For the Table Book
THEATRALIA.
Tom Durfey
Once got fifty guineas (according to tradition) for singing a single song to queen Anne in ridicule of “the princess Sophia, electress and duchess dowager of Hanover,” (as she is called in the oath of allegiance,) naturally no great favourite with the then reigning monarch. The only lines of this satirical production that have come down to us are the following; and, until now, only the two first of the stanza have been preserved by Durfey’s biographers:—
“The crown’s far too weighty
For shoulders of eighty;
She could not sustain such a trophy;
Her hand, too, already
Has grown so unsteady
She can’t hold a sceptre;
So Providence kept her
Away.—Poor old Dowager Sophy.”
“Merry Tom” had sung before the king in the former reign, and Charles II., as is well known, was very fond of his company.
Liston’s Marriage.
The following got into circulation just after Mr. Liston was united to Miss Tyrer but never was published:—
Liston has married Fanny Tyrer:
He must, like all the town, admire her,
A pretty actress, charming voice!
But some, astonish’d at his choice
Of one, compar’d with him, so small
She scarcely seem’d a wife at all,
Express’d their wonder: his reply
Show’d that he had “good reason why.”—
“We needs must when the devil drives;
And since all married men say, wives
Are of created things the worst,
I was resolv’d I would be curst
With one as small as I could get her.
The smaller, as I thought, the better.
I need not fear to lay my fist on,
Whene’er ’tis needed, Mrs. Liston:
And since, ’like heathen Jew or Carib,
I like a rib, but not a spare-rib,
I got one broad as she is long—
Go and do better, if I’m wrong.”