Читать книгу The Tatler (Vol. 1-4) - Joseph Addison - Страница 97

"'Though in your country I'm unknown,

Yet, sir, I must advise you;

Of late so poor and mean you're grown,

That all the world despise you.

Here vermin eat your majesty,

There meagre subjects stand unfed;

What surer signs of poverty,

Than many lice, and little bread?

Then, sir, the present minute choose,

Our armies are advanced;

Those terms you at the Hague refuse,

At Paris won't be granted.

Consider this, and Dunkirk raze,

And Anna's title own;

Send one Pretender out to graze,

And call the other home.'

"Your humble Servant,

"BREAD, THE STAFF OF LIFE."

262. No. 21.

263. It would seem from the passage in the Examiner (vol. iii. No. 48), that three men of distinction at that time, probably noblemen, were supposed to be denoted under the names of Hogshead, Culverin, and Musket, from Wapping; or, as they are named by the Examiner, "Tun, Gun, and Pistol, from Wapping." They are there mentioned among others, said to have been, "with at least fifty more, sufferers of figure under this author's satire, in the days of his mirth," &c. In the Guardian (No. 53) Steele says, "Tun, Gun, and Pistol from Wapping, laughed at the representation which was made of them, and were observed to be more regular in their conduct afterwards."

264. The kept mistress of a knight of the shire near Brentford, who squandered his estate on women, and in contested elections. He has long since gone into the land of oblivion. See No. 51.—(Nichols.)

265. Several such verses, inscribed on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, are given in Nichols' "Select Collection of Poems," v. 168–178.

266. Admiral Sir John Norris (died 1749) was sent in June 1709, with a small squadron, to stop the French supply of corn from the Baltic.