"I'm him as was your lover true, O perjur'd Betsy
Your spark from Dublin up, I'll soon be doubling up in
If, Pat, you would divine the cause, behold this nymph
You 've won the hand of Betsy Brown, now try a taste
The Corp'ral laid a bet he'd beat, but Betsy held her rib--
"Be aisy, daisy I--Lying lout! we'll see which best can
A trick worth two I'll shew you, by St. Patrick, merry
Poor Betsy fainted in his arms--the Corp'ral made a
Jack ey'd the pump, and thither hied, and filled a bucket
And chuck'd it o'er his chuck, for fear she should the
Then gave a tender look, and join'd a tender in the
What afterwards became of him we never could diskiver.
"The City of London and the trade thereof," and other standing toasts, having been drunk with the accustomed honours, Uncle Timothy addressed Mr. Bosky,
"Thy _Epilogue_, Benjamin. Drop we the curtain on this mountebank drama, and cry quittance to conjurors."
Mr. Bosky. But what is an _Epilogue_ without a dress coat, a _chapeau bras_, black velvets and paste buckles? _Nous verrons!_
And the Lauréat rose, put on a stage face, stood tea-pot fashion, and poured out his soul.
Mr. Bosky. Knights of the Table Round! in verse
When George the Second, royally interr'd,
Uncle Tim. Bosky, dismounting Pegasus, suppose
You sit, and speak your epilogue in prose,
Not in falsetto flat, and thro' the nose,
Mr. Bosky (resuming his seat and natural voice). The monarch, glorying in the name of Briton, assumed the imperial diadem amidst the acclamations of his loyal subjects; the mime, though not Briton born, but naturalized, had done nothing to alienate his right comical peers, or diminish his authority in the High Court and Kingdom of Queerummania. But _Punch_ had fallen on evil times and tongues. A few sticks of the rotten edifice of _utilitarianism_ had been thrown together; men began to prefer the dry, prickly husks of disagreeable truths, to the whipt-syllabubs of pleasant fiction; all recreations were resolving themselves in "_Irishman's Holiday_ (_change of work!_) the vivacity of small beer, and the strength of workhouse gruel! an unjolly spirit had again come over the nation; and people thought that by making this world a hell upon earth, they were nearer on their road to heaven! The contemporaries of _Punch_, too, had declined in respectability. A race of inferior conjurors succeeded to the cups and balls of Mr. Fawkes; the equilibrists and vaulters * danced more like a pea on a tobacco-pipe, than artists on the wire; and a troop of barn-door fowls profaned the classic boards on which Dogget, Pinkethman, and Spiller, once crowed so triumphantly.