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Yet here, as elsewhere, chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling fortune seemed to threaten woe.
John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs's shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter-a safe employ;

In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred-
At number twenty-seven, it is said—
Facing the pump, and near the Granby's Head.
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down:
Pat was the urchin's name, a red-haired youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.

Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe,
The muse shall tell an accident she saw.

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat;
But leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat;
Down from the gallery the beaver flew,
And spurned the one, to settle in the two.
How shall he act? Pay at the gallery door
Two shillings for what cost when new but four?
Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,

John Mullins whispers: Take my handkerchief.'
'Thank you,' cries Pat, 'but one won't make a line.'
'Take mine,' cried Wilson; And,' cried Stokes, ' take
mine.'

A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,

Where Spitalfields with real India vies.
Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted hue,

Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.
George Green below, with palpitating hand,
Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's hand;
Upsoars the prize; the youth, with joy unfeigned,
Regained the felt, and felt what he regained,
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat.

The Baby's Début.-By W. W. [Wordsworth]. Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of 45, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter.

My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New-Year's Day;
So in Kate Wilson's shop

Papa (he's my papa and Jack's)
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top.

Jack's in the pouts, and this it is,

He thinks mine came to more than his,
So to my drawer he goes,
Takes out the doll, and, O my stars!
He pokes her head between the bars,
And melts off half her nose!

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg,
And tie it to his peg-top's peg,

And bang, with might and main, Its head against the parlour-door; Off flies the head, and hits the floor, And breaks a window-pane.

This made him cry with rage and spite; Well, let him cry, it serves him right.

A pretty thing, forsooth!

If he's to melt, all scalding hot,
Half my doll's nose, and I am not
To draw his peg-top's tooth!

Aunt Hannah heard the window break,
And cried: 'O naughty Nancy Lake,
Thus to distress your aunt :

No Drury Lane for you to-day!'
And while papa said: 'Pooh, she may !'
Mamma said: 'No, she shan't!'

Well, after many a sad reproach,
They got into a hackney-coach,

And trotted down the street.

I saw them go: one horse was blind; The tails of both hung down behind; Their shoes were on their feet.

The chaise in which poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room:

I wiped the dust from off the top, While Molly mopped it with a mop, And brushed it with a broom.

My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, Came in at six to black the shoes

(I always talk to Sam) : So what does he but takes and drags Me in the chaise along the flags,

And leaves me where I am.

My father's walls are made of brick,
But not so tall and not so thick

As these; and, goodness me!
My father's beams are made of wood,
But never, never half so good
As these that now I see.

What a large floor! 'tis like a town!
The carpet, when they lay it down,
Won't hide it, I'll be bound:
And there's a row of lamps; my eye!
How they do blaze! I wonder why
They keep them on the ground.

At first I caught hold of the wing,
And kept away; but Mr Thing-

Umbob, the prompter man,
Gave with his hand my chaise a shove,
And said: 'Go on, my pretty love;

Speak to 'em, little Nan.

'You've only got to curtsey, whisp-
er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp,
And then you 're sure to take :
I've known the day when brats not quite
Thirteen got fifty pounds a night;

Then why not Nancy Lake?'

But while I'm speaking, where 's papa?
And where's my aunt? and where's mamma?
Where's Jack? Oh, there they sit !
They smile, they nod; I'll go my ways,
And order round poor Billy's chaise,

To join them in the pit.

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A Tale of Drury Lane.-By W. S. [Scott].

As Chaos which, by heavenly doom,
Had slept in everlasting gloom,
Started with terror and surprise,

When light first flashed upon her eyes:
So London's sons in night-cap woke,

In bed-gown woke her dames,

For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke,

"The playhouse is in flames.'

And lo! where Catherine Street extends,
A fiery tale its lustre lends

To every window-pane :

Blushes each spout in Martlet Court,
And Barbican, moth-eaten fort,
And Covent Garden kennels sport

A bright ensanguined drain ;

Meux's new brewhouse shows the light,
Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height
Where patent shot they sell :
The Tennis Court, so fair and tall,
Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall,
The Ticket Porters' house of call,
Old Bedlam, close by London wall,
Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal,
And Richardson's hotel.

Nor these alone, but far and wide
Across the Thames's gleaming tide,
To distant fields the blaze was borne ;
And daisy white and hoary thorn
In borrowed lustre seemed to sham
The rose or red sweet Wil-li-am.

To those who on the hills around
Beheld the flames from Drury's mound

As from a lofty altar rise,

It seemed that nations did conspire
To offer to the god of fire

Some vast stupendous sacrifice!
The summoned firemen woke at call,
And hied them to their stations all.
Starting from short and broken snooze,
Each sought his ponderous hobnailed shoes;
But first his worsted hosen plied,
Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed,
His nether bulk embraced;

Then jacket thick of red or blue,
Whose massy shoulder gave to view
The badge of each respective crew,

In tin or copper traced.

The engines thundered through the street,
Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete,
And torches glared, and clattering feet
Along the pavement paced. . . .
E'en Higginbottom now was posed,
For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed ;
Without, within, in hideous show,
Devouring flames resistless glow,

And blazing rafters downward go,
And never halloo Heads below!'
Nor notice give at all:
The firemen, terrified, are slow
To bid the pumping torrent flow,

For fear the roof should fall.
Back, Robins, back! Crump, stand aloof!
Whitford, keep near the walls!
Huggins, regard your own behoof,
For, lo! the blazing rocking roof
Down, down in thunder falls !

An awful pause succeeds the stroke,
And o'er the ruins volumed smoke,
Rolling around its pitchy shroud,
Concealed them from the astonished crowd.
At length the mist awhile was cleared,
When lo! amid the wreck upreared,
Gradual a moving head appeared,
And Eagle firemen knew

'Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered,
The foreman of their crew.
Loud shouted all in signs of woe,
'A Muggins to the rescue, ho!'

And poured the hissing tide:
Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain,
And strove and struggled all in vain,
For, rallying but to fall again,

He tottered, sank, and died!
Did none attempt, before he fell,
To succour one they loved so well?
Yes, Higginbottom did aspire-
His fireman's soul was all on fire-
His brother-chief to save;
But ah! his reckless, generous ire
Served but to share his grave!
'Mid blazing beams and scalding streams,
Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke,
Where Muggins broke before.

But sulphury stench and boiling drench,
Destroying sight, o'erwhelmed him quite;
He sank to rise no more.

Still o'er his head, while Fate he braved,
His whizzing water-pipe he waved ;
'Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps;
You, Clutterbuck, come, stir your stumps;
Why are you in such doleful dumps?

A fireman, and afraid of bumps!

What are they feared on? fools-'od rot 'em!'Were the last words of Higginbottom.

Address to the Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition.
And thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous !

Speak for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou 'rt standing on thy legs above-ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon.

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect-
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade—
Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled:
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop, if that withered tongue

Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen, How the world looked when it was fresh and young, And the great Deluge still had left it green;

Or was it then so old that history's pages

Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent, incommunicative elf?

Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;

But prithee tell us something of thyself;

Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house;

Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,

What hast thou seen-what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above-ground, seen some strange mutations; The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations, And countless kings have into dust been humbled, Whilst not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head

When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,

The nature of thy private life unfold:

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled :
Have children climbed those knees, and kissed that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race?

Statue of flesh-immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!
Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence,
Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning.

Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost for ever?
Oh, let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue, that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom.

The Rejected Addresses were edited, with Memoirs, by Epes Sargent (New York, 1871) and P. Fitzgerald (1890); Arthur H. Beavan published a joint life of the two brothers-James and Horace Smith (1899); and see also Timbs's Lives of the Wits and Humourists (1862). There is a good paper on the Smiths in the first volume of Hayward's Essays (1858); and an account of the real Rejected Addresses may be found in Blackwood's Magazine for May 1893.

Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841) was born in London, the second son of the Vauxhall composer James Hook (1746-1827), by his first wife, the beautiful Miss Madden. His education

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was almost limited to a year at Harrow and matriculation at Oxford; but he early achieved celebrity as a playwright, a punster and matchless improvisatore, and as a practical joker-his greatest performance the Berners Street Hoax (1809), which took in the Lord Mayor, the Duke of Gloucester, and hundreds of thousands of lowlier victims. In 1805 he composed a comic opera, The Soldier's Return, overture and music, as well as dialogues and songs, being entirely by himself. It was highly successful, and young Theodore was ready next year with another after-piece, Catch Him Who Can, which showed Liston and Mathews at their best, and had a great run. Hook then produced. in rapid succession a series of musical operasThe Invisible Girl, Music Mad, Darkness Visible, Trial by Jury, The Fortress, Tekeli, Exchange no Robbery, and Killing no Murder. Some of these

display wonderful knowledge of dramatic art, musical skill, and literary powers in so young an author. They were followed (1808) by a novel described as a farce in narrative shape. Hook's remarkable conversational talents and popularity as a writer for the stage led him much into society. Flushed with success, full of the gaiety and impetuosity of youth, and conscious of his power to please and even fascinate in company, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the passing hour, and became noted for his 'boisterous buffooneries' and his wild sallies of wit and drollery.

Amongst his various talents was one which is rare in England-that of improvising both songs and music. Hook would at table turn the whole conversation of the evening into a song, sparkling with puns or witty allusions, and perfect in its rhymes. He accompanied himself,' said Lockhart, 'on the pianoforte, and the music was frequently, though not always, as new as the verse. He usually stuck to the common ballad measures; but one favourite sport was a mimic opera, and then he seemed to triumph without effort over every variety of metre and complication of stanza. About the complete extemporaneousness of the whole there could rarely be the slightest doubt.' This extraordinary command of extempore verse seems to have been the amazement of all Hook's associates; it astonished Sheridan, Coleridge, and the most illustrious of his contemporaries. Something must be done for Hook,' said the PrinceRegent, and in 1812 that something was found in the post, worth £2000 a year, of accomptantgeneral and treasurer to the Mauritius. There Hook fared gloriously, until in 1818 a grave deficiency was detected in the public chest; he was arrested and sent, almost penniless, to England. An acquaintance, meeting him at St Helena, said, 'I hope you are not going home for your health.' 'Why,' answered the irrepressible punster, 'I am sorry to say they do think there's something wrong in the chest.' Hook ascribed the 'unfortunate defalcation' to a black clerk, who had committed suicide; anyhow, though criminal proceedings were dropped, in 1823 he was pronounced a Crown debtor for £12,000, and was again sold up and arrested. In 1825 he was released from the King's Bench, but not from the debt; however, he made no effort to discharge it. Meanwhile in 1820 he had started the Tory journal John Bull, designed to vilify Queen Caroline, advocate high aristocratic principles, and combine virulent personalities with much wit and humour; in its palmy days it brought him fully £2000 per annum. His political songs were generally admired for their point and brilliancy of fancy. In 1824-28 appeared his nine volumes of tales, Sayings and Doings, which brought him £4000. The popular writer now pursued his literary career with unabated diligence and spirit. In 1830 he published Maxwell; in 1832 The Life of Sir David Baird; in 1833 The

Parson's Daughter and Love and Pride. In 1836 he became editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and contributed to its pages Gilbert Gurney and the far inferior sequel, Gurney Married, each afterwards collected into three volumes. In 1837 appeared Jack Brag; in 1839 Births, Deaths, and Marriages, Precepts and Practice, and Fathers and Sons. Hook's last avowed work, Peregrine Bunce, supposed not to have been wholly written by him, appeared some months after his death.

The production of thirty-eight volumes within sixteen years the author being all the while editor and almost sole writer of a newspaper, and for several years the efficient conductor of a magazine -certainly affords, as Lockhart observed, sufficient proof that Hook never sank into idleness; but he was the idol of the fashionable circles, and ran a heedless round of dissipation. Though in receipt of a large income-probably not less than £3000 per annum-by his writings, he became involved in pecuniary embarrassments; and an unhappy connection he dared not avow entailed upon him the anxieties and responsibilities of a family. Parts of his diary quoted by Lockhart reveal his struggles, his alternations of hope and despair, and his ever-deepening distresses and difficulties. At length, overwhelmed with difficulties, his children unprovided for, and himself utterly broken down, he died ere he had completed his fifty-third year. Shakespeare has nothing more pitiful than his words to a friend who a few weeks before had caught him in deshabille: 'Well, you see me at last as I am all the bucklings and paddings, and washings and brushings, dropped for ever-a poor old gray-haired man, with my belly about my knees.' A memorial window to him was put up in 1893 in the parish church of Fulham, where he is buried. Theodore's elder brother James (1771-1828), himself the author of a couple of novels (Pen Owen and Percy Mallory, humorous, Tory in politics, and satirical on the subject of Welsh genealogies and antiquities), became in 1802 chaplain to the Prince of Wales, and in 1825 Dean of Worcester; his eldest son, Walter Farquhar Hook (1798–1875), vicar of Leeds from 1837, and Dean of Chichester from 1859, wrote the Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (12 vols. 1860-76).

Theodore Hook's works are very unequal, and none of them perhaps display the rich and varied powers of his conversation. His early familiarity with the stage had taught him the effect of dramatic situations and pointed dialogue. But the theatre is not always a good school for literary taste, and Hook's witty and tragic themes and contrasts of character are often too violent and indiscriminating. Extravaganza, caricature, and burlesque too frequently intrude; the conventional and the artificial mix themselves up with rude realism. Hook's humour, indisputable and inexhaustible, at times brilliant, is at best low humour or farce; his lack of taste and vulgarity,

and his scurrility in controversy, can only partly be excused by reason of the defects of his education; and much of his cleverest work is now all but unread and unknown.

An Adventurer.

'My dear Johnny,' said the respectable widow Brag to her son, 'what is the good of your going on in this way? Here, instead of minding the business, you are day after day galloping and gallivanting, steeple-chasing, fox-hunting, lord-hunting, a-wasting your time and your substance, the shop going to Old Nick, and you getting dipped instead of your candles.'

'Mother,' said Jack, 'don't talk so foolishly! You are of the old school-excellent in your way, but a long way behindhand: the business is safe enough. You cannot suppose, with the education I have had, I can meddle with moulds, or look after sixes, tens, fours to the pound, or farthing rushlights ;-no, thanks to my enlightenment, I flatter myself I soar a little higher than that.'

'No nonsense, Johnny!' said Mrs Brag. All you have now, and all you have spent since your poor father's death, was gained by your father's enlightenment of his customers and how do you suppose I can carry on the trade if you will not now and then attend to it?'

'Take my advice, my dear mother,' said Jack, ‘and marry. I'm old enough now not to care a fig for a father-in-law ;—marriage is the plan, as I say to my friend Lord Tom-straight up, right down, and no mistake. Get a sensible, stir-about husband, who does not mind grubbing, and hasn't a nose '

'Hasn't a nose?' interrupted Mrs Brag.

'I don't mean literally,' said Jack, but sportingly ;does not mind the particular scent of tallow-you understand? Let him into the tricks of the trade: you will still be queen-bee of the hive,-make him look after the drones while you watch the wax.'

And while you, Johnny, lap up the honey,' said the queen-bee.

'Do what you like,' said her son, 'only marry— "marry come up," as somebody says in a play.'

'But, John,' said Mrs Brag, 'I have no desire to change my condition.'

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'Nor I that you should,' said Jack; but I wish you would change your name. As long as Brag, wax and tallow chandler," sticks up on the front of the house, with three dozen and four dangling dips swinging along the shop-front, like so many malefactors expiating their crimes, I live in a perpetual fever lest my numerous friends should inquire whether I am one of the firm or the family.'

'Johnny,' said Mrs Brag, 'you are a silly fellow. What is there to be ashamed of in honest industry? If all the fine folks whom you go a-hunting with, and all the rest of it, like you, and are really glad to see you, it is for yourself alone; and if they, who must know by your name and nature that you can never be one of themselves, care a button for you, your trade, 50 as you do not carry it about with you, will do you no harm. What difference is it to them how you get your thorough-bred horses, your smart scarlet coat, neat tops, and white cords, so as you have them?- they won't give you any new ones when they are gone.'

'It is all very well talking,' said Johnny, but I never should show my face amongst them if I once thought they guessed at my real trade. I live in a regular worry

as it is. If ever a fellow asks me if I was at Melton last year, that moment I think of the shop-" pretty mould of a horse" tingles in my ears-"sweet dip of the country sets me doubting; and, only last week, a proposal to go 'cross country and meet Lord Hurricane's harriers at Hampton Wick nearly extinguished me.'

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'And what now, Johnny,' said Mrs Brag, 'do you think these lords take you for, if not for a tallowchandler ?'

'An independent gentleman,' said Jack.

'That is to say,' replied his mother, a gentleman who has nothing to depend upon.'

'They look upon me as an agreeable rattle,' said John. 'One that has often been in the watchman's hands, too,' said the old lady.

'I talk big and ride small,' said Jack, 'I am always up with the hounds-never flinch at anything-am the pride of the field wherever I go--and in steeple-chases of infinite value.'

'And very little weight, my dear Johnny,' interrupted his mother.

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'Respectable houses!' said Jack. 'Poh! not a bit of it! What! bagmen in buggies with boxes of buttons in the boots? No, no! the "Travellers'"-par excellence.

'Par what?' said Mrs Brag. 'What! d'ye mean the fine Club-house in Pall Mall which you showed me the outside of last King's birth-night?'

'The same,' said Brag. 'Now, if I had stuck to the naked, as Lord Tom says-told the plain unvarnishedI never could have qualified. Lord Tom asked me if I should like to belong to the "Travellers'; "-in course I said yes-straight up, right down, and no mistake. Well, then he asks me if I could qualify ;-so not quite understanding him, he says, "Have you ever been in Greece?"-"Yes," said I:-I might have added "up to the elbows often;" didn't though. Had him dead. Down he whips my name, and calls in Sir Somebody Something out of the street to second me.'

'If you could but get into a club, Johnny,' said Mrs Brag, 'where they uses gas, and get 'em to give it up and try oil on illumination nights, I'd say something to you -them Travellers has oil as it is. But what I think is, somebody is sure to find you out, Johnny.'

'Time enough,' said Jack. 'I'm going it now smooth and soft across the country, increasing my acquaintance; falling into the society of elegant females-women of fashion, with beautiful faces and liberal hearts;-introduced to three last week-proud as peacocks to everybody else, delighted with me ;-met them at Ascot-cold collation in the carriage-champagne iced from London; -got on capital-never was so happy in my life-hottest weather I ever felt; spirits mounted-I was the delight of the party-told them half-a-dozen stories of myself, and made them laugh like cockatoos, but I was bundled all of a heap by the Marquis of Middlesdale, who had been at luncheon with the king, and who, in passing the barouche, gave me a smack on the back you might have heard to Egham, and cried out, “Jack, this is a melting day, isn't it?"

'He meant it, Johnny, depend upon it,' said Mrs Brag.

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