“Bah!” chuckled the corpulent conjuror, “à bas the blue devils! If ruin must come, good luck send that it may be blue. Though poor in purse, let me be rich in nose! Saint Bartlemy in a consumption—ha! ha! Pinched for standing-room, the comical old grig laughs and lies down! and, so droll he looks in dissolution, that I must have my lark out, though one of his boa-con-strictors should threaten to suck me down in a lump. He dies full of years and fun, the patriarch of posture-masters and puppet-showmen! Merry be his memory! and Scaramouches eternal caper round his sarcophagus! Shall we cry him a canting canticle? Rather let us chant a rattling roundelay!”
Major Domo's a comical homo I
Sic transit gloria mundi;
Highty-tighty I frolicksome,, flighty I
Soon will Bartlemy Fair and fun die.
Coat of motley, cap and bells,
O'er his bier shall dolefully jingle;
Conjurors all shall bear his pall,
And mountebanks follow it, married and single!
Giants, dwarfs in sable scarfs.