brutes are wild.
If the veriest cur would lick my hand,
I could love it like a child!

XXXVI.

And the beggar man's ghost besets my dreams,
At night to make me madder,--
And my wretched conscience, within my breast,
Is like a stinging adder;--
I sigh when I pass the gallows' foot,
And look at the rope and ladder!--

XXXVII.

For hanging looks sweet,--but, alas! in vain,
My desperate fancy begs,--
I must turn my cup of sorrows quite up,
And drink it to the dregs,--
For there is not another man alive,
In the world, to pull my legs!

FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN.[26]

[Footnote 26: These famous verses were first published as from an
anonymous correspondent in the _London Magazine_. When Hood reprinted
them, under his own name, in the first series of _Whims and Oddities_,
he prefaced them with the following words:--

"I have never been vainer of any verses than of my part in the
following Ballad. Dr. Watts, amongst evangelical nurses, has an
enviable renown; and Campbell's Ballads enjoy a snug, genteel
popularity. Sally Brown has been favored perhaps with as wide a
patronage as the Moral Songs, though its circle may not have been
of so select a class as the friends of 'Hohenlinden.' But I do not
desire to see it amongst what are called Elegant Extracts. The
lamented Emery, dressed as Tom Tug, sang it at his last mortal
benefit at Covent Garden; and ever since it has been a great
favorite with the watermen of Thames, who time their oars to it, as
the wherrymen of Venice time theirs to the lines of Tasso. With the
watermen it went naturally to Vauxhall, and over land to Sadler's
Wells. The Guards--not the mail coach, but the Lifeguards--picked
it out from a fluttering hundred of others, all going to one air,
against the dead wall at Knightsbridge. Cheap printers of Shoe Lane
and Cow Cross (all pirates!) disputed about the copyrights, and
published their own editions; and in the meantime the authors, to
have made bread of their song (it was poor old Homer's hard ancient
case!), must have sung it about the streets. Such is the lot of
Literature! the profits of 'Sally Brown' were divided by the Ballad
Mongers;--it has cost, but has never brought me, a halfpenny."]

AN OLD BALLAD.

Young Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's maid.

But as they fetch'