George Colman

“ Roger, at first, walk’d to and fro,
With tolerably tranquil paces;
But finding John determine’d to remain,
Roger, each time he pass’d, thro’ spite or pain,
Made, at his adversary, hideous faces.
How misery will lower human pride!
And make us buckle!—
Roger, who, all his life, had John defied,
Was now oblige’d to speak him fair,—and truckle.
“Behold me,” Roger cried, “behold me, John!
Entreating as a favour you’ll be gone;
Me! your sworn foe, tho’ fellow-lodger ”

“ Where Somnus, son of Nox, the humble copy
Of his own daughter Mors,8 had made assault
On the Duke’s eye-lids,—not with juice of poppy,
But potent draughts, distill’d from hops and malt.
Certainly, nothing operates much quicker
Against two persons’ secret dialogues,
Than one of them being asleep, in liquor,
Snoring like twenty thousand hogs.
Yet circumstance did, presently, require
The Knight to tell his tale;
And to instruct his Man, knock’d down with ale,
That he (Sir Thomas) had knock’d down a Friar.
How wake a man, in such a case? ”

“ Where John, by Roger’s brick-bat, chance’d to fall,
And Roger had a key that could undo it;
Thro’ this same door, at any time of day,
They brought, into the Convent, corn, and hay;——
Sometimes, at dusk, a pretty girl came thro’ it:
Just to confess herself, to some grave codger;
Perhaps, she came to John,—perhaps, to Roger.
Out at this portal Roger made a shift
To lug his worst of foes:
For, seizing (as the gout was wont) his toes,
He dragg’d the load he couldn’t lift.
Achilles, thus, drew round the Trojan plain,
The ten years’ Adversary he had slain. ”

“ Now nodding to this Friar, now to that,
As thro’ the Cloister she was wont to trip;
Stopping, sometimes, to have a little chat,
On casual topicks, with the holy brothers;—
So condescending was her Ladyship,
To Roger, John, and all the others.
All this was natural enough
To any female of urbanity;—
But holy men are made of as frail stuff
As all the lighter sons of Vanity!—
And these her Ladyship’s chaste condescensions,
In Friar John bred damnable desire ”

“ Then, thro’ your palettes thrust your graphick thumbs,—
And work away!
Seeing John dead as a door nail,
Roger began to wring his hands, and wail;
Calling himself, Beast, Butcher, cruel Turk!
Thrice “Benedicite!” he mutter’d;
Thrice, in the eloquence of grief he utter’d;
“I’ve done a pretty job of journey-work!”
Some people will shew symptoms of repentance
When Conscience, like a chastening Angel, smites ’em;
Some from mere dread of the Law’s sentence,
When Newgate, like the very Devil, frights ’em ”

“ Or aim’d maliciously,—tho’ Fame says not—
Certain his soul (the Knight so crack’d his crown)
Fled from his body; but which way it went,
Or whether Friars’ souls fly up, or down,
Remains a matter of nice argument.
Points so abstruse I dare not dwell upon;
Enough, for me, his body is not gone;
For I have business, still, in my narration,
With the fat carcass of this holy porpus;
And Death, tho’ sharp in his Administration,
Never suspended such an Habeas Corpus.
END OF PART I.
THE
KNIGHT AND THE FRIAR.
PART THE SECOND. Contents
Reader! ”

“ More torture than he suffer’d from the wounds
He got among the French, in France;—
Not that I take upon me to advance
The knight was ever wounded there.
Think gravely, Sir, I pray:—fancy the Knight—
(’Tis quite a Picture) —with his heart’s delight!
Fancy you see his virtuous Lady stand,
Holding the Friar’s foulness in her hand!—
How should Sir Thomas, Sir, behave?
Why bounce, and sputter, surely, like a squib:—
You would have done the same, Sir, if a knave,
A frouzy Friar, meddle’d with your Rib.
His bosom almost burst with ire
Against the Friar;
Rage gave his face an apoplectick hue ”

“ If the Knight knew the aptness, in its full extent, of his oath, upon this occasion, we must give him more credit for his reading than we are willing to allow to military men of the age in which he flourish’d;—for, observe: he vows to cudgel a man lurking to rob his Lady of her virtue, in a bower;—how appropriately, therefore, does he swear by the God of the Gardens! ”

“ To those who dabble in their neighbours’ matters;
Therefore, he wisely held it good
To hide his practice from the neighbourhood,
And not appear, there, as a resident;
But merely one who, casually, went
To see the lodgers in the large brick house;—
To lounge, and chat, not minding time a souse;—
Like one to whom all business was quite foreign;—
And, thus, he visited his female sick;
Who lay as thick,
Within his tenement of brick,
As rabbits in a warren. ”

“ Maid of the Moor! his love return!
True love ne’er tints the cheek with shame:
When Gard’ners’ hearts, like hot-beds, burn,
A Cook may surely feed the flame.
Ah! not averse from love was she;
Tho’ pure as Heaven’s snowy flake;
Both love’d: and tho’ a Gard’ner he,
He knew not what it was to rake. ”

“ Kings hang’d poor Rogues, while rich ones were befriended.
Contents
Ye Criticks, and ye Hyper-Criticks!—who
Have deign’d (in reading this my story thro’)
A patient, or impatient, ear to lend me,—
If, as I humbly amble, ye complain
I give my Pegasus too loose a rein,
’Tis time to call my Betters to defend me.
Come, Swift! who made so merry with the Nine;
With thy far bolder Muse, Oh, shelter mine!
When she is style’d a slattern, and a trollop;—
Force stubborn Gravity to doff his gloom ”

“ So long as Friar John’s and Friar Roger’s.
I have been very accurate in my researches,
And find this Convent (truce with whys and hows)
Kept in a constant ferment with the rows
Of these two quarrelsome fat sons of Churches.
But when Sir Thomas went to his devotions,
Proceeding thro’ their Cloister with his Bride,
You never could have dream’d of their commotions,
The stiff-rump’d rascals look’d so sanctified:
And it became the custom of the Knight
To go to matins every day;
He jogg’d his Bride, as soon as it was light,
Crying, “my dear, ’tis time for us to pray.” ”

“ That Priest, and Crabstick, (to his grief) must grow,
He wish’d stout Crabstick couldn’t kill fat Friar.
Men’s wishes will be partial, now and then;—
As, in this case, ’tis plainly seen;
Wherein, Sir Thomas, full of spleen,
Wish’d to burn all the Crabs, and Clergymen.
Think ye that he,—at wishing tho’ a dab,—
To wish such harm to any Knight would urge ye? ”

“ That legions of Blue Devils seize’d the Knight;
Megrim invested his belaurell’d skull;
Spleen laid embargoes on his appetite;
Till, thro’ the day-time, he was haunted, wholly,
By all the imps of “loathed Melancholy!”—
Heaven keep her, and her imps, for ever, from us!—
An Incubus,5 whene’er he went to bed,
Sat on his stomach, like a lump of lead,
Making unseemly faces at Sir Thomas.
Plagues such as these might make a Parson swear;
Sir Thomas being but a Layman,
Swore, very roundly, à la militaire,
Or, rather, (from vexation) like a Drayman:
Damning his Walls, out of all line and level ”

“ When a man, as Sterne observes, “can extricate himself with an equivoque, in such an unequal match,”— (and two booksellers to one poet are tremendous odds) —“he is not ill off;”—but reflecting a little, as I went home, I began to think my pun was a vile one,—and did not assist me, one jot, in my argument;—and, now I have put it upon paper, it appears viler still;—it is execrable.—So, without much further reasoning, I sat down to rhyming;—rhyming, as the reader will see, in open defiance of all reason,—except the reasons of Messrs. ”

“ Swift thro’ the night’s foul air they spin;
They took her to the green well’s brink,
And, with a souse, they plump’d her in.
So true the fair, so true the youth,
Maids, to this day, their story tell:
And hence the proverb rose, that Truth
Lies in the bottom of a well.
Contents
Dick ended:—Tom and Will approve’d his strains ”

“ As Shove came up, tho’ he had, long time, kept
His character, for patience, very laudably,
He couldn’t help, at every step he stepp’d,
Grunting, and grumbling, in his gizzard, audibly.
For Isaac’s mental feelings, you must know,
Not only were considerably hurt,
But his corporeal, also—
Having no other clothing than a shirt;—
A dress, beyond all doubt, most light and airy,
It being, then, a frost in January.
When Shove was deep down stairs, the Doctor heard,
(Being much nearer the stair top,)
Just here and there, a random word,
Of the Soliloquies that Shove let drop ”

“ It must be confess’d that the last mention’d attribute of this Deity was stretch’d forth to promote pleasure in some instances, instead of fear;—for it was a sportive custom, in the hilarity of recent marriages, to seat the Bride upon his Palus;—but this circumstance by no means disproves its efficacy as a dread to Robbers; on the contrary, that implement must have been peculiarly terrifick, which could sustain the weight of so many Brides, without detriment to its firmness, or elasticity. Return
There is a terrible jumble in Somnus’s family. ”

“ And what’s impossible can’t be;
And never, never, comes to pass! ”

“ Will kick’d out the Doctor:—but, when ill indeed,
E’en dismissing the Doctor don’t always succeed; ”

“ An old Gentlewoman, a great admirer of the black letter, (as many old Gentlewomen are) presented the Author of these Tales with the Original MS. of this Sonnet; advising the publication of a facsimile of the Knight’s hand-writing. It is painful, after this, to advance, that the Sonnet, so far from being genuine, is one of the clumsiest literary forgeries, that the present times have witnessed. It appears, in this authentick Story, that Sir Thomas Erpingham was married in the reign of Henry the Fifth ”

“ He was the son of Nox, by Erebus;—and Erebus, according to different accounts, was not only Nox’s husband, but her brother,—and even her son, by Chaos;—and Mors was daughter of Somnus, by that devil of a Goddess Nox, the mother of his father and himself!—The heathen Deities held our canonical notions in utter contempt; and must have laugh’d at the idea (which, surely, nobody does now,) of forbidding a man to marry his Grandmother. Return
Vide Lord Chesterfield’s Letters.—This noble Author, by the by, has set his dignified face against risibility. ”

“ Crow, in the dark, now, reached the stair-case head;
Shove, in the dark, was coming up to bed.
A combination of ideas flocking,
Upon the pericranium of Crow,—
Occasion’d by the hasty knocking,
Succeeded by a foot he heard below,—
He did, as many folks are apt to do,
Who argue in the dark, and in confusion;—
That is, from the Hypothesis, he drew
A false conclusion:
Concluding Shove to be the person sent,
With an express, from the brick tenement ”

“ Me!—who, in agony, tho’ suing now to you,
Would, once, have seen you damn’d ere make a bow to you.
Me,—Roger!”12
To this address, so fraught with the pathetick,
John remain’d dumb, as a Pythagorean;
Seeming to hint, “Roger, you’re a plebeian
Peripatetick.”
When such choice oratory has not hit,
When it is, e’en, unanswer’d by a grunt,
’Twould justify tame Job to curse a bit,
And set an Angler swearing, in his punt.
Cholerick Roger could not brook it;—
So seeing a huge brick-bat, up he took it;
And aiming, like a marksman at a crow,
Plump on the breast he hit his deadly foe ”

“ N.B. Half our modern Legends are either borrow’d or translated from the German. Return
This is the conclusion of all that was originally printed under the title of “My Night-gown and Slippers.” Return
Roses were not emblems of faction, cries the Critick, till the reign of Henry the Sixth.—Pooh!—This is a figure, not an anachronism. Suppose, Mr. Critick, you and all your descendants should be hang’d, although your father died in his bed:—Why then posterity, when talking of your father, may allude to the family gallows, which his issue shall have render’d notoriously symbolical of his House. ”

“ ADVERTISEMENT. My Booksellers inform’d me, lately, that several inquiries had been made for My Night-Gown and Slippers,—but that every copy had been sold;—they had been out of print these two years.—“Then publish them again,” said I, boldly,— (I print at my own risk) —and with an air of triumph. Messrs. Cadell and Davies advise’d me to make additions.—“The Work is, really, too short,” said Messrs. ”

“ It would be well for us poor devils, who call ourselves Comic Writers, if our efforts were always as successful in raising a Laugh as his Lordship’s censure upon it. Return
I am aware that much has been said, of old, relative to the “cura boum,” and the “optuma torvæ forma bovis;”—but, for a show of cattle, I would back Smithfield, or most of our English market Towns, against any forum boarium of the Romans. Return
Tarquinius Superbus, the last King of Rome;—he was a haughty Monarch, and built the Cloaca maxima. Return
This is a palpable plagiarism. ”

“ The Table of Contents was added, as well as the titles My Night-gown and Slippers and The Knight and the Friar. The use of quotation marks (“”) has been modernized; the spelling and other idiosyncrasies have not. ”

“ For, certainly, (tho’ not with wit) the Knight
Had hit the Friar very hard, indeed!
And heads, nineteen in twenty, ’tis confest,
Can feel a crab-stick sooner than a jest.
There was, in the Knight’s family, a man
Cast in the roughest mould Dame Nature boasts ”

“ Rolla thus addresses Pizarro: “Behold me, at thy feet—Me,—Rolla!—Me, that never yet have bent or bow’d—in humble agony I sue to you.”—The theft is more glaring, as the Apostrophe, both here, and in the original, occurs in the midst of a strong incident, and is address’d to an Enemy by a proud spirit, in very moving circumstances. Return
Vide Part 1st, page 61, lines 4-7. Return
Shakspeare certainly borrow’d this expression from Sir Thomas.—See Macbeth. Return
This seems to be a new comparative ”

“ As great Lords’ stories often are. ”