1830.] Sir John de Bull. 323 



What was the shape and colour of his hat, or 

 The fashion of his breeches well, I wot, 

 The latter must have been, indeed, capacious, 

 Seeing our knight's dimensions were so spacious). 



He kept a host of servants, more, perhaps, 

 Than he had any need of grooms and pages, 

 And women, with their weans upon their laps 

 Crying for spoonmeat, scullions of all ages ; 

 Some gaping hungrily for broken scraps ; 

 And some for nicer picking, and their wages 

 In good hard cash ; and some old women vain, 

 Who dozed , and curled their wigs, then dozed again." 



Our good knight's household seems to have been rather heterogeneous 

 in its arrangements. Of what earthly use. could all those women and 

 weans be, but to consume his substance, and, worse than all, his patience 

 and his temper ? We cannot, however, avoid noticing the harmless 

 nature of his fc old women vain," and comparing them with the same 

 species in our own days. Would that they had no more dangerous 

 employment than " dozing and curling their wigs ;" that they had not 

 such an antipathy to dust, such a desire for prying into lumber- closets, 

 and such a mania for interfering with the Press ! Heaven and earth, 

 what a clatter amongst the china and glasses ! A poor fly has presumed 

 to come too near the sugar-basin. Up goes the Scarlet-duster* and the 

 insect is annihilated ! 



" Tantaene animis celestibus irse ?" 



We resume our quotation. 



" I shall not tell the names of all this host ; 

 (In truth 'twould be a very tedious job :) 

 Each servant had his own especial post ; 

 The buttery, the larder, kitchen hob, 

 And eke the cellar. Those John prided most 

 Were valiant Dogberry and Trimming Sob 

 Fi-Fum, from Aberdeen, and Massa Mungo 

 All honest men ' sed intervallo longo.' 



Our author's description of those worthies is somewhat too long for 

 quotation within the limits which we can allow for this article. The 

 great " captain of the watch," whom Shakspeare describes, is altogether 

 a more amusing character than the " valiant Dogberry'' described here. 

 His absurdities are more innocent, and contain more naivete. However, 

 we think, that if Shakspeare had been "mad" enough to imagine such 

 a character as " Dogberry in power" qfficio he would have painted 

 him much in the same style as the present author has done. 



Trimming Bob as his name implies was a shifty sort of personage, 

 who could see a coining wind, (as pigs are said to do in Yorkshire,) and 

 always managed to change his position accordingly. He once left his 

 master's service, upon some point of principle, but soon returned, having 



* Some pluckless people, who are fond of finding out meanings where they do not exist, 

 may imagine that we allude here to our worthy Attorney-Greneral ; but we can prove to a 

 demonstration, that they are quite at fault. It is an axiom of toothless old women, that 

 their bark is worse than their bite ; Sir James's bark and bite are equally bad : ergo t Sir 

 James is not an old woman. Q. E. D. 



2 S 2 



