t of the strongest oak,
His line a cable which no storm e'er broke,
His hook was baited with a dragon's tail,
He sat upon a rock and bobb'd for a whale."

"Besides which," continued Dashall, "he is a great sailor; has a yacht
of his own, and generally accompanies

~~214~~~ Royalty on aquatic excursions. I remember a laughable
caricature, exhibiting the alderman in his own vessel, with a turtle
suspended on a pole, with the following lines, in imitation of
Black-eyed Susan, said to be written by Mr. Jekyll:--

"All in the Downs the fleet lay moor'd,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When Castlereagh appeared on board,
'Ah where shall I my Curtis find.
Tell me ye jovial sailors, tell me true,
Does my fat William sail among your crew.'"

He is a banker, a loan-monger, and a contractor, a member of Parliament,
and an orator; added to which, he may be said to be a man of wit
and humour--at all events he is the cause of it in others. His first
occupations have procured him great wealth, and his wit and humour great
fame.

"The worthy Alderman's hospitality to the late good humoured and
gossiping James Boswell, the humble follower and biographer of Dr.
Johnson, is well known; and it is probable that the pleasures of the
table, in which no man more joyously engaged, shortened his life. To
write the life of a great man is no easy task, and to write that of a
big one may be no less arduous. Whether the Alderman really expected to
be held up to future fame by the Biographer of Johnson, cannot be
very easily ascertained; however that wish and expectation, if it ever
existed, was completely frustrated by the death of poor Boswell.

"I recollect to have seen some lines of the worthy Alderman, on the
glorious victory of the Nile, which shew at once his patriotism, his
wit, and his resolution, in that he is not to be laughed out of the
memorable toast he once gave--

"Great Nelson, in the grandest stile,
Bore down upon the shores of Nile,
And there obtained a famous victory,
Which puzzled much the French Directory.
The impudence of them there fellows,
As all the newspapers do tell us,
Had put the grand Turk in a pet,
Which caus'd him send to Nelson an aigrette;
Likewise a grand pelisse, a noble boon--
Then let us hope--a speedy peace an