A thief, who cometh in the night, With whole boots and net pantaloons, Like some one whom it were not right To mention ;-or the luckless wight, From whom he steals nine silver spoons But in this case he did appear Like a slop-merchant from Wapping, And with smug face, and eye severe, On every side did perk and peer Till he saw Peter dead or napping. He had on an upper Benjamin He called the ghost out of the corse; The Devil knew not his name and lot Peter thought he had parents dear, Solemn phiz in his own village; Where he thought oft when a boy He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage The produce of his neighbour's tillage, With marvellous pride and joy. And the Devil thought he had, Of an unjust war, just made Of giving soldiers rations bad The world is full of strange delusion That he had a mansion planned In a square like Grosvenor-square, And all this, though quite ideal, Was a state not more unreal Or the care he could not banish. After a little conversation, The Devil told Peter, if he chose, He'd bring him to the world of fashion By giving him a situation In his own service-and new clothes. And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud, Turned up with black-the wretched fellow PART THIRD. HELL HELL is a city much like London- And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity. There is a Castles, and a Canning, There is a ***, who has lost His wits, or sold them, none knows which; He walks about a double ghost, And though as thin as Fraud almost, There is a Chancery Court; a King; An army; and a public debt, Which last is a scheme of paper money, There is great talk of revolution— Gin-suicide-and methodism ; Taxes too, on wine and bread, And meat and beer, and tea, and cheese; From which those patriots pure are fed, Who gorge before they reel to bed The tenfold essence of all these. There are mincing women, mewing, (Like cats, who amant miserè,*) Lawyers-judges-old hobnobbers Are there; bailiffs-chancellorsBishops great and little robbersRhymesters-pamphleteers-stock-jobbersMen of glory in the wars,— Things whose trade is, over ladies To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper, Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling, *One of the attributes in Linnæus's description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus is to be referred;—except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with those of others. † What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association, like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be called the "King, Church, and Constitution" of their order. is almost too horrible for a joke. But this subject |