(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up _Dens_ with their theology?
Is Brahma’s bull--a Hindoo god at home--
A papal bull to be tied up till Monday--
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday--
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make religion sad, and sour, and snubbish
But saints zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast--rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero[2] up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the dandelions on a Sunday--
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
NOTE.--There is an anecdote of a Scotch Professor who happened
during a Sunday walk to be hammering at a geological specimen which
he had picked up, when a peasant gravely accosted him, and said,
very seriously, “Eh! Sir, you think you are only breaking a stone,
but you are breaking the Sabbath.”
In a similar spirit, some of our over-righteous sectarians are fond
of attributing all breakage to the same cause--from the smashing of
a parish lamp, up to the fracture of a human skull;--the “breaking
into the bloody house of life,” or the breaking into a brick-built
dwelling. They all originate in the breaking of the Sabbath. It is
the source of every crime in the country--the parent of every
illegitimate child in the parish. The picking of a pocket is
ascribed to the picking of a daisy--the robbery on the highway to a
stroll in the fields--the incendiary fire to a hot dinner--on
Sunday. All other causes--the want of education--the want of moral
culture--the want of bread itself, are totally repudiated. The
criminal himself is made to confess at the gallows that he owes his
appearance on the scaffold to a walk with “Sally in our alley” on
the “day that comes between a Saturday and Monday.”
Supposing this theory to be correct, and made like the law “for
every degree,” the wonder of Captain Macheath that we haven’t
“better company at Tyburn tree” (now the New Drop) must be fully
shared by everybody who has visited the Ring in Hyde Park on the
day in question. But how much greater must be the wonder of any
person who has happened to reside, like myself, for a year or two
in a continental city, inhabited, according to the strict
construction of our Mawworms, by some fifteen or twenty thousand of
habitual Sabbath-breakers, and yet, without hearing of murder and
robbery as often as of blood-sausages and dollars! A city where the
Burgomaster himself must have come to a bad end, if a dance upon
Sunday led so inevitably to a dance upon nothing!
The “saints” having set up this absolute dependence of crime on
Sabbath-breaking, their relative proportions become a fair
statistical question; and, as such, the inquiry is seriously
recommended to the rigid legislator, who acknowledges, indeed, that
the Sabbath was “made for man,” but, by a singular interpretation,
conceives that the man for whom it was made is himself!
THE TURTLES.
A FABLE.
“The rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle.”--BYRON.
One day, it was before a civic dinner,
Two London Aldermen, no matter which,
Cordwainer, Girdler, Patten-maker, Skinner--
But both were florid, corpulent, and rich,
And both right fond of festive demolition,
Set forth upon a secret expedition.
Yet not, as might be fancied from the token,
To Pudding Lane, Pie Corner, or the Street
Of Bread, or Grub, or anything to eat,
Or drink, as Milk, or Vintry, or Portsoken,
But eastward to that more aquatic quarter,
Where folks take water,
Or bound on voyages, secure a berth
For Antwerp or Ostend, Dundee or Perth,
Calais, Boulogne, or any Port on earth!
Jostled and jostling, through the mud,
Peculiar to the Town of Lud,
Down narrow streets and crooked lanes they dived,
Past many a gusty avenue, through which
Came yellow fog, and smell of pitch,
From barge, and boat, and dusky wharf derived;
With darker fumes, brought eddying by the draught,
From loco-smoko-motive craft;
Mingling with scents of butter, cheese, and gammons,
Tea, coffee, sugar, pickles, rosin, wax,
Hides, tallow, Russia-matting, hemp and flax,
Salt-cod, red-herrings, sprats, and kipper’d salmons,
Nuts, oranges, and lemons,
Each pungent spice, and aromatic gum,
Gas, pepper, soaplees, brandy, gin, and rum;
Alamode-beef and greens--the London soil--
Glue, coal, tobacco, turpentine and oil,
Bark, assafœtida, squills, vitriol, hops,
In short, all whiffs, and sniffs, and puffs and snuffs,
From metals, minerals, and dyewood stuffs,
Fruits, victual, drink, solidities, or slops--
In flasks, casks, bales, trucks, waggons, taverns, shops,
Boats, lighters, cellars, wharfs, and warehouse-tops,
That, as we walk upon the river’s ridge,
Assault the nose--below the bridge.
A walk, however, as tradition tells,
That once a poor blind Tobit used to choose,
Because, incapable of other views,
He met with “such a sight of smells.”
But on, and on, and on,
In spite of all unsavoury shocks,
Progress the stout Sir Peter and Sir John,
Steadily steering ship-like for the docks--
And now they reach a place the Muse, unwilling,
Recalls for female slang and vulgar doing,
The famous Gate of Billing,
That does not lead to cooing--
And now they pass that House that is so ugly
A Customer to people looking “smuggley”--
And now along that fatal Hill they pass
Where centuries ago an Oxford bled,
And proved--too late to save his life, alas!--
That _he_ was “off his head.”
At last before a lofty brick-built pile
Sir Peter stopp’d, and with mysterious smile
Tingled a bell that served to bring
The wire-drawn genius of the ring,
A species of commercial Samuel Weller--
To whom Sir Peter--tipping him a wink,
And something else to drink--
“Show us the cellar.”
Obsequious bow’d the man, and led the way
Down sundry flights of stairs, where windows small,
Dappled with mud, let in a dingy ray--
A dirty tax, if they were tax’d at all.
At length they came into a cellar damp,
With venerable cobwebs fringed around,
A cellar of that stamp
Which often harbours vintages renown’d,
The feudal Hock, or Burgundy the courtly,
With sherry, brown or golden,
Or port, so olden,
Bereft of body ’tis no longer portly--
But old or otherwise--to be veracious--
That cobwebb’d cellar, damp, and dim, and spacious,
Held nothing crusty--but crustaceous.
Prone, on the chilly floor,
Five splendid Turtles--such a five!
Natives of some West Indian shore,
Were flapping all alive,
Late landed from the Jolly Planter’s yawl--
A sight whereon the dignitaries fix’d
Their eager eyes, with ecstacy unmix’d,
Like fathers that behold their infants crawl,
Enjoying every little kick and sprawl.
Nay--far from fatherly the thoughts they bred
Poor loggerheads from far Ascension ferried!
The Aldermen too plainly wish’d them dead
And Aldermanbury’d!
“There!” cried Sir Peter, with an air
Triumphant as an ancient victor’s,
And pointing to the creatures rich and rare,
“There’s picters!”
“Talk of Olympic Games! They’re not worth mention;
The real prize for wrestling is when Jack,
In Providence or Ascension,
Can throw a lively turtle on its back!”
“Aye!” cried Sir John, and with a score of nods,
Thoughtful of classical symposium,
“There’s food for Gods!
There’s nectar! there’s ambrosium!
There’s food for Roman Emperors to eat--
Oh, there had been a treat
(Those ancient names will sometimes hobble us)
For Helio-gobble-us!”
“There were a feast for Alexander’s Feast!
The real sort--none of your mock or spurious!”
And then he mention’d Aldermen deceased,
And “Epicurius,”
And how Tertullian had enjoy’d such foison;
And speculated on that _verdigrease_
That isn’t poison.
“Talk of your Spring, and verdure, and all that!
Give _me_ green fat!
As for your Poets with their groves of myrtles
And billing turtles,
Give me, for poetry, them Turtles there,
A-billing in a bill of fare!”
“Of all the things I ever swallow--
Good, well-dressed turtle beats them hollow--
It almost makes me wish, I vow,
To have _two_ stomachs, like a cow!”
And lo! as with the cud, an inward thrill
Upheaved his waistcoat and disturb’d his frill,
His mouth was oozing and he work’d his jaw--
“I almost think that I could eat one raw!”
And thus, as “inward love breeds outward talk,”
The portly pair continued to discourse;
And then--as Gray describes of life’s divorce--
With “longing lingering look” prepared to walk,--
Having thro’ one delighted sense, at least,
Enjoy’d a sort of Barmecidal feast,
And with prophetic gestures, strange to see,
Forestall’d the civic Banquet yet to be,
Its callipash and callipee!
A pleasant prospect--but alack!
Scarcely each Alderman had turn’d his back,
When seizing on the moment so propitious,
And having learn’d that they were so delicious
To bite and sup,
From praises so high flown and injudicious,--
And nothing could be more pernicious!
The turtles fell to work, and ate each other up!
MORAL.
Never, from folly or urbanity,
Praise people thus profusely to their faces,
Till quite in love with their own graces,
They’re eaten up by vanity!
TOWN AND COUNTRY.
AN ODE.
O! Well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh “_O rus!_”
Of London pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades--my eyes detest
This endless meal of brick!
What joy have I in June’s return?
My feet are parch’d, my eyeballs burn,
I scent no flowery gust:
But faint the flagging zephyr springs,
With dry Macadam on its wings,
And turns me “dust to dust.”
My sun his daily course renews
Due east, but with no Eastern dews;
The path is dry and hot!
His setting shows more tamely still,
He sinks behind no purple hill,
But down a chimney’s pot!
O! but to hear the milkmaid blithe,
Or early mower wet his scythe
The dewy meads among!--
My grass is of that sort, alas!
That makes no hay--called sparrow-grass
By folks of vulgar tongue!
O! but to smell the woodbines sweet!
I think of cowslip cups--but meet
With very vile rebuffs!
For meadow-buds I get a whiff
Of Cheshire cheese,--or only sniff
The turtle made at Cuft’s.
How tenderly Rousseau reviewed
His periwinkles!--mine are stewed!
My rose blooms on a gown!--
I hunt in vain for eglantine,
And find my blue-bell on the sign
That marks the Bell and Crown:
Where are ye, birds! that blithely wing
From tree to tree, and gaily sing
Or mourn in thickets deep?
My cuckoo has some ware to sell,
The watchman is my Philomel,
My blackbird is a sweep!
Where are ye, linnet, lark, and thrush!
That perch on leafy bough and bush,
And tune the various song?
Two hurdigurdists, and a poor
Street-Handel grinding at my door,
Are all my “tuneful throng.”
Where are ye, early-purling streams,
Whose waves reflect the morning beams,
And colours of the skies?
My rills are only puddle-drains
From shambles, or reflect the stains
Of calimanco-dyes!
Sweet are the little brooks that run
O’er pebbles glancing in the sun,
Singing in soothing tones:--
Not thus the city streamlets flow;
They make no music as they go,
Though never “off the stones.”
Where are ye, pastoral pretty sheep,
That wont to bleat, and frisk, and leap
Beside your woolly dams?
Alas! instead of harmless crooks,
My Corydons use iron hooks,
And skin--not shear--the lambs.
The pipe whereon, in olden day,
The Arcadian herdsman used to play
Sweetly, here soundeth not;
But merely breathes unwholesome fumes,
Meanwhile the city boor consumes
The rank weed--“piping hot.”
All rural things are vilely mock’d,
On every hand the sense is shock’d,
With objects hard to bear:
Shades--vernal shades!--where wine is sold!
And, for a turfy bank, behold
An Ingram’s rustic chair!
Where are ye, London meads and bowers,
And gardens redolent of flowers
Wherein the zephyr wons?
Alas! Moor Fields are fields no more.
See Hatton’s Gardens bricked all o’er,
And that bare wood--St. John’s.
No pastoral scenes procure me peace;
I hold no Leasowes in my lease,
No cot set round with trees:
No sheep-white hill my dwelling flanks;
And Omnium furnishes my banks
With brokers--not with bees.
O! well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh “_O rus!_”
Of city pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades--my eyes detest
That endless meal of brick!
NO!
No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon--
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--
No road--no street--no “t’other side the way”--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--
No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing ’em--
No knowing ’em!--
No travelling at all--no locomotion,
No inkling of the way--no notion--
“No go”--by land or ocean--
No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No Park--no Ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,--
November!
THE LOST HEIR.
“Oh, where, and oh where
Is my bonny laddie gone?”--OLD SONG
One day, as I was going by
That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry
That chill’d my very blood;
And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,
Bedaub’d with grease and mud.
She turn’d her East, she turn’d her West,
Staring like Pythoness possest,
With streaming hair and heaving breast
As one stark mad with grief.
This way and that she wildly ran,
Jostling with woman and with man--
Her right hand held a frying pan,
The left a lump of beef.
At last her frenzy seem’d to reach
A point just capable of speech,
And with a tone almost a screech,
As wild as ocean birds,
Or female Ranter mov’d to preach,
She gave her “sorrow words.”
“Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild!
Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?
Lawk help me, I don’t know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way--
A child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a
needle in a bottle of hay.
I am all in a quiver--get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty
M’Nab!
You promised to have half an eye on him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab.
The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes,
Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies.
I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys,
With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys.
When his father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock
strikes one,
He’ll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns
not done!
La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don’t be making a mob
in the street;
Oh Serjeant M’Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you.
in your beat?
Do, good people, move on! don’t stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid
stuck pigs;
Saints forbid! but he’s p’r’aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake
of his clothes by the prigs;
He’d a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one
day in Rag Fair;
And his trousers considering not very much patch’d, and red plush, they was
once his Father’s best pair.
His shirt, it’s very lucky I’d got washing in the tub, or that might have gone
with the rest;
But he’d got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.
He’d a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sew’d in, and not quite so much
jagg’d at the brim.
With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you’ll know by that
if it’s him.
Except being so well dress’d my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want
of an orphan,
Had borrow’d the child to go a begging with, but I’d rather see him laid out in
his coffin!
Do, good people, move on, such a rabble of boys! I’ll break every bone of ’em I
come near,
Go home--you’re spilling the porter--go home--Tommy Jones, go along home with
your beer.
This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan,
Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey
and an Organ.
Oh my Billy--my head will turn right round--if he’s got kiddynapp’d with them
Italians,
They’ll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish
tatterdemalions.
Billy--where are you, Billy?--I’m as hoarse as a crow, with screaming for ye,
you young sorrow!
And shan’t have half a voice, no more I shan’t, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow.
Oh Billy, you’re bursting my heart in two, and my life won’t be of no more vally,
If I’m to see other folks’ darlins, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley.
And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair
As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there an’t no Billy there!
I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know’d where to run,
Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny
bun,--
The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily
To find my Bill holdin’ up his little innocent hand at the Old Bailey.
For though I say it as oughtn’t, yet I will say, you may search for miles and
mileses
And not find one better brought up, and more pretty behaved, from one end to t’other
of St. Giles’s.
And if I call’d him a beauty, it’s no lie, but only as a Mother ought to
speak;
You never set eyes on a more handsomer face, only it hasn’t been wash’d for a
week;
As for hair, tho’ it’s red, it’s the most nicest hair when I’ve time to just show
it the comb;
I’ll owe ’em five pounds, and a blessing besides, as will only bring him safe
and sound home.
He’s blue eyes, and not to be call’d a squint, though a little cast he’s certainly
got;
And his nose is still a good un, tho’ the bridge is broke, by his falling on a
pewter pint pot;
He’s got the most elegant wide mouth in the world, and very large teeth for his
age;
And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson’s child to play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage.
And then he has got such dear winning ways--but oh I never never shall see him no more!
O dear! to think of losing him just after nursing him back from death’s door!
Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang ’em, was at twenty a penny!
And the threepence he’d got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child
is too many.
And the Cholera man came and whitewash’d us all and, drat him, made a seize of
our hog.
It’s no use to send the Crier to cry him about, he’s such a blunderin’ drunken
old dog;
The last time he was fetch’d to find a lost child, he was guzzling with his bell
at the Crown,
And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted Mother and Father
about Town.
Billy--where are you, Billy, I say? come Billy, come home, to your best of Mothers!
I’m scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they drive so, they’d run over their own
Sisters and Brothers.
Or may be he’s stole by some chimbly sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues
and what not,
And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketch’d, and
the chimbly’s red hot.
Oh I’d give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin’ eyes
on his face.
For he’s my darlin of darlins, and if he don’t soon come back, you’ll see me drop
stone dead on the place.
I only wish I’d got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and wouldn’t I hug him
and kiss him!
Lauk! I never knew what a precious he was--but a child don’t not feel like a child till
you miss him.
Why there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the young wretch, it’s that Billy as
sartin as sin!
But let me get him home, with a good grip of his hair, and I’m blest if he shall
have a whole bone in his skin!”
SHE IS FAR FROM THE LAND.
Cables entangling her,
Shipspars for mangling her,
Ropes, sure of strangling her;
Blocks over-dangling her;
Tiller to batter her,
Topmast to shatter her,
Tobacco to spatter her;
Boreas blustering,
Boatswain quite flustering,
Thunder clouds mustering
To blast her with sulphur--
If the deep don’t engulph her;
Sometimes fear’s scrutiny
Pries out a mutiny,
Sniffs conflagration,
Or hints at starvation:--
All the sea-dangers,
Buccaneers, rangers,
Pirates, and Sallee-men,
Algerine galleymen,
Tornadoes and typhons,
And horrible syphons,
And submarine travels
Thro’ roaring sea-navels;
Every thing wrong enough,
Long boat not long enough,
Vessel not strong enough;
Pitch marring frippery,
The deck very slippery,
And the cabin--built sloping,
The Captain a-toping,
And the Mate a blasphemer,
That names his Redeemer,--
With inward uneasiness;
The cook, known by greasiness,
The victuals beslubber’d,
Her bed--in a cupboard;
Things of strange christening,
Snatch’d in her listening,
Blue lights and red lights
And mention of dead lights,
And shrouds made a theme of,
Things horrid to dream of,--
And _buoys_ in the water
To fear all exhort her;
Her friend no Leander,
Herself no sea gander,
And ne’er a cork jacket
On board of the packet;
The breeze still a stiffening,
The trumpet quite deafening;
Thoughts of repentance,
And doomsday and sentence;
Everything sinister,
Not a church minister,--
Pilot a blunderer,
Coral reefs under her,
Ready to sunder her;
Trunks tipsy-topsy,
The ship in a dropsy;
Waves oversurging her,
Syrens a-dirgeing her;
Sharks all expecting her,
Sword-fish dissecting her,
Crabs with their hand-vices
Punishing land vices;
Sea-dogs and unicorns,
Things with no puny horns,
Mermen carnivorous--
“Good Lord deliver us!”
ANACREONTIC.
BY A FOOTMAN.
It’s wery well to talk in praise
Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,
In proper time and place;
Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,
Dipp’d out of a transparent pool
Reflecting heaven’s face.
Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,
And streams as gushes from the hills,
It’s wery well to talk;--
But what becomes of all sich schemes,
With ponds of ice, and running streams
As doesn’t even walk?
[Illustration: A PUBLIC DINNER.]
[Illustration: A DAY’S SPORT ON THE MOORS.]
When Winter comes with piercing cold,
And all the rivers, new or old,
Is frozen far and wide;
And limpid springs is solid stuff,
And crystal pools is hard enough
To skate upon and slide;--
What then are thirsty men to do,
But drink of ale, and porter too,
Champagne as makes a fizz;
Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,
And p’rhaps a drop of summut short--
The water-pipes is friz!
THE FORLORN SHEPHERD’S COMPLAINT.
AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, FROM SYDNEY.
“Well! Here I am--no Matter how it suits,
A-keeping Company with them dumb Brutes,
Old Park vos no bad Judge--confound his vig!
Of vot vood break the Sperrit of a Prig!
“The like of Me, to come to New Sow Wales
To go a-tagging arter Vethers’ Tails
And valk in Herbage as delights the Flock,
But stinks of Sweet Herbs vorser nor the Dock!
“To go to set this solitary Job
To Von whose Vork vos alvay in a Mob!
It’s out of all our Lines, for sure I am
Jack Shepherd even never kep a Lamb!
“I arn’t ashamed to say I sit and veep
To think of Seven Years of keepin Sheep,
The spooniest Beasts in Nater, all to Sticks,
And not a Votch to take for all their Ticks!
“If I’d fore-seed how Transports vood turn out
To only Baa! and Botanize about,
I’d quite as leaf have had the t’other Pool,
And come to Cotton as to all this Vool!
“Von only happy moment I have had
Since here I come to be a Farmer’s Cad,
And then I cotch’d a vild Beast in a Snooze,
And pick’d her Pouch of three young Kangaroos!
“Vot chance have I to go to Race or Mill?
Or show a sneaking Kindness for a Till;
And as for Vashings, on a hedge to dry,
I’d put the Natives’ Linen in my Eye!
“If this whole Lot of Mutton I could scrag,
And find a fence to turn it into Swag,
I’d give it all in Lonnon Streets to stand,
And if I had my pick, I’d say the Strand!
“But ven I goes, as maybe vonce I shall,
To my old crib to meet with Jack, and Sal,
I’ve been so gallows honest in this Place,
I shan’t not like to show my sheepish Face.
“It’s wery hard for nothing but a Box
Of Irish Blackguard to be keepin’ Flocks,
‘Mong naked Blacks, sich Savages to hus,
They’ve nayther got a Poker nor a Pus.
“But Folks may tell their Troubles till they’re sick
To dumb brute Beasts,--and so I’ll cut my Stick!
And vot’s the Use a Feller’s Eyes to pipe
Vere von can’t borrow any Gemman’s Vipe?’
HUGGINS AND DUGGINS.
A PASTORAL AFTER POPE.
Two swains or clowns--but call them swains--
While keeping flocks on Salisbury Plains,
For all that tend on sheep as drovers,
Are turned to songsters, or to lovers,
Each of the lass he called his dear,
Began to carol loud and clear.