Of “Making a book” how he made a stir,
But never had written a line to her,
  Once his idol and Cara Sposa: 
And how he had storm’d, and treated her ill,
Because she refused to go down to a mill,
She didn’t know where, but remember’d still
  That the Miller’s name was Mendoza.

CCCII.

How often he waked her up at night,
And oftener still by the morning light,
  Reeling home from his haunts unlawful;
Singing songs that shouldn’t be sung,
Except by beggars and thieves unhung—­
Or volleying oaths, that a foreign tongue
  Made still more horrid and awful!

CCCIII.

How oft, instead of otto rose,
With vulgar smells he offended her nose,
  From gin, tobacco, and onion! 
And then how wildly he used to stare! 
And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,—­
And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
Till he look’d like a study of Giant Despair
  For a new Edition of Bunyan!

CCCIV.

For dice will run the contrary way,
As well is known to all who play,
  And cards will conspire as in treason: 
And what with keeping a hunting-box,
    Following fox—­
    Friends in flocks,
    Burgundies, Hocks,
    From London Docks,
    Stultz’s frocks,
    Manton and Nock’s
    Barrels and locks,
    Shooting blue rocks,
    Trainers and jocks,
    Buskins and socks,
    Pugilistical knocks,
    And fighting-cocks,
If he found himself short in funds and stocks,
  These rhymes will furnish the reason!

CCCV.

His friends, indeed, were falling away—­
Friends who insist on play or pay—­
And he fear’d at no very distant day
  To be cut by Lord and by cadger,
As one, who has gone, or is going, to smash,
For his checks no longer drew the cash,
Because, as his comrades explain’d in flash,
  “He had overdrawn his badger.”

CCCVI.

Gold, gold—­alas! for the gold
Spent where souls are bought and sold,
  In Vice’s Walpurgis revel! 
Alas! for muffles, and bulldogs, and guns,
The leg that walks, and the leg that runs,
All real evils, though Fancy ones,
When they lead to debt, dishonor, and duns,
  Nay, to death, and perchance the devil!

CCCVII.

Alas! for the last of a Golden race! 
Had she cried her wrongs in the market-place,
  She had warrant for all her clamor—­
For the worst of rogues, and brutes, and rakes,
Was breaking her heart by constant aches,
With as little remorse as the Pauper, who breaks
  A flint with a parish hammer!

HER LAST WILL.