Of law, must burn from hour to hour,
(Else they, without redemption, fall
Under the terrors of that Hall
Which, once notorious for a hop,
Is now become a justice shop)
Which are so managed, to go out
Just when the time comes round about,
Which yet, through emulation, strive

To keep their dying light alive,
And (not uncommon, as we find
Amongst the children of mankind)

As they grow weaker, would seem stronger,
And burn a little, little longer :

Fancy, betwixt such eyes enshrined,
No brush to daub, no mill to grind,

Thrice waved her wand around, whose force
Changed in an instant Nature's course,

And, hardly credible in rhyme,

Not only stopp'd, but call'd back time,

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The face of every wrinkle clear'd,
Smooth as the floating stream appear'd,

ting magistrate at Bow Street was armed with very stringent powers for committing and inflicting penalties on such lamplighters as negligently suffered the lamps to go out, or omitted to go their rounds every hour to relight such as were extinguished. These imperfect expedients have now been happily superseded by the blaze of gas.

594] The Westminster Sessions-house was then held at a house in King Street, which had probably been a low place of public entertainment. Early in this century, a new sessions-house was erected near St. Margaret's church, affording a perfect specimen of the goose-pie order of architecture; it has since undergone some alterations, but it wants reforming, or rather removal altogether.

Down the neck ringlets spread their flame,
The neck admiring whence they came;
On the arch'd brow the Graces play'd;
On the full bosom Cupid laid;

Suns, from their

proper orbits sent,

Became for eyes a supplement;

Teeth, white as ever teeth were seen,
Deliver'd from the hand of Green,
Started, in regular array,

Like train-bands on a grand field day,
Into the gums, which would have fled,
But, wond'ring, turn'd from white to red;
Quite alter'd was the whole machine,

And Lady

was fifteen.

Here she made lordly temples rise
Before the pious Dashwood's eyes,
Temples which, built aloft in air,
May serve for show, if not for prayer;
In solemn form herself, before,
Array'd like Faith, the Bible bore:
There, over Melcombe's feather'd head,

629] See vol. ii. p. 101.

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620

625

630

633] In Hogarth's "Five orders of Periwigs," the first head in the second row was designed to represent Lord Melcombe, whose general costume and equipage were no less characteristic; he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, each in itself a load to the wearer, and every birth-day added to the stock. In doing this he so contrived as never to put his old dresses out of countenance by any variations in the fashions of the new; in the mean time, his bulk and corpulency gave full display to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and embroidery, and this, when set off

Who, quite a man of gingerbread,
Savour'd in talk, in dress, and phiz,
More of another world than this,
To a dwarf Muse a giant page,
The last grave fop of the last age,
In a superb and feather'd hearse,
Bescutcheon'd and betagg'd with verse,
Which, to beholders from afar,
Appear'd like a triumphal car,

She rode, in a cast rainbow clad;

There, throwing off the hallow'd plaid,

Naked, as when (in those drear cells

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645

Where self-bless'd, self-cursed Madness dwells) Pleasure, on whom, in Laughter's shape,

Frenzy had perfected a rape,

First brought her forth, before her time,

with an enormous periwig and deep laced ruffles, gave the picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit. When he paid his court at St. James's to Queen Charlotte upon her nuptials, he approached to kiss her hand, decked in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat and breeches, the latter of which, in the act of kneeling down, forgot their duty, and broke loose from their moorings in a very

indecorous manner.

The above sketch is chiefly extracted from Cumberland's memoirs of himself, and he completes this spirited portrait in these words: "I had taken leave of Lord Melcombe the day preceding the Coronation, and found him before a looking-glass in his new robes, practising attitudes, and debating within himself upon the most graceful mode of carrying his coronet in the procession. He was in high glee with his fresh and blooming honours, and I left him in the act of dictating a billet to Lady Harvey, apprising her that a young lord was coming to throw himself at her feet."

Wild witness of her shame and crime,
Driving before an idol band

Of drivelling Stuarts, hand in hand;
Some who, to curse mankind, had wore
A crown they ne'er must think of more;
Others, whose baby brows were graced
With paper crowns, and toys of paste,
She jigg'd, and playing on the flute,
Spread raptures o'er the soul of Bute.

Big with vast hopes, some mighty plan,
Which wrought the busy soul of man
To her full bent, the Civil Law,
Fit code to keep a world in awe,
Bound o'er his brows, fair to behold,
As Jewish frontlets were of old;
The famous Charter of our land
Defaced, and mangled in his hand;
As one whom deepest thoughts employ,
But deepest thoughts of truest joy,
Serious and slow he strode, he stalk'd,
Before him troops of heroes walk'd,
Whom best he loved, of heroes crown'd,
By Tories guarded all around,
Dull solemn pleasure in his face,
He saw the honours of his race,

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660

665

670

672] The Tories were to the last the staunch friends of the Stuarts. The Earl of Bute was perfectly sensible of this when he invited into his ministry several members of the Cocoa Tree, a club then notorious for the high Jacobitical principles of its members. The house in Pall Mall in which it was held became afterwards as well if not better known as the auctionrooms of the celebrated Mr. James Christie.

He saw their lineal glories rise,

675

And touch'd, or seem'd to touch the skies;
Not the most distant mark of fear,

No sign of axe, or scaffold near,

Not one cursed thought to cross his will

680

Of such a place as Tower Hill.

Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade,
A shrew, like every other maid
Who turns the corner of nineteen,
Devour'd with peevishness and spleen :
Her tongue, (for as one bound for life,
The husband suffers for the wife,
So if in any works of rhyme

Perchance there blunders out a crime,
Poor culprit bards must always rue it,

Although 'tis plain the Muses do it)

Sooner or later cannot fail

To send me headlong to a jail.

Whate'er my theme, (our themes we choose

In Modern days without a Muse,

Just as a father will provide

To join a bridegroom and a bride,

As if, though they must be the players,
The game was wholly his, not theirs)

Whate'er my theme, the Muse, who still
Owns no direction but her will,
Flies off, and ere I could expect,
By ways oblique and indirect,
At once quite over head and ears
In fatal politics appears.

Time was, and, if I aught discern

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705