The Extravagant Youth.

"No stone that is thrown

Can light on him, or sarcastic kick can make quick

His anonymous carcass.

But we, who are free

Now to balance his worth or slip,
Smirch not, or birch,

But yield largesse for authorship."

-Scraps of Verse, by the late Rev. N. or M.; plus Dervaux.

WITH this spirited "Emblem of Prodigality," the short group

of E. initialed ballads begins. It not only gives a fresh and vigorous account of a riotous young Spendthrift, who wasted foolishly the wealth which his miserly old father had grubbed together by usury, but with considerable skill it also rings the changes on the allegory which is so emphatically pealed in the accompanying picture, and pursues the equivoque without betraying any secret meaning until the final couplet. We might feel surprised at the total silence which has gathered around this amusing ballad (nobody seeming to know anything about it, no reproduction of either the picture or the verse having been hitherto attempted); were it not that we had long ago gauged the shallowness of the knowledge possessed by the so-called popularizers of old literature. Bat-eyed, with shrill voice of mocking-bird, long-eared and self-conceited, the new race of poetical critics swarm in magazines. They jauntily disparage all the earlier anthologists; they decry as criticasters their own predecessors: but if they held a tithe of the learning and insight of Joseph Ritson, or his inferior rival Dr. Thomas Percy, we might hope for some better work from them than they now furnish, despite the enormously increased facilities afforded by public libraries in our days. We have also innumerable Book re-printing Societies, that have done good service; but surely not a hundredth part collectively of what ought to have been accomplished, with ample funds and available scholarship. A few laborious conscripts have been the ForlornHope of each regiment, unfortunately too often wasted in scaling walls that were hardly worth the trouble of besieging. Have not Book Societies themselves yielded such an "Emblem of Prodigality," like the ballad, as combined the disadvantages of alternate penuriousness and reckless waste? Our mouth is sealed at present, but the time may come for denouncing the scandal.

The tune of "King James's Jigg" is in John Playford's Dancing-Master, seventh edition, 1686, p. 161, under the title of "The King's Jigg," having been newly added to the book and marked with an asterisk to specify its novelty. As The Country Farmer," the ballad which gave name to the tune has been reprinted by Mr. W. Chappell in his Roxb. Ballads, iii. 363; with its second sequel on p. 366. We ourselves gave the intermediate sequel to it here, on p. 17.

to 6.

[Roxburghe Collection, II. 138; Pepys, II. 92; Huth, I. 96.]

The Extravagant Youth:

TO THE TUNE OF King James's Jigg; Or, The Country Farmer.

YOme listen a while, and I will relate
My sad and most dismal deplorable state,

For now I am in a most woful case,

By running this wild and extravagant race:
When Silks and Sattins did me adorn,

I said that I was most Nobly Born;

Good Counsel I slighted, and held it in scorn,
But now here behold how I stick in the Horn!

I gave my self over to ev'ry Vice,

As Courting, and sporting with Cards and Dice;
I thought in my heart it would never be day,
While I was attired in rich array:

8

With Boon Companions I did Trade,
They counted me a Jocular Blade,
But now all my Glory is clearly decay'd,
And into the Horn [I] my self have betray'd.

I once kept my Gelding, abroad to Ride,

My Hat and my feather, and Sword by my side,
As long as my Pocket was lined with Gold,
In pleasure I swam, and abroad I roul'd:

But now no longer can I reign,

In sorrowful note I here do complain,

16

And stick in the Horn where I still must remain,
And cannot get out if I'd never so fain.

24

My Father he went in a Thread-bare Coat,
And on his old Angels was wont to dote;
Which he had obtain'd by Usury,
And now I have spent it as merrily:
I called for Wine like a Hector stout,

My Golden Guinnies did flye about,

I'de Revel and Rant, and I'de keep a fine rout;
But now I'm in, where I cannot get out.

I never would take any thought or care,
I said that I was my old Father's Heir,
My Festival Fellows was Roisterous Boys,
We liv'd in delights with a thousand joys:
While we in Splendor did abound,

Methoughts the world went merrily round,

But since friends and fortune together hath frown'd,

I stick in the Horn, where I still may be found.

40

My Father gave me all his free-hold Land,
And then at my Courtesie he would stand,
O then, thought I, thy Silver sha'n't rust,
I'le make it to flye like the Summer's Dust:
Then did I keep my Prancing Naggs,
Till I had emptied his Golden Bags,
My silks flourisht like to a Navy of Flags,
But now they are worn and torn to Rags.

48

I mortgag'd and sold, and I spent so fast,

The Miser my father was vext at last,

To think that I squander'd away such summs,

He scratcht his ears, and he knawed his thumbs;
His whole Estate was quite decay'd,

By those vile Projects which I have play'd;

Thus I have quite ruin'd the Usurer's trade,
And I in the Horn am a sorrowful Blade.

56

An Emblem of Prodigality.

Now here an Example I must remain,

My freedom I never expect again;

Young Gallants, be warned, such ruine shun,

Which has both my Father and me undone:
All comforts now from us are flown,

My Father in Bedlam makes his moan,
And I in the Counter a Prisoner thrown:

This Horn is a Figure by which it is known.

445

[orig. "and I."

64

[No Printer's name to Roxburghe copy, but Pepysian is "printed for J. Deacon, in Guiltspur-street. In Black-letter, with one woodcut. Date, as licensed by Richard Pocock, 1685-1688.]

For those who desire to learn what were the discomforts of an incarceration in the Wood-Street Counter prison, shortly before the date of this ballad, ample materials are afforded in a poem by William Bagwell, commonly called Bagnall (supposed author of "Bagnall's Ballad" in Musarum Delicia, 1655, and Wit Restored, 1658, beginning "A ballet, a ballet! let every Poet a ballet make with all speed," etc., known by its burden as Oh Women! monstrous Women). The poem is entitled "The Counter Scuffle," 1653, its copperplate frontispiece representing the riotous quarrels in that den of vice and squalor. It begins,

Let that Majestic Pen that writes

Of brave King Arthur and his Knights,
And of their noble Feats and Fights,
And those who tell of Mice and Frogs,
And of the Skirmishes of Hogs,
And of fierce Bears and Mastiff Dogs,
Be silent.

And now let each one listen well,
While I the famous Battel tell,
In Wood-street Counter that befel
in high Lent; etc.

The Scuffle is between a Hectoring Captain and a tradesman named Ellis: the Captain was probably Alexander Radcliffe, who wrote "The Ramble,” “News from Hell," and "A call to the Guard" (though the latter is sometimes attributed to the Earl of Rochester, and printed as his in the 1685 edition of his Poems). They begin respectively, “While duns were knocking at my door," "So dark the night was that old Charon Could not carry ghostly fare on;" and "Rat tat, rat too, rat too, rat tat too, rat tat too, With your noses all scabb'd and your eyes black and blue." "The Ramble" probably preceded Bagwell's Counter Scuffle," and Edmund Gayton good humouredly avenged his friend Radcliffe, for any personal allusions therein, by writing "Bagnall's Ghost" in the same measure as The Ramble" and "The Counter Scuffle," beginning

(See The Bagford Ballads, pp. 429, 633, and 1092.) For their "Lenten entertainment" the Counter prisoners fared better than certain players were like to do

in Denmark; well enough as regards food, truly: insomuch that a spendthrift's friends will furnish him with plenty of meat and drink, so long as he is a merry companion, although they button up pockets to an application for payment of debts and enlargement from prison. The list of dishes certainly reads well, but many of them are recklessly flung about the place when Ellis begins the brawl. The quarrel is the result of each man boasting his own profession superior to others, thus the lawyer exults over "the soldier and his swaggering crew: But at that word the Captain grew, in Choler." In his angry rejoinder he boasts the need of the military (this being in Cromwell's time, 1655), "to guard you and the Cuckoes' Nest, your City." Ellis takes the term in dudgeon, as being a tradesman and freeman of the City, although he was born at Bristol, and considers himself in lineage unassailable. But since he first saw his wife in London, other unpleasant insinuations might be urged if he left the term unchallenged, so he speaks :

"And he that calls it Cuckoe's Nest,
Except he says he speaks in Jest,

He is a Villain and a Beast.

I'll prove it."

The Captain calls him "a proud Boy," and threatens to whip him. Ellis flings the jug at him, and the Man of War attempts to discharge a greasy dish in requital, "brim-full of buttered fish;" but his foot slips, his aim is missed, and, woeful to relate! he "all be-butterfishified" his person (a verb that, but for our quotation, might fail to beautify the Philological Society's forthcoming dictionary). "The rest is," unlike Hamlet's prophecy, anything but "silence! "

[This woodcut belongs to "Beautie's Cruelty:" See p. 444.]