Respect for the feelings of an honourable family,—nearly connected with the Ingoldsbys,—has induced me to veil the real "sponsorial and patronymic appellations" of my next hero under a sobriquet interfering neither with rhyme nor rhythm.[7] I shall merely add that every incident in the story bears, on the face of it, the stamp of veracity, and that many "persons of honour" in the county of Berks, who well recollected Sir George Rooke's expedition against Gibraltar, would, if they were now alive, gladly bear testimony to the truth of every syllable.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Pack o' nonsense!—Every body as belongs to him is dead and gone—and every body knows that the poor young gentleman's real name wasn't Sobriquet at all, but Hampden Pye, Esq., and that one of his uncles—or cousins—used to make verses about the king and the queen, and had a sack of money for doing it every year;—and that's his picture in the blue coat and little gold-laced cocked hat, that hangs on the stairs over the door of the passage that leads to the blue room.—Sobriquet!—but there!—The Squire wrote it after dinner!
Elizabeth Botherby.
[LEGEND OF HAMILTON TIGHE.]
The Captain is walking his quarter-deck, With a troubled brow and a bended neck; One eye is down through the hatchway cast, The other turns up to the truck on the mast; Yet none of the crew may venture to hint "Our skipper hath gotten a sinister squint!"
The Captain again the letter hath read Which the bum-boat woman brought out to Spithead— Still, since the good ship sail'd away, He reads that letter three times a-day; Yet the writing is broad and fair to see As a Skipper may read in his degree, And the seal is as black, and as broad, and as flat, As his own cockade in his own cock'd hat: He reads, and he says, as he walks to and fro, "Curse the old woman—she bothers me so!"
He pauses now, for the topmen hail— "On the larboard quarter a sail! a sail!" That grim old Captain he turns him quick, And bawls through his trumpet for Hairy-faced Dick.
"The breeze is blowing—huzza! huzza! The breeze is blowing—away! away! The breeze is blowing—a race! a race! The breeze is blowing—we near the chase! Blood will flow, and bullets will fly,— Oh where will be then young Hamilton Tighe?"