THOfl>AS 
 
 Hood 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/whimsodditiesinpOOthonn 
 
WHIMS AND ODDITIES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 " What Dpiiion liath po spsseil tliee, tnat tliou wilt never forsakf that 
 hupertineat custom at puiiiiitij^ f " 
 
 ScaiBI BROS. 
 
THE ONLY AUTHORISED EDITION. 
 
 Whims and Oddities, 
 
 In Proj^e anb lerj^e: 
 
 WITH FORTY-SEVEN ORIGINAL DESIGNS, 
 
 By THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 •* Why don't you get up behind ? " 
 
 LONDON : 
 E. MOXON, SON, & CO., DOVER STREET, W. 
 1869. 
 
PR 
 uTsn 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 PREFACE . 151 
 
 BIANCA's dream, a VENETIAN STORY . . . . 153 
 
 a ballad-singer 164 
 
 Mary's ghost 166 
 
 the progress of art 163 
 
 A SCHOOL FOR ADULTS 174 
 
 A lEGEND OF NAVARRE 180 
 
 THE DEMON-SHIP . 188 
 
 SALLY HOLT, AND THE DEATH OF JOHN HAYLOFT . .194 
 
 A TRUE STORY 199 
 
 THE DECLINE OF MRS, SHAKERLY 207 
 
 TIM TCRPIN. A PATHETIC BALLAD 210 
 
 THE MONKEY-MARTYR. A FABLE . . . . .215 
 
 BANDITTI 221 
 
 death's RAMBLE 224 
 
 CRANIOLOGY 227 
 
 AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR 232 
 
 A PARTHIAN GLANCE 235 
 
 A sailor's apology for botv-legs . . . .239 
 
 NOTHING BUT HEARTS !" 242 
 
 JACK HALL . # 246 
 
 969000 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Paw 
 
 the wee man . 258 
 
 pythagorean fancies 261 
 
 ** don't you smell fire T' 267 
 
 the volunteer 270 
 
 a marriage procession 276 
 
 the widow 280 
 
 A MAD DOG 285 
 
 JOHN TROT 290 
 
 AN ABSENTEE ......... 295 
 
 ODE TO THE CAMELEOPAUD ...... 299 
 
 A MAY-DAY • . • 303 
 
In the absence of better fiddles, I have ventured tc 
 come forward again with my little kit of fancies. 1 
 trust it will not be found an unworthy sequel to my 
 first performance ; indeed, I have done my best, in 
 the !N'ew Series, innocently to imitate a practice 
 that prevails abroad in duelling — I mean, that of the 
 Seconds giving Satisfaction. 
 
 The kind indulgence that welcomed my Volume 
 heretofore, prevents me from reiterating the same 
 apologies. The Public have learned, by this time, 
 from my rude designs, that I am no great artist, and 
 from my text, that I am no great author, but humbly 
 equivocating-, bat-like, between the two kinds ; — though 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 proud to partake in any characteristic of either. As 
 for the first particular, my hope persuades me that 
 my illustrations cannot have degenerated, so ably as I 
 have been seconded by Mr. Edward Willis, who, like 
 the humane Walter, has befriended my offspring in 
 the Wood. 
 
 In the literary part I have to plead guilty, as usual, 
 to some verbal misdemeanors ; for which, I must 
 leave my defence to Dean Swift, and the other great 
 European and Oriental Pundits. Let me suggest, 
 however, that a pun is somewhat like a cherry : though 
 there may be a slight outward indication of partition 
 — of duplicity of meaning — yet no gentleman need 
 make two bites at it against his own pleasure. To 
 accommodate certain readers, notwithstanding, I have 
 refrained from putting the majority in italics. It is 
 not every one, I am aware, that can Toler-ate a pun 
 like my Lord ^^orbury. 
 
WHIMS AND ODDITIES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 BIANCA'S DEEAM. 
 
 A VEJiETIAN STORY. 
 
 BiANCA ! — fair Bianca ! — who could dwell 
 With safety on her dark and hazel gaze, 
 
 Nor find there lurk'd in it a witching spell, 
 Fatal to balmy nights and blessed days ? 
 
 The peaceful breath that made the bosom swell, 
 She turn'd to gas, and set it in a blaze ; 
 
 Each eye of hers had Love's Eupyrion in it, 
 
 That he could light his link at in a minute. 
 
 IL 
 
 So that, wherever in her charms she shone, 
 A thousand breasts were kindled into flame ; 
 
 Maidens who cursed her looks forgot their own, 
 And beaux were turn'd to flambeaux where she came; 
 
 All hearts indeed were conquered but her own, 
 Which none could ever temper down or tame : 
 
 In short, to take our haberdasher's hints, 
 
 She might have written over it, — ^' from Flints." 
 
 L 
 
154 
 
 biakca's dee am. 
 
 III. 
 
 Slic was, in truth, tlic wonder of lier sex, 
 
 At least in Venice — where with eyes of brov^'n 
 
 Tenderly languid, ladies seldom vex 
 
 An amorous gentle with a needless frown ; 
 
 Where gondolas convey guitars by pecks, 
 
 And love at casements climbeth up and down, 
 
 "Whom for his tricks and custom in that kind, 
 
 Some have consider'd a Venetian blind. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Howbeit, this difference was quickly taught, 
 
 Amongst more youths who had this cruel jailor, 
 
 To hapless Julio — all in vain he sought 
 
 AVith each new moon his hatter and his tailor ; 
 
 In vain tlie richest padusoy he bouglit, 
 
 And went in bran new beaver to assail her — 
 
 As if to show that Love had made him smart 
 
 All over — and not merely round his heart. 
 
 V. 
 
 In vain he labour' d thro' the sylvan park 
 Bianca haunted in — that where she came, 
 
 Her learned eyes in wandering might mark 
 The twisted cipher of her maiden name, 
 
 "Wholesomely going thro' a course of bark : 
 No one was touch' d or troubled by his flame, 
 
 Except the Dryads, those old maids that grow 
 
 In trees, — like wooden dolls in embryo. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In vain complaining elegies he writ, 
 
 And taught his tuneful instrument to grieve, 
 
 And sang in quavers how^ his heart was split. 
 Constant beneath her lattice with each eve ; 
 
bianca's deeam. 
 
 She mock'd liis wooing with her wicked wit, 
 
 And slash'd his suit so that it match'd his sleeve 
 Till he grew silent at the vesper star, 
 And quite despairing, ham string' d his guitar. 
 
 VTT. 
 
 Eianca's heart was coldly frosted o'er 
 
 With snows unmeltiug — an eternal sheet, 
 
 But his was red within him, like the core 
 Of old Vesuvius, with perpetual heat ; 
 
 And oft he long'd internally to pour 
 His flames and glowing lava at her feet, 
 
 Eut when his burnings he began to spout. 
 
 She stopp'd his mouth, and put the crater out. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Meanwhile he wasted in the eyes of men. 
 So thin, he seem'd a sort of skeleton-key 
 
 Suspended at death's door — so pale — and then 
 He turn'd as nervous as an aspen tree ; 
 
 The life of man is three-score years and ten, 
 Eut he was perishing at twenty-three, 
 
 For people truly said, as grief grew stronger, 
 
 " It could not shorten his poor life — much longer.' 
 
 IX. 
 
 For why, he neither slept, nor drank, nor fed, 
 Nor relish' d any kind of mirth below ; 
 
 Pire in his heart, and frenzy in his head. 
 Love had become his universal foe. 
 
 Salt in his sugar — nightmare in his bed. 
 At last, no wonder wretched Julio, 
 
 A sorrow-ridden thing, in utter dearth 
 
 Of hope — made up his mmd to cut her girth ! 
 
156 
 
 bianca's deeam. 
 
 X. 
 
 Tor liapless lovers always died of old, 
 
 Sooner than chew reflection's bitter cud ; 
 
 So Thisbe stuck herself, what time 'tis told, 
 The tender-hearted mulberries wept blood ; 
 
 And so poor Sappho, when her boy was cold, 
 Drown'd her salt tear-drops in a Salter flood, 
 
 Their fame still breathing, tho' their breath be past, 
 
 For those old suitors lived beyond their last. 
 
 XI. 
 
 So Julio went to drown, — when life w^as dull. 
 But took his corks, and merely had a bath ; 
 
 And once, he pnll'd a trigger at his skull. 
 But merely broke a window in his wrath ; 
 
 And once, his hopeless being to annul. 
 He tied a pack-thread to a beam of lath, 
 
 A line so ample, 'twas a query whether 
 
 'Twas meant to be a halter or a tether. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Smile not in scorn, that Julio did not thrust 
 His sorrows thro' — 'tis horrible to die ! 
 
 And come down with our little all of dust, 
 That dun of all the duns to satisfy : 
 
 To leave life's pleasant city as we must. 
 
 In Death's most dreary spunging-house to lie, 
 
 Where even all our personals must go 
 
 To pay the debt of Nature that we owe ' 
 
 XIII. 
 
 So Julio lived : — 'twas nothing but a pet 
 
 He took at life — a momentary spite ; 
 Besides, he hoped that time would some day get 
 
 The better of love's flame, however bright; 
 
BI1KCA*S DEEAM. 
 
 157 
 
 A tiling that time lias never compass' d yet, 
 For love, wc know, is an imm.ortal light ; 
 Like that old fire, that, quite beyond a doubt, 
 Was always in, — for none have found it oat. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Meanwhile, Bianca dream' d — 'twas once when Night 
 Along the darken'd plain began to creep, 
 
 Like a young Hottentot, whose eyes are bright, 
 Altho' in skin as sooty as a sweep : 
 
 The flow'rs had shut their eyes — the zephyr light 
 Was gone, for it had rock'd the leaves to sleep ; 
 
 And all the little birds had laid their heads 
 
 Under their wings — sleeping in feather beds. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Lone in her chamber sate the dark-eyed maid. 
 By easy stages jaunting thro' her prayers, 
 
 But list'ning side-long to a serenade, 
 
 That robb'd the saints a little of their shares : 
 
 For Julio underneath the lattice play'd 
 His Deh Vieni, and such amorous airs. 
 
 Born only underneath Italian skies. 
 
 Where every fiddle has a Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Sweet was the tune — the w^ords were even sweeter — 
 Praising her eyes, her lip^, her nose, her hair. 
 
 With all the common tropes wherewith in metre 
 The hackney poets overcharge their fair. 
 
 Her shape was like Diana's but completer ; 
 
 Her brow with Grecian Helen's might compare : 
 
 Cupid, alas ! was cruel Sagittarius, 
 
 Julio — the weeping water-man Aquarius. 
 
158 
 
 bianca's dkeam. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Now, after listing to sucli laudings rare, 
 
 'Twas verj natural indeed to go — 
 "What if she did postpone one little prayer — 
 
 To ask her mirror " if it was not so ?" 
 'Twas a large mirror, none the worse for wear, 
 
 Reflecting her at once from top to toe : 
 And there she gazed upon that glossy track, 
 That show'd her front face tho' it " gave her back." 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 A.nd long her lovely eyes were held in tlirall, 
 By that dear page where first the woman reads : 
 
 That Julio was no flatt'rer, none at all, 
 
 She told herself — and then she told her beads ; 
 
 Meanwhile, the nerves insensibly let fall 
 Two curtains fairer than the lily breeds ; 
 
 For Sleep had crept and kiss'd her unawares. 
 
 Just at the half-way milestone of her prayers. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Then like a drooping rose so bended she, 
 Till her bow'd head upon her hand reposed ; 
 
 But still she plainly saw, or seem'd to see. 
 That fair reflection, tho' her eyes were closed, 
 
 A beauty bright as it Avas wont to be, 
 
 A portrait Fancy painted while she dozed : 
 
 'Tis very natural, some people say. 
 
 To dream of what we dwell on in the day. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Still shone her face — yet not, alas ! the same, 
 But 'gan some dreary touches to assume. 
 
 And sadder thoughts, with sadder changes came— 
 ller eyes resign' d their light, her lips their bloom, 
 
biaxca's deeam. 
 
 159 
 
 Hor teeth fell out, ber tresses did the same, 
 
 Her cheeks were thigedwithbile, her eyes with rheum: 
 There was a throbbing at her heart within, 
 For, oh ! there was a shooting in her chin. 
 
 XX r. 
 
 And lo ! upon her sad desponding brow, 
 
 The cruel trenches of besieging age. 
 With seams, but most unseemly, 'gan to show 
 
 Her place was booking for the seventh stage ; 
 And where her raven tresses used to flow. 
 
 Some locks that Time had left her in his rage, 
 And some mock ringlets, made her forehead shady, 
 A com. pound (like our Psalms) of tete and braidy. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Then for her shape — alas ! how Saturn wrecks, 
 And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about, 
 
 Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks. 
 Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout, 
 
 Makes backs and stomaclis concave or convex : 
 Witness those pensioners call'd In and Out, 
 
 Who all day watching first and second rater, 
 
 Quaintly unbend themselves — but grow no straighter. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 So Time with fair Bianca dealt, and made 
 
 Her shape a bow, that once was like an arrow ; 
 
 His iron hand upon her spine he laid, 
 
 And twisted all awry her " winsom.e marrow." 
 
 In truth it was a change ! — she had obey'd 
 The holy Pope before her chest grew narrow, 
 
 But spectacles and palsy seem'd to make her 
 
 Something between a Glassite and a Quaker. 
 
IGO bianca's dream. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Her grief and gall meanwhile were quite extreme, 
 And she had ample reason for her trouble ; 
 
 For what sad maiden can endure to seem 
 Set in for singleness, tho' growing double. 
 
 The fancy madden'd her ; but now the dream, 
 Grown thin by getting bigger, like a bubble, 
 
 Burst, — but still left some fragments of its size, 
 
 That, like the soapsuds, smarted in her eyes. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And here — just here — as she began to heed 
 The real world, her clock chimed out its score ; 
 
 A clock it was of the Venetian breed, 
 
 That cried the hour from one to twenty-four ; 
 
 The works moreover standing in some need 
 Of workmanship, it struck some dozens more ; 
 
 A warning voice that clench'd Bianca's fears, 
 
 Such strokes referring doubtless to her years. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 At fifteen chimes she was but half a nun, 
 By twenty she had quite renounced the veil ; 
 
 She thought of Julio just at twenty-one, 
 And thirty made her very sad and pale. 
 
 To paint that rum where her charms would run ; 
 At forty all the maid began to fail. 
 
 And thought no higher, as the late dream cross' d her, 
 
 Of single blessedness, than single Gloster. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 And so Bianca changed ; — the next sweet even, 
 
 With Julio in a black Venetian bark, 
 Eow'd slow and stealthily — the hour, eleven, 
 
 Just sounding from the tower of old St. Mark. 
 
biakca's dream. 
 
 161 
 
 She sate with ejes turn'd quietly to heav'n, 
 
 Perchance rejoicing in the grateful dark 
 That veil'd her blushing cheek, — for Julio brought her 
 Of course— to break the ice upon the water. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Eut what a puzzle is one's serious mind 
 To open ; — oysters, when the ice is thick, 
 
 Are not so difficult and disinclin'd ; 
 And Julio felt the declaration stick 
 
 About his throat in a most awful kind ; 
 However, he contrived by bits to pick 
 
 His trouble forth, — much like a rotten cork 
 
 Grop'd from a long-neck' d bottle with a fork. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Eut love is still the quickest of all readers ; 
 
 And Julio spent besides those signs profuse 
 That English telegraphs and foreign pleaders, 
 
 In help of language, are so apt to use, 
 Arms, shoulders, fingers, all were interceders, 
 
 JSTods, shrugs, and bends, — Eianca could not choose 
 Eut soften to his suit with more facility, 
 He told his story with so much agility. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Ee thou my park, and I will be thy dear, 
 (So he began at last to speak or quote :) 
 
 Ee thou my bark, and I thy gondolier, 
 (For passion takes this figurative note ;) 
 
 Ee thou my light, and I thy chandelier ; 
 Ee thou my dove, and I will be thy cote : 
 
 My lily be, and I will be thy river ; 
 
 Be thou my life — and I will be thy liver." 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 biakca's dee am. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 This, with more tender logic of the kind, 
 He pour'd into her small and shell-like ear, 
 
 That timidly against his lips inclin'd ; 
 
 Meanwhile her eyes glanc'd on the silver sphere 
 
 That even now began to steal behind 
 
 A dewy vapour, which was lingering near. 
 
 Wherein the dull moon crept all dim and pale, 
 
 Just like a virgin putting on the veil : — 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Bidding adieu to all her sparks — the stars, 
 
 That erst had woo'd and worshipp'd in her train, 
 
 Saturn and Hesperus, and gallant Mars — 
 Never to flirt with heavenly eyes again. 
 
 Meanwhile, remindful of the convent bars, 
 Bianca did not watch these signs in vain, 
 
 But turn'd to Julio at the dark eclipse. 
 
 With words, like verbal kisses, on her lips. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 He took the hint full speedily, and, back'd 
 
 By love, and night, and the occasion's meetness, 
 
 Bestow'd a something on her cheek that smack'd 
 (Tho' quite' in silence) of ambrosial sweetness; 
 
 That made her think all other kisses lack'd 
 
 Till then, but what she knew not, of completeness : 
 
 Being used but sisterly salutes to feel. 
 
 Insipid things — like sandwiches of veal. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 He took her hand, and soon she felt him wring 
 
 The pretty fingers all instead of one ; 
 Anon his stealthy arm began to cling 
 
 About her waist that had been clasp'd by none ; 
 
biakca's deeam. 
 
 Their dear confessions I forbear to sing, 
 Since cold description would but be outrun 
 
 For bliss and Irish watches have the pow'r, 
 In twenty minutes, to lose half an hour ! 
 
 IN-AND-OFT PEN3I0NEJ?«, 
 
164 
 
 A BALLAD SINGEE 
 
 Is a town crier for the advertising of lost tunes. Hun- 
 ger hath made him a wind instrument : his want is 
 vocal, and not he. His voice had gone a-begging 
 before he took it up and applied it to the same trade ; 
 it was too strong to hawk mackarel, but was just soft 
 enough for Eobin Adair. His business is to make 
 popular songs unpopular, — he gives the air, like a 
 weather-cock, with manv variations. As for a key, he 
 has but one — a latch-key — for all manner of tunes ; 
 and as they are to pass current amongst the lower 
 sorts of people, he makes his notes like a country 
 banker's, as thick as he can. His tones have a 
 copper sound, for he sounds for copper ; and for the 
 musical divisions he hath no regard, but sings on, like 
 a kettle, without taking any heed of the bars. Before 
 beginning he clears his pipe with gin ; and he is 
 always hoarse from the thorough draft in his throat. 
 He hath but one shake, and that is in winter. His 
 voice sounds flat, from flatulence ; and he fetches 
 breath, like a drowning kitten, whenever he can. 
 JSTotwithstanding all this his music gains ground, for 
 it walks with him from end to end of the street. 
 
 He is your only performer that requires not many 
 entreaties for a song ; for he will chaunfc, without 
 asking, to a street cur or a parish post. His only 
 
A BALLAD SINGEE. 
 
 165 
 
 backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that lie 
 never dines ; for lie sings for bread, and though corn has 
 ears, sings very commonly in vain. As for his country 
 he is an Englishman, that by his birthright may sing 
 whether he can or not. To conclude, he is reckoned 
 passable in the city, but is not so good off the stones. 
 
166 
 
 MAEY'S GHOST. 
 
 A PATHETIC BALLAD, 
 
 "gin a body meet a body.' 
 
 'TwAS in the middle of the night, 
 To sleep young William tried, 
 
 When Mary's ghost came stealing in, 
 And stood at his bed-side. 
 
mart's ghost. 
 
 IL 
 
 0 William dear ! O "William dear ! 
 My rest eternal ceases : 
 
 Alas ! my everlasting peace 
 Is broken into pieces. 
 
 III. 
 
 1 tlionglit the last of all my cares 
 Would end with my last minute ; 
 
 But tho' I went to my long home, 
 I didn't stay long in it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The body-snatchers they have come, 
 
 And made a snatch at me ; 
 It's very hard them kind of men 
 
 Won't let a body be ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Ton thought that I was buried deep. 
 Quite decent like and chary, 
 
 But from her grave in Mary-bone 
 They've come and bon'd your Mary. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The arm that us'd to take your arm 
 
 Is took to Dr. Vyse ; 
 And both my legs are gone to walk 
 
 The hospital at Guy's. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I vow'd that you should have my hand, 
 
 But fate gives us denial ; 
 You'll find it there, at Doctor Bell's, 
 
 In spirits and a phial. 
 
Mary's ghost. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 As for my feet, the little feet 
 You used to call so pretty, 
 
 There's one, I know, in Bedford Eow, 
 The t' other's in the city. 
 
 IX. 
 
 I can't tell where my head is gone, 
 
 But Doctor Carpue can : 
 As for my trunk, it's all pack'd up 
 
 To go by Pickford's van. 
 
 X. 
 
 I wish you'd go to Mr. P. 
 
 And save me such a ride ; 
 I don't half like the outside place, 
 
 They've took for my inside. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The cock it crows — I must be gone ! 
 
 My William, we must part ! 
 But I'll be your's in death, altho' 
 
 Sir Astley has my heart. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Don't go to weep upon my grave, 
 And think that there I be ; 
 
 They haven't left an atom there 
 Of my anatomic. 
 
169 
 
 THE PEOGRESS OF ART. 
 
 INFANT GENIUS. 
 
 O HAPPY time ! Art's early days ! 
 
 AVhen o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise, 
 
 Narcissus-like I hung ! 
 "When great Rembrandt but little seem'd, 
 And such Old Masters all were deem'd 
 
 As nothing to the young ! 
 
THE PROGEESS OF ARl'. 
 
 II. 
 
 Some scratchy strokes — abrupt and few, 
 So easily and swift I drew, 
 
 Sufficed for my design ; 
 My sketchy, superficial hand, 
 Drew solids at a dash — and spanned 
 
 A surface with a line. 
 
 ni. 
 
 Not long my eye was thus content, 
 But grew more critical — my bent 
 
 Essay'd a higher walk ; 
 I copied leaden eyes in lead — 
 Rheumatic hands in white and red. 
 
 And gouty feet — in chalk. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Anon my studious art for days 
 Kept making faces — happy phrase, 
 
 Tor faces such as mine ! 
 Accomplished in the details then, 
 I left the minor parts of men, 
 
 And drew the form divine. 
 
 V. 
 
 Old Gods and Heroes — Trojan — Greek, 
 Figures — long after the antique, 
 
 Great Ajax justly fear'd ; 
 Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt, 
 And Nestor, fring'd enough to tempt 
 
 Bird-nesters to his beard. 
 
THE PEOGEESS OF AET. 
 
 TL 
 
 A Bacclius, leering on a bowl, 
 A Pallas, that out-star' d her owl, 
 
 A Vulcan — very lame ; 
 A Dian stuck about with stars, 
 "With my right hand I murder' d Mars— 
 
 (One "Williams did the same.) 
 
 VII. 
 
 But tir'd of this dry work at last, 
 Crayon and chalk aside I east. 
 
 And gave my brush a drink ! 
 Dipping — as when a painter dips 
 In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,"— 
 
 That is — in Indian ink. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Oh then, what black Mont Blancs arose^ 
 Crested with soot, and not with snows : 
 
 What clouds of dingy hue ! 
 In spite of what the bard has penn'd, 
 I fear the distance did not " lend 
 
 Enchantment to the view," 
 
 IX. 
 
 Not Eadclyffe's brush did e'er design 
 Black Forests, half so black as mine, 
 
 Or lakes so like a pall ; 
 The Chinese cake dispers'd a ray 
 Of darkness, like the light of Daj 
 
 And Martm over all. 
 
THE PROGllESS OE ART. 
 
 Yet urcliin pride sustain' d me still, 
 I gaz'd on all with right good will, 
 And spread the dingy tint ; 
 No holy Luke help'd me to paint. 
 The devil surely, not a Saint, 
 Had any finger in't ! " 
 
 XI. 
 
 But colours came ! — like morning light, 
 "With gorgeous hues displacing night, 
 
 Or Spring's enliven' d scene : 
 At once the sable shades withdrew ; 
 My skies got very, very blue ; 
 
 My trees extremely green. 
 
 XII. 
 
 And wash'd by my cosmetic brush, 
 How Beauty's cheek began to blush ; 
 
 With lock of auburn stain — 
 (ISTot Groldsmith's Auburn) — nut-brown hair, 
 That made her loveliest of the fair ; 
 
 jSTot " lovehest of the plain ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Her lips were of vermilion hue ; 
 Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue, 
 
 Set all my heart in flame ! 
 A young Pygmalion, I ador'd 
 The maids I made — but time was stor'd 
 
 With evil — and it came ! 
 
THE PllOGEESS OF AET. 
 
 173 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Perspective dawn'd — and soon I saw 
 My houses stand against its law ; 
 
 And " keeping " all unkept ! 
 My beauties were no longer things 
 For love and fond imaginings ; 
 
 But horrors to be wept ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 A-h ! why did knowledge ope my eyes ? 
 Why did I get more artist-wise ? 
 
 It only serves to hint, 
 "What grave defects and wants are mine ; 
 That I'm no Hilton in design — 
 
 In nature no Dewint ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Thrice happy time ! — Art's early days ! 
 When o'er each deed, with sweet self-praise, 
 
 Narcissus-like I hung ! 
 When great Eembrandt but little seemVi, 
 And such Old Masters all were deem'd 
 
 As nothing to the young ! 
 
174 
 
 A SCHOOL FOE ADULTS. 
 
 BETTER LATE THAN NEVEB." 
 
 Servant. How well you saw 
 
 Your father to school to-day, knowmg how apt 
 
 He is to play the truant. 
 Son. But is he not 
 
 Yet gone to school ? 
 Servant. Stand by, and you shall see. 
 
 Enter three Old Men with satchels, sittghig. 
 
 All TJiree. Homine, Domine, duster, 
 
 Three knaves in a cluster. 
 Son. O this is gallant pastime. Nay, come on ; 
 
 Is this your school ? was that your lesson, ha? 
 
A SCHOOL FOR ADULTS. 
 
 175 
 
 lit Old Man. 
 Son. 
 
 2d Old Man. 
 3d Old Man. 
 Son. 
 
 All Three. 
 Lady. 
 
 Ti^aveller. 
 Native. 
 
 Traveller. 
 
 All Three. 
 
 Pray, now, good sou, indeed, indeed — 
 Indeed 
 
 You shall to school. Away with him ! and take 
 
 Their wagships with him, the whole cluster of them. 
 
 You shan't send us, now, so you shan't — 
 
 We be none of your father, so we be'nt. — 
 
 Away with 'em, I say ; and tell their school-mistress 
 
 What truants they are, and bid her pay *em soundly. 
 
 Oh ! oh ! oh ! 
 
 Alas ! will nobody beg pardon for 
 The poo old boys? 
 
 Do men of such fair years here go to school ? 
 They would die dunces else. 
 
 These were great scholars in their youth ; but when 
 Age grows upon men here, their learning wastes, 
 And so decays, that, if they live until 
 Threescore, their sons send 'em to school again ; 
 They'd die as speechless else as new-born children. 
 'Tis a wise nation, and the piety 
 Of the young men most rare and commendable : 
 Yet give me, as a stranger, leave to beg 
 Their liberty this day. 
 'Tis granted. 
 
 Hold up your heads ; and thank the gentleman, 
 Like scholars, with your heels now. 
 Gratias ! Gratias ! Gratias ! [Exeunt Sin^viff. ] 
 
 "The Antipodes,"— R. Br<yim. 
 
 Amongst tlie foundations for the promotion of National 
 Education, I had heard of Schools for Adults ; but 
 I doubted of their existence. They were, I thought, 
 merely the fancies of old dramatists, such as that 
 scene just quoted ; or the suggestions of philan- 
 thropists — the theoretical buildings of modern philoso- 
 phers — benevolent prospectuses drawn up by warm- 
 hearted enthusiasts, but of schemes never to be 
 realized. They were probably only the bubble projec- 
 tions of a junto of interested pedagogues, not content 
 with the entrance monies of the rising generation, but 
 aiming to exact a premium from the unlettered gray- 
 
176 
 
 A SCHOOL FOR ADULTS. 
 
 beard. The age, I argued, was not ripe, for sucb 
 institutions, in spite of the spread of intelligence, and 
 the vast power of knowledge insisted on by the public 
 journalist. I could not conceive a set of men, or 
 gentlemen, of mature years, if not aged, entering 
 themselves as members of preparatory schools, and 
 petty seminaries, in defiance of shame, humiliation, 
 and the contumely of a literary age. It seemed too 
 whimsical to contemplate fathers, and venerable grand- 
 fathers, emulating the infant generation, and seeking 
 for instruction in the rudiments. My imagination 
 refused to picture the hoary abecedarian, 
 
 'With satctel on his back, and sliming morning face, 
 Creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school." 
 
 Fancy grew restive at a patriarchal ignoramus with a 
 fool's-cap, and a rod thrust down his bosom ; at a 
 palsied truant dodging the palmy inflictions of the 
 cane ; or a silver-headed dunce horsed on a pair of 
 rheumatic shoulders for a paralytic flagellation. The 
 picture notwithstanding is realized ! Elderly people 
 seem to have considered that they will be as awkwardly 
 situated in the other world, as here, without their 
 alphabet, — and Schools for Grown Persons to learn to 
 read, are no more Utopian than New Harmony. The 
 following letter from an old gentleman, whose educa- 
 tion had been neglected, confirms me in the fact. It 
 is copied, verbatim and literatim, from the original, 
 which fell into my hands by accident. 
 
 Deer Brother, -^^^^^ Eeath, November, 1827. . 
 
 My honnerd Parents being Both desist 
 I feal my deuty to give you Sum Acount of the Prog- 
 gress I have maid in my studdys since last Vocation 
 
A SCHOOL rOE ADULTS. 
 
 177 
 
 You will be gratefied to hear I am at the Hed of my 
 Class and Tom Hodges is at its Bottom, tlio He was 
 Seventy last Burth Day and I am onely going on for 
 Three Skore. I have begun Gografy and do exsizes 
 on the Grlobs. In figgers I am all most out the foro 
 Simples and going into Compounds next weak. In 
 the mean time hop you will aprove my Hand riting as 
 well as my Speling witch I have took grate panes with 
 as you desird. As for the French Tung Mr. Legender 
 says I shall soon get the pronounciation as well as a 
 Parishiner but the Master thinks its not advisible to 
 begin Lattin at my advanced ears. 
 
 With respecks to my Pears onal comfits I am verry 
 happy and midling "Well xcept the old Cumplant in 
 my To — but the Master is so kind as to let me have a 
 Cushin for my feat. If their is any thing to cumplane 
 of its the Vittles. Our Cook dont understand Maid 
 dishe. Her Currys is xcrabble. Tom Hodges Foot 
 Man brings him Evry Day soop from Birches. I wish 
 you providid me the same. On the hole I wish on 
 menny Acounts I was a Day border partickly as 
 Barlow sleeps in our Eoom and colFs all nite long. 
 His brother's Ashmy is wus then his. He has took 
 lately to snuff and I have wishes to do the like. Its 
 very dull after Supper since Mr. Grierson took away 
 the fellers Pips, and forbid smocking, and allmost 
 raized a Biot on that hed, and some of the Boys v»'a3 
 to have Been horst for it. I am happy (to) say I 
 have never been floged as yet and onely Caind once and 
 that was for damming at the Cooks chops becous they 
 was so overdun, but there was to have been fore Wiped 
 yeaster day for Playing "Wist in skool hours, but was 
 Begd off on acount of their Lumbargo. 
 
 I am sorry to say Ponder has had another Stroak of 
 
 K 
 
178 
 
 A SCHOOL FOR ADULTS. 
 
 the perrylaticks and has no Use of his Lims. He is 
 Parrs fag — and Parr has got the Eoomytix bysidea 
 very bad but luckly its onely stiffind one Arm so he 
 has still Hops to get the Star for Heliocution. Poor 
 Dick Combs eye site has quite gone or he would nave 
 a good chance for the Silvur Pen. 
 
 Mundy was one of the Fellers Burths Days and 
 we was to have a hole Holiday but he dyed sudnly over 
 cite of the appoplxy and disappinted us verry much. 
 Two moor was fetcht home last Weak so that we are 
 getting very thin partickly when we go out Wauking, 
 witch is seldom more than three at a time, their is 
 allways so menny in the nusry. I forgot to say Grar- 
 rat run off a month ago he got verry Homesick ever 
 since his Granchilderen cum to sea him at skool, — 
 Mr. Grierson has expeld him for running away. 
 
 On Tuesday a new Schollard cum. He is a very old 
 crusty Chap and not much lick'd for that resin by the 
 rest of the Boys, whom all Teas him, and call him Phig 
 because he is a retired Grosser. Mr. Grierson declind 
 another New Boy because he hadn't had the Mizzles. 
 I have red Gays Pebbles and the other books Ton 
 were so kind to send me — and would be glad of moor 
 partickly the Gentleman s with a Welsh Whig and a 
 Worming Pan when you fore ward my Closebox with my 
 clean Lining like wise sum moor Pleasy Hoshery for 
 my legs and the Cardmums I rit for with the Prench 
 Grammer &c. Also weather I am to Dance next 
 quarter. The Gimnystacks is being interdeuced into 
 our Skool but is so Yoilent no one follows them but 
 Old Parr and He cant get up his Pole. 
 
 I have no more to rite but hop this letter will 
 find you as Well as me ; Mr. Grierson is in Morning 
 for Mr. Linly Murry of whose loss you have herd of 
 
A SCHOOL ISOn ADULTS. 
 
 179 
 
 ^xcept which he is in Quite good Helth and desires 
 his Eespective Complements with witch I remane 
 Your deutiful and 
 
 loving Brother 
 
 S.P. Barlow and Phigg have just had a fite in the 
 Yard about calling names and Phigg has pegged 
 Barlows tooth out But it was loose before. Mr. Gr. 
 dont allow Puglism, if he nose it among the Bojs, as at 
 their Times of lifes it might be fatle partickly fron3 
 puling their Coats of in the open Are. 
 
 Our new Husher his cum and is verrj well Red in 
 his Mother's tung, witch is the mane thing with 
 Beginers but We wish the Prentch Master was changed 
 on Acount of his Polly ticks and Eeligun. Brassbrige 
 and him is always Squabling about Bonnyparty and 
 the Pop of Eoom. Has for Barlow we cant tell 
 weather He is "Wig or Tory for he cant express his 
 Sentymints for Coffing. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 A LEGEND OF NAVAKKE, 
 
 THE SPARE BED. 
 
 'TwAS in tlie reign of Lewis, call'd the Great, 
 As one may read on his triumphal arches, 
 
 The thing befel I'm going to relate, 
 
 In course of one of those " pomposo " marches 
 
 He lov'd to make, like any gorgeous Persian, 
 
 Partly for war, and partly for diversion. 
 
A LEGEND OE KAYABRE. 
 
 181 
 
 II. 
 
 Some wag had put it in the royal brain 
 
 To drop a visit at an old chateau, 
 Quite unexpected, with his courtlj train ; 
 
 The monarch lik'd it, — but it happened so, 
 That Death had got before them by a post, 
 And they were "reckoning without their liost,^^ 
 
 III. 
 
 "Who died exactly as a child should die, 
 Without one groan or a convulsive breath, 
 
 Closing without one pang his quiet eye, 
 Sliding composedly from sleep — to death ; 
 
 A corpse so placid ne'er adorn' d a bed, 
 
 He seem'd not quite — but only rather dead. 
 
 IV. 
 
 All night the widow' d Baroness contriv'd 
 To shed a widow's tears ; but on the morrow 
 
 Some news of such unusual sort arriv'd, 
 
 There came strange alteration in her sorrow ; 
 
 From mouth to mouth it pass'd, one common humming 
 
 Throughout the house — the King! the King is coming] 
 
 v. 
 
 The Baroness, with all her soul and heart, 
 A loyal woman, (now called ultra royal,) 
 
 Soon thrust all funeral concerns apart, 
 And only thought about a banquet-royal ; 
 
 In short, by aid of earnest preparation. 
 
 The visit quite dismiss' d the visitation. 
 
182 
 
 A LEGEIs^D OE NAYAIIRE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And, spite of all her grief for tlie ex-mate, 
 
 There was a secret hope she could not smother, 
 
 That some one, earlj, might replace "the late " — 
 It was too soon to think about another ; 
 
 Yet let her minutes of despair be reckon' d 
 
 Against her hope, which was but for a second, 
 
 vn. 
 
 She almost thought that being thus bereft 
 
 Just then, was one of time's propitious touches ; 
 
 A thread in such a nick so nick'd, it left 
 Eree opportunity to be a duchess ; 
 
 Thus all her care was only to look pleasant, 
 
 But as for tears — she dropp'd them — fjr the present 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Her household, as good servants ought to try, 
 Look'd like their lady — any thing but sad. 
 
 And giggled even that they might not cry, 
 To damp fine company ; in truth they had 
 
 No time to mourn, thro' choking turkeys' throttles. 
 
 Scouring old laces, and reviewing bottles, 
 
 IX. 
 
 Oh what a hubbub for the house of woe ! 
 
 All, resolute to one irresolution. 
 Kept tearing, swearing, plunging to and fro, 
 
 Just like another French mob-revolution. 
 There lay the corpse that could not stir a muscle, 
 But all the rest seem'd Chaos in a bustle. 
 
A LEGEND or NAYAEEE. 
 
 The Monarch came : oh ! who could ever guess 
 The Baroness had been so late a weeper ! 
 
 The kingly grace and more than graciousness, 
 Buried the poor defunct some fathoms deeper,- 
 
 Could he have had a glance — alas, poor Being ! 
 
 Seeing would certainly have led to D — ing. 
 
 XI. 
 
 For casting round about her eyes to find 
 Some one to whom her chattels to endorse, 
 
 The comfortable dame at last inclin'd 
 
 To choose the cheerful Master of the Horse ; 
 
 He was so gay, — so tender, — the complete 
 
 Nice man, — the sweetest of the monarch's suite. 
 
 XII. 
 
 He saw at once and enter' d in the lists — 
 Glance unto glance made amorous replies ; 
 
 They talk'd together like two egotists, 
 In conversation all made up of eyes : 
 
 No couple ever got so right consort-ish 
 
 "Within two hours — a courtship rather shortish. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 At last, some sleepy, some by wine opprest. 
 The courtly company began " nid noddin ; '* 
 
 The King first sought his chamber, and the rest 
 Instanter followed by the course he trod in. 
 
 I shall not please the scandalous by showing 
 
 The order, or disorder of their going. 
 
184 
 
 A LEGEND OF NAVARRE. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The old Chateau, before that night, had never 
 Held half so many underneath its roof ; 
 
 It task'd the Baroness's best endeavour, 
 And put her best contrivance to the proof. 
 
 To give them chambers up and down the stairs, 
 
 In twos and threes, by singles, and by pairs. 
 
 XV. 
 
 She had just lodging for the whole — yet barely ; 
 
 And some, that were both broad of back and tall, 
 Lay on spare beds that served them very sparely ; 
 
 However, there were beds enough for all ; 
 But living bodies occupied so many, 
 She could not let the dead one take up any ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The act was, certainly, not over decent : 
 
 Some small respect, e'en after death, she ow'd him, 
 
 Considering his death had been so recent ; 
 
 However, by command, her servants stow'd him, 
 
 (I am asham'd to think how he was slubber'd,) 
 
 Stuck bolt upright within a corner cupboard ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And there he slept as soundly as a post. 
 With no more pillow than an oaken shelf ; 
 
 Just like a kind accommodating host. 
 Taking all inconvenience on himself ; 
 
 None else slept in that room, except a stranger, 
 
 A decent man, a sort of Forest Eanger. 
 
A LEGEND Or KAVARRE. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Who, whether he had gone too soon to bed, 
 Or dreamt himself into an appetite, 
 
 Howbeit, he took a longing to be fed, 
 About the hungry middle of the night ; 
 
 So getting forth, he sought some scrap to eat, 
 
 Hopeful of some stray pasty, or cold meat. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The casual glances of the midnight moon, 
 
 Bright'ning some antique ornaments of brass, 
 
 Guided his gropings to that corner soon. 
 Just where it stood, the coffin-safe, alas ! 
 
 He tried the door — then shook it — and in course 
 
 Of time it opened to a little force. 
 
 XX. 
 
 He put one hand in, and began to grope ; 
 
 The place was very deep and quite as dark as 
 The middle night ; — when lo ! beyond his hope, 
 
 He felt a something cold, in fact, the carcase ; 
 Eight overjoy' d, he laugh' d, and blest his luck 
 At finding, as he thought, this haunch of buck ! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Then striding back for his couteau de chasse, 
 Determin'd on a little midnight lunching, 
 
 He came again and prob'd about the mass. 
 As if to find the fattest bit for munching ; 
 
 Not meaning wastefully to cut it all up, 
 
 But only to abstract a little collop. 
 
A LEGEND OJf JSTAYARKa. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 But just as lie liad struck one greedy stroke, 
 His hand fell down quite powerless and weak ; 
 
 Tor when he cut the haunch it plainly spoke 
 As haunch of ven'son never ought to speak ; 
 
 No wonder that his hand could go no further — 
 
 Whose could? — to carve cold meat that bellow' d, 
 " murther ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Down came the Eody with a bounce, and down 
 The Eanger sprang, a staircase at a spring, 
 
 And bawl'd enough to waken up a town ; 
 
 Some thought that were murder' d, some, the King, 
 
 And, like Macduff, did nothing for a season. 
 
 But stand upon the spot and bellow, Treason ! " 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A hundred nightcaps gather' d in a mob. 
 
 Torches drew torches, swordsbrought swords together, 
 It seem'd so dark and perilous a job ; 
 
 The Baroness came trembling like a feather 
 Just in the rear, as pallid as a corse. 
 Leaning against the Master of the Horse. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 A dozen of the bravest up the stair. 
 
 Well lighted and well watch' d, began to clamber ; 
 They sought the door — they found it — they were there, 
 
 A dozen heads went poking in the chamber ; 
 And lo ! with one hand planted on his hurt. 
 There stood the Body bleeding thro his shirt, — 
 
A LEGEND OF NAVARSE. 
 
 187 
 
 XXVL 
 
 No passive corse — but like a duellist 
 
 Just smarting from a scratch — in fierce position, 
 One hand advanc'd, and ready to resist ; 
 
 In fact, the Baron doff'd the apparition, 
 Swearing those oaths the French delight in most, 
 And for the second time " gave up the ghost ! " 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 A living miracle ! — for why ? — the knife 
 
 That cuts so many off from grave gray hairs, 
 
 Had only carv'd him kindly into life : 
 
 How soon it chang'd the posture of affairs ! 
 
 The difference one person more or less 
 
 Will make in families, is past all guess. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 There stood the Baroness — no widow yet : 
 Here stood the Baron — " in the body " still : 
 
 There stood the Horses' Master in a pet, 
 Choking with disappointment's bitter pill, 
 
 To see the hope of his reversion fail, 
 
 Like that of riding on a donkey's tail. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 The Baron liv'd — 'twas nothing but a trance : 
 The lady died — 'twas nothing but a death : 
 
 The cupboard-cut serv'd only to enhance 
 
 This postscript to the old Baronial breath :~ 
 
 He soon forgave, for the revival's sake, 
 
 A little cho^ intended for a steak I 
 
188 
 
 THE DEMON-SHIP, 
 
 THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. 
 
 Stories of storm-ships and haunted vessels, of 
 Bpectre-sballops, and supernatural Dutch doggers, are 
 common to many countries, and are well attested both 
 in poetry and prose. The adventures of Solway 
 sailors, with Mahound, in his bottomless barges, and 
 the careerings of the phantom-ship up and down the 
 Hudson, have hundreds of asserters besides Messrs. 
 CunniDgham and Crayon; and to doubt their authen- 
 ticity may seem like an imitation of the desperate 
 
THE DEMOK-SHIP. 
 
 189 
 
 sailing of the haunted vessels themselves against wind 
 and tide. I cannot help fancying, however, that 
 Eichard Faulder was but one of those tavern- dreamers 
 recorded hj old Heywood, who conceived 
 
 * * The room wherein they quaff'd to be a pinnace." 
 
 And as for the Plying Dutchman, my notion is very 
 different from the popular conception of that appari- 
 tion, as I have ventured to show by the opposite 
 design. The spectre-ship, bound to Dead-Man's Isle, 
 is almost as awful a craft as the skeleton-bark of the 
 Ancient Mariner; but they are both fictions, and 
 have not the advantage of being realities, like the 
 dreary vessel with its dreary crew in the following 
 story, which records an adventure that befel even 
 unto myself. 
 
 'TwAS off the "Wash — the sun went down — the sea 
 
 look'd black and grim. 
 For stormy clouds, with murky fleece, were mustering 
 
 at the brim ; 
 
 Titanic shades ! enormous gloom ! — as if the solid 
 night 
 
 Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light ! 
 
 It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye, 
 
 AVith such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky! 
 
 Down went my helm — close reef d — the tack held 
 
 freely in my hand — 
 With ballast snug — I put about, and scudded for the 
 
 land. 
 
 Loud hiss'd the sea beneath her lee — my little boat 
 flew fast, 
 
I DO THE DEMO^^-SHI P. 
 
 But faster still the rushing storm came borne upon 
 the blast. 
 
 Lord ! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining 
 sail ! 
 
 What furious sleet, with level drift, and fierce assaults 
 of hail ! 
 
 What darksome caverns yawn'd before ! what jagged 
 
 steeps behind ! 
 Like battle-steeds, with foamy manes, wild tossing in 
 
 the wind. 
 
 Each after each sank down astern, exhausted in the 
 chase. 
 
 But where it sank another rose and gallop' d in its 
 place ; 
 
 As black as night — they turned to white, and cast 
 
 against the cloud 
 A snowy sheet, as if each surge upturn'd a sailor's 
 
 shroud : — 
 
 Sfcill flew my boat ; alas ! alas ! her course was nearly 
 run ! 
 
 Behold yon fatal billow rise — ten billows heap'd in 
 one ! 
 
 With fearful speed the dreary mass came rolling, 
 rolling, fast, 
 
 As if the scooping sea contained one only wave at 
 last ! 
 
 Still on it came, with horrid roar, a swift pursuing 
 grave ; 
 
 It seem'd as though some cloud had turn'd its huge- 
 ness to a wave ! 
 Its briny sleet began to beat beforehand in my face — 
 I felt the rearward keel begin to climb its swelling 
 base ! 
 
 I saw its alpine hoary head impending over mine ! 
 
THE DEMON-SHIP. 191 
 
 Another pulse — and down it rush'd — an avalanche of 
 brine ! 
 
 Brief pause had I, on God to crj, or think of wife and 
 home ; 
 
 The waters clos'd — and when I shriek'd, I shriek'd 
 
 below the foam ! 
 Beyond that rush I have no hint of any after deed — 
 Tor I w^as tossing on the waste, as senseless as a 
 
 weed. 
 
 * ♦ ♦ ♦ « 
 
 "Where am I? in the breathing world, or in the 
 
 world of death ? 
 With sharp and sudden pang I drew another birth of 
 
 breath ; 
 
 My eyes drank in a doubtful light, my ears a doubtful 
 sound — 
 
 And was that ship a real ship whose tackle seem'd 
 around ? 
 
 A moon, as if the earthly moon, was shining up aloft ; 
 But were those beams the very beams that I had seen 
 so oft ? 
 
 A face, that mock'd the human face, before me watch' d 
 alone ; 
 
 But were those eyes the eyes of man that look'd against 
 my own ? 
 
 Oh ! never may the moon again disclose me such a sight 
 As met my gaze, when first I look'd, on that accursed 
 night ! 
 
 Tve seen a thousand horrid shapes begot of fierce 
 extremes 
 
 Of fever ; and most frightful things have haunted in 
 my dreams — 
 
192 THE DEMON-SHIP. 
 
 Hyenas — cats — blood-loving bats — and apes with hate- 
 ful stare — 
 
 Pernicious snakes, and shaggy bulls — the lion, and 
 she-bear — 
 
 Strong enemies, with Judas looks, of treachery and 
 spite — 
 
 Detested features, hardly dimm'd and banish'd by the 
 light ! 
 
 Pale-sheeted ghosts, with gory locks, upstarting from 
 
 their tombs — 
 All phantasies and images that flit in midnight 
 
 glooms — 
 
 Hags, goblins, demons, lemures, have made me all 
 aghast, — 
 
 But nothing like that GtEIMLT One who stood beside 
 the mast ! 
 
 His cheek was black — his brow was black — his eyes 
 
 and hair as dark : 
 His hand was black, and where it touch' d, it left a 
 
 sable mark ; 
 
 His throat was black, his vest the same, and when I 
 
 look'd beneath. 
 His breast was black — all, all was black, except his 
 
 grinning teeth. 
 His sooty crew were like in hue, as black as Afric 
 
 slaves ! 
 
 Oh, horror! e'en the ship was black that plough' d the 
 inky waves ! 
 
 " Alas ! " I cried, " for love of truth and blessed 
 mercy's sake. 
 
 Where am I ? in what dreadful ship ? upon what 
 dreadful lake ? 
 
THE DEMON-SHIP. 193 
 
 What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any 
 coal ? 
 
 It is Mahound, the Evil One, and he has gain'd my 
 soul ! 
 
 Oh, mother dear ! my tender nurse ! dear meadows 
 that beguil'd 
 
 My happy days, when I was yet a little sinless child, — 
 My mother dear — my native fields, I never more shall 
 see : 
 
 I'm sailing in the Devil's Ship, upon the Devil's Sea !" 
 
 Loud laugh'd that Sable Mari^tee, and loudly in 
 return 
 
 His sooty crew sent forth a laugh that rang from stem 
 to stern — 
 
 A dozen pair of grimly cheeks were crumpled on the 
 nonce — 
 
 As many sets of grinning teeth came shining out at 
 once : 
 
 A dozen gloomy shapes at once enjoy'd the merry fit. 
 With shriek and yell, aud oaths as well, like Demons 
 of the Pit. 
 
 They erow'd their fill, and then the Chief made answer 
 
 for the whole ; — 
 "Our skins," said he, "are black ye see, because we 
 
 carry coal ; 
 
 You'll find your mother sure enough, and see your 
 
 native fields — 
 For this here ship has pick'd you up — the Mary Ann 
 
 of Shields!'' 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 SALLY HOLT, AND THE DEATH 0^* 
 JOHN HA7L0FT. 
 
 FouE times in the year — twice at tlie season of the 
 lialf-yearlj dividends, and twice at the intermediate 
 quarters, to make her slender investments — there calls 
 at my Aunt Shakerly's, a very plain, very demure 
 maiden, about forty, and makes her way downward to 
 the kitchen, or upward to my cousin's chamber, as 
 may happen. Her coming is not to do chair-work, or 
 needle- work — to tell fortunes — to beg, steal, or borrow. 
 She does not come for old clothes, or for new. Her 
 simple errand is love— pure, strong, disinterested, 
 enduring love, passing the love of women— at least for 
 women. 
 
 It is not often servitude begets much kindliness 
 between the two relations ; hers, however, grew from 
 that ungenial soil. For the whole family of the 
 Shakerlies she has a strong feudal attachment, but her 
 particular regard dwells with Charlotte, the latest born 
 of the clan. Her she doats upon — her she fondles — 
 and takes upon her longing, loving lap. 
 
 O let not the oblivious attentions of the worthy 
 Dominie Sampson, to the tall boy Bertram, be called 
 an unnatural working ! I have seen my cousin, a 
 good feeder, and well grown into womanhood, sitting 
 — two good heads taller than her dry-nurse — on the 
 knees of the simple-hearted Sally Holt ! I have seen 
 
SALLY HOLT, A^h JOnN nAYLOET. 195 
 
 the huge presentation orange, unlapp'd from the 
 homely speckled kerchief, and thrust with importunate 
 tenderness into the bashful marriagealle hand. 
 
 My cousin's heart is not so artificially composed, as 
 to let her scorn this humble affection, though she ia 
 puzzled sometimes with what kind of look to receive 
 these honest but awkward endearments. I have seen 
 her face quivering with half a laugh. 
 
 It is one of Sally's staple hopes that, some day or 
 other, when Miss Charlotte keeps house, she will live 
 with her as a servant ; and this expectation makes her 
 particular and earnest to a fault in her enquiries 
 about sweethearts, and offers, and the matrimonial 
 chances : questions which I have seen my cousin 
 listen to with half a cry. 
 
 Perhaps Sally looks upon this confidence as her 
 right, in return for those secrets which, by joint force 
 of ignorance and affection, she could not help reposing 
 in the bosom of her foster-mistress. Nature, unkind 
 to her, as to Dogberry, denied to her that knowledge 
 of reading and writing which comes to some by 
 instinct. A strong principle of religion made it a 
 darling point with her to learn to read, that she might 
 study in her bible : but in spite of all the help of my 
 cousin, and as ardent a desire for learning as ever 
 dwelt in scholar, poor Sally never mastered beyond 
 A-B-ab. Her mind, simple as her heart, was unequal 
 to any more difficult combinations. Writing was 
 worse to her than conjuring. My cousin was her 
 amanuensis : and from the vague, unaccountable 
 mistrust of ignorance, the inditer took the pain^3 
 always to compare the verbal message with the 
 transcript, by counting the number of the words. 
 
 I would give up all the tender epistles of Mrs. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 SALLY nOLT, AND 
 
 Arthur Brooke, to have read one of Sally's epistles ; 
 but they were amatory, and therefore kept sacred: 
 for plain as she was, Sally Holt had a lover. 
 
 There is an unpretending plainness in some faces 
 that has its charm — an unaffected ugliness, a thousand 
 times more bewitching than those would-be pretty 
 looks that neither satisfy the critical sense, nor leave 
 the matter of beauty at once to the imagination. We 
 like better to make a new face than to mend an old 
 one. Sally had not one good feature, except those 
 which John Hayloft made for her in his dreams ; and 
 to judge from one token, her partial fancy was equally 
 answerable for his charms. One precious lock — no, 
 not a lock, but rather a remnant of very short, very 
 coarse, very yellow hairj the clippings of a military 
 crop, for John was a corporal — stood the foremost 
 item amongst her treasures. To her they were curls, 
 golden, Hyperion, and cherished long after the parent- 
 head was laid low, with many more, on the bloody 
 plain of Salamanca. 
 
 I remember vividly at this moment the ecstasy of 
 her grief at the receipt of the fatal news. She was 
 standing near the dresser with a dish, just cleaned, in 
 her dexter hand. !Ninety-nine women in a hundred 
 w^ould have dropped the dish. Many would have 
 flung themselves after it on the floor ; but Sally put 
 it up, orderly, on the shelf. The fall of John Hayloft 
 could not induce the fall of the crockery. She felt the 
 blow notwithstanding ; and as soon as she had emptied 
 her hands, began to give way to her emotions in her 
 own manner. Affliction vents itself in various modes, 
 with different temperaments : some rage, others 
 compose themselves like monuments. Some weep, 
 some sleep, some prose about death, and others poetise 
 
THE DEATH OE JOHN HAYLOET. 19? 
 
 on it. Many take to a bottle, or to a rope. Some go 
 to Margate, or Bath. 
 
 Sally did nothing of these kinds. She neither 
 snivelled, travelled, sickened, maddened, nor ranted, 
 nor canted, nor hung, nor fuddled herself — she only 
 rocked herself uj^on the Jcitchen chair ! ! 
 
 The action was not adequate to her relief. She got 
 up — took a fresh chair — then another — and another — 
 and another, — till she had rocked on all the chairs in 
 the kitchen. 
 
 The thing was tickling to both sympathies. It was 
 pathetical to behold her grief, but ludicrous that she 
 knew no better how to grieve. 
 
 An American might have thought that she was in 
 the act of enjoyment, but for an intermitting 0 dear ! 
 O dear ! Passion could not wring more from her in 
 the way of exclamation than the tooth-ache. Her 
 lamentations were always the same, even in tone. 
 By and bye she pulled out the hair — the cropped, 
 yellow, stunted, scrubby hair ; then she fell to rocking 
 — then O dear ! O dear ! — and then Da Capo. 
 
 It was an odd sort of elegy, and yet, simple 
 as it was, I thought it worth a thousand of Lord 
 Littleton's 1 
 
 " Heyday, Sally ! what is the matter ? " was a very 
 natural inquiry from my Aunt, when she came down 
 into the kitchen ; and if she did not make it with her 
 tongue, at least it was asked very intelligibly by her 
 eyes. Now Sally had but one way of addressing her 
 mistress, and she used it here. It was the same with 
 which she would have asked for a holiday, except that 
 the waters stood in her eyes. 
 
 " If you please. Ma'am," said she, rising up from 
 her chair, and dropping her old curtsey, " if you 
 
198 
 
 SALLY nOLT, AND JOHN HATLOrT. 
 
 please, Ma*am, it's John Hayloft is dead : and then 
 she began rocking again, as if grief was a baby that 
 wanted jogging to sleep. 
 
 My Aunt was posed. She would fain have 
 comforted the mourner, but her mode of grieving was 
 so out of the common way, that she did not know how 
 to begin. To the violent she might have brought 
 soothing; to the desponding, texts of patience and 
 resignation ; to the hysterical, sal volatile ; she might 
 have asked the sentimental for the story of her woes. 
 A good scolding is useful with some sluggish griefs : 
 — in some cases a cordial. In others — a job. 
 
 If Sally had only screamed, or bellowed, or fainted, 
 or gone stupified, or raved, or said a collect, or moped 
 about, it would have been easy to deal with her. But 
 with a woman that only rocked on her chair 
 
 AVhat the devil could my xiunt do ? — 
 
 Why, nothing : — and she did it as well as she 
 could. 
 
 A SPOONEY 
 
199 
 
 A TEUE STORY. 
 
 Of all our pains, since man was curst 
 I mean of bodj, not the mental, 
 To name the worst, among the worst, 
 The dental sure is transcendental ; 
 Some bit of masticating bone, 
 That ought to help to clear a shelf. 
 But let its proper work alone, 
 And only seems to gnaw itself 5 
 In fact, of any grave attack 
 
A TRUE STOET. 
 
 On victual there is little danger, 
 'Tis so like coming to the rack^ 
 As well as going to the manger. 
 
 Old Hunks — it seem'd a fit retort 
 
 Of justice on his grinding ways — 
 
 Possessed a grinder of the sort, 
 
 That troubled all his latter days. 
 
 The best of friends fall out, and so 
 
 His teeth had done some years ago, 
 
 Save some old stumps with ragged root, 
 
 And they took turn about to shoot ; 
 
 If he drank any chilly liquor, 
 
 They made it quite a point to throb ; 
 
 Eut if he warm'd it on the hob. 
 
 Why then they only twitch' d the quicker. 
 
 One tooth — I wonder such a tooth 
 
 Had never kill'd him in his youth — 
 
 One tooth he had with many fangs, 
 
 That shot at once as many pangs, 
 
 It had an universal sting ; 
 
 One touch of that extatic stump 
 
 Could jerk his limbs, and make him jump, 
 
 Just like a puppet on a string ; 
 
 And what was worse than all, it had 
 
 A way of making others bad. 
 
 There is, as many know, a knack, 
 
 "With certain farming undertakers, 
 
 And this same tooth pursued their track, 
 
 By adding achers still to achers I 
 
 One way there is, that has been judg'd 
 A certain cure, but Hunks was loth 
 
A TEUE STORY. 
 
 To pay the fee, and quite begrudg'd 
 
 To lose his tooth and money both ; 
 
 In fact, a dentist and the wheel 
 
 Of Fortune are a kindred east, 
 
 For after all is drawn, you feel 
 
 It's paying for a blank at last ; 
 
 So Hunks went on from week to week, 
 
 And kept his torment in his cheek ; 
 
 Oh ! how it sometimes set him rocking, 
 
 "With that perpetual gnaw — gnaw — gnaw, 
 
 His moans and groans were truly shocking 
 
 And loud, — altho' he held his jaw. 
 
 Many a tug he gave his gum, 
 
 And tooth, but still it would not come, 
 
 Tho' tied by string to some firm thing, 
 
 He could not draw it, do his best. 
 
 By draw'rs, altho' he tried a chest. 
 
 At last, but after much debating. 
 
 He joined a score of mouths in waiting, 
 
 Like his, to have their troubles out. 
 
 Sad sight it was to look about 
 
 At twenty faces making faces. 
 
 With many a rampant trick and antic, 
 
 Tor all were very horrid cases. 
 
 And made their owners nearly frantic. 
 
 A little wicket now and then 
 
 Took one of these unhappy men, 
 
 And out again the victim rush'd, 
 
 While eyes and mouth together gush'd ; 
 
 At last arrived our hero's turn. 
 
 Who plunged his hands in both his pockets, 
 
 And down he sat, prepared to learn 
 
 How teeth are charm'd to quit their sockets. 
 
A TEUE STOUT. 
 
 Tliose wlio have felt sucli operations, 
 Alone can guess the sort of ache, 
 When his old tooth began to break 
 The thread of old associations ; 
 It touch' d a string in every part, 
 It had so many tender ties ; 
 One chord seem'd wrenching at his heart, 
 And two were tugging at his eyes ; 
 " Bone of his bone," he felt of course, 
 As husbands do in such divorce ; 
 At last the fangs gave way a little, 
 Hunks gave his head a backward jerk. 
 And lo ! the cause of all this work, 
 "Went — where it used to send his victual ! 
 
 The monstrous pain of this proceeding 
 
 Had not so numb'd his miser wit, 
 
 But in this slip he saw a hit 
 
 To save, at least, his purse from bleeding ; 
 
 So when the dentist sought his fees, 
 
 Quoth Hunks, " Let's finish, if you please.' 
 
 " How, finish ! why it's out ! " Oh ! no- 
 
 'Tis you are out, to argue so ; 
 
 I'm none of your before-hand tippers. 
 
 My tooth is in my head no doubt. 
 
 But as you say you pull'd it out. 
 
 Of course it's there — between your nippers 
 
 " Zounds ! sir, d'ye think I'd sell the truth 
 
 To get a fee ? no, wretch, I scorn it." 
 
 But Hunks still ask'd to see the tooth, 
 
 And swore by gum ! he had not drawn it. 
 
 His end obtain' d, he took his leave, 
 A secret chuckle in his sleeve ; 
 
A TRUE STOHY. 
 
 The joke was worthy to produce one, 
 
 To think, by favour of his wit, 
 
 How well a dentist had been bit 
 
 By one old stump, and that a loose one ? 
 
 The thing was worth a laugh, but mirth 
 
 Is still the frailest thing on earth : 
 
 Alas ! how often when a joke 
 
 Seems in our sleeve, and safe enough, 
 
 There comes some unexpected stroke, 
 
 And hangs a weeper on the cuff! 
 
 Hunks had not whistled half a mile, 
 "When, planted right against a stile. 
 There stood his foeman, Mike Mahoney, 
 A vagrant reaper, Irish-born, 
 That help'd to reap our miser's corn, 
 Eut had not help'd to reap his money, 
 A fact that Hunks remembered quickly ; 
 His whistle all at once was quell' d. 
 And when he saw how Michael held 
 His sickle, he felt rather sickly. 
 
 Nine souls in ten, with half his fright, 
 "Would soon have paid the bill at sight, 
 But misers (let observers watch it) 
 Will never part with their delight 
 Till well demanded by a hatchet — 
 They live hard — and they die to match it. 
 Thus Hunks prepared for Mike's attacking. 
 Besolved not yet to pay the debt. 
 But let him take it out in hacking ; 
 However, Mike began to stickle 
 In words before he used the sickle ; 
 But mercy was not long attendant : 
 
'204 
 
 A TRUE STOUT. 
 
 From words at last be took to blows, 
 And aim'd a cut at Hunks's nose ; 
 Tbat made it wbat some folks are not— 
 A member very independent. 
 
 Heaven knows bow far tbis cruel trick 
 
 Migbt still bave led, but for a tramper 
 
 Tbat came in danger's verj nick, 
 
 To put Maboney to tbe scamper. 
 
 But still compassion met a damper ; 
 
 Tbere lay tbe sever' d nose, Alas ! 
 
 l^eside tbe daisies on tbe grass, 
 
 " Wee, crimson-tipt " as well as tbej, 
 
 According to tbe poet's lay : 
 
 And tbere stood Hunks, no sigbt for laugbter i 
 
 Away ran Hodge to get assistance, 
 
 Witb nose in band, wbicb Hunks ran after, 
 
 But somewbat at unusual distance. 
 
 In many a little country place 
 
 It is a very common case 
 
 To bave but one residing doctor, 
 
 Wbose practice ratber seems to be 
 
 JSTo practice, but a rule of tbree, 
 
 Pbjsician — surgeon — drug-decoctor ; 
 
 Tbus Hunks was forced to go once more 
 
 "Wbere be bad ta'en bis tootb before. 
 
 His mere name made tbe learn' d man bot, — 
 
 " Wbat ! Hunks again witbin my door ! 
 
 " I'll pull bis nose ; " quotb Hunks, " you cannot." 
 
 Tbe doctor look'd and saw tbe case 
 Plain as tbe nose not on bis face. 
 
 O ! bum — ba — yes — I understand." 
 But tben arose a long demur, 
 
A TRUE STOUT, 
 
 205 
 
 For not a finger would lie stir 
 Till he was paid his fee in hand ; 
 That matter settled, there they were, 
 With Hunks well strapped upon his chair. 
 
 The opening of a surgeon's job — 
 
 His tools, a ehestfull or a drawfull — 
 
 Are always something very awful, 
 
 And give the heart the strangest throb ; 
 
 But never patient in his funks 
 
 Look'd half so like a ghost as Hunks, 
 
 Or surgeon half so like a devil 
 
 Prepared for some infernal revel : 
 
 His huge black eye kept rolling, rolling, 
 
 Just like a bolus in a box : 
 
 His fury seem'd above controlling, 
 
 He bellow' d like a hunted ox : 
 
 " Now, swindling wretch, I'll show thee hew 
 
 We treat such cheating knaves as thou ; 
 
 Oh ! sweet is this revenge to sup ; 
 
 I have thee by the nose — it's now 
 
 My turn — and I will turn it up." 
 
 Guess how the miser liked the scurvy 
 
 And cruel way of venting passion ; 
 
 The snubbing folks in this new fashion 
 
 Seem'd quite to turn him topsy turvy ; 
 
 He utter' d pray'rs, and groans, and curses, 
 
 For things had often gone amiss 
 
 And wrong with him before, but this 
 
 Would be the worst of all reverses ! 
 
 In fancy he beheld his snout 
 
 Turn'd upward like a pitcher's spout ; 
 
 There was another grievance yet, 
 
£06 
 
 A TrtUE STOUT. 
 
 And fauc}' did not fail to show it, 
 That he must throw a summerset, 
 Or stand upon his head to blow it. 
 
 And was there then no argument 
 To change the doctor's vile intent, 
 And move his pity ? — yes, in truth, 
 And that was — paying for the tooth. 
 " Zounds ! pay for such a stump ! I'd rather — " 
 Eut here the menace went no fartlier, 
 For with his other ways of pinching, 
 Hunks had a miser's love of snuff, 
 A recollection strong enough 
 To cause a very serious flinching ; 
 In short he paid and had the feature 
 Eeplaced as it was meant by nature ; 
 Tor tho' by this 'twas cold to handle, 
 (No corpse's could have felt more horrid,) 
 And white just like an end of candle. 
 The doctor deem'd and proved it too. 
 That noses from the nose will do 
 As well as noses from the forehead ; 
 So, fix'd by dint of rag and lint. 
 The part was bandag'd up and muffled. 
 The chair ijiifasten'd, Hunks arose. 
 And shuffled out, for once unshuffled ; 
 And as he went, these words he snuffled-*» 
 Well, this is * paying thro' the nose.' 
 
207 
 
 THE DECLINE OF MES. SHAKEELY, 
 
 "wholesale — RETAIL — AND FOR EXPORTATION." 
 
 TowAEDS the close of her life, my Aunt Shakerly 
 increased rapidly in bulk: she kept adding growth 
 unto her growth, 
 
 Giving a sum of more to that wliich had too much," 
 
 till the result was worthy of a Smith field premium. It 
 was not the triumph, however, of aiiy systematic diet 
 
208 THE DECLINE OY KRS. SnAKERLT. 
 
 for the promotion of fat, — (except ojster-eating there 
 is no human system of s^^^ZZ-feeding,) on the contrary, 
 she lived abstemiously, diluting her food with pickle- 
 acids, and keeping frequent fasts, in order to reduce 
 her compass ; but they failed of this desirable effect. 
 Nature had planned an original tendency in her organi- 
 sation that was not to be overcome : — she would have 
 fattened on sour krout. 
 
 My uncle, on the other hand, decreased daily ; 
 originally a little man, he became lean, shrunken, 
 wizened. There was a predisposition in his constitu- 
 tion that made him spare, and kept him so; — he 
 would have fallen off even on brewers' grains. 
 
 It was the common joke of the neighbourhood to 
 designate my aunt, my uncle, and the infant Shakerly, 
 as " Wholesale, Eetail, and ron Exportation;'' 
 and, in truth, they were not inapt impersonations of 
 that popular inscription, — my aunt a giantess, my 
 uncle a pigmy, and the child being carried abroad." 
 
 Alas ! of the three departments, nothing now 
 remains but the Eetail portion — my uncle, a penny- 
 worth, a mere sample. 
 
 It is upon record, that Dr. Watts, though a puny 
 man in person, took a fancy, towards his latter days, 
 that he was too large to pass through a door : an 
 error which Death shortly corrected by taking him 
 through his own portal. My unhappy aunt, with 
 more show of reason, indulged in a similar delusion ; 
 she conceived herself to have grown inconveniently 
 cumbersome for the small village of * * * *, and my 
 uncle, to quiet her, removed to the metropolis. There 
 she lived for some months in comparative ease, till at 
 last an unlucky event recalled all her former inquie- 
 tude. The Elephant of Mr. Cross, a good feeder, and 
 
THE DECLINE OF MBS. SHAKEELT. 
 
 209 
 
 with a natural tendency to corpulence, throve so well 
 on his rations, that, becoming too huge for his den, he 
 was obliged to be dispatched. My aunt read the 
 account in the newspapers, and the catastrophe with 
 its cause took possession of her mind. She seemed to 
 herself as that Elephant. An intolerable sense of 
 confinement and oppression haunted her by day and 
 in her dreams. First she had a tightness at her chest, 
 then in her limbs, then all over ; she felt too big for 
 her chair — then for her bed — then for her room — then 
 for the house! To divert her thought my uncle 
 proposed to go to Paris ; but she was too huge for a 
 boat — for a barge — for a packet — for a frigate — for a 
 country — for a continent ! "She was too big," she 
 said, " for this world — but she was going to one that 
 is boundless." 
 
 Nothing could wean her from this belief: her 
 whole talk was of " cumber-grounds : " of the " burthen 
 of the flesh : " and of "infinity." Sometimes her head 
 wandered, and she would then speak of disposing of 
 the " bulk of her personals." 
 
 In the meantime her health decayed slowly, but 
 perceptibly : she was dying, the doctor said, by inches. 
 
 Now my uncle was a kind husband, and meant 
 tenderly, though it sounded untender : but when tho 
 doctor said that she was dying by inches — 
 
 " God forbid ! " cried my uncle : " consider what a 
 great big creature she is ! 
 
 p 
 
210 
 
 TIM TUEPIN, 
 
 A PATHETIC BALLAD. 
 
 THE JUDGES OF A-SIZE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Tim TuiiPTis" lie was gravel blind, 
 And ne'er had seen the skies : 
 
 For Nature, when his head was made, 
 Forgot to dot his eyes. 
 
 n. 
 
 So, like a Christmas pedagogue, 
 Poor Tim was forc'd to do — 
 
 Look out for pupils, for he had 
 A vacancy for two. 
 
TIM TTJEPIl^, 
 
 III. 
 
 There's some have specs to lielp their sight 
 
 Of objects dim and small : 
 But Tim had species within his eyes, 
 
 And could not see at all. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Now Tim he woo'd a servant maid, 
 
 And took her to his arms ; 
 For he, like Pyramus, had cast 
 
 A wall-eye on her charms. 
 
 V. 
 
 By day she led him up and down 
 
 Where'er he wish'd to jog, 
 A happy wife, altho' she led 
 
 The life of any dog. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But just when Tim had liv'd a month 
 
 In honey with his wife, 
 A surgeon ope'd his Milton eyes. 
 
 Like oysters^ with a knife. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But when his eyes were open'd thus, 
 
 He wish'd them dark again : 
 Por when he look'd upon his wife, 
 
 He saw her very plain. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Her face was bad, her figure worse. 
 
 He couldn't bear to eat : 
 For slie was any thing but like 
 
 A Grace before his meat. 
 
 f2 
 
TIM TUBPIN. 
 
 IX. 
 
 'Sow Tim he was a feeling man : 
 For when his sight was thick, 
 
 It made him feel for every thing — 
 But that was with a stick. 
 
 X. 
 
 So with a cudgel in his hand — 
 
 It was not light or slim — 
 He knocked at his wife's head until 
 
 It open'd unto him. 
 
 XI. 
 
 A.nd when the corpse was stiff and cold 
 He took his slaughter' d spouse, 
 
 And laid her in a heap with all 
 The ashes of her house. 
 
 XII. 
 
 But like a wicked murderer, 
 
 He liv'd in constant fear 
 From day to day, and so he cut 
 
 His throat from ear to ear. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The neighbours fetch' d a doctor in; 
 
 Said he, this wound I dread 
 Can hardly be sow'd up — his life 
 
 Is hanging on a thread. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 But when another week was gone, 
 He gave him stronger hope — 
 
 Instead of hanging on a thread, 
 Of hanging on a rope. 
 
TIM TURPm. 
 
 XV. 
 
 All ! when lie liid his bloody work, 
 
 In aslies round about, 
 How little lie supposed the truth 
 
 Would soon be sifted out. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But when the parish dustman came, 
 
 His rubbish to withdraw, 
 He found more dust within the heap, 
 
 Than he contracted for ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 A dozen men to try the fact, 
 W ere sworn that very day ; 
 
 But tho' they all were jurors, yet 
 No conjurors were they. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Said Tim unto those jurymen, 
 You need not waste your breath, 
 
 For I confess myself at once, 
 The author of her death. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 And, oh ! when I reflect upon 
 The blood that I have spilt, 
 
 Just like a button is my soul, 
 Inscrib'd with double guilt! 
 
 XX. 
 
 Then turning round his head again, 
 
 He saw before his eyes, 
 A great judge, and a little judge, 
 
 The judges of a-size 1 
 
TIM lURPlIT. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The great judge took his judgment cap, 
 
 And put it on his head, 
 And sentene'd Tim bj law to hang, 
 
 Till he was three times dead. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 So he was tried, and he was hung 
 
 (Fit punishment for such) 
 On Horsham- drop, and none can say 
 
 It was a drop too much. 
 
 Jurors— NOT cojt-jurors. 
 
215 
 
 THE MONKEY-MAKTYR, 
 
 A FABLE. 
 
 BRUTE EMANCIPATION. 
 
 ** God help thee, said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will : so I 
 tamed about the cage to get to the door." — Stuivne. 
 
 *Tis strange, what awkward figures and odd capers 
 Folks cut, who seek their doctrine from the papers ; 
 But there are many shallow politicians, 
 AVho take their bias from bewilder' d journals — 
 
 Turn state-physicians, 
 And make themselves fools' -caps of the diurnals. 
 
216 
 
 THE MONKEY-MAKTYB. 
 
 One of tLis kind, not human, but a monkey, 
 Had read himself at last to this sour creed — • 
 That he was nothing bat Oppression's flunkey, 
 And man a tyrant over all his breed. 
 
 He could not read 
 Of niggers whipt, or over-trampled weavers, 
 But he applied their wrongs to his own seed, 
 And nourish' d thoughts that threw him into fevers 
 His very dreams were full of martial beavers, 
 And drilling Pugs, for liberty pugnacious, 
 
 To sever chains vexatious : 
 In fact, he thought that all his injur' d line 
 Should take up pikes in hand, and never drop 'em 
 Till they had clear' d a road to Freedom's shrine, — 
 Unless perchance the turn-pike men should stop 'em.. 
 
 Full of this rancour, 
 Pacing one day beside St. Clement Danes, 
 
 It came into his brains 
 To give a look in at the Crown and Anchor ; 
 Where certain solemn sages of the nation 
 Were at that moment in deliberation 
 How to relieve the wide world of its chains. 
 
 Pluck despots down. 
 
 And thereby crown 
 Whitee- as well as blackee-man-cipation. 
 Pug heard the speeches with great approbation, 
 And gaz'd with pride upon the Liberators ; 
 
 To see mere coal-heavers 
 
 Such perfect Bolivars — 
 Waiters of inns sublim'd to innovators. 
 And slaters dignified as legislators — 
 Small publicans demanding (such their high sense 
 Of liberty) an universal license — 
 
THE MONKEY-MABTYU. 
 
 And patten-makers easing Freedom's clogs — 
 
 The whole thing seem'd 
 
 So fine, he deem'd 
 The smallest demagogues as great as Gogs ! 
 
 Pug, with some curious notions in his noddle, 
 "Walk'd out at last, and turn'd into the Strand, 
 
 To the left hand, 
 Conning some portions of the previous twaddle, 
 And striding with a step that seem'd design' d 
 To represent the mightj March of Mind, 
 
 Instead of that slow waddle 
 Of thought, to which our ancestors inclin'd — 
 No wonder, then, that he should quickly find 
 He stood in front of that intrusive pile. 
 
 Where Cross keeps many a kind 
 
 Of bird confin'd. 
 And free-born animal, in durance vile — 
 A thought that stirr'd up all the monkey-bile ! 
 
 The window stood ajar — 
 
 It was not far, 
 Nor, like Parnassus, very hard to climb — 
 The hour was verging on the supper- time. 
 And many a growl was sent through many a bar. 
 Meanwhile Pug scrambled upward like a tar, 
 
 And soon crept in, 
 
 TJnnotic'd in the din 
 Of tuneless throats, that made the attioe ring 
 With all the harshest notes that they could bring 
 
 For like the Jews, 
 
 Wild beasts refuse, 
 In midst of their captivity — to smg. 
 
218 
 
 THE MONKEY-MARTTE. 
 
 Lord ! how it made him chafe, 
 Eull of his new emancipating zeal, 
 To look around upon this brute-bastille, 
 And see the king of creatures in — a safe ! 
 The desert's denizen in one small den, 
 Swallowing slavery's most bitter pills — 
 A bear in bars unbearable. And then 
 The fretful porcupine, with all its quills 
 
 Imprison' d in a pen ! 
 A tiger limited to four feet ten ; 
 
 And, still worse lot, 
 
 A leopard to one spot ! 
 
 An elephant enlarg'd, 
 
 But not discharg'd ; 
 (It was before the elephant was shot ;) 
 A doleful wanderoo, that wandered not ; 
 An ounce much disproportion' d to his pound. 
 
 Pug's wrath wax'd hot 
 To gaze upon these captive creatures round ; 
 "Whose claws — all scratching — gave him full assurance 
 They found their durance vile of vile endurance. 
 
 He went above — a solitary mounter 
 
 Tip gloomy stairs — and saw a pensive group 
 
 Of hapless fowls — 
 
 Cranes, vultures, owls. 
 In fact, it was a sort of Poultry- Compter, 
 Where feather'd prisoners were doom'd to droop : 
 Here sat an eagle, forc'd to make a stoop, 
 Not from the skies, but his impending roof; 
 
 And there aloof, 
 A pining ostrich, moping in a coop ; 
 "With other samples of the bird creation, 
 All cag'd against their powers and their wills, 
 
THE MONKEY-MARTYR. 
 
 And cramp' d in sucli a space, tlie longest bills 
 
 ^Vere plainly bills of least accommodation. 
 
 In truth, it was a very ugly scene 
 
 To fall to any liberator's sbare, 
 
 To see those winged fowls, that once bad been 
 
 Eree as the wind, no freer than fix'd air. 
 
 His temper little mended, 
 Pug from this Bird-cage Walk at last descended 
 
 Unto the lion and the elephant. 
 
 His bosom in a pant 
 To see all nature's Eree List thus suspended, 
 And beasts depriv'd of what she had intended. 
 
 They could not even prey 
 
 In their own way ; 
 A hardship always reckon' d quite prodigious. 
 
 Thus he revolv'd — 
 
 And soon resolv'd 
 To give them freedom, civil and religious. 
 
 That night there were no country cousins, raw 
 From Wales, to view the lion and his kin : 
 The keeper's eyes were fix'd upon a saw ; 
 The saw was fix'd upon a bullock's shin : 
 
 Meanwhile with stealthy paw, 
 
 Pug hastened to withdraw 
 The bolt that kept the king of brutes within. 
 JN"ow, monarch of the forest ! thou shalt win 
 Precious enfranchisement — thy bolts are undone 
 Thou art no longer a degraded creature. 
 But loose to roam with liberty and nature ; 
 And free of all the jungles about London — 
 All Hampstead's heathy desert lies before thee ! 
 ]M ethinks I see thee bound from Cross's ark. 
 
TUE MONKEY-MAETYR. 
 
 Full of the native instinct tliat comes o'er thee, 
 
 And turn a ranger 
 Of Hounslow Forest, and the Eegent's Park — 
 Thin Ehodes's cows — the mail-coach steeds endanger, 
 And gobble parish watchman after dark : — 
 Methinks I see thee, with the early lark, 
 Stealing to Merlin's cave — (thi/ cave.) — Alas, 
 That such bright visions should not come to pass ! 
 Alas, for freedom, and for freedom's hero I 
 
 Alas, for liberty of life and limb ! 
 For Pug had only half unbolted Nero, 
 
 When JN'ero lolted him ! 
 
 rONY-ATOWSEI. 
 
BANDITTI. 
 
 Op all tlie saints in the Calendar, none has suffered 
 less from the Reformation than St. Cecilia, the great 
 patroness of Music. Lofty and lowly are her votaries 
 — many and magnificent are her holiday festivals — 
 and her common service is performing at all hours of 
 the day. She has not only her regular high-priests 
 and priestesses ; but, like the "Wesleyans, her itiner- 
 ants and street-missionaries, to make known her wor- 
 ship in the highways and in the bye ways. Nor is the 
 homage confined to the people of one creed; — the Pro- 
 testant exalts her on his barrel-organ — the Catholic with 
 her tambourine — the wandering J ewwith hisPan's-pipe 
 
222 
 
 BANDITTI. 
 
 and double-drum. The group on the other side was 
 sketched from a company of these " Strolling Players." 
 
 It must be confessed that their service is sometirr.ds 
 of a kind rather bo drive angels higher into heaven, 
 than to entice them earth v^rard ; and there are certain 
 retired streets — near the Adelphi, for instance — where 
 such half-hourly deductions from the natural quiet of 
 the situation should justly be considered in the rent. 
 Some of the choruses, in truth, are beyond any but a 
 saintly endurance. Conceive a brace of opposition 
 organs, a fife, two hurdy-gurdies, a clarionet, and a 
 quartette of decayed mariners, all clubbing their 
 mus^ic in common, on the very principle of Mr. 
 Owen's New Harmony I 
 
 In the Journal of a recent Traveller through the 
 Papal States, there is an account of an adventure with 
 Neapolitan robbers, that would serve, with very slight 
 alterations, for the description of an encounter with 
 our own banditti. 
 
 " To-day, Mrs. Grraham and I mounted our horses 
 and rode towards Islington. AVe had not proceeded 
 far, when we heard sounds as of screaming and 
 groaning, and presently a group of men appeared at 
 a turn of the road. It was too certain that we had 
 fallen in with one of those roving bands. Escape was 
 impossible, as they extended across the road. Their 
 leader was the celebrated Elanigan, notorious for his 
 murder of Eair Ellen, and the Bewildered Maid. 
 One of the fellows advanced close up to Mrs. Gr., and 
 putting his instrument to her ear, threatened to blow 
 out her brains. We gave them what coppers we had, 
 and were allowed to proceed. We were informed by 
 the country-people, that a gentlewoman and her 
 daughter had been detained by them, near the same 
 
BANDITTI. 
 
 223 
 
 spot, and robbed of tbeir bearings, witb circumstancea 
 of great barbarity ; Planigan in the meantime, standing 
 by witb bis pipe in bis moutb ! 
 
 " Innumerable otber travellers bave been stopped 
 and tortured by tbese wretclies, till tbey gave up tbeir 
 money : and yet tbese excesses are winked at by tbe 
 police. In tbe meantime, tbe government does not 
 interfere, in tbe bope, perbaps, that some day tbose 
 gangs may be broken up, and separated, by discord 
 amongst tbemselves." 
 
 Sometimes to tbe eye of fancy tbese wandering 
 minstrels assume anotber character, and illustrate 
 Collins's Ode on tbe Passions, in a way tbat might 
 edify Miss Macauley. Tirst, Fear, a blind harper, 
 lays bis bewildered hand amongst the chords, but 
 recoils back at the sound of an approaching carriage. 
 Anger, with starting eye-balls, blows a rude clash on 
 the bugle-horn ; and Despair, a snipe-faced wight, 
 beguiles his grief witb low sullen sounds on the 
 bassoon. Hope, a consumptive Scot, with golden hair 
 and a clarionet, indulges, like the flatterer herself, in 
 a thousand fantastic flourishes beside the tune — with 
 a lingering quaver at the close ; and w^ould quaver 
 longer, but Eevenge shakes his matted locks, blows a 
 fresh alarum on bis pandeans, and thumps witb 
 double heat his double-drum. Dejected Pity at his 
 side, a hunger-bitten urchin, applies to his silver-toned 
 triangle ; whilst Jealousy, sad proof of his distracted 
 state, grinds on, in all sorts of time, at his barrel- 
 organ. "With eyes upraised, pale Melancholy sings 
 retired and unheeded at the corner of the street ; and 
 Mirth, — yonder he is, a brisk little Savoyard, jerking 
 away at the hurdy-gurdy, and dancing himself at the 
 tsame time, to render his jig-tune more jigging. 
 
224 
 
 DEATH'S EAMBLE. 
 
 **DUST O!" 
 — ♦ — 
 
 One day the dreary old King of Death 
 Inclined for some sport witli tlie carnal, 
 
 So lie tied a pack of darts on his back, 
 And quietly stole from his charnel. 
 
 His head was bald of flesh and of hair, 
 
 His body was lean and lank. 
 His joints at each stir made a crack, and the cm 
 
 Took a gnaw, by the way, at his sliank. 
 
death's eamble. 
 
 225 
 
 And wliat did he do witli his deadly darts, 
 
 This goblin of grisly bone ? 
 He dabbled and spill' d man's blood, and he kill'd 
 
 Like a butcher that kills his own. 
 
 The first he slaughter' d it made him laugh, 
 
 (For the man was a coffin-maker,) 
 To think how the mutes, and men in black suits, 
 
 Would mourn for an undertaker. 
 
 Death saw two Quakers sitting at church, 
 
 Quoth he, " we shall not differ." 
 And he let them alone, like figures of stone 
 
 Tor he could not make them stiffer. 
 
 He saw two duellists going to fight, 
 
 In fear they could not smoother ; 
 And he shot one through at once — for he knew 
 
 They never would shoot each other. 
 
 He saw a watchman fast in his box, 
 
 And he gave a snore infernal ; 
 Said Death, " he may keep his breatli, for his sleep 
 
 Can never be more eternal." 
 
 He met a coachman driving his coach 
 
 So slow, that his fare grew sick ; 
 But he let him stray on his tedious way, 
 
 Tor Death only wars on the quick. 
 
 Death saw a toll-man taking a toll. 
 
 In the spirit of his fraternity ; 
 But he knew that sort of man would extort, 
 
 Though summon'd to all eternity. 
 
 0 
 
226 
 
 death's e amble. 
 
 He found an autlior writing his life, 
 
 But he let him write no further ; 
 Por Death, who strikes whenever he likes, 
 
 Is jealous of all self-murther ! 
 
 Death saw a patient that pull'd out his purse, 
 
 And a doctor that took tlie sum ; 
 But he let them be — for he knew that the " fee '* 
 
 Was a prelude to " faw " and " fum." 
 
 He met a dustman ringing a bell, 
 
 And he gave him a mortal thrust ; 
 Por himself, by law, since Adam's flaw. 
 
 Is contractor for all our dust. 
 
 He saw a sailor mixing his grog, 
 
 And he marked him out for slaughter ; 
 
 For on water he scarcely had cared for Death 
 And never on rum-and-water. 
 
 Death saw two players playing at cardfi. 
 But the game wasn't worth a dump, 
 
 For he quicl^ly laid them flat with a spade, 
 To wait for the final trump ! 
 
227 
 
 CEANIOLOGY. 
 
 CRANE-IOLOGY, 
 
 *Tis strange how like a very diince, 
 Man — with his bumps upon his sconce, 
 Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge 
 Has had, till lately, of Phrenology — 
 
CKANIOLOGY. 
 
 A science tliat by simple dint of 
 
 Head-combing he should find a hint of, 
 
 When scratching o'er those little pole-hills, 
 
 The faculties throw up like mole-hills ; — 
 
 A science that, in very spite 
 
 Of all his teeth, ne'er came to light. 
 
 For tho' he knew his skull had grinders, 
 
 Still there turn'd up no organ finders, 
 
 Still sages wrote, and ages fled, 
 
 And no man's head came in his head — 
 
 Not even the pate of Erra Pater, 
 
 Knew aught about its pia mater. 
 
 At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him — 
 
 I don't know but it might be Spurzheim — 
 
 Tho' native of a dull and slow land. 
 
 And makes partition of our Poll-land 
 
 At our Acquisitiveness guesses. 
 
 And all those necessary nesses 
 
 Indicative of human habits, 
 
 All burrowing in the head like rabbits. 
 
 Thus Veneration, he made known. 
 
 Had got a lodging at the Crown : 
 
 And Music (see Deville's example) 
 
 A set of chambers in the Temple : 
 
 That Language taught the tongues close by, 
 
 And took in pupils thro' the eye. 
 
 Close by his neighbour Computation, 
 
 AVho taught the eyebrows numeration. 
 
 The science thus — to speak in fit 
 Terms — having struggled from its nit, 
 AVas seiz'd on by a swarm of Scotchmen 
 Those scientifical hotch-potch men. 
 Who have at least a penny dip 
 
CRANIOLOGT. 
 
 22^ 
 
 And wallop m all doctorsliip, 
 
 Just as iu making broth they smatter 
 
 By bobbing twenty things in water : 
 
 These men, I say, made quick appliance 
 
 And close, to phrenologic science ; 
 
 Yov of all learned themes whatever, 
 
 That schools and colleges deliver, 
 
 There's none they love so near the bodies, 
 
 As analyzing their own noddles ; 
 
 Thus in a trice each northern blockhead 
 
 Had got his fingers in his shock head. 
 
 And of his bumps was babbling yet worse ' 
 
 Than poor Miss Capulet's dry wet-nurse ; 
 
 Till having been sufficient rangers 
 
 Of their own heads, they took to strangers', 
 
 And found in Presbyterians' polls 
 
 The things they hated in their souls ; 
 
 !For Presbyterians hear with passion 
 
 Of organs join'd with veneration. 
 
 No kind there was of human pumpkin 
 
 But at its bumps it had a bumpkin ; 
 
 Down to the very lowest gullion. 
 
 And oiliest scull of oily scullion. 
 
 'No great man died but this they did do. 
 
 They begged his cranium of his widow : 
 
 No murderer died by law disaster. 
 
 But tliey took off his sconce in plaster ; 
 
 Por thereon they could show depending, 
 
 The head and front of his offending," 
 How that his philanthropic bump 
 "Was m aster' d by a baser lump ; 
 Por every bump (these wags insist) 
 Has its direct antagonist. 
 Each striving stoutly to prevail. 
 
230 
 
 CRANIOLOGT. 
 
 Like horses knotted tail to tail ; 
 And many a stilF and sturdy battle 
 Occurs between these adverse cattle, 
 The secret cause, beyond all question, 
 Of aches ascrib'd to indigestion, — 
 "Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivals 
 Tugging together like sheer devils, 
 Till one gets mastery good or sinister. 
 And comes in like a new prime-minister. 
 
 Each bias in some master node is : — 
 What takes M'Adam where a road is, 
 To hammer little pebbles less ? 
 His organ of Destructiveness. 
 What makes great Joseph so encumber 
 Debate ? a lumping lump of Number : 
 Or Malthus rail at babies so ? 
 The smallness of his Philopro — 
 What severs man and wife ? a simple 
 Defect of the Adhesive pimple : 
 Or makes weak women go astray ? 
 Their bumps are more in fault than they. 
 
 These facts being found and set in order 
 By grave M.D.s beyond the Border, 
 To make them for some months eternal, 
 Were enter' d monthly in a journal, 
 That many a northern sage still writes in. 
 And throws his little Northern Lights in, 
 And proves and proves about the phrenos, 
 A great deal more than I or he knows. 
 How Music suffers, exeinple, 
 By wearing tight hats round the temple ; 
 What ills great boxers have to fear 
 
CRANIOLOGT. 
 
 rrom blisters put behind the ear : 
 And how a porter's Veneration 
 Is hurt bj porter's occupation : 
 Whether shillelaghs in reality- 
 May deaden Individuality : 
 Or tongs and poker be creative 
 Of alterations in th' Amative : 
 If falls from scaffolds make us less 
 Inclin'd to all Constructiveness : 
 "With more such matters, all applyin 
 To heads — and therefore headifyiug. 
 
 A SPECIAL PLEADER. 
 
232 
 
 AN AFFAIE OF HONOUK. 
 
 "honour calls him to the field," 
 
 — 4-— 
 
 And those were tlie only duels/' concluded 
 
 tlie major, " that ever I fought in mj life." 
 
 Now the major reminded me strongly of an old 
 boatman at Hastings, who, after a story of a swimmer 
 that was snapped asunder by a " sea attorney " in the 
 "West Indies, made an end in the same fashion : — 
 " And that was the only time," said he, "I ever saw 
 a man bit in two by a shark." 
 
 A single occurrence of the kind seemed sufficient 
 for the experience of one life ; and so I reasoned upon 
 
AN APFAIR OF nOKOTJR. 
 
 233 
 
 the major's nine duels. He must, in tlie first place, 
 have been not onlj jealous and swift to quarrel ; but, 
 in the second, have met with nine intemperate spirits 
 equally forward with himself. It is but in one affront 
 out of ten that the duellist meets with a duellist : a 
 computation assigning ninety mortal disagreements to 
 his single share ; whereas I, with equal irritability 
 and as much courage perhaps, had never exchanged a 
 card in my life. The subject occupied me all the walk 
 homeward through the meadows : — " To get involved 
 in nine duels," said I ; " 'tis quite improbable ! " 
 
 As I thought thus, I had thrust my body halfway 
 under a rough bar that was doing duty for a stile at 
 one end of a field. It was just too high to climb 
 comfortably, and just low enough to be inconvenient 
 to duck under ; but I chose the latter mode, and 
 began to creep through with the deliberateness 
 consistent with doubtful and intricate speculation. 
 " To get involved in nine duels — here my back hitched 
 a little at the bar — 'tis quite impossible." 
 
 I am persuaded that there is a spirit of mischief 
 afoot in the world — some malignant fiend to seize 
 upon and direct these accidents : for just at this nick, 
 whilst I was boggling below the bar, there came up 
 another passenger by the same path : so seeing how 
 matters stood, he made an attempt at once to throw 
 his leg over the impediment : but mistaking the 
 altitude by a few inches, he kicked me — where I had 
 never been kicked before. 
 
 " By Heaven ! this is too bad," said I, staggering 
 through head foremost from the concussion : my back 
 was up, in every sense, ifi. a second. 
 
 The stranger apologised in the politest terms, — 
 but with such an intolerable chuckle, with such a 
 
234 
 
 AN AITAIIl OF IIOISOTJE. 
 
 provoking grin lurking about Lis face, tliat I felt fury 
 enough, like Beatrice, to "eat his heart in the market- 
 place." In short, in two little minutes, from venting 
 my conviction upon duelling, I found myself engaged 
 to a meeting for the vindication of my honour. 
 
 There is a vivid description in the History of 
 Eobinson Crusoe, of the horror of the solitary Mariner 
 at finding the mark of a foot in the sandy beach of his 
 Desert Island. That abominable token, in a place 
 that he fancied was sacred to himself — in a part, he 
 made sure, never trodden by the sole of man — haunted 
 him wherever he went. So did mine. I bore about 
 with me the same ideal imprint — to be washed out, 
 not by the ocean-brine, but with blood ! 
 
 As I walked homeward after this adventure, and 
 reflected on my former opinions, I felt that I had 
 done the gallant major an injustice. It seemed likely 
 that a man of his profession might be called out even 
 to the ninth time — nay, that men of the peaceful cloth 
 might, on a chance, be obliged to have recourse to 
 mortal combat, 
 
 As for G-entlemen at the Bar, I have shown how 
 they may get into an Affair of Honour in a twinkling, 
 
235 
 
 A PA ETHI AN GLANCE. 
 
 A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW. 
 
 "Sweet Memory, wafted by thy gentle gale, 
 Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail." 
 
 ROQERa. 
 
 I. 
 
 Come, my Crony, let's think upon far-away days, 
 
 And lift up a little Oblivion's veil ; 
 Let's consider the past with a lingering gaze, 
 
 Like a peacock whose eyes are inclined to his tail. 
 
236 
 
 A PARTHIAN GLANCE. 
 
 II. 
 
 Ay, come, let us tarn our attention behind, 
 
 Like those critics whose heads are so heavy, I fear, 
 
 That they cannot keep up with the march of the mmd, 
 And so turn face about for reviewing the rear. 
 
 III. 
 
 Looking over Time's crupper and over his tail, 
 Oh, what ages and pages there are to revise ! 
 
 And as farther our back-searching glances prevail, 
 Like the emmets, "how little we are in our ejes !" 
 
 IV. 
 
 What a sweet pretty innocent, half-a-yard long. 
 On a dimity lap of true nursery make ! 
 
 I can fancy I hear the old lullaby song 
 
 That was meant to compose me, but kept me awake. 
 
 V. 
 
 M.ethinks I still suffer the infantine throes, 
 
 When my flesh was a cushion for any long pin — 
 
 Whilst they patted my body to comfort my woes, 
 Oh! how little they dreamt they were driving them in! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Infant sorrows are strong — infant pleasures as weak — 
 But no grief was allow' d to indulge in its note ; 
 
 Did yoa ever attempt a small " bubble and squeak," 
 Thro' the Dalby's Carminative down in your throat? 
 
 VII. 
 
 Did you ever go up to the roof with a bounce ? 
 
 Did you ever come down to the floor with the same? 
 Oh ! I can't but agree with both ends, and pronounce 
 Head or tails" with a child^ an unpleasantish game! 
 
A PAllTHIAN GLANCE. 
 
 237 
 
 vni. 
 
 Then an urchin — I see myself urchin, indeed, 
 
 With a smooth Sunday face for a mother's delight ; 
 Why should weeks have an end ? — I am sure there 
 was need 
 
 Of a Sabbath, to follow each Saturday-night. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Was your face ever sent to the housemaid to scrub ? 
 
 Have you ever felt huckaback soften' d with sand ? 
 Had you ever your nose towell'd up to a snub, 
 
 And your eyes knuckled out with the back of the 
 hand? 
 
 X. 
 
 Then a school-boy — my tailor was nothing in fault, 
 Por an urchin will grow to a lad by degrees, — 
 
 But how well I remember that " pepper and salt " 
 That was down to the elbows, and up to the knees ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 What a figure it cut when as Nerval I spoke ! 
 
 With a lanky right leg duly planted before ; 
 Whilst I told of the chief that was kill'd by my stroke, 
 
 And extended my arms as " the arms that he wore ! " 
 
 XII. 
 
 Next a Lover — Oh ! say, were you ever in love ? 
 
 W^ith a lady too cold — and your bosom too hot ! 
 Have you bow'd to a shoe-tie, and knelt to a glove ? 
 
 Like a heau that desired to be tied in a knot ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Wltli the Bride all in white, and your body in blue. 
 Did you walk up the aisle — the genteelest of men ? 
 
 When I think of that beautiful vision anew, 
 Oh ! I seem but the liffin of what I was then ! 
 
238 
 
 k PARTHIAN GLANCE. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 I am wither' d and worn by a premature care, 
 
 And my wrinkles confess the decline of my day a ; 
 
 Old Time's busy hand has made free with my hair, 
 And I'm seeking to hide it — by writing for bays ! 
 
 '•MT BANKG TTIEY ARC FURNISHED," 
 
289 
 
 A SAILOE'S APOLOGY FOE BOW-LEGS. 
 
 There's some is born with their straight legs bjnatur— 
 And some is born with bow-legs from the first — 
 And some that should have grow'd a good deal 
 straighter, 
 
 But they were badly nurs'd, 
 And set, you see, like Bacchus, with their pegs 
 
 Astride of casks and kegs : 
 I've got myself a sort of bow to larboard, 
 
 And starboard. 
 And this is what it was that warp'd my legs. — 
 
 'Twas all along of Poll, as I may say. 
 That foul'd my cable when I ought to slip ; 
 
 But on the tenth of May, 
 
 When I gets under weigh, 
 Down there in Hartfordshire, to join my ship, 
 
 I sees the mail 
 
 Get under sail. 
 The only one there was to make the trip. 
 
 Well — I gives chase, 
 
 But as she run 
 
 Two knots to one. 
 There war'nt no use in keeping on the race ! 
 
 Well — casting round about, what next to try on, 
 
 And how to spin, 
 I spies an ensign with a Bloody Lion, 
 
240 A SAILOPv's APOLOuY FOR i30W-LEG3. 
 
 And bears away to leeward for tlie iun, 
 
 Beats round the gable, 
 And fetches up before the coach-horse stable : 
 Well — there they stand, four kickers in a row, 
 
 And so 
 
 I just makes free to cut a brown'un's cable. 
 But riding ife'nt in a seamPtu's natur — 
 So I w^hips out a toughish end of yarn. 
 And gets a kind of sort of a land- waiter 
 
 To splice me, heel to heel, 
 
 Under the she-mare's keel. 
 And off I goes, and leaves the inn a-starn ! 
 
 My eyes ! how she did pitch ! 
 And would'nt keep her own to go in no line, 
 Tho' I kept bowsing, bowsing at her bow'-line, 
 But always making lee-way to the ditch. 
 And yaw'd her head about all sorts of ways. 
 
 The devil sink the craft ! 
 And was'nt she trimendus slack in stays ! 
 We could'nt, no how, keep the inn abaft ! 
 
 Well — I suppose 
 AVe had'nt run a knot — or much beyond — 
 (What will you have on it ?) — but off she goes, 
 Up to her bends in a fresh-w^ater pond ! 
 
 There 1 am ! — all a-back ! 
 So I looks forward for her bridle-gears, 
 To heave her head round on the t'other tack ; 
 
 But when I starts. 
 
 The leather parts. 
 And goes aw^ay right over by the ears ! 
 
 What could a fellow do, 
 AVhose legs, like mine, you know, were in the bilboes, 
 
A sailor's apology for bow-legs. 241 
 
 But trim myself upriglit for bringing-to, 
 
 And square his yard-arms, and brace up his elbows, 
 
 In rig all snug and clever, 
 Just while his craft was taking in her water ? 
 I did'nt like my burth tho', howsomdever, 
 Because the yarn, you see, kept getting taughter, — 
 Says I — I wish this job was rayther shorter ! 
 
 The chase had gain'd a mile 
 x\-head, and still the she-mare stood a-drinking : 
 
 Now, all the while 
 Her body did'nt take of course to shrinking. 
 Says I, she's letting out her reefs, I'm thinking — 
 
 And so she swell' d, and swell' d, 
 
 And yet the tackle held, 
 'Till both my legs began to bend like winkin. 
 My eyes ! but she took in enough to founder ! 
 And there's my timbers straining every bit, 
 
 Ready to split. 
 And her tarnation hull a-growing rounder ! 
 
 "Well, there — off Hartford Ness, 
 We lay both lash'd and water-logg'd together. 
 
 And can't contrive a signal of distress ; 
 Thinks I, we must ride out this here foul weatlier, 
 Tho' sick of riding out — and nothing less ; 
 When, looking round, I sees a man a-starn : — 
 Hollo ! says I, come underneath her quarter ! — 
 And hands him out my knife to cut the yarn. 
 So I gets off, and lands upon the road. 
 And leaves the she-mare to her own concarn, 
 
 A-standing by the water. 
 If I get on another, I'll be blow'd ! — 
 And that's the way, you see, my legs got bow'd ! 
 
 B 
 
242 
 
 NOTHING BUT HEARTS!^ 
 
 * SHE IS ALL HEART." 
 
 It must have been the lot of every whist-plajer to 
 observe a phenomenon at the card-table, as mysterious 
 as any in nature — I mean the constant recurrence of 
 a certain trump throughout the night — a run upon a 
 particular suit, that sets all the calculations of Hoyle 
 and Cocker at defiance. The chance of turning-up is 
 equal to the Four Denominations. They should 
 
" KOTIIING EUT HEAETS ! " 
 
 243 
 
 alternate with each other, on the average — whereas a 
 Heart, perhaps, shall be the last card of every deal. 
 King or Queen, Ace or Deuce, — still it is of the same 
 clan. You cut — and it comes again. " Nothing but 
 Hearts!" 
 
 The figure herewith might be fancied to embody 
 this kind of occurrence ; and, in truth, it was designed 
 to commemorate an evening dedicated to the same 
 red suit. I had looked in by chance at the Eoyal 
 Institution : a Mr. Professor Pattison, of New York, 
 I believe, was lecturing, and the subject was— 
 " Nothing but Hearts!'' 
 
 Some hundreds of grave, curious, or scientific 
 personages were ranged on the benches of the Theatre ; 
 —every one in his solemn black. On a table in front 
 of the Professor, stood the specimens : hearts of all 
 shapes and sizes — man's, woman's, sheep's, bullock's, 
 — on platters or in cloths, — were lying about as 
 familiar as household wares. Drawings of hearts, in 
 black or blood-red, (dismal valentines !) hung around 
 the fearful walls. Preparations of the organ in wax, 
 or bottled, passed currently from hand to hand, from 
 eye to eye, and returned to the gloomy table. It was 
 like some solemn Egyptian Inquisition — a looking into 
 dead men's hearts for their morals. 
 
 The Professor began. Each after each he displayed 
 the samples; the words "auricle" and "ventricle" 
 falling frequently on the ear, as he explained how 
 those " solemn organs " pump in the human breast. 
 He showed, by experiments with water, the operation 
 of the valves with the blood, and the impossibility of 
 its revulsion. As he spoke, an indescribable thrilling 
 or tremor crept over my left breast — thence down 
 my side — and all over. I felt an awful consciousness 
 
 b2 
 
244 
 
 "nothing but hearts!" 
 
 of the bodilj presence of my heart, till then nothing 
 more than it is in song — a mere metaphor — so 
 imperceptible are all the grand vital workings of 
 the human frame ! Now I felt the organ distinctly. 
 There it was ! — a fleshy core — aye, like that on the Pro- 
 fessor' s plate — throbbing away, auricle, and ventricle, 
 the valve allowing the gushing blood at so many 
 gallons per minute, and ever prohibiting its return 1 
 
 The professor proceeded to enlarge on the important 
 office of the great functionary, and the vital engine 
 seemed to dilate within me, in proportion to the sense 
 of its stupendous responsibility. I seemed nothing 
 but auricle, and ventricle, and valve. I had no 
 breath, but only pulsations. Those who have been 
 present at anatomical discussions can alone corroborate 
 this feeling— how the part discoursed of, by a 
 surpassing sympathy and sensibility, causes its 
 counterpart to become prominent and all-engrossing 
 to the sense ; how a lecture on hearts makes a man 
 seem to himself as all heart ; or one on heads causes a 
 Phrenologist to conceive he is " all brain." 
 
 Thus was I absorbed : — my " bosom's lord," lording 
 over every thing beside. By and bye, in lieu of 
 one solitary machine, I saw before me a congregation 
 of hundreds of human forcing pumps, all awfully 
 working together — the palpitations of hundreds of 
 auricles and ventricles, the flapping of hundreds 
 of valves! And anon they collapsed — mine — the 
 Professor's — those on the benches — all ! all ! — into 
 one great auricle — one great ventricle — one vast 
 universal heart ! 
 
 The lecture ended — 1 took up my hat and walked 
 out, but the discourse haunted me. I was full of the 
 subject. A kind of fluttering, which was not to 
 
NOTHING BUT HEAKTS ! " 
 
 245 
 
 be cured even by ilio fresh air, gave me plainly 
 to understand that my heart was not " in the High- 
 lands," — nor in any lady's keeping — but where it 
 ought to be, in my own bosom, and as hard at work as 
 a parish pump. I plainly felt the blood — like the 
 carriages on a birth-night — coming in by the auricle, 
 and going out by the ventricle ; and shuddered to 
 fancy what must ensue either way, from any 
 " breaking the line." Then occurred to me the 
 danger of little particles absorbed in the blood, 
 and accumulating to a stoppage at the valve, — the 
 pumps getting choked," — a suggestion that made me 
 feel rather qualmish, and for relief I made a call on 
 
 Mrs. W . The visit was ill-chosen and mistimed, 
 
 for the lady in question, by dint of good-nature, and 
 a romantic turn- — principally estimated by her young 
 and female acquaintance — had acquired the reputation 
 of being " all heart." The phrase had often provoked 
 my mirth, — but, alas ! the description was now over 
 true. Whether nature had formed her in that mould, 
 or my own distempered fancy, I know not — but there 
 she sate, and looked the Professor's lecture over 
 again. She was like one of those games alluded to in 
 my beginning — "Nothing but Hearts!" Her nose 
 turned up. It was a heart — and her mouth led 
 a trump. Her face gave a heart — and her cap 
 followed suit. Her sleeves puckered and plumped 
 themselves into a heart-shape — and so did her body. 
 Her pincushion was a heart — the very back of her 
 chair was a heart — her bosom was a heart. She was 
 " all heart " indeed 1 
 
246 
 
 JACK HALL. 
 
 death's door. 
 
 'Tis very hard when men forsake 
 This melancholy world, and make 
 A bed of turf, they cannot take 
 
 A quiet doze, 
 But certain rogues will come and break 
 
 Their "bone repose." 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 II. 
 
 'Tis hard we cau't give up our breath, 
 Aud to the earth our earth bequeath, 
 "Without Death Eetches after death, 
 
 Who thus exhume us ; 
 And snatch us from our homes beneath, 
 
 And hearths posthumous. 
 
 III. 
 
 The tender lover comes to rear 
 
 The mournful urn, and shed his tear — 
 
 Her glorious dust, he cries, is here ! 
 
 Alack! alack! 
 The while his Sacharissa dear 
 
 Is in a sack ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 'Tis hard one cannot lie amid 
 The mould, beneath a coffin-lid, 
 But thus the Eaculty will bid 
 
 Their rogues break thro' it 
 If they don't want us there, why did 
 
 They send us to it ? 
 
 V. 
 
 One of these sacrilegious knaves. 
 Who crave as hungry vulture craves, 
 Behaving as the goul behaves, 
 
 ']N"eath church-yard wall — 
 Mayhap because he fed on graves. 
 
 Was nam'd Jack Hall. 
 
248 
 
 JACK HALL. 
 
 VL 
 
 By day it was his trade to go 
 Tending the black coach to and fro ; 
 And sometimes at the door of woe, 
 
 "With emblems suitable. 
 He stood with brother Mute, to show 
 
 That life is mutable. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Eut long before they pass'd the ferry, 
 The dead that he had help'd to bury, 
 He sack'd — (he had a sack to carry 
 
 The bodies off in.) 
 In fact, he let them have a very 
 
 Short fit of coffin, 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Night after night, with crow and spade, 
 He drove this dead but thriving trade. 
 Meanwhile his conscience never weigh' d 
 
 A single horsehair ; 
 On corses of all kinds he prey'd, 
 
 A perfect corsair ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 At last — it may be, Death took spite, 
 Or jesting only meant to fright — 
 He sought for Jack night after night 
 
 The churchyards round ; 
 And soon they met, the man and sprite, 
 
 In Pancras' ground. 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 X, 
 
 Jack, by the glimpses of tlie moon 
 Perceiv'd the bony knacker soon, 
 An awful shape to meet at noon 
 
 Of night and lonely ; 
 But Jack's tough courage did but swoon 
 
 A minute only. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Anon he gave his spade a swing 
 Aloft, and kept it brandishing, 
 Ready for what mishaps might spring 
 
 Trom this conjunction ; 
 Punking indeed was quite a thing 
 
 Beside his function, 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Hollo ! " cried Death, " d'ye wish your sands 
 Kun out ? the stoutest never stands 
 A chance with me, — to my commands 
 
 The strongest truckles ; 
 But I'm your friend — so let's shake hands, 
 
 I should say — knuckles." 
 
 xni. 
 
 Jack, glad to see th' old sprite so sprightly, 
 And meaning nothing but uprightly, 
 Shook hands at once, and, bowing slightly, 
 
 His mull did proffer : 
 But Death, who had no nose, politely 
 
 Declin'd the offer. 
 
cTack: hall. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Then sitting down upon a bank, 
 Leg over leg, shank over sliank, 
 Like friends for conversation frank, 
 
 That had no check on : 
 Quoth Jack unto the Lean and Lank, 
 
 " You're Death, I reckor.." 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Jaw-bone grinn'd: — "I am that same, 
 You've hit exactly on my name ; 
 In truth it has some little fame 
 
 Where burial sod is." 
 Quoth Jack, (and wink'd,) "of course ye came 
 
 Here after bodies." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Death grinn'd again and shook his head 
 " I've little business with the dead ; 
 When they are fairly sent to bed 
 
 I've done my turn : 
 Whether or not the worms are fed 
 
 Is your concern. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " My errand here, in meeting you, 
 Is nothing but a * how-d'ye do ; ' 
 I've done what jobs I had — a few 
 
 Along this way ; 
 If I can serve a crony too, 
 
 I beg you'll say." 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Quoth Jack, " Tour Honour's very kind s 
 And now I call the thing to mind, 
 This parish very strict I find ; 
 
 But in the next 'un 
 There li^es a very well- inclined 
 
 Old sort of sexton/*' 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Death took the hint, and gave a wink 
 As well as eyelet holes can blink ; 
 Then stretching out his arm to link 
 
 The other's arm, — 
 " Suppose," says he, "we have a drink 
 
 Of something warm." 
 
 XX. 
 
 Jack nothing loth, with friendly ease 
 Spoke up at once : — " Why, what ye please 
 Hard by there is the Cheshire Cheese, 
 
 A famous tap." 
 But this suggestion seem'd to tease 
 
 The bony chap. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " No, no — your mortal drinks are heady, 
 And only make my hand unsteady ; 
 I do not even care for Deady, 
 
 And loathe your rum ; 
 Eat Tve some glorious brewage ready. 
 
 My di'ink is — mum 1 " 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 XXIL 
 
 And off tliej set, eacli right content — 
 Who knows the dreary way they went ? 
 Eut Jack felt rather faint and spent, 
 
 And out of breath ; 
 At last he saw, quite evident, 
 
 The Door of Death. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 All other men had been unmann'd 
 To see a coffin on each hand. 
 That served a skeleton to stand 
 
 By way of sentry ; 
 In fact, Death has a very grand 
 
 And awful entry. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Throughout his dismal sign prevails, 
 His name is writ in coffin nails ; 
 The mortal darts make area rails ; 
 
 A scull that mocketh, 
 Grins on the gloomy gate, and quails 
 
 Whoever knocketh. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And lo ! on either side, arise 
 
 Two monstrous pillars — bones of thighs 
 
 A monumental slab supplies 
 
 The step of stone, 
 Where w^aiting for his master lies 
 
 A dog of bone. 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 253 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The dog leapt up, but gave no yell, 
 The wire was pulFd, but woke no bell, 
 The ghastly knocker rose and fell, 
 
 But caused no riot ; 
 The ways of Death, we all know well 
 
 Are very quiet. 
 
 xxvir. 
 
 Old Bones stept in; Jack stepp'd behind: 
 Quoth Death, " I really hope you'll find 
 The entertainment to your mind, 
 
 As I shall treat ye — 
 A friend or two of goblin kind, 
 
 I've asked to meet ye." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And lo ! a crowd of spectres tall, 
 Like jack-a-lanterns on a wall. 
 Were standing — every ghastly ball 
 
 An eager watcher. 
 " My friends," says Death—^^ friends, Mr. Hall, 
 
 The body-snatcher.'* 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Lord, what a tumult it produced, 
 When Mr. Hall was introduced ! 
 Jack even, who had long been used 
 
 To frightful things. 
 Felt just as if his b'^ck was sluic'd 
 
 With freezing springs ! 
 
254 
 
 JACK HALL. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Each goblin face began to make 
 
 Some horrid mouth — ape — gorgon — Pnaka ; 
 
 And then a spectre-hag would shake 
 
 An airy thigh-bone ; 
 And cried, (or seem'd to cry,) I'll break 
 
 Tour bone, with my bone ! 
 
 XXXT. 
 
 Some ground their teeth — some seem.'d to spif>— 
 (Nothing, but nothing came of it,) 
 A hundred awful brows were knit 
 
 In dreadful spite. 
 Thought Jack — I'm sure I'd better quit, 
 
 Without good night. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 One skip and hop and he was clear, 
 And running like a hunted deer, 
 As fleet as people run by fear 
 
 Well spurr'd and whipp'd., 
 Death, ghosts, and all in that career 
 
 Were quite outstripp'd. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 But those who live by death must die ; 
 Jack's soul at last prepar'd to fly; 
 And when his latter end drew nigh, 
 
 Oh ! what a swarm 
 Of doctors came, — but not to try 
 
 To keep him warm. 
 
JACK ITALL. 
 
 Xo ravens ever scented prey 
 So early where a dead horse lay, 
 Nor vultures sniff' d so far away 
 
 A last convulse : 
 A dozen " guests " day after day 
 
 Were " at his pulse." 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 'Twas strange, altho' they got no fees, 
 How still they watch'd by twos and threes 
 But Jack a very little ease 
 
 Obtain' d from them ; 
 In fact he did not find M. D.s 
 
 Worth one D— M, 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 The passing bell with hollow toll 
 AYas in his thought — the dreary hole ! 
 Jack gave his eyes a horrid roll, 
 
 And then a cough : — 
 " There's something w^eighing on my soul 
 
 -I wish was off ; 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " All night it roves about my brains, 
 All day it adds to all my pains, 
 It is concerning my remains 
 
 When I am dead 
 Twelve wigs and twelve gold-headed canes 
 
 Drew near his bed. 
 
JACK HALL. 
 
 xxxviri, 
 
 "Alas !" he sigli'd, " I'm sore afraid, 
 A dozen pangs my heart invade ; 
 Eut when I drove a certain trade 
 
 In flesh and bone, 
 There was a little bargain made 
 
 About my own." 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Twelve suits of black began to close, 
 Twelve pair of sleek and sable hose, 
 Twelve flowing cambric frills in rows, 
 
 At once drew round ; 
 Twelve noses turn'd against his nose. 
 
 Twelve snubs profouncL 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Ten guineas did not quite sufiice, 
 And so I sold my body twice ; 
 Twice did not do — I sold it thrice, 
 
 Forgive my crimes ! 
 In short I have received its price 
 
 A dozen times!" 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Twelve brows got very grim and black, 
 Twelve wishes stretched him on the rack, 
 Twelve pair of hands for fierce attack 
 
 Took up position, 
 Ready to share the dying Jack 
 
 By long division. 
 
JAOK HA.LL, 
 
 25T 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Twelve angry doctors wrangled so, 
 That twelve had struck an hour ago, 
 Before they had an eye to throw 
 
 On the departed ; 
 Twelve heads turn'd round at once, and lo ! 
 
 Twelve doctors started. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Whether some comrade of the dead, 
 
 Or Satan took it in his head 
 
 To steal the corpse — the corpse had fled 
 
 'Tis only written, 
 That " tliere was nothing in the led, 
 
 But twelve were bitten /'* 
 
 "why don't you get Ui' LEllIND?" 
 
 8 
 
258 
 
 THE WEE MAK. 
 
 A ROMANCE. 
 
 A HARD ROW. 
 
 It was a merry company, 
 And they were just afloat, 
 
 "When Id ! a man, of dwarfish span, 
 Came up and hail'd the boat. 
 
 Good morrow to ye, gentle folks, 
 And will you let me in ? — 
 A slender space will serve my case, 
 !For I am small and thin.'* 
 
THE WEE MAN. 
 
 259 
 
 They saw he was a dwarfish man, 
 
 And very small and thin ; 
 'Not seven such would matter much, 
 
 Ajid so they took him in. 
 
 They laugh' d to see his little hat, 
 
 With such a narrow brim ; 
 They laugh' d to note his dapper coat 
 
 With skirts so scant and trim. 
 
 But barely had they gone a mile, 
 
 When, gravely, one and all, 
 At once began to think the man 
 
 Was not so very small. 
 
 His coat had got a broader skirt. 
 
 His hat a broader brim. 
 His leg grew stout, and soon plump' d out 
 
 A very proper limb. 
 
 Still on they went, and as they went, 
 More rough the billows grew, — 
 
 And rose and fell, a greater swell. 
 And he was swelling too ! 
 
 And lo ! where room had been for seven, 
 Eor six there scarce was space ! 
 
 For five ! — for four ! — for three ! — not more 
 Than two could find a place ! 
 
 There was not even room for one ! 
 
 They crowded by degrees — 
 Aye — closer yet, till elbows met. 
 
 And knees were jogging knees. 
 
 8 ^ 
 
THE WEE MA^. 
 
 " Good sir, you must not sit a-stern, 
 The wave will else come in ! " 
 
 Without a word he gravely stirr'd, 
 Another seat to win. 
 
 " Good sir, the boat has lost her trim, 
 
 You must not sit a-lee ! " 
 With smiling face, and courteous grace, 
 
 The middle seat took he. 
 
 But still, by constant quiet growth. 
 
 His back became so wide. 
 Each neighbour wight, to left and right, 
 
 Was thrust against the side. 
 
 Lord ! how they chided with themselves, 
 
 That they had let him in ; 
 To see him grow so monstrous now, 
 
 That came so small 'and thin. 
 
 On every brow a dew-drop stood. 
 They grew so scared and hot, — 
 
 " I' the name of all that's great and tall, 
 Who are ye, sir, and what ? " 
 
 Loud laugh' d the Gogmagog, a laugh 
 
 As loud as giant's roar — 
 " When first I came, my proper name 
 
 Was Little — now I'm Moore! 
 
261 
 
 PYTHAGOEEAN FANCIES. 
 
 Op all creeds — after the Christian — I incline most 
 to the Pythagorean. I like the notion of inhabiting 
 the body of a bird. It is the next thing to being a 
 cherub — at least, according to the popular image of a 
 boy's head and wings ; a fancy that savours strangely 
 of the Pythagorean. 
 
 I think nobly of the soul with Malvolio, but not so 
 
262 
 
 PYTHAGOEEAK TANCIES. 
 
 meanly, as lie does by implication, of a bird-body. 
 What disparagement would it seem to sliuffle off a 
 crippled, palsied, languid, bed-ridden carcase, and find 
 yourself floating above the world — in a flood of sun- 
 sbine — under tlie feathers of a Eoyal Eagle of the 
 Andes ? 
 
 Eor a beast-body I have less relish — and yet how 
 many men are there who seem predestined to such an 
 occupancy, being in this life even more than semi- 
 brutal! How many human faces that at least 
 countenance, if they do not confirm, this part of the 
 Brahminical Doctrine. What apes, foxes, pigs, curs, 
 and cats, walk our metropolis — to say nothing of him 
 shambling along Carnaby or Whitechapel — 
 
 A BUTCHEE ! 
 
 Whoe'er has gone thro' London Street, 
 Has seen a Butcher gazing at his meat, 
 
 And how he keeps 
 
 Gloating upon a sheep's 
 Or bullock's personals, as if his own; 
 
 How he admires his halves 
 
 And quarters — and his calves. 
 As if in truth upon his own legs grown ; — 
 
 His fat ! Ms suet ! 
 His kidneys peeping elegantly thro' it ! 
 
 His thick flank ! 
 
 And Ids thin ! 
 His shank ! 
 His shin ! 
 
 Skin of his skin, and bone too of his bone ! 
 
PYTHAGOREAN FANCIES. 
 
 263 
 
 With wliat an air 
 He stands aloof, across the thoroughfare 
 Gazing — and will not let a bodj bj, 
 Tho' buy ! buy ! buy ! be constantly his cry ; 
 Meanwhile with arms a-kimbo, and a pair 
 Of Ehodian legs, he revels in a stare 
 At his Joint Stock — for one may call it so, 
 
 Howbeit without a Co. 
 The dotage of self-love was never fonder 
 Than he of his brute bodies all a-row ; 
 Narcissus in the wave did never ponder 
 
 With love so strong, 
 
 On his " portrait charmant," 
 As our vain Butcher on his carcase yonder. 
 
 Look at his sleek round skull ! 
 How bright his cheek, how rubicund his nose is ! 
 
 His visage seems to be 
 
 Eipe for beef-tea ; 
 Of brutal juices the whole man is full — 
 In fact, fulfilling the metempsychosis 
 The Butcher is already half a Bull. 
 
 Surpassing the Butcher, in his approximation to 
 the brute, behold yon vagrant Hassan — a wandering 
 camel-driver and exhibitor, parading, for a few pence, 
 the creature's outlandish hump, yet burthened him- 
 self with a bunch of flesh between the shoulders. 
 Por the sake of the implicit moral merely, or as an 
 illustration of comparative physiology, tlie show is 
 valuable; but as an example of the Pythagorean 
 
264 
 
 PTTHAGOEEAN TANCIES. 
 
 dispensation, it is above appraisement. The retributive 
 metamorpliosis has commenced — the Beast has set hia 
 seal upon the Human Form — a little further, and he 
 will be ready for a halter and a show-man. 
 
 COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 As there are instances of men thus transmuting 
 into the brute ; so there are brutes, that, by peculiar 
 human manners and resemblance, seem to hint at a 
 former and a better condition. The ouran-outang, 
 and the monkey, notoriously claim this relationship j 
 and there are other tribes, and in particular some 
 which use the erect posture, that are apt to pro- 
 voke such Pythagorean associations. For example: 
 — I could never read of the great William Penn'8 
 interview with the American savages, or look on the 
 
PITHAGOREAN FA^TCIES. 
 
 265 
 
 painting commemorative of that event, without 
 dreaming that I had seen it acted over again at the 
 meeting of a tribe of Kangaroos and a Penguin. The 
 Kangaroos, sharp-sighted, vigilant, cunning, wild, 
 swift, and active, as the Indians themselves; — the 
 Penguin, very sleek, guiltless of arms, very taciturn, 
 very sedate, except when jumping ; upright in its 
 conduct — a perfect Quaker. It confirmed me, in this 
 last fancy, to read of the conduct of these gentle birds 
 when assaulted, formerly, with long poles, by the 
 seamen of Captain Cook — buffe tings which the Pen- 
 guins took quietly on either cheek, or side of the 
 head, and died as meekly and passively as the primitive 
 Martyrs of the Sect ! 
 
 It is difficult to say to what excesses the desire of 
 fresh victual, after long salt junketting, may drive a 
 mariner ; for my own part, I could not have handled a 
 pole in that persecution without strong Pythagorean 
 ^misgivings. 
 
 There is a Juvenile Poem, — " The Notorious Glut- 
 ton," by Miss Taylor of Ongar, in which a duck falls 
 sick and dies in a very human-like way. I could 
 never eat duck for some time after the perusal of 
 those verses; — it seemed as if in reality the soul 
 of my grandam might inhabit such a bird. In mere 
 tenderness to past womanhood, I could never lay the 
 death-scene elsewhere than in a lady's chamber — 
 with the body of the invalid propped up by com- 
 fortable pillows on a nursery chair. The sick attend- 
 ant seemed one that had relished drams aforetime 
 — had been pompously officious at human dissolu- 
 tions, and would announce that "all was over'" 
 with the same flapping of paws and duck-like inflec- 
 tions of tone. As for the Physician he was an 
 
266 PYTHAQOEEAN TANCIES. 
 
 Ex-Quack of our own kind, just called in from the pond 
 —a sort of Man-Drake, and formerly a brother by 
 nature, as now by name, of the author of " Winter 
 Nights/' 
 
267 
 
 "DON'T YOU SMELL FIEE ?" 
 
 EuN ! — run for St. Clements' s engine ! 
 
 For the Pawnbroker's all in a blaze, 
 And the pledges are frying and singing 
 
 Oh ! how the poor pawners will craze 
 
268 
 
 "don't you smell riKE?'* 
 
 Now where can tlie turncock be drinking ? 
 
 Was there ever so thirsty au elf ? — 
 But he still may tope on, for I'm thinking 
 
 That the plugs are as dry as himself. 
 
 IT. 
 
 The engines ! — I hear them come rumbling ; 
 
 There's the Phoenix ! the Globe! and the Sun! 
 What a row there will be, and a grumbling 
 
 When the water don't start for a run ! 
 See ! there they come racing and tearing, 
 
 All the street with loud voices is fill'd; 
 Oh ! it's only the firemen a-s wearing 
 
 At a man they've run over and kill'd! 
 
 III. 
 
 How sweetly the sparks fly away now, 
 
 And twinkle like stars in the sky ; 
 It's a wonder the engines don't play now, 
 
 But I never saw water so shy ! 
 Why there isn't enough for a snipe, 
 
 And the fire it is fiercer, alas ! 
 Oh ! instead of the New Kiver pipe. 
 
 They have gone — that they have — to the gas ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Only look at the poor little P 's 
 
 On the roof — is there anything sadder F 
 My dears, keep fast hold, if you please, 
 
 And they won't be an hour with the ladder ! 
 But if any one's hot in their feet. 
 
 And in very great haste to be saved, 
 Here's a nice easy bit in the street. 
 
 That M'Adam has lately unpaved ! 
 
"don't you smell riRE?*' 
 
 There is some one — I see a dark shape 
 
 At that window, the hottest of all, — 
 Mj good woman, why don't jou escape ? 
 
 ISeYer think of your bonnet and shawl : 
 If your dress isn't perfect, what is it 
 
 For once in a way to your hurt ? 
 When your husband is paying a visit 
 
 There, at Number Eourteen, in his shirt ! 
 
 Only see how she throws out her chaney I 
 
 Her basons, and teapots, and all 
 The most brittle of Iter goods — or any, 
 
 But they all break in breaking their fall : 
 Such things are not surely the best 
 
 From a two-story window to throw — 
 She might save a good iron-bound chest, 
 
 Por there's plenty of people below ! 
 
 O dear ! what a beautiful flash ! 
 
 How it shone thro' the window and door; 
 "We shall soon hear a scream and a crash. 
 
 When the woman falls thro' with the floor ! 
 There ! there ! what a volley of flame. 
 
 And then suddenly all is obscured ! — 
 Well — I'm glad in my heart that I came ;~ 
 
 But I hope the poor man is insured ! 
 
270 
 
 THE VOLUNTEER 
 
 THE ANGEL OF DEATH. 
 
 **The clashing of my araiour in my ears 
 Sounds like a passing bell ; my buckler puts me 
 In mind of a bier ; this, my broadsword, a pickaxe 
 To dig my grave." The Lover's PROGHSsa 
 
 — f — 
 
 I. 
 
 •TwAS in that memorable year 
 France threaten'd to put off in 
 Flat-bottom' d boats, intending each 
 To be a British coffin, 
 To make sad widows of our wives, 
 And every babe an orphan : — 
 
THE YOLUNTEEE. 
 
 271 
 
 n. 
 
 When coaf s were made of scarlet cloaks, 
 
 And heads were dredg'd with flour, 
 
 I listed in the Lawyers' Corps, 
 
 Against the battle hour ; 
 
 A perfect Volunteer — for why ? 
 
 I brought my " will and pow'r.*' 
 
 ni. 
 
 One dreary day — a day of dread. 
 
 Like Gate's, over-cast — 
 
 About the hour of six, (the morn 
 
 And I were breaking fast,) 
 
 There came a loud and sudden sound. 
 
 That struck me all aghast ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 A dismal sort of morning roll. 
 That was not to be eaten : 
 Although it was no skin of mine. 
 But parchment that was beaten, 
 I felt tattoo' d through all my flesh, 
 Like any Otaheitan. 
 
 V. 
 
 My jaws with utter dread enclosed 
 
 The morsel I was munching, 
 
 And terror lock'd them up so tight, 
 
 My very teeth went crunching 
 
 All through my bread and tongue at onc>e, 
 
 Like sandwich made at lunching. 
 
THE VOLXjyTEEIl. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Mj hand tliat held the tea-pot fast. 
 
 Stiffen' d, but yet unsteady, 
 
 Kept pouring, pouring, pouring o'er 
 
 The cup in one long eddy. 
 
 Till both my hose were mark'd with tea^ 
 
 As they were mark'd already. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I felt my visage turn from red 
 To white — from cold to hot ; 
 But it was nothing wonderful 
 My colour changed, I wot, 
 For, like some variable silks, 
 I felt that I was shot. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And looking forth with anxious eye, 
 
 From my snug upper story, 
 
 I saw our melancholy corps, 
 
 Groing to beds all gory ; 
 
 The pioneers seem'd very loth 
 
 To axe their way to glory. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The captain march' d as mourners march, 
 The ensign too seem'd lagging. 
 And many more, although they were 
 !No ensigns, took to flagging — 
 Like corpses in the Serpentine, 
 Me thought they wanted dragging. 
 
THE YOLUNTEER. 
 
 2. 
 
 But while I watch' d, the thought of death 
 
 Came like a chilly gust, 
 
 And lo ! I shut the window down, 
 
 With very little lust 
 
 To join so many marching men, 
 
 That soon might be March duafc. 
 
 XL 
 
 Quoth I, since Fate ordains it so^ 
 
 Our foe the coast must land on ; " — 
 
 I felt so warm beside the fire 
 
 I cared not to abandon ; 
 
 Our hearths and homes are always tilings 
 
 That patriots make a stand on. 
 
 xit. 
 
 "The fools tliat fight abroad for home/' 
 Thought I, " may get a wrong one ; 
 Let those that have no homes at all, 
 Go battle for a long one/' 
 The mirror here ccmfirm'd me this 
 Reflection, by a strong one. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 For there, whei*e I was wont to shave, 
 And deck me like Adonis, 
 There stood the leader of our foes, 
 AVith vultures for his cronies — 
 No Corsican, but Death himself, 
 The Bony of all Bonies. 
 
THE VOLUNTEEK. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A horrid sight it was, and sad 
 To see the grisly chap 
 Put on my crimson livery, 
 And then begin to clap 
 My helmet on — ah me ! it felt 
 Like any felon's cap. 
 
 XV. 
 
 My plume seem'd borrow' d from a hearse, 
 
 An undertaker's crest ; 
 
 My epaulettes like coffin-plates ; 
 
 My belt so heavy press' d, 
 
 Tour pipeclay cross-roads seem'd to lie 
 
 At once upon my breast. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 My brazen breast-plate only lack'd 
 
 A little heap of salt. 
 
 To make me like a corpse full dress'd, 
 
 Preparing for the vault — 
 
 To set up what the Poet calls 
 
 My everlasting halt. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This funeral show inclined me quite 
 
 To peace : — and here I am ! 
 
 Whilst better lions go to war, 
 
 Enjoying with the lamb 
 
 A lengthen' d life, that might have been 
 
 A martial epigram. 
 
275 
 
 4 MAERIAGE PEOCESSION. 
 
 It has never been my lot to marry — whatever I may 
 have written of one Honoria to the contrary. My 
 affair with that lady never reached beyond a very 
 embarrassing declaration, in return for which she 
 breathed into my dull deaf ear an inaudible answer. 
 It was beyond my slender assurance, in those days, to 
 ask for a repetition^ whether of acceptance or denial. 
 
 t2 
 
276 
 
 A MARRIAGE PROCEeSIOK. 
 
 One chance for explanation still remained. I wrote 
 to her mother, to bespeak her sanction to our union, 
 and received, hj return of post, a scrawl, that, for 
 aught I knew, might be in Sanscrit. I question 
 whether, even at this time, my intolerable baslifulness 
 would suffer me to press such a matter any farther. 
 
 My thoughts of matrimony are now confined to 
 occasional day-dreams, originating in some stray 
 glimpse in the Prayer Book, or the receipt of bride- 
 cake. It was on some such occurrence that I fell 
 once, Bunyan-like, into an allegory of a wedding. 
 
 My fancies took the order of a procession. "With 
 flaunting banners it wound its Alexandrine way-— in 
 the manner of some of Martin's painted pageants — 
 to a taper spire in the distance. And first, like a 
 band oi livery, came the honourable company of 
 Match-makers, all mature spinsters and matrons — and 
 as like aunts and mothers as may be. The Glovers trod 
 closely on their heels. Anon came, in blue and gold, 
 the parish beadle, Scarabseus Parochialis, with the 
 ringers of the hand-bells. Then came the Banns — it 
 was during the reign of Lord Eldon's Act — three 
 sturdy pioneers, with their three axes, and likely to 
 hew down sterner impediments than lie commonly in 
 the path of marriage. On coming nearer, the counte- 
 nance of the first was right foolish and perplext ; of 
 the second, simpering ; and the last, methought, looked 
 sedate, as if dashed with a little fear. After the banns 
 — like the judges following the halberts — came the 
 joiners : no rough mechanics, but a portly, full-blown 
 vicar, with his clerk — both rubicund — a peony paged by 
 a pink. It made me smile to observe the droll clerical 
 turn of the clerk's beaver scrubbed into that fashion 
 
A MAEEIAGE PROCESSIOIir. 
 
 277 
 
 by bis coat, at tlie nape. The marriage-knot — borne 
 by a ticket-porter — came after the divine, and raised 
 associations enough to sadden one, but for a pretty 
 Cupid that came on laughing and trundling a hoop- 
 ring. 
 
 JOINERS. 
 
 The next group was a numerous one, Firemen of 
 the Hand-in-Hand, with the Union flag — the chief 
 actors were near. With a mixture of anxiety and 
 curiosity,. I looked out for the impending couple, 
 when, how shall I tell it ? I beheld, not a brace of 
 young lovers — a E/omeo and Juliet, not a he-moon 
 here, and a she-sun there" — not bride and bridegroom 
 • — but the happy pear, a solitary Bergamy, carried 
 on a velvet cushion by a little foot-page. I could 
 
278 
 
 A MARRIAGE PR0CESSI0J5". 
 
 have foresworn my fancy for ever for so wretched 
 a conceit, till I remembered that it was intended, 
 perhaps, to typify, under that figure, the mysterious 
 resolution of two into one, a pair nominally, but in 
 substance single, which belongs to marriage. To 
 make amends, the high pontracting parties approached 
 in proper person — a duplication sanctioned by the 
 practice of the oldest masters in their historical 
 pictures. It took a brace of Cupids, with a halter, to 
 overcome the " sweet reluctant delay " of the Bride, 
 and make her keep pace with the procession. She was 
 absorbed like a nun, in her veil ; tears, too, she dropped, 
 hirge as sixpences, in her path ; but her attendant 
 bridesmaid put on such a coquettish look, and tripped 
 along so airily, that it cured all suspicion of heart- 
 ache in such maiden showers. The Bridegroom, drest 
 for the Honeymoon, was ushered by Hymen — a little 
 link-boy ; and the imp used the same importunity for 
 his dues. The next was a motley crew. For nuptial 
 ode or Carmen, there walked two carters, or draymen, 
 with their whips ; a leash of footmen in livery indi' 
 cated Domestic Habits ; and Domestic Comfort was 
 personated by an ambulating advertiser of " Hot 
 Dinners every Day." 
 
 I forget whether the Bride's Character preceded 
 or followed her — but it was a lottery placard, and 
 blazoned her as One of Ten Thousand. The parents 
 of both families had a quiet smile on their faces, 
 hinting that their enjoyment was of a retrospective 
 cast ; and as for the six sisters of the bride, they 
 would have wept with her, but that six young gallants 
 came after them. The friends of the family were 
 Quakers, and seemed to partake of the happiness of 
 
A MAEEIAGE PEOCESSION. 279 
 
 tlie occasion in a very quiet and quaker-like way. I 
 ought to mention that a band of harmonious sweet 
 music preceded the Happj Pair. There was none 
 cam.e after — the veteran, Townsend, with his constables, 
 to keep order, making up the rear of the Procession. 
 
 IHK MAN IN THE HONEYMOON. 
 
280 
 
 THE "WIDOW. 
 
 "encompassed in an angel's frame." 
 
 O^TE widow at a grave will sob 
 A little while, and weep, and sigh ! 
 If two should meet on such a job, 
 They'll have a gossip by and by. 
 If three should come together — why, 
 Three widows are good company ! 
 If four should meet by any chance, 
 !Four is a number very nice, 
 
THE WIDOW. 
 
 To have a rubber in a trice — 
 But five will up and have a dance ! 
 
 Poor Mrs. C (why should I not 
 
 Declare her name ? — her name was Cross) 
 
 AVas one of those the " common lot " 
 
 Had left to weep no common loss ; 
 
 For she had lately buried then 
 
 A man, the " very best of men," 
 
 A lingering truth, discovered first 
 
 Whenever men " are at the worst." 
 
 To take the measure of her woe, 
 
 It was some dozen inches deep — 
 
 I mean in crape, and hung so low, 
 
 It hid the drops she did not weep : 
 
 In fact, what human life appears, 
 
 It was a perfect " veil of tears." 
 
 Though ever since she lost " her prop 
 
 And stay," — alas! he wouldn't stay — 
 
 She never had a tear to mop, 
 
 Except one little angry drop, 
 
 Erom Passion's eye, as Moore would say; 
 
 Because, when Mister Cross took flight, 
 
 It look'd so very like a spite — 
 
 He died upon a washing-day ! 
 
 Still Widow Cross went twice a week, 
 
 As if " to wet a widow's cheek," 
 
 And soothe his grave with sorrow's gravy,— 
 
 'Twas nothing but a make-believe. 
 
 She might as well have hoped to grieve 
 
 Enough of brine to float a navy ; 
 
 And yet she often seem'd to raise 
 
 A cambric kerchief to her eye — 
 
THE WIDOW. 
 
 A duster ouglit to be tlie phrase, 
 
 Its work was all so very dry. 
 
 The springs were lock'd that ought to flow — ' 
 
 In England or in widow-woman — 
 
 As those that watch the weather know, 
 
 Such " backward Springs " are not uncommon, 
 
 But why did Widow Cross take pains, 
 
 To call upon the " dear remains," — 
 
 Bemains that could not tell a jot, 
 
 "Whether she ever wept or not. 
 
 Or how his relict took her losses ? 
 
 Oh ! my black ink turns red for shame — 
 
 Eut still the naughty world must learn, 
 
 There was a little German came 
 
 To shed a tear in " Anna's Urn," 
 
 At the next grave to Mr. Cross's ! 
 
 For there an angel's virtues slept, 
 
 " Too soon did Heaven assert its claim ! " 
 
 But still her painted face he kept, 
 
 *'Encompass'd in an angel's frame." 
 
 He look'd quite sad and quite deprived, 
 
 His head was nothing but a hat-band ; 
 
 He look'd so lone, and so ^^^^wived, 
 
 That soon the Widow Cross contrived 
 
 To fall in love with even that band ; 
 
 And all at once the brackish juices 
 
 Came gushing out thro' sorrow's sluices — 
 
 Tear after tear too fast to wipe, 
 
 Tho' sopp'd, and sopp'd, and sopp'd again — • 
 
 No leak in sorrow's private pipe. 
 
 But like a bursting on the main ! 
 
 Whoe'er has watch'd the window-pane — ' 
 
THE WIDOW. 
 
 I mean to say in showery weather- 
 Has seen two little drops of rain, 
 Like lovers very fond and fain, 
 At one another creeping, creeping. 
 Till both, at last, embrace together : 
 So far'd it with that couple's weeping! 
 The principle was quite as active — 
 
 Tear unto tear, 
 
 Kept drawing near, 
 Their very blacks became attractive. 
 To cut a shortish story shorter, 
 Conceive them sitting tete a tete — 
 Two cups, — hot muffins on a plate, — 
 With " Anna's Urn " to hold hot water ! 
 The brazen vessel for a while. 
 Had lectured in an easy song. 
 Like Abernethy — on the bile — 
 The scalded herb was getting strong ; 
 All seem'd as smooth as smooth could be, 
 To have a cosey cup of tea ; 
 Alas ! how often human sippers 
 With unexpected bitters meet, 
 And buds, the sweetest of the sweet, 
 Like sugar, only meet the nippers ! 
 
 The Widow Cross, I should have told, 
 Had seen three husbands to the mould ; 
 She never sought an Indian pyre, 
 Like Hindoo wives that lose their loves, 
 But with a proper sense of fire. 
 Put up, instead, with " three removes : " 
 Thus, when with any tender words 
 Or tears she spoke about her loss, 
 The dear departed, Mr. Cross, 
 
THE WIDOW. 
 
 Came in for notliing but his tliirds ; 
 For, as all widows love too well, 
 She hked upon the list to dwell, 
 And oft ripp'd up the old disasters — 
 She might, indeed, have been supposed 
 A great ship owner, for she prosed 
 Eternally of her Three Masters ! 
 
 Thus, foolish woman ! while she nursed 
 Her mild souchong, she talk'd and reckoned 
 AYhat had been left her by her first. 
 And by her last, and by her second. 
 Alas ! not all her annual rents 
 Could then entice the little German, — 
 Not Mr. Cross's Three Per Cents, 
 Or Consols, ever make him her man ; 
 He liked her cash, he liked her houses, 
 But not that dismal bit of land 
 She always settled on her spouses. 
 So taking up his hat and band. 
 Said he " You'll think my conduct odd— 
 Eut here my hopes no more may linger ; 
 I thought you had a wedding-finger, 
 But oh ! — it is a curtain-rod ! " 
 
285 
 
 A MAD DOG 
 
 Is none of my bug-bears. Of the bite of dogs, large 
 ones especially, I have a reasonable dread ; but as to 
 any participation in the canine frenzy, I am some- 
 what sceptical. The notion savours of the same 
 fanciful superstition that invested the subjects of Dr 
 Jenner with a pair of horns. Such was affirmed to be 
 the effect of the vaccine matter — and I shall believe 
 what I have heard of the canine virus, when I see a 
 rabid gentleman, or gentlewoman, with flap- ears, dew- 
 claws, and a brush-tail ! 
 
 I lend no credit to the imputed effects of a mad 
 dog's saliva. We hear of none such amongst the 
 West Indian Negroes — and yet their condition is 
 always slavery. 
 
 I put no faith in the vulgar stories of human beings 
 betaking themselves, through a dog-bite, to dog- 
 habits : and consider the smotherings and drownings, 
 that have originated in that fancy, as cruel as the 
 murders for witchcraft. Are we, for a few yelpings, 
 to stifle all the disciples of Loyola — Jesuit's Bark — or 
 plunge unto death all the convalescents who may take 
 to bark and wine ? 
 
 As for the Hydrophobia, or loathing of water, 
 I have it mildly myself. My head turns invariably at 
 thin washy potations. With a dog, indeed, the case 
 is difterent — he is a water-drinker ; and when he takes 
 to grape-juice, or the stronger cordials, may be 
 
286 
 
 A MAD DOG. 
 
 dangerous. But I have never seen one with a bottle 
 — except at his tail. 
 
 There are other dogs who are born to haunt the 
 liquid element, to dive and swim — and for such 
 to shun the lake or the pond would look suspicious. 
 A Newfoundlander, standing up from a shower at a 
 door- way, or a Spaniel with a Parapluie, might be inno- 
 cently destroyed. But when does such a cur occur^ 
 
 There are persons, however, who lecture on 
 Hydrophobia very dogmatically. It is one of their 
 maggots, that if a puppy be not wormed, he is 
 apt to go rabid. As if forsooth it made so much 
 difference, his merely speaking or not with, what 
 Lord Duberly calls, his " vermicular tongue ; " Verily, 
 as Izaak "Walton would say, these gudgeons take the 
 worm very kindly ! 
 
 HYDROPHOBIA. 
 
A MAD DOG. 
 
 287 
 
 Next to a neglect of calling in Dr. Gardner, want 
 of water is prone to drive a dog mad. A reasonable 
 saying — but the rest is not so plausible, viz. that 
 if you keep a dog till he is very dry, he will refuse to 
 drink. It is a gross libel on the human-like instinct 
 of the animal, to suppose him to act so clean contrary 
 to human-kind. A crew of sailors, thirsting at sea, 
 will suck their pumps or the canvass — any thing 
 that will afford a drop of moisture ; whereas a parching 
 dog, instead of cooling his tongue at the next gutter, 
 or licking his own kennel for imaginary relief, runs 
 senselessly up and down to over-heat himself, and 
 resents the offer of a bucket like a mortal affront. 
 Away he scuds, straight forward like a marmot — except 
 when he dodges a pump. A glimmering instinct guides 
 him to his old haunts. He bites his Ex-master — grips 
 his trainer — takes a snap with a friend or two where 
 he used to visit — and then biting right and left 
 at the public, at last dies — a pitchfork in his eye, 
 fifty slugs in his ribs, and a spade through the small 
 of his back. 
 
 The career of the animal is but a type of his 
 victim's — suppose some Bank Clerk. He was not 
 bitten, but only splashed on the hand by the mad 
 foam or dog-spray : a recent flea-bite gives entrance 
 to the virus, and in less than three years it gets 
 possession. Then the tragedy begins. The unhappy 
 gentleman first evinces uneasiness at being called 
 on for his JSTew Eiver rates. He answers the 
 Collector snappishly, and when summoned to pay for 
 his supply of water, tells the Commissioners doggedly, 
 that they may cut it off. !From that time he gets 
 worse. He refuses slops — turns up a pug nose at 
 pump-water — and at last, on a washing-day, after 
 
288 
 
 A MAD DOG. 
 
 flying afc tlie laundress, rushes out, ripe for hunting, 
 to the street. A twilight remembrance leads him 
 to the house of his intended. He fastens on her 
 hand — next worries his mother — takes a bit apiece 
 out of his brothers and sisters — runs a-muck, " giving 
 tongue," all through the suburbs — and finally, is 
 smothered by a pair of bed-beaters in Moorfields. 
 
 According to popular theory the mischief ends 
 not here. The dog's master — the trainer, the friends, 
 human and canine — the Bank Clerks — the laundresses 
 — sweetheart — mother and sisters — the two bed- 
 beaters — all inherit the rabies, and run about to bite 
 others. It is a wonder, the madness increasing by 
 this ratio, that examples are not running in packs 
 at every turn : — my experience, nothwithstanding, 
 records but one instance. 
 
 It was my Aunt's brute. His temper, latterly, 
 had altered for the worse, and in a sullen, or insane 
 fit, he made a snap at the cook's radish-like fingers. 
 The act demanded an inquest De Lunatico Inquirendo 
 — he was lugged neck and crop to a full bucket ; but 
 you may bring a horse to the water, says the Proverb, 
 yet not make him drink, and the cur asserted the 
 same independence. To make sure, Betty cast 
 the whole gallon over him, a favour that he received 
 with a mood that would have been natural in any 
 mortal. His growl was conclusive. The cook alarmed, 
 first the family, and then the neighbourhood, which 
 poured all its males capable of bearing arms into 
 the passage. There were sticks, staves, swords, and a 
 gun, a prong or two, moreover, glistened here an d 
 there. The kitchen-door was occupied by the first 
 rank of the column, their weapons all bristling in 
 advance ; and right opposite — at the further side 
 
A MAD DOG. 
 
 289 
 
 of the kitchen, and holding all the army at hay — stood 
 Hydrophobia — " in its most dreadful form ! " 
 
 Conceive, Mulready ! under this horrible figure 
 of speech, a round, goggle-eyed pug-face, supported by 
 two stumpy bandy-legs — tlie forelimbs of a long, 
 pampered, sausage-like body, that rested on a simihir 
 pair of crotchets at tlie other end ! Not without 
 short wheezy pantings, he began to waddle towards 
 the guarded entry — but before he had accomplished 
 a quarter of the distance, there resounded the report 
 of a musket. The poor Turnspit gave a yell — the 
 little brown bloated body tumbled over, pierced by a 
 dozen slugs, but not mortally ; for before the piece 
 could be reloaded, he contrived to lap up a little pool 
 — from Betty's bucket — that had settled beside the 
 hearth. 
 
 '• SPEAK ur, su; 1 " 
 
 U 
 
290 
 
 JOHN TROT. 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 DIULL AND BROADCAST. 
 
 JoHK Trot he was as tall a lad 
 
 As York did ever rear- 
 As Mb dear Granny used to say, 
 He'd make a grenadier. 
 
JOHN TliUT, 
 
 IL 
 
 A Serjeant soon came down to York, 
 
 With ribbons and a frill ; 
 My lads, said he, let broadcast be, 
 
 And come away to drill. 
 
 nr. 
 
 But when he wanted John to 'list, 
 
 In war he saw no fun. 
 Where wliat is calFd a raw recruit, 
 
 Gets often over-done. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let others carry guns, said he, 
 
 And go to war's alaruis, 
 But I have got a shoulder-knot 
 
 Impos'd upon my arms. 
 
 V. 
 
 For John he had a footman's place 
 
 To wait on Lady Wye — 
 She was a dumpy woman, tho' 
 
 Her family was high. 
 
 VL 
 
 Now when two years had past awaj, 
 
 Her Lord took very ill, 
 And left her to her widowhood. 
 
 Of course more dumpy still. 
 
 YU. 
 
 Said John, I am a proper man, 
 
 And very tall to see ; 
 Who knows, but now her Lord it low, 
 
 iShe may look up to me ? 
 
 u 2 
 
JOHJf TROT. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A cunning woman told me on^e, 
 Such fortune would turn up ; 
 
 She was a kind of sorceress, 
 But studied in a cup ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 So he walk'd up to Lady Wye, 
 And took her quite amazed,— 
 
 She thought, tho' John was tall enough, 
 He wanted to be raised. 
 
 X. 
 
 But John — for why ? she was a dame 
 
 Of such a dwarfish sort — 
 Had only come to hid her make 
 
 Her mourning very short. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Said he, your Lord is dead and cold^ 
 
 You only cry in vain ; 
 Kot all the Cries of London now, 
 
 Could call him back again ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 You'll soon have many a noble beau. 
 
 To dry your noble tears — 
 But just consider this, that I 
 
 Have followed you for years. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And tho' you are above me far, 
 
 What matters high degree. 
 When you are only four foot nine, 
 
 And 1 am six foot three ? 
 
JOn:N^ TEOT. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 For tlio' you are of lofty race, 
 
 And I'm a low-born elf; 
 Yet none among your friends could say, 
 
 You matched beneatli yourself. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Said she, such insolence as this 
 
 Can be no common case ; 
 Tho' you are in my service, sir, 
 
 Your love is out of place. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 O Lady Wye ! 0 Lady Wye ! 
 
 Consider what you do ; 
 How can you be so short with me, 
 
 I am not so with you! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Then ringing for her serving men, 
 They show'd him to the door : 
 
 Said they, you turn out better now, 
 Why didn't you before ? 
 
 xvni. 
 
 They strip p'd his coat, and gave him kicks 
 
 Tor all his wages due ; 
 And off, instead of green and gold. 
 
 He went in black and blue. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 No family w^ould take him in, 
 
 Because of this discharge ; 
 So he made up his mind to serve 
 
 The country all at large. 
 
JOHN TKOT. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Huzza ! the Serjeant cried, aud put 
 
 The money in his hand, 
 And with a shilling cut him off 
 
 Prom his paternal land. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 For when his regiment went to fight 
 
 At Saragossa town, 
 A Frenchman thought he look'd too tal] 
 
 And so he cut him down ! 
 
 HIGH-BORN AND LO .V-BORX. 
 
295 
 
 AN ABSENTEK 
 
 If ever a man wanted a flapper — no Butclier's 
 mimosa, or catcli-fly, but one of those officers in use 
 
 at the court of Laputa — my friend W should have 
 
 such a remembrancer at his elbow. I question whether 
 even the appliance of a bladder full of peas, or pebbles, 
 would arouse him from some of his abstractions — fits 
 of mental insensibility, parallel with those bodily 
 trances in w^hich persons have sometimes been coffined. 
 'Not that he is entangled in abstruse problems, like the 
 nobility of the Plying Island ! He does not dive, like 
 Sir Isaac Newton, into a reverie, and turn up again 
 with a Theory of Gravitation. His thoughts are not 
 deeply engaged elsewhere — they are nowhere. His 
 head revolves itself, top-like, into a profound slumber . 
 ' — a blank doze without a dream. He is not carried 
 away by incoherent rambling fancies, out of himself, — 
 he is not drunk, merely, with the Waters of Oblivion, 
 but drowned in them, bodv and soul ! 
 
 There is a story, somewnere, of one of these absent 
 persons, wh^ stoopea down, when tickled about tho 
 calf by a blue-bottle, and scratched his neighbour's leg: 
 an act of tolerable forgetfulness, but denoting a state 
 
 far short of W 's absorptions. He would never 
 
 have felt the fly. 
 
 To make AV" 's condition more whimsical, he 
 
296 
 
 AN ABSENTEE. 
 
 lives in a small bachelor's house, witli no other atten- 
 dant than an old housekeeper — one Mistress Bundy. 
 of faculty as infirm and intermitting as his own. It 
 will be readily believed that her absent fits do not 
 originate, any more than her master's, in abstruse 
 mathematical speculations — a proof with me that such 
 moods result, not from abstractions of mind, but 
 stagnation. How so ill-sorted a couple contrive to 
 get through the common-place afiairs of life, I am 
 not prepared to say : but it is comical indeed to see 
 him ring up Mistress Bundy to receive orders, which 
 he generally forgets to deliver — or if delivered, this 
 old Bewildered Maid lets slip out of her remembrance 
 with the same facility. Numberless occurrences of 
 this kind — in many instances more extravagant — 
 are recorded by his friends ; but an evening that I 
 spent with him recently, will furnish an abundance of 
 examples. 
 
 In spite of going by his ow^n invitation, I found 
 
 AY within. He was too apt, on such occasions, 
 
 to be denied to his visitors ; but what in others would 
 be an unpardonable afiront, was overlooked in a man 
 w^ho was not always at home to himself. The door 
 was opened by the housekeeper, whose absence, as 
 usual, would not allow her to decide upon that of her 
 master. Her shrill quavering voice went echoing up 
 
 Btairs with, its old query, — " Mr. AY ! are you 
 
 within then a pause, literally for him to collect 
 himself. Anon came his answer, and I w^as ushered 
 up stairs, Mrs. Bundy contriving, as usual, to forget 
 my name at the first landing-place. I had therefore to 
 
 introduce myself formally to AY , whose old friends 
 
 came to him always as if wdth new faces. As for 
 what followed, it was one of the old fitful colloquies 
 
AN ABSENTEE. 
 
 297 
 
 - — a game at conversation, sometimes with a partner, 
 sometimes with a dummy ; the old ^voman's memory 
 m the meantime growing torpid on a kitchen-chair. 
 Hour after hour passed away : no tea-spoon jingled, 
 or tea-cup rattled ; no murmuring kettle or hissiug 
 ui-n found its way upward from one Haunt of Forget- 
 ftdness to the other. In short, as might have been 
 expected with an Absentee, the Tea was absent. 
 
 It happens that the meal in question is not one of 
 my essentials ; I therefore never hinted at the In Tea 
 • Speravi of my visit ; but at the turn of eleven o'clock, 
 my host rang for the apparatus. The Chinese ware 
 was brought up, but the herb was deficient. Mrs. 
 Bundy went forth, by command, for a supply; but it 
 was past grocer- time, and we arranged to make 
 jimends by an early supper, w^hich came, however, as 
 proportionably late as the tea. By dint of those 
 freedoms which you must use with an entertainer who is 
 absent at his own table, I contrived to sup sparely ; 
 
 and W 's memory, blossoming like certain flowers 
 
 to the night, reminded him that I was accustomed to 
 go to bed on a tumbler of Geneva and w^ater. He 
 kept but one bottle of each of the three kinds, Bum, 
 Brandy, and Hollands, in the house ; and w^hen 
 exhausted they were replenished at the tavern a few 
 doors off. Luckily, for it was far beyond the midnight 
 hour wdien, according to our vapid magistracy, all 
 spirits are evil, the three vessels were full, and merely 
 wanted bringing up stairs. The kettle was singing on 
 the hob : the tumblers wdth spoons in them, stood 
 miraculously ready on the board ; and Mrs. Bundy 
 was really on her way from below with the one thing 
 needful. Never were fair hopes so unfairly blighted ! 
 I could hear her step labouring on the stairs to the 
 
298 
 
 AX ABSENTEE. 
 
 very last step, when her memory serving her just 
 as treacherously as her forgetfuhiess, or rather both 
 betraying her together, tiiere befel the accident 
 which I have endeavoured to record by the following 
 Bketch. 
 
 I never ate or drank with the Barmecide again ! 
 
 **.»J>ft'K! l'7E FORGOT TliE BHAXDY I" 
 
299 
 
 ODE TO THE CAMELEOPARD. 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS IMITATION. 
 
 Welcome to Freedom's birth-place — and a den! 
 
 Great xlnti-climax, hail! 
 So very lofty in thy front — but then, 
 
 So dwindling at the tail ! — 
 In truth, thou hast the most unequal legs ! 
 Has one pair gallopp'd, whilst the other trotted, 
 
300 
 
 ODE TO THE CAMELEOPAEli. 
 
 Along with other brethren, leopard-spotted, 
 O'er Afric sand, where ostriches lay eggs ? 
 Sure thou wert caught in some hard uphill chas^, 
 Those hinder heels still keeping thee in check ! 
 
 And yet thou seem'st prepared in any case, 
 
 Tlio' they had lost the race, 
 To win it by a neck ! 
 
 That lengthy neck — how like a crane's it looks ! 
 
 Art thou the overseer of all the brutes ? 
 
 Or dost thou browze on tip-top leaves or fruits — 
 
 Or go a bird-nesting amongst the rooks ? 
 
 How kindly nature caters for all wants ; 
 
 Thus giving unto thee a neck that stretches, 
 
 And high food fetches — • 
 To some a long nose, like the elephant's ! 
 
 Oh ! had'st thou any organ to tliy bellows, 
 To turn thy breath to speech in human style, 
 
 "What secrets thou might' st tell us, 
 "Where now our scientific guesses fail ; 
 
 For instance of the JMile, 
 Whether those Seven Mouths have any tail — 
 
 Mayhap thy luck too, 
 From that high head, as from a lofty hill- 
 Has let thee see the marvellous Timbuctoo — 
 Or drink of Niger at its infant rill ; 
 What were the travels of our Major Denham, 
 
 Or Clapperton, to thine 
 
 In that same line, 
 If thou could' st only squat thee down and pen 'em ' 
 
 Strange sights, indeed, thou must have overlook' d, 
 With eyes held ever in such vantage-stations ! 
 
OJDE TO THE CAMELEOPARD. 
 
 Hast seen, perchance, unhappy white folks cook'd, 
 
 And then made free of negro corporations ? 
 
 Poor wretches saved from cast away three-deckers- 
 
 By sooty wreckers — 
 'From hungry waves to have a. loss still drearier, 
 To far exceed the utmost aim of Park — 
 And find themselves, alas! beyond the mark, 
 lu the insides of Africa's Interior ! 
 
 AFRICAN WUECKER3. 
 
 Live on. Giraffe ! genteelest of raff kind ! 
 Admir'd by noble, and by royal tongues ! 
 
 May no pernicious wind, 
 Or English fog, blight thy exotic lungs ! 
 
302 
 
 ODE TO THE OAMELEOPAED. 
 
 Live on in liappy peace, altho' a rarit}^ 
 Nor env^Y thy poor cousin's more outrageoua 
 
 Parisian popularity ; 
 Whose very leopard-rash is grown contagious. 
 And worn on gloves and ribbons all about, 
 
 Alas ! they'll wear him out ! 
 So thou shalt take thy sweet diurnal feeds — 
 When he is stuff' d with undigested straw, 
 Sad food that never visited his jaw 1 
 And staring round him with a brace of beads ! 
 
303 
 
 A MAY-DAY. 
 
 A MAY-DUKE. 
 
 I KKOW not wliat idle schemer or mad wag put 
 Bucli a folly ill tlie head of my Lady Easherl}^, but she 
 resolved to celebrate a May-day after the old fashion, 
 and convert Por]% ington Park — her Ham pshire Leasowes 
 — into a new Arcadia. Such revivals have always 
 come to a bad end : the Golden Age is not to 
 
304 
 
 A MAY-BAT. 
 
 be regilt ; Pastoral is gone out, and Pan extinct — • 
 Pans will not last for ever. 
 
 But Lady Easterly's fete was fixed. A large order 
 was sent to Ingram, of rustic celebrity, for nubbly 
 sofas and crooked chairs ; a letter was dispatched to 
 
 the Manager of the P h Theatre, begging a loan 
 
 from the dramatic wardrobe ; and old Jenkins, the 
 steward, w^as sent through the village to assemble as 
 many, male and female, of the barn-door kind, as 
 he could muster. Happy for the Lady, had her 
 Hampshire peasantry been more pig-headed and 
 hoggishly untractable, like the staple animal of the 
 county : but the time came and the tenants. Happy 
 for her, had the goodnatured manager excused himself, 
 with a plea that the cottage-hats, and blue bodices, 
 and russet skirts, were bespoke, for that very night, by 
 Eosina and her villagers. But the day came and the 
 dresses. I am told that old Jenkins and his helpmate 
 liad a world of trouble in the distribution of the 
 borrowed plumes : this maiden turning np a pug-nose, 
 still pugger, at a faded bodice ; that damsel thrusting 
 out a pair of original pouting lips, still more spout- 
 like, at a rusty ribbon ; carroty Celias wanted more 
 roses in their hair, and dumpy Delias more flounces 
 in their petticoats. There is a natural tact, however, 
 in womankind as to matters of dress, that made them 
 look tolerably when all was done : but pray except 
 from this praise the gardener's daughter, Dolly 
 Blossom, — a born sloven, with her horticultural hose, 
 which she had 'pruned so often at top to graft at 
 bottom, that, from long stockings, they had dwindled 
 into short socks ; and it seemed as if, by a similar 
 process, she had coaxed her natural calves into her 
 ankles. The men were less fortunate in their toilette : 
 
A MAY-DAY. 
 
 305 
 
 they looked slack in their tights, and tight in their 
 slacks; to say nothing of Johnny Giles, who was 
 so tight all over, that he looked as if he had stolen hi a 
 clothes, and the clothes, turning King's evidence, 
 were going to split upon him." 
 
 In the mean time, the retainers at the Park had 
 not been idle. The old mast was taken down from 
 the old barn, and stripped of its weathercock, did 
 duty as a May-pole. The trees and shrubs were hung 
 with artificial garlands ; and a large marquee made an 
 agreeable contrast, in canvass, with the long lawn. 
 An extempore wooden arbour had likewise been 
 erected for the May Queen ; and here stood my Lady 
 Easherly with her daughters : my Lady, with a full 
 moon face, and a half moon tiara, was Diana ; the 
 young ladies represented her Nymphs, and they had 
 all bows and arrows, Spanish hats and feathers, 
 Lincoln green sponsors and slashed sleeves, — the 
 uniform of the Porkington Archery. There were, 
 moreover, six younger young ladies — a loan from the 
 parish school — who were to be the immediate 
 attendants on her Sylvan Majesty, and, as they 
 expressed it in their own simple Doric, " to shy 
 flowers at her fut! " 
 
 And now the nymphs and swains began to assem- 
 ble : Damon and Phillis, Strephon and Amaryllis — a 
 nomenclature not a little puzzling to the performers, 
 for Delia answered to Damon, and Chloe instead of 
 Colin, — 
 
 And, though I called another, Abra came." 
 
 But 1 must treat you with a few personalities. 
 Damon was one Darius Dobbs. He was entrusted 
 with a fine tinsel crook and half-a-dozen sheep, which 
 
 X 
 
806 
 
 A MAT-DAT. 
 
 he was puzzled to keep, by hook, or by crook, to tlie 
 lawn ; for Corydon, his fellow shephei'd, had quietly 
 hung up his pastoral emblem, and walked off to the 
 sign of the Eose and Crown. Poor Damon 1 there he 
 sat, looking the very original of Phillips's line, 
 
 * * Ah, silly I, more silly tlian my sheep, " 
 
 and, to add to his perplexity, he could not help seeing 
 and hearing Mary Jenks, his own sweetheart, who, 
 having no lambs to keep, was romping where she 
 would, and treating whom she would with a kindness 
 by no means sneaking. Poor Darius Dobbs ! 
 
 Gregory Giles was Colin ; and he was sadly ham- 
 pered with "two hands out of employ;" for, after 
 feeling up his back, and down his bosom, and about 
 his hips, he had discovered that, to save time and 
 trouble, his stage-clothes had been made without 
 pockets. But 
 
 * ' Satan finds some mischief still 
 For idle hands to do ; " 
 
 and, accordingly, he soon set Colin's fingers to work 
 so busily, that they twiddled off all the buttons from 
 nis borrowed jacket. 
 
 Strephon was nothing particular, only a sky-blue 
 body on a pair of chocolate-coloured legs. But Lubin 
 was a jewel ! He had formerly been a private in the 
 Baconfield Yeomanry, and therefore thought proper 
 to surmount his pastoral uniform with a cavalry cap ! 
 Such an incongruity was not to be overlooked. Old 
 Jenkins remonstrated, but Lubin was obstinate ; the 
 steward persisted, and the other replied with a " posi- 
 tive negative ; " and, in the end, Lubin went off in a 
 huff to the Eose and Crown. 
 
A MAI-DAY. 
 
 307 
 
 The force of two bad examples was too much for the 
 virtue of Darius Dobbs : be threw away his crook, left 
 bis sheep to anybody, and ran off to the alehouse, and, 
 what was worse, Colin was sent after him, and never 
 came back ! 
 
 The chief of the faithful shepherds, who now re- 
 mained at the park, was Hobbinol — one Josias Strong, 
 a notorious glutton, who had won sundry wagers by 
 devouring a leg of mutton and trimmings at a sitting. 
 He was a big lubberly fellow, that had been bora 
 great, and had achieved greatness, but had not great- 
 ness thrust upon him. It was as much as he could 
 do to keep his trowsers, — for he was at once clown 
 and pantaloon, — down to the knee, and more than he 
 could do to keep them up to the waist ; and, to crown 
 all, having rashly squatted down on the lawn, the 
 juicy herbage had left a stain behind, on his caliiiian- 
 coes, that still occupies the " greenest spot " in th 
 memoirs of Baconfield. 
 
 There were some half-dozen of other rustics to the 
 same pattern, but the fancy of my Lady Easherly did 
 not confine itself to the humanities. Old Joe Bradley, 
 the blacksmith, was Pan; and truly he made a respect- 
 able satyr enough, for he came half drunk, and was 
 rough, gruff*, tawny and brawny, and bow-legged, and 
 hadn't been shaved for a month. His cue was to 
 walk about in buckskins, leading his own billy-goat, 
 and he was followed up and down by his sister, Patty, 
 wliom the wags called Fatty Fan, 
 
 The other Deity was also a wet one — a triton 
 amongst mythologists, but Timothy Gubbins with his 
 familiars, — the acknowledged dolt of the village, and 
 remarkable for his w^eekly slumbers in the parisli 
 church. It had been ascertained that he could 
 
808 
 
 A MAY-DAT. 
 
 neitlier pipe, nor sing, nor dance, nor even keep 
 sheep, so he was stuck with an urn under his arm, 
 and a rush crown, as the God of the fish-pond, — a 
 task, simple as it was, that proved bejond his genius, 
 for, after stupidly dozing awhile over his vase, he fell 
 into a sound snoring sleep, out of which he cold- 
 pigged himself by tumbling, urn and all, into his own 
 fountain 
 
 Misfortunes always come pick-a-back. The Eose 
 and Crown happened to be a receiving-house for the 
 drowned, under the patronage of the Humane Society, 
 wherefore the Water God insisted on going there to 
 ue dried, and Cuddy, who pulled him out, insisted on 
 going with him! These two had certainly some 
 slight excuse for walking off to the alehouse, whereas 
 Sylvio thought proper to follow them without any 
 excuse at all ! 
 
 This mischance was but the prelude of new disas- 
 ters. It was necessary, before beginning the sports 
 of the day, to elect a Mat QuEEif, and, by the in- 
 fluence of Lady Easherly, the choice of the lieges fell 
 upon Jenny Acres, a really pretty maiden, and worthy 
 of the honour ; but in the meantime Dolly Wiggins, 
 a brazen strapping dairy-maid, had quietly elected 
 herself, — snatched a flower-basket from one of the six 
 Ploras, strewed her own path, and getting first to the 
 royal arbour, squatted there firm and fast, and per- 
 sisted in reigning as Queen in her own right. Hence 
 arose civil and uncivil war, — and Alexis and Diggon, 
 being interrupted in a boxing match in the Park, 
 adjourned to the Eose and Crown to have it out ; and 
 as two can't make a ring, a round dozen of the shep- 
 herds went along with them for that purpose. 
 
 There now remained but five swains in Arcadia, and 
 
A MAY-J)AT. 
 
 J09 
 
 they had five nymphs apiece, besides Mary Jenks, 
 who divided her favour equally amongst them all. 
 There should have been next in order a singing match 
 on the lawn, for a prize, after the fashion 6f Pope's 
 Pastorals ; but Cory don, one of the warblers, had 
 bolted, and Palemon, who remained, had forgotten 
 what was set down for him, though he obligingly 
 offered to sing " Tom Bowling " instead. But Lady 
 Rasherly thought proper to dispense with the song, 
 and there being nothing else, or better, to do, she 
 directed a movement to the marquee, in order to 
 begin, though somewhat early, on the collation. Alas! 
 even this was a failure. During the time of Grubbins's 
 ducking — the Qaeen's coronation — and the boxing- 
 match — Hobbinol, that great greedy lout, had been 
 privily in the pavilion, glutting his constitutional 
 voracity on the substantial, and he was now lying 
 insensible and harmless, like a gorged boa constrictor, 
 by the side of the table. Pan too had been missing, 
 and it was thought he was at the Eose and Crown, — 
 but no such luck ! He had been having a sly pull at 
 the tent tankards, and from half drunk had got so 
 whole drunk, that he could not hinder his goat from 
 having a butt even at Diana herself, nor from entangling 
 his horns in the table-cloth, by which the catastrophe 
 of the collation was completed ! 
 
 The rest of the fete consisted of a succession of 
 misfortunes which it would be painful to dwell upon, 
 and cruel to describe minutely. So I will but hint, 
 briefly, how the fragments of the banquet were 
 scrambled for by the Arcadians — how they danced 
 afterwards round the May-pole, not tripping them- 
 selves like fairies, but tripping one another — how the 
 Honourable Miss Kasherly, out of idleness, stood 
 
810 
 
 A MAY-DAY, 
 
 fifcting the notch of an arrow to the string — and how 
 the shaft went off of itself, and lodged, unluckily, in 
 the calf of one of the caperers. I will leave to the 
 imagination, what suits were torn past mending, or 
 soiled beyond washing — the lamentations of old 
 Jenkins — and the vows of Lady llasherly and 
 daughters, that there should be no more May-days at 
 Porkington. Suffice it, that night found all the Arca- 
 dians at the Eose and Crown : and on the morrow, 
 Diana and her Nymphs were laid up with severe colds 
 — Dolly Wiggins was out of place — Hobbinol in a 
 surfeit — Alexis before a magistrate — Palemon at a 
 Burgeon's — Billy in the pound — and Pan in the stocks, 
 with the fumes of last night's liquor not yet evapor- 
 ated from his grey gooseberry eyes. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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