THE LORD OF BURLEIGH.
Listen to the doleful story
Of a juvenile M.P.,
He was but a voting Tory,
And a farmer's daughter she.
Spake he in his wisest manner
(Whereat people often smiled),
"You must give up your piano,
You are but a farmer's child.
"Straight forget each foreign tongue, dear,
And, to further my desire,
All the songs you ever sang, dear—
For a tenant is your sire."
So she sells her dear piano;
With the cash her bargain yields
Buys she Gibbs's best guano,
Which she scatters o'er the fields.
Then forgets each well-bred accent,
Foreign, native, just the same,
All her modern books are back sent
To the stores from whence they came.
Then he marries her and makes her
Thus a lady of renown,
And with condescension takes her
To his house by Stamford town.
From the gate his crest depended,
Which the owner's breeding shows;
Hand with fingers wide extended
Stretching from a lordly nose.
Waves the flippant owner's pennant
O'er the keep's embattled brow,
Though her sire was but a tenant
She is Lady Burleigh now.
Long she lived in stately manner
'Mid the highborn and the grand,
But she pined for her piano
Scattered on the teeming land.
Then she grew and ever thinner,
And she murmured, "O that he,
At that agricultural dinner,
Had not ever counselled me."
So she drooped and drooped before him,
And at last, with anguish bent,
To his freedom did restore him,
Following her dear instrument.
He survived in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, young and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Was so great a fool as he.
CECIL.
The Kettering Observer, March 21, 1884.
When Lord Burghley, M.P. (son of the Marquis of Exeter), took the English farmers to task for allowing their daughters to play the piano, and to learn a few of the polite little accomplishments of the day, his remarks were generally resented as impertinent, and his name lent itself irresistibly to the ridicule contained in the preceding parody of Tennyson's "Lord of Burleigh." Inasmuch as Tennyson's poem was founded on incidents connected with the courtship and marriage of the first Marquis of Exeter, to Sarah Hoggins, the daughter of a small yeoman farmer at Bolas Magna, in Shropshire. The marriage took place in October, 1791, and the lady died in January, 1797, leaving two sons, of whom the elder became the second Marquis of Exeter, and was the grandfather of the Lord Burghley above referred to.