Falstaff has a plausible explanation at the service of his employer: 'You cannot blame us, Master Bull, we did not make it, or steal it; it lay in our way, and we found it!'
_May 1, 1806._ _A Maiden Aunt smelling Fire._ Published by T. Rowlandson, 1 James Street, Adelphi.
Old Maids are doomed to lead Apes in Hell.
An old Tabitha, who is appropriately surrounded by her feline friends, has been disturbed from her slumbers by various suspicious nocturnal sounds, and has appeared, candle in hand, and in a very incomplete toilette, to fathom the mystery, of the source of which she has evidently some shrewd suspicion; since she is hastening to the first floor to her niece's apartment. Above the balustrade stands the guilty damsel, who has had sufficient warning, as her lover, carrying his garments in his hand, for expedition, is making his way from the niece's room under the cover of an ambuscade; while the lady is leaning over the staircase railings, with an air of startled innocence assumed to carry off the _contretemps_.
_May, 1806_. _Recruiting on a Broad-Bottom'd Principle._ Published by T. Blacklock, 92 Royal Exchange.--Grenville, Fox, and their colleagues, are out on a recruiting expedition, to enlist volunteers for their new service. Lord Grenville, as the recruiting sergeant, is haranguing the bystanders; his followers are rather of the tatterdemalion order: they wear the red caps of Liberty, and the revolutionary cockades, they are out-at-elbows and shoeless. Sheridan is waving the colours inscribed 'God save the King! No Jacobins!' Fox is drummer, Lord Derby is fifer; 'Now my brave fellows, now is the time to make your fortunes and show your loyalty, all on a Broad-Bottom'd principle: we don't value _candle-ends_ and _cheese-parings_, not we! All lives, and fortune-soldiers to a man. We'll make our enemies tremble; we are the boys to _wind_ 'em; now is your time, my lads; the bed of Honour is a bed of Down.' A dog, the _Member for Barkshire_ according to his collar, is bow-wowing the sergeant's address; one of the audience, with a paper, _Bed of Roses_ (to which the ministerial condition had been likened by Lord Castlereagh), in his pocket, is half decided to join their standard: 'I don't like a bed of Down, I would rather it was a _Bed of Roses_: however I have a great mind to enter notwithstanding, there is nothing like having two strings to one's bow.'