During his absence, I had little else to do but to curse the country, and scratch my ears for want of liberty, which were terrified with the buzzing of a parcel of fanatical souls, who swarm’d as thick as bees at a Hampshire-farmers, some damning of doctor B——ges, others confounding of Timothy Cr—soe, some raving against Me—d of Stepney, others cursing of Salters-Hall, &c. as if the ready road to hell was to travel through Presbytery.
By this time my friend Bob was as good as his word, which was the first time I ever knew him so. Well, says he, you may see I am as sure as a Robin, I have got your discharge; but the justice swears, had you been confin’d for any thing besides whoring, drinking, and swearing, you should have been shackled and been damn’d before he’d ever have releas’d you; but however here’s a little Scribere cum dasho will set you at liberty; upon which we call’d the constable of the ward, who, upon sight of the discharge, freed my supporters from confinement, which was no sooner done, but with a reciprocal joy for my happy deliverance, we began a ramble together thro’ all the neighbouring avenues, in hopes to meet with something that might give us a little diversion; we had not travelled above an hundred yards, but who should we meet but the old snarling rogue that us’d to cry poor Jack, with his wife after him; he no sooner espy’d us, but attack’d us open-mouth’d after the following manner, Two sharpers without one penny of money in their pockets; a couple of bullies, and both cowards, ha, ha. Now for a fool with a full pocket, a good dinner on free-cost, a whore and a tavern, a belly-full of wine without paying for’t, ha, ha, ha, a hackney-coach for a bilk, or a brass-shilling, a long sword, never a shirt, White-Fryars i’th’ day time, a garret at night, ha, ha, ha, ha. Thus the old rascal run upon us as we pass’d by him, that we were both as glad when we were out of his reach, as a hen-peck’d cuckold that has shunn’d the hisses of that serpent he hugs every night in his bosom.
We had not gone twenty yards farther, scarce out of the reach of the noisy tongue of this railing peripatetick, but we met Bowman that kept the Dog-tavern in Drury-lane, whose first salutation was, Pox take you both for a couple of shammocking rascals, if it had not been for you and such others of your company, I had been a living man to this day, for you broke my tavern and that broke my heart. When I went off, besides book-debts never paid, but cross’d out and forgiven, I had as much chalk scored up in my bar, upon your account, as would have whitened the flesh of twenty calves at Rumford, or have cured half the town of the heart-burn, that never were satisfied to this day, and as certainly as you are both damn’d, I would arrest you here in the Devil’s name, but that ye know a foreign plea, or the statute of limitation are pleadable in defiance of me; and that whore my wife too, that used to open her sluice and let in an inundation of shabroons to gratify her concupiscence, she lent her helping buttock among ye to shove on my ruin; but if ever I catch the strumpet in these territories, I’ll sear up the bung-hole of her filthy firkin, but I’ll reward her for her bitching. Confound you, cries Bob, for a cuckoldy cydermonger; do not you know damnation pays every man’s scores, and tho’ we tick’d in the other world for subsistence, it was not with a design to cheat you or any body else, for we knew we should have the Devil to pay one time or other, and now you see, like honest men, we have pawned our souls for the whole reckoning, and so a fart for our creditors; you see we had rather be damn’d than not to make general satisfaction, and yet you are not satisfied. Why a man at this rate had better live in Newgate to eternity, than be thus plagued with creditors after his arse, to put him in mind of old scores wherever he travels; besides, ’tis against the law of humanity, for a man to be dunn’d for a domestick debt in a foreign country. Well, gentlemen, says he, I find you have not forgot your old principles; and so good by to ye. And thus, as old Nic would have it, we got rid of our second plague.
As we went from thence, turning down into a steep narrow lane, irregularly pav’d with rugged flints, like the bottom of a mountain in North-Wales, a damn’d greasy great fellow, with his hair thrust under a dirty night-cap, in a dimity-wastcoat and buff-breeches, with a hugh bucks-horn-handle-knife hanging by a silver-chain at his apron-strings, came puffing and blowing up the hill against us, like a crampus before a storm, sweating as if he had been doing the drudgery of Sisyphus, and coming near us he makes a halt, and looking me full in my face, gives a mannerly bow, and cries, Your servant noble captain: Friend, said I, I don’t know thee. Ah! master, said he, time was, when you condescended to eat many a sop in the pan in my poor kitchin; I kept the sign of the gridiron in Waterlane for many years together, but have been damn’d, the lord help me, above these nine months, for only cozening my customers with slink veal. I told him I was sorry for his condition, and hop’d I did not owe him any thing: No, worthy master, says he, not a farthing, for you never had more at a meal than a half-penny rowl, and I always, because you were a gentleman, allow’d you the benefit of my dripping-pan, and every time you came, you paid me for my bread very honestly. I did not much approve of the rogue’s memory, so bid him farewel: but my friend Weden, like a bantering dog, did so terrify my ears about my half-penny ordinary, that I had rather for the time been flung naked into a tuft of nettles.
As he was thus teazing me, who should we stumble upon but captain Swinny the Irishman; you cannot but imagine a very joyful congratulation pass’d between us: who had been stanch friends, such old and intimate acquaintance. No sooner was our salutation over, but we began to enquire as we us’d to do upon earth, into one another’s circumstances: upon which, says Swinny, By my soul and shalvation, I have got my good old lord here, that I us’d to procure and pimp for in t’other world; and as he gave me money upon earth to indulge him in his sins, and provide him whores to cool his lechery, now he’s damn’d for’t, like a grateful master, he allows me every day a dish of snapdragons to fetch him water from Styx, to cool his entrails. I think, says Bob, you were always very careful of your lord’s health, and never brought any thing to his embraces but unpenetrated maids, or very sound thorn-backs. By chriesh and shaint Patrick, ’tis very true, says he, for I always made my self his taster for fear he should be poison’d, and first took a sip of the cup to try whether the juice was good or no; and tho’ he was as great a wencher as any was in England, I’ll take my swear, excepting the gout, he’s come as sound a nobleman into hell, as has took leave of the other world these fifty years, and was so very bobborous two days ago, tho’ he’s near seventy, that he bid me look out for soft-handed she-devil to give him a little frication, and said nothing vex’d him but that he was damn’d among a parcel of spirits, with whom he could have no carnal copulation: well, gentlemen, I must loiter no longer, I am travelling in haste to Styx to fill my lord’s bottle, but all won’t cool his lechery, tho’ he be turn’d a perfect aquapote so, my dear joys, farewel.
We had not parted with him as many minutes a man may beget his likeness in, but who should we meet but Mumford the player, looking as pale as a ghost, falling forward as gently as a catterpillar cross a sicamore-leaf, gaping for a little air, like a sinner just come out of the powdering tub, crying out as he crept towards us, Oh my back! confound ’em for a pack of brimstones: Oh my back! how now, Sir Courtly, said I, what the devil makes thee in this pickle? Oh, gentlemen, says he, I am glad to see you, but I am troubled with such a weakness in my back, that it makes me bend like a superannuated fornicator: some strain, said I, got in the other world with overheaving your self. What’s matter how ’twas got, says he, can you tell me any thing that’s good for’t? yes, said I, get a good warm Girdle and tie round you, ’tis an excellent corroboratick to strengthen the loins; pox on you, says he, for a bantering dog how can a single girdle do me good, when a Brace was my destruction? I think, said I, you did die a martyr for a pair of penetrable whiskers, fell a bleeding sacrifice to a cloven tuft, that was glad, I believe, of your going out of the other world, as old Nic was of your coming into this, for I hear you kept the poor titmouse under such slavish subjection, that a peer of the realm, notwithstanding his honour, could not so much as come in to be brother-starling with you. Nay, some say you put an Italian security upon’t, purposely to indict any body for felony and burglary that should break open the lock. Pox confound you, says he, for a lyar, how can that be, when half the pit knows they had egress and regress when they pleas’d without any manner of obstruction? but tattling here won’t do my business, I must seek out Needham, Lower, or some other famous physician that may give me ease; so gentlemen, adieu to ye.
We had not gone much farther, but at the corner of a dirty lane we found a wondrous throng of attentive scoundrels, serenaded by a couple of ballad-singers, who stood in the middle of the tatter’d audience, with their hands under their ears, singing, With a rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, in and out, in and out ho: who should come limping by just in the interim, but Mr. Dryden the poet: there’s a delicious song for you, gentlemen, says he, there are luscious words wrapt up in clean linen for you; tho’ there is a very bawdy mystery in them, yet they are so intelligibly express’d, that a girl of ten years old may understand the meaning of them; my lord Rochester’s songs are mine arse to it: well my dear Love for Love, thou deservest to be poet laureat, were it only for the composure of this seraphick ditty, ’tis enough to put musick into the tail of an old woman of fourscore, and make a girl of fourteen to be as knowing in her own thoughts, as her parents that got her; oh, ’tis a song of wonderful instruction, of incomparable modesty, considering its meaning. Who should come puffing into the crowd in abundance of haste, with a face as red as a new pantile, but Nat Lee? Hark you, Nat, says Dryden, did you ever here such a feeling ballad in your life before? egad, the words steal so cunningly into ones veins, that nature will scarce be pacified till she has dropt some loose corns into one’s breeches. Foh, you old lecherous beast, says Nat Lee, here’s a song indeed for a poet-bays of your gravity to admire! I have heard twenty better under White-Fryars gate-way. You’re a mad man, says Dryden, you never understood a song in your life, nor any thing else, but jumbling the gods about, as if they were so many tapsters in a lumber-house. I’ll sing you a song, says Lee, worth fifty on’t that I made when I was in Bedlam, to be sung in my play, that had five and twenty acts in’t; now pray observe me, and your self shall be judge.
The gods on a day when their worships were idle,
Met all at the sign of the half-moon and fiddle;
Old Bacchus and Venus did lovingly joyn,
And swore there was nothing like women and wine:
They drank till they all were as merry as grigs,
And wallowed about like a litter of pigs;
Till their heads and their tails were so little apart,
the breath of a belch, mix’d with that of a fart;
But as it fell out, poor unfortunate Mars,
Just nodded his nose into Venus’s arse;
Why how now, says Mars, ye old jade, d’y’ suppose,
Your arse was design’d as a case for my nose?
Then pulling his head from her bumb, fell a swearing,
Her honour smelt worse than a stinking red-herring,
Well, says Mr. Lee, after he had ended his ditty, what think you now, Mr. Dryden? Think, says he, what should I think? I think there is more pretty tickling sort of wit in the very chorus of the other, than there is in all your piece of frantick trumpery. Thus we leave them squabbling together, which song should have the preference, and so stept forward.
We had not jogg’d on above a quarter of a mile further, but a parcel of spirits in the shape of screech-owls came hovering over our heads, crying out, Make room, make room, for the chief pastor of the flock will be here to night. Think we, here’s some great guest or other a coming; for my part I thought nothing less than an archbishop of C-n——y: my friend Bob was much of my opinion, and cry’d, there was some fat priest coming in to pay his garnish, but who should it prove at last but a dissenting doctor, trick’d up in a band and cloak, and all the factious ornaments becoming a squeamish conscience, attended with abundance of bald crowns and gray hairs, who came hobbling after him like the old men of the Charter-house, behind their chaplain to eleven a-clock prayers. My friend Bob and I having both a curiosity to know what Don Prattlebox it was, enquir’d of a devil who had a discerning countenance, if he knew who this new comer was? He answer’d us ’twas doctor Ma—th—w T—y—r of Salters-hall, and those that attend him were some of his congregation, who were come in order to take up lodgings for the rest, who would not be long after: Adsheart, says Bob, they are the most faithful flock in the universe, for if their shepherd comes to the devil, I see they will be sure to follow him, whilst the churchmen are such a parcel of straying sheep, that tho’ their guides go to heaven themselves, they can perswade but very few of their congregation to bear them company.