“How Nancy Sniggles was the village pride,—­
    How Will, her sweetheart, went to be a sailor;
  How much at parting Nancy Sniggles cried,—­
    And how she snubb’d her funny friend the tailor;
  How William boldly fought and bravely died;
    How Nancy Sniggles felt her senses fail her—­”
  Then comes a sad denouement—­now-a-days
  It is not virtue dominant that pays.

  Such tales, in this, the post-octavo age,
    Our novelists incontinently tells us—­
  Tales, wherein lovely heroines engage
    With highwaymen, good-looking rogues but callous,
  Who go on swimmingly till the last page,
    And then take poison to escape the gallows—­
  Tales, whose original refinement teaches
  The pride of eloquence in—­dying speeches!

  What an apotheosis have we here! 
    What equal laws th’ awards of fame dispose! 
  Capture a fort—­assassinate a peer—­
    Alike be chronicled in startling prose—­
  Alike be dramatised—­(how near
    Is clever crime to virtue!)—­at Tussaud’s
  Be grouped with all the criminals at large,
  From burglar Sheppard unto fiend Laffarge!

  The women are best judges after all! 
    And Sheridan was right, and Plagi-ary;
  To their decision all things mundane fall,
    From court to counting-house; from square to dairy;
  From caps to chemistry; from tract to shawl,
    And then these female verdicts never vary! 
  In fact, on lap-dogs, lovers, buhl, and boddices,
  There are no critics like these mortal goddesses!

  To please such readers, authors make it answer
    To trace a pedigree to the creation
  Of some old Saxon peer; a monstrous grandsire,
    Whose battles tell, in print, to admiration—­
  But I, unfortunate, have never once a
    Mysterious hint of any great relation;
  I know whether Shem or Japhet—­right sir—­
  Was my progenitor—­nor care a kreutzer.

  For, though there’s matter for regret in losing
    An opportune occasion to record
  The feats in gambling, duelling, seducing—­
    Conventional acquirements of a lord—­
  Still I have stories startling and amusing,
    Which I can tell and vouch, upon my word. 
  To anybody who desires to hear ’em—­
  But don’t be nervous, pray,—­you needn’t fear ’em.

  But what of my poor Hy-son all this while? 
    She saved the gardener by a timely kiss. 
  Few husbands are there proof against a smile,
    And Te-pott’s rage endured no more than this. 
  Ah, reader! gentle, moral, free from guile,
    Think you she did so very much amiss? 
  She was not love-sick for the fellow quite—­
  She merely thought of him—­from morn till night!