EPITAPH.
Fulle thirtie yeares, I lived a smuggler bolde,
Dealing in goode Schiedam and Englishe golde.
My hande was open, and my hearte was lighte;
My owners knew my worde was honour brighte.
In the West Indies, too, for seven long yeares,
I stoutlie foughte the Dons and the Mounseers.
Commander of the tight-built sloop, the Sharke,
Late as the owle, and early as the larke,
I roamed the sea, nor cared for tide or winde,
And left the Guarda Costas all behinde.
Until betrayed by woman’s flattering tongue,
In San Domingo my three mates were hung.
I shot the Judge, forsook the Spanish Maine,
And to olde Englande boldlie sailed againe.
Was married thrice, and think it rather harde,
That I should lie alone in this churchyarde.
But the march of mind is fatal to sentiment. A few years ago all vestiges of Jack were swept away. A neighbouring tanner had taken a liking to the spot, purchased it, planted his pits in it, and carried off Jack’s monument for a chimney-piece!
——But what hills are those edging the horizon, green, soft, and sunny. I hear a burst of sonorous bells—
Over this wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.
No; Milton’s bells are monastic; the solemn clang of some huge cathedral, calling the brethren to vespers, and filling the air with the melancholy pomp of the antique cloister.—These are gay, glad, tumultuous, a clang of joy. It is the Queen’s accession. Flags are flying on every ship and steeple, and I hear a distant cannonade. The guns of Woolwich are firing in honour of the day.
And what palace is looming on my right? Greenwich Hospital. A façade worthy of Greece; ranges of Corinthian columns; vast courts expanding in front; groves and green hills in the rear; and on the esplanade, a whole battalion of one-legged or one-armed heroes, formed in line, and, as we arrive, giving three cheers to the “glory” of her Majesty.
I leave the chroniclers to tell, that this noble establishment was founded by William the Dutchman, of freedom-loving and French-hating memory; that the call for public munificence was answered, as such calls always are, by England; and that at this hour it pensions nearly forty thousand as brave veterans as any in the world.
What magnitude of benevolence was ever equal to this regal and national benefaction? In what form could public gratitude have ever been more nobly displayed? Or by what means, uniting the highest charity to the most just recompense, could comfort have been more proudly administered to the declining days of the British seaman. In the long course of a hundred and fifty years, what thousands, and tens of thousands, must have been rescued, by this illustrious benevolence, from the unhappiness of neglected old age! To what multitudes of brave old hearts must it have given comfort in their distant cottages, and what high recollections must the sight of its memorials and trophies revive in the men who fought under Rodney and Howe, St. Vincent and Nelson! Those are the true evidences of national greatness. Those walls are our witnesses to posterity, that their fathers had not lived in vain. The shield of the country thrown over the sailor and the soldier, against the chances of the world in his old age, is the emblem of a grander supremacy than ever was gained by even its irresistible spear.
——But the steamer has made a dash to the opposite bank, and we glide along the skirts of a small peninsula, marked by a slender stone pillar, where the border of Essex begins.
At this spot, a couple of hundred years ago, a mayor of London had been hanged; for what reason, Elkanah Settle, the city laureate, does not aver, further than that “wise people differed much on the subject,”—some imagining that it was for bigamy; others, that it was for having, at a great banquet given to the king by the corporation of spectacle-makers, mistaken the royal purse for his own; but the chief report being, “that he was hanged for the bad dinners which he gave to the common-councilmen.” The laureate proceeds to say, that at this spot, whenever the mayor of London went down with the Companies in their visitation of the boundaries, the barges all made a solemn stop. The mayor, (he was not yet a lord,) with all the aldermen, knelt on the deck, and the chief chaplain, taking off his cap, repeated this admonition:—
Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,
Of a sinner’s death beware.
Liveth virtue, liveth sin
Not without us, but within.
Man doth never think of ill,
While he feedeth at his will.
None doth seek his neighbour’s coin,
When he seeth the sirloin.
No man toucheth purse or life,
While he thus doth use his knife.
Savoury pie and smoking haunch
Make the hungry traitor staunch.
Claret spiced, and Malvoisie,
From ill Spirits set us free,
Better far than axe or sword
Is the City’s well filled board.
Think of him once, hanging there,
Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,
Chorus.—Beware, Beware, Beware!
The various corporate bodies chanted the last line with unanimous devotion; the mayor and aldermen then rose from their knees, and the whole pageant moved on to Blackwall to Dine.
Who has not heard of Blackwall? more fashionable for three months in the year than Almacks itself for the same perishable period; fuller than Bond Street, and with as many charming taverns as Regent Street contains “Ruination shops,” (so called by Lady J. the most riante wit of the day,) those shops where one can purchase every thing that nobody wants, and that few can pay for. Emporiums, as they name themselves, brilliant collections of all that is dazzling and delightful, from a filigree tooth-pick, up to a service of plate for a royal visitation.
Blackwall is a little city of taverns, built by white-bait, as the islands in the South Sea are built by the coral insect. The scenery is a marsh, backed by the waters of a stagnant canal, and lined with whitewashed warehouses. It is in fact a transfer of Wapping, half-a-dozen miles down the Thames. But Blackwall disdains the picturesque; it scorns exterior charms, and devotes itself to the solid merits of the table, and to dressing white-bait with a perfection unrivalled, and unrivalable in the circumference of the terrestrial globe.
Blackwall deserves to be made immortal, and I gave it a passport to posterity, in an Ode.