It may seem to some readers that these epithets,--opprobria, as some may think them,--do not redound to the credit of Mr. Alderman Whittington's intellect; but even if they are not, as before suggested, the production of envy, they are by no means inconsistent with Whittington's successful progress in life; on the contrary, they seem to designate him as a person who would naturally rise to City honours. It is grown to be a proverb, and admitted by the best writers on the subject, that Lord Mayors are "stupid dogs."[29] The City hath a prescription to choose "fools," for places of honour therein; and, as Matthew was at least twice Lord Mayor, he might with great propriety have been twice as great a fool as any of the others.
This leads me to the important consideration of how often the illustrious Matthew had the honour of so worthily filling the Civic throne.
An ancient and well-known ballad has this beautiful, and indeed important, rhyme,--
"---- ---- Whittington, _Twice_ Lord Mayor of London."[30]
Some copies indeed, and one in particular, (penis R. Pria Knight, F.R.S.) have it "thrice." This, however, on a careful collation with all the best MSS. and some very fair black-letter editions, has been most satisfactorily disproved: it has crept into the old versions, either from the well-known predilection for the _trine_ number; or, from the writer's having composed the work during Matthew's second Mayoralty, when, as it appears from some old papers in the Tower, he, as well as many of his zealous friends, had a notion that he would have been again elected to the dignified office which he had for two successive years filled so satisfactorily--to himself.
That such a re-election would have delighted him, nobody can doubt, who is aware of the fact of his being so anxious to discharge correctly the duties of his great office, that he practised the part,--or, as it is in one account quaintly phrased, _played at Lord Mayor_,--for some time before he had attained the station; and for many years after he had passed the chair, evinced his gratitude by keeping up the same laudable practice. An old account of one of his private dinners states, that even to the day of his death, when he was at home, he sat in state at the head of his table, with his loving spouse beside him, and his chief guest, if it were but the deputy of the ward, upon his right, while the other members of his family were ranged as regularly in order as if they had been at the Easter dinner in the Mansion House.