"She rose up early in the morning,
Long before 'twas break of day."

Mark the impatience of revenge! she will not even wait till day-break; she gets (as we may suppose, though it is not declared) leave of absence, and goes on shore,

"And she found false Billy Taylor,
Valking with his lady gay."

Infamous Billy Taylor! while your mistress was braving for you the dangers of the ocean, you were reveling in the arms of another! But your hour is come! The character of Billy is inimitably well supported throughout, or, as Horace says—

"Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constat."

'Tis true, he deserts his mistress; but 'tis for a lady of similar disposition; it is a lady gay with whom he walks: thus, though he is false, he shows himself full of mirth: he is still Billy Taylor. Mark the artifice of the poet! Like Virgil who drops the epithet "pious" on a similar occasion, the poet here calls Billy by the appropriate epithet "false." There is an elegance and simplicity perfectly Homeric in the repetition of the line, "Valking with his lady gay."

"Straight she call'd for swords and pistols,
Brought they vas at her command."

Let not the sceptical reader sneer, and ask where she got, or who brought the swords and pistols. Some kind deity, willing to assist the purposes of her just revenge, interposed and brought her arms. Surely Horace would allow that this was "dignus vindice nodus." But to proceed:—

"She fell on shooting Billy Taylor
Vith his lady in his hand."

Here is an interesting incident! here a melancholy subject! what a scene for a picture! On one side, a lady impelled by jealousy with a discharged pistol in her hand, and a face expressive of the triumph of revenge; on the other Billy Taylor, stretched on the cold ground, with his hand in that of his lady, now we may suppose no longer gay, and perhaps weeping! Observe, Billy died in the situation in which Tibullus wished to die: he held his mistress, "deficiente manu."[H] O! come here all ye young men! ye Billy Taylors for the world is full of you! ye deserters of true-lovers, ye walkers with ladies gay, come here and contemplate! Taylor, who a few days before was gay like you, is now alas "stone dead," or, to use the pathetic and expressive language of Falstaff—who by the by, was, like Billy, a gay deceiver—is now no better than a "shotten herring!