How oft, instead of otto of rose, With vulgar smells he offended her nose, From gin, tobacco, and onion! And then how wildly he used to stare! And shake his fist at nothing, and swear,-- And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair, Till he look’d like a study of Giant Despair For a new Edition of Bunyan! For dice will run the contrary way, As well is known to all who play, And cards will conspire as in treason; And what with keeping a hunting-box, Following fox-- Friends in flocks, Burgundies, Hocks, From London Docks; Stultz’s frocks, Manton and Nock’s Barrels and locks, Shooting blue rocks, Trainers and jocks, Buskins and socks, Pugilistical knocks, And fighting cocks, If he found himself short in funds and stocks These rhymes will furnish the reason! His friends, indeed, were falling away-- Friends who insist on play or pay-- And he fear’d at no very distant day To be cut by Lord and by cadger, As one, who has gone, or is going, to smash, For his checks no longer drew the cash, Because, as his comrades explain’d in flash, “He had overdrawn his badger.” Gold, gold--alas! for the gold Spent where souls are bought and sold, In Vice’s Walpurgis revel! Alas! for muffles, and bulldogs, and guns, The leg that walks, and the leg that runs,-- All real evils, though Fancy ones, When they lead to debt, dishonour, and duns, Nay, to death, and perchance the devil! Alas! for the last of a Golden race! Had she cried her wrongs in the market-place, She had warrant for all her clamour-- For the worst of rogues, and brutes, and rakes, Was breaking her heart by constant aches, With as little remorse as the Pauper, who breaks A flint with a parish hammer! HER LAST WILL. Now the Precious Leg while cash was flush, Or the Count’s acceptance worth a rush, Had never excited dissension; But no sooner the stocks began to fall, Than, without any ossification at all, The limb became what people call A perfect bone of contention. For alter’d days brought alter’d ways, And instead of the complimentary phrase, So current before her bridal-- The Countess heard, in language low, That her Precious Leg was precious slow, A good ‘un to look at but bad to go, And kept quite a sum lying idle. That instead of playing musical airs, Like Colin’s foot in going up-stairs-- As the wife in the Scottish ballad declares-- It made an infernal stumping. Whereas a member of cork, or wood, Would be lighter and cheaper and quite as good, Without the unbearable thumping.