Oh! Great Lessee! Great Manager! Great Man! Oh, Lord High Elliston! Immortal Pan Of all the pipes that play in Drury Lane! Macready’s master! Westminster’s high _Dane_ (As Galway Martin, in the House’s walls, Hamlet and Doctor Ireland justly calls) Friend to the sweet and ever-smiling Spring! Magician of the lamp and prompter’s ring! Drury’s Aladdin! Whipper-in of actors! Kicker of rebel preface-malefactors! Glass-blowers’ corrector! King of the cheque-taker! At once Great Leamington and Winston-Maker! Dramatic Bolter of plain Bunns and cakes! In silken _hose_ the most reform’d of _Rakes_! Oh, Lord High Elliston! lend me an ear! (Poole is away, and Williams shall keep clear) While I, in little slips of prose, not verse, Thy splendid course, as pattern-work, rehearse! Bright was thy youth--thy manhood brighter still-- The greatest Romeo upon Holburn Hill-- Lightest comedian of the pleasant day, When Jordan threw her sunshine o’er a play! But these, though happy, were but subject-times, And no man cares for bottom-steps, that climbs-- Far from my wish it is to stifle down The hours that saw thee snatch the Surrey crown! Though now thy hand a mightier sceptre wields, Fair was thy reign in sweet St. George’s Fields. Dibdin was _Premier_--and a Golden _Age_ For a short time enrich’d the subject stage. Thou hadst, than other Kings, more peace-and-plenty; Ours but one Bench could boast, but thou hadst twenty; But the times changed--and Booth-acting no more Drew Rulers’ shillings to the gallery door. Thou didst, with bag and baggage, wander thence, Repentant, like thy neighbour Magdalens! Next, the Olympic Games were tried, each feat Practised the most bewitching in Wych Street. Charles had his royal ribaldry restored, And in a downright neighbourhood drank and whored; Rochester there in dirty ways again Revell’d--and lived once more in Drury Lane: But thou, R. W., kept thy moral ways, Pit-lecturing ’twixt the farces and the plays, A lamplight Irving to the butcher-boys That soil’d the benches and that made a noise:-- “YOU,--in the back!--can scarcely hear a line! Down from those benches--butchers--they are MINE!” Lastly--and thou wert built for it by nature!-- Crown’d was thy head in Drury Lane Th_eä_tre! Gentle George Robins saw that it was good, And renters cluck’d around thee in a brood. King thou wert made of Drury and of Kean! Of many a lady and of many a Queen! With Poole and Larpent was thy reign begun-- But now thou turnest from the Dead and Dun, Hook’s in thine eye, to write thy plays, no doubt, And Colman lives to cut the damnlets out!