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What an odd-favoured mountebank! “a threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller, a needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,” with a nose crooked as the walls of Troy, and a chin like a shoeing horn; those two features having become more intimately acquainted, because his teeth had fallen out! Behold him jabbering, gesticulating, and with auricular grin, distributing this Bartholomew Fair bill.
“Sept. 3, 1729. At Bullock's Great Theatrical Booth will be acted a Droll, called Dorastus and Faunia, or the Royal Shepherdess; Flora, an opera; with Toilet's Rounds; the Fingalian Dance, and a Scottish Dance, by Mrs. Bullock.”
Thine, Hallam, is a tempting bill of fare. “The Comical Humours of Squire Softhead and his man Bullcalf, and the Whimsical Distresses of Mother Catterwall!” With a harmonious concert of “violins, hautboys, bassoons, kettle-drums, trumpets, and French horns!” Thine, too, Hippisley, immortal Scapin! transferring the arch fourberies of thy hero to Smithfield Rounds. At the George Inn, where, with Chapman, thou keepest thy court, we are presented with “Harlequin Scapin, or the Old One caught in a sack; and the tricks, cheats, and shifts of Scapin's two companions, Trim the Barber, and Bounce-about the Bully.” The part of Scapin by thy comical self.
At this moment a voice, to which the neigh of Bucephalus was but a whisper, announced that the unfortunate owner had lost a leg and an arm in his country's service, winding up the catalogue with some minor dilapidations, all of which are more or less peculiar to those patriots who during life find their reward in hard blows and poverty, and in death receive a polite invitation to join a water party down the pool of oblivion! The Lauréat paused.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. “Lost his leg in battle!—ha! ha! ha!—a gude joke! He means in a man-trap! I should be glad to know what business a pauper body like this has blathering abroad? Are there not almshouses, and workhouses, and hospitals, for beggars and cripples? Though I perfectly agree wi' Sandy M'Grab, Professor * of Humanity, that sic like receptacles, and the anti-Presbyterian abomination of alms-giving are only so many premiums for roguery and vay-gabondism. Let every one put his shoulder to the wheel, his nose to the grindstone, and make hay while the sun shines.”
* At Oxford and Cambridge they write L.L.D.—in Scotland,
L.S.D. viz. 35s. 3d. for the diploma!
Mr. Bosky. But are there not many on whom the sun of prosperity never shone?
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Their unthriftiness and lack of foresight alone are to blame!
Mr. Bosky. Is to want a shilling, to want every virtue? Men think highly of those who rapidly rise in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers! Would you provide no asylum for adversity, sickness, and old age?