While Bendigo suffers as an _im_-patient under the hands of the Nottingham doctors for more than two years, we shall, before again raising the curtain, interpose a slight _entr’acte_ in the shape of a little song to an old tune, then in the height of its popularity, “The Fine Old English Gentleman;” of which we opine we have read worse parodies than this, which was often chaunted in the parlour of Tom Spring’s “Castle,” in Holborn, at various meetings of good men and true, the patrons of fair play and of the then flourishing “Pugilistic Association,” whereof Tom was the President, and “the Bishop of Bond-street” the Honorary and Honourable Treasurer. THE FINE OLD ENGLISH PUGILIST BY THE P.L. OF THE P.R. I’ll sing a song of days of old now vanish’d like the mist, And may the fire of “Frosty Face” a modern bard assist To pay the honours justly due to each Old Pugilist, Who, not for filthy lucre, but for conquest, clenched his fist, Like a fine Old English Pugilist, One of the olden time! No plans of crossing robbery he ever deigned to hatch, The honest backers to betray, or simple ones to catch; But at a moment’s notice always ready for a match, Whoever was the customer that dar’d him to the scratch, Like a fine Old English Pugilist, One of the olden time! Whate’er his size, whate’er his weight, he didn’t care a pin, The science of his challenger, or colour of his skin, But gallantly he went to work, regardless of the tin, And though not certain of success he did his best to win. Like a fine Old English Pugilist, One of the olden time! Those were the days when Ben the Big and Johnson fought of old, Mendoza, Humphries, Bristol Pearce, and both the Belchers bold, That was, I mention it with pride, Pancratia’s age of gold, When men, like cattle in a fair, were neither bought nor sold, But shone true British Pugilists, Men of the olden time! Then manfully within the ring each boxer kept his ground, Bestowing wholesale pepper in each well-contested round; And when the victory was proclaim’d, their brows with conquest crown’d, All anger, in a foaming pot, was in an instant drown’d, Like fine Old English Pugilists, Men of the olden time! But, ah, those hours flew swiftly by, of boxing annals bright, And men began to do the thing that wasn’t very right, And honesty from Pugilists prepar’d to take a flight, For cross coves manag’d, as they pleas’d, to win or lose a fight, Unlike brave English Pugilists, Men of the olden time!