be ripe for 1796.] GEORGE COLMAX THE YOUNGER. 19 exhibition. It was ordered to be performed immediately News was brought to mo in my sickness of the mighty fiat; and aUhongh I Avas tokl officially that due care had been taken to render it worthy of public attention, I submitted with doubt and trembling to the decree. My doubts too of this boasted care were not a little increased by a note which I received from the prompter, -written by the manager's order, three liours only before the first re- presentation of the play ; wherein, at this late period, my consent was abruptly requested to a transposition of two of the most material scenes in the second act ; and the reason given for this curious proposal was that the present stage of Drury — where the architect and machinist, Avitli the judgment and ingenuity of a politician and a wit to assist them, had combined to outdo all former theatrical outdoings — was so bunglingly constructed that there was not time for the carpenters to place the lumbering frame- work, on Avhich an abbey was painted, behind the repre- sentation of a library without leaving a chasm of ten minutes in the action of the play ; and that in the middle of an act. Such was the fabrication of that new stage whose 'extent and powers' have been so vauntingly advertised, under the classic management of ^\l\. Kemble, in the edifying exhibition of pantomimes, processions, pageants, triumphal cars, milk-white horses, and elephants ! " As I did not choose to alter the construction of my play without deliberation merely to screen the ill- con- struction of the house, I would not listen to the modest and iceU-timed demand of turning the progress of my fable topsy turvy. *' Very ill and very weak from the eiFects of the fever, which had not yet left me, I made an effort and went to xhe theatre to witness the performance. I found 'Mr. Kemble in his dressing-room, a short time before tho o 2 20 MEMOIR OF [1796. curtain was drawn up, taking o/)z'w??z inlh ; and nobody who is acquainted with that gentleman will doubt me when I assert, that they are a medicine which he has long been in the habit of swallowing. He appeared to be very unwell ; and seemed indeed to have imbibed '' * Poppy and mandragora, And all tlie drowsy syrups of tbe world.' " The play began ; and all went smoothly till a trifling disapprobation was shown to the character personated by Mr. Dodd — the scene in which he was engaged being much too long. A proof of the neglect of those whose business it was to have informed me (in my unavoidable absence from the theatre) that it appeared in the la&t rehearsals to want curtaihiient . I considered this, however, to be of no great moment ; for Mr. Kemble was to appear immediately in a subsequent scene, and much was expected from his execution of a part written expressly for his powers. " And here let me describe the requisites for the charac- ter which I have attempted to draw, that the world may judge whether I have taken a wrong measure of the personage whom I proposed to fit ; premising that I have worked for him before with success, and therefore it may be presumed that I am somewhat acquainted with the dimensions of his qualifications. I required then a man " ' Of a tall stature, and of sable hue, Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew.' " A man of whom it might be said — " ' There's something in his soul O'er w^hich bis melancholy sits and broods.' " Look at the actor ; and will anybody do him the in- justice to declare that he is deficient in these qualifications. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAX THE YOUXGER. 11 It would puzzle any author, in any time or country, from yEschylus down even to the translator of Lodoiska* — and really, gentlemen, I can go no lower — to find a figure and face better suited to the purpose. I have endeavoured moreover to portray Sir Edward ^lortimer as a man stately in his deportment, reserved in his temper, myste- rious, cold, and impenetrable in his manner : and the candid observer I trust will allow that Mr. Kemble thoroughly adequate to such a personation. " To complete my requisitions, I demanded a performer who could enter into the spirit of a character proceeding upon romantic, half-witted principles, abstracted in his opinions, sophisticated in his reasonings, and who is thrown into situations where his mind and conduct stand tiptoe on the extremest verge of probability. Here surely I have not mistaken my man ; for if I am able to form any opinion of him as an actor — and my opinion I knoAV is far from singular — his chief excellence almost approaches that style which the learned denominate caricature. Possi- bility on the stretch, passion over-leaping its customary bound, movements of the soul, sullen or violent, very rarely seen in the common course of things, yet still may be seen — in these is his element. As our language is said to have sunk imder the vast conception of Milton, so does the modesty of nature suffer a depression beneath the unwieldy imaginings of Mr. Kemble. He seldom deigns to accompany the goddess in her ordinary walks, when she decently paces the regular path with a sober step and a straight person ; but he kindly assists her when she is doubtless in need of assistance — when she appears out of her way, crazy and crooked. " The arrogant fault of being more refined than refine- * T, p. Kemble himself. 22 MEAIOIK OF [1796. ment, more proper than propriety, more sensible tlian sense, wliicli nine times in ten Avill disgust tlie spectator, becomes frequently an advantage to him in characters of the above description. " In short, ^Ir. Ivemblc is a paragon-representative ol the lums natuica ; and -were Mr. Kemble sewed up in a skin, to act a hog in a pantomime, he would act a hog Avith six legs better than a hog with four. "If any one ask why I chose to sketch a lusus naturce when it might better become an author to be chaste in his delineation, I can only reply that I did so to obtain the assistance of Mr. Kemble in his best manner ; and that now I do most heartily repent me : for never, sure, did man place the main strength of his building upon so rotten a prop ! " Well, the great actor was discovered as Sir Edward Mortimer in his library. Gloom and desolation sat upon liis brow ; and he was habited, from the wig to the shoe- string, with the most studied exactness. Had one of King Charles the First's portraits walked from the frame upon the boards of the theatre, it could not have afforded a truer representation of ancient and melancholy dignity. "The picture could not have looked better — but, in justice to the picture, it must also be added, that the picture could scarcely have acted worse. " The spectators, wdio gaped with expectation at his first appearance, yawned with lassitude before his first exit. It seemed, however, that illness had totally in- capacitated him from performing the business he had undertaken. For his mere illness he was entitled to j)ity ; for his conduct under it, he undoubtedly deserved censure. "How can Mr. Kemble, as a manager and an actor, justify his thrusting himself forward in a new play, the material interest of which rested upon his own powers, at 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 23 a moment ^vllen lie must be conscious that he had no powers at all ? ^Ir. Kcmble owes a duty to the public, to his employer, and to an author writing for his employer's house. How docs he treat the claimants upon his service iu this instance ? Exactly thus — he insults the under- standing of the first, and injures the interests of the two last, by calling in a crowd to an entertainment which he knows he must mar. "I requested him, at the end of the first act, to order an apology to be made for his indisposition, lest the uninformed or malicious might attribute the ponderosity of the per- former to the heaviness of the author. I was anxious to disavow all right and title to those pigs of lead which did not belong to me, and of which :Mr. Kemble was the just proprietor. But no, he peremptorily declared he would not suffer an apology to be made ! It should have been made (if at all) before the play began. Then why was it not made ? He did not tlien imagine that illness would have disabled him. So then a man quits his chamber, after an attack which has evidently weakened him ex- tremely, and he has no bodily feel, no internal monitor, to whisper to him that he is feeble, and that he has not re- covered sufficient strength to make a violent exertion ! This mode of reasoning, adopted by Mr. Kemble, is much \n the spirit of that clown's who did not know whether he could play on a fiddle till he tried. Be it noted also, that Mr. Kemble was swallowing his opium pills hefovQ the play began, because he u'cis ill. But opium causes strange oblivious effects; and these pills must have occasioned so sudden a lapse in Mr. Kemble's memory, that he forgot when he took them, why he took them, or that he had taken them at all. The dose must have been very power- ful. Still, for the reasons already stated, I pressed for an apology ; still Mr. Kemble continued obstinate in opposing 24 MEMOIR OF [1796- it. His indisposition, lie said, was evident ; he had coughed very much upon the stage, and an apology would make him ' look like a fool.' " Good-nature in excess becomes weakness ; but I never yet found, in the confined course of my reading, that good nature and folly would bear the same definition. Mr. Kemble, it would seem (and he produced at least mana- gerial autlioritu for it), considered the terms to be synonymous. Freely, however, forgiving him for his un- kindness in refusing to gratify a poor devil of an author, who, very anxious for his reputation, was very moderate in his request, I do, in all Christian charity, most sincerely wish that ]Mr. Kemble may never find greater cause to look like a fool than an apology for his indisposition. "At length, by dint of perseverance, I gained my point. A j)roprietor of the theatre was called in upon the occa- sion, whose mediation in my favour caiTied more weight with the acting manager than a hapless dramatist's en- treaty ; and the apology was in due form delivered to the audience. " One-third of the play only was yet performed ; and I was now to make up my mind, like an unfortunate traveller, to pursue my painful journey through two stages more upon a broken-down poster, on whose back lay all the baggage for my expedition. Miserably and most heavily in hand did the poster proceed ! He groaned, he lagged, he coughed, he winced, he wheezed ! Never was seen so sorry a jade ! The audience grew completely soured ; and once completely soured, everything naturally went wrong. They recurred to their disapprobation of poor Dodd — and observe what this produced. I must relate it. " Mr. Kemble had just plodded through a scene, regard- less of those loud and manifest tokens that the critics de- lighted not in the Ulrowsf/ hmns^ with, which he ' ran^ 1796.] GEORGE GOLMAN THE YOUNGER. 25 nifjliCs yawning j)eal,^ when Dodd appeared to him on tlic stage; at whose entrance the clamour Avas renewed. Tlicn, and not till then, did the acting manager, who had been deaf as any post to the supplications of the author for an apology — then did he appear suddenly seized with a fit of good nature. He voluntarily came forward ' to look like a fool^ and beg the indulgence of the town. He feared he was the unhappy cause of their disapprobation ; he en- treated their patience ; and hoped he should shortly gain strength to enable them to judge, on a future night, what he handsomely termed the merits of the play. Here was friendship ! Here was adroitness ! While the public were testifying their disgust at the piece, through the medium of poor Dodd, Mr. Kemble, with unexampled generosity, took the whole blame upon his own shoulders, and he- roically saved the author by so timely an interposition. I was charmed with this master-stroke, and at the impulse of the moment, I thanked him. But alas! how narrow is the soul of man ! how distrustful in its movements, how scanty in its acknowledgments, how perplexing to itself in its combinations ! Had I afterwards looked on the thing simply and nakedly by itself, why, the thing is a good- natured thing ; but I must be putting other circumstances by the side of it, with a plague to me ! I must be puzzling myself to see if all fits ; if all is of a piece. And what is the result ? Miserable that I am ! I have lost the pleasure of evincing a gratitude which I thought I owed, because I no longer feel myself a debtor. Had I abandoned my mind to that placid negligence, that luxurious confidence, which the inconsiderate enjoy, it had never occurred to me that Mr. Kemble, foreseeing perhaps that an ag- grieved author might not be totally silent, stepped for- ward with this speech to the public, as a kind of salvo (should a statement be made) for his rigidity in the first 26 MEMOIR OF [1796. instance. It had never occurred to me that Mr. Kemble Avas sufficiently hissed, yawned at, laughed at, and coughed down, to have made his apology before Mr. Dodd appeared. It had never occurred to me that his making his apology at a previous moment Avould have answered the same purpose to me^ and not to Mm. It had never occurred, in short, that there is such a thing as ostentatious humility and a politic act of kindness; and that I should have waited the sequel of a man's conduct before I thanked him for one instance of seeming goodwill, close upon the heels of stubborn ill-nature, and in the midst of existing and palpable injury. The sequel wdll show that I was prema- ture in my acknovfledgment ; but before I come to the sequel, a Avord or two (I will be brief) to close my account of this first night's eventful history. The piece w^as con- cluded, and given out for a second performance with much opposition. " Friends who never heard the play read shook their heads ; friends who had heard it read scarcely knew it again. Several, I doubt not, of the impartial, who chose to be active, actively condemned ; and enemies of course rejoiced in an opportunity of joining them. " No opportunity could be fairer. The play was at least a full hour too long ; and had Job himself sat to hear it, he must have lost his patience. But if, gentle reader, thou possessest Job's Cjuality, and hast followed me thus far in my narrative, it will appear to thee (for I doubt not thy retention and combination) that I was unable to cur- tail it effectually at the proper time — the last rehearsals. I was then laid flat, my dear friend, as you remember I have told you, by a fever. The acting manager did attend the last rehearsals, and suffered the piece, to be produced uncut ^ to ' drag its slow length along,' surcharged with all its own incapacity and all his opium. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 27 " How then do I stand indebted, according to the articles of this night's statement % I owe to ^Ir. Keniljlc : — "For his iUness For his conduct under it ... . For his refusing to make an apology For his making an apology . . . For his mismanagement .... For his acting COMTASSIOX, CENSuut:. A Smili:. A Sn 1:1:1:. A G 1:0 AN. A IIiss. •" This account is somewhat like the tavern bill picked from FalstafE's pocket, Avhen he is snorting behind the arras. There is but one halfpennyworth of compassion to this intolerable deal of blame. "Now for the sequel. I have shown, I think, that ^Mr. Kemble, in the first instance, undertook a duty "which he could not perform. I have now to affirm, with all the difficulty of proving a negative full in my face, that he afterwards made a mockery of discharging a duty which he would not perform. " After a week's interval, to give him time to recruit his strength, and the author time to curtail and alter the play (for the impression which the mismanager and actor had contrived to stamp rendered alteration necessary), it was a second-time represented. I must here let the uninformed reader into a secret ; but I must go to Newmarket to make him understand me; no, Epsom will do as well, and that is nearer home. It often happens at a race that a known horse, from whom good sport is expected, disappoints the crowd by icalldnj over the course ; he does not miss an inch of the ground, but affords not one jot of diversion, unless some pleasiu:e is received in contemplating his figure. Now an actor can do the very same thing. He can ivcdk over his part ; he can miss no more of his words than the horse does of his 23 MEMOIR OF [1796. way; he can be as dull and as tedious and as good looking as the horse in his progress. The only difference between the two animals is that the horse brings in him who bets ujDon him a gainer, but the luckless wight who has a large stake depending upon the actor, is decidedly certain to lose. There is a trick too that the jockeys practise which is called, I think, plcajing booty. This consists in appearing to use their utmost endeavour to reach the win- ning post first, when they are already determined to come in the last. The consequence is, that all except the knowing ones attribute no fault to the jockey, but damn the horse for a sluggard. An actor can i^lay booty if he chooses ; he can pretend to whip and spur and do his best, Avhen the connoisseur knows all the while he is shirking ; but sluggard is the unmerited appellation given by the majority to the innocent author. " Mr. Kemble chiefly chose to be horse, and ivalhed over the ground. Every now and then, but scarcely enough to save aj)pearances, he gave a slight touch of the jockey, and played booty. " Whether the language which is put into the mouth of Sir Edward Mortimer be above mediocrity or below contempt is not to the present purpose ; but the words he is made to utter certainly convey a meaning, and the circumstances of the scenes afford an ojijDortunity to the performer of playing ofT his mimic emotions, his transi- tions of passion, his starts, and all the trickeries of iiis trade. The devil a trick did Mr. Kemble play but a very scurvy one. His emotions and passions were so rare and so feeble that they seasoned his general insipidity like a single grain of wretched pepper thrown into the largest dose of water gruel that was ever administered to an invalid. For the most part he toiled on, line after line^ in a dull current of undiversified sound, which stole 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 29 upon the ear far more clrov/sily than the distant miir- miirings of Lethe, with no attempt to break the lulling stream, or check its sleep-inviting course. " Frogs in a marsh, flies in a bottle, Avind in a crevice, a preacher in a field, the drone of a bagpipe, all, all yielded to the inimitable and soporific monotony of Mr. Kemble. " The very best dramatic writing, Ayhere passion is expressed, if delivered languidly by the actor, will fail in its intended effect ; and I will be bold enough to say that were the curse in ' King Lear ' new to an audience, and they heard it uttered fur the first time in a croak fainter than a crow's in a consumption, it would pass unnoticed or appear vapid to the million, "If I raise a critical clatter about my cars by this assertion, which some may twist into a profanation of Shakspeare, I leave it to Horace, who can fight battles better than I, to defend me. " * Si dicentis erunt fortunis absona dicta, Romani tollent equiles peditesque cacliinnum.' " That Mr. Kemble did not misconceive the part is cer- tain ; for he told me, some time before the play was acted, that he feared the exertions requisite in Sir Edward Mortimer would strain his lungs more than Octavian in ' The Mountaineers.' " That he can strain his lungs to good purpose in Octa- vian is well known : and after this, his own intimation, how will he escape the charge of wilful and direct delin- quency, when, with such a conception of the part, and with health recovered, he came forward in the true spirit of Bottom, and ' aggravated his voice so that he roared you as gently as any sucking dove ?' * * " Mr. Kemble informed me, previous to the second representation of the play, that he felt himself capable of exertion." 30 MEMOIR OF [1796. " He insulted the town and injured Lis employer and tlic author sufficiently in the first instance ; in the second, he added to the insult and injury a liundredfold ; and as often as he mangled the character (three or four times, I am Tincertain which, after the first night's performance) he heaped aggravation upon aggravation. " The most miserable murmur that ever disgraced the walls of a theatre could not have been a stronger draw- back than Mr. Kemble. He was not only dull in himself, but the cause of dulness in others. Like the baleful upas of Java, his pestiferous influence infected all around him. When two actors come forward to keep up the shuttlecock of scenic fiction, if one plays slovenly the other cannot maintain his game. Poor Bannister, jun., wouJd he speak out (but I have never pressed him, and never shall press him, to say a word upon the subject), could bear ample testimony to the truth of this remark. He suffered like a man under the cruelty of Mezentius. All alive himself, he was tied to a corpse, which he was fated to drag about with him scene after scene, which weighed him down and depressed his vigour. Miss Farren too, who might animate anything but a soul of lead and face of iron, experienced the same fate. " I could proceed, and argue, and reason, and discuss, and tire the reader, as I have tired myself (it is now, my good friend, one o'clock in the morning), to prove further that Wx. Kemble was unsound in my cause, and that he ruined my play. But I will desist here. I think I have iirosed enough to manifest that my arguments are not unfounded. " They who are experienced in Dramatics will, I trust, see that I have made a fair extenuation of myself ; they who are impartial will, I hope, be convinced that I have set down nought in malice. " The only question that may arise to shake materially 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER, 31 tlie credit of all I liavo said is, * How is it probable that INIr. Ivemble should injure you thus Avithout provocation ? Is it in nature ? Is it in man ?' I can merely answer that I am unconscious of having given liim a cause for provocation ; that if I have given him cause, he has taken a bad mode of revenge ; that Mr. Kemble's nature has frequently puzzled me in my observation upon it ; and tlmt I think him a very extraordinary man. " But let him take this with him, should tins crudely written preface ever fall in his way. I have committed it to paper currente calamo. I mean no allusion, no epithet, to apply to him as a private individual. As a private individual, I give him not that notice which it might here be impertinent to bestow. But I have an undoubted right to discuss his merits, or demerits, in his public capacities of manager and actor ; and my cause of com- plaint gives me a good reason as well as a right. His want of conduct, his neglect, his injustice, his oppression, his finesse, his person, his face, are, in this point of view, all open to my animadversion. *' ' He is my goods, my chattels ; My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.* '^ And I would animadvert still further, did I not think I had already said sufficient to gain the object of guarding my own reputation. That object has solely swayed me in dwelling so long upon a ' plain tale,' encumbered with so latiguing a hero as John Kemble." "advertisement to the reader. " I am indebted for the groundwork of this play to a ^.ovel, entitled ' Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams ; written by William God.win.' Much of 32 MEMOIR OF [1796. ]\Ir. Godwin's story I have omitted ; much which I have adopted, I have compressed ; much I have added ; and much I have taken the liberty to alter. "All this I did that I might fit it, in the best of my judgment, to the stage. " I have cautiously avoided all tendency to that which vulf^'arly (wrongly in many instances) is termed politics; with which, many have told me, ' Caleb Williams' teems. " The stage has now no business with politics ; and should a dramatic author endeavour to dabble in them, it is the Lord Chamberlain's office to check his attempts before they meet the eye of the public. I perused Mr. Godwin's book as a tal^ replete with interesting incident, ino-enious in its arrangement, masterly in its delineation of character, and forcible in its language. I considered it as rio-ht of common ; and by a title which custom has given to dramatists, I enclosed it within my theatrical paling. However I may have tilled the land, I trust he discovers no intentional injury to him in my proceeding. " To all the performers (excepting Mr. Kemble) I offer my hearty thanks for their exertions, which would have served me more had not an actor, ' dark as Erebus,' cast a gloom upon them, which none of their efforts, however brilliant, could entirely disperse. " But this does not diminish my obligations to them — so much indeed I owe to them, that when the play was last performed it Avas rising, spite of ' Erebus,' in favour with the town. It was then advertised, day after day, at the bottom of the play-bills, for repetition, till the pro- missory advertisement became laughable ; and at length the advertisement and the play were dropt together. " If after the foregoing preface 1 should at a future period bring the play forward in the Haymarket Theatre, I am fully aware of the numbers who, from party and 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 33 pique, may noAV oppose it. 1 am aware too of the weight which a first impression leaves upoQ the minds of the most candid. Still so strong is my confidence in the genuine decision of a London audience, who have a fair oppor- tunity of exercising their judgment and feelings (which they have not had yet in respect to this play), that I believe I shall venture an appeal. " The piece is now printed as it was acted on the^irs^ niglit ; that they who peruse it may decide whether, even in that shape (with all the misfortunes before enume- rated with which it was doomed to struggle) it should be for ever consigned to moulder on the shelf. "The songs, duets, and choruses are intended merely as vehicles for musical effect. Some critics have pompously called them 'lyric poetry' — that by raising them to dignity, they may more effectually degrade them : as men lift a stone very high, before they let it fall, when they would completely dash it to pieces. "I now leave the gentle reader to the perusal of the play — and lest my father's memory may be injured by mistakes ; and, in the confusion of after-times, the Translator of Terence, and the Author of ' The Jealous Wife,' be sup- posed guilty of ' The Iron Chest,' I shall, were I to reach the patriarchal longevity of ISIethuselah, continue (in all my dramatic publications) to subscribe myself " George Colman the Youkger. ♦'Piccadilly, July 20tli, 1796." "POSTSCRIPT. ** '■ Inveni Portum P " I have now, previous to the publication of this edition of ' The Iron Chest,' made the appeal suggested in the fore- D 34 MEMOIR OF [1796. going advertisement. I have produced the play at my own theatre in the Haymarket. *' Keflecting on the prejudice it would encoimter, my hopes of success were very moderate ; had my expec- tations, however, been most sanguine,, I should not have suffered a disappointment. The piece was received with strong marks of approbation ; it is now nightly performing ; and if numerous auditors and full applause can gratify a dramatic author, I am gratified completely. " The play, as now representing, varies from the printed copy in scarcely more than six lines, except in mere curtailment : and it is printed (as I have already stated) as it was first acted in Drury Lane. '' The chief performers new in the piece, at the Hay- market, are Messrs. Elliston, Aickin, Fawcett, Palmer, C. Kemble, Mrs, Kemble, and Mrs. Bland. Their efforts to serve me demand my warmest acknowledgments ; to dwell upon their abilities would be superfluous. Suffice it to say, that all the representatives of the dramatis persons did ample credit to themselves; and added, I trust, no small portion of reputation to the theatre. " But let not my corps dramatique think it invidious if I single Mr. Elliston from their number, who is pe- culiarly predicamented in coming forward in a character of which so much has already been said. This young actor, new this summer, to the boards of a London theatre, with a juvenility of j)erson, in this instance unfavourable to him, has sustained a part written expressly for the powers of another man (and that man as strong a man- nerist as ever wore a buskin), in a mode which might well become an established veteran of the stjige. It is far from my intention to draw general comparisons ; but it is impossible here to avoid sjoeaking of the two actors of Sir Edward Mortimer. The first mangled, and finally sunk 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 35 my play ; the second healed the wounds it had received and is now (with the rest of his brethren) ably supporting it. It is bare truth to say that Mr. Elliston's conduct to me and his performance of the character have been the very reverse of Mr. Kemble's : were it more than bare truth, it would be a high compliment. " I now beg the reader to compare this postscript -with the preface ; and I think he will readily observe that the one most fully establishes the other. Here are facts, ex- perimental facts, now given, and nightly continuing to be given, to corroborate the arguments I have advanced, and to prove that my complaint is well founded. " I must here repeat that I have had but one motive in these statements — the motive which I have avowed in the conclusion of my preface. I have effected my pur- pose ; and I feel not the least ill will towards Mr. Kemble. But my reason tells me that I had better go to Constantinople to do him a service than put future faith in his management and his acting. "As to the poor, -pelting paragrapJnsts and pa?npJileteers, he cannot, I am sure, be pleased in observing the con- temptible dirt with which they have endeavoured to be- spatter me. I have I think stated that they are below my notice ; but so sore is man, spite of his boasted apathj--, that I cannot help giving here a general reply to their animadversions. " My language will, I trust, be found more liberal than the jargon of my opponents ; and my arguments fully as convincing. Thus I address them : " Gentlemen I ! ! " Pshaw ! Pish ! Pooh ! Ha, ha, ha ! " Your obedient, " G. CoLMAN THE YoUNGER, "Piccadilly, September 5, 1796." D 2 36 MEMOIR OF [1796. THE IRON CHEST. First 'performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane^ on March 12, 1796. "THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS By Mr. KEMBLE, &c." Drury Lane Play Bill. " I had as lieve tLe town-crier had spoke my lines." ShaTcs'peare. SIR EDWARD MORTIMER Mr. Kemble ! ! ! FITZHARDING {Ids elder Brother) . . . . Mr. Wroughton. WILFORD {Secretary to Sir Edioard) . . . Mr. Bannister, jun. ADAM WINTERTON {the Steivard) . . . Mr. Dodd. RAWBOLD Mr. Barrymore. SAMSON RAWBOLD {his Son) Mr. Suett. BOY Master Welsh. COOK Mr. HoLLiNGSwoRTn. PETER Mr. Banks. WALTER Mr. Maddoks. SIMON Mr. Webb. GREGORY Mr. Trueman. ARMSTRONG Mr. Kelly. ORSON Mr. R. Palmer. FIRST ROBBER Mk. Digntjm. SECOND ROBBER . Mr. Sedgwick. THIRD ROBBER . . = Mr. Bannister. ROBBER'S BOY Master Webb. LADY HELEN ...'..., \ . . Miss Farren. BLANCH Mrs. Gibbs. DAME RAWBOLD Miss Tidswell. BARBARA Signora Storage. JUDITH Miss De Camp. 1 797-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 37 It must be remembered that the above was written under the impulse of feelings rendered poignantly acute by the loss of the unprecedented sum which had been agreed to be paid to Colman had the play proved success- ful, and therefore must be received with caution. That Mr. Kemble's behaviour throughout the business was not such as to exculpate him entirely from the charges urged against him must be admitted ; but that he was so grossly culpable as Mr. Colman endeavours to prove may be unequivocally denied. The life of a manager of a theatre is one of harass and perplexity; but we are inclined to think that George Colman the Younger had not so much troublesome cor- respondence with his performers as his father endiu-ed before him. The summer performances of 1797 began about the usual period. Munden was engaged in the place of Bannister ; or we should rather say, that he was intended to succeed Parsons. Mrs. Davenport was retained this season for the old women, foraierly played by Mrs. Hopkins; and the sudden retirement of that charming vocalist, ]SIiss Leak, gave an opportunity for a young lady of the name of Andrews (another j)upil of Dr. Arnold) to make her debut. A farce entitled " The Irish Legacy " was produced at this time, but without success. It was a very early work of a young author, who subsequently wrote with considerable popularity — Samuel James Arnold. The music was composed by his father. The best production of this season was " The Heir at LaAV." Of the merits of this agreeable comedy there can be but one opinion. The characters (the amusing Pan- gloss, perhaps, excepted) are true pictures of common life. Mrs. Inchbald remarked, " Invention, observation, good intention, and all the powers of a complete dra- 38 MEMOIR OF [1797. matist, are in this comedy displayed, except one — ta^te seems wanting ; but this failure is evidently not an error in judgment, but an escape from labour. The finer colours, for more polished mankind, Avould demand the artist's more laborious skill." With all due deference to the fair critic, the dramatic author, to be effective on the stage, must work freely, and, like the scene-painter (to use a technical term), with the pound brush ! Of the comedy of " The Heir at Law," a critic has remarked of Dr. Pangloss, one of the most pleasant of the dramatis persona?, that the originality of the cha- racter may be reasonably disputed, by a reference to " Fortune in her Wits," a comedy translated from the " Naufragium Joculare " of Abraham Cowley, and printed in 1705. The comedy of " The Heir at Law " has recently (187 1) been revived with great success, owing to the inimitaole acting of Mr. Clarke in the principal character. It was in 1797 that Colman published the first instal- ment of that series of humorous tales in verse which we now present to the public. This consisted of a thin quarto, entitled " My Nightgown and Slippers," containing only three stories — " The Maid of the Moor, or the Water Fiends " (a burlesque on the then existing rage for German ballads), " The Newcastle Apothecary," and " Lodgings for Single Gentlemen." The whole were connected by intercalary conversations between Tom, Dick, and Will, an alehouse triumvirate, who rail at modern poets and novel writers. The novelty of the style immediately attracted attention; the book became very popular, and the whole edition was soon exhausted. In 1802 the little work reappeared, with considerable additions, under the title of " Broad Grins." As a story- teller in verse George Colman can scarcely be reckoned l8co.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 39 inferior to La Fontaine. He was certainly the real father of all the Hoods and Ingoldsbys of a later generation. We must revert, however, for the present, to Colman'rf dramatic performances. On the i6th of January, 1798, he produced the ro- mance of " Blue Beard" at Drury Lane Theatre. As a dramatic piece little can be said in its favour, but the spectacle was grand in the extreme. The procession was the best regulated effect of pageantry that had been at that time witnessed on the stage. Michael Kelly was very happy in the selection of the music ; Mrs. Crouch, in the zenith of her beauty, was the original Fatima ; Miss Decamp gained great popularity by her performance and singing in L'ene; Bannister and Suett were very pleasant; and the celebrated Madame Parisot danced exquisitely. "The Castle Spectre" and "Blue Beard" ran together for a great number of nights, with unpre- cedented success. On the 19th of January, T799, Colman produced a melodramatic romance at Drury Lane, entitled " Feudal Times, or the Banquet Gallery." It was showy but dull. There was little novelty in the plan, neither interest nor ingenuity in the construction of the story ; nor was there anything attractive in it upon the stage except what was supplied by the composer, the mechanist, and the scene- painter. On the nth of February, 1800, Colman brought before the public his comedy. of "The Poor Gentleman," at Covent Garden Theatre, with great success. It was represented for many nights with roars of laughter. Munden, Lewis, Fawcett, and Mrs. Mattocks were irresis- tible in it. "The Poor Gentleman" was of considerable service to the treasury. In addition to the plums of this fortunate season, 40 MEMOIR OF [iSoo. Colman, on tlie 31st of August, presented hi?3 "Review; or, the AVags of Windsor." Without plot or interest, the dialogue and the characters are so pleasant that if, at this distance of time, the " Review," even tolerably acted, is amusing, what must the farce have been, supported as it was seventy years ago ! Nearly, if not entirely, the whole of this capital farce was written, or rather put together, by Colman in sudden haste, at Dr. Arnold's table in Duke Street. The character and principal dialogue, &c., of Caleb Quotem was transferred, without much addition, from a piece called " Throw Physic to the Dogs," which had failed a season or two before. Songs which Dr. Arnold had by him, ready cut and dried, v/ere adapted, and even cha- racters introduced to sing them. " A Poor Little Gipsy I w^ander forlorn," sung by Mrs. Bland, and another ballad, sung by Miss Decamp disguised as a young recruit, ■were written by Samuel James Arnold, and when so adapted, proved a high feather in his youthful cap of vanity. The power of a man of talent to elicit amusement from the slightest and least promising materials is strikingly displayed by this dramatic trifle. Few pieces are more destitute of novelty in every point of view. Plot there is none. The incidents are few and trivial, and the same characters have been exhibited in the same situations in innumerable previous instances. Suspicious guardians, intriguing wards, and blundering servants have composed the dramatis personse of half the plays and farces pro- duced during the last century ; yet they are here so pleasantly grouped, coloured Avith so haj^py an extrava- gance, and made to converse in language so pregnant with whim and drollery, that the " Review " lias always been a decided favourite, and will long continue to excite iSo3.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER, /^\ the laiiditer of those careless mortals who visit the o theatre merely to be amused, without examining too curiously into the construction of the piece which calls forth their merriment. The vulgar Irishman of the modern stage is a descrip- tion of character in depicting which the author of the "Keview" remarkably excels. Looney Mactwolter is a rich specimen of this ability ; and as the author Avas most happy in his delineation of the part, he was equally for- tunate in having it sustained by so inimitable a performer as the original representative. The stoical gravity of the mind which can remain proof against the exquisite humour of Looney's bulls and blunders, when played by John- stone, is little to be coveted. The Yorkshireman, the Deputy, and the two pair of lovers, possess few shining characteristics ; but the voluble Quotem must not be passed over in silence. On the 5th of March, 1803, the most popular of George Colman's plays, " John Bull, or an Englishman's Fireside," was produced at Covent Garden. The im- bounded. humour of Dennis Brulgruddery and Dan, the honest energy of Job Thornberry, the pathos, moral effi- cacy, character, and contrast that pervaded this comedy, immediately caused it to become a universal favourite. It was acted most admirably, and had a great run — forty-seven nights ! Colman now disposed of part of the Theatre Royal, Hay market, to his brother-in-law, JMr. Morris, Mr. "Win- ston, and an attorney of the name of Tahourdine. This partnership eventually led to a quarrel, and soon afterwards to a vexatious lawsuit, by which Colman's pecuniary affairs suffered so much that he was for some time compelled to live within tiie Rules of the Court of Kinoj's Bench. When Colman Avas in the Rules (and Dubois said that .\2. MEMOIR OF [iSoS. he only stayed there to prove by a practical joke that he could be kept withm them), he lived in the last house of the Eules towards Westminster, which, however, he left suddenly, and gave this reason for his departure. The staircase had a window looking out of the Rules, and he said " that after one of his nightly symposiums, he was afraid, in going to bed, he might fall out of this window, and so fix his bail." Honour therefore made him retreat. All retreats are not of that character. About this time His Eoyal Highness the Duke of York obtained leave from the King's Bench for Colman to dine at Carlton House. He accompanied the Duke thither. On his walking through the apartments with him, Colman remarked, " What excellent lodgings ! I have nothing like them in the King's Bench!" After dinner, he exclaimed, " Eh! why this is wine; pray do tell me who that fine- looking fellow is at the head of the table ?" The good- natured Duke said, " Hush, George, you'll get into a scrape." "No, no," said Colman, in a louder voice, " I am come out to enjoy myself; I want to know who that fine, square-shouldered, magnificent-looking, agreeable fellow is, at the head of the table V " Be quiet, George," inter- rupted the Duke ; " you know it is the Prince." " Why then," continued Colman, still louder, " he is your elder brother. I declare he don't look half your age. Well, I remember the time wdien he sung a good song ! and as I am come out for a lark, for only one day, if he is the same good fellow that he used to be, he would not refuse an old playfellow." The Prince laughed, and sang. " What a magnificent voice ! " exclaimed Colman, " I have heard nothing to be compared to it for years. Such expression too ! I'll be damned if I don't engage him for my theatre." It would appear that this freak gave no offence to the iSop.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGEk. 43 Eoyal host ; for Colmau was ever treated with kindness by George the Fourth. In 1 80S Cohnan produced a piece entitled "The Afri- cans ; or War, Love, and Duty." It certainly is far from being his best drama. He bestowed his chief labour upon the dialogue, which is highly ornamented, and in the most vigorous style of the author ; but this labour Avas mis- applied, for the characters required the utmost simplicity of diction. This Avas one of the great faults of the play. The three brothers were well represented by Young, Farley, and Fawcett; the latter jjlayed admirably, and Avas doubtless the great support of the piece. Ilcnry Augustus Mug (Listen) was dragged into the play. There are boundaries even to extravagance, and when Colman planned the introduction of a vulgar cockney into Tatte- conda and made him Secretary of State, he must have been astonished at his OAvn temerity. Listen, however, was himself alone^ his humour never failed, and the song Avhich he had to sing, to the tune of " Will you come to the Bower?" he had frequently to Avarble thrice. The annexed invitation was sent by Colman to William Augustus Downs, better knoAvn at the period as " Fat Major Downs," of the St. James's Royal Volunteers, a fellow of infinite humour, though professing the grave trade of an imdertaker. It is dated December 3, 1809, " To W. A. DoAvns, Esq." " Boisterous Sir! — " (In Avhom all the fleet Avas moored, as the poet sings.) " What effect had the heavy gale of Avind upon you one night in the course of this last Aveek ? I apprehend that it occasioned a tremendous SAvell in you, and that you must have run very high. It is Avith painful anxiety that I Avait for a detail of the damages done to the shipping Avhich lay at anchor in you in such tempestuous Aveather. 44 MEMOIR OF [1812. " ' Your name brings to mind, dear funereal Downs, Both your coffins and one of our maritime towns. Eenowned Undertaker ! all mortals must feel, That we can't mention Downs, without thinking on Deal. Derry Downs, Downs, Downs, derry Downs !' " Will you dine with me to-morrow at five, to meet the great Listoii and his little wife ; and will you also under- take to forward the enclosed to the Cambridge Coffee House, for I know not where it is ? I am obliged to send an apology to Grubb. " Walter Ealeigh. " Send a goose — i.e. (latine), an Anser.'^ Downs was the original " Two Single Gentlemen rolled into One," the actual " Will Waddle" of Colman's capital song. In 18 1 2 Colman published his " Poetical Vagaries," a se- cond series of tales in verse. Its supposed freedom of subject and style, together with its appearance in the ambitious but then fashionable quarto form, called forth some very severe and perhaps somewhat overstrained animadversions from the Quarterly Review, to which Colman soon retorted in a satire entitled "Vagaries Vindicated" — as bitter and caustic as the " English Bards and Scotch Eeviewers." A few years later, a firm of publishers in Edinburgh, attracted by the great popularity of the "Broad Grins" and the " Poetical Vagaries," wrote and offered the author a handsome sum for a third volume of a similar character. To this fortunate proposal, which was accepted by Colman, we owe the little work entitled " Eccentricities for Edin- burgh," — a third series of tales in no way inferior to their more well known j^i'edecessors. In the two last-named books, Colman thought fit to indulge in certain very ab- surd idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation, which we have thought it best to remove in the present edition, i822.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 45 together witli his elaborate preface to the " Vagaries," in •which he endeavours to justify them. As an etymologist, Colman is certainly out of his element, and readers will enjoy his humour all the better freed from the impedi- ments to which we have alluded. Accordingly we have ruthlessly eradicated his apostrophes and terminal k's, and restored the missing integral e's to their proper places. The long series of Colman's dramatic performances ends with "The Law of Java," produced in 1822. It is sin- gular that of a writer so prolific, and whose name holds so high a place in our dramatic literature, no collection of the plays has ever appeared in this country, but is still a desideratum. "With what an indefatigable pen, and what exhaustless humour, he amused the playgoers of two score successive years, we have endeavoured imperfectly to de- scribe. The scope of the present undertaking does not admit of our giving many specimens of these admirable productions, but we have culled from them a number of songs and ballads, some of them well known, but for the first time assembled here, such as "Mynheer van Dank" and " Unfortunate Miss Bailey." Colman received very considerable sums for his plays. For " The Poor Gentleman" and " Who Wants a Guinea?" he was paid 550/. each, then the customary price for a five-act comedy ; that is to say, 300Z. on the first nine nights, 100/, on the twentieth night, and 150/. for the copyright.* For " John Bull" (the most attractive comedy * TLat is to say, 33Z. 6s. 8c?. per mrjlit for the first niue nights, lOoZ. ou the twentieth night, and lOoZ. on the fortieth night. This was the plan settled by Cumberland with Sheridan at Drury Lane, and Harris at Covent Garden, for remunerating authors instead of their (generally losing) benefits. The copyright was usually understood to be a distinct bargain — the proprietor of the theatre w'as to have the lefusal at any hand fide price offered by a bouliEeller. 45 MEMOIR OF [1822. ever produced, having averaged 470/. per night for fort}^- seven nights), Mr. Harris paid loooZ., and Colman after- wards received twice an additional 100/., making 1200Z. ]\Ir. Harris was accustomed to pay an author one or two hundred pounds above the 550/., when the drama was very successful, which was the case with most of Colman's 2'^lays. We have not any record to prove what sum was re- ceived for the farce of "X. Y. Z. ;" but it appears that Mr. Harris paid Colman 600/. for that, and patching up one or two things, Asa manager, Colman the Younger was liberal, affable, and assiduous; he assumed no affected reserve or su- periority, but was with all his performers f\imiliar and friendly, though he never lost sight of the respect due to tlie audience, and of the proper interests of the theatre ; and though, as Sir Fretful Plagiary says, *' he writes himself," yet he was exempt from the narrow jealousy too often prevalent in the literary character, and they Avho aspired at dramatic distinction were sure to meet at his theatre Avith counsel, assistance, and protection. A proof of his affability as a manager, was observable in a kind of theatrical club, which he introduced among his performers, the object of which was to procure proper refreshments for them between the acts, and to promote a general spirit of good-fellowship and harmony. The club alluded to was called the Property Club, being held at the back of the stage, among the scenery and other theatrical matters, which, in the language of the green-room, are termed jyroperties. The club commenced at the end of the second act of the play, and concluded with the fall of the curtain. The chair was taken in succession, and several gentlemen of acknowledged merit in the literary world were members of it. It had, moreover, the recommendation of being iS22.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 47 attended by tlie female performers, who imparted a softer charm to the spirit of gaiety, and prevented it fr5m deviating into execs.?. In private life Colman was social and intelligent, expert in the playful contentions of wit and humour, and per- fectly ready at what is termed repartee ; and when sur- rounded by men of acknowledged pleasantry, in the general skirmish of raillery, was never at a loss for a spirited retort ; though it must be acknowledged that in this kind of amicable warfare he has been fairly foiled Avith his own weapons by Theodore Hook, the most rapid wit and humorist of the ao-e. The life of Colman, though subject to some vicissitudes, can never be said to have made him acquainted with want, though frequently compelling him to struggle through fluctuations of fortune, the unavoidable results of his own indiscretion and the ruinous vanity of apino- the style and expenses of many associates far above him in rank and fortune. The keenest censure, however, must admit that this fault, unjustifiable as it was, arose out of an ambition to emulate the gentlemanly character ; and when the disadvantage of his birth and the reckless inadvertencies of his early life are taken into the scale, even censure must be silent, and nothing beyond the honest plea of liberality be heard in his requiem. 80 far the labour of a biographer would be found easy and rapid enough; but the ghost of George Colman, autocratically nicknamed " the Younger," could he " revisit the glimpses of the moon," would scarcely thank the man who passed over his name with notice so slight and favourable: his object through life was distinction and notoriety -, and he certainly was not nice at any period of it how that fame was acquired. For the reputation of a wit, Colman laboured with 48 ' MEMOIR OF [1822. unwearied assiduity, and alike sacrificed a friend or pro- voked an enemy by his efforts to obtain it. Notwithstanding this undignified ambition, with high spirits, a natural vein of humour, and a command of language which embraced a happy knack of playing upon words with that ludicrous association of things apparently opposed to each other which has been one of the definitions of wit, but which is iu fact the very essence of a pun, and which the French call a calembourg, or in better words a jeu de mots, in con- tradistinction to a JEU d'esprit; with such qualifications for an agreeable companion, with the perfect manners and habits of a gentleman, with an excellent memory and the all but self-acquired knowledge of classical and modern languages, it can be no Avonder that his society was sought, his talents appreciated, and his fame extended. Although Colman was more nearly allied to the character of a punster than that of a wit, he was more than either that of a humorist ; he said thousands of good things which would entirely lose their poignancy by repetition, since the inimitable chuckle of his voice, and the remarkable expression of his countenance, would be wanting. The intelligent roll of his large and almost glaring eyes, with the concurrent expression of his hand- some face, were ever the unerring avant-couriers of his forthcoming joke ; and if anything curtailed the mirth he had provoked, it was the almost interminable laughter with which he honoured his own effusion. His friend, Mr. Samuel Arnold, thus speaks of Colman's relations with Sheridan : — " It must be reluctantly admitted that no man was ever more tainted by jealousy as an author and a wit (the late celebrated, and justly celebrated, author of the ' West Indian' perhaps alone excepted) than Colman. I never heard him speak of the dramatic works of Sheridan with- 1827.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 49 out some debasing alloy; lie undervalued him as a wit, and somewhat more than hinted that he thought himself more than a match for him in convivial society. By way of salvo, indeed, he lauded him to the skies as an orator ; but even as such, I once heard him conclude his eulo- gium by adding, ' but tliat is not a gift, but an acquire- ment ; any man of sound sense and ordinary information, with good nerves, may make an orator by practice and preparation ,' still, if honest truth is to be spoken, the wit of Sheridan was a razor, compared to which our friend Colman's was a bludgeon. I have been many times in copipany with both, when Sheridan was silent, and not easily dr^Avn out ; on which occasions Colman would gnarl and fret and talk at him as if to rouse and provoke him to the combat ; but this was in Sheridan's later days, when suffering under bodily as well as mental ailment. He once said, when Colman made a successful hit, * I hate a pun, but Colman sometimes almost reconciles me to tlie infliction.' " When Colman received the appointment of Examiner of Plays for the Lord Chamberlain, he seems to have exer- cised his office with a rigour and severity which one would hardly have expected from the licence and freedom of his own writings. The Examiner who preceded him was a gentleman of the name of Larpent, understood to be a rigid Methodist, and certainly a rigid censor of the dramas submitted to his perusal. But Mr. Larpent's objections never extended beyond any dangerous sentences which appeared to meddle in politics in his dangerous times, or with sentiments which were calculated to subvert mora- lity, glaringly to shock decency, or, above all, to bring religion of any description into contempt. But, generally speaking, the good taste or the precautionary judgment of modern managers has left little occasion for such critical 50 MEMOIR OF [iP.27. censorship. Colman therefore, in order to be distingue^ was driven to close quarters ; where nothing blasphemous, immoral, or political was to be discovered he marked his critical acumen by disavowing a lover's right to call his mistress ' an angel ;' an angel, he said, was a character in Scripture, and not to be profaned on the stage by being applied to a woman. He would not license an address to the Deity in any shape whatever. " Oh, Providence !" he said, was an address to the Providence of God, and ought not to be allowed. The name of heaven or hell he uniformly expunged. On one occasion he observed, " The j'^hrase *■ Oh, Heaven !' ' Ye Heavens,' occurs seven times in tliis piece — omit them." A *' damn" was a pill he could never swallow, which may in part account for the volubility with which that and other such unmeaning expletives flowed almost perpetnally from his mouth. On one occasion he expunged the exclama- tion of " Oh, lud !" He said it meant, " Oh ! Lord," which was inadmissible. On another, where a dandy had to say while addressing the chambermaid, " Demme my dear," he observed, " Demme means damn me — omit it ;•' but puerili- ties of this sort, annoying enough to author, manager, and actor, were too numerous to be quoted or remembered. In 1827, some years after he had ceased to write for the stage, Colman commenced to write some autobiogra- phical recollections of the earlier portions of his life, which were published in 1830, under the title of '* Random Eecords."* Of these vohuues we have made large use in compiling the present memoir. They contain also several humorous ballads and tales in verse, which we have in- * "Random Records," by George Colm.in the Younger. In Two Volumes. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830, He retained some of his eccentricities of spelling in tliis work. 1S30.] GEORGE COLMAN THE VOUXGER. 51 eluded ill our collection. In concluding his " Random Records," Colman held out some hope that he might favour the world with a continuation of his autobiography, deal- inc; with the events of his later life. " Further materials," he says, '' are not wanting to me for a continuance of my autobiography, materials which may promise perhaps to be more acceptable to modern readers than these which I here put forth ; since (from my pro- gressive mingling -with the world) they will approach nearer to the present times. " If then the specimens of scribbling which I now pub- lish should not prove altogether unentertaining to the million, I j^ropose to follow them up, in due time, with further records." This promise, however, ho was prevented from falfilling by the ill health under which he suiFered more and more from 1830 do-\\Ti to the close of his life. The following very interesting account of his later years is derived from his medical attendant \^ — '' It was early in February, 1830, that my attendance on Mr. Colman commenced. He had for many years been suffering from gout, and on this occasion I was apprehen- sive that there were evidences of some organic disease ; he also was annoyed with a painful affection of the bladder, which in the strongest constitutions and most firm and philosophic minds generally produces nervous irritation to a distressing degree. Each attack increased his inability to take exercise, and rendered it necessary for me to impose restrictions on his ordinary arrangements, and advise an avoidance as much as possible of social excitement. "In November, 1832, he was the subject of a very severe attack, accompanied with alarming symptoms of * Dr. H. S. Chlnnock. E 2 52 MEMOIR OF [1836. internal mischief, so as to require bleeding and other active measures. This iUness continued three months ; fortunately he ralhed, and his health for some time sub- sequently was manifestly improving. "This improvement, however, was only temporary. Some months after the old enemy visited him, and my former fears of the existence of organic disease of the liver and other parts returned ; and to avoid the excitement attending his permanent residence in town, and to gain the advantage of country air, he removed to Greenford, the residence of my late friend Mr. Henry Harris. The result of this proceeding wms more beneficial than my most sanouine expectations had induced me to anticipate. Nevertheless, my visits were necessary, and although the improvement was so evident, I could not but apprehend on many occasions, when I was with him, after a three months' residence at Greenford, that it was in a great measure depending on the mental quiet and perfect do- mestic happiness he enjoyed under Mr. Harris's roof. "There were evident symptoms of decay of constitu- tional power, although his nervous energy was as stringent as ever. He remained at Greenford, with occasional visits to Brompton, till August, 1836, when it was necessary, in consequence of increasing infirmities, that I should see him very much oftener than I possibly could at such a distance. Soon after his return to liis old residence, it was too i^lain to my mind that we were to lose one of the brightest orna- ments of this country ; the painful malady I have referred to was lamentably increasing both in virulence and degree, and notwithstanding we had theadvc'intage of the unceasing attention, kindness, and skill of Dr. Chambers, in addition to whatever assistance I could render him, he ceased to exist on the 17th October, 1836. " It has never fallen to mv lot to Avitness ' in the hour 1S36.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 53 of death' so mucli serenity of mind, such perfect philo- sopliy, or resignation more complete. Up to wltliin one hour of his decease, he was perfectly sensible of his danger, and bore excruciating pain with the utmost for- titude. Towards the very latter part of his life, it was necessary that he should have medical assistance more frequently than my engagements would allow, and my then assistant (who was equally zealous in matters of religion as shilfid in his profession) was with him during the night, and occasibnally in the day. About four days prior to his decease, on my morning visit, Colman's first remark was, ' Don't let Mr. come here any more ; be with me yourself as much as possible.' I naturally inquired the reason, as he had hitherto given so much satisfaction. With the greatest calmness, he told me that he Avas and had been for some time conscious of his danger, that he had prepared himself for whatever might occur, that ho had made his peace with the Almighty, and however he might suffer, I should observe he would not shrink from the decrees of Providence, but that he had no notion of being lectured on matters of religion by others than divines ; that during the greater part of the previous night my assistant had been endeavouring to make him a convert to his peculiar views, accompanied by some terrible descrip- tions attending his non-acceptation of his religious tenets, and Mr. was only quieted by Colman stating that I had sent him as a medical man, and that which he required was relief to his body, not to his soul. When he wanted a physician he would send for one ; when he had occasion for a divine, he would request the attendance of a clergyman of his own creed. " On a consequent examination of my assistant, I found that he, like many members of other religious communities, imagined that a person connected with dramatic pursuits 54 MEMOIR OF ^ [1836. must inevitably require spiritual consolation, and ventured in this instance to overstep liis professional duty. Mr. replied that he, in the most delicate manner, pointed out to my poor patient his immediate danger, and afterwards represented the immense imjoortance of attending to the Avelfare of his soul. His remarks, he stated, were borne Vv'ith much patience, and at length terminated in the manner I have related. "It is remarkable that although the disease of Colman was of a most painful and irritating nature, yet his mind and temper were seldom disturbed ; it appeared often to me that in the same ratio he lost physical power and suffered bodily pain, there was increased cerebral energy, intellectual activity, and wit of the most genuine character. His late friend. General Phipps, has repeatedly said to me, after the most anxious inquiries as to Mr. Colman's pro- bable recovery, when I have foreboded evil, 'I never enjoyed his society more 3 he is more witty and intellectual than ever.' " This quiescence ought not entirely to be referred to the superiority of my patient's mind, or the control he exer- cised over his feelings, or to physical organization. The perfect domestic haj)piness he enjoyed, the constant in\a- riable attention of jMrs. Colman, the affectionate character of her disposition, her anxious solicitude, combined with the most perfect judgment, have not only been observed by me, but also as constantly mentioned by him as one main, even the principal source of his comfort. iK^ever could he bear her Irom his si2;ht. " Colman, as we all know, had been for a vast number of years accustomed to the most j^l^^sing and exciting society, but he alwaj'S said to me, ' There is nothing so delightful in life as domestic happiness and comfort.' This sentiment was also often repeated at Greenford, whore he 1836.] GEORGE COLMAX THE YOCXGER. 55 had not only tlie comfort resulting from :^Irs. Colman's society, but the affectionate anxieties of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harris. No man Avas more grateful for kindness shown to him, or more highly appreciated any interest evinced by his friends. " His funeral was private. He was buried in the vaults under Kensington church, by the side of his father ; his old friends General Lewis, Mr. Harris, myself, and one or two others only attending." The following is a List of the Dramas written hj George Colman the Younger. Two to One ^7^4 Turk and No Turk 1785 Inkle and Yarico 17S7 Ways and Means ^V^S Battle of Hexham 17S9 Surrender of Calais ^791 Mountaineers ^793 New Hay at the Old Market . . . • 17 95 Iron Chest ^79^ Heir-at-Law ^797 Blue Beard ^79^ Blue Devils . . 179^ Teudal Times ^799 -r> • ... ISOO Ptcview Boor Gentleman 1^°° John Bull ^^°" Love Laughs at j ^^^^-^^^ ^i^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^f y Locksmiths ,- ^Yrthur Grilhnhoofe ( ' X. Y. Z. ) > Africans .... ^^09 Law of Java '^22 56 MEMOIR OF [1836. Of a man of Avit and a man of the world like George Colman the Younger, it may justly be said that the repu- tation is twofold. One part of it, the brilliant repartee and sparkling conversation, almost perishes with him. The few hons mots, j^reserved by chance out of so many thou- sands, fall flat and seem irrelevant without the circum- stances and surroundings that produced them. The other and more enduring part of his reputation consists in the dramas and poems and prose narrative, Avhich he skilfully and unflaggingly elaborated over a period of half a cen- tury. It must not be supposed that these cost him no pains ; for if easy writing has been described as " d — d hard reading," the reverse is also probably true, and easy readino; is " d — d hard v/riting." Colman, though he can hardly be considered a volu- minous, was certainly an industrious, writer. The wild oats of his youth once sown, from 1782 on to 1822, few years elapsed in which he failed to enchant the public with some fresh and brilliant production of his pen. Some twenty-five plays, three (or rather four) volumes of tales in verse, a preface to a friend's novel,* and two volumes of autobiography, are what remain to us as the result. Of the plays we have already spoken separately at some length. AVithcut any deep insight into the profounder side of life, they skim lightly and gracefully the surface of contemporary character and manners. The dialogue is incisive, interesting, and witty, the incidents for the most part humorous, and the plot well sustained. There are few in which probability is violated, either by the un- likelihood of the events, or by attributing to the persons of the drama propensities too lofty or too mean. In nearly Like Master like Man," by John Palmer. 1836.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 57 all there is an intininte stage knowlcclgc, Tlicy are cer- tainly not free from the coarseness of morals and man- ners and the freedom and licence of diction -wliicli characterized the days of the llegcncy ; if they -were, they would be no fair reflex of the life of the time. Some of them in which these blemishes are least apparent, such as " The Ileir-at-Law," still keep their place on the stage. Many of them are interspersed Avith admirable songs and ballads, which the reader will find collected here for the first time. But in the changes of manners and times, and the transitions of dramatic taste, it is not probable that George Colman will preserve, as a writer of plays, any- thing but a classic fame. His dramas will remain indis- pensable to any collection pretending to completeness ; but they will stand on the shelves, praised but unread by the many, and read and admired only by the few. The writings by which George Colman's name will go down to posterity are his inimitable Tales in Verse. We could have been well content to lose half his dramas for another small volume of these. They are unfortunately as few as they are inimitable and unique. The stamp of popularity has so long been fixed upon some of them that it seems almost impertinent to praise them. Where is the schoolboy who has not committed to memory " The Newcastle Apothecary" — reprinted in a hundred dif- ferent volumes of selections ? and where is the grown man who has not split his sides over " The Elder Brother ?" The humour is so broad and large, so whole- some and genuine, that you must laugh in spite of your- self. Then " The Two Parsons, or the Tale of a Shirt " (in the "Poetical Vagaries"), which excited the indignation of the Quarterbj Review^ where is there a richer or droller, or more ludicrous situation, more drolly told ? It is equal 58 MEMOIR OF [1836. to a bit of " Tom Jones," but no more intended virgini- husg^ue puer'isque than that admirable novel is. As in the matchless '■'■ Contes de la Fontaine," much of the charm of Colman's tales lies not so much in the story itself as in the telling of it. As an instance of this let the reader refer to the two versified letters in the poem of " London Eurality (Eccentricities for Edinburgh)," and then read the genuine and original letters "which inspired them. It will immediately be seen that all the real humour has been infused into them by the happy touches of Colman : — " Mrs. Pitts' compliments to Miss Cozens ; she was in hopes to have found her at home by this time, as she wisjies to speak to her about a little bad workmanship in her house since she went away, by a board or something put upon it, in what her maid calls her larder, which, by being ill-done, the nails come almost through Mrs. Pitts' passage, and there being no partition wall, only thin paper, between the houses, which is very dangerous, and she is very sorry to find it being so unsafe, and she hopes her maids are very careful, for we are both in danger, espe- cially from her frequent large washes, which never were so before, though there has been four different families in that house since Mrs. Pitts has been at W., and none of them had such washes Avith all their great things, only their smalls, which Mrs. Pitts has ; it not only is dan- gerous, but extremely disfiguring to the place, and might be taken for a washerwoman's place, rather than any- bcdy's-else, and almost wonders Miss C. can like it her- self, only she is seldom if ever at home, she does not find it so disagreeable, especially -when the things hang out on both sides; and she must excuse my mentioning her donkey frightened her very much one day as the gate was 1S36.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 59 opened, and she went there to throw some rubbish, and dropt her scissors, which she was some time in looking for, in the meantime she felt something touch her face, wliich proved to be this creature ; on looking up saw the monster, she screamed, and her maids heard her. " I am, j\Iadam, your humble servant, ''L. riTTS." To this we have thefoUou-ing reply from Miss Cozens: — " :\Iiss Cozens's compHments to Mrs. P. ; is sorry the partition wall should be only thin paper, will put up some thicker as soon as she gets home. Miss C. is surprised to find washing great things should be so very offensive and so uncommon at W. ; I have always been used to clean sheets and table-cloths. ^Miss C. is shocked to find Mrs. Pitts so alarmed at the sight of my ass ; thought you had seen it often before ; can't guess how it came to touch her face, 'tis very quiet in general, and was never called a monster till now ; but as Mrs. Pitts had lost her scissors, cannot wonder she vras so terrified. ]Miss C. will take care in future her maid shall hang out all on one side. " I am. Madam, your humble servant, "M. Cozens."' It now only remains for us to speak of Colman's Auto biography. In this work of his old age — interspersed as it is Avith anecdotes and sallies of humour full of the old fire, he begins to display somewhat of the garrulousness of senility. The book is far too rambling and bulky to be reprinted entire, but vre have given all the best passages in consecutive order, and arranged under headings at the end of the present volume. 6o MEMOIR OF [iSi8. Colman associated with nearly all the first literary and dramatic characters of his time, at least Avith such of them as frequented London society. It is natural therefore that we should find in their writings many allusions and references to him, and not a few records of his hons mots. Some of these we have collected at the end of the book. Colman was among the early associates of Theodore Hook, and of the first evening spent in the society of that distinguished wit, the former used to give an amusing anecdote. They had been sitting together for some hours, and their potations the while had probably not been con- fined to that agreeable beverage " Wliicli cheers but not inebriates ;" and to which, by the way. Hook ''entertained the pro- foundest objection," when the great dramatist, fixing his eyes upon his young companion, and ever and anon taking a sip from his glass, as he regarded him, began to mutter, " Very odd, very strange indeed ! wonderful precocity of genius ! astonishing diligence and assiduity ! You must be a very extraordinary young man. Why, sir," he continued, raising his voice, "you can hardly yet have reached your twenty-first birthday." "I have just passed it," said the other, ^^ vingt-un overdrawn." " Ah ! very good," replied old Colman, " but, sir, pray tell me how the d — 1 did you contrive to find time to write that terrible long Roman history ?" In the journals of Thomas Moore, a perfect repertory of literary information, there are two or three incidental references to Colman of an interesting character: — " George Colman at the Beefsteak Club lately, quite drunk, making extraordinary noises while INIorris was i8i9.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 6i singing, which disconcerted the latter (who, strange to say, is a very grave, steady person) considerably. "September, i8i8."' '• In the evening read Cohnan's little comedy of ' Ways and Means,' Some comical things in it : ' Curse Cnpid, he has not a halfpenny to buy him breeches.' * Ahvays threatening to break my neck : one would think we ser- vants had a neck to spare, like the Swan in Lad' Lane.' "October, iSiS." '' The skeleton of ' The Forty Thieves' was Sheridan's : then Ward filled it up, and afterwards George Colman got loo/. for an infusion of jokes, &c. into it." G. B, B. London, November, 1S71. NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. PREFACE TO " INIY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS." Courteous Eeadeil — If after having purchased '' ^ly Nightgown and Slippers" you hold them two shillings and sixpence all too dear, you have only to journey to the fountain Castalius, in Boeotia, at the very bottom of j\Iount Parnassus (where such mere bijoux as these are manufactured), and I will return you the money. Pro- vided at the same time, that you there do return to me my goods clean and imcut. Let me, how^ever, give you a brief account of these trifles. " The ^laid of the :Moor," " The Newcastle Apothe- cary," and " Lodgings for Single Gentlemen," are slipshod tales, written for an entertainment which I proposed to offer to the public at the Haymarket Theatre during Lent, and tw^o of them were intended to be sjwkeii (read them therefore with a view to recitation), and the third to be sung, as light matter, calculated to relieve the gravity of a didactic performance. The whole performance (for reasons unnecessary to mention here) was relinquished ; but as it is my custom to avoid the accumulation of my own papers in my bureau, I hold it more advisable to print my three stories (light as they are) than to burn them. I have put them into a kind of crambo-vehicle to make them connect, and if " The jMaid of the Moor" acts as an antidote, with one boarding-school miss, to the poison so plentifully distributed in the shape of novels, romances, legendary tales, &c., I may say, with philosophers, that the most insignificant things are of some utility. Vale ! George Coljian the Younger. riccadilly, March 2 1st, 1797. F 66 COLJMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. ADVERTISEMENT PREFIXED TO " EROAD GRINS." My booksellers informed me lately that several in- quiries liad been made for " My Nightgown and Slippers ;" but that every copy had been sold : they had been out of print these two years. " Then publish them again," said I, boldly (I print at my own risk), and with an air of triumph. Messrs. Cadell and Davies advised me to make additions. " The work is really too short," said JSIessrs. Cadell and Davies. " I wish, gentlemen," returned I, " my readers were of your opinion." ''I protest, sir," said they (and they asserted it both together with great emphasis), '■'- you have but three tales." I told them carelessly it was enough for the greatest hashaw among modern poets, and wished them a good morning. When a man, as Sterne observes, " can extricate himself with an equivoque, in such an unequal match" (and two booksellers to one poet are tremendous odds) "he is not ill off;" but reflecting a little as I went home, I began to think my pun was a vile one, and did not assist me one jot in my argument : and now I have put it upon paper it appears viler still ; it is exe- crable. So without much further reasoning, I sat down to rhyming ; rhyming, as the reader will see, in open de- fiance of all reason, except the reasons of Messrs. Cadell and Davies. Thus you have " My Nightgown and Slippers," with additions, converted into '' Broad Grins ;" and 'tis well if they may not end in ivkle yawns at last. Should this be the case, gentle revievrers, do not ungratefully attempt to break my sleep (you will find it labour lost), because I have contributed to yours. George Colman the Younger. May, lSo2. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS, TOM, Dick, and Will were little kuown to fame — No matter ; But to the alehouse oftentimes they came, To chatter. It was the custom of these three To sit up late ; And o'er the embers of the alehouse fire, When steadier customers retire, The choice triumviri^ d'ye see ? Held a debate. Held a debate ? On politics no doubt. Not so—they cared not who was in. No, not a pin — Nor who was out. All their discourse on modern poets ran, For in the Muses was their sole delight ; They talked of such, and such, and such a man, Of those who could and those wlio could not write. It cost them very little pains To count the modern poets who had bruins. 68 COLMAX'S HUMOROUS JVORJiS. 'Twas a small difficulty — 'twasn't anyj They were so few ; But to cast up the scores of men Who wield a stump they call a pen, Lord ! they had much to do — There were so many ! Buoy'd on a sea of fancy Genius rises, And like the rare leviathan surprises ; But the small fry of scribblers ! tiny souls ! They wriggle through the mud in shoals. It would have raised a smile to see the faces They made, and the ridiculous grimaces. At many an author, as they overhauled him. They gave no quarter to a calf, Blown up with puff and paragra|)h ; But if they found him bad, they mauled him. On modern dramatists they fell. Pounce, vi ct armis — tooth and nail — pell mell ; They called them carpenters and smugglers ; Filching their incidents from ancient hoards, And knocking them together like deal boards, And jugglers; Who all the town's attention fix, By making — plays ? No, sir ; by making tricTcs. The versifiers — Heaven defend us ! They played the very devil with their rhymes ; They hoped Apollo a new set jkvould send us ; And then, invidiously enough, Placed moodish verse, which they called stuff, Against the writings of the elder times. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SUrTERS. C9 To say the truth, a modern versifier Chipped check by jowl "Witli Pope, "with Dryden, and with Prior, Would look daiinied scurvily, upon my soul ! For novels, should their critic hints succeed, The Misses might fare better, when they took 'em ; But it would fare extremely i!l indeed With gentle Messrs. Lane and Ilookham. " A novel now," says Will, " is nothing more Than an old castle and a creaking door, A distant hovel. Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light. Old armour, and a phantom all in white, And there's a novel ! " Scourge me such catch-penny inditers Out of the land," quoth Will, rousing in passion, " And fie upon the readers of such writers, Who bring rhem into fashion !" Will rose in declamation. *' 'Tis the bane," Says he, " of youth ; 'tis the perdition ; It fi Us a giddy female brain With vice, romance, lust, terror, pain, With superstition. " Were I pastor in a boarding-school, I'd quash such books in toto ; if I couldn't, Let me but catch one Miss that broke my rule, I'd flog her soundly ; damme if I wouldn't." William, 'tis plain, was getting in a rage ; But, Thomas dryly said, for he was cool, " I think no gentleman would mend the age By flogging ladies at a boarding-school." 70 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Dick knocked the aslies from his pipe, And said, "Friend Will, You give the novels a fair wipe ; But still While you, my friend, with passion run 'em down, They're in the hands of all the town. '' The reason's j)lain," proceeded Dick, " And simply thus, Taste, over-glutted, grows depraved and sick, And needs a stimulus. *' Time was (when honest Fielding writ) Tales full of nature, character, and wit Were reckoned most delicious boiled and roast ; But stomachs are so cloyed with novel-feeding, Folks get a vitiated taste in reading, And want that strong provocative, a ghost. Or, to come nearer, And put the case a little clearer ; Minds, just like bodies, suffer enervation By too much use ; And sink into a state of relaxation, With long abuse. "Now a romance, with reading debauchees, Eouses their torpid powers when nature fails ; And all their legendary tales Are, to a worn-out mind, cantharides. ' But how to cure the evil ? you will say : My recij^e is, laughing it away. " Lay bare the weak farrago of those men Who fabricate such visionary schemes. MY XIGHTGOIVX AND SUFFERS. 71 As if the nightmare rode upon their pen, And troubled all their ink with hideous dreams. '^ For instance, when a solemn ghost stalks in. And through a mystic tale is busy, Strip me the gentleman into his skin — What is he ? " Truly, ridiculous enough, Mere trash : and very childish stufF. *• Draw but a ghost or fiend of loiu degree., And all the bubble's broken. Let us see.' THE MAID OF THE MOOR; OR, THE WATER FIENDS. ON a wild moor, all brown and bleak. Where broods the heath-frequenting gi-ouse. There stood a tenement antique, Lord Hoppergollop's country house. Here silence reigned with lips of glue. And undisturbed maintained her law ; Save when the owl cried ^- whoo ! whoo ! whoo !"' Or the hoarse crow croaked " caw I caw ! caw !" Neglected mansion ! — for 'tis said. Whene'er the snow came feathering down, Four barbed steeds — from the Bull's Head — Carried thy master up to town. Weak Hoppergollop ! Lords may moan, "\"STio stake in London their estate On two small rattling bits of bone, On little figure or on great. COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, Swift whirl tlie wheels — he's gone. A rose Kemains behind, Avhose virgin look Unseen must blush in wintry snows, Sweet, beauteous blossom ! — 'twas the cook I A bolder far than my w^eak note, Maid of the Moor ! thy charms demand. Eels might be proud to lose their coat If skinned by Molly Dumpling's hand. Long had the fair one sat alone, Had none remained save only she ; — ■ She by herself had been, if one Had not been left for company. 'Twas a tall youth, whose cheek's clear hue Was tinged with health and manly toil : Cabbage he soAved, and when it grew, He always cut it off, to boil. Oft would he cry, " Delve, delve the hole !" And prune the tree, and trim the root ; And stick the wig upon the pole, To scare the sparrows from the fruit. A small mute favourite by day Followed his step ; where'er he wheels His barrow round the garden gay A bobtail cur was at his heels. Ah, man ! the brute creation see ! Thy constancy oft needs the spur ; "While lessons of fidelity Are found in ever}^ bobtail cur. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLirPERS. Hard toiled the youth, so fresh and strong, While Bobtail in his face vronld look, And marked his master troll the song — " Sweet Molly Dumpling ! oh, thou cook T For thus he sung, while Cupid smiled, Pleased that the gardener owned his dart, Which pruned his passions, running wild. And grafted true-love on his heart. IMaid of the Moor ! his love return ! True love ne'er tints the cheek with shame ; When gardeners' hearts like hot-beds burn, A cook may surely feed the flame. Ah i not averse from love was she, Though pure as Heaven's snowy fiake. Both loved ; and though a gardener he, He knew not what it was to rake. Cold blows the blast ; the night's obscure ; The mansion's crazy wainscots crack ; — No star appeared, and all the moor — Like every other ]Moor — was black. Alone, pale, trembling, near the fire, The lovely Molly Dumpling sat ; Much did she fear, and much admire What Thomas Gardener could be at. Listening, her hand supports her chin ; But ah ! no foot is heard to stir. He comes not from the garden in, Nor he nor little bobtail cur. 74 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, They cannot come, sweet maid ! to thee ; Flesh, both of ciir and man, is grass ; And what's impossible can't be, And never, never comes to pass. She paces through the hall antique To call her Thomas from his toil ; Opes the huge door ; the hinges creak — Because the hinges wanted oil. Thrice on the threshold of the hall She " Thomas !" cried, with many a sob ; And thrice on Bobtail did she call. Exclaiming, sweetly, " Bob! Bob ! Bob!" Vain maid ! a gardener's corpse, 'tis said, In answers can but ill succeed ; And dogs that hear when they are dead Are very cunning dogs indeed ! Back through the hall she bent her way : All, all was solitude around ! The candle shed a feeble ray. Though a large mould of four to the pound. Full closely to the fire she drew, Adown her cheek a salt tear stole ; When lo ! a coffin out there flew, And in her apron burnt a hole ! Spiders their busy death-w^atch ticked, A certain sign that fate will frown ; The clumsy kitchen-clock too clicked, A certain sign it was not down. MY NIGIITGO WN AND SLIPPERS. 75 More strong and strong her terrors rose, Her shadow did the maid appal ; She trembled at her lovely nose, It look'd so long against the wall. Up to her chamber, damp and cold, She climbed Lord Hoppergollop's stair, Three stories high, long, didl, and old, As great lords' stories often are. All nature now appeared to pause. And "o'er' the one half world seemed dead." No " curtained sleep" had she— because She had no curtains to her bed. Listening she lay. With iron din The clock struck twelve; the door flew wide ; When Thomas grimly glided in. With little Bobtail by his side. Tall, like the poplar, was his size ; Green, green his waistcoat was, as lec-ks ; Red, red as beetroot, were his eyes ; Pale, pale as turnips, were his cheeks. Soon as the spectre she espied. The fear-struck damsel faintly said, " -Wniat would my Thomas ?"' He replied, " Oh, Molly Dimipling, I am dead ! " All in the flower of youth I fell. Cut off with health's full blossom crowned ; I was not ill — but in a well T tumbled backwards and was drowned. COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. ''Four fathom dcGp thy love doth lie, His faithful dog his fate doth share;— ^- We're Fiends ! — this is not he and I We are not liere^ for v.^e are tliere. •'Yes, two foul Water-Fiends are we. Maid of the Moor, attend us now ! Thy hour's at hand ; we come for thee !" The little Ficnd-cur said "Bow wow !" " To wind her in her cold, cold grave, A Holland sheet a maiden likes: A sheet of water thou shalt have — Such sheets there are in Holland dykes." The Fiends ajiproach ; the Maid did shriidc ; Swift through the night's foul air they spin They took her to the green well's brink. And with a souse they plumped her in. So true the fliir, so true the youth. Maids to this day their story tell ; And hence the proverb rose, that truth Lies in the bottom of a well. Dick ended : Tom and Will approved his strains. And thought his legend made as good a figure As naturalizing a dull German's brains. Which beget issues in the Heliconian stews, Upon a profligate Until Muse, In all the gloomy impotence of vigour,* * Half our modern legends are either boiTOwed or transla'cd from tliC German. MY XIGIITGO\V\ AND SUFPERS. 77 " 'Twas now tlie A'cry witching time of night, When iirosers yawn." Discussion grew dilfuse : Argument's carte and tierce were lost outright ; And they fyuglit loose. Says Will, quite carelessly, *' The other day. As I was lying on my back In bed, I took a fancy in my head : Some writings aren't so difficult as people say — They are a hnack.^'' "What writings? whose ?" says Tom, raking the cinders. " ^lany," cried Will. " For instance, Peter Pindar's." " What ! call you his a knack ?" — " Yes ; mind his measure : In that lies half the j;oz';?i that gives us pleasure." " Pooh ! 'tisn't that," Dick cried : " That has been tried Over and over. Bless your souls ! 'Tis seen in Crazy Tales, and twenty things beside ; His measure is as old as poles." " Granted," cries Will; "I know I'm speaking treason : For Peter With many a joke and queer conceit doth season His metre : " And this I'll say of Peter, to his face, As 'twas time past of Vanbrugh writ — Peter has often w\anted grace, But he has never wanted v:it. " Yet I will tell you a plain tale, And see how far quaint measure will prevail.'* 78 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. THE NEWCASTLE APOTHECARY. A MAN in many a country town we know, Professes openly with Death to v/restle ; Entering the field against the grimly foe, Armed with a mortar and a pestle. Yet some affirm no enemies they are ; But meet just like prize-fighters in a fair, Who first shake hands before they box. Then give each other plaguy knocks, With all the love and kindness of a brother ; So (many a suffering patient saith), Though the apothecary fights with Death, Still they're sworn friends to one another. A member of this -ffisculapian line Lived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne : No man could better gild a pill. Or make a bill. Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister, Or draw a tooth out of your head. Or chatter scandal by your bed, Or give a clyster. Of occupations these were quantum siiff.^ Yet still he thought the list not long enough ; And therefore midwifery he chose to pin to't. This balanced things : for if he hurled A few score mortals from the world. He made amends by bringing others into't. His fame full six miles round the country ran ; In short, in reputation he was solus : All the old vv'omen called him " a fine man !" His name was Bolus. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. Benjamin Bolus though in trade ^ (Which oftentimes will genius fetter) Read works of fancy, it is said, And cultivated the Belles Lettres. And why should this be thought so odd ? Can't men have taste who cure a phthisic ? Of poetry though patron-god, Apollo patronizes physic. Bolus loved verse, and took so much delight in't, That his prescriptions he resolved to write in't. No opportunity he e'er let pass Of writing the directions on his labels. In dapper couplets, like Gay''s Fables^ Or rather like the lines in Hudihras. Apothecary's verse ! and where's the treason ? 'Tis simply honest dealing — not a crime. When patients swallow physic without reason. It is but fair to give a little rhyme. He had a patient lying at death's door, Some three miles from the town — it midit be four •J To whom one evenini^ Bolus sent an article i^ -UV/iClO OC1J.U CVi-l CVi l(lV/i.C« In pharmacy that's called cathartical ; And on the label of this stuff He wrote this verse ; Which, one would think, was clear enough, And terse :-« " When talcen^ To he well shaken.''^ So COLMAN'S HUMOROUS W0RK6. Next morning early Bolus rose, And to the patient's house he goes, Upon his pad, Who a vile trick of stumbling had : It was indeed a very sorry hack ; But that's of course ; For what's expected from a horse With an apothecary on his back ? Bolus arrived, and gave a doubtful tap, Between a single and a double rap. Knocks of this kind Are given by gentlemen who teach to dance ; By fiddlers and by opera singers : One loud, and then a little one behind, As if the knocker fell by chance Out of their fingers. The servant lets him in with dismal face, Long as a courtier's out of place, Portending some disaster ; John's countenance as rueful looked, and grim, As if the apothecary had physic'd him. And not his master. " Well, how"s the patient ?"' Bolus said. John shook his head. " Indeed ! hum ! ha ! that's very odd ! He took the draught ?" John gave a nod. "Well, how? What then ? Sp:ak out, you dunce !" " Why then," says John, '• we sliooh him once." " Shook him ! how ?" Bolus stammered out. " Wc jolted hini about." MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. 8i " Zounds! shake a patient, man ? A shake wont do." " No, sir, and so we gave him twoT '' Two shakes ! od's curse ! 'Twould make the patient worse." " It did so, sir! and so a third we tried." " Well, and what then?" "Then, sir, my master died." Ere Will had done 'twas waxing wondrous late. And reeling bucks the street began to scour. While guardian watchmen, with a tottering gait. Cried everything quite clear except the hour. " Another pot," says Tom, '' and then A song ; and so good night, good gentlemen ! " I've lyrics, such as hon vivants indite. In which your bibbers of champagne delight. The poetaster, bawling them in clubs. Obtains a miserably noted name ; And every noisy bacchanalian dubs The singing- writer with a bastard fame." LODGINGS FOR SINGLE GENTLEMEN. WHO has e'er been in London, that overgrown place, Has seen "Lodgings to Let" stare him full in the face; Some are good and let dearly ; while some, 'tis well known. Are so dear and so bad, they are best let alone. Derry down. Will Waddle, whose temper was studious and lonely, Hired lodgings that took Single Gentlemen only ; G 82 COLMAJSrs HUMOROUS WORKS. But Will was so fat lie appeared like a ton, Or like two single gentlemen rolled into one. He entered his rooms, and to bed lie retreated, But all the night long he felt fevered and heated. And though heavy to weigh as a score of fat sheep, He was not by any means heavy to sleep. Next night 'twas the same, and the next, and the next; He perspired like an ox, he was nervous and vexed ; Week passed after week, till by weekly succession, His weakly condition was past all expression. In six months his acquaintance began much to doubt him. For his skin, " like a lady's loose gown," hung about him ; He sent for a doctor, and cried like a ninny, " I have lost many pounds; make me well, there's a guinea." The doctor looked wise ; " A slow fever," he said ; Prescribed sudorifics and going to bed. " Sudorifics in bed," exclaimed Will, "are humbugs; I've enough of them there without paying for drugs." Will kicked out the doctor; but when ill indeed, E'en dismissing the doctor don't always succeed ; So calling his host, he said, " Sir, do you know I'm the fat Single Gentleman six months aa;o ? "Look'ee, landlord, I think," argued Will, with a grin, '■'• That with honest intentions you first tooh me in; But from the first night, and to say it I'm bold, I have been so damned hot, that I'm sure I caught cold." Quoth the landlord, '' Till dow I ne'er had a dispute; I've let lodgings ten years ; I'm a baker to boot. In airing your sheets, sir, my wife is no sloven. And your bed is immediately — over my oven." MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. 83 '• The oven !" says Will. Says the host, " Why this pas- sion ? In that excellent bed died three people of fashion ! Why so crusty, good sir ?" " Zounds !" cries Will in a taking, " Who wouldn't be crusty with half a year's baking ?" Will paid for his rooms. Cried the host, with a sneer, " Well, I see you've been going away half a year," "Friend, we can't well agree, yet no quarrel," Will said, *" But I'd rather not iierisli while you make your bread.'' -^ * " For one man may die where another makes bread," 1797. t This is the conclusion of all that was originally printed under the title of "My Nightgown and Slippers." G 2 BROAD GRINS. BROAD GRINS. THE KNIGHT AND THE FRIAR. PART THE FIRST. IN our Fifth Harry's reign, wheu 'twas the fashion To thump the French, poor creatures ! to excess ; Though Britons now-a-days show more compassion. And thump them certainly a great deal less ; In Harry's reign, when flushed Lancastrian roses Of York's pale blossoms had usurped the right ;* As wine drives nature out of drunkards' noses, Till red triumphantly eclipses white ; In Harry's reign — but let me to my song, Or good King Harry's reign may seem too long. Sir Thomas Erpingham, a gallant knight. When this King Harry Avent to war in France, Girded a sword about his middle ; Resolving very lustily to fight. And teach the Frenchmen how to dance Without a fiddle. **' Roses were not emblems of faction," cries the critic, "till the reign of Henry YL" Pooh ! this is a figure, not an anachronism. Suppose, Mr. Critic, you and all your descendants should be hanged, although your father died in his bed. Why then posterity, when talking of your father, may allude io t\\Q family gallows, which his issue shall have rendered notoriously symbolical of his house. 88 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And wondrous bold Sir Thomas proved in battle, Performing prodigies with spear and shield ; His valour, like a murrain among cattle, Was reckoned very fatal in the field. Yet though Sir Thomas had an iron fist, He Avas at heart a mild philanthropist. Much did he grieve, when making Frenchmen die. To any inconvenience to put 'em ; " It quite distressed his feelings," he would cry, "That he must cut their throats" — and then he cut 'em. Thus, during many a campaign. He cut and grieved and cut and came again ; Pitying and killing ; Lamenting sorely for men's souls, While pretty little eyelet holes Clean through their bodies he kept drilling ; Till palling on his laurels, grown so thick (As boys pull blackberries till they are sick). Homeward he bent his course to wreathe 'em ; And in his castle, near fair Norwich town, Glutted Avith glory he sat doAvn, In perfect solitude beneath 'em. Now sitting under laurels, heroes say. Gives grace and dignity, and so it may. When men have done campaigning ; But certainly these gentlemen must own. That sitting under laurels quite alone, Is much more dignified than entertaining. BROAD GRINS. 89 Pious .^neas, who in his narration Of his own prowess felt so great a charm (For though he feigned great grief in the relation, He made the story longer than your arm*) — Pious ^neas no more pleasure knew Than did our knight, who could be pious too — In telling his exploits and martial brawls ; But pious Thomas had no Dido near him, No queen, king, lord, nor commoner to hear him. So he was forced to tell them to the walls ; And to his castle walls, in solemn guise, The knight fall often did soliloquize. For " walls have ears," Sir Thomas had been told ; Yet thought the tedious hours would seem much shorter If now and then a tale he could unfold To ears of flesh and blood, not atone and mortar. At length his old castellum grew so dull. That legions of blue devils seized the knight ; Megrim invested his belaurelled skull ; Spleen laid embargoes on his appetite ; * "Qais talia fando Temperet a lachrjmis ?" says ^neas, by way of proem ; yet for a hero tolerably "used to the melting mood," he talks oa this occasion much more than he cries ; and though he begins with a wooden horse, and gives a general account of the burning of Troy, still the quorum pars magna fid is evidently the great inducement to his chattering ; accordingly, he keeps up Queen Dido to a scandalous late hour after supper, for the good folks of Carthage, to tell her an egotistical story that occupies two whole books of the " ^aeid." Oh, these heroes ! I once knew a worthy general— but I wont tell that story. 90 COLMAlSrs HUMOROUS WORKS. Till throngli the daytime lie was haunted wholly By all the imps of " loathed Melancholy l" Heaven keep her and her imps for ever from us ! And Incubus,* whene'er he went to bed, Sat on his stomach like a lump of lead, Making unseemly faces at Sir Thomas. Plagues such as these might make a parson swear ; Sir Thomas being but a layman, Swore very roundly a la militaire^ Or rather (from vexation) like a drayman ; Damning his walls out of all line and level ; Sinking his drawbridges and moats ; Wishing that he were cutting throats, And they were at the devil. '• What's to be done," Sir Thomas said one day, " To drive ennui away ? How is this evil to be parried ? What can remind me of my former life ? Those happy days I spent in noise an I strife !" The last words struck him. " Zounds !" says he, " a wife!" And so he married. * Far be it from me to offer a pedantic affront to the gentlemen who peruse me by explaining the word incubus, which Pliny and others more learnedly call Ephialtes ; I modestly state it to mean the oiight- mare for the information of the ladies. The chief symptom by which this affliction is vulgarly known is a heavy pressure upon the stomach when l)-ing in a supine posture in bed. It would terrify some of my fair readers, who never experienced this characteristic of the Incubus, were I to dwell on its effects ; and it would irritate others who are in the habit of labouring under its sensations. BROAD GRINS. 91 Muse ! regulate your pace ; Kestrain awhile your frisking and your giggling! Here is a stately lady in the case ; ■\Ye mustn't now be fidgetting and niggling. O god of love ! urchin of spite and play ! Deserter oft from saffron Hymen's quarters ; His torch bedimming as thou runn'st away, Till half his votaries become his martyrs. Sly, wandering god ! whose frolic arrows pass Through hearts of potentates and prentice-boys ; Who mark'st with milkmaids' forms the tell-tale grass, And mak'st the fruitful prude repent her joys! Drop me one feather from thy wanton wdng, Yoimg god of dimples ! in thy roguish flight ; And let thy poet catch it now, to sing The beauty of the dame ^vho w^on the knight ! Her beauty ! — but Sir Thomas's own sonnet Beats all that I can say upon it. SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAIM'S SONNET=^ ON HIS LADY. I. SUCH star-lile lustre lights her eyes^ They must have darted from a sphei^e, Our duller system to surprise, Outshining all the planets here; * An old gentlewoman, a great admirer of the black letter (as many old gentlewomen are), presented the author of these tales with the original MS. of this sonnet, advising the publication oi a. fac-simile 92 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And having wandered from their wonted place, Fix in the wondrous heaven of her /ace. II. The modest rose whose blushes speak The ardent kisses of the sun, Offering a tribute to her cheek, Droops to perceive its tint outdone ; Then withering with envy and despair, Dies on her lips and leaves its fragrance there. of the knight's handwriting. It is painful after this to advance that the sonnet, so far from being genuine, is one of the clumsiest literary forgeries that the present times have witnessed. It appears in this authentic story that Sir Thomas Erpingham was married in the reigu of Henry V. ; and it is evidently intended that moderns should believe he writ these love verses almost immediately after his marriage, not only from the ardour with which he celebrates the beauty of his wife, but from the circumstance of a man writing any love verses upon his wife at all ; but the style and language of the lines are most glaringly inconsistent with their pretended date. The fact is, we have here foisted upon us a close imitation of Cowley {vide the "Mistress"), who was not horn till the year 1618, two centuries after the era iu question. Chaucer died a.d. 1400, and Henry V. (who was king only nine years, five months, and eleven days) began his reign scarcely thirteen years after the death of that poet. Sir Thomas then must at least have written in the obsolete phraseology of Chaucer, and pro- bably would have imitated him, as did Lydgate, Occleve, and others — nay, Harding, Skelton, &c., who were fifty or sixty years subsequent to Chaucer, were not so modern in their language as their celebrated predecessor. Having in few words pi-oved (it is presumed) this sonnet to be spurious, an apology may be thought necessary for not saying a great deal more ; but this herculean task is left in deference to the disputants on " Vonigern," who will doubtless engage in it as a matter of great importance, and once more lay the world under very heavy obligations, with various pamphlets in folio upon the subject ; and surely too many acknowledgments cannot be given to men who are so indefatigably generous in their researches, that half the result of BROAD GRINS. III. 93 Einglets that on her hreast descend Increase the beauties they invade^ Thus branches in luxuriance bend To grace the lovely hills they shade ; And thus the glowing climate did entice Tendrils to curl, unpruned, o'er Paradise. Sir Thomas having closed his love-sick strain, Come, buxom Muse, and let us frisk again ! Close to a chapel near the castle gates Dwelt certain stickers in the devil's skirts, Who with prodigious fervour shave their pates, And show a most religious scorn for shirts. Their house's sole endoAvment was our knight's ; Thither an abbot and twelve friars retreating. Conquered, sage, pious men ! their aj^petites With that infallible specific, eating. 'Twould seem, since tenanted by holy friars, That piece and harmony reigned here etern-illy ; Whoever told you so were cursed liars ; The holy friars quarrelled most infernally. tliera when published causes even the sympathetic reader to labour as much as the writer. How ungratefully did Pope say : — ** There, dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark, Wits, who like owls, see only in the dark ; A lumber-house of books in every head, For ever reading, never to be read !" — Dunciad. 94 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Not a day past Without some scliism among these heavenly lodgers; But none of then' dissensions seemed to last So long as Friar John's and Friar Koger's. I have been very accurate in my researches, And find this convent (truce with ?t%s and Jioifs), Kept in a constant ferment with the rows Of these two quarrelsome fat sons of churches. But when Sir Thomas went to his devotions, Proceeding through their cloister with his bride,. You never could have dreamed of their commotions, The stifF-rumped rascals looked so sanctified. And it became the custom of the knight To go to matins every day ; He jogged his bride as soon as it was light. Crying, " My dear, 'tis time for us to pray." This custom he established very soon After his honeymoon. Wives of this age might think his zeal surprising, But much his pious lady did it please To see her husband every morning rising, And going instantly upon his knees. Never, I ween. In any person's recollection Was such a couple seen Fcr genuflection ! Making as great a drudgery of prayer As humble curates are obliged to do, Whose labour, woe the while ! scarce buys them cassocks : BROAD GRINS. 95 And every morning, Avlietlier foul or fair, Sir Thomas and the dame were in their pew Craw-thumping upon hassocks. It could not otherwise befall (Sir Thomas and his wife this course pursuing), But that the lady, affable to all, Should greet the friars on her way To matins as she met them every day, Good morning ing, and how d^ye doing? Now nodding to this friar, now to that, As through the cloister she was wont to trip. Stopping sometimes to have a little chat On casual topics with the holy brothers; So condescending was her ladyship To Roger, John, and all the others. All this was natural enou2;h To any female of urbanity ; But holy men are made of as frail stuff As all the lighter sons of vanity ! And these her ladyship's chaste condescensions In Friar John bred damnable desire; Heterodox unclean intentions ; Abominable in a friar ! Whene'er she greeted him his gills grew red, Wliile she was quite unconscious of the matter ; But he, the beast ! was casting sheep'seyes at her Out of his bullock head. That coxcombs were and are I need not 2;ive, O 7 Nor take the trouble now to prove ; Nor that those dead, like many now who live, Have thought a lady's condescension love. 96 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Tins happened with fat Friar John ; Monastic coxcomb ! amorous and gummy ! Filled with conceit up to his very brim ! He thought his guts a garbage doated on By a fair dame whose husband was to Idni Hyperion to a mummy. Burning with llames the lady never knew, Hotter and heavier than toasted cheese, He sent her a much warmer hillet-doux Than Abelard e'er writ to Eloise. But whether Friar John's fat shape and face, Though pleading both together, Were sorry advocates in such a case ; Or whether He marred his hopes by suffering his pen With too much fervour to display 'em — As very tender nurses now and then Cuddle their children till they overlay 'em — 'Twas plain his prayer to decorate the brows Of good Sir Thomas was so far from granted, That the dame went directly to her spouse And told him what the filthy friar wanted. Think, reader ! think ! if thou hast ta'en for life A partner to thy bed, for worse or better. Think what Sir Thomas felt when his chaste wife Brandished before his eyes the friar's letter ! He felt, sir, — zounds ! — Yes, zounds, I say, sir — for it makes me swear — More torture than he suffered from the wounds He got among the French in France ; Not that I take upon me to advance The knight was ever Avounded there. BROAD GRINS. 97 Think gravely, sir, I pray — fiincy the knight — ('Tis quite a picture) — with his heart's delight ! Fancy you see his virtuous lady stand Holding the friar's foulness in her hand ! How should Sir Thomas, sir, behave ? Why bounce and sputter surely like a squib : You would have done the same, sir, if a knave, A frowsy friar, meddled with your rib. His bosom almost burst with ire Ao;ainst the friar ! Rage gave his face an apoplectic hue ; His cheeks turned purple and his nose turned blue. He swore with this mock saint he'd soon be even : Ple'd have him flayed like Saint Bartholomew, And now again he'd have him stoned like Stephen. But ^' Ira furor hrevis est,'^ As Horace quaintly has expressed. Therefore the knight, finding his foam and froth AVork through the bunghole of his mouth like beer, Pulled out the vent-peg of his wrath To let the stream of his revenge run clear ; Debating with himself what mode might suit him, To trounce the rogue who wanted to cornute him. First an attack against his foe he planned. Learned in the field where late he fought so felly ; That is, to march up bravely, sword in hand. And run the friar through his holy bdly At last his better judgment did declare— Seeing his honour would as little sliiu'? H 98 COLMAIsrs HUMOROUS WORKS, By sticking friars as by killing swine — To circumvent him by a ruse de guerre ; And as the project ripened in his head, Thus to his virtuous wife he said : " Now sit thee down, my lady bright, And list thy lord's desire ; An assignation thou shalt write, Beshrew me ! to the friar. " Aread him at the midnight hour In silent sort to go, And bide thy coming in the bower, For there do crabsticks grow. " He shall not tarry long — for why ? Wlien twelve have striking done, Then, by the god of gardens,* I Will cudgel him till one /" * If the kniglat knew the aptness in its full extent of his oath upon this occasion, we must give him more credit for his reading than we are willing to allow to military men of the age in which he flourished : for observe, he vows to cudgel a man lurking to rob his lady of her virtue in a loiccr ; how appropriately therefore does he swear by the "god of the gardens !" who is represented with a kind of cudgel {falx I'tgnea) in his right hand ; and is moreover furnished with another weapon of formidable dimensions (Horace calls it palus), for the express purpose of annoying robbers. * ' Fures dextra coercet, Obsccenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine paUis.^* It must be confessed that the last mentioned attribute of this Deity was stretched forth to promote pleasure, in some instances, instead of fear ; for it was a sportive custom, in the hilarity of recent marriages, to seat the bride upon his palus ; but this circumstance by no means disproves its efficacy as a dread to robbers ; on the contrary, that imi^lement must have been peculiarly terrific, which could sustain the v.'eiglit of so many brides, without detriment to its fi.rmness or elasticity. BROAD GRINS. 99 The Lady wrote just what Sir Thomas told her ; For it is no less strange than true That Avives did once what husbands bid them do. Lord ! how this world improves as we grow older ! She named the midnight hour, Telling the friar to repair To the sweet secret bower ; But not a word of any crabsticks there. Thus have I seen a liquorish black rat Lured by the cook to sniiF and smell her bacon ; And when he's eager for a bit of fat, Down goes a trap upon him — and he's taken. A tiny page — for formerly a boy Was a mere dunce, who did not understand The doctrines of Sir Pandarus of Troy — Slipped the dame's note into the friar's hand. As he was walking in the cloister. And then slipped off — as silent as an oyster. The friar read, the friar chuckled ; For now the farce's unities were right : Videlicet — the argument, a cuckold ; The scene, a bower ; time, twelve o'clock at night. Blithe was fat John, and dreading no mishap, Stole at the hour appointed to the trap ; But so perfumed, so musked for the occasion— His tribute to the nose so lil?:e invasion — You would have sworn to smell him 'twas no rat, But a dead putrefied old civet cat. H 2 roo COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. He reached the spot, anticipating blisses, Soft miirmnrs, melting sighs, and burning kisses, Trances of joy and mingling of the souls — "When whack ! Sir Thomas hit him on the jowls. Now on his head it came, now on his flice, His neck and shoulders, arms, legs, breast, and back- In short, on almost every place We read of in the almanack. Blows rattled on him thick as hail, Making him rue the day that he was born. Sir Thomas plied his cudgel like a flail. And thrashed as if he had been thrashing corn. At length a thump (painful the facts, alas ! Truth urges us historians to relate) Took Friar John so smart athwart the pate, It acted like a perfect couii cle grace. Whether it was a random shot Or aimed maliciously — though fome says not — Certain his soul (the knight so cracked his crown) Fled from his body ; but which way it went, Or whether friars' souls fly up or down, Eemains a matter of nice argument. Points so abstruse I dare not dwell upon ; Enough foi me his body is not gone. For I have business still in my narration With the fat carcass of this holy porpoise ; And death, though sharp in his administration, Never suspended such a habeas co7yus. BROAD GRINS. loi PART THE SECOND. Eeadcr ! if you have genius you'll discovor, Do what you will to keep it cool, It now and then in spite of you boils over Upon a fool. Haven't you (lucky man if iioC) been vexed, AVorn, fretted, and perplexed By a pert, busy, would-be-clever knave, A forward, empty, self-sufficient slave ? And haven't you, all Christian patience gone, At last put down the puppy with your wit, Wliom it seemed (though you had whole mines of it) Extravagance to spend a jest upon ? And haven't you (I'm sure you have, my friend!). When you have laid the puppy low. All httle pique and malice at an end. Been sorry for the blow ? And said (if witty so would say your bard), " Damn it ! I hit that meddling fool too hard." Thus did the brave Sir Thomas say. Whose genius didn't much disturb his pate ; It rather in his bones and muscles lay. Like many other men's of good estate. Thus did Sir Thomas say ; and wxll he might, When pity to resentment did succeed ; For certainly (though not with wit) the knight Had hit the friar very hard indeed ! And heads, nineteen in twenty, 'tis confessed, Can feel a crabstick sooner than a jest. 102 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. There was in the knight's family a man Cast in the roughest mould clame nature boasts, With shoulders wider than a dripping-pan, And legs as thick about the calves as posts. All the domestics, viewing in this hulk So large a specimen of nature's whims, AVith kitchen wit, allusive to his bulk, Had christened him the Duke of Limbs. Throughout the castle every whipper-snapper Was canvassing the merits of this strapper ; Most of the men voted his size alarming. But all the maids nem. con. declared it charming ! This wight possessed a quality most rare ; I tremble when I mention it, I swear, Lest pretty ladies question my veracity ; 'Twas when he had a secret in his care. To keep it with the greatest pertinacity. Pour but a secret in him, and 'twould glue him Like resin on a well-corked bottle snout ; Had twenty devils come with corkscrews to him. They never could have screwed the secret out. Now when Sir Thomas in the dark alone Had killed a friar weighing twenty stone. Whose carcass must be hid before the dawn, Judging he might as hopelessly desire To move a convent as a friar. He thought on this man's secrecy and brawn ; And like a swallow o'er the lawn he skims, Up to the cock-loft of the Duke of Limbs ; BROAD GRINS. 103 Where Somniis, son of Nox, the humble copy Of his own daughter Mors,* had made assault On the Duke's eyelids, not with juice of poppy, But potent draughts distilled from hops and malt. Certainly nothing operates much quicker Against two persons' secret dialogues Than one of them being asleep in liquor, Snoring like twenty thousand hogs. Yet circumstances pressingly require The knight to tell his tale. And to instruct his man knocked down with ale, That he (Sir Thomas) had knocked down a friar. How wake a man in such a case ? Sir, the best method — I have tried a score — Is, when his nose is playing thorough bass, To pull it till you make him roar. A sleeper's nose is made on the same plan As the small wire 'twixt a doll's wooden thighs ; For pull the nose or wire, the doll or man Will open in a minute both their eyes. This mode Sir Thomas took, and in a trice Grasped with his thumb and finger, like a vice. * There is a terrible jumble in Somnus's family. He was the son of Nox, by Erebus ; and Erebus, according to different accounts, was not only Nox's husband, but her brother, and even her son by Chaos, and Mors was daughter of Somnus, by that devil of a goddess Nox, the mother of his father, and himself ! The heathen deities held our canoni- cal notions in utter contempt ; and must have laughed at the idea (which surely nobody does now) of forbidding a man to marry his grandmother. 104 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. That feature which the human face embosses, And pulled the Duke of Limbs by the proboscis. The man awoke and goggled on his master ; He saw his master goggling upon him ; Fresh from concluding on a friar's nob, What coroners would call an awkward job. He glared, all horror-struck and grim, Paler than Paris plaster ! His hair stuck up like bristles on a pig ; So Garrick looked when he performed Macbeth, Who, ere he entered after Duncan's death, Rumpled his wig. The knight cried " Follow me !" with strange grimaces ; The man arose. And began " sacrificing to the Graces,"* By putting on his clothes. But he reversed, in making himself smart, A Scotchman's toilet altogether, And merely clapped a cover on that part The Highlanders expose to wind and weather. They reached the bower where the friar lay, When to his man The knight began. In doleful accents, thus to say :— - * Yide Lord Chesterfield's Letters. This noble author, by the bye, has set his dignified face against risibility. It would be well for U3 poor devils, who call ourselves comic writers, if our efi'orts were always as successful in raising a lawjh^ as his lordship's censure upon it. BROAD GRINS. IC5 " Here a fat friar lies, killed with a mauling, For coming in the dark a catter wauling, Whom I (oh, cursed spite !) did lay so !" Thus solemnly Sir Thomas spake and sighed, To Avliom the Duke of Limbs replied, " Odrabbit! Sir Thomas, you don't say so!" Then taking the huge friar iier the hocks. He whirled the ton of blubber three times round. And swung it on his shoidders from the ground. With strength that yields in any age to no man's, Though Milo's ghost should rise, bearing the ox He carried at the games of the old Romans. Nay, I opine — let fame say what it can — Of ancient vigour (fame is ofc a liar). That Milo was a pigmy to this man, And his fat ox quite skinny to the friar. Besides, I hold it much in doubt If Eoman graziers (should the truth come out) Were, like the English, knowing in the matter; I wouldn't breed my beast iiwre Romano; For I suspect in fattening they were dull, And when they made an ox out of a bull They fed him ill, and then he got no fatter Than a fat opera soprano.'^ Over the moat (the di-awbridge being down) Gallantly stalked the brawny Duke of Limbs, Bearing Johannes, of the shaven crown. Famed, when alive, for spoiling maids and hymns, * I am aware that mucli has been said of old relative to the cura houni, and the optuma ton'ce forma bovis; but for a show of cattle, I would back Smithfield, or most of our English market towns, against any forum boariuni of the Romans. io6 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, For mangling paternosters and goose-pies, And telling sundry beads and sundry lies. Across a marsh he strode with steadier gait Than Satan trod the Syrtis at his fall, And perched himself, with his monastic weight, Upon the convent garden's wall; Whence, on the grounds within it, as he gazed, To find a spot where he might leave his load. He spied a house so little^ it seemed raised More for man's visits than his fixed abode ; And C3nithia aided him to gaze his fill, For now she sought Endymion on the hill. Arise, Tarquinius! show thy lofty face !* While I describe with dignity the place. Snug in an English garden's shadiest spot A structure stands, and welcomes many a l^reeze Lonely and simple as a ploughman's cot. Where monarchs may unbend who wish for ease. There sit philosophers, and sitting read : And to some end apply the dullest pages. And pity the barbarians north of Tweed, Who scout these fabrics of the southern sages. Sure for an edifice in estimation, Never was any less presuming seen ! It shrinks so modestly from observation ! And hides behind all sorts of evergreen ; * Tarquinius Superbus, tlie last king of Rome ; he was a haughty monarch; and built the Cloaca maxima. BROAD GRINS. 107 Like a coy maid, designed for filthy man, Peeping at liis approach behind her fan. luto this place, unnoticed by beholders. The Duke of Limbs most circumspectly stole, And shot the friar ofE his shoulders, Just like a sack of round Newcastle coal. Not taking any pains, Nor caring in the least How he deposited the friar's remains, No more than if a friar were a beast. No funeral of which you ever heard Was marked with ceremonies half so slight ; For John was left, not like the dead interred, But like the living, sitting bolt upright! Has no shrewd reader, of one sex or t'other, Recurring to the facts already stated. Thought on a certain Roger ? that same brother Who hated John and whom John hated ? 'Tis now a necessary thing to say That at this juncture Roger wasn't well; Poor man! he had been rubbing all the day His stomach with coarse towels, And clapping trenchers, hot as hell, Upon his bowels ; Where spasms were kicking up a furious frohc. Afflicting him with mulhgrubs and coHc. He also had imbibed, to soothe his pains, Ofpulvis rhei very many grains ; And to the garden's deepest shade was bent, To give quite privily his sorrows vent ; io8 COLMAN S HUMOROUS WORKS. W]ien ihere^ alive and merry to appearance, He spied his ancient foe by the moon's light ! Who sat erect, with so much perseverance, It looked as if he kept his post in spite. A case it is of piteous distress If carrying a secret grief about, We wish to bury it in a recess. And find another there who keeps us out. Expecting soon his enemy to go, Eoger at first walked to and fro, With tolerably tranquil paces ; But finding John determined to remain, Eoger each time he passed, through spite or pain, Made at his adversary hideous faces. How misery will lower human pride ! And make us buckle ! Eoger, who all his life had John defied. Was now obliged to speak him fair and truckle. " Behold me," Eoger cried, " behold me, John ! Entreating as a, favour you'll be gone ; Me 1 your sworn foe though fellow lodger ; Me ! who in agony though suing now to you. Would once have seen you damned ere make a bow to you, Me— Eoser 1"* * This is a palpable plagiarism. Rolla thus addresses Pizarro : "Behokl me at thy feet, me, Holla ! me, that never yet have bent or bowed, in humble agony I sue to you." The theft is more glaring as the apostrophe, both here and in the original, occurs in tke midst of a strong incident, and is addressed to an enemy by a proud spirit in very moving circumstances. BROAD GRINS. 109 To this address, so fraught with the pathetic, John remained dumb as a Pythagorean ; Seeming to hint, *' Roger, you're a plebeian Peripatetic." When such choice oratory has not liit. When it is e'en unanswered by a grunt, 'Twould justify tame Job to curse a bit. And set an angler swearing in his punt. Choleric Eoger could not brook it ! So seeing a huge brickbat, up he took it ; And aiming like a marksman at a crow. Plump on the breast he hit his deadly foe, Who fell, like pedants' periods, to the ground, Very inanimate, and very round. Here is another picture, reader mine ! I gave you one in the first canto ; This is more solemn, mystical, and fine, Like something in the Castle of Otranto. Bring, bring me now a painter for the work, Who on the subject will with furor rush! Some artist who can sup upon raw pork. To make him dream of horrors for his brush! Come, limners, come ! who choke your house's entry With dear, unmeaning lumber from your easels ; Dull heads of the nobility and gentry; Full lengths of fubsy belles or beaux like weasels ! Come, limners, hither come ! and draw A finer incident than e'er ye saw ! no COLMAN S HUMOROUS WORKS. Here is a John by moonlight (a fat monk), Lying stone dead'^ and here a Eoger, quick; And over John stands Roger in a funk, Supposing he has killed him with a brick ! There, painters ! there ! Now by Apelles's gamboge I swear ! Such a dead subject never comes Among those lifeless living ye display ; Then through your palettes thrust your graphic thumbs, And work away ! Seeing John dead as a door nail, Eoger began to Avring his hands and wail ; Calling himself beast, butcher, cruel Turk ! Thrice Benedicite, he muttered ; Thrice, in the eloquence of grief, he uttered, "I've done a pretty job of journey-work !" Some people will show symptoms of repentance When conscience, like a chastening angel, smites 'em. Some from mere dread of the law's sentence, Wlien Newgate, like the very devil, frights 'em. That Virtue's struggles in the heart denotes, This Vice's hints to men's left ears and throats. Now R':^ger's conscience it appears, Was not by half so lively as his fears.] His breast, soon after he was born. Grew like an hostler's lanthorn at an inn ; All the circumference was dirty horn. And feebly blinked the ray of warmth within. BROAD GRINS, III In short, for one of his religious function, His conscience was both cowardly and callous ; No melting cherub whispered to't " compunction !'' But grim Jack Ketch disturbed it, crying "gallows!" And all his sorrow for this deed abhorred, Was nothing but antipathy to cord, A padlocked door stood in the garden wall, "Where John by Eoger's brickbat chanced to fall. And Eoger had a key that could imdo it ; Through this same door at any time of day They brought into the convent corn and hay ; Sometimes at dusk a pretty girl came through it, Just to confess herself to some grave codger ; Perhaps she came to John, perhaps to Eoger. Out of this portal Eoger made a shift To lug his worst of foes, For seizing (as the gout was wont) his toes, He dragged the load he couldn't hft. Achilles thus drew round the Trojan plain, The ten years' adversary he had slain. Yet — for I scorn a Grecian to disparage — Achilles in more style and splendour did it ; He sported murder strapped behind his carriage, But bourgeois Eoger sneaked on foot and hid it. Eoger, however, laboiu-ed on. Puffing and tugging. And hauling John, As fishermen on shore haul up a boat ; Till after a great deal of lugging. He lugged him to the edge of the knight's moat; 112 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And stuck liim up so straight upon his rear, Touching almost the water with his heels, That the defunct might pass, not seen too near, For some fat gentleman who bobbed for eels. Swiftly did Eoger then retrace his ground. Lighter than he came out by many a pound. So have I seen on Marlborough downs a hack. Eased of a great man's chaise, and coming back From Bladud's sj)rings, upon the western road ; No bloated noble's luggage at his rump. Whose doom's, that dread of pickpockets, tlie pump, He canters home from Bath without his load. Sir Thomas being scrupulous and queasy, Couldn't in all this interval be easy. He went to bed, and there began to burn ; Nine times he turned in wondrous perturbation ; He woke her ladyship at every turn. And gave her full nine times complete vexation. To seek the Duke of Limbs at length he rose. And prowled with him, lamenting Fortune's stripes ; Now in the rookery among the crows. Now squashing in the marsh among the snipes. Wishing strange wishes, among many He wished, ere he had clapped his eyes on any. All priests and crabsticks thrown into the fire ; Or seeing Providence ordained it so, That priest and crabstick (to his grief) must grow. He wished stout crabstick couldn't kill fat friar. BROAD GRINS. "5 Men's wishes will be partial now and then ; As in this case 'tis plainly seen ; Wherein Sir Thomas, full of spleen, Wished to burn all the crabs and clergymen. Think ye that lie, at wishing though a dab. To wish such harm to any hiight would urge ye ? Yet he, a knight, had taken up a crab, And thumped to death with it one of the clergy. As he went wishing on. With the great Duke of Limbs behind him. Horror on horror ! he saw John Where least of all he ever thought to find him ! Stuck up on end in placid grace. Like a stuffed kangaroo, though vastly fatter. With the full moon upon his chubby face, Like a brass pot-lid shining on a platter. '"Sdeath !" quoth the knight, of half his powers bereft, " Didst thou not tell me where this friar was left ? Men rise again to yusli us from our stools .'"* To which the Duke replied, with steady phiz, *' Them as took pains to push that friar from Jus, At such a time o' night, was cursed fools." "Ah !" sighed Sir Thomas, " while I wander here. By fortune stamped a homicide, alas !" (And as he spoke a penitential tear Mingled with heaven's dewdi'ops on the grass), "Will no one from my eyes yon spectre pull?" " Sir Thomas," said the Duke of Limbs, " 1 wool." * Shakspeare certainly borrowed this expression from Sir Thomas. See Macbeth. I 114 COLMArrS HUMOROUS WORKS. He would have thrown the garbage in the moat^ But the knight told him fat was prone to float. The lout at length, having bethought him, Heaved up the friar on his back once more, And (castles having armouries of yore) Into the knight's old armoury he brought him. Among the gorgeous shining coats of mail That graced the walls on high in gallant show^ As pewter pots in houses famed for ale Glitter above the barmaid in a row, A curious antique suit was hoarded. Covered with dust, "Which had for many years afforded An iron dinner to that ostrich, Eust. Though this was all too little, in a minute The Duke of Limbs rammed the fat friar in it ; So a good housewife takes a narrow skin, To make black pudding, and stuffs hog's meat in. The knight, who saw this ceremony pass. Inquired the meaning, when the Duke did say, " I'll tie him on ould Dumpling that's at grass, And turn him out a top of the highway." This steed, who now it seems was grazing, In the French wars had often borne the knight ; His symmetry beyond the power of praising, And prouder than Bucephalus in fight. Once hoAv he pawed the ground and snuffed the gale, Uncropped his ears, undocked his flowing tail ; BROAD GRINS. 115 No blemish was •svithin liim nor without him, Perfect he was in every part ; No barbarous farrier with infernal art Had mutilated the least bit about him. Of high Arabian pedigree, Father of many four-foot babes was he, And sweet hoofed beauties still would he be rumpling ; But counting five-and-twenty from his birth, At grass for life, unwieldy in the girth, He had obtained, alas ! the name of Dumpling. Now at the postern stood the gay old charger, Saddled and housed, in full caparison; Now on his back — no rider larger — Upright and stiff and tied with cords sat John, Armed cap-a-pie completely, like a knight Goino; to fiirht. o A lance was in the rest of stately beech. Nothing was wanting but a page or squire ; The Duke vrith thistles switclied old Dumpling's breech. And off he clattered with the martial friar. Now in the convent let us take a peep. Where Eoger, like Sir Thomas, couldn't sleep. Instead of singing requiems and psalms For fat John's soul, he had been seized with qualms ; Thinking it would be rash to tarry there, And having prudently resolved on flight, Knocked up a neighbouring miller in the night, And borrowed his grey mare. Thus trotting off, beneath a row of trees He saw a sight that made his marrow freeze ! 12 Ii6 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. A furious warrior followed him in mail, Upon a charger close at his mare's tail ! He crossed himself, and canting cried, " Oh, sadly have I sinned !" Then stuck his heels in his mare's side, And then old Dumpling whinny 'd. Eoger whipt and Iloger sj)urred, Distilling drops of fear ; But while he spurred, still, still he heard The wanton Dumpling at his rear. 'Twas dawn : he looked behind him in the chase. When lo ! the features of fat John, His beaver up and pressing on. Glared ghastly in the wretched Roger's face ! The miller's mare, who oft; had gone the way, Scampered with Roger into Norwich town; And there, to all the market folks' dismay, Old Dumpling beat the mare with Roger down. Brief let me be. The story soon took air ; For townsmen are inquisitive of course, When a live monk rides in upon a mare Chased by a dead one, armed, upon a horse. Sir Thomas up to London sped fall fast, To beg his life and lands of Royal Elarry ; And for his services in Gallia past, His suit did not miscarry ; For in those days — thank heaven they are mended ! — Kings hanged poor rogues while rich ones were be- friended. BROAD GRINS. uy Ye critics and ye hypercritics, who Have deigned, in reading this my story through, A patient or impatient ear to lend me, If as I humbly amble ye complain I give my Pegasus too loose a rein, 'Tis time to call mi/ betters to defend me. Come, Swift ! who made so merry with the Nine, With thy far bolder Muse, oh, shelter mine When she is styled a slattern and a trollop ! Force stubborn Gravity to doff his gloom ; Point to thy Celia and thy Dressing-Room, Thy Nymph at bedtime, and thy famed Maw- Wallop ! Come, Sterne ! whose prose, with all a poet's art, Tickles the fancy while it melts the heart — Since at apologies I ne'er was handy. Come, while fastidious readers run me hard. And screen, sly, playful wag, a hapless bard Behind one volume of thy " Tristram Shandy !" Ye two alone — though I could bring a score Of brilliant names and high examples more — Plead for me when 'tis said I misbehave me ! And ye, sour censors, in your crabbed fits, Who will not let them rescue me as luits, Prithee a,s j^arsons suffer 'em to save me I ii8 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, THE ELDER BROTHER. CENTRIC in London noise and London follies Proud Covent Garden blooms in smoky glory: For chairmen, coffee-rooms, piazzas, dollies, Cabbages, and comedians famed in story. On this gay spot (upon a sober plan) Dwelt a right regular and staid young man. Mucli did lie early hours and quiet love, And was entitled Mr. Isaac Shove. An orphan he ; yet rich in expectations (Which nobody seemed likely to supplant} From that prodigious tore of all relations, A fusty, canting, stiff-rumped maiden aunt ; The wealthy ^liss Lucretia Cloghorty, Who had brought Isaac up, and owned to forty. Shove on this maiden's will relied securely ; Who vowed she ne'er would wed to mar his riches ; Full often would she say of men demurely, "I can't abide the filthy things in breeches!" He had apartments up two pair of stairs ; On the first floor lodged Doctor Crow ; The landlord was a torturer of hairs. And made a grand display of wigs below ; From the beau's Brutus to the parson's grizzle ; Over the doorway w^as his name ; 'twas Twizzle. Now, you must know, This Doctor Crow AVas not of law, nor music, nor divinity ; J^'KOAD GRLYS. hq He ^vas obstetric; but, the fact is, lie didn't in Lucina's turnpike practise; He took bye-roads^ reducing ladies' shapes, Who had secured themselves from leading apes, But kept the reputation of virginity. Crow had a roomy tenement of brick, Enclosed with walls, one mile fiom Hyde Park Corner ; Fir trees and yews were planted round it thick ; No situation Avas forlorner ! * Yet notwithstanding folks might scout it, It suited qualmish spinsters who fall sick, And didn't wish the world to know about it. Here many a single gentlewoman came. Pro tempore, full tender of her fame ! Who for a while took leave of friends in town ; ^'Business, forsooth! to Yorkshire called her down, Too weighty to be settled by attorney !" And in a month's or six weeks' time came back ; When everybody cried, *' Good lack ! How monstrous thin you've grown, upon your journey !" The doctor knowing that a puff of scandal Would blow his private trade to tatters. Dreaded to give the smallest handle To those who dabble in their neighbours' matters ; Therefore he wisely held it good To hide his practice from the neighbourhood ; And not appear there as a resident ; But merely one who casually went To see the lodgers in the large brick house ; To lounge and chat, not minding time a souse ; 120 . COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Like one to whom all business was quite foreign; And thus he visited his female sick, Who lay as thick "Within his tenement of brick As rabbits in a Avarren. He lodged in Covent Garden all the while, And if they sent in haste for his assistance. He soon was with 'em — 'twas no mighty distance — From the town's end it was but a bare mile. Now Isaac Shove, Living above This Doctor Crow, And knowing barber Twizzle lived below, Thought it might be as well. Hearing so many knocks, single and double. To buy, at his own cost, a street-door bell. And save confusion in the house and trouble ; Whereby his (Isaac's) visitors might know, Without long waiting in the dirt and drizzle. To ring for him at once ; and not to knock for Crow Nor Twizzle. Besides, he now began to feel The want of it was rather ungenteel ; For he had often thought it a disgrace To hear, while sitting in his room above, Twizzle's shrill maid, on the first landing place. Screaming, "A man below vants Mister Shove !" The bell was bought ; the wire was made to steal Round the dark staircase like a tortured eel. BROAD GRINS. "i Twisting and twining ; The jemmy handle Twizzle's door-post graced, And just beneath a brazen plate was placed, Lacquered and shining ; Graven whereon, in characters full clear And legible, did "Mr. Shove" appear; And furthermore, which you might read right well, Was, "Please to ring the bell." At half-past ten, precisely to a second. Shove every night his supper ended ; And sipped his glass of negus till he reckoned, By his stop-watch, exactly one more quarter ; Then as exactly he untied one garter ; A token 'tw^as that he for bed intended ; Yet having still a quarter good before him, He leisurely undressed before the fire, Contriving as the quarter did expire, To be as naked as his mother bore him, Bating his shirt and night-cap on his head ; Then, as the watchmen bawled eleven, He had one foot in bed, More certainly than cuckolds go to heaven. Alas ! what pity 'tis that regularity Like Isaac Shove's is such a rarity ! But there are swilling waghts in London town, Termed jolly dogs, choice spirits, alias swine, Who pour in midnight revel bumpers down, Making their throats a thoroughfare for wine. 122 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. These spendthrifts, who life's pleasures thus outrun, Dozing with headaches till the afternoon, Lose half men's regular estate of sun. By borrowing too largely of the moon. One of this kidney, Toby Tosspot hight, Was coming from the Bedford late at night. And being Bacchi plenus, full of wine, Although he had a tolerable notion Of aiming at progressive motion, 'Twasn't direct, 'twas serpentine. He worked with sinuosities along, Like Monsieur Corkscrew worming through a cork ; Not straight, like Corkscrew's proxy, stiif Don Prong, A fork. At length, with near four bottles in his pate. He saw the moon shining on Shove's brass plate, When reading, " Please to ring the bell," And being civil beyond measure, '' Ring it !" says Toby ; '* very well ; I'll ring it with a deal of pleasure." Toby, the kindest soul in all the town, Gave it a jerk that almost jerked it down. He waited full two minutes ; no one came ; He waited full two minutes more, and then Says Toby, " If he's deaf, I'm not to blame, I'll pull it for the gentleman again." But the first peal woke Isaac in a fright, AVho, quick as lightning, popping up his head, Sat on his head's antipodes in bed. Pale as a parsnip, bolt upright. BROAD GRIXS. 123 At length he wisely to hhnself did say, Calming his fears, " Tush ! 'tis some fool has rung and run away," When peal the second rattled in his ears ! Shove jumped into the middle of the floor, And trembling at each l)reath of air that stirred, He groped downstairs and opened the street door, AVhilc Toby was performing peal the third. Isaac eyed Toby fearfully askant. And saw he was a strapper stout and tall ; Then put this question, " Pray, sir, what d'ye want ?" Says Toby, " I want nothing, sir, at all." ** Want nothing! sir, you've pulled my bell I vow, As if you'd jerk it off the wire !" Quoth Toby, gravely making him a boAv, " I pulled it, sir, at your desire." "At mine !" — " Yes, yours ; I hope I've done it well ! High time for bed, s'r ; I was hastening to it ; But if you write up please to ring the bell, Common politeness makes me stop and do it." Isaac, now waxing wroth apace. Slammed the street door in Toby's face With ail his mio-ht : And Toby as he shut it swore He was a dirty son of — something more Than delicacy suffers me to write ; And lifting up the knocker, gave a knock So long and loud it might have raised the dead ; Twizzle declares his house sustained a shock Enough to shake his lodgers out of bed. 124 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Toby, his rage thus vented in the rap, "Went serpentining home to take his nap. 'Tis now high time to let you know That the obstetric Doctor Crow Awoke in the beginning of this matter, By Toby's tintinnabulary clatter ; And knowing that the bell belonged to Shove, He listened in his bed, but did not move : He only did apostrophize, Sending to hell Shove and his bell, That wouldn't let him close his eyes. But when he heard a thundering hiock^ says he, " That's certainly a messenger for me ; Somebody ill in the brick house no doubt ;" Then muttered, hurrying on his dressing-gown, *'I wish my ladies out of town, Chose more convenient times for crying out !" Crow in the dark now reached the staircase head ; Shove in the dark was coming up to bed. A combination of ideas flocking Upon the pericranium of Crow, Occasioned by the hasty knocking. Succeeded by a foot he heard below ; He did, as many folks are apt to do, "Who argue in the dark and in confusion ; That is, from the hypothesis he drew A false conclusion ; Concluding Shove to be the person sent "With an express from the brick tenement, BROAD GRINS. 125 Whom barber Twizzle, torturer of liairs, Had civilly let in and sent upstairs. As Shove came up, though he had long time kept His character for patience very laudably, He couldn't help, at every step he stepped. Grunting and grumbling in his gizzard audibly ; For Isaac's mental feelings, you must know, Not only were considerably hurt, But his corporeal also. Having no other clothing than a shirt •, A dress beyond all doubt most light and airy, It being then a frost in January. "When Shove was deep downstairs, the doctor heard (Being much nearer the stair top) Just here and there a random word. Of the soliloquies that Shove let drop. But shortly by progression brought To contact nearer. The doctor consequently heard him clearer, And then the fag-end of this sentence caught : "Which Shove repeated warmly, though he shivered ; " Damn Twizzle's house ! and damn the bell ! And damn the fool who rang it ! "V\^ell, From all such plagues I'll quickly be delivered." " "What? quickly be delivered !" echoes Crow; " "Who is it ? Come, be sharp — reply, reply ; "Who wants to be delivered? let me know." Recovering his surprise, Shove answered, " li" 126 COZMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. *' You be delivered /" says the doctor, " 'sblood !" Hearing a man's gruff voice, " you lout ! you lob ! You be delivered ! Come, that's very good !'^ Says Shove, " I will, so help me bob !" "Fellow," cried Crow, "you're drunk with filthy beer; A drunkard, fellow, is a brute's next neighbour ; But Miss Cloghorty's time was very near, And I suppose Lucretia's now in labour." " Zounds !" bellows Shove, with rage and wonder wild, " Why then, my maiden 2i\\nt is lig ivitli child P^ Here was at once a sad discovery made ; Lucretia's frolic now was past a joke ; Shove trembled for his fortune. Crow his trade, Both, both saw ruin by one fatal stroke ! But with his aunt when Isaac did discuss, She hushed the matter up by speaking thus : " Sweet Isaac !" said Lucretia, " sj^are my fame ! Though for my babe I feel as should a mother, Your fortune will continue much the same ; For, keep the secret, you're his elder brother. ^^ POETICAL VAGARIES. POETICAL VAGARIES. AN ODE TO WE, A HACKNEYED CRITIC. «'' Nothing, if not Critical: 'Shaksi^eare. HAIL, Plural Unit ! avIio wouldst be A Junto o'er my Muse and me, With dogmas to control us ; Hail mystic WE ! grand Next-to-None ! Large body corporate of One ! Important OMNES, Solus ! II. First Person Singular ! pray why Impregnate thus the Pronoun I ? Of madness what a tissue I To Avrite as if with passion wild Thou oft hadst got Thyself with child, And thou wert Self and Issue ! III. Thy voice, which counterfeits alone A score of voices in its own, Awhile takes in the many : Thus a bad one pound note is passed For twenty shillings, and at last Turns out not worth a penny. K 130 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. IV. 'Tis well for Thee no laws of thine Can crush vile followers of the Nine. Thou Iw'&t uiDon the sinners ; And if all poets left off writing Through thy anonymous inditing, Why, thou must leave off dinners. V. For Tliou couldst ne'er turn poet sure, Laurels or luncheons to procure — Witness thy present calling ; Else why not write thyself a name So very humble, e'en in fame, As mine which thou art mauling ? VI. Yet hold. Thou mayst on Pindus' heights Have far out-soared my lowly flights — No ; that's a thought I'll smother : The meanest bard among the mean. Can he thus skulk behind a screen And try to stab a brother ? VII. But come, one moment leave thy pea Stuck in thy gall-bottle, and then Smooth o'er thy forehead's furrow. Let's chat. Where got'st thou thy employ ? Art thou of Dublin city joy ? Or bonny Edinburg'h ? POETICAL VAGARIES. 131 VIII. Or art John Bull, in garret crammed ? " Spirit of health, or goblin damned ?" Be something for thy credit. Perhaps thou'rt he who (as they say) Cut up the last successful play, And never saw nor read it ? IX. Be what thou wilt ; when all is done, To me thou'rt (like Thyself) All One, Thou'rt welcome still to flog on ; For till one addled egg's a brood, Or twenty WEs a multitude, My Muse and I will jog on. X. Now shouldst thou praise me after all, Though that indeed were comical, What honour could I pin to't ? If porridge were my only cheer. Thy praise or blame must both appear Two tasteless chips thrown into't. XI. Then, WE, shake hands, and part 1 No breach, No difference 'twixt us I beseech ! Although our business varies : Thine is detraction, mine is jest-^ Which occupation pray is best, Thy spite or my " Vagaries ?'* 132 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. LOW AMBITION; OR, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. DAW. Prcecordia ZmcZj7, — Persius, Claims tie Belly Par«.— Moore's Almanac. MALEBRANCHE and Locke, and such grave fellows, Who were abstracted reasoners, tell us Much that relates to Man. When you have read All these philosophers have said, You'll give them credit for their perspicacity ; And after that (if you should have a head Of no great ontological capacity) You'll know as much About the matter as I know of Dutch. For when a metaphysic chain Once gets entangled in your brain, The more you rattle it the more you rave, And curse and swear and misbehave, Coming to no conclusion ; And if at last you lose the smallest link, You may as well go whistle as go think Of mending the confusion. Then, leaving spiritual truths to those Wlio, taking pleasure in the study, O'er Thoughts on Human Understanding doze, TiU human understanding grows quite muddy POETICAL VAGARIES. One proposition only I advance (It will not lead philosophy a dance) Respecting Man — videlicet^ I never met with any yet, However thick his pericranium's density Let it be thicker than a post — Who has not some astonishing propensity Of which he makes a pother and a boast. He'll either tell you he can drink or smoke, Or play at whist, or on the pipe and tabor, Or cut a throat, a caper, or a joke, Much better than his neighbour. Many will say they'll settle you the nation, And make a peace, solid and good (I wish they would). Sooner than the Administration. One tells you how a town is to be taken, A second o'er the fair sex boasts his power. Another brags he'll eat six pounds of bacon, For half a crown, in half an hour. Thus nature always brings, in Fortune's spite, Man's " ruling passion," as Pope says, to light. 133 ^._ ^'. And I maintain that all these *' ruling passio Divide them how you will, and subdivide — 1 care not how they're ramified Into their different forms and fashions — I say they all proceed from pride ; And this same pride is founded on ambition. Shades varying with talents and condition. 134 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Look at that rope-dancer ; observe ! Gods ! how he vaults ! 'tis all to get a name ; Eisking his limbs and straining every nerve To jump himself, poor devil, into fame. Mark with what majesty he wields the pole, While the buffoon (his vassal) chalks his sole ! Sir, 'tis his poor ambition's richest hope To reign elastic emperor and lord O'er ail who ever capered on a cord, And be the Bonaparte of the rope. In short, an itching for renown Makes some dance ropes and others storm a town ; And an observer must be very dull If a Jack-Pudding or a Pierrot Don't sometimes seem to him as great a hero As a Grand Signior or a Great Mogul. That lowly men aspire to lowly glory. Here followeth (exempli gratid) a story :— Goddess ! whose frolic humour glads the sky ; Who oft with dimpled cheek to Momus listen ; Within the lustre of whose lucid eye Laughter's gay drops, like dew in sunshine, glisten ! Come, sweet Euphrosyne ! luxuriant Mirth I Leave all the heathen deities behind ; Descend and help ('twill be but kind) One of the poorest poets upon earth ! ! now descend ! while I devote my page To one who flourished on a London stage. POETICAL VAGARIES. 135 She comes I I sing the man ycleped Daw, Whose mother dressed the tragic queens ; She in the candle-snuffer raised a flame, Then quenched it like a liberal dame ; And the first light my hero ever saw Was that his father snuffed behind the scenes. Born to the boards, as actors say, this wight Was oft let out at half a crown per night, By Under parents, after he was weaned ; At three years old, squab, chubby-cheeked, and stupid, Sometimes he was a little extra fiend, Sometimes a supernumerary Cupid. When Master Daw full fourteen years had told, He grew, as it is termed, hobbedyhoyish — For Cupidons and fairies much too old. For Calibans and devils much too boyish. This state, grave fathers say, behind the scenes, Often embarrasses their ways and means ; And Master Daw was out of size For raising the supplies. He was a perfect lout, a log ; You never clapped your eyes Upon an uglier dog ! His voice had broken to a gruffish squeak ; He had grown blear-eyed, baker-kneed, and gummy ; And though he hadn't been too hoarse to speak. He was too ugly even for a dummy. 136 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. But hoodwinked Fortune, goddess of misprision, Soon gave her bandeau's knot a tighter twist ; Or else, that she might have no chance of vision, Slie certainly employed an oculist. Had she but seen no better than the fowl The chaste Minerva loves — yclept an owl — Or had of seeing the least notion, . She never, never could have found , In Master Daw, that chubby stupid hound, A subject for theatrical promotion. But lo ! 'twas at a ballet's night rehearsal. Performed at last, as playbills often show. Whether the ballet have been hissed or no. To overllows and plaudits universal. The prompter's boy, a pickled thoughtless knave, Playing a game at marbles in the sea, Happened to break his leg upon a wave. And Master Daw was made his deputy. The office of a prompter's boy perchance May not be generally known. I'll sketch it. Would I could enhance The outline with some touches of my own ! The prompter's boy, messieurs ! must stand Near the stage door, close at the prompter's hand, Holding a nomenclature that's numerical, Which tallies with the book prompteriodl : And as the prompter calls, " One, Two, Three, Four,'' Marked accurately in the prompt-book page. These numbers mean the boy must leave the door, To call the fo'ks referred to for the stage. POETICAL VAGARIES. 137 In this capacity, as record saith, Young Master Daw Both heard and saw As much (if not as tv:6) as any one can. He saw the actor murdering Macbeth, Whom he had only called to murder Duncan. He saw Anne Boleyn in the green-room grant A kiss to Wolsey, dangling at her crupper ; Heard an archbishop damn a figurante. And Shylock order sausages for supper. During his time (or Master Daw's a liar). Three Virgins of the Sun grew wondrous round ; Pluto most narrowly escaped from fire, And Neptune in a water-tub was drowned. During his time, from the proscenium ta'en, Thalia and Melpomene both vanished ; The lion and the unicorn remain, Seeming to hint to a capricious age, " Suffer the quadrupeds to keep the stage, The Muses to be banished." During his time — pshaw ! let me turn Time's glass. Reader, old Time (depend on't) will kill thee ; But should I grow prolix, alas ! Thou never wouldst kill time by reading me. Yet here will I apostrophize thee, Time ! If not in reason, why in crambo rhyme : — 138 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, A RECKONING WITH TIME * I. COME on, old Time ! nay, that is stnfF; Gaffer ! tliou com'st on fast enough ; Winged foe to feathered Cupid ! But tell me, Sandman, ere thy grains Have multiplied upon my brains So thick to make me stupid — II. Tell me, Death's Journeyman ! but no, Hear thou my speech ; I will not grow Irreverent while I try it ; For though I mock thy flight, 'tis said The forelock fills me with such dread, I — never take thee hy it. III. List then, old Is-Was-and-To-Be ! I'll state accounts 'twixt thee and me ; Thou gav'st me, first, the measles ; With teething wouldst have ta'en me off, Then mad'st me with the hooping-cough Thinner than fifty weasels. * This "Keckoniug witli Time" appeared three or four years ago, at the request of a friend, in a monthly publication ; whence it was copied into a few works of a similar description. But as it was first purposely written to be introduced in the present tale, and has been seen only in prints a little more fugitive (perhaps) than this book, the author trusts he may be excused for inserting it in the place of its original destination. POETICAL VAGARIES, 139 IV. Thou gavest small-pox (the dragon now ^hat Jenner combats on a cow) ; And then some seeds of knowledge ; Grains of the grammar which the flails Of pedants thresh upon our tails, To fit us for a college. V. And when at Christchurch 'twas thy sport To rack my brains with sloe-juice port, And lectures out of number ! There Freshman Folly quaffs and sings, While Graduate Dulness clogs thy wings "With mathematic lumber. VI. Thy pinions next, which while they wave Fan all our birthdays to the grave, I think ere it was prudent, Ballooned me from the schools to town, Where I was parachuted down A dapper Temple student. VII. Then much in dramas did I look. Much slighted thee and great Lord Coke ; Congreve beat Blackstone hollow ; Shakspeare made all the statutes stale. And in my crown no pleas had Hale, To supersede Apollo. VIII. Ah, Time ! those raging heats I find Were the mere dog-star of my mind ; I40 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORK:>, How cool is retrospection ! Youth's gaudy summer solstice o'er, Experience yields a mellow store, An autumn of reflection ! IX. Why did I let the god of song Lure me from law to join his throng Gulled by some slight applauses ? What's verse to A when versus B ? Or what John Bidl, a comedy, To pleading John Bull's causes ? o) X. Yet though my childhood felt disease, Though my lank purse unswoln by fees Some ragged muse has netted. Still, honest Chronos ! 'tis most true To thee (and faith to others too !) I'm very much indebted. XI. For thou hast made me gaily tough. Inured me to each day that's rough, In hopes of calm to-morrow ; And when, old Mower of us all. Beneath thy sweeping scythe I fall, ^on\Q.feiv DEAR FRIENDS will sorrov,'. XII. Then, though my idle prose or rhyme Should half an hour outlive me, Time ! Pray bid the stone engravers. Where'er my bones find churchyard roonij POETICAL VAGARIES. H^ Simply to chisel on my tomb, *' Thank Time for all his favours I" Tklanagers, actors, candle- snuffers — all — Yea, all who write, or damn, or clap a play. Even little prompters' boys, who players call, (Sad truth to tell !) grow older every day. Now had the sure forerunner of our fate (Time, whom I have apostrophized), Who rubs no Russian oil upon his pate, Scorning a wng or a transparent tete^ Or any cure for baldness advertised ; Time had besprinkled with some years My hero's asinine and vulgar ears. Daw, now adult, and turned of five-and-thirty, Conceived himself miraculously clever ; His skin was Uke a dun cow's hide grown dirty, And his legs knit in bandiness for ever. Coxcombical, malicious, busy, pert, Brisk as a flea and ignorant as dirt, When he began one of his frothy chatters, Boasting about his knowledge of stage matters, He looked so very, very sage. You could not, for your soul, talk gravely to him; He seemed an oran-outang come of age, Connived at for a man by those who knew him. Many strange faces may be seen ; but Daw's Looked like the knocker of a door whose grin Has let its handle tumble from the jaws To hinder you from rapping on its chin. 142 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, Three single ladies and one married By looking at him all miscarried. No longer prompter's boy, he now had gained A rank upon the stage almost unique — A rank of which I am about to speak — Yfhich with great dignity he long maintained. "Daw on the stage ! too ugly as a lad ! And now so frightful when to manhood grown, That Ugliness had ' marked him for her own,' Sure the proprietors were all gone mad I" Reader, it ill becometh me To say how mad proprietors may be ; But every night To crowxled audiences did Mr. Daw Give boxes, pit, and galleries delight, Acting with great eclat. And though he acted so repeatedly (Of which he often talked conceitedly), Although no actor in his line excelled him, Yet in the personation of his part (The fact I know will make you start), Not one of his encomiasts beheld him. When the enigma is expounded, You'll own 'tis true, and be dumbfounded. Well was the adage to my hero known That beauty merely is skin-deep ; But thinking ugliness is some skins deeperj He very politicly tried to creep Into another skin beside his own ; POETICAL VAGARIES. 143 Wherein concealed, His face and figure coiildn't be revealed, And soon he proved a most successful creeper. Being a persevering rogue, Through interest and strong solicitation. Before live cattle came in vogue, He got at last his wished-for situation: And -when sliam beasts came on, it was his pride To tell he always acted the inside. Thus Daw, " with Fortune almost out of suits," Unfit to show himself or utter words. Wriggled into the parts of all the brutes. And all the larger birds. He was the stateliest ostrich seen for struts ; Unrivalled in the bowels of a boar ; Great and majestic in a lion's guts, And a tine tiger, both for walk and roar. A noted connoisseur was heard to swear (From minor merits far from a detractor), There was no bearing any outside bear, If Mr. Daw were not the inside actor. Sometimes a failure his great name would tarnish ; Once, acting in a dragon newly painted, The ceruse, turpentine, and varnish Gave him the colic, and the dragon fainted. Once too, when drunk in Cerberus, oh 1 shame ! He fell asleep within the dog's internals ; Thus Mr. Whitbread's porter overcame The porter to the king of the infernals. :±^ COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. But in dumb follies that succeed the play, His reputation rose so fast That he was called, par excellence^ at last, The great Intestine Roscius of his day. Yet frequently it has been shown, r; •; And history hath often stated, A hero meets in his career a check ; Sometimes in battle he is overthrown, Sometimes he is assassinated, And sometimes he's suspended by the neck. Sundry the ways when Fortune's scurvy In which a hero is turned topsy-turvy. Christmas was coming on — those merry times When in conformity to ancient rules Grand classic theatres give pantomimes, For the delight of innocents and fools ; That is (if I may make so bold), For children who are young and children who are old. A pasteboard elephant, of monstrous size. Was formed to bless a learned nation's eyes, And charm the sage theatrical resorters ; And as two men were necessary in it. It was decreed, in an unlucky minute. That Mr. Daw should fill the hinder quarters. The hinder quarters ! ! ! — here was degradation ! Gods ! mighty Daw ! what was thy indignation ! He swore a tragic oath — " by her who bore him !" (Meaning the dresser of the tragic queens) "No individual behind the scenes Should walk in any elephant hefore him." POETICAL VAGARIES. 145 " He'i rather live on husks, Or dine upon his nails, Than quit first parts, under the trunks and tusks, And stoop to second rates, beneath the tails ! " 'Twas due to his celebrity at least. If he should so far condescend To represent the moiety of a beast. That he should have the right to choose ii:M(:li enciy The managers were on the stage ; To -whom he thus remonstrated in rage: — " I've been chief lion and first tiger here For fifteen year. That, you may tell me, matters not a souse ; But what is more, All London says I am the greatest boar You ever had in all your house. "Of all insides the town likes me the best ; Over my head no underling shall jump ; I'll play your front legs, shoulders, neck, and breast, But damn me if I act your loins and rump !" Though this address was coarser than jack-towels, Although the speaker's face made men abhor him, Yet when a man acts nothing else but bowels, The managers might have some bowels for him. And if obdurate managers could feel A little more than flint or steel. If they had any heart. On hearing such a forcible appeal. They might have let the man reject the part. L 1^6 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. All the head manaf^er said to it Was simply this, " Daw, you must do it." And, after all, the manager was right ; But how to make the fact appear Incontrovertible and clear, And place it in its proper light, Puzzles me quite ! Come, let me try. Reader, 'twould make you sweat (You'll pardon the expression), To see two fellows get. With due discretion, One upright, one aslant. Into the entrails of an elephant ; For if you'll have the goodness to reflect On the construction of these huge brute creatures, You'll see the man in front must walk erect ; While he who goes behind must bend, Stooping and bringing down his features. Over the front man's latter end ; And the beast's shape requires particularly, The tallest man to march first perpendicularly. Now the new inside man you'll find Was taller by a head than Daw ; Therefore 'twas fit that Daw should walk behind According both to equity and law. Daw for a time with jealousy was racked, And with his rival wouldn't act ; Nevertheless, Like other politicians in the nation. Who can't have all their wishes. POETICAL VAGARIES. 147 He chose at last to coalesce Eather than lose his situation, And give np all the loaves and fishes. The house "was crammed : the elephant appeared ; With three-times-three the elephant was cheered ; Shouts and huzzas the ear confound ; The building rings, the building rocks ; *' The Elephant" the pit, " the Elephant" each box, , " The Elephant" the galleries resound ! The elephant walked down Before the lamps to fascinate the town. Daw, with his ugly face inclined Just over his tall rival's skirts, Bore horizontally in mind His Self-love's bruises and Ambition's hurts. Hating the man by whom he was disgraced, AYho from his cap had plucked the choicest feather, He bit him in the part where honour's placed Till his teeth met together. On this attack from the ferocious Daw Upon his Pays Bas, The man, imable to conceal his pain, Eoared and writhed, Eoared and writhed, Eoared and writhed and roared a^ain ! That beasts should roar is neither new nor queer j But on a repetition of the spite. How was the house electrified to hear The elephant say, " Curse you, Daw, don't bite L 2 148 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Daw persevered. Unable to get out, The tall man faced about, And Avith great force the mighty Daw assailed. Both in the dark were now at random fiffhtino;, Huffing and cuffing, kicking, scratching, biting, Though neither of the combatants prevailed. It was the strongest precedent by far, In ancient or in modern story, Of such a desperate intestine war Waged in so small a territory. And in this civil brawl, like any other, Where every man in arms his country shatters, The two inhabitants thumped one another Till they had torn the elephant to tatters ; And thus uncased, the rival actors Stood bowing to their generous benefactors. Uproar ensued ; from every side Scene-shifters ran to gather up the hide ; While the Two Bowels in dismay — Hissed, hooted, damned, and pelted — walked away. Eeader, if you would further know The history of Mr. Daw, 'tis brief. He died not many months ago Of mortified ambition and of grief; For when Live Quadrupeds usurped the stage. And which are now (but mayn't be long) the rage^ He went to bed. And never afterwards held up his head. Awhile he languished, looking pale and wan ; Then, dying, said, " Daw's occupation's gone !" THE LADY OF THE WRECK; OR, CASTLE BLARNEYGIG. A POEir. TO THE AUTHOR OF THE LADY OF THE LAKE, WHOSE GIFTED MUSE NEEDS KO MERETRICIOUS COLOUhiNGS UrOX HER BEAUTY, WHOSE CHARMS MIGHT DISDAIN A VEIL OF OBSOLETENESS TO OBSCURE THEM ; * THE FOLLOWING POEM •OF THE LADY OF THE WRECK, OR CASTLE BLARNEYGIG, Js gltsprctfallg Ittscriljtb BY HIS ADMIRER. ADVERTISEMENT. Let not the reader whose senses have been delightfully intoxicated by that Scottish Circe, the " Lady of the Lake," accuse the present Author of plagiary. The "wild Irish and wild Caledonians bore a great resemblance to each other in very many particulars ; and two poets, who have any " method in their madness," may naturally fall into similar strains of wildness when handling subjects equally wild and remote. 'Tis a wild world, my masters ! The Author of this work has merely adopted the style which a northern genius has of late rendered the fashion and the rage. He has attempted in this instance to become a maker of the modern-antique — a vendor of a new coinage begrimed with the ancient cenigo — a con- structor of the dear iwetty Sublime and sweet little Grand — a writer of a short epic poem, stuffed with romantic knick-knackeries, and interlarded with songs and ballads a la mode de " Chevy Chase," " Edom o' Gordon," "Sir Lancelot du Lake," &c. &c. How is such a writer to be classed ? "Inter qucs referendus erit ? veteresne Poetas ? An quos et prsesens et postera respuet tetas V Hon. Epist. I. lib. 2. THE LADY OF THE WRECK; OR, CASTLE BLARNEYGIG. " Qusedam nimis antique, pleraque dura.'' — Hob. " Thus have I (my dear countrymen) with incredihle pains and diligence discovered the hidden sources of the Bathos, or, as I may say, broke open the abysses of this great deep." Mart. Sckib. Trtpl BABOYS. CANTO FIRST. HAEP of the Pats !* that rotting long hast lain On the soft bosom of St. Allan's bog, And icheji the icind had Jits f wouldst twang a strain, Till envious mud did all thy music clog, E'en just as too much pudding chokes a dog. Oh, Paddy's Harp I still sleeps thine accent's pride ? Will nobody be giving it a jog ? * " If it be allowed that the harp was in use among the ancient Caledonians, it can hardly be denied that they borrowed it from the Irish." — Walker'' s Historical Memoirs of Irish Bards. t The same idea occurs in the beautiful opening of the " Lady of the Lake ;" where it is said that the Scotch harp hung " On the witch-elm that shades St. Fillan's spring;" and "flung its numbers" down the "fitful breeze." Indeed, the •whole of the present invocation to the Irish harp is a tolerably close though humble imitation of the commencement of the poem above mentioned. 154 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Still must thou silent be ns when espied Upon an Irish old, old halfpenny's back-side ? Not thus when Erin wore a wilder shape, Thy voice was speechless in an Irish town : It roused the hopeless lover to a rape, Made timorous tenants knock proud landlords down : Whisky at every pause the feast did crown. Now, by the powers ! the fun was never slack ; The Os and J/acs were frisky as the clown ; For still the burthen (growing now a hack) Was " Hubbaboo, dear joys !" and " Didderoo !" and " Whack !" Och, wake again ! arrah, get up once more, And let me venture just to take a thrum ! Wake, and be damned ! you've had a tightest snore — Perhaps I'd better let you lie there dumb Yet if one ballad-monger like my strain, Though I've a clumsy finger and a thumb, I shan't have jingled minstrelsy in vain ; So, Wizard, be alive ! old Witch, get up again ! I. The pig at eve was lank and faint Where Patrick is the patron saint, And Avith his peasant lord, unfed, Went grunting to their common bed ; But when black night her sables threw Athwart the slough of Ballyloo,* * In tlie latest chorography of Ireland, Ballyloo is not to be found in the maps. Various other places mentioned in this poem are also totally omitted. But even the discoveries of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 155 The deep-moutlied thunder's angry roar Kebellowed on the Ulster shore, And liailstones pelted, mighty big, The towers of Castle Blarneygig. ir. Aloft, where erst tyrannic Fear Placed lynx-eyed Vigilance to peer,* And listen in the dunnest dark Whether a feudal cur should bark. Drunk, deaf, and purblind, in the din Dozed the old warder Rory Flinn. Before the antique hall's turf fire Was stretched the porter. Con ]\Iacguire, Who at stout usquebaugh's command, Snored with his prokerj in his hand. Kathlane, who very ill could dish Wild Ballyshannon's springy fish, And Sheelah who had lately come To spider-brush from Blunderdrum, so long ago as the time of Queen Anne, are looked for in vain, except in the charts which are bound up in his own puLlieation. Shameful negligence ! * i.e., The "Watch Tower;" in which a man was formerly sta- tioned to give notice of danger, real or apprehended, from the approach of any party or parties whatever. No vestige of this personage's office remains in the rural abodes of our modern nobility. In and around the metropolis, and in great provincial towns and their suburbs, warders still exist : but they are situated on the ground ; on the out- side of mansions, which they pretend, and are not supposed to guard ; in small wooden boxes, just capable of containing them, wherein they doze, as conveniently as their predecessor Rory Flinn, in this poem recorded. t Ililernice, proker ; Anglice, poker. 156 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Were dreaming in a stolen embrace With Roger Moyle and Redmond Scrace ; And all the vassals' senses lay Drowned in the whisky of the day. Still raged the storm ; still, records run, All slept in Blarneygig save one, Lord of the castle and domain. Sir Tooleywhagg O'Shaughnashane.* III. He heard, or thought he heard, a sound Pierce through the hurly-burly round ; A shriek, a yell, he knew not what, So from his night- couch up he got. Then through a peep-hole popped his head. And thus Sir Tooleywhagg he said ; Standing the while, though something loth, In a short shirt of Irish cloth. IV. " Spake out," he cried, "whose voice is that. Shrill as a Tom Balruddery cat ?| * After a certaia period Irishmen adopted surnames, for the con- venience of designation ; and to prevent that confusion from which they have to this day kept so 2^'>'overbially clear. Hence arose the Os and Macs, meaning the 'Sons of.' The O'Tooles were formerly of high celebrity in Ireland in times of convulsion and insurrection ; military of course ; even the clergy fought. Ware informs us (re- ferring to a piece of biography published by Purius) that " Laurence O'Tool had an archbishopric." It was a Dublin one. From the surname of the knight of Blarneygig Castle, it is probable that the families of the O'Tooles and O'Shaughnashanes were allied by inter- marriages. f " Balruddery Cat.''— The squall of a Balruddery Cat is very annoying to those whose organs of hearing are unaccustomed to it ; THE LADY OF THE WRECK. I57 Come you a fairy, good or ill, My bullocks to presarve or kill ? Or only does a Banshee* prowl For somebody's departing sowl ? Haply you lurk from foemen nigh. My sea-side castle's strength to spy, Who on the morrow may think fit To bother Blarneygig a bit ; Och ! if the latter, soon as light Peeps over Murroughlaughlin's height, My kernes and gallowglassesf here Will show you sport with sparthe;!: and spear ; And sallying on my spalpeen foe, Shout Forroch ! Forroch !§ Bugg-abo !"|| and equally so is the squ.ill of any cat in any other place ; which may somewhat tend to diminish the peculiarity of the cats of Balvuddery. * " .4 Banshee' — a friendly spirit that gave a strong hint of an approaching death in an Irish family. There has been, it seems, a similar supernatural retainer in Scotland ; denominated by my great Xorth British prototype in poetry a Ben-shie ; the last syllable pos- sibly from the French, chier. t " The Irish of the Middle Ag^s had two sorts of footmen, some called Gallowglasses, armed, &c. &c. Others lighter armed, called Turhiculi, by some Timburii, but commonly A''€rns."—TFa?'e's Antiq. and Hist, of Ireland. t A Spartlie was an Irish weapon of war. § Forroch, Farah, or Ferrarjh.— "\Yhen they (the Irish) approached the enemy so near as to be heard, they used this martial cry— Farah ! Farah ["—Wares Antiq. and Hist, of Ireland. "The vulgar Irish suppose this war-song to have been Forroch or Ferragh:' — Spenser's State of Ireland. II Bugg-abo. — "They likewise call upon their Captain's name, or the word of their ancestors ; as under O'Neale they cry Landarg-aboT kc. &c. — Spenser. In short, Abo was a term of exultation, tantamount to "for ever!" tacked to and shouted with the principal part of the estate which 158 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. V. Scarce had lie said, wlien lightning played Full on the features of a maid, Who in the elemental shock. Stuck like a limpet to the rock, Eeared o'er the surface of the flood Her pallid cheek, her lip's life-blood, The blended colours seemed to show Of pearl and coral from below. Save that her dank dishevelled hair Half hid her breast, her breast was bare ; What could be seen looked firm and white As the rude rock she held so tight ; Bare too was all her beauteous form, Stript by the unrelenting storm ! But half in sea and half on shore A liquid petticoat she wore ; And as the undulating surge Did to and fro its fury urge. Just now and then it left the tips Exposed of two round polished hips ; All downward else her blush to save Lay covered by the wanton wave. But oh ! her voice from out the main Seemed sweeter than a syren's strain ; And while below the cliff she clung. Thus to Sir Tooleywhagg she sung : tlieJr cHeftain possessed. It is to be supposed therefore tliat a- great part of Sir Tooleywhagg O'Shaughnashane's territory was. BUGG. THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 159 yi. SOXG. " What linen so fine lias the bride put on ? What torch is her chamber brightening ? The bride is adrift in a salt--\vater shift, And her candles are flashes of lightning. *' Oh : Thady Pumn, the Isle of :Man* I left and sailed for you ; I am very ill lucked all night to be ducked, For keeping my promise true ! " Oh ! Thady, your bride cannot sleep by your side, Go to bed to another lady ; I must lie in the dark ^vith a whale or a shark, Instead of my d^irling Thady." VII. She paused, for to the rock rushed in A booming wave above her chin ; Whicli haply worked her body's good. For wholesome flows the briny flood, And if the mouth a pint have caught, A fine aperient 'tis thought. Sir Tooleywhagg, who heard the pause,t Was little conscious of the cause ; For now pitch-dark was all the shore. And much he wished for an encore ; * " Oh, Alice Brand, my native land I left for love of you." ,S'ce the adiniraUe Poem of the Lady of the Lake. t The power of hcarinrj a xjause is a gift peculiar to the natives of Ireland . i6o COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Soon did the ducked recovering fair In varied strains renew her air ; Eenewed it much in hopes to gain Sir Tooleywhagg O'Shaughnashane ; For when he first put out his head, Graced with a night-cap dyed in red, Fire that foreruns the thundercUip Blazed on him redder than his cap. 'Twas then she marked his face and mien, Plain through his peep-hole to be seen ; His eagle eye's commanding glance. His shoulders' broad superb expanse. His strong uncovered ample chest That looked like so much brawn undrest ; All that in days of chivalry Fair ladies wished their knights to be ! She marked and murmured, sighing deep, While through his hole he crouched to peep, " If stooping with such charms he's decked, Gods ! what a man when he's erect ! Yea, on a modest maiden's word. This, this must be the castle's lord." VIII. Well too she marked with anxious eyes A bucket of capacious size. Suspended o'er the craggy beach. And close within the chieftain's reach ; With many a roll of cord to be Let down at pleasure to the sea ; Which for the castle's use was made Whene'er it suffered a blockade ; To draw up succours from the strand When the besieger pressed on land : THE LADY OF THE WRECK. l6i And thus her plaint she warbled strong In all the euphony of song. SONG CONTINUED. " Chieftain ! if thou canst at all For a shipwrecked lady angle, Clew me up thy castle wall ; Near thee doth a bucket dangle. " Chieftain ! leave me not to drown ; Save a maid without a smicket ! If the bucket come not down, Soon shall I be doomed to kick it.* " Quick, oh ! quick unwind the rope ! If thou answer'st to my hope. Then on thee when fate is frowning, May a rope prevent thy drowning !" IX. Ye sons of Erin ! well 'tis kno^vn Your natiire to the sex is prone. South from Lough Swilly to Tramore, From Kilcock to Knockealy's shore^f Can ye resist throughout your isle A woman's tear, a woman's smile ! And when did beauty pour in vain Her plaint to an O'Shaughnashane ? * This proves that the modern slang phrase of Uclhuj the luclet- i c to die, is borrowed frona our ancestors. 3Iulta rcnaseentur Did not on the sensorium light Of Blarneygig's puissant knight. Staring on his embarrassed bride, "Lady O'Shaughnashane," he cried, " Arrah, what makes you blush ? Come here^ And sit upon my knee, my dear." IX. Obeyed she ? Yes ; for then a spouse (Times alter !) seldom broke her vows, Nor thought all other vows effiiced While marriage beds were not disgraced ; As if love, honour, and obey (Oaths now of form on life's highway) Like paltry passengers were lost In Virtue's terrible hard frost. Much did Sir Tooleywhagg rejoice To see the lady of his choice Sitting, while he sat in his cap, Obediently upon his lap. THE LADY OF THE WRECK, 179 His satisfaction grew so strong It popped out rampant in a song ; And many a harsh, discordant note Came bellowing through his rusty throat. Such through thy caves, Loch Derg, were sent. When wild winds struggled for a vent, Which, as their boisterous road they took, Saint Patrick's Purgatory* shook. SOXG OF THE BRIDEGROOM. X. Don't now be after being coy ; Sit still upon my lap, dear joy ! And let us at our breakfast toy, For thou art wife to me, Judy !f « <( Of this cave strange and increclible things are related. It was demolished, as a fictitious thing, on St. Patrick's day, in the year 1497, by authority of Pope Alexander YL, by the Guardian of the House of Minorits of Donegall and others, says the author of the ' Ulster Annals,' who then lived. Yet it was afterwards restored, and frequently visited by pilgrims." — 'SVare'i A ni'iq^. of Ireland. + The world has been much hQ-Maryed of late by modern poets of prettiness ; and we have innumerable sweet little stanzas of simpli- city, ending with ^^ ray Mary,^' audi *' w?/ iVa?-y," to the end of the chapter ; much after the following manner : — To-morrow, let it shine or pour, Precisely at the hour of four Drive me the carriage to the door, . ' ily coachman ! For I must dine with Doctor Brown, And to his villa must go down, Thou know'st the way to Kentish Town, My coachman I K a i8o COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And I am bound by wedlock's chain Thy humble sarvant to remam, Sir Tooleywhagg O'Shaiighnashane, The husband unto thee, Judy ! Each vassal at our wedding-feast, BHnd drunk last night as any beast, Eoared till the daylight streaked the East, Which sjioiled the sleep of thee, Judy ! Feasts in the honeymoon are right ; But that once o'er, my heart's delight ! Nought shall disturb thee all the night, Or ever waken me, Judy ! The skins of wolves — by me they bled — ■ Are covers to our marriage-bed : Should one, in hunting bite me dead, A widow thou wilt be, Judy ! Howl at my wake, 'twill be but kind ; And if I leave, as I've designed. Some little Tooleywhaggs behind. They'll sarve to comfort thee, Judy ! XI. Touched by the pathos of the song, Though every note was rumbled wrong, Scarce could the sympathetic bride Her conjugal emotions hide. To see her husband's corse ! and oh ! A wolf to bite him from her so ! A wolf — all Erin's saints forbid ! — Whose skin was but her coverlid ! Beneath that softness lurked there life To make a widow of a wife ! THE LADY OF THE WRECK. i8i To make her lord resign his breath ! To make her see him stiff in death 1 Ye modern spouses, never scoff At the fond tear she hurried off; But as she dashed the tear away, She smiled and laboured to be gay. XII. <' What is this ring," she said, " Sir Knight, That on your finger looks so bright, Outshining the fair star of morn ? Some old love-token, I'll be sworn ! I'll pull it off, dear !"' At the word, Thunder far-off was muttering heard. And lightning faintly played to own It quivered for the mystic stone. Then all was hushed as death again, Save that a sound swung down the glen, As tolling on the ear it fell From Bunamargy Friary bell. Dull waxed the sun ; a dusky red Through the dense atmosphere was spread f Books to their tree-tops cawed retreat, Oppressed with suffocating heat. XIII. The chief (confusion marked his brow) Cried, " Bathershane ! be asy now ! 'Tis but a toy, a gift to me. Sent from a dead friend now at sea." Here conscience whispered, :SIany a wave, Thou Lust's, thou Avarice's slave ! Is rolling o'er a luckless fair, Driven by thy fiilsehood to despair. i82 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Turn from thy wife ! thou wilt be found As false to her as her that's drowned. Turn from thy wife, thy dalliance check ; Cease imddling in her ivory neck ;* Think on the Lady of the Wreck I XIV. " Sent from a friend at sea who's dead !" The now half-jealous lady said, Wouldst into life the lifeless drag ? Thou banter'st me, my Tooleywhagg ! Dead men, who sometimes float I hear, Transmit no presents home, my dear. Come, come ! this toy, this gewgaw thing, This showy, baubling, foppish ring, Befits thy manly finger ill ; Have it I must. Sir Knight, and will." Quick from his hand she twitched the stone, And laughing fixed it on her own. That instant burst a bombard cloud O'er Blarneygig's high turrets loud, And wliile its grand artillery roared, Both sheeted fires and waters poured. Earth's huge maternal sides upborne With horrid labour throes were torn. Then Wicklow first thy mountains bold Pear tinged with something much like goldj-f * "Paddling in your neck with his damned fingers." — Shakspeare. f Gold is supposed to have been lately discovered in the Wicklow mountains: but many doubt whether it be really gold, or only something lihe it. Be it the one or the other, it is a sign of good luck to the discoverers. THE LADY OF THE WRECK, 183 INIoneykillcark's unfatliomed bog Rushed o'er the vales of Tullyhog ; The forest shuddered o'er the buck, The shrinking pond left dry the duck, Who thrown upon her glossy back, Fluttered but quaked too much to quack ; The craven from his dunghill flew, And stilled his cock-a-doodle-doo * XV. Nature as seagirt Erin shook. Her laws of gravity forsook. The bucket's cordage cracked in twain, That wound the lady from the main — The bucket then ne'er meant to fly, Disdained the beach and sought the sky ; The lofty Watch Tower's roof beat in. And crushed the warder Eory Flinn ; Expiring drunk, he " whisky" cried. All water buckets damned, and died. The sea that laved the castle's base, Arose the battlements to face ; Fronting the windows foaming came, Where sat the chieftain wdth his dame. And full a minute ere its fall, Spread a broad waving watery wall ! Sudden it sunk ;— the orb of day Now struggling with the clouds for sway, * The Oravm is the dunghill-cock ; and is used adjectmly by d authors as an epithet of cowardice. Individuals of a noble family now existing have reversed the definition of this epithet; and at- tached to the name of Craven everything that is spirited and esti- mable in society. i84 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. The awful tempest rolled away. Strewed o'er the chamber from the strand Lay seaweed, cockleshells, and sand ; And in a corner shivering sat, Wet through with brine, a water-rat : On the O'Shaughnashane it fixed Its eyes with anger, sorrow mixed ; Showed its sharp teeth in doleful spite, And knapped and chattered at the knight. XVI. " Say is the tempest past V inquired The dame, who from a swoon respired. " Say is the tempest — ah ! what's that ? Save me, Saint Roger ! 'tis a rat ! What eyes ! what teeth ! what ears ! what hair ! Look at its Avhiskers ! what a pair ! And oh ! Sir Tooleywhagg ! see what A long thick swinging tail 't has got I Destroy it, or I faint again, Throw, throw it back into the main !" Perked on its dripping haunches stood The bristling reptile of the flood, And uttered to the bride a squeak. That seemed almost a human shriek. The shrieking bride sore, sore dismayed, Almost a rat-like squeak repaid ; And hurried from the spot to yield The rat possession of the field. XVII. Mused not the chieftain when his dear Fled tlie apartment pale with fear ? THE LADY OF THE V/RECK. 1S5 Mused ho not on the mystic ring ? The storm ? the rat ? — the everything ? Sat he not -wrapt in doubt and woe, And tranced in cogitation ? — no. The shallow cellules of his head "Were so preoccupied with lead, That wanting intellectual space, Eeflection could not find a place. But a rich fool,* whose stars ordain His pate shall be one blank of brain, Ne'er long sits motionless alone. He cannot tliinh himself to stone ; Nor like the wise, or would-be wise, Read, write, combine, philosophize ; Still with no labour of the mind. Work for his limbs he's sure to find. His body's action whiles away His listless life in tiresome play, And helps the cranium of the ass Folly's long holidays to pass. Left by his lady's sudden flight. The busybodied brainless knight, Barren of thought, deprived of chat, Threw bread and butter to the rat. The reptile, in a sullen mood, Its whiskers twirled and spurned the food. XVIII. As the lone angler, patient man ! At Newry-Water or the Banne,f * This is by no means intended to insinuate that a man who is rich must consequently be foolish ; but that a fool who is affluent can afford to have no business or study. t Rivers in Ulster. i86 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, Leaves off against his placid wish, Impaling worms to torture fish ; As dull at dusk he plods to rest, Not even with a nibble blest, So from the rat retired the knight, Convinced he could not get a bite. When to the anteroom he came, A rat again — the very same. He left it straight and sought the stair. The animal sat crouching there. He ranged his grand apartments through, The yellow chamber, green, red, blue. There was the water-reptile too ! Where could he go ? where stay ? where look ? At every turn, in every nook He feared the rat would be espied, And all his fears were ratified, XIX. Months fleeted since the earthquake's shock : Meanwhile at Allyballyknock Grand feasts were given in the hall Of Lord Fitz Gallyhogmagawl ; Others at Craughternaughter Hill, Where dwelt the pale Mac Twiddle dill ; There came the knight, and thither sped The little hairy quadruped. Whom host and guests essayed in vain To drive from the O'Shaughnashane. Where'er he went, whate'er the hour, On plain or hill, in hall or bower. At prayer, meals, sport, all matters that An Irish chieftain could be at, There grinned the same eternal rat ; THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 187 Eluding every effort still To hurt, to catch it, or to kill. XX. On Blarneygig s high gateway reared, A manifesto now appeared ; Sir Tooleywhagg's most strict command Writ in his own improper hand ; From which, with pure and classic dread, Orthography and grammar fled. Five minutes' shower washed away " Bade, and tak notisj' every day. What mattered ? for each vassal knew His duty he was bound to do ; But in default of it might plead Not one of them had learned to read. By word of mouth the order then Was given, and spread among the men ; That through the territory sought To each apartment must be brought That foe instinctive to a rat, That tiger's miniature — the cat. XXI. Bagged from a cabin on the skirt Of thy morass soft Grannyfert ! First came a cottier's* half-starved Tom, Whom famine had deducted from ; » "They were persons who, not holding, or unable to hold, any lands on their own account, wejre obliged to work for their subsistence throughout the whole year for such cultivators of land as called them- selves gentlemen. These labourers went by the name of cottiers."— BdVs Description of the Pecmnti-y of Ireland. 1 88 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Deducted till it seemed through fast, That eight of his nine lives were past. But soon his cat-star crying " eat," Relented in the shape of meat ; New sleeked his coat, replumped his flesh, And gave him his lost lives afresh. Then like the amorous Turk he saw, Though only a one-tailed Bashaw, Aroimd his wawling presence swell A huge seraglio stocked pell-mell. With black, white, tabby, tortoiseshell. Yet when about the rat they ranged. Their natural feline fury changed ; The rat no symptom showed of fright, The cats forgot to pounce or bite ; Each claw was shut, and all the furred, As if in love and pity, purred. Thus wolves before our mother's vice Caressed the kid in paradise ; The lamb thus calmly cropt the plain, Beneath the peaceful lion's mane ; While on the branch that bloomed above, The hawk sat billing with the dove. XXII. Thrice through the zodiac's signs the sun His annual wheeling race had run, While kept the water-fiend its pace. Haunting the knight from place to place. Worn with the pest, on travel bent. From rocky Blarneygig he went ; Traversed the sea ; all Europe viewed ; StilJ, still the cursed rat pursued ! THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 189 No change it manifested ; save That which the various nations gave. In France, thy dressing-room, oh, Worhl ! Its whiskers seemed more smartly curled ; Through Italy a mellower note Squeaked, like a quaver, from its throat ; Among the Germans, all the day It looked not sober though not gay, And gravely studied to maintain A haughty toss of nose in Spain. As hopeless, home, the chief at last O'er Scotia's barren Highlands past, The reptile shedding half its hair. Grew hide-bound till its breech was bare ; And scratched, while hunger marked its jaws. Incessantly between the claws.* xxiir. The chief (his breast with sorrow big) Ee- entered Castle Blarney gig. " Bother !" he cried, " 'tis all in vain, Ladj' of the O'Shaughnashane I As I return, returns my foe ! We've made the tour of Europe though. But to what purpose did I roam ? What, Judy, what have I brought home? Like many a travelled fool no doubt, No more nor less than I took out !" * Although tlie autlior indulges in an allusion to a common-place national jest, he feels a sincere respect for the Scotch, as an honourable, brave, and acute people : and he knows not that even the lower orders of North Britons are in fact troubled with the itch, any more than that Englishmen hang and drown themselves in November. lie lived three years in Scotland, and never observed one instance of the above- mentioned cutaneous disorder. I90 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Next morn lie rose to chase the deer In the thick tangles of Dunleer. 'Twere long to tell who in the mud Was left, chin-deep, at Grnddrybrud ; What horse or rider at Kilcleck Now broke his wind and now his neck ; Enough that when the lengthened shade Of oaks had vanished from the glade, When a chill, sullen, starless night Was pressing dew-dript evening's flight, Dismounted in a luckless hour (Far from his own or any tower) Upon a wide and swampy plain, Wandered the lone O'Shaughnashane. " How am I worn," he sighed, " Och hone ! With melancholy to the bone !" Then sat him down upon a stone, To while the hours till morning-tide, With the rat perking by his side. 'Twas then he heard — no minstrel nigh — A Kearnine* twang his lullaby. SONG. XXIV. Huntsman, sleep !| the deer has jogged From thy hounds, not worth the chiding ; Huntsman, sleep ! thy steed lies bogged, Glandered, spavined, not worth riding. * Kearnme. "This vord is translated by Vallancey, a small harp." — WalTccrs Irish Bard. + " ffuiftsman, rest / iky chase is done.^^ See Lady of the Lake, Canto It THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 191 Huntsman, 'tis thy fate to own Leather lost and empty belly ! Stick thy bottom on the stone Till the rat shall squeak reveille ! Huntsman, snore ! for up thou'rt done ;* And before the rising sun, To awaken and assail ye Will the reptile squeak reveille. XXV. Light lingering still upon the ground, The wanderer cast his eyes around. The reptile, with the chase o'ertoiled. Into a hairy ball was coiled. And slept upon a heathery stump Spite of the hail that beat its rump. While, turning from the storm, it dozed, Its rear was to the knight exposed. " NoAv, by the powers !" he uttered low " I've taken by surprise the foe ! Och, divil ! have I, five years past, Caught you here napping now at last ?" He tiptoed eager through the hail, And seized his torment by the tail. The vermin squeaked — Oh, well away ! Should vermin talk in future day, No rhetoric could better teach A rat to make its dying speech. Against the stone he dashed its head, And saw his plague at length lie dead. * The modern phrase to le c?one w^j, has descended to us from the Slangi of tht ancients. 192 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Its blood, while man runs mortal race, Tempest nor time will e'er eiFace. E'en now the antiquary pores O'er the grey stone, and there explores (What cannot antiquaries see !) I\Iarks that ne'er were nor e'er will be. He traces on a barbarous strand A fair denuded ; in her hand A scroll, with two Os following T, And after that discovers LEY^ Then TF, H, A, double G, Which ^Mi together make full sure To lovers of the old obscure A shipwrecked maid dead many a year, Still grasjiing all she held most dear, And cast on history a light Touching the Lady and the Knight. XXVI. Say how far off, as grey crow flies, Did Blarneygig's dark turrets rise From the morasses where was slain The rat by the O'Shaughnashane ? A toilsome length — four leagues at least ! Wind whistled chilly from the east, And eastward from the castle lay The swamps whereon the chief did stray, Wafting its sounds the adverse Avay. Yet Avhen the wretched rat was crushed, Loud on the heath a twangle rushed That rung out supper grand and big From the cracked bell of Blarneygig. The festive metal's blundering tone Well to Sir Tooleywhagg was known, THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 193 Who, car-directed by its sound, Squashed darkling through the rotten ground. So erst did Satan (as 'tis sung By thee, great Bard !* who England's tongtio To such sublime perfection wrought It only sunk beneath thy thought — By thee who, loyal to the Muse, Tliy King didst prosingly abuse| — By thee, like Homer, reft of sight, Like Homer gifted to delight !) — So erst did Satan drasr his tail o O'er bog, o'er steep, or moory dale. And wading through mud, mire, and clay, With head, hands, feet, pursue his way. At length against his castle-gate A hubaboo he sraye full late. The muzzy porter, Con Macguire, Housed his blown carcass from the fire And oped the portal. Swift as light. Passing his vassal, shot the knight. When past, the vassal locked with care The gate, and muttered " Who goes there ?'* O'ercome with transport and fatigue (Oh, he had zigzagged many a league !) In to his dame, in slumbers hushed, The great Sir Tooleywhagg he pushed ; And falling on his stomach flat, Eoared, "Judy, I have killed the rat!" * MliLoa. + "'Tis in Vcaiu to dissemble, aud far be it from me to defeuJ, his engagin.:< with a party combined in the destruction of our Church and monarchy." — Fentjii's Life of Milton. See also Milton's Prose Works. O 194 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. XXVII. " Speed, Loone}^, speed !"* next morning cried The jocund chief; " for tliou must ride rieet as the bolt that rends tlie tree On rocky Cloghernochartee. Speed, Looney! speed to every guest, Eide north and south, ride east and -west ! Saddle grey Golloch, spur him hard From Glartyflarty to Klanard, From Killybegs to Killaleagh, Cross Ulster's province — haste away ! Spee4, Looney, speed ! Invite them all : Baron Fitz Gallyhogmagawl, Dennis O'Rourke of Ballyswill, D'Arcy, and pale Mac Twiddlediil ; All the O'Brans, O'Finns, O'Blanes, Mac Gras, Mac Naughtans, and Mac Shanes. I hold a feast — thou know'st the day — Speed, Looney ! Looney, haste away ! XXVIII. The day arrived ; the guests were met ; High in his hall the chief was set. The horn he emptied, soon as filled, And filling soon as empty, swilled. * ^^ Speed, Malise^ speed I Malise in the ''Lady of the Lake" ig sent in great haste to invite gentlemen to a battle instead of a dinner. His master bids him tcike a short stick and punch it: — "A cubit's length, in measure due ; The shaft and limb were rods of yew." "With this signal for war, which has been thrust into the fire, he runs through the country. THE LADY OF THE WRECK. 195 All swilled alike, each Erin's son Appeared a bursting living tun. 'Twas at that crisis of the feast When purpled man is almost beast ; When either friend his friend provokes, By hiccoughing aifronts for jokes, Or goblets at the head are sent, Before affronts are given or meant ; A vassal (now 'twas waxing late) Announced a stranger at the gate. ' ' A stranger !" spluttered forth the knight ; " Tell him he's welcome to alight." ^' Plase you," returned the vassal, pale, " She is, my chieftain, not a male ! She's mantled in a sea-green weed,* And mounted on a rat-tailed steed ; Her face is covered, but she speaks Like murmuring vraves, her stallion squeaks ; And such a rider, such a nag, You never saw. Sir Tooleywhagg." Startled, half-sobered, sore displeased, The knight a swaling candle seized. And stasrserin": throucrh his castle court, CO O <^ ' He reached the spectre at the port. The apparition raised its veil. And showed the features, ashly pale ! With ringlets, blood-drenched, in her neck, O the sad Lady of the Wreck. XXIX. ** Perjured seducer, list I" she said, " And tremble at the doubly dead ; * "Weed formerly siguified a garment. We still say Vlido-wi weeds, 2 196 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. By thee, to desperation urged, I plunged, and drowned — for tliee emerged. The ring drawn off, it gave me power (For know, 'twas charmed) from that same hour To join thee, cruellest of men ! In one shape more till death agnin. Doting, I came : to thee I fled, A little faithful quadru23ed ; Doting, with thee, from shore to shore, I swam and trotted Europe o'er. Was I not constant as thy bride ? Why drive me first down Erin's tide, Then kill me since my suicide ? Perjured seducer, list ! thy doom Approaches : seek thy banquet-room ; Back to thy guests ; renew the sport ; Be thy life merry, as 'tis short ! For learn, thy latest vital gasp Ends with the candle in thy grasp. Soon as burnt down, beyond all doubt, Sir Tooleywhagg, thy life is out." She ceased — a sea-wave rolled to meet Her squeaking rat-tailed palfrey's feet ; And foaming past the palsied knight. Swept horse and rider from his sight. XXX. Wan as the spectre of the flood, Before his guests the chieftain stood. With trembling voice he told them all, " Fate," cried Fitz Gallyhogmagawl, " To thee, my son-in law, doth give Longer than other men to live. THE LADY OF THE WRECK. i97 If thou canst wave thy dying day Until tlie candle burns away, Tliou mayst immortal be, Sir Knight, Only by turning down the light." Oh ! happy, happy thought ! — 'twas done ; Sir Tooley whagg a race might run, And only burn out with the sun. XXXI. A Grain the horns were filled b}^ all. And ululations shook the hall, While noise and whisky racked the brain, Still kept the great O'Shaughnashune (Who now mortality defied) The turned-down candle by his side ; Till sapping, at each feverish toast. The little sense a sot can boast. Quite vanquished by potations deep, The human swine all sunk to sleep. What time they snorted loud, the fire And every taper did expire. A vassal entered, all was dark ; The turf he blew, but not a spark ! He groped the slopped oak table round, And there at last a candle found ; The fatal candle I — at a lamp, Upon the staircase, dim with damp, Eelumining the Avick that gave The chief of Blarneygig his grave. He placed it where his lord might take The light whenever he should wake. Soon as the candle 'gan to burn. Sir Tooleywhagg he gave a turn ; 198 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And groaned ; but still his eyes were closed- Death hovering round him while he dozed ! He dreamt of tempest, of a rat, And nightmares rode him as he sat. A thief within the candle got, The heated chieftain grew more hot ; The candle in the socket blazed, He oped his eyes, his head he raised. That moment he had raised his head, The light expired — the knight was dead ! Harp of the Pats ! farewell ! for truly I Am growing very sick of minstrelsy ; — So get thee to the bog again ! Good-bye ! TWO PARSONS; OR, THE TALE OF A SHIRT. "Paupertas omues artes perdocet."— Plautus. ADAM and Eve were, at the world's beginning. Ashamed of nothing till they took to sinning But after Adam's slip — the first was Eve's — With sorrow big They sought the fig, To cool their blushes with its banging leaves. Whereby we find That when all things were recent (So paradoxical is human kind !) Till folks grew naughty they were harel>/ decent. Thus dress may date its origin From sin ; Wliich proves beyond the shadow of dispute, How many owe their livelihoods to fruit : For fruit caused sin, and sin brought shame, And all through shame our dresses came. With that sad stopper of our breath, Death ! 200 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS, Now had not woman worked our fall, How many who have trades and avocations Would shut up shop, in these our polished nations. And have no business to transact at all ! In such an instance, what pray would become Of all our reverend clergy ? They would be thought uncommonly hum- drum. And banished in a trice, Who zealously, for pay, should urge ye Not to be vicious, if there were no vice. What would become of all i\\Qfie-fie ladies? And all proprietors of jKiw-j^aiu houses ! And all the learned proctors, whose grave trade is Parting from bed and board the jMW-pmv spouses? What would become of heirs-at-law, alas! However lawyers ferreted. If relatives to death would never pass, And heirs-at-law — never inherited ? What would become of all ('tis hard to say !) Who thrive on vice, but in a various way ? Those who maintain themselves by still maintaining it, And those who live by scourging and restraining it ? AQ:ain, if we should never die nor dress, But walk immortally in nakedness, 'Twould be a very losing game for those Who furnish us with funerals and clothes. To sum the matter up then briefly. Losers through innocency would be chiefly : — The Lord Chief Justice, undertakers. Hatters, shoo, boot r.nd breech'.'s-makcrf!. rnv rj/^.soxs. 201 Jack-ketches, parsons, tailors, proctors, Mercers and milliners— perhaps quack doctors — Hosiers and resurrection-men, Sextons, the Bow Street officers, and then Those infinitely grander drudges. The big-Avigged circuiteering judges : The venal fair who kiss to eat, The key-keeper of Chandos Street ; The — pooh ! there ne'er could be an end on't, Should I attempt to count them all, depend on't. We know Jioc rjeims omne daily is Before our eyes — cum multis allis. But wlio would then have heard of, by the bye, The Vice Suppressing starched Society ? — That tribe of self-erected prigs — whose leaven Consists in buclramizing souls for heaven ; Those stiff-rumped buzzards, who evince the vigour Of Christian virtue by unchristian rigour ; Those quacks and Quixotes who in coalition Compose the canters' secret inquisition ; Dolts, in our tolerating constitution. Who turn morality to persecution, And through their precious pates' fanatic twists, Are part informers, spies, and Methodists ? What would become of these ? no matter what : It matters not at all What would befall Each bigot ass or hypocritic sot. But since, ah, well-a-day ! that death and dress Have both obtained, what can our griefs express To see poor parsons — some are poor 'tis reckoned — Prepare us for i\\q first and want the second? 202 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Great Britain's principal sonl-mender Liveth at Lambeth Palace in great splendour. A curate is another sort of man, "Very unlike the Metropolitan, Living (without a living) as he can. This last, who toils in a twofold vocation, That is, between his wife and congregation. Is thereby getting all the while — Which sure must raise (if nothing else) his bile — Scarce anything but children and vexation. Whene'er his text he is about to handle, Lulling to sleep his Sunday people, 'Tis wondrous how his zeal Can burn at all with scarce a meal — And not go out, just like a candle. Under his great extinguisher, the steeple : — So small the salary and fees. To help the kneeler mend his breeches' knees ! Oh ! how must his parishioners be hurt, While their good pastor is his text pursuing. To know his surplice hinders them from viewing His ragged small-clothes — ragged as his shirt ! This theme ! to volumes 1 could swell it ; But thereby hangs a tale ; I'll tell it. OziAS Polyglot, a Kentish curate. So much his orthodoxy manifested. That by one heathen power he was detested, Who to poor Polyglot was most obdurate. TWO PARSONS. 203 This mytliologic deity was Plutus, The grand divinity of cash ; Who when he rumps us quite and wont salute us, If we are men in commerce, then we smash. If men of large estate, then we retrench ; But if we are in all respects Mere simple debtors, sans effects, Hoping that Plutus may not always frown, We then as calmly as we can sit down. The King (heaven bless him !) finding us a Bench. The god of cash hath latterly displayed Much spite to sundry citizens in trade ; Abandoning, to the world's wonder. Proud firms with whom 'twas thought he ne'er v/ould sunder. He hath, moreover, looked a little blank, And shown a kind of coolness to the Bank : The mighty Bank at whose command is Great credit and resoui'ce, has all the while Returned the coolness with no sort of bile^ To make men think it has the yellow jaundice ; But finding guineas in the till run taper. Has providently stopped the slit with paper. Now Plutus having turned his back On poor Ozias Polyglot, The lazy fat incumbent's hack, What had he got ? I'll tell you what. He had got twins for three years running, Which for a curate is not over-cunning. 204 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. "Who never is in riches wallowing ; But for the three years following (And 'twas less hard in his uxorious case) His loving rib instead of deuce threw ace. In matters of arithmetic, At which I never boasted to be quiclc, He whose sage head is better far than mine Will find, according to my calculation, Errors excepted in the computation, Ozias in six years got babies nine ! The parson dearly loved his darling pets, Sweet little, ruddy, ragged parsonets ! Then, which for all his drudging was not dear, This meek improver of his congregation. This pious helper of our population, Had got just twenty-seven pounds per year. Still had Ozias Polyglot With all his gettings never oot, Whereat the good man's trouble was not small, An invitation to the hall ; Where dwelt a thing of consequence through mire, A many-acred, two-legged ass, the squire. 'Tis true the country squire of modern days Is greatly mended, like, his roads and ways. He is not now, we know, That porker he appeared some years ago ; That swinish, stupid, fattened lord of grounds, That hog of bumpering capacity ; With far more noise than any of his hounds. And infinitely less sagacity. TJfV rARSOiYS. 205 ITe is not now, as he was wont to bo, 80 niucli the cock of all his company, lie is not that tyrannic wise man Who, in a territory of his own, Can " bear no rival near his throne," And therefore asks to dine five days in six, That he may knock them down in politics, The unresisting lawyer and exciseman. If such a character should still remain, 'Twas not the squire who now possessed the hall ; He had not in his character a grain Of such a character at all. No ; he had travelled, and he knew, At least set up to know (which is the same For fools who get from fools a sort of name) Much about paintings, statues, and virtu. His mansion was the pink of taste and art. His charming pictures ! oh, how they delighted you ! In his saloon Egyptian monsters frighted you. And pagods on his staircase made you start. Nothing surpassed his carpets and his draperies, His clocks, chairs, tables, sofas, ottomans ; His rooms were crowded with Etruscan aperies. Fine noseless busts, and Koman pots and pans. He had a marble Venus on a stand. Wanting a leg and a right hand ; A sweeter piece of art was never found ; Had not those brutes, the sailors, rot 'em! In bringing her from Rome knock'd off her bottom, She would have sold for thirty thousand pound. 2o6 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS V/ORKS. His candlesticks, Avlien guests retired to beds, Were Cleopatras splashed with ormolu, Or squab Mark Antonies, antiquely new, With wax-lights rammed into their hands or heads. In every bedroom there were placed Knick-knackeries of wondrous taste, With shells, and spars, stuffed birds, and flies in amber ; And by the side of every bed There stood a Grecian urn instead Of what is called in France a pot-de-chamhre. To see the wonders of a house thus stocked, His London friends in shoals came down, Though he resided sixty miles from town, And parties upon parties flocked. Now they who came these vanities to view Did not care twopence for virtu ; • Nor for the dwelling, nor the dweller ; But they delighted very much to look On the rare carve-worJc of the squire's French cook, And to inspect, with special care. Those crusted vessels, dragged to air, From the great Herculaneum, his cellar. In short, whate'er the season or the weather. They kindly came to breakfast, dine, and sup, At the squire's charge, for weeks together ; Giving themselves most complaisantly up To sensuality and all iniquity ; Kissing the rural Venuses they found, With cherry-cheeks, on the squire's ground, TIVO PARSONS. 207 Till the poor damsels tliey attacked Were characters as cracked As his cracked Venus of antiquity. The Londoners thus crowding to the hall, It was no wonder That Parson Polyglot knocked under, And never poked his nose in it at all. Besides, the squire for neighbours had a dread, And always " cut the natives," as he said. An accident at last, however, granted To Parson Polyglot the very thing (As Iris said to the Rutilian King'^) That Fate ne'er promised, and he so much wanted. Some wags were on a visit to the squire, Famous adepts in practicaUe ]okmg^ Which is as much true w^it as smoke is fire. Or puffing empty pipes tobacco-smoking. These lively apes of genius, who for ever Their jests can as mechanically grind As barrel-organ men their tunes, oj^ined Hoaxing a parson was prodigious clever ! Therefore a messenger was sent. To run as fast as he was able. With more of a command than compliment, And bid Ozias to the great man's table. * ** Turne, quod optanti Bivum promittere nemo Audei'et, volvenda dies, en, attulit ultro." — Virr/. ^-Encid. 2o8 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS IVORuYS. The invitation made tlie curate start ! Though worldly vanity could never bias Till now the meek affections of Ozias, Vain-glory glowed in his parsonic heart. His eye shot ostentatious fire (The first it ever shot off in his life), When he was told by his prolific wife The message that was sent him from the squire. How oft it pains historians to relate The truths which truth obliges them to state! The fact, alas ! must out ; then it be known, The Reverend Ozias Polyglot (Much about gettings has been said), had got Only one shirt that he could call his own. He now had spared it ; And he was lying snug between Two blankets, till his Rib had washed it clean, And plaited it, and ironed it, and aired it. She had that instant hung it on the line, When the man knocked to bid him forth to dino. The parish clock struck five ; at six The great man chose his dinner hour to fix. 'Twas three miles in the dirt, Up-hill, from the poor parson's to the hall ; " Come, duck !" he cried, " make haste, and dry my shirt, *' Or else I shan't get there in time at all," Vain the attempt ! — his duck refused to try it, Swearing it was impossible to dry it. TIVO PARSONS. 209 The curate bid her pull it off the cord, And vowed into his shirt he'd get ; Says Mrs. Polyglot, " Good Lord ! "You're mad, Ozias ; vy, it's wringing vet!" " Where is my neckcloth then ?" — another rub ! 'Twas soaking at the bottom of the tub, Never was hapless preacher more perplexed ! "Woman!" he bawled, "you see how time doth press me ! In all my life I never was so vexed !" Then gulping "Damme," substituted " Bless me !" Thoughts kicked up in his brain a sort of schism : What measure to adopt or what decline ? Was he to roll in bed or go to dine ? Affront the squire or get the rheumatism ? On one side lay his interest and ambition — " A patron might so better his condition !" But then, on t'other side, His fears arose : " Folks lost the use of all their limbs or died," lie had been told, " by sitting in wet clothes." "What would my flock do, all my honest neighbours. If death should shortly end my pious labours ? Wife ! w^hat would you do if disease assailed me, And all at once my precious members failed me ?" People unblest by Fortune's gifts. Wanting clean shirts, will often find out shifts. The parson's surplice was laid by For Sabbath, neatly folded up and dry ; P 2IO COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. And from the tail of that His loving helpmate snipped a slice, Which in a trice Made him a very long and white cravat ; So long indeed — whereat he was full glad — That (though 'twas narrow) from his chin Down to his knees — Ozias being thin — It hid in front what skin Ozias had. Tied round his neck it looked extremely spruce ; He buttoned up his waistcoat to the top ; Popped on his wig, Avell floured for Sunday's use, To save expenses at the barber's shop. The clock chimed half-past five. " As I'm a sinner," The Churchman said, " I shall be very late ! But I'm equipped." He kissed his loving mate, And ran uphill through clay three miles to dinner. Critics may say, " Why did Ozias scour And scamper up so fast through clay ? Dinner at six is scarce a curate's hour ; Had not the parson dined already, pray?" Ye sages who minutely thus object. Know first the parson did it from respect. And next, no dinner could he buy that day. Pert, hireling critics ! self-sufficient elves ! Pray did you never want a meal yourselves? Ozias reached the hall, puffing and blowing. Exactly as appointed, little knowing TIFO FARSOXS. 211 How long for dinner he was doomed to wait. He knew not (simple servitor of heaven !) That fiishion's six means half-past six for seven, And seven come, the guests arrive at eight. A shoulder-knotted puppy, with a grin, Queering the threadbare curate, let him in. Passing fall many a sphinx and griffin's head, The Churchman to the drawing-room was led. No soul was there ; But — oh ! its grandeur ! — how it made him stare I The elegancies that he saw Filled the religionist with worldly awe ; The draperies and mirrors much surprised him : But when (recovering) he threw His eyes on the collection of virtu. The nudities quite shocked and scandalized Irm Titian's famed goddess, in luxurious buif. Was the first piece the parson thrust his no^