A vindictive person's a brute;
I'd rather have been on the skylight
Than down at the staircase foot!
For whatever evil you suffer,
The words of the sage rehearse,
"Though things may be bad, you duffer,
They might be a good deal worse."
The Story of a Railway Tavern, by Professor Long, Fellow of the Learned Societies, contained in Vere Vereker's Vengeance, by Thomas Hood, 1865.
Reference was made, on page 80, to Edmund H. Yates's parody on Evangeline, it is to be found in "Mirth and Metre," by F. E. Smedley and E. H. Yates, 1855.