And whenever the duke and the officers saw him, they were sure to point, and say, “What do you think of the author, David Love?” These seem to have been David’s golden days. Not only—
“One hand the pen, and one the sword did wield,”
but he was also an actor of plays for the amusement of the officers. However, his discharge came, and adventures crowded thickly upon him. He traversed England in all directions, married a second and a third time, figured away in London and Edinburgh, and finally in Nottingham, with ballads and rhymes of his own composing; saw the inside of a prison, was all but hanged for his suspicious and nomadic poverty, and after all, by his own showing, is now to be classed with the most favoured of mortals:—
“I am now 76 years of age, and I both see and hear as well as I did thirty years ago. My wife is aged about fifty, and has been the space of a year in tolerable health. She works hard at her silk-wheel, to assist me; is an excellent housewife; gossips none: cleanly in cooking, famous at washing, good at sewing, marking, and mending her own and children’s clothes. For making markets none can equal her. Consults me in every thing, to find if I think it right, before she proceeds to buy provisions, or clothes; strives to please me in every thing; and always studies my welfare, rejoicing when I am in health, grieved when I am pained or uneasy. She is my tender nurse to nourish me, my skilful doctress to administer relief when I am in sickness or in pain; in short, a better wife a poor man never had.”
Truly, David, I think so too! A happy man art thou to be possessed of such an incomparable helpmate; and still happier that, unlike many a prouder bard, thou art sensible of thy blessings.
To show that although our minstrel often invokes the muse to paltry subjects for paltry gains, yet he can sometimes soar into a higher region, I give the following:—
THE CHILD’S DREAM.
The substance thereof being founded on fact
I’ll tell you who I saw last night,
As I lay sleeping on my bed;
A shining creature all in light,
To me she seemed a heavenly maid.
I meet her tripping o’er the dew,
Fine as a queen of May, mamma;
She saw, she smiled, she to me flew,
And bade me come away, mamma.