“I would beg to enquire to whom the selection and arrangement of the comic entertainments are to be intrusted. Unless the major should have already found a competent person, I think I can recommend to his notice an individual who is eminently qualified for the duties,” said Mr. Seymour.
“I am, at this moment, in quest of such a director,” said the major.
“Ned Hopkins, then, who has for some time past taken up his abode at our village alehouse, is the very person, of all others, whom you seek. I have no doubt that for a trifling consideration he will undertake the office; and I feel equally confident that he will execute its duties to your satisfaction.”
“Ned Hopkins!” exclaimed the vicar, with some surprise.
“To be sure; and who better understands the trim of those itinerant sons of Comus? Was not his father a mountebank doctor, and a professor of the art of legerdemain?”
“I value not Ned Hopkins the less on that account; the immortal Virgil was the son of a servant, or assistant, to a wandering astrologer, or ‘Medicus Magus,’ as Juvenal has it; and the mother of Euripides was a cabbage-woman, for which Aristophanes so unjustifiably ridicules him. But my dislike to Ned Hopkins is founded upon his own dissipated habits, his disgusting jokes, and Bacchanalian buffoonery.”
“Ay,” continued Mr. Seymour, “and his bad puns, vile quotations, and hackneyed proverbs; and yet you must confess that, after all, he is a very clever fellow.”
“Sir,” observed the vicar, “Satan does not usually select a fool as his ambassador.”
“Upon my word, gentlemen, this must needs be a very amusing fellow; and you have so far excited my curiosity, as to make me desirous of hearing something farther of his history and habits,” said the major.
“He is one of those loose spirits,” replied Mr. Seymour, “who live upon expedients; and measuring their consciences by their wants, derive a revenue from sources, of which those who jog on quietly through the beaten paths of life have not the most remote conception. He commenced his career under the tutelage of the first fire-eater of the day, but having clumsily scalded his mouth, he lost his reputation, and found it advisable to seek some other stage for the display of his abilities. Possessed of a very considerable degree of native humour and caustic shrewdness, he engaged himself as a ‘mercenary,’ or literary drudge, to a popular publisher of comic song books, sanguinary murders, magical magazines, amorous valentines, oracles of health, and plans for the liquidation of the national debt; which occupations have, as I have been credibly informed, produced for him during a successful season, some twenty or thirty pounds in the lawful coin of the realm: but Ned, like many a great genius, was better pleased with an hour of idleness than a week of study; and, strange to say, would at any time have preferred a cup of wine to a bucketful of the finest water from Helicon; no sooner, therefore, had he collected a few pounds, than he descended from his high literary station, a lofty garret; and, taking up his abode at some hedge alehouse, would enjoy a life of happy leisure, until every particle of that worldly substance which he had gained by inspiration from above, was gratefully returned to the skies in the form of tobacco fumes. For some months past,” added Mr. Seymour, “he has been a constant resident at the Bag of Nails, where, as I am led to believe, he pays for nothing but his tobacco; the worthy hostess having found him a very profitable bait for customers, is too willing to barter the drippings of the kitchen for his wit, and the leakage of the tap-room for his songs.”