If I touch’d it, she would very soon say, “Mary, we must part.”
To be sure she _is_ unlucky: only Friday comes Master Randall,
And breaks a broken spout, and fresh chips a tea-cup handle:
He’s a dear, sweet little child, but he will so finger and touch,
And that’s why my Lady doesn’t take to children much.
Well! there’s stupid Mr. Lambert, with his two great coat flaps,
Must go and sit down on the Dresden shepherdesses’ laps,
As if there was no such things as rosewood chairs in the room;
I couldn’t have made a greater sweep with the handle of the broom.
Mercy on us! how my mistress began to rave and tear!
Well! after all, there’s nothing like good ironstone ware for wear.
If ever I marry, that’s flat, I’m sure it won’t be John Dockery,--
I should be a wretched woman in a shop full of crockery.
I should never like to wipe it, though I love to be neat and tidy,
And afraid of mad bulls on market-days every Monday and Friday.
I’m very much mistook if Mr. Lambert’s will be a catch;
The breaking the Chiney will be the breaking-off of his own match.
Missis wouldn’t have an angel, if he was careless about Chiney;
She never forgives a chip, if it’s ever so small and tiny.
Lawk! I never saw a man in all my life in such a taking;
I could find in my heart to pity him for all his mischief-making.
To see him stand a-hammering and stammering, like a zany;
But what signifies apologies, if they won’t mend old Chaney!
If he sent her up whole crates full, from Wedgwood’s and Mr. Spode’s,
He couldn’t make amends for the crack’d mandarins and smash’d toads.
Well! every one has their tastes, but, for my part, my own self,
I’d rather have the figures on my poor dear grandmother’s old shelf:
A nice pea-green poll-parrot, and two reapers with brown ears of corns,
And a shepherd with a crook after a lamb with two gilt horns,
And such a Jemmy Jessamy in top boots and sky-blue vest,
And a frill and flower’d waistcoat, with a fine bowpot at the breast.
God help her, poor old soul! I shall come into ’em at her death,
Though she’s a hearty woman for her years, except her shortness of breath.
Well! you think the things will mend--if they won’t, Lord mend us all!
My Lady will go in fits, and Mr. Lambert won’t need to call:
I’ll be bound in any money, if I had a guinea to give,
He won’t sit down again on Chiney the longest day he has to live.
Poor soul! I only hope it won’t forbid his bans of marriage,
Or he’d better have sat behind on the spikes of my Lady’s carriage.
But you’ll join ’em all of course, and stand poor Mr. Lambert’s friend;
I’ll look in twice a day, just to see, like, how they mend.
To be sure it is a sight that might draw tears from dogs and cats;
Here’s this pretty little pagoda, now, has lost four of its cocked hats:
Be particular with the pagoda: and then here’s this pretty bowl--
The Chinese Prince is making love to nothing because of this hole;
And here’s another Chinese man, with a face just like a doll--
Do stick his pigtail on again, and just mend his parasol.
But I needn’t tell you what to do; only do it out of hand,
And charge whatever you like to charge--my Lady won’t make a stand.
Well! good morning, Mr. What-d’ye-call; for it’s time our gossip ended:
And you know the proverb, the less as is said, the sooner the Chiney’s mended.
ON A PICTURE OF HERO AND LEANDER.
Why, Lover, why
Such a water rover?
Would she love thee more
For coming _half seas over_?
Why, Lady, why,
So in love with dipping?
Must a lad of _Greece_
Come all over _dripping_?
Why, Cupid, why
Make the passage brighter?
Were not any boat
Better than a _lighter_?
Why, Madam, why
So intrusive standing?
Must thou be on the stair
When he’s on the _landing_?
MISS FANNY’S FAREWELL FLOWERS.
Not “the posie of a ring.”
SHAKESPEARE (all but the _not_).
I came to town a happy man:
I need not now dissemble
Why I return so sad at heart--
It’s all through Fanny Kemble:
Oh! when she threw her flowers away,
What urged the tragic slut on
To weave in such a wreath as that,
Ah me! a bachelor’s button.
None fought so hard, none fought so well,
As I to gain some token--
When all the pit rose up in arms,
And heads and hearts were broken;
“Huzza!” said I, “I’ll have a flower
As sure as my name’s Dutton;”--
I made a snatch--I got a catch--
By Jove! a bachelor’s button!
I’ve lost my watch--my hat is smashed--
My clothes declare the racket;
I went there in a full dress coat,
And came home in a jacket.
My nose is swell’d--my eye is black--
My lip I’ve got a cut on!
Odds buds!--and what a bud to get--
The deuce! a bachelor’s button!
My chest’s in pain; I really fear
I’ve somewhat hurt my bellows,
By pokes and punches in the ribs
From those _herb-strewing fellows_.
I miss two teeth in my front row;
My corn has had a _fut_ on;
And all this pain I’ve had to gain
This cursed bachelor’s button.
Had I but won a rose--a bud--
A pansy--or a daisy--
A periwinkle--anything--
But this--it drives me crazy!
My very sherry tastes like squills,
I can’t enjoy my mutton;
And when I sleep I dream of it--
Still--still----a bachelor’s button
My place is book’d per coach to-night,
But oh, my spirit trembles
To think how country friends will ask
Of Knowleses and of Kembles.
If they should breathe about the wreath,
When I go back to Sutton,
I shall not dare to show my share,
That all!--a bachelor’s button!
My luck in life was never good,
But this my fate will burden:
I ne’er shall like my farming more,--
I know I shan’t the Garden.
The turnips all may have the fly,
The wheat may have the smut on,
I care not,--I’ve a blight at heart,--
Ah me!--a bachelor’s button!
THE STAGE-STRUCK HERO.
‘It must be. So Plato?--Thou reasonest?--Well.”
--_School Cato._
It’s very hard! oh, Dick, my boy,
It’s very hard one can’t enjoy
A little private spouting;
But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives,
Up comes our master, bounce! and gives
The tragic muse a routing!
Ay, there he comes again! be quick!
And hide the book--a playbook, Dick,
He must not set his eyes on!
It’s very hard, the churlish elf
Will never let one stab one’s self
Or take a bowl of p’ison!
It’s very hard, but when I want
To die--as Cato did--I can’t,
Or go _non compos mentis_--
But up he comes, all fire and flame;--
No doubt he’d do the very same
With Kemble for a ‘prentice!
Oh, Dick! Oh, Dick! it was not so
Some half a dozen years ago!
Melpomene was no sneaker,
When, under Reverend Mister Poole,
Each little boy at Enfield School
Became an Enfield speaker!
No cruel master-tailor’s cane
Then thwarted the theatric vein;
The tragic soil had tillage.
O dear dramatic days gone by!
You, Dick, were Richard then--and I
Play’d Hamlet to the village,
Or, as Macbeth, the dagger clutch’d,
Till all the servant-maids were touch’d--
Macbeth, I think, my pet is;
Lord, how we spouted Shakespeare’s works--
Dick, we had twenty little Burkes,
And fifty Master Betties!
Why, there was Julius Cæsar Dunn,
And Norval, Sandy Philip,--one
Of Elocution’s champions--
Genteelly taught by his mamma
To say, not father, but papa,
Kept sheep upon the Grampians!
Coriolanus Crumpe--and Fig
In Brutus, with brown-paper wig,
And Huggins great in Cato;
Only he broke so often off,
To have a fit of whooping-cough,
While reasoning with Plato.
And Zangra too,--but I shall weep,
If longer on this theme I keep,
And let remembrance loose, Dick;
Now forced to act--it’s very hard--
“Measure for Measure” with a yard--
You Richard, with a goose, Dick!
Zounds! Dick, it’s very odd our dads
Should send us there when we were lads
To learn to talk like Tullies;
And now, if one should just break out,
Perchance, into a little spout,
A stick about the skull is.
Why should stage-learning form a part
Of schooling for the tailor’s art?
Alas! dramatic notes, Dick,
So well record the sad mistake
Of him who tried at once to make
Both _Romeo_ and _Coates_, Dick!
YE TOURISTS AND TRAVELLERS.
Ye Tourists and Travellers, bound to the Rhine,
Provided with passport, that requisite docket,
First listen to one little whisper of mine--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
Don’t wash or be shaved--go like hairy wild men,
Play dominoes, smoke, wear a cap, and smock-frock it,
But if you speak English, or look it, why then--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll sleep at great inns, in the smallest of beds,
Find charges as apt to mount up as a rocket,
With thirty per cent. as a tax on your heads,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll see old Cologne,--not the sweetest of towns,--
Wherever you follow your nose you will shock it;
And you’ll pay your three dollars to look at three crowns,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll count seven Mountains, and see Roland’s Eck,
Hear legends veracious as any by Crockett;
But oh! to the tone of romance what a check,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
Old Castles you’ll see on the vine-covered hill,--
Fine ruins to rivet the eye in its socket--
Once haunts of Baronial Banditti, and still--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll stop at Coblenz, with its beautiful views,
But make no long stay with your money to stock it,
Where Jews are all Germans, and Germans all Jews,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!--
A Fortress you’ll see, which, as people report,
Can never be captured, save famine should block it--
Ascend Ehrenbreitstein--but that’s not their _forte_,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll see an old man who’ll let off an old gun,
And Lurley, with her hurly-burly, will mock it;
But think that the words of the echo thus run,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
You’ll gaze on the Rheingau, the soil of the Vine!
Of course you will freely Moselle it and Hock it--
P’raps purchase some pieces of Humbugheim wine--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
Perchance you will take a frisk off to the Baths--
Where some to their heads hold a pistol and cock it;
But still mind the warning, wherever your paths--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
And Friendships you’ll swear, most eternal of pacts,
Change rings, and give hair to be put in a locket;
But still, in the most sentimental of acts--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
In short, if you visit that stream or its shore,
Still keep at your elbow one caution to knock it,
And where Schinderhannes was Robber of yore,--
Take care of your pocket!--take care of your pocket!
RURAL FELICITY.
Well, the country’s a pleasant place, sure enough, for people that’s country born,
And useful, no doubt, in a natural way, for growing our grass and our corn.
It was kindly meant of my cousin Giles, to write and invite me down.
Tho’ as yet all I’ve seen of a pastoral life only makes me more partial to town.
At first I thought I was really come down into all sorts of rural bliss,
For Porkington Place, with its cows and its pigs, and its poultry, looks not much amiss;
There’s something about a dairy farm, with its different kinds of live stock,
That puts one in mind of Paradise, and Adam, and his innocent flock;
But somehow the good old Elysium fields have not been well handed down,
And as yet I have found no fields to prefer to dear Leicester Fields up in town.
To be sure it is pleasant to walk in the meads, and so I should like for miles,
If it wasn’t for clodpoles of carpenters that put up such crooked stiles;
For the bars jut out, and you must jut out, till you’re almost broken in two,
If you clamber you’re certain sure of a fall, and you stick if you try to creep through.
Of course, in the end, one learns how to climb without constant tumbles-down,
But still as to walking so stylishly, it’s pleasanter done about town.
There’s a way, I know, to avoid the stiles, and that’s by a walk in a lane,
And I did find a very nice shady one, but I never dared go again;
For who should I meet but a rampaging bull, that wouldn’t be kept in the pound,
A trying to toss the whole world at once, by sticking his horns in the ground?
And that, by-the-bye, is another thing, that pulls rural pleasures down,
Ev’ry day in the country is cattle-day, and there’s only two up in town.
Then I’ve rose with the sun, to go brushing away at the first early pearly dew,
And to meet Aurory, or whatever’s her name, and I always got wetted through;
My shoes are like sops, and I caught a bad cold, and a nice draggle-tail to my
gown,
That’s not the way that we bathe our feet, or wear our pearls, up in town!
As for picking flowers, I have tried at a hedge, sweet eglantine roses to snatch,
But, mercy on us! how nettles will sting, and how the long brambles do scratch;
Beside hitching my hat on a nasty thorn that tore all the bows from the crown,
One may walk long enough without hats branching off, or losing one’s bows about town.
But worse than that, in a long rural walk, suppose that it blows up for rain,
And all at once you discover yourself in a real St. Swithin’s Lane;
And while you’re running all duck’d and drown’d, and pelted with sixpenny drops,
“Fine weather,” you hear the farmers say; “a nice growing shower for the crops!”
But who’s to crop me another new hat, or grow me another new gown?
For you can’t take a shilling fare with a plough as you do with the hackneys in town.
Then my nevys too, they must drag me off to go with them gathering nuts,
And we always set out by the longest way and return by the shortest cuts.
Short cuts, indeed! But it’s nuts to them, to get a poor lustyish aunt
To scramble through gaps, or jump over a ditch, when they’re morally certain she can’t,--
For whenever I get in some awkward scrape, and it’s almost daily the case,
Tho’ they don’t laugh out, the mischievous brats, I see the “hooray!” in their face.
There’s the other day, for my sight is short, and I saw what was green beyond,
And thought it was all terry firmer and grass, till I walked in the duckweed pond:
Or perhaps when I’ve pully-hauled up a bank they see me come launching down,
As none but a stout London female can do as is come a first time out of town.
Then how sweet, some say, on a mossy bank a verdurous seat to find,
But for my part I always found it a joy that brought a repentance behind;
For the juicy grass with its nasty green has stained a whole breadth of my gown--
And when gowns are dyed, I needn’t say, it’s much better done up in town.
As for country fare, the first morning I came I heard such a shrill piece of work!
And ever since--and it’s ten days ago--we’ve lived upon nothing but pork;
One Sunday except, and then I turn’d sick, a plague take all countrified cooks!
Why didn’t they tell me, _before_ I had dined, they made pigeon pies of the rooks?
Then the gooseberry wine, tho’ it’s pleasant when up, it doesn’t agree when it
’s down,
But it served me right, like a gooseberry, fool to look for champagne out of town?
To be sure cousin G. meant it all for the best when he started this pastoral plan,
And his wife is a worthy domestical soul and she teaches me all that she can,
Such as making of cheese, and curing of hams, but I’m sure that I never shall learn,
And I’ve fetch’d more back-ache than butter as yet by chumping away at the churn;
But in making hay, tho’ it’s tanning work, I found it more easy to make,
But it tries one’s legs, and no great relief when you’re tired to sit down on the rake.
I’d a country dance, too, at harvest home, with a regular country clown,
But, Lord! they don’t hug one round the waist and give one such smacks in town:
Then I’ve tried to make friends with the birds and the beasts, but they take to such curious rigs,
I’m always at odds with the turkey-cock, and I can’t even please the pigs.
The very hens pick holes in my hand when I grope for the new-laid eggs,
And the gander comes hissing out of the pond on purpose to flap at my legs.
I’ve been bump’d in a ditch by the cow without horns, and the old sow trampled me down,
The beasts are as vicious as any wild beasts--but they’re kept in cages in town!
Another thing is the nasty dogs--thro’ the village I hardly can stir
Since giving a bumpkin a pint of beer just to call off a barking cur;
And now you would swear all the dogs in the place were set on to hunt me down,
But neither the brutes nor the people I think are as civilly bred as in town.
Last night about twelve I was scared broad awake, and all in a tremble of fright,
But instead of a family murder it proved an owl, that flies screeching at night.
Then there’s plenty of ricks and stalks all about, and I can’t help dreaming of Swing--
In short, I think that a pastoral life is not the most happiest thing;
For, besides all the troubles I’ve mentioned before, as endured for rurality’s sake,
I’ve been stung by the bees, and I’ve set among ants, and once--ugh! I trod on
a snake!
And as to mosquitoes, they tortured me so, for I’ve got a particular skin,
I do think it’s the gnats coming out of the ponds, that drives the poor suicides in!
And after all an’t there new-laid eggs to be had upon Holborn Hill?
And dairy-fed pork in Broad St. Giles, and fresh butter wherever you will?
And a covered cart that brings Cottage Bread quite rustical-like and brown?
So one isn’t so very uncountrified in the very heart of the town.
Howsomever my mind’s made up, and although I’m sure cousin Giles will be vext,
I mean to book me an inside place up to town upon Saturday next,
And if nothing happens, soon after ten, I shall be at the Old Bell and Crown,
And perhaps I may come to the country again, when London is all burnt down.
THE DOCTOR.
A SKETCH.
“Whatever is, is right.”--POPE.
There once was a Doctor,
(No foe to the proctor,)
A physic concocter,
Whose dose was so pat,
However it acted,
One speech it extracted,--
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
And first, all “unaisy,”
Like woman that’s crazy,
In flies Mistress Casey,
“Do come to poor Pat
The blood’s running faster!
He’s torn off the plaster--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
Anon, with an antic,
Quite strange and romantic,
A woman comes frantic--
“What could you be at?
My darling dear Aleck,
You’ve sent him oxalic!”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
Then in comes another,
Dispatch’d by his mother,
A blubbering brother,
Who gives a rat-tat--
“Oh, poor little sister
Has lick’d off a blister!”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
Now home comes the flunkey,
His own powder-monkey,
But dull as a donkey--
With basket and that--
“The draught for the Squire, Sir,
He chuck’d in the fire, Sir--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
The next is the pompous
Head Beadle, old Bumpus--
“Lord! here is a rumpus:
That pauper, Old Nat,
In some drunken notion
Has drunk up his lotion--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
At last comes a servant,
In grief very fervent:
“Alas! Doctor Derwent,
Poor Master is flat!
He’s drawn his last breath, Sir--
That dose was his death, Sir.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”
LAYING DOWN THE LAW.
----“I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.”
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
“If thou wert born a Dog, remain so; but if thou wert born a Man,
resume thy former shape.”--ARABIAN NIGHTS.
A Poodle, Judge-like, with emphatic paw,
Dogmatically laying down the law,--
A batch of canine Counsel round the table,
Keen-eyed, and sharp of nose, and long of jaw,
At sight, at scent, at giving tongue, right able:
O, Edwin Landseer, Esquire, and R.A.,
Thou great Pictorial Æsop, say,
What is the moral of this painted fable?
O, say, accomplished artist!
Was it thy purpose, by a scene so quizzical,
To read a wholesome lesson to the Chartist,
So over partial to the means called Physical,
Sticks, staves, and swords, and guns, the tools of treason?
To show, illustrating the better course,
The very Brutes abandoning Brute Force,
The worry and the fight,
The bark and bite,
In which, says Doctor Watts, the dogs delight,
And lending shaggy ears to Law and Reason,
As uttered in that Court of high antiquity
Where sits the Chancellor, supreme as Pope,
But works--so let us hope--
In equity, not iniquity?
Or was it but a speculation
On transmigration,
How certain of our most distinguished Daniels,
Interpreters of Law’s bewildering book,
Would look
Transformed to mastiffs, setters, hounds, and spaniels
(As Brahmins in their Hindoo code advance)
With that great lawyer of the Upper House
Who rules all suits by equitable _nous_,
Become--like vile Armina’s spouse--
A Dog, called Chance?[4]
Methinks, indeed, I recognise
In those deep-set and meditative eyes
Engaged in mental puzzle,
And that portentous muzzle,
A celebrated judge, too prone to tarry
To hesitate on devious ins and outs,
And, on preceding doubts, to build _re-doubts_
That regiments could not carry--
Prolonging even Law’s delays, and still
Putting a skid upon the wheel up-hill,
Meanwhile the weary and desponding client
Seem’d--in the agonies of indecision--
In Doubting Castle, with that dreadful Giant
Described in Bunyan’s Vision!
So slow, indeed, was justice in its ways,
Beset by more than customary clogs,
Going to law in those expensive days
Was much the same as going to the Dogs!
But possibly I err,
And that sagacious and judicial creature,
So Chancellor-like in feature,
With ears so wig-like, and a cap of fur,
Looking as grave, responsible, and sage,
As if he had the guardianship, in fact,
Of all poor dogs, or crackt,
And puppies under age--
It may be that the Creature was not meant
Any especial Lord to represent,
Eldon or Erskine, Cottenham or Thurlow,
Or Brougham (more like him whose potent jaw
Is holding forth the letter of the law),
Or Lyndhurst, after the vacation’s furlough,
Presently sitting in the House of Peers,
On wool he sometimes wishes in his ears,
When touching Corn Laws, Taxes, or Tithe-piggery,
He hears a fierce attack,
And, sitting on his sack,
Listens in his great wig to greater Whiggery!
So, possibly, those others,
In coats so various, or sleek, or rough,
Aim not at any of the legal brothers,
Who wear the silken robe, or gown of stuff.
Yet who that ever heard or saw
The Counsel sitting in that solemn Court,
Who, having passed the Bar, are safe in port,
Or those great Sergeants, learned in the Law,--
Who but must trace a feature now and then
Of those forensic men,
As good at finding heirs as any harrier,
Renown’d like greyhounds for long tales--indeed,
At worrying the ear as apt as terriers,--
Good at conveyance as the hairy carriers
That bear our gloves, umbrellas, hats, and sticks,
Books, baskets, bones, or bricks,
In Deeds of Trust as sure as Tray the trusty,--
Acute at sniffing flaws on legal grounds,--
And lastly--well the catalogue it closes!--
Still following their predecessors’ noses,
Through ways however dull or dusty,
As fond of hunting precedents, as hounds
Of running after foxes more than musty.
However slow or fast,
Full of urbanity, or supercilious,
In temper wild, serene, or atrabilious,
Fluent of tongue, or prone to legal saw,
The Dogs have got a Chancellor, at last,
For Laying down the Law!
And never may the canine race regret it,
With whinings and repinings loud or deep,--
Ragged in coat, and shortened in their keep,
Worried by day, and troubled in their sleep,
With cares that prey upon the heart and fret it--
As human suitors have had cause to weep--
For what is Law, unless poor Dogs can get it
Dog-cheap?
A BLACK JOB.
“No doubt the pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated as to cheat.”--HUDIBRAS.
The history of human-kind to trace,
Since Eve--the first of dupes--our doom unriddled,
A certain portion of the human race
Has certainly a taste for being diddled.
Witness the famous Mississippi dreams!
A rage that time seems only to redouble--
The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes,
For rolling in Pactolian streams,
That cost our modern rogues so little trouble.
No matter what,--to pasture cows on stubble,
To twist sea-sand into a solid rope,
To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble,
Or light with gas the whole celestial cope--
Only propose to blow a bubble,
And Lord! what hundreds will subscribe for soap!