When she hears of your scaly mistake,

She'll surely turn snitch for the forty—

That her Jack may be regular weight."

If there be any gemman so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism; who, I trust, still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplishments.

[Gentleman Jackson was of good renown. "Servility," says Egan (Life in London, 1823, p. 217), "is not known to him. Flattery he detests. Integrity, impartiality, good-nature, and manliness, are the corner-stones of his understanding." Byron once said of him that "his manners were infinitely superior to those of the Fellows of the College whom I meet at the high table" (J.W. Clark, Cambridge, 1890, p. 140). (See, too, letter to John Jackson, September 18, 1808, Letters, 1898, i. 189, note 2; Hints from Horace, line 638, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 433, note 3.) As to the stanza quoted by Egan (Anecdotes of the Turf, 1827, p. 44), but not traduced or interpreted, "To be hobbled for making a clout" is to be taken into custody for stealing a handkerchief, to "turn snitch" is to inform, and the "forty" is the £40 offered for the detection of a capital crime, and shared by the police or Bow Street runners. Dangerous characters were let alone and tacitly encouraged to continue their career of crime, until the measure of their iniquity was full, and they "weighed forty." If Jack was clumsy enough to be detected in a trifling theft, his "blowen" would go over to the enemy, and betray him for the sake of the Government reward (see Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose, 1823, art. "Weigh forty").]

[572] {433}[Don Juan must have driven by Pleasant Row, and passed within hail of Paradise Row, on the way from Kennington to Westminster Bridge. (See Cary's New Pocket Plan of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1819.) But, perhaps, there is more in the names of streets and places than meets the eye. Here, as elsewhere, there is, or there may be, "a paltering with us in a double sense.">[

[KM]

Through rows called "Paradise," by way of showing

Good Christians that to which they all are going.—[MS. erased.]

[573] {434}[Compare Childe Harold, Canto 1. stanza lxix. line 8, var. ii., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 66, note 2.]