And at the last to send a joyfull end:
Having put out your fire and your light,
For to conclude, I bid you all good night."
The collection of Bellman's songs here described is sometimes found appended to a little work entitled Time well Improved, or Some Helps for Weak Heads in their Meditations, 12mo. 1657. The latter publication is a reprint, with a new title-page, of Samuel Rowlands' Heaven's Glory, seeke it; Earth's Vanitie, fly it; Hell's Horror, fere it. But whether the songs in question were written, or merely collected by Rowlands, does not appear.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
The Bellman (Vol. iii., p. 324.).—Your correspondent F. W. T. will find a very amusing sketch of a night-watchman in Gemälde aus dem häuslichen Leben und Erzählungen of G. W. C. Starke: whether it may help his inquiries or not I cannot say. It will at least inform him of the difficulties in which a conscientious and gallant watchman found himself when he attempted to improve on the time-honoured terms in which he had to "cry the hours."
BENBOW.
Birmingham.
THE TRAVELS OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, AND THE AUTHOR OF THE SABBATH.
(Vol. iii., p. 305.)
1. In answer to the communication of A COLLECTOR, allow me to remark, that although Bruce did not publish his Travels till about seventeen years after his return to Great Britain, various details had got abroad; and, as usually happens, the actual facts, as given by himself, were either intentionally or accidentally misrepresented. Latterly, Bruce, indignant at the persecution he suffered, held his tongue, and patiently awaited the publication of his Travels to silence his accusers. Amongst other teasing occurrences, Paul Jodrell brought him on the stage in a clever after-piece which was acted in the Haymarket in 1779, and was published in 8vo. in 1780. A copy of this piece, which is called A Widow and no Widow, is now before me: and Macfable, a Scotch travelling impostor, was acted by Bannister; and the hits at Bruce cannot be mistaken.