The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events

by Leigh Hunt

I warrant t'would have danced it like a duck.

The fiddlers, voices, entries, all the sport,

And the gay show put off, where the brisk court

Anticipates, in rich subsidy coats,

All that is got by necessary votes.

Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent, the good,

See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood."[219]

The "subsidy coats" allude to Charles's raising money for his profligate expenditure under pretence of the public service. The last couplet would have done credit to a better satire.

As we are upon the subject of a neighbourhood to which they apply, we shall proceed to give a few more extracts from Mr. Malcolm, highly characteristic of the lower orders of desperadoes in Charles's reign.