Ty hye, ty hye*! O sweet delight! Fara diddle dino; This is idle fino. So so so so! fine English days! Fara diddle dino; This is idle fino. What a capital satire upon the gullibility of the world, which appears to have been as great in the olden time as at present! Rely upon it, worthy reader, nothing is to be done, especially in this Metropolis, without tickling the age. From the minister of state, down to the mountebank who figures on the tight rope at Astley's Amphitheatre, all are engaged in the same game; and well I wot, many an honest English Ass contrives, by hook or by crook, to pass for an Unicorn. CLI. Strike it up, neighbour, Thou shalt be well paid for thy labour: I mean to spend my shoe sole, In dancing round the May pole; * A sort of chuckling ironical exclamation. Vide No. LXX. 66 I will be blythe and brisk; Leap and skip, Hop and trip, Turn about In the rout, Until my weary joints can scarce frisk. There seems such a determination to be happy about the man who means to wear out his very shoes in dancing, that one can scarcely help participating in his feelings. “I will be blythe and brisk," says he, “I'll leap and skip, turn about, &c. (à la mode de Jim Crow*) till I can scarce frisk;" like certain young ladies of my acquaintance, who upon my remarking how earnestly they seemed to exert themselves in the dance, replied, "To be sure; Papa only allows us a ball once in two years, and we are deter"mined to have as much as we can for our money." At the same moment I caught the eye of the unfortunate individual who was playing quadrilles: it spoke volumes, and he continued his labours with a sort of dogged desperation. 66 CLII. The Nightingale, the organ of delight; The nimble Lark, the Blackbird, and the Thrush; And all the pretty choristers of flight, That chant their music notes in every bush; Let them no more contend who shall excell; The Cuckoo is the bird that bears the bell. These Songs being denominated "Phantasticke Spirits," I should think it probable that a little sarcasm was in * Vide Play-bills of the Adelphi Theatre, 1836–7. tended in thus celebrating the Cuckoo, his name being, ... the Cuckoo gray, 66 "Whose note full many a man doth mark, Midsummer Night's Dream. As the writer, however, has not informed us why the Cuckoo should bear the bell, I will relate a piece of useful information, (particularly to housekeepers,) by which it may be seen that he is entitled to take precedence of all common birds. "If you mark where your right foot doth “stand the first time you do hear the Cuckoo, and then grave or dig up the earth under the same; wheresoever "this earth is sprinkled about, there will no fleas breed!" From an Old Pamphlet mentioned in the Censura Literaria, entitled, "A thousand notable things of sundry "sorts, whereof some are wonderful, some strange, some pleasant, divers necessary, a great sort profitable, and "many precious." 66 The author quotes this, he says, from some older work, but at the same time vouches for the fact from his own experience! Mention is made, in Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, of a poem in seven-line stanzas by Dan Robert or Rogerus Saltwode, Monke of St. Austen's, at Canterbury, A.D. 1510, entitled, "A comparyson between iiij byrdes, the lark, the "nyghtyngale, the thrushe, and the cucko, for their syngynge, who should be Chauntour of the Quere." Most likely the Phantastic Spirit now under consideration had reference to some such ballad of an anterior date. 66 CLIII. Alas! tarry but one half hour, Until an opportunity fit my power: Then will I look and sigh out all my sorrow. Now every body looketh on, Adieu! why did I aspire high? For now my ruinous end is nigh. Yet will I still prolong my last farewell; Will go near to break my heart. That doth swell. Who has not This is an exquisite touch of nature. known the time when he would have given worlds for the delay of one half-hour, (ay! of one minute) that thereby he might have further opportunity of gazing his last look, and sighing his last adieu, unmolested by the presence of every body looking on? CLIV. Death hath deprived me of my dearest friend; The world shall end, and end shall all things have. All things have end on earth that nature wrought; That* nature wrought shall unto dust be brought. *Sc. that which. Weelkes has adapted this stanza to music of six voices, and entitled it A Remembrance of his friend Thomas Morley, but its original name is " A Dump upon the death of the "most noble Henry, late Earl of Pembroke." It is to be found in Witte's pilgrimage thro' a world of amorous sonnets, soul passions, and other passages, divine, philosophical, moral, poetical and political; by John Davies of Hereford, A.D. 1590. This species of composition, wherein each line repeats a portion of its antecedent, is called by Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, a heel-treading kind of verse. CLV. Since Robin Hood, Maid Marian, He did labour after the Tabor For to dance, then into France To skip it. In hope of gains He will trip it, On the toe Diddle do. Volumes being already filled with narrations relative to Robin Hood and his coadjutors, it is unnecessary for me to say anything about that notable outlaw; being moreover warned by a proverb quoted in Camden's Remains, that "Tales of Robin Hood are good for Fools," among whom I may not class my readers. I find that William Kempe was a celebrated Comedian, Morris Dancer and H |