PLATE I.
George Dyball, a blind beggar of considerable notoriety, and his dog Nelson.
The next plate is of a beggar well known at fairs near the Metropolis. He is certainly blind, and perhaps one of the most cunning and witty of his tribe; for in order that his blindness may be manifest, he literally throws up his eyeballs, as if desirous of exemplifying the following lines in Hudibras:—
"As men of inward light are wont
To turn their optics in upon't."
He is a foreigner, and probably a Frenchman; at all events he professed to be so on the commencement of the war; but having acquired a tolerable stock of English, and perhaps not choosing to return home, he now declares himself "A poor Spaniard Man."
Sometimes he will, by an artful mode of singing any stuff that comes into his head, and by merely sounding the last word of a line, so contrive to impose upon the waggoners and other country people, as to make them believe that he fought in the field of Waterloo.
"Poor fellow," exclaimed a spectator, "he has been in the battle of Waterloo." "Yes, my belove friends," returned the mendicant, "De money de money go very low too."
However, this fellow is now and then detected, in consequence of a picture, which is painted on a tin plate and fastened to his breast, being the portrait of and worn many years ago by a marine, who had lost his sight at Gibraltar. His hair, which is sometimes bushy, is now and then closely put under his hat, or tied in a tail; and when he alters his voice, he becomes a different character—the form of a decrepit vender of matches. The seated beggar in this plate is frequently to be seen at the wall of Privy Chambers; he never asks charity, nor goes any great distance from Westminster, where he resides.
