Merrie England in the Olden Time. George Daniel

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СКАЧАТЬ Timothy to a T! Pardon me, sir, but he must have sat to you for the portrait. If you unbutton his native consequence a little, and throw a jocular light over his whim-whams and caprices, the likeness would be perfect.”

      This was addressed to us by a lively, well-to-do-in-the-world-looking little gentleman, who lolled in an arm-chair opposite to an adjoining window, taking things in an easy pick-tooth way, and coquetting with a pint of old port.

      “The picture, sir, that you are pleased to identify is not an individual, but a species—a slight off-hand sketch, taken from general observation.”

      “Indeed! That's odd.”

      “Even so.”

      “Never knew Uncle Tim was like all the world. Would, for all the world's sake, that all the world were like Uncle Tim!”

      “A worthy character.”

      “Sir, he holds in his heart all the four honours—Truth, Honesty, Affection, and Benevolence—in the great game of humanity, and plays not for lucre, but love! I fear you think me strangely familiar—impertinent too, perhaps. But that portrait, so graphical and complete, was a spell as powerful as Odin's to break silence. Besides, I detest your exclusives—sentimentalising! soliloquising!—Their shirt-collars, affectedly turned down, puts my choler up! Give me the human face divine, the busy haunts of men, the full tide of human existence.”

      The little gentleman translated the “full tide” into a full glass to our good healths and better acquaintance, at the same time drawing his chair nearer, and presenting a handsomely embossed card, on which was inscribed, in delicate Italian calligraphy, “Mr. Benjamin Bosky, Dry-salter, Little Britain.”

      Drysalter—he looked like a thirsty soul!

      “Pleasant prospect from this window; you may count every steeple in London. There's the 'tall bully,'—how gloriously his flaming top-knot glistens in the setting sun! Wouldn't give a fig for the best view in the world, if it didn't take in the dome of St. Paul's! Beshrew the Vandal architect that cut down those beautiful elms.—

      'The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees,

      And bears the like antipathy to trees,'

      and run up the wigwam pavilions, the Tom-foolery baby-houses, the run mad, shabby-genteel, I-would-if-I-could-but-I-can't cottages ornée—ornée?—horney!—the cows popping in their heads at the parlour windows, frightening the portly proprietors from their propriety and port!”

      It was clear that Mr. Bosky was not to be so frightened; for he drew another draught on his pint decanter, though sitting beneath the umbrage of a huge pair of antlers that were fixed against the wall, under which innumerable Johnny New-comes had been sworn, according to ancient custom, at the Horns at Highgate. It was equally clear, too, that Mr. Bosky himself might have sat for the portrait that he had so kindly appropriated to Uncle Timothy.

      A fine manly voice without was heard to troll with joyous melody—

      “The lark, that tirra-lirra chants—

      With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay,

      Are summer songs for me and my aunts,

      While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

      “Uncle Tim! Uncle Tim!” shouted the mercurial little Drysalter, and up he started as if he had been galvanised, scampered out of the room, made but one leap from the top of the stairs to the bottom, descended à plomb, was up again before we had recovered from our surprise, and introduced a middle-aged, rosy-faced gentleman, “more fat than bard beseems,” with a perforating eye and a most satirical nose. “Uncle Timothy, gentlemen.—A friend or two, (if I may presume to call them so,) Uncle Timothy, that I have fallen in with most unexpectedly and agreeably.”

      There is a certain “I no not like thee, Doctor Fell,” feeling, and an “I do,” that have rarely deceived us. With the latter, the satirical-nosed gentleman inspired us at first sight. There was the humorist, with a dash of the antiquary, heightened with a legible expression that nature sometimes stamps on her higher order of intelligences. What a companion, we thought, for “Round about our coal fire” on a winter's evening, or, “Under the green-wood tree” on a summer's clay!

      We were all soon very good company; and half a dozen tea-totallers, who had called for a pint of ale and six glasses, having discussed their long division and departed, we had the room to ourselves.

      “Know you, Uncle Timothy,” cried Mr. Bosky, with a serio-comic air, “that the law against vagabonds and sturdy beggars is in full force, seeing that you carol in broad daylight, and on the King's highway, a loose catch appertaining to one of the most graceless of their fraternity?”

      “Beggars! varlet! I beg nothing of thee but silence, which is gold, if speech be silver. * Is there aught unseemly in my henting the stile with the merry Autolycus? Vagabonds! The order is both ancient and honourable. Collect they not tribute for the crown? Take heed, Benjamin, lest thine be scored on! Are they not solicitors as old as Adam?”

      * A precept of the Koran.

      “And thieves too, from Mercury downwards, Uncle Timothy.”

      “Conveyancers, sirrah! sworn under the Horns never to beg when they can steal. Better lose my purse than my patience. Thou, scapegrace! rob best me of my patience, and beggest nought but the question.”

      “Were not the beggars once a jovial crew, sir?” addressing ourselves to the middle-aged gentleman with the satirical nose.

      “Right merry! Gentlemen—

      'Sweeter than honey

      Is other men's money.'

      “The joys of to-day were never marred by the cares of to-morrow; for to-morrow was left to take care of itself; and its sun seldom went down upon disappointment. The beggar, * though his pockets be so low, that you might dance a jig in one of them without breaking your shins against a halfpenny; while from the other you might be puzzled to extract as much coin as would pay turnpike for a walking-stick, sings with a light heart; his fingers no less light! playing administrators to the farmer's poultry, and the good housewife's sheets that whiten every hedge!

      * “Cast our nabs and cares away—

       This is Beggars' Holiday;

       In the world look out and see

       Who's so happy a king as he?

       At the crowning of our king,

       Thus we ever dance and sing.

       Where's the nation lives so free

       And so merry as do we?

       Be it peace, or be it war,

       Here at liberty we are.

       Hang all Harmanbccks! we cry,

       And the Cuffinquiers, too, by.

       We enjoy our ease and rest,

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