a light heart; his fingers no less light! playing administrators to the farmer's poultry, and the good housewife's sheets that whiten every hedge ! Mendicity is a monarchy; it is governed by peculiar laws, and has a language of its own. Reform has waged war to the knife with it. The soapeater, whose ingenious calling was practised in the streets of London as far back as Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, is admonished to apply the raw material of his trade to an exterior use ;1 and the tatterdemalions of the Beggar's Opera no longer enjoy the privileges that belonged to their ancestors three centuries ago, when the Barbican, Turnmill Street, and Houndsditch, rang with their nocturnal orgies; and where not unfrequently "an alderman hung in chains" gratified their delicate appetites; as in more recent times, With a seeming bursten belly, I look like one half dead, sir, Or else I beg With a wooden leg, And with a night-cap on my head, sir." Blind Beggar's Song. Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems. 1682. 1 Like the Dutchman, who being desired to rub his rheumatic limb with brandy, improved upon the prescription. "I dosh better as dat," roared Mynheer, "I drinks de prandy, and den I rubs mine leg wit de pottle!" the happy but bygone days of Dusty Bob and Billy Waters. The well-known mendicants of St. Paul's churchyard, Waithman's crossing, and Parliament-Street have, by a sweeping act of the 1 The Sons of Carew The news was a terrible damper; The blind, in their fright, Soon recovered their sight, And the lame thought it prudent to scamper. The street they call Dyott Portended a riot, Mendicity Bill, Who for prowess and skill Was dubb'd the bold Ajax of Drury, Flung his fiddle aside, And his sky-scraper cock'd in a fury! Our ducks and green peas Shall the constable seize,― Our sherry, our port, and Madeira?" legislature, been compelled to brush; their brooms are laid up in ordinary, to make rods for their backs, till the very stones they once swept are ready to rise and mutiny. Well might Epicurus say, 'Poverty, when cheerful, ceases to be poverty." 66 6 Suppose, gentlemen, as the day is closing in, we each of us take our wallet and staff, trudge forth, and levy contribution! I am in a valiant humour to cry stand!' to a too powerfully refreshed citizen of light weight and heavy purse." And Mr. Bosky suited the action to the word. "Sit down, soul of a grasshopper! The very ghost of his wife's tweezers would snuff out thy small courage. Thou hast slandered the beggars' craft, and, like greater rogues, shalt be condemned to live by thine own! Thou 'gibier de potence!' Thou a prigger! Why thou art only a simple prig, turned out by thy tailor! Steal if thou canst into our good graces; redeem thy turpitude by emulating at least one part of the beggars' calling, ballad-singing. Manifest thy deep contrition by a song." "A bargain, Uncle Timothy. If thou wilt rake from a sly corner of that old curiosity shop, thy brain, some pageant of the ancient brethren of Bull-Feathers-Hall. What place more fitting for such pleasant chronicle, than the Horns at Highgate?" This proposal being assented to by the middleaged gentleman, Mr. Bosky "rosined," (swallowed a bumper) and sounded a musical flourish as a preludio. "But gentlemen, you have not said what I shall sing." Beggars, Mr. Bosky, must not be choosers! Wonderful General Wolfe, Uncommon brave; partic❜lar! Sentimental and tender? The mealy potato it grows In your garden,' Miss Maddison cries; 'So I cannot walk there, for I knows, Like love that potatoes have eyes!'" "No buffoonery, if you please, Benjamin Bosky," cried Uncle Tim. "Or furiously funny—eh ?” My pipe at your peeper I 'll light, So pop out your jazey so curly; A jorum of yeast over night, Will make you next morning rise early! Arrah! thro' your casement and blind If you do not, Miss Casey, look kind, 66 Wid your good-natured eye that's a cross one!" My good friends," sighed the middle-aged gentleman, "this unhappy nephew of mine hath as many ballads in his budget as Sancho Panza had proverbs in his belly. And yet - but he seems determined to break my heart." Mr. Bosky appeared more bent upon cruelly cracking Uncle Timothy's sides. "Now I bethink me of a ditty of true love, full of mirth and pastime." And Mr. Bosky began in a droll falsetto, and with mock gravity, THE LAST OF THE PIGTAILS. "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, I call'd at her lodgings in Dean Street, Soho; The picture of famine, my frame half reduced; O dear! what can ail me? I once was so hale When my head's under ground let this verse tell my tale. |