Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

Will drive us poor cits fairly out of our wits
By coming to honor the christ'ning.

In pitiful plight for a feast and a sight
Is each municipal member,

He wants to go thro' a rehearsal or two
Against the ninth of November ! 71

Lord (aside). That ever I should live, ha! ha! To hear an alderman sol fa.

-Citizens, the Lord's Anointed

Has commanded and appointed

Altar, Chancel, (gracious powers!) strewn with fair and fragrant flowers—

(In our noses every rose is Puseyite-perfume!)

Anthems breathing (well-a-day!) horrid, monkish, melody! (I'd rather now a Flemish frow hear warble" Buy a Broom!"

Rome-ridden Denison, you don't deserve that benison, Reformation's toothy rations turtle soup and venison ! Pusey too, the same to you! and all (God save Victoria!) Who say she's not (I'd have 'em shot!) the Church's upper story, ah!

O, Bishop Ullathorne (in the side of Bull a thorn!)

Sent to fry us! post to Pius, varlet! lead the van(), Bishop Beverley (who thought to coax us cleverly!) Brush with Brother Brummagem as quickly as you can! Scarlet Tile, quit Britain's isle, or else (tile territorial To swallow up our "loving cup," our turbot and John Dory all!)

Your owner will from Tower Hill to Pius at the Vatican Have soon to go to kiss his toe, if, minus head and hat,

he can.

Tom Thumb 72 to try his mimic power,73

On royal ennui for an hour.

Crowns, with high debate and discourse,74
Overdone, have taken this course.

King Hal made much of mimes and mummers,
His wag was Will, the famous Summers;

72 It is a melancholy reflection that a tithe of what was lavished upon this "disgusting dwarf" (as "The Times" designated this Liliputian mountebank, in its eloquent lament on the death of Haydon) would have stood between genius and despair. Upon this sad subject we might ponder till the mind "burst with thinking." To Sir Robert Peel belongs the deep consolation of having relieved Haydon in his last extremity. The broken-hearted man applied to a certain loosely-loquacious and "liberal” (!) Lord for pecuniary assistance, but in vain. The Prime Minister, harassed by the combined hostility of factious friends and place-hunting foes, found leisure for benevolence. He sent the applicant two hundred pounds, and received his dying benediction.

It was only a few weeks before the death of Haydon that Uncle Timothy saw him in Paddington Church Yard reading the inscription ("Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord!") on the tomb-stone of Siddons. To that friend he confided his many sorrows, and his mournful conviction that there was but ONE cure for them.

"O God!-Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall leave behind me?" he exclaimed.-Then, with a look and tone never to be forgotten, he added,

"If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story."

Queen Bess, when sorrowful and sick,
"Undumpish'd" was by Tarleton Dick!
And Archee Armstrong 75 often burst
The sides of good King Charles the First.
These jesters of the ancient schools,

[blocks in formation]

But a few paces from the grave of Siddons this once sensitive and too-finely-strung organisation "sleeps well!" "Oh! let him pass, he hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."

73 Very different were the "Merriments" of our English Tom Thumb, which "in the olde time have beene the only revivers of drousy age at midnight: old and young have with his tales chim'd mattens till the cocks crow in the morning; batchelors and maides with his tales have compassed the Christmas fire-blocke till the curfew bell rings candle out; the old shepheard and the young plow-boy, after their dayes labour, have carold out a Tale of Tom Thumbe to make them merry with: and who but little Tom hath made long nights seem short, and heavy toyles easie?"-The Famous History of Tom Thumb.

74" Strain'd to the height,

In that celestial colloquy sublime,

Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair.”

75 Archie came in gold most glorious to behold,

Which made the people fall into laughter;

Some men they stood by, when the Foole they did
spie,

Expecting many Lords to follow after."

This was on the 11th of April, 1609, when King James I. accompanied by the Queen, the Prince, and a splendid retinue, gave the name of "Britain's Burse" to a rival Exchange at Durham House... Archee's annuity was

Their quaint parlousness and patter
Pregnant were with mind and matter,
Their words were swords, their ready wit
Shone brightest in their use of it!
Now this Merry-Andrew's greatest
Merit is that he's the latest,

Tho' judging from experience past,
He is not like to be the last! 76
When the Imperial Presence from
In state has strutted tiny Tom,
I, your baterie de cuisine

Will humbly lay before the Queen,
And your dutiful petition
For Her Majesty's commission.
Touching this momentous measure

You shall know the Sovereign's pleasure.

[Exit.

Sir P... .. Ye diplomatic spirits crown

My head with laurels ! drop me down

two shillings per day, as we learn from a very curious Debenture written in Latin, and now lying before us, of which the following is a translation.

[blocks in formation]

76 "The Dutch Dwarf, Van Tromp, had the honor of attending at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday Evening." — Court Circular, Saturday, February 24, 1849.

From your amaranthine bowers

Bouquets, for the victory's ours!

Pumpkin..... Haunch of venison, hot and

smoking!

Cherry sauce, piquant, provoking!

And a bottle of the best

Make me, too, completely blest!

SONG, Mr. Pumpkin Plethoric.

In nectarine streams all purple beams
Let me lovingly lave my lip,

Then, for a spree, shall gallopade glee,
And toes trot out on a frolicksome trip!
At every draught so merrily quaff'd
Cupid Dan shall open his fire,

From some wicked eye an arrow let fly,

And turn his gas on higher and higher! Then, by the mass! let bumpers pass;

Now for a bottle from Bacchus's bin!

I long for a quiz at my festivous phiz

In the glass that I hold 'twixt my nose and my

chin!

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.—The Long Walk, Windsor.

N

Enter Democritus.

Democritus.

OT by Motley Coat alone

I have found the Fool is known,

Seldom he abroad appears

Wearing his symbolic ears,

« AnteriorContinua »