Obrazy na stronie
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No. XI.-AUGUST, 1823.

North. Nay, do not blush, Ensign. I thought you had dipped in the Shannon. I believe you sing extempore?

Mullion. Ay, and ex-trumpery.

North. Curse your punning. Quaver away this.

(Throwing M. a paper.) Mullion (hums a preludio). Then, therefore, give due audience and attend. Milton, hem !

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Really a very pretty song. It was spoony in you to drop it out of

your pocket, Odoherty!

Odoherty. And amazingly genteel in you to sing it under the circumstances. It was about as bad as Brougham's reading in Parliament Mr. Saurin's letter, picked out of Lord Norbury's pocket.* North. Is the author a secret? Odoherty. Not the least. Rest her soul! she died of love. Her name was Quashie Maboo-quite a sentimental negress, who kept a canteen in the Bowery Way, New York. Poetry and peach-brandy were the death of her. I got her a great wake in 1816, for she was tenderly attached to me.

North. Wilberforce ought to quote this song as a proof of negro capacity. Was she pretty?

Odohorty. Yes, black but comely-she squinted furiously, but it passed for ogling; and I can assure you her pine-apple rum was superb.

Mullion. You were then a rum customer, I take it. Apropos of love, Tom Moore is in Ireland, I understand.

North. So I am informed by letter from Killarney. He travels in the train of the Marquis of Lansdowne,t who is visiting his Irish

estates.

Tickler. Tom goes as joculator, I suppose. Lansdowne, when in office, was distinguished as a dancing-master, and gave Thomas, if I mistake not, the place in the West Indies for his piping.

North. I do not blame him for that. I rejoice to see literary merit patronized, but there was something base and grovelling-in a word, something truly Whig-in the ruffian treatment Dibding experienced from the gang which got into power in 1806.

Tickler. Dirty revengeful-and beggarly to the last degree. They could not forgive him for having, in his glorious songs, stirred the

* Mr. Sheil, in his "Sketches of the Irish Bar," (Article, Lord Norbury, vol. ii., p. 83,) gives a different and uncontradicted version. Norbury" was in the habit of stuffing papers into the old chairs in his study, in order to supply the deficiency of horse-hair which the incumbency of eighty years had produced in their bottoms. At last, however, they became, even with the aid of this occasional supplement, unfit for use, and were sent by his Lordship to a shop in which old furniture was advertised to be bought and sold. An individual of the name of Monaghan got one of these chairs into his possession, and, finding it stuffed with papers, drew them out. He had been a clerk in an attorney's office, and knew Mr. Saurin's handwriting."-It was a letter from Saurin, the first law-officer of the Crown in Ireland, to Lord Norbury, Chief Justice, recommending him, when on circuit in the King's County, to talk to Protestant gentlemen about and against the Catholics and their claims! The authenticity of the letter was undoubted, the affair was discussed in Parliament, and the then Tory Ministry effectually screened Norbury and Saurin !-M.

+ Mrs. Gilpin, we are told by Cowper, was economical, and had a frugal mind, even when "She to pleasure was inclined."

Moore might have been her blood-relation, adroitly managing, on most occasions, to "travel in the train" of somebody who paid all the expenses. In his Diary are numerous records of this.-M.

No.-Moore was appointed Registrar to the Admiralty Court, at Bermuda, in 1803, and Lord Lansdowne did not enter office until 1806 !-M.

§ Dibdin, who wrote a great number of patriotic sea-songs, during the naval contests which terminated at Trafalgar, received a Government pension, in acknowledgment of the service they had done by inspiring and exciting the British tars. When the Whigs came into office in 1806, they struck Dibdin's name out of the pension-list! As a party, they had opposed the war, and were determined to punish the poet for doing any thing to encourage it.-M.

1823.]

DUKE OF SUSSEX.

343

spirit of Britain against their friends the Jacobins; and accordingly, in his old age, the filthy fellows deprived him of a pension which he had earned by services to his country, more solid than the nine-tenths of those which have been the foundation of many a Whig property. North. Well, well-they stick to one another, however; which is more than can be said of other people who shall be nameless. You know we have often contrasted the different treatment experienced by this very Tommy Moore and Theodore Hook, under the very same circumstances.*

Odoherty. Theodore, however, is winding up after all, and must eventually be cleared of all slur. If the details of his case were published, it would be the exposé of all the most rascally piece of pitiful persecution ever heard of; and I hope it will be published some fine day or other.

Mullion. You have heard Theodore's joke on his misfortune?
Buller. No, never. (Aside.) Plus millies jam audivi.

Mullion. Poh, man, you must have heard it; it is in print. When he came from the Isle of France, he touched at the Cape of Good Hope, where he met Lord Charles Somerset. "Bless me," said his lordship, "what sends you home so soon, Hook—a complaint in your liver ?""No," replied Theodore; "a disorder in my chest." You certainly heard it?

North. Why, yes; it's almost as venerable as any thing in Joe Miller.

Mullion. I was aware of that, and only told it as a preface to the Duke of Sussex's admirable version of the story. The Duke, you know, is very bright.

Odoherty. Yes, as one of Lambton's coal-scuttles.

Mullion. And hates Theodore, whom he suspects—with what reason I cannot say-of having demolished him in Bull.†

Tickler. Why, certainly, his highness has no great reason to be obliged to the tribe of Bull; for he was only suspected to be a block head formerly, but now is written down as an ass regular.

Mullion. Well, sir, an ultra fit of candor every now and then seizes on him, and he panegyrizes Hook's wit. "I don't like the man, sir," he says "I don't like the man; but to do him justice; let us be fair; he's a droll fellow, sir-a droll fellow; he tells you a good thing

-a devilish good thing now-ha, ha, ha!—a most excellent thing. You know he was at the Isle of France; ay, and he came back from

* Both had held colonial appointments of trust. Each had suffered by his deputy's misconduct. Hook was sent home in chains, and not even his own friends, the Tories, wiped away the claim, but even seized his property while he was dead and unburied. Moore fluttered about in society, spent a season or two at Paris, (with occasional flights to London,) and finally compromised for a few hundreds.-M.

+ Theodore Hook, as Editor of John Bull, spared no leader of the antagonist Whig party. The Duke of Sussex, pompous and proud, was frequently a victim.-M.

the Isle of France too-ha, ha, ha! and we all know why-ha, ha, ha! Well, then, coming home, he stopped at the Cape of Good Hope-some place in India, you know-where he met Charles Somerset. Says Charles to him, 'Why, Hook,' says he, 'what the devil,' says he, brings you home? I hope,' says he, it is nothing ails your liver?' Well, now, just mind what Hook said-devilish good-very good, faith-I don't like the man, sir-I don't like the man; but let us be fair; he is a droll fellow, sir-a droll fellow. 'No,' says Hook, 'nothing ails my liver-never was better in my life,' says he; 'but there is a deficiency in my accounts, which I must go over to answer.' Ha, ha, ha! Devilish good, was it not? When I heard it first, every body laughed. Ha, ha, ha !"

Tickler. You are a capital mimic, Mullion. I wish Mathews had that story.

North. No, no; it would be scandalous to bring a prince of the blood on the stage. Remember that he is a son of George III., and brother of George IV.

Tickler. Pooh! Mathews could tell it of Signor any other of the Duke's select circle.

ΟΙ

Mullion. Who, by the way, regularly laugh at the joke, whenever it pleases the Duke to tell it. It is his highness's best story, and is always told on great occasions, state days, holidays, and the like.

North. Come, gentlemen, change the subject, if you please. I do not like to hear any thing disparaging to any son of HIM, who, no matter what king may reign, shall be king of my heart to the end of the chapter.

Come fill up your wine,

Look, fill it like mine;

Here, boys, I begin,

A good health to the KING!

Tims, see it go round,

Whilst with mirth we abound.

Chorus.

For we will be dull and heavy no more,

Since wine does increase, and there's claret good store.

Nay, don't us deceive

Odoherty. Upon honor, I filled a bumper from the foundation. North. I did not address you, my good fellow. I spoke to Mullion, who is fighting shy; but do not interrupt me.

Nay, don't us deceive,

Why this will you leave?

The glass is not big,

What the deuce, you're no Whig.

Come, drink up the rest,

Or be merry at least.

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For we will be dull and heavy no more,

Since wine does increase, and there's claret good store.

Tickler. Out of PiHs to Purge Melancholy, if I mistake not? North. Yes, from the aforesaid. It was a favorite chant of worthy Dr. Webster, some forty years ago, when we used to meet in the Gude Auld Town, at the White Horse in the Canongate. Many a scene I have got through since the Aughty-Three. "And I said, the days of my youth, where are they? And Echo answered, Where are they?" Odoherty. Pr'ythee, no more of your antediluvian recollectionsyour dramas of the ancient world.

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'Tis in vain to com-plain, In a melancholy strain, Of the

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We have laughed,

We have quaffed,

We have raked it fore and aft,

But out of pleasure's bowl have not emptied all the draught.

Never mind
Days behind,

But still before the wind,

Float after jolly souls, full flasks, and lasses kind.

Buller. Extempore? Stans pede in uno?

15*

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