In the autumn of 1824, Captain Medwin having hinted that certain beautiful lines on the burial of that gallant officer might have been the production of Lord Byron's Muse, the late Mr. Sydney Taylor, somewhat indignantly, claimed them for their rightful owner, the late Rev. Charles Wolfe. During the controversy a third claimant started up in the person of a _soi-disant_ "Doctor Marshall," who turned out to be a Durham blacksmith, and his pretensions a hoax. It was then that a certain "Doctor Peppercorn" put forth _his_ pretensions, to what he averred was the only "true and original" version, viz.:-- Not a _sous_ had he got,--not a guinea or note, And he look'd confoundedly flurried, As he bolted away without paying his shot, And the Landlady after him hurried. We saw him again at dead of night, When home from the Club returning; We twigg'd the Doctor beneath the light Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning. All bare, and exposed to the midnight dews, Reclined in the gutter we found him; And he look'd like a gentleman taking a snooze, With his _Marshall_ cloak around him. "The Doctor's as drunk as the d----," we said, And we managed a shutter to borrow; We raised him, and sigh'd at the thought that his head Would "consumedly ache" on the morrow. We bore him home, and we put him to bed, And we told his wife and his daughter To give him, next morning, a couple of red Herrings, with soda-water.-- Loudly they talk'd of his money that's gone, And his Lady began to upbraid him; But little he reck'd, so they let him snore on 'Neath the counterpane just as we laid him. We tuck'd him in, and had hardly done When, beneath the window calling, We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun Of a watchman "One o'clock!" bawling. Slowly and sadly we all walk'd down From his room in the uppermost story; A rushlight we placed on the cold hearth-stone, And we left him alone in his glory!! FOOTNOTES: [6] See note at end of "The Cynotaph." Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.--VIRGIL. I wrote the lines-- ... owned them--he told stories! THOMAS INGOLDSBY. MRS. BOTHERBY'S STORY. THE LEECH OF FOLKESTONE. Reader, were you ever bewitched?--I do not mean by a "white wench's black eye," or by love potions imbibed from a ruby lip;--but, were you ever really and _bonâ fide_ bewitched, in the true Matthew Hopkins sense of the word? Did you ever, for instance, find yourself from head to heel one vast complication of cramps?--or burst out into sudorific exudation like a cold thaw, with the thermometer at zero?--Were your eyes ever turned upside down, exhibiting nothing but their whites?--Did you ever vomit a paper of crooked pins? or expectorate Whitechapel needles?--These are genuine and undoubted marks of possession; and if you never experienced any of them,--why, "happy man be his dole!"