duggins.

sally is ripe as june or may,

and yet as cold as christmas day;

for when she’s asked to change her lot,

lamb’s wool,—but sally, she wool not

[pg 101]

huggins.

only with peggy and with health,

i’d never wish for state or wealth;

talking of having health and more pence,

i’d drink her health if i had fourpence.

duggins.

oh, how that day would seem to shine,

if sally’s banns were read with mine;

she cries, when such a wish i carry,

“marry come up!” but will not marry.

domestic didactics.

by an old servant.

it is not often when the nine descend that they go so low as into areas; it is certain, nevertheless, that they were in the habit of visiting john humphreys, in the kitchen of no. 189, portland place, disguised, no doubt, from mortal eye, as seamstresses or charwomen—at all events, as winifred jenkins says, “they were never ketch’d in the fact.” perhaps it was the rule of the house to allow no followers, and they were obliged to come by stealth, and to go in the same manner; indeed, from the fragmental nature of john’s verses, they appear to have often left him very abruptly. other pieces bear witness of the severe distraction he suffered between his domestic duty to the umphravilles, twelve in family, with their guests, and his own secret visitors from helicon. it must have been provoking, when seeking for a simile, to be sent in search of a salt-cellar; or when hunting for a rhyme, to have to look for a missing teaspoon. by a whimsical peculiarity, the causes of these lets and hindrances are recorded in his verses, by way of parenthesis:

[pg 102]

and though john’s poetry was of a decidedly serious and moralising turn, these little insertions give it so whimsical a character, as to make it an appropriate offering in the present work. poor john! the grave has put a period to his didactics, and the publication of his lays in “hood’s own,” therefore, cannot give him pain, as it certainly would have done otherwise, for the mss. were left by last will and testament “to his very worthy master, joshua umphraville, esq., to be printed in elegant extracts, or flowers of english poetry.” the editor is indebted to the kindness of that gentleman for a selection from the papers; which he has been unable to arrange chronologically, as john always wrote in too great a hurry to put dates. whether he ever sent any pieces to the periodicals is unknown, for he kept his authorship as secret as junius’s, till his death discovered his

[pg 103]

propensity for poetry, and happily cleared up some points in john’s character, which had appeared to his disadvantage. thus when his eye was “in fine frenzy rolling,” bemused only with castalian water, he had been suspected of being “bemused with beer;” and when he was supposed to indulge in a morning sluggishness, he was really rising with the sun, at least with apollo. he was accused occasionally of shamming deafness, whereas it was doubtless nothing but the natural difficulty of hearing more than nine at once. above all, he was reckoned almost wilfully unfortunate in his breakage; but it appears that when deductions for damage were made from his wages, the poetry ought to have been stopped, and not the money. the truth is, john’s master was a classical scholar, and so accustomed to read of pegasus, and to associate a poet with a horseman, that he never dreamt of one as a footman.