“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!