“But gentlemen, you have not said what I shall sing.”
“_Beggars_, Mr. Bosky, must not be choosers!”
“No buffoonery, if you please, Benjamin Bosky,” cried Uncle Tim.
Wid your good-natured eye that's a _cross_ one!”
“My good friends,” sighed the middle-aged gentleman, “this unhappy nephew of mine hath as many ballads in his budget as Sancho Panza had proverbs in his belly. And yet--but he seems determined to break my heart.”
Mr. Bosky appeared more bent upon cruelly cracking Uncle Timothy's sides.
“Now I bethink me of a ditty of true love, full of mirth and pastime.” And Mr. Bosky began in a droll falsetto, and with mock gravity,
“When I heard she was married, thinks I to myself,
I'm now an old bachelor laid on the shelf;
The last of the Pigtails that smok'd at the Sun,
I call'd at her lodgings in Dean Street, Soho;
My love's gone for ever! alas! she's no go.
A nip of prime Burton shall warm my cold blood,
Since all my enjoyments are nipp'd in the bud!
The picture of famine, my frame half reduced;
I can't eat a quarter the vittles I us'd!
O dear! what can ail me? I once was so hale--
When my head's underground let this verse tell my tale.
I sought the Old Bailey, despairing and lank,
To take my last cut of boil'd buttock and flank,
To sniff my last sniff in those savoury scenes,
And sigh my last sigh over carrots and greens!
'A pot of mild porter, and take off the chill,'
A damsel came smirking, in curls, cap, and frill.
I started! she scream'd! 'twas my Dora! off flew
Flank, buttock, greens, carrots, and peas-pudding too!
'Yes, I am your true love!' she curtsey'd, and said,
'At home I'ma widow, but here I'm a maid!
My spouse kick'd the bucket last Sunday at Leeds,
And left me, a rose-bud, all cover'd with weeds.'
'For all your fine speeches, a widow, in fine,
Though wedlock's a bolus to physic and fright,
A black draught--a widow! would finish me quite.”
“A vile stave! Commend me to 'fonde Elderton,' * and the troop of 'metre ballad-mongers' that sleep among the dull of ancient days; but save me from that doleful doggrel of which, I shrewdly suspect, thou, Benjamin Bosky, art the perpetrator.
* The following is a description of Elderton by a contemporary writer in 1582. See “Reporte of the Death and Martyr-dome of M. Campion, Jesuit, &c.”