BETTY—I beg pardon—Fanny K.
(I was just thinking of your Betty Finnikin)—
Permit me this to say,
In quite a friendly way—
I like your theatre, though but a minnikin;
For though small stages Kean dislikes to spout on,
Renounce me if I don’t agree with Dowton,
The Minors are the Passions’ proper schools
For me, I never can
Find wisdom in the plan
That keeps large reservoirs for little Pooles.
I like your boxes where the audience sit
A family circle; and your little pit;
I like your little stage, where you discuss
Your pleasant bill of fare,
And show us passengers so rich and rare,
Your little stage seems quite an omnibus.
I like exceedingly your Parthian dame,
Dimly remembering dramatic codgers,
The ghost of Memory—the shade of Fame!—
Lord! what a housekeeper for Mr. Rogers!
I like your savage, of a one-horse power;
And Terence, done in Irish from the Latin;
And Sally—quite a kitchen-garden flower;
And Mrs. Drake, serene in sky-blue satin!
I like your girl as speechless as a mummy—
It shows you can play dummy!—
I like your boy, deprived of every gleam
Of light for ever—a benighted being!
And really think—though Irish it may seem—
Your blindness is worth seeing.
I like your Governess; and there’s a striking
Tale of Two Brothers, that sets tears a-flowing—
But I’m not going
All through the bill to tell you of my liking.
Suffice it, Fanny Kelly! with your art
So much in love, like others I have grown,
I really mean myself to take a part
In “Free and Easy”—at my own bespeak—
And shall three times a week
Drop in and make your pretty house my own!
TO DOCTOR HAHNEMANN.
THE HOMŒOPATHIST.
ELL, Doctor,
Great concoctor
Of medicines to help in man’s distress;
Diluting down the strong to meek,
And making even the weak more weak,
“Fine by degrees, and beautifully less”—
Founder of a new system economic,
To druggists anything but comic;
Framed the whole race of Ollapods to fret,
At profits, like thy doses, very small;
To put all Doctors’ Boys in evil case,
Thrown out of bread, of physic, and of place,—
And show us old Apothecaries’ Hall
“To Let.”
How fare thy Patients? are they dead or living,
Or, well as can expected be, with such
A style of practice, liberally giving
“A sum of more to that which had too much?”
Dost thou preserve the human frame, or turf it?
Do thorough draughts cure thorough colds or not?
Do fevers yield to anything that’s hot?
Or hearty dinners neutralise a surfeit?
Is’t good advice for gastronomic ills,
When Indigestion’s face with pain is crumpling,
To cry “Discard those Peristaltic Pills,
Take a hard dumpling!”
Tell me, thou German Cousin,
And tell me honestly without a diddle,
Does an attenuated dose of rosin
Act as a tonic on the old Scotch fiddle?
Tell me, when Anhalt-Coethen babies wriggle,
Like eels just caught by sniggle,
Martyrs to some acidity internal,
That gives them pangs infernal,
Meanwhile the lip grows black, the eye enlarges;
Say, comes there all at once a cherub-calm,
Thanks to that soothing homœopathic balm,
The half of half, of half, a drop of “varges?”