“To each his suff’rings.”
Heaps of dead Trojans were Scamander’s bane,
Dead dogs, dead cats, and dung-boats shame the Seine,
Ten thousand shores and jakes the Thames defile,
And gradual mud is working woe to Nile;
Yet harder Duddon’s fate, her hapless stream
Of fifty strains by Wordsworth is the theme.
* * * * *
The following jeu d’esprit was written on a certain nobleman, who, leaving the Whig party, of which up to that time he had been a strong adherent, and for the sake, it was supposed, of gaining the Regent’s favour, not only voted, but took a strong part against the Queen.
TO LORD L---.
What caused you L---, to rush in,
Through thick and thin, to give your Queen a splashing
For this your party, to the devil gave you,
And yet the rav’nous Tories will not have you.
So in that country (where with hopes you fool
Your second infancy, you yet shall rule)
A sect of devotees there is who tell ye
The way to heaven is through a fish’s belly;
And in the surges, on a certain day,
They give themselves to rav’nous sharks a prey.
Among the rest, an ancient beldame went,—
Weak, wither’d, wrinkled, tawny, tough, and bent
(Your very self in breeches she would be,
Put on her petticoats, and you were she);
She waded in the water to her haunches,
Hoping the sharks would pass her through their paunches;
But out of fifty, not a shark would have her,
Tho’ she implored them, as a special favour;
They came and smelt, and did not like her savour,
She threw their stomachs into such commotion,
They would not even bear her in the ocean.
But down they pushed her—roll’d her o’er and o’er,
And shovel’d with their snouts again to shore;
Alike your fate: to be by sharks abhorr’d
Was her’s, and your’s by Minister’s old Lord.
* * * * *
In the Chronicle of September 27th, 1824, appeared the following notice of my brother’s death, headed:—“Death of Henry Cooper.—We regret to have to announce the death of a gentleman warmly beloved by all who knew him, Mr. Henry Cooper the barrister. He died on Sunday the 19th, at the cottage of his friend, Mr. Hill, of Chelsea, after a short illness which brought on an inflammation in his bowels that proved fatal; he was interred on Friday last.
“Mr. Cooper had overcome the difficulties of his profession, and was rising fast into eminence. He was already leader on the Norfolk circuit, and with his readiness, his powerful memory, and his forcible and fluent delivery, the most distinguished success was universally anticipated for him: his vein of pleasantry was particularly rich, as an instance we may refer to a case on the very last circuit in which a hairdresser of Newmarket was one of the parties, and which he made irresistibly amusing. We appeal confidently to those of our readers who have attentively considered the signs of the times, if there was not much distrust of the bar about the period when Mr. Henry Cooper came into notice, and if he did not by his exertions contribute greatly to remove it.
“He had been sometime employed procuring materials for a life of Lord Erskine, with whom he was particularly intimate, which he had undertaken to write; we suspect he had not made much progress in the work when death erminated all his labour.”
The next notice of his death is taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine, from July to December, 1824; vol. 94, part 2.—“On the 19th of September, 1824, at Chelsea, Henry Cooper, barrister-at-law, in the vigour of life and with every prospect of reaching the highest honors in his profession. The death of this rising barrister