6 should run thus. May it please your M My, we are many of us worth a hundred thousand pounds; and are possessed of several other inestimable advantages. For the preservation of this money and those advantages we are chiefly indebted to your M―y. We are 'therefore once more assembled to assure your My of our fidelity. This, it is true, we have lately assured 'your My five or six times, but we are willing once 'more to repeat what can't be doubted, and to kiss your 'royal hand, and the Queen's hand, and thus sincerely 'to convince you, that we shall never do anything to deprive you of one loyal subject, or any one of ourselves ' of one hundred thousand pounds.' Should we not upon reading such an address, think that people a little silly, who thus made such unmeaning professions ?-Excuse me, Mr. Printer, no man upon earth has a more profound respect for the abilities of the aldermen and the Common Council than I; but I could wish they would not take up a monarch's time in these good-natured trifles, who I am told seldom spends a moment in vain. 6 The example set by the City of London will probably be followed by every other community in the British Empire. Thus we shall have a new set of addresses from every little borough with but four freemen and a burgess ; day after day shall we see them come up with hearts filled with gratitude, laying the vows of a loyal people at the foot of the throne. Death! Mr. Printer, they'll hardly leave our courtiers time to scheme a single project for beating the French; and our enemies may gain upon us, while we are thus employed in telling our governor how much we intend to keep them under. But a people by too frequent a use of addresses may by this means come at last to defeat the very purpose for which they are designed. If we are thus exclaiming in raptures upon every occasion, we deprive ourselves of the powers of flattery when there may be a real necessity. A boy three weeks ago swimming across the Thames, was every minute crying out, for his amusement, I've got the cramp, I've got the cramp ; the boatmen pushed off once or twice, and they found it was fun; he soon after cried out in earnest, but nobody believed him, and so he sunk to the bottom. In short, sir, I am quite displeased with any unnecessary cavalcade whatever. I hope we shall soon have occasion to triumph, and then I shall be ready myself either to eat at a turtle feast, or to shout at a bonfire; and will lend either my faggot at the fire, or flourish my hat at every loyal health that may be proposed. I am the same Common Council-man who troubled you some days ago. To whom can I complain but to you? for you have many a dismal correspondent; in this time of joy my wife does not choose to hear me, because she says I'm always melancholy when she's in spirits. I have been to see the Coronation, and a fine sight it was, as I am told. To those who had the pleasure of being near spectators, the diamonds, I am told, were as thick as Bristol stones in a show-glass; the ladies and gentlemen walked all along, one foot before another, and threw their eyes about them, on this side and that, perfectly like clock-work. Oh! Mr. Printer, it had been a fine sight indeed, if there was but a little more eating. 1 First inserted in second edition. Instead of that, there we sat, penned up in our scaffoldings, like sheep upon a market-day in Smithfield ; but the devil a thing could I get to eat (God pardon me for swearing) except the fragments of a plum-cake, that was all squeezed into crumbs in my wife's pocket, as she came through the crowd. You must know, sir, that in order to do the thing genteelly, and that all my family might be amused at the same time, my wife, my daughter, and I, took two guinea places for the Coronation, and I gave my two eldest boys (who, by the by, are twins, fine children) eighteenpence apiece to go to Sudrick Fair, to see the court of the Black King of Morocco, which will serve to please children well enough. 6 That we might have good places on the scaffolding, my wife insisted upon going at seven o'clock the evening before the Coronation, for she said she would not lose a full prospect for the world. This resolution I own shocked me. 'Grizzle,' said I to her, 'Grizzle, my dear, 'consider that you are but weakly, always ailing, and 'will never bear sitting out all night upon the scaffold. 'You remember what a cold you caught the last fast'day, by rising but half an hour before your time to go 'to church, and how I was scolded as the cause of it. 'Beside, my dear, our daughter Anna Amelia Wilhelmina Carolina, will look like a perfect fright, if she sits up, and you know the girl's face is something at her time 'of life, considering her fortune is but small.' 'Mr. Grogan,' replied my wife, Mr. Grogan, this is always the case, when you find me in spirits; I don't want to go, not I; nor I don't care whether I go at all, it is 'seldom that I am in spirits, but this is always the case.' In short, Mr. Printer, what will you have on 't? to the Coronation we went. 6 6 What difficulties we had in getting a coach, how we were shoved about in the mob, how I had my pocket picked of the last new almanac, and my steel tobacco-box; how my daughter lost half an eyebrow and her laced shoe in a gutter; my wife's lamentation upon this, with the adventures of the crumbled plum cake, and broken brandy-bottle, what need I relate all these; we suffered this and ten times more before we got to our places. At last, however, we were seated. My wife is certainly a heart of oak; I thought sitting up in the damp night air would have killed her; I have known her for two months take possession of our easy-chair, mobbed up in flannel nightcaps, and trembling at a breath of air; but she now bore the night as merrily as if she had sat up at a christening. My daughter and she did not seem to value it of a farthing. She told me two or three stories that she knows will always make me laugh, and my daughter sung me the Noontide air, towards one o'clock in the morning. However, with all their endeavours I was as cold and as dismal as ever I remember. If this be the pleasures of a coronation, cried I to myself, I had rather see the court of King Solomon in all his glory at my ease in Bartholomew Fair. Towards morning sleep began to come fast upon me; and the sun rising and warming the air, still inclined me to rest a little. You must know, sir, that I am naturally of a sleepy constitution; I have often sat up at table with my eyes open, and have been asleep all the while. What will you have on 't? just about eight o'clock in the morning I fell fast asleep. I fell into the most pleasing dream in the world. I shall never forget it; I dreamed that I was at my Lord Mayor's feast, and had scaled the crust of a venison pasty. I kept eating and eating, in my sleep, and thought I could never have enough. After some time, the pasty methought was taken away, and the dessert was brought in its room. Thought I to myself, if I have not got enough of the venison, I am resolved to make it up by the largest snap at the sweetmeats. Accordingly, I grasped a whole pyramid; the rest of the guests seeing me with so much, one gave me a snap, and the other gave me a snap, I was pulled this way by my neighbour on the right hand, and that by my neighbour on the left, but still kept my ground without flinching, and continued eating and pocketing as fast as I could. I never was so pulled and hauled in my whole life. At length, however, going to smell to a lobster that lay before me, methought it caught me with its claws fast by the nose. The pain I felt upon this occasion is inexpressible; in fact it broke my dream; when, awaking, I found my wife and daughter applying a smelling-bottle to my nose; and telling me it was time to go home, they assured me every means had been tried to awake me, while the procession was going forward, but that I still continued to sleep till the whole ceremony was over. Mr. Printer, this is a hard case, and as I read your most ingenious work, it will be some comfort, when I see this inserted, to find thatI write for it too. I am, Your distressed, Humble Servant, L. GROGAN. |