, and Kirby, and Cole,
And Souter, and Wilson--alack!
I cannot distinguish the whole.
For Robins, and Hunter, and Poole,
And Evans, and Scholey, and Co.
Would fill out my verse beyond rule,
And my Pegasus halts in the Bow.
The radicals all are done up;
Sedition is gone to the dogs;
And Benbow and Cobbett may sup
With their worthy relations the Hogs.
So here I will wind up my list
With Underwood, Callow, and Highley;
Who bring to the medicals grist,
By books on diseases wrote dryly.
Just one word at parting I crave--
If Italian, French, German, or Dutch,
To bother your noddle you'd have,
Send to Berthoud, or Treuttel and Wurtz,
Or Zotti, or Dulau, or Bohn,
But they're all very good in their way;
Bossange, Bothe, Boosey and Son,
All expect _Monsieur Jean_ Bull to pay.
"A right merrie conceit it is," said Blackstrap, "and an excellent
memoranda of the eminent book-sellers of the present time." "Ay, sir,"
continued the veteran; "all our old ballads had the merit of being
useful, as well as amusing. There was 'Chevy Chase, and 'King John
and his Barons,' and 'Merry Sherwood,' all of them exquisite chants;
conveying information to the mind, and relating some grand historical
fact, while they charmed the ear. But ~262~~your modern kickshaws are
all about 'No, my love, no,' or 'Sigh no more, lady,' or some such silly
stuff that nobody cares to learn the words of, or can understand if they
did. I remember composing a ballad in this town myself, some few
years since, on a very strange adventure that happened to one of our
commercial brethren. He had bought an old hunter at Bristol to finish
his journey homeward with, on account of his former horse proving lame,
and just as he was entering Cheltenham by the turnpike-gate at the end
of the town, the whole of the Berkeley Hunt were turning out for a day's
run, and having found, shot across the road in full cry. Away went the
dogs, and away went the huntsmen, and plague of any other way would
the old hunter go: so, despite of the two hundred weight of perfumery
samples contained in his saddle-bags, away went Delcroix's deputy over
hedge and ditch, and straight forward for a steeple chase up the Cleigh
Hills; but in coming down rather briskly, the cou
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