You've seen, I've no doubt, at Bartholomew fair,
Gentle Header,—that is, if you've ever been there,—
With their hands tied behind them, some two or three pair
Of boys round a bucket set up on a chair,
Skipping, and dipping
Eyes, nose, chin, and lip in,
Their faces and hair with the water all dripping,
In an anxious attempt to catch hold of a pippin,
That bobs up and down in the water whenever
They touch it, as mocking the fruitless endeavor;
Exactly as Poets say,—how, though, they can't tell us,—
Old Nick's Nonpareils play at bob with poor Tantalus
—Stay!—I'm not clear,
But I'm rather out here;
'T was the water itself that slipp'd from him, I fear;
Faith, I can't recollect, and I haven't Lempriere—
No matter,—poor Blogg went on clucking and bobbing,
Sneezing out the salt water, and gulping and sobbing,
Just as Clarence, in Shakspeare, describes all the qualms he
Experienced while dreaming they'd drown'd him in Malmsey.
"O Lord," he thought, "what pain it was to drown!"
And saw great fishes with great goggling eyes,
Glaring as he was bobbing up and down,
And looking as they thought him quite a prize,
When, as he sank, and all was growing dark,
A something seized him with its jaws!—A shark?—
No such thing, Reader—most opportunely for Blogg,
'Twas a very large, web-footed, curly-tail'd Dog!
* * * * * * *
I'm not much of a trav'ler, and really can't boast
That I know a great deal of the Brittany coast,
But I've often heard say
That e'en to this day,
The people of Granville, St. Maloes, and thereabout,
Are a class that society doesn't much care about;
Men who gam their subsistence by contraband dealing,
And a mode of abstraction strict people call "stealing,"
Notwithstanding all which, they are civil of speech,
Above all to a stranger who comes within reach;
And they were so to Bogg,
When the curly-tail'd Dog
At last dragged him out, high and dry on the beach.
But we all have been told,
By the proverb of old,
By no means to think "all that glitters is gold,"
And, in fact, some advance
That most people in France
Join the manners and air of a Maitre de Danse,
To the morals—(as Johnson of Chesterfield said)—
Of an elderly Lady, in Babylon bred,
Much addicted to flirting, and dressing in red.—
Be this as it might,
It embarrass'd Blogg quite
To find those about him so very polite.
A suspicious observer perhans might have traced
The petiles soins, tendered with so much good taste
To the sight of an old-fashion'd pocket-book, placed
In a black leather belt well secured round his waist
And a ring set with diamonds, his finger that graced,
So brilliant, no one could have guess'd they were paste.
The group on the shore
Consisted of four,
You will wonder, perhaps, there were not a few more;
But the fact is they've not, in that part of the nation,
What Malthus would term, a "too dense population,"
Indeed the sole sign of man's habitation
Was merely a single
Rude hut, in a dingle
That led away inland direct from the shingle
Its sides clothed with underwood, gloomy and dark,
Some two hundred yards above high-water mark;
And thither the party,
So cordial and hearty,
Viz., an old man, his wife, two lads, made a start, he
The Bagman, proceeding,
With equal good breeding,
To express, in indifferent French, all he feels,
The great curly-tail'd Dog keeping close to his heels.—
They soon reach'd the hut, which seem'd partly in ruin,
All the way bowing, chattering, shrugging, Mon-Dieuing,
Grimacing, and what sailors call parley-vooing,
* * * * * * *
Is it Paris, or Kitchener, Reader, exhorts
You, whenever your stomach's at all out of sorts,
To try, if you find richer viands won't stop in it,
A basin of good mutton broth with a chop in it?
(Such a basin and chop as I once heard a witty one
Call, at the Garrick, "a c—d Committee one,"
An expression, I own, I do not think a pretty one.)
However, it's clear
That with sound table beer,
Such a mess as I speak of is very good cheer;
Especially too
When a person's wet through,
And is hungry, and tired, and don't know what to do.
Now just such a mess of delicious hot pottage
Was smoking away when they enter'd the cottage,
And casting a truly delicious perfume
Through the whole of an ugly ill-furnish'd room;
"Hot, smoking hot,"
On the fire was a pot
Well replenish'd, but really I can't say with what;
For, famed as the French always are for ragouts,
No creature can tell what they put in their stews,
Whether bull-frogs, old gloves, or old wigs, or old shoes
Notwithstanding, when offer'd I rarely refuse,
Any more than poor Blogg did, when seeing the reeky
Repast placed before him, scarce able to speak, he
In ecstasy mutter'd, "By Jove, Cocky-leeky!"
In an instant, as soon
As they gave him a spoon.
Every feeling and faculty bent on the gruel, he
No more blamed Fortune for treating him cruelly,
But fell tooth and nail on the soup and the bouilli.
* * * * * *