Читать книгу Merrie England in the Olden Time - George Daniel - Страница 13

“When I heard she was married, thinks I to myself,

I'm now an old bachelor laid on the shelf;

The last of the Pigtails that smok'd at the Sun,

My Dora has done me, and I am undone!

I call'd at her lodgings in Dean Street, Soho;

My love's gone for ever! alas! she's no go.

A nip of prime Burton shall warm my cold blood,

Since all my enjoyments are nipp'd in the bud!

The picture of famine, my frame half reduced;

I can't eat a quarter the vittles I us'd!

O dear! what can ail me? I once was so hale—

When my head's underground let this verse tell my tale.

I sought the Old Bailey, despairing and lank,

To take my last cut of boil'd buttock and flank,

To sniff my last sniff in those savoury scenes,

And sigh my last sigh over carrots and greens!

'A pot of mild porter, and take off the chill,'

A damsel came smirking, in curls, cap, and frill.

I started! she scream'd! 'twas my Dora! off flew

Flank, buttock, greens, carrots, and peas-pudding too!

'Yes, I am your true love!' she curtsey'd, and said,

'At home I'ma widow, but here I'm a maid!

My spouse kick'd the bucket last Sunday at Leeds,

And left me, a rose-bud, all cover'd with weeds.'

'For all your fine speeches, a widow, in fine,

Is an article madam, I mean to decline I

Though wedlock's a bolus to physic and fright,

A black draught—a widow! would finish me quite.”

“A vile stave! Commend me to 'fonde Elderton,' * and the troop of 'metre ballad-mongers' that sleep among the dull of ancient days; but save me from that doleful doggrel of which, I shrewdly suspect, thou, Benjamin Bosky, art the perpetrator.

* The following is a description of Elderton by a

contemporary writer in 1582. See “Reporte of the Death and

Martyr-dome of M. Campion, Jesuit, &c.”

“Fonde Elderton, call in thy foolish rhime,

Thy scurill balates are to bad to sell;

Let good men rest, and mende thy self in time,

Confesse in prose thou hast not metred well;

Or if thy folly cannot chuse but fayne

Write alehotise toys, blaspheme not in thy vain.”

It smells woundily of thy peculiar locality, and might have befringed the walls of Bedlam and Soho. Henceforth be the Magnus Apollo of thy native Little Britain, and divide the crown with Thomas Delony, of huck-ster-fame! Jack of Newbery, the Gentle Craft, garlands, strange histories,

'And such small deer,

Had been Tom's food for many a year,'

and may serve for thine, Benjamin; for, in poetical matters, thou hast the maw of a kite and the digestion of an ostrich.”

“A sprat to catch a herring!”

“A tittlebat! thou triton of the minnows!”

“But the Bull-Feather! Uncle Timothy, the Bull-Feather

'Must not be forgotten

Until the world's rotten.'

Let me refresh thy memory. Once upon a time——”

“Peace, babbler! If I must take the bull by the horns, it shall be without thy jockeyship. I will not ride double. 'Tis an idle tale, gentlemen; but there are charms in association that may render it interesting.”

Uncle Tim regaled with a fragrant pinch his satirical nose, and began