MOST Holy, and High, and Legitimate squad,
First Swells of the world, since Boney's in quod, †
Who have every thing now, as Bill Gibbons would say,
"Like the bull in the china shop, all your own way”—
Whatsoever employs your magnificent nobs, S
Whether diddling your subjects, and gutting their fobs **
(While you hum the poor spoonies †† with speeches, so pretty,
'Bout Freedom, and Order, and-all my eye, Betty)
In prison. The dab's in quod; the rogue is in prison. S Heads.
Taking out the contents. Thus, gutting a quart pot (or taking out the lining of it), i. c. drinking it off.
++ Simpletons, alias Innocents.
Whether praying, or dressing, or dancing the hays,
Or lapping your congo* at Lord C-stl—r—gh's†
(While his Lordship, as usual, that very great dab S
At the flowers of rhet'ric, is flashing his gab ** )—
Or holding State Dinners, to talk of the weather,
And cut up your mutton and Europe together!
Whatever your gammon, whatever your talk,
Oh deign, ye illustrious Cocks of the Walk,
To attend for a moment,-and if the Fine Arts
Of fibbing and boring †† be dear to your hearts;
††
If to level, to punish,†† to ruffian †† mankind,
And to darken their daylights, SS be pleasures refined
(As they must be) for every Legitimate mind,-
Oh listen to one, who, both able and willing
To spread through creation the mysteries of milling
(And, as to whose politics, search the world round,
Not a sturdier Pit-tite *** e'er lived under ground),
See the Appendix, No. 3. § An adept. **Showing off his talk.-Better expressed, perhaps, by a late wit, who, upon being asked what was going on in the House of Commons, answered, "only Lord C. airing his vocabulary."
All terms of the Fancy, and familiar to those who read the Transactions of the Pugilistic Society.
$ To close up their eyes-alias, to sow up their sees.
*** TOм received his first education in a coal-pit; from whence he has been honoured with the name of "the Black Diamond."
Has thought of a plan, which-excuse his presump
He hereby submits to your Royal rumgumption.*
It being now settled that emperors and kings,
Like kites made of foolscap, are high-flying things,
To whose tails a few millions of subjects, or so,
Have been tied in a string, to be whisk'd to and fro,
Just wherever it suits the said foolscap to go-
This being all settled, and freedom all gammon,†
And nought but your honours worth wasting a d-n on;
While snug and secure you may now run your rigs, §
Without fear that old Boney will bother your gigs—
As your Honours, too, bless you! though all of a trade,
Yet agreeing like new ones, have lately been made
Special constables o'er us, for keeping the peace,—
Let us hope now that wars and rumbustions will cease;
That soldiers and guns, like "the Devil and his works,"
Will henceforward be left to Jews, Negers, and Turks;
Till Brown Bess ** shall soon, like Miss Tabitha Fusty,
For want of a spark to go off with, grow rusty,
* Gumption, or Rumgumption, comprehension, capacity.
Nonsense or humbug.
Play your tricks.
** A soldier's fire-lock.
And lobsters will lie such a drug upon hand,
That our do-nothing Captains must all get japann'd!†
My eyes, how delightful!—the rabble well gagg’d,
The Swells in high feather, and old Boney lagg'd!§
But, though we must hope for such good times as these,
Yet as something may happen to kick up a breece—
Some quarrel, reserved for your own private picking-
Some grudge, even now in your great gizzards sticking
(God knows about what-about money, mayhap,
Or the Papists, or Dutch, or that Kid,** Master Nap)—
And, setting in case there should come such a rumpus,
As some mode of settling the chat we must compass,
* Soldiers, from the colour of their clothes. “To boil one's lobster means for a churchman to turn soldier; lobsters, which are of a bluish black, being made red by boiling."-Grose. Butler's ingenious simile will occur to the reader :
When, like a lobster boil'd, the Morn
From black to red began to turn.
+ Ordained-i. e. become clergymen.
** Child.-Hence our useful word, kidnapper—to nab a kid being to steal a child. Indeed, we need but recollect the many excellent and necessary words to which Johnson has affixed the stigma of "cant term," to be aware how considerably the English language has been enriched by the contributions of the Flash fraternity.
|