Till dead as horse-blocks,
(O what a sad box!)
They’re thrown into the docks,
Or, just like dead cats, in the river!
This song is to be set to music by Mr Kelly in his very best style of pathos, sublimity, and crotchets, and to be delightfully demi-semi-quavered to the admiring audience by Mrs Billington. Then, if box, pit, and gallery, should not, una voce, Nick Bottom-like, cry, “Encore! Encore! Let her roar! Let her roar! Once more, once more! Let the squeak and the squall be swelled to a bawl, Dr Caustic will find the door! Find the door! And never go there any more”!!
Say that the devil never fails.
This stanza contains a legendary tale, which I dare say is as true, as that which commemorates a notable exploit of St. Dunstan in seizing old satan, one dark night in the tenth century, and wringing the nose of his infernal majesty with a pair of red-hot black-smith’s pincers, which made him roar and scold at such a rate, that he awakened and terrified all the good people of Glastonbury and its neighborhood.
In gulping tractors down, for med’cines.