Yet again does the poet allude to the occupant of the lowest tier of the great "three-decker," when he in the opening lines of _The Sofa_ depicts the various seekers after sleep. After telling of the snoring nurse, the sleeping traveller in the coach, he continues: "Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk, The tedious rector drawling o'er his head; And sweet the clerk below--" a pretty picture truly of a stirring and impressive service! Cowper, if he were alive now, would have been no admirer of _Who's Who_, and poured scorn upon any "Fond attempt to give a deathless lot To names ignoble, born to be forgot." Beholding some "names of little note" in the _Biographia Britannica_, he proceeded to satirise the publication, to laugh at the imaginary procession of worthies--the squire, his lady, the vicar, and other local celebrities, and chants in his anger: "There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk." The poet Gay is not unmindful of the "Parish clerk who calls the hymns so clear"; and Tennyson, in his sonnet to J.M.K., wrote: "Our dusty velvets have much need of thee: Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily; But spurr'd at heart with fiercest energy To embattail and to wall about thy cause With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Brow-beats his desk below." In the gallery of Dickens's characters stands out the immortal Solomon Daisy of _Barnaby Rudge_, with his "cricket-like chirrup" as he took his part in the social gossip round the Maypole fire. Readers of Dickens will remember the timid Solomon's visit to the church at midnight when he went to toll the passing bell, and his account of the strange things that befell him there, and of the ringing of the mysterious bell that told the murder of Reuben Haredale. In the British Museum I discovered a fragmentary collection of ballads and songs, made by Mr. Ballard, and amongst these is a song relating to a very unworthy follower of St. Nicholas, whose memory is thus unhappily preserved: THE PARISH CLERK A NEW COMIC SONG _Tune_--THE VICAR AND MOSES Here rests from his labours, by consent of his neighbours, A peevish, ill-natur'd old clerk; Who never design'd any good to mankind, For of goodness he ne'er had a spark. Tol lol de rol lol de rol lol. But greedy as Death, until his last breath, His method he ne'er failed to use; When interr'd a corpse lay, Amen he'd scarce say, Before he cry'd Who pays the dues? Not a tear now he's dead, by friend or foe shed; The first they were few, if he'd any; Of the last he had more, than tongue can count o'er, Who'd have hang'd the old churl for a penny.