Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

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Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on the print version of ‘The Works of Thomas
Hood, Vol. II,’ published in 1882. Inconsistent and uncommon
spelling and hyphenation have been retained; punctuation and
typographical errors have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved
to the end of the sections in which their respective footnote
anchors are situated.

Small caps have been changed to uppercase letters.

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HOOD’S OWN.

THE WORKS

OF

THOMAS HOOD.

COMIC AND SERIOUS, IN PROSE AND VERSE, WITH ALL
THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS.

EDITED, WITH NOTES,
BY HIS SON AND DAUGHTER.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, & CO., WARWICK HOUSE,
SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: 10 BOND STREET.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

The Boy at the Nore 1

The Run-Over 4

Johnsoniana 11

The Great Earthquake at Marylebone 16

Ode to St. Swithin 20

The Apparition. A True Story 24

A Blind Man 28

The Supper Superstition. A Pathetic Ballad 30

A Snake-Snack 33

A Storm at Hastings, and the Little Unknown 36

Lines to a Lady on her Departure for India 45

The Nelson 48

Sonnet to a Scotch Girl Washing Linen after her Country
Fashion 51

My Apology 52

Sonnet to a Decayed Seaman 54

The Great Conflagration 55

Huggins and Duggins 97

Domestic Didactics. By an Old Servant 101

Pain in a Pleasure-Boat. A Sea Eclogue 107

A Spent Ball 111

Literary and Literal 113

The Accident 120

Sonnet to Lord Wharncliffe, on his Game Bill 123

Literary Reminiscences. No. I. 124

Ode to Perry, the Inventor of the Patent Perryan Pen 132

Sketches on the Road 139

The Undying One 144

A Gipsy Party 148

Cockle _v._ Cackle 157

A Lawyer’s Letter 162

The Sweep’s Complaint 167

Letter from an Old Sportsman 173

The Sub-Marine 179

The Island 182

Dog-grel Verses. By a poor Blind 188

The Kangaroos. A Fable 193

Literary Reminiscences. No. II. 195

The Domestic Dilemma. A True Story from the German of
Jean Paul Nemand 201

Ode for the Ninth of November 222

Sonnet 228

Rondeau. (Extracted from a Well-known Annual) 229

London Fashions for November. Remarks 230

Symptoms of Ossification 233

The Poacher. A Serious Ballad 234

Sketches on the Road. The Sudden Death 237

I cannot Bear a Gun 252

Trimmer’s Exercise for the Use of Children 257

Some Account of William Whiston 259

The Fox and the Hen. A Fable 263

The Comet. An Astronomical Anecdote 267

Literary Reminiscences. No. III. 270

The Ocean. Considered per se 275

Love and Lunacy 295

Those Evening Bells. “I’d be a Parody.” 331

Lines to a Friend at Cobham 332

The Quakers’ Conversazione 333

Sketches on the Road. The Morning Call 344

The Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig 348

To a Bad Rider 351

My Son and Heir 352

Literary Reminiscences. No. IV. 358

The Carnaby Correspondence 395

A Rise at the Father of Angling 425

Right and Wrong. A Sketch at Sea 431

Patronage 440

Animal Magnetism 452

The Forlorn Shepherd’s Complaint. An Unpublished Poem,
from Sidney 464

Anacreontic. By a Footman 468

HOOD’S OWN:

OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.

THE BOY AT THE NORE.

“Alone I did it!--Boy!”--CORIOLANUS.

I SAY, little Boy at the Nore,
Do you come from the small Isle of Man?
Why, your history a mystery must be,--
Come tell us as much as you can,
Little Boy at the Nore!

You live it seems wholly on water,
Which your Gambier calls living in clover;--
But how comes it, if that is the case,
You’re eternally half seas over,--
Little Boy at the Nore?

While you ride--while you dance--while you float--
Never mind your imperfect orthography;--
But give us as well as you can,
Your watery auto-biography,
Little Boy at the Nore!

LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITUR.

I’m the tight little Boy at the Nore,
In a sort of sea negus I dwells;
Half and half ’twixt saltwater and Port,
I’m reckon’d the first of the swells--
I’m the Boy at the Nore!

I lives with my toes to the flounders,
And watches through long days and nights;
Yet, cruelly eager, men look--
To catch the first glimpse of my lights--
I’m the Boy at the Nore.

I never gets cold in the head,
So my life on salt water is sweet,--
I think I owes much of my health
To being well used to wet feet--
As the Boy at the Nore.

There’s one thing, I’m never in debt:
Nay!--I liquidates more than I _oughtor_[1];
So the man to beat Cits as goes by,
In keeping the head above water,
Is the Boy at the Nore.

I’ve seen a good deal of distress,
Lots of Breakers in Ocean’s Gazette;
They should do as I do--rise o’er all;
Aye, a good floating capital get,
Like the Boy at the Nore!

I’m a’ter the sailor’s own heart,
And cheers him, in deep water rolling;
And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk,
Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling,
Is the Boy at the Nore!

Could I e’er but grow up, I’d be off
For a week to make love with my wheedles;
If the tight little Boy at the Nore
Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles,
We’d have _two_ at the Nore!

They thinks little of sizes on water,
On big waves the tiny one skulks,--
While the river has Men of War on it--
Yes--the Thames is oppress’d with great Hulks,
And the Boy’s at the Nore!

But I’ve done--for the water is heaving
Round my body, as though it would sink it!
And I’ve been so long pitching and tossing,
That sea-sick--you’d hardly now think it--
Is the Boy at the Nore!

[1] A word caught from some American Trader in passing.

THE RUN-OVER.

“DO you see that ’ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?” enquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some fifty yards in advance. “Well, for all he’s driving there so easy like, and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that’s a fact, driv right through his body!”

“Rather him than me,” drawled a passenger on the box, without removing his cigar from his mouth.

“It’s true for all that,” returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal to an affidavit. “The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the tug, and out again at t’other besides pinning him to the wall of the stable--and that’s a thing such as don’t happen every day.”

“Lucky it don’t,” said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.

“It an’t likely to come often,” resumed Ned, “let alone the getting over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To see him bowling along there, he don’t look like a man pinned to a stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug--do he?”

“Can’t say he does,” said the smoker.

“For my part,” said Ned, “or indeed any man’s part, most people in such a case would have said, it’s all up with me, and good reason why, as I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the tug--and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit. But somehow he always stuck to it--not the wall, you know--but his own opinion, that he should get over it--he was as firm as flints about that--and sure enough the event came off exactly.”

“The better for him,” said the smoker.

“I don’t know the rights on it,” said Ned, “for I warn’t there--but they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught.”

“Nothing more likely,” said the fumigator.

“Howsomever,” continued Ned, “he was cured by Dr. Maiden of Stratford, who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat hearty; and by taking his feeds well,--warm mashes at first, and then hard meat, in course of time he filled up. Nobody hardly believed it, though, when they see him about on his legs again--myself for one--but he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. If that an’t game, I don’t know what is.”

“No more do I,” said the man with the Havannah.

“I don’t know the philosophy on it,” resumed Ned, “but it’s a remark of mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,--and if he says he won’t, he won’t--you may book that for certain. Mayhap a good pluck helps the wounds in healing kindly,--but so it is, for I’ve observed it. You’ll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he, I’m done for--and he turns out quite correct--while another as is cut to ribbons will say--never mind,--I’m good for another round, and so he proves, particularly if he’s one of your small farmers. I’ll give you a reason why.”

“Now then,” said the smoker.

“My reason is,” replied Ned, “that they’re all as hard as nails--regular pebbles for game. They take more thrashing than their own corn, and that’s saying something. They’re all fortitude, and nothing else. Talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to ’em, from butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead. You can’t hurt their feelings. They’re jist like badgers, the more you welt ’em the more they grin, and when it’s over, maybe a turn-up at a cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they’ll go home to their missises all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers, with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army surgeons.”

“The very thing Scott has characterised,” I ventured to observe, “in the person of honest Dandie.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Ned, “I know Farmer Scott very well, and he’s anything but a dandy. I was just a going to bring forward, as one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. We become friends through an axident. It was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of the road, before you could cry Snacks! I was over him with the old Regulator.”

“Good God!” exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. “Was not the poor fellow hurt?”

“Why, not much for HIM,” answered Ned, with a very decided emphasis on the pronoun. “Though it would have been a quietus for nine men out of ten, and, as the Jews say, Take your pick of the basket. But he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face, like a man that hadn’t got the exact bit of the joint he preferred.”

“Looked queer!” ejaculated the compassionate passenger, “he must have looked dreadful! I remember the Regulator, one of the oldest and heaviest vehicles on the road. But of course you picked him up, and got him inside, and----”

“Quite the reverse,” answered Ned, quietly, “and far from it; he picked himself up, quite independent, and wouldn’t even accept a lift on the box. He only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and says he, ‘all right,’ and away he toddled.”

“I can’t credit it,” exclaimed the man on the roof.

“That’s jist what his wife said,” replied Ned, with considerable composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. “Let alone two black eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he’d a hole in his head, with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since Macadaming. But he made so light on it all, and not being very clear besides in his notions, I’m blest if he didn’t tell her he’d only been knockt down by a man with a truck!”

“Not a bad story,” said the smoker on the box.

I confess I made internally a parallel remark. Naturally robust as my faith is, I could not, as Hamlet says, let “Belief lay hold of me,” with the coachman’s narrative in his hand, like a copy of a writ. I am no stranger, indeed, to the peculiar hardihood of our native yeomanry; but Ned, in his zeal for their credit, had certainly overdrawn the truth. As to his doctrine of presentiments, it had never been one of the subjects of my speculations; but on a superficial view, it appeared to me improbable that life or death, in cases of casualty, could be predetermined with such certainty as he had averred; and particularly as I happen to know a certain lady, who has been accepting the Bills of Mortality at two months’ date, for many years past--but has never honoured them when due. It was fated, however, that honest Ned was to be confirmed in his theories and corroborated in his facts.

We had scarcely trotted half a mile in meditative silence, when we overtook a sturdy pedestrian, who was pacing the breadth as well as the length of the road, rather more like a land surveyor than a mere traveller. He evidently belonged to the agricultural class, which Ned had distinguished by the title of Small Farmers. Like Scott’s Liddesdale yeoman, he wore a shaggy dreadnought, below which you saw two well-fatted calves, penned in a pair of huge top-boots--the tops and the boots being of such different shades of brown as you may observe in two arable fields of various soil, a rich loam and a clay. In his hand he carried a formidable knotted club-stick, and a member of the Heralds’ College would have set him down at once a tenant of the Earl of Leicester, he looked so like a bear with a ragged staff.

I observed that Ned seemed anxious. One of his leaders was a bolter, and his wheelers were far from steady; and the man ahead walked not quite so straightly as if he had been ploughing a furrow. We were almost upon him--Ned gave a sharp halloo--the man looked back, and wavered. A minute decided the matter. He escaped Scylla, but Charybdis yawned for him--in plain prose, he cleared the Rocket, but contrived to get under the broad wheel of a Warwickshire waggon, which was passing in the opposite direction. There was still a chance,--even a fly-waggon may be stopped without much notice--but the waggoner was inside, sweethearting with three maids that were going to Coventry. Every voice cried out Woh! but the right one. The horses plodded on--the wheels rumbled--the bells jingled--we all thought a knell.

Ned instantly pulled up, with his team upon their haunches--we all alighted, and in a moment the sixteen the Rocket was licensed to carry were at the fatal spot. In the midst of the circle lay, what we considered a bundle of last linen just come home from the mangle.

“That’s a dead un,” said the smoker, throwing away as he spoke the butt-end of a cigar.

“Poor wretch,” exclaimed the humane man from the roof, “what a shocking spectacle!”

“It’s over his chest,” said I.

“It’s all over,” said the passenger on my right.

“And a happy release,” said a lady on my left; “he must have been a cripple for life.”

“He can’t have a whole rib in his body,” said a man from the dicky.

“Hall to hattums,” said a gentleman from the inside.

“The worst I ever see, and I’ve had the good luck to see many,” said the guard.

“No, he can’t get over that,” said Ned himself.

To our astonishment, however, the human mass still breathed. After a long sigh it opened one eye--the right--then the other--the mouth gasped--the tongue moved--and at last even spoke, though in disjointed syllables.

“We’re nigh--hand--an’t we--the nine--milestun?”

“Yes--yes--close to it,” answered a dozen voices, and one in its bewilderment asked, “Do you live there?” but was set right by the sufferer himself.

“No--a mile fudder.”

“Where is there a surgeon?” asked the humane man, “I will ride off for him on one of the leaders.”

“Better not,” said the phlegmatic smoker, who had lighted a fresh cigar with some German tinder and a lucifer--“not used to saddle--may want a surgeon yourself.”

“Is there never a doctor among the company?” inquired the guard.

“I am a medical man,” replied a squat vulgar-looking personage. “I sell Morison’s pills--but I haven’t any about me.”

“Glad of it,” said the smoker, casting a long puff in the other’s face.

“Poor wretch!” sighed the compassionate man. “He is beyond human aid. Heaven help the widow and the fatherless--he looks like a family man!”

“I were not to blaame,” said the waggoner. “The woife and childerin can’t coom upon I.”

“Does anyone know who he is?” inquired the coachman, but there was no answer.

“Maybe the gemman has a card or summut,” said the gentleman from the inside.

“Is there no house near?” inquired the lady.

“For to get a shutter off on,” added the gentleman.

“Ought we not to procure a postchaise,” inquired a gentleman’s footman.

“Or a shell, in case,” suggested the man from the dicky.

“Shell be hanged!” said the sufferer, in a tone that made us all jump a yard backward. “Stick me up agin the milestun--there, easy does it--that’s comfortable--and now tell me, and no nonsense,--be I flat?”

“A little pancakey,” said the man with the cigar.

“I say,” repeated the sufferer, with some earnestness, “be I flat--quite flat--as flat like as a sheet of paper? Yes or no?”

“No, no, no,” burst from sixteen voices at once, and the assurance seemed to take as great a load off his mind as had lately passed over his body. By an effort he contrived to get up and sit upon the milestone, from which he waved us a good-bye, accompanied by the following words:--

“Gentlefolk, my best thanks and my sarvice to you, and a pleasant journey. Don’t consarn yourselves about me, for there’s nothing dangerous. I shall do well, I know I shall; and I’ll tell you what I’ll go upon--if I bean’t flat I shall get round.”

JOHNSONIANA.

“None despise puns but those who cannot make them.”--SWIFT.

_To the Editor of the Comic Annual._

SIR,

As I am but an occasional reader in the temporary indulgence of
intellectual relaxation, I have but recently become cognizant
of the metropolitan publication of Mr. Murray’s Mr. Croker’s Mr.
Boswell’s Dr. Johnson: a circumstance the more to be deprecated,
for if I had been simultaneously aware of that amalgamation of
miscellaneous memoranda I could have contributed a personal
quota of characteristic colloquial anecdotes to the biographical
reminiscences of the multitudinous lexicographer, which although
founded on the basis of indubitable veracity, has never transpired
among the multifarious effusions of that stupendous complication
of mechanical ingenuity, which, according to the technicalities
in usage in our modern nomenclature, has obtained the universal
cognomen of the press. Expediency imperiously dictates that the
nominal identity of the hereditary kinsman, from whom I derive my
authoritative responsibility, shall be inviolable and umbrageously
obscured; but in future variorum editions his voluntary addenda
to the already inestimable concatenation of circumstantial
particularisation might typographically be discriminated from
the literary accumulations of the indefatigable Boswell and the
vivacious Piozzi, by the significant classification of Boz, Poz,
and Coz.

In posthumously eliciting and philosophically elucidating the
phenomena of defunct luminaries, whether in reference to corporeal,
physiognomical, or metaphysical attributes, justice demands the
strictest scrupulosity, in order that the heterogeneous may not
preponderate over the homogeneous in the critical analysis.
Metaphorically speaking, I am rationally convinced that the
operative point I am about to develop will remove a pertinacious
film from the eye of the biographer of the memorable Dr. Johnson;
and especially with reference to that reiterated verbal aphorism
so preposterously ascribed to his conversational inculcation,
namely, that “he who would make a pun would pick a pocket;”
however irrelevant such a doctrinarian maxim to the irrefragable
fact, that in that colossal monument of etymological erudition
erected by the stupendous Doctor himself (of course implying his
inestimable Dictionary), the paramount gist, scope, and tendency
of his laborious researches was obviously to give as many meanings
as possible to one word. In order, however, to place hypothesis
on the immutable foundation of fact, I will, with your periodical
permission, adduce a few Johnsonian repartees from my cousin’s
anecdotical memorabilia, which will perspicuously evolve the
synthetical conclusion, that the inimitable author of Rasselas
did not dogmatically predicate such an aggravated degree of moral
turpitude in the perpetration of a double entendre.

Apologistically requesting indulgence for the epistolary laxity of
an unpremeditated effusion,

I remain, Sir,
Your very humble obedient servant,
SEPTIMUS REARDON.

_Lichfield, October 1, 1833._

“Do you really believe, Dr. Johnson,” said a Lichfield lady, “in the dead walking after death?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I have no doubt on the subject; I have heard the Dead March in Saul.” “You really believe then, Doctor, in ghosts?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I think _appearances_ are in their favour.”

The Doctor was notoriously very superstitious. The same lady once asked him--“if he ever felt any presentiment at a winding-sheet in the candle.”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “if a _mould_ candle, it doubtless indicates death, and that somebody will go out like a _snuff_; but whether at Hampton _Wick_ or in _Greece_, must depend upon the _graves_.”

Dr. Johnson was not comfortable in the Hebrides. “Pray, Doctor, how did you sleep?” inquired a benevolent Scotch hostess, who was so extremely hospitable that some hundreds always occupied the same bed.--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I had not a wink the whole night long; sleep seemed to _flee_ from my eyelids, and to _bug_ from all the rest of my body.”

The Doctor and Boswell once lost themselves in the Isle of Muck, and the latter said they must “_spier_ their way at the first body they met.” “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “you’re a scoundrel: you may spear anybody you like, but I am not going to ‘run a-Muck and tilt at all I meet.’”

“What do you think of whiskey, Dr. Johnson?” hiccupped Boswell after emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “it penetrates my very soul like ‘the _small-still_ voice of conscience,’ and doubtless the worm of the still is the ‘worm that never dies.’” Boswell afterwards inquired the Doctor’s opinion on illicit distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between the smugglers and the Excise. “If I went by the _letter_ of the law, I should assist the Customs, but according to the _spirit_ I should stand by the contrabands.”

The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the North. “Sir,” he said to the young Laird of Icombally, who was going to join his regiment, “may Providence preserve you in battle, and especially your nether limbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but you must import a wooden leg.” At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke out. “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man’s hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a Log they would make a King of it.”

Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a Bishop’s Palace. “Sir,” said Johnson, “it must have been the poorest of Sees: take your _Rum_ and _Egg_ and _Mull_ altogether, and they won’t provide for a _Bishop_.”

East India company is the worst of all company. A Lady fresh from Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson’s favour by talking of nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as usual, to _tiffin_. “Madam,” said he, in a tone that would have scared a tiger out of a jungle, “India’s very well for a rubber or for a bandana, or for a cake of ink, but what with its Bhurtpore, Pahlumpore, Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singapore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad, Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sindbad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it’s a _poor_ and _bad_ country altogether.”

Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she would give him an apple. “My dear child,” said the parent, feeling herself in the presence of a great moralist, “you ought not to be good on any consideration of gain, for ‘virtue is its own reward.’ You ought to be good disinterestedly, and without thinking what you are to get for it.” “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, “you are a fool; would you have the boy _good for nothing_?”

The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son’s robbing an orchard. “Madam,” said Johnson, “it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was called a judgment. I suppose that’s why Justice is represented with a pair of scales.”

Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of Dr. Johnson whether he really considered that a man ought to be transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a double meaning. “Sir,” said Johnson, “if a man means well, the more he means the better.”

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT MARY-LE-BONE.

“Do you never deviate?”--JOHN BULL.

IT was on the evening of the 7th of November, 18--, that I went by invitation to sup with my friend P., at his house in Highstreet, Mary-le-bone. The only other person present was a Portuguese, by name Senor Mendez, P.’s mercantile agent at Lisbon, a person of remarkably retentive memory, and most wonderful power of description. The conversation somehow turned upon the memorable great earthquake at Lisbon, in the year of our Lord----, and Senor Mendez, who was residing at that time in the Portuguese capital, gave us a very lively picture--if lively it may be called--of the horrors of that awful convulsion of nature. The picture was dreadful; the Senor’s own house, a substantial stone mansion, was rent from attic to cellar: and the steeple of his parish church left impending over it at an angle surpassing that of the famous Leaning Tower of Bologna!

The Portuguese had a wonderfully expressive countenance, with a style of narration indescribably vivid; and as I listened with the most intense interest, every dismal circumstance of the calamity became awfully distinct to my apprehension. I could hear the dreary ringing of the bells, self-tolled from the rocking of the churches; the swaying to and fro of the steeples themselves, and the unnatural heavings and swellings of the Tagus, were vividly before me. As the agitations increased, the voice of the Senor became awfully tremulous, and his seat seemed literally to rock under him. I seemed palsied, and could see from P.’s looks that he was similarly affected. To conceal his disorder, he kept swallowing large gulps from his rummer, and I followed his example.

This was only the first shock;--the second soon followed, and, to use a popular expression, it made us both “shake in our shoes.” Terrific, however, as it was, the third was more tremendous; the order of nature seemed reversed; the ships in the Tagus sank to the bottom, and their ponderous anchors rose to the surface; volcanic fire burst forth from the water, and water from dry ground; the air, no longer elastic, seemed to become a stupendous solid; swaying to and fro, and irresistibly battering down the fabrics of ages; hollow rumblings and moanings as from the very centre of the world, gave warning of deafening explosions, which soon followed, and seemed to shake the very stars out of the sky. All this time the powerful features of the Senor kept working, in frightful imitation of the convulsion he was describing, and the effect was horrible; I saw P. quiver like an aspen--there seemed no such thing as terra firma. Our chairs rocked under us; the floor tossed and heaved; the candles wavered, the windows clattered, and the teaspoons rang again, as our tumblers vibrated in our hands.

Senor Mendez at length concluded his narrative, and shortly took leave; I staid but a few minutes after him, just to make a remark on the appalling character of the story, and then departed myself,--little thinking, that any part of the late description was to be so speedily realised by my own experience!

The hour being late, and the servants in bed, P. himself accompanied me to the door. I ought to remark here that the day had been uncommonly serene--not a breath stirring, as was noticed on the morning of the great catastrophe at Lisbon; however, P. had barely closed the door, when a sudden and violent motion of the earth threw me from the step on which I was standing, to the middle of the pavement; I had got partly up when a second shock, as smart as the first, threw me again on the ground. With some difficulty I recovered my legs a second time, the earth in the mean time heaving about under me like the deck of a ship at sea. The street lamps, too, seemed violently agitated, and the houses nodded over me as if they would fall every instant. I attempted to run, but it was impossible; I could barely keep on my feet. At one step I was dashed forcibly against the wall; at the next I was thrown into the road; as the motion became more violent I clung to a lamp-post, but it swayed with me like a rush. A great mist came suddenly on, but I could perceive people hurrying about, all staggering like drunken men; some of them addressing me, but so confusedly as to be quite unintelligible; one--a lady--passed close to me in evident alarm: seizing her hand, I besought her to fly with me from the falling houses, into the open fields; what answer she made I know not, for at that instant, a fresh shock threw me on my face with such violence as to render me quite insensible. Providentially, in this state I attracted the notice of some of the night police, who humanely deposited me, for safety, in St. Anne’s watch-house, till the following morning; when being sufficiently recovered to give a collected account of that eventful evening, the ingenious Mr. W., of the Morning Herald, was so much interested by my narrative that he kindly did me the favour of drawing it up for publication in the following form.

_Police Intelligence.--Bow Street._

“This morning a stout country gentleman, in a new suit of mud, evidently town made, was charged with having walked _Waverly_ over-night till he got his _Kennelworth_ in a gutter in Mary-le-bone. The Jack-o’-lanthorn who picked him up could make nothing out of him, but that he was some sort of a _Quaker_, and declared that the whole country was in a _shocking_ state. He acknowledged having taken rather too much _Lisbon_; but according to Mr. Daly, he sniffed of whiskey ‘as strong as natur.’ The defendant attempted with a _sotto voce_ (Anglice, a tipsy voice), to make some excuse, but was stopped and fined in the usual sum, by Sir Richard. He found his way out of the office, muttering that he thought it very hard to have to pay _five hogs_ for being only as drunk as _one_.”

ODE TO ST. SWITHIN.

“The rain it raineth every day.”

THE Dawn is overcast, the morning low’rs,
On ev’ry window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps,
To celebrate the Jubilee of Show’rs!
A constant sprinkle patters from all leaves,
The very Dryads are not dry, but soppers,
And from the Houses’ eaves
Tumble eaves-droppers.

The hundred clerks that live along the street,
Bondsmen to mercantile and City schemers,
With squashing, sloshing, and galoching feet,
Go paddling, paddling, through the wet, like steamers,
Each hurrying to earn the daily stipend--
Umbrellas pass of every shade of green,
And now and then a crimson one is seen,
Like an Umbrella _ripen’d_.

Over the way a waggon
Stand with six smoking horses, shrinking, blinking,
While in the George and Dragon
The man is keeping himself dry--and drinking!
The Butcher’s boy skulks underneath his tray,
Hats shine--shoes don’t--and down droop collars,
And one blue Parasol cries all the way
To school, in company with four small scholars!

Unhappy is the man to-day who rides,
Making his journey sloppier, not shorter;
Aye, there they go, a dozen of outsides,
Performing on “a Stage with real water!”
A dripping Pauper crawls along the way,
The only real willing out-of-doorer
And says, or seems to say,
“Well, I am poor enough--but here’s a _pourer!_”

The scene in water colours thus I paint,
Is your own Festival, you Sloppy Saint!
Mother of all the Family of Rainers!
Saint of the Soakers!
Making all people croakers,
Like frogs in swampy marshes, and complainers!
And why you mizzle forty days together,
Giving the earth your water-soup to sup,
I marvel--Why such wet, mysterious weather?
I wish you’d _clear it up_!

Why cast such cruel dampers
On pretty Pic Nics, and against all wishes
Set the cold ducks a-swimming in the hampers,
And volunteer, unask’d, to wash the dishes?
Why drive the Nymphs from the selected spot,
To cling like lady-birds around a tree--
Why spoil a Gipsy party at their tea,
By throwing your cold water upon hot?

Cannot a rural maiden, or a man,
Seek Hornsey-Wood by invitation, sipping
Their green with Pan,
But souse you come, and show their Pan all dripping!
Why upon snow-white table-cloths and sheets,
That do not wait, or want a second washing,
Come squashing?
Why task yourself to lay the dust in streets,
As if there were no Water-Cart contractors,
No pot-boys spilling beer, no shop-boys ruddy
Spooning out puddles muddy,
Milkmaids, and other slopping benefactors!

A Queen you are, raining in your own right,
Yet oh! how little flatter’d by report!

Even by those that seek the Court,
Pelted with every term of spleen and spite.
Folks rail and swear at you in every place;
They say you are a creature of no bowel;
They say you’re always washing Nature’s face,
And that you then supply her,
With nothing drier,
Than some old wringing cloud by way of towel!
The whole town wants you duck’d, just as you duck it,
They wish you on your own mud porridge supper’d,
They hope that you may kick your own big bucket,
Or in your water-butt go sous! heels up’ard!
They are, in short, so weary of your drizzle,
They’d spill the water in your veins to stop it--
Be warn’d! You are too partial to a mizzle--
Pray _drop it_!

THE APPARITION.

A TRUE STORY.

“To keep without a reef in a gale of wind like that--Jock was the only boatman on the Firth of Tay to do it!”--

“He had sail enough to blow him over Dundee Law.”--

“She’s emptied her ballast and come up again,--with her sails all standing--every sheet was belayed with a double turn.”

I give the sense rather than the sound of the foregoing speeches, for the speakers were all Dundee ferry-boatmen, and broad Scotchmen, using the extra-wide dialect of Angus-shire and Fife.

At the other end of the low-roofed room, under a coarse white sheet, sprinkled with sprigs of rue and rosemary, dimly lighted by a small candle at the head, and another at the feet, lay the object of their comments--a corpse of startling magnitude. In life, poor Jock was of unusual stature, but stretching a little, perhaps, as is usual in death, and advantaged by the narrow limits of the room, the dimensions seemed absolutely supernatural. During the warfare of the Allies against Napoleon, Jock, a fellow of some native humour, had distinguished himself by singing about the streets of Dundee, ballads, I believe his own, against old Boney. The nick-name of Ballad-Jock was not his only reward; the loyal burgesses subscribed among themselves, and made him that fatal gift, a ferry-boat, the management of which we have just heard so seriously reviewed. The catastrophe took place one stormy Sunday, a furious gale blowing against the tide, down the river--and the Tay is anything but what the Irish call “weak tay,” at such seasons. In fact, the devoted Nelson, with all sails set,--fair-weather fashion,--caught aback in a sudden gust,--after a convulsive whirl capsized, and went down in forty fathoms, taking with her two-and-twenty persons, the greater part of whom were on their way to hear the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,--even at that time highly popular,--though preaching in a small church at some obscure village, I forget the name, in Fife. After all the rest had sunk in the waters, the huge figure of Jock was observed clinging to an oar, barely afloat,--when some sufferer probably catching hold of his feet, he suddenly disappeared, still grasping the oar, which afterwards springing upright into the air, as it rose again to the surface, showed the fearful depth to which it had been carried. The body of Jock was the last found; about the fifth day, it was strangely enough deposited by the tide almost at the threshold of his own dwelling, at the Craig, a small pier or jetty, frequented by the ferry-boats. It had been hastily caught up, and in its clothes laid out in the manner just described, lying as it were in state, and the public, myself one, being freely admitted, as far as the room would hold, it was crowded by fish-wives, mariners, and other shore-haunters, except a few feet next the corpse, which a natural awe towards the dead kept always vacant. The narrow death’s door was crammed with eager listening and looking heads, and by the buzzing without, there was a large surplus crowd in waiting before the dwelling for their turn to enter it.

On a sudden, at a startling exclamation from one of those nearest the bed, all eyes were directed towards that quarter. One of the candles was guttering and sputtering near the socket,--the other just twinkling out, and sending up a stream of rank smoke,--but by the light, dim as it was, a slight motion of the sheet was perceptible just at that part where the hand of the dead mariner might be supposed to be lying at his side! A scream and shout of horror burst from all within, echoed, though ignorant of the cause, by another from the crowd without. A general rush was made towards the door, but egress was impossible. Nevertheless horror and dread squeezed up the company in the room to half their former compass: and left a far wider blank between the living and the dead! I confess at first I mistrusted my sight; it seemed that some twitching of the nerves of the eye, or the flickering of the shadows, thrown by the unsteady flame of the candle, might have caused some optical delusion; but after several minutes of sepulchral silence and watching, the motion became more awfully manifest, now proceeding slowly upwards, as if the hand of the deceased, still beneath the sheet, was struggling up feebly towards his head. It is possible to conceive, but not to describe, the popular consternation,--the shrieks of women,--the shouts of men--the struggles to gain the only outlet, choked up and rendered impassable by the very efforts of desperation and fear!--Clinging to each other, and with ghastly faces that _dared_ not turn from the object of dread, the whole assembly backed with united force against the opposite wall, with a convulsive energy that threatened to force out the very side of the dwelling--when, startled before by silent motion, but now by sound,--with a smart rattle something fell from the bed to the floor, and disentangling itself from the death drapery, displayed--a large pound Crab!--The creature, with some design, perhaps sinister, had been secreted in the ample clothes of the drowned seaman, but even the comparative insignificance of this apparition gave but little alleviation to the superstitious horrors of the spectators, who appeared to believe firmly, that it was only the Evil One himself, transfigured.--Wherever the crab straddled sidelong, infirm beldame and sturdy boatman equally shrank and retreated before it,--aye, even as it changed place, to crowding closely round the corpse itself, rather than endure its diabolical contact. The crowd outside, warned by cries from within, of the presence of Mahound, had by this time retired to a respectful distance, and the crab, doing what herculean sinews had failed to effect, cleared itself a free passage through the door in a twinkling, and with natural instinct began crawling as fast as he could clapperclaw, down the little jetty before mentioned that led into his native sea. The Satanic Spirit, however disguised, seemed everywhere distinctly recognised. Many at the lower end of the Craig lept into their craft; one or two even into the water, whilst others crept as close to the verge of the pier as they could, leaving a thoroughfare--wide as “the broad path of honour,”--to the Infernal Cancer. To do him justice, he straddled along with a very unaffected unconsciousness of his own evil importance. He seemed to have no aim higher than salt water and sand, and had accomplished half the distance towards them, when a little decrepit poor old sea-roamer, generally known as “Creel Katie,” made a dexterous snatch at a hind claw, and before the Crab-Devil was aware, deposited him in her patchwork apron, with an “Hech, Sirs, what for are ye gaun to let gang siccan a braw partane?” In vain a hundred voices shouted out, “Let him bide, Katie,--he’s no cannie;” fish or fiend, the resolute old dame kept a fast clutch of her prize, promising him, moreover, a comfortable simmer in the mickle pat, for the benefit of herself and that “puir silly body the gudeman:” and she kept her word. Before night the poor Devil was dressed in his shell, to the infinite horror of all her neighbours. Some even said that a black figure, with horns, and wings, and hoofs, and forky tail, in fact old Clooty himself, had been seen to fly out of the chimney. Others said that unwholesome and unearthly smells, as of pitch and brimstone, had reeked forth from the abominable thing, through door and window. Creel Kate, however, persisted, aye, even to her dying day and on her deathbed, that the Crab was as sweet a Crab as ever was supped on; and that it recovered her old husband out of a very poor low way,--adding, “And that was a thing, ye ken, the Deil a Deil in the Dub of Darkness wad hae dune for siccan a gude man, and kirk-going Christian body, as my ain douce Davie.”

A BLIND MAN

Is a Blackamoor turned outside in. His skin is fair, but his lining is utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars,--mere jellies; or like mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind’s eye can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental capacity at all--for, “out of sight is out of mind.”

Wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your noon. The brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object; like a dark house at a general illumination. When he stirs, it is like a Venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human kettle tied to a dog’s tail, and with much of the same tin twang in his tone. With botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade, whereof the berries are in his eyes;--amongst painters he is only contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. He stands against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief, howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence, yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest.

In his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things palpable. In politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage, heroic, for he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes of _looking_-glass would not help him to see. To conclude--he is pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holloa!

THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

“Oh flesh, flesh how art thou fishified.”--MERCUTIO.

I.

’Twas twelve o’clock by Chelsea chimes,
When all in hungry trim,
Good Mister Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate, and Jim.

II.

Said he, “Upon this dainty cod
How bravely I shall sup,”--
When, whiter than the table-cloth,
A GHOST came rising up!

III.

“O, father dear, O, mother dear,
Dear Kate, and brother Jim,--
You know when some one went to sea,--
Don’t cry--but I am him!

IV.

“You hope some day with fond embrace
To greet your absent Jack,
But oh, I am come here to say
I’m never coming back!

V.

“From Alexandria we set sail,
With corn, and oil, and figs,
But steering ‘too much Sow,’ we struck
Upon the Sow and Pigs!

VI.

“The Ship we pump’d till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel’s Chops.

VII.

“Just give a look in Norey’s chart,
The very place it tells;
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.

VIII.

“Well, there we are till ‘hands aloft,’
We have at last a call;
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate’s parrot too, and all.

IX.

“But oh, my spirit cannot rest,
In Davy Jones’s sod,
Till I’ve appear’d to you and said,--
Don’t sup on that ’ere Cod!

X.

“You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 P.M.,
That cod was picking me!

XI.

“Those oysters too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.

XII.

“O, do not eat those oysters then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave,
They suck’d my blood like imps!

XIII.

“Don’t eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They’ll know the smell they used to smell;
Just try the dog and cat!”

XIV.

The Spirit fled--they wept his fate,
And cried, Alack, alack!
At last up started brother Jim.
“Let’s try if Jack was Jack!”

XV.

They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat,
And little Kitten too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce,
To see what brutes would do.

XVI.

Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munch’d the Cod--and little Kit
Quite feasted on the shrimps!

XVII.

The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!

A SNAKE-SNACK.

“Twine ye, twine ye.”--SIR W. SCOTT.

IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of observation, the reptile not being remarkable for the regularity of its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her victim,--a living White Rabbit--who with a large dark eye gazed piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that line in Hamlet--

“O could I shuffle off this mortal _coil_!”

The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape--but her lips were glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the rabbit was to proceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb. In short, I thought the reported _cram_ was nothing but _stuff_, and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that ’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for wagers: the delight of eating-houses, and the dread of ordinaries. The contrast was whimsical, between his mountain of mummy, and the slim Macaroni figure of the Snake, the reputed Glutton. However, the Boa began at last to prepare for the meal, by lubricating the muzzle of the Rabbit with her slimy tongue, and then commenced in earnest,

As far as in her lay to take him in,
A stranger dying with so fair a skin.

The process was tedious--“one swallow makes a summer”--but it gradually became apparent, from the fate of the head, that the whole body might eventually be “lost in the Serpentine.” The Reptile, indeed, made ready for the rest of the interment by an operation rather horrible. On a sudden, the living cable was observed, as a sailor would say, to haul in her slack, and with a squeeze evincing tremendous muscular power, she reduced the whole body into a compass that would follow the head with perfect ease. It was like a regular smash in business:--the poor rabbit was completely broken--and the wily winder-up of his affairs recommenced paying herself in full. It was a sorry sight and sickening. As for the Stout Gentleman, he could not control his agitation. His eyes rolled and watered; his jaws constantly yawned like a panther’s; and his hands with a convulsive movement were clasped every now and then on his stomach;--but when the whole rabbit was smothered in snake, he could restrain himself no longer, and rushed out of the menagerie as if he really expected to be called upon to fulfil his rash engagement. Anxious to ascertain the true nature of the impulse, I hurried in pursuit of him, and after a short but sharp chase, I saw him dash into the British Hotel, and overheard his familiar voice--the same that had promised to swallow both Snake and Snack--bellowing out, guttural with hunger--“Here!--waiter!--Quick!--Rabbits in onions for two!”

A STORM AT HASTINGS

AND THE LITTLE UNKNOWN.

’TWAS August--Hastings every day was filling--
Hastings, that “greenest spot on memory’s waste!”
With crowds of idlers willing or unwilling
To be bedipped--be noticed--or be braced,
And all things rose a penny in a shilling.
Meanwhile, from window and from door, in haste
“Accommodation bills” kept coming down,
Gladding “the world of letters” in that town.

Each day pour’d in new coach-fulls of new cits,
Flying from London smoke and dust annoying,
Unmarried Misses hoping to make hits,
And new-wed couples fresh from Tunbridge toying.
Lacemen and placemen, ministers and wits,
And Quakers of both sexes, much enjoying
A morning’s reading by the ocean’s rim,
That sect delighting in the sea’s broad brim.

And lo! amongst all these appear’d a creature,
So small, he almost might a twin have been,
With Miss Crachami--dwarfish quite in stature,
Yet well proportion’d--neither fat nor lean,
His face of marvellously pleasant feature.
So short and sweet a man was never seen--
All thought him charming at the first beginning--
Alas, ere long they found him far too winning!

He seem’d in love with chance--and chance repaid
His ardent passion with her fondest smile,
The sunshine of good luck, without a shade,
He staked and won--and won and staked--the bile
It stirr’d of many a man and many a maid,
To see at every venture how that vile
Small gambler snatch’d--and how he won them too--
A living Pam, omnipotent at loo!

Miss Wiggins set her heart upon a box,
’Twas handsome, rosewood, and inlaid with brass,
And dreamt three times she garnish’d it with stocks,
Of needles, silks, and cottons--but alas!
She lost it wide awake.--We thought Miss Cox
Was lucky--but she saw three caddies pass
To that small imp:--no living luck could loo him!
Sir Stamford would have lost his Raffles to him!

And so he climb’d--and rode, and won--and walk’d,
The wondrous topic of the curious swarm
That haunted the Parade. Many were balk’d
Of notoriety by that small form
Pacing it up and down:--some even talk’d
Of ducking him--when lo! a dismal storm
Stepp’d in--one Friday, at the close of day--
And every head was turn’d another way--