WHAT BECAME OF THE COACHMEN 305 



Churchyard. lie called it Tlie Lament and 

 Anticipation: of a Stage-CoachuHdi. It Avas, in- 

 deed, a very doleful production, describing what 

 was already liaj^pening on other roads and was 

 presently to l)efall on this. It is not proposed 

 to quote the sixteen pages of this poetical effort. 

 Let two verses suffice to show at once how, if his 

 Muse did limp unmistakahly, she Avas not wholly 

 destitute of descrij^tive force : — • 



The smiling cliaml;ermaid, she too forlorn, 

 The boots' gruff voice, the waiter's busy zest, 



The ostler's whistle, or the guard's lond horn, 



No more shall call them from their place of rest. 



Then comes the final catastrophe : — 



The next we heard, some new-invented plan 

 Had in a Union lodged our ancient fiiend. 



Come here and see, for thou shalt see the man 

 Doom'd by the railroad to so sad an end. 



The end was not yet, hut the Lynn "Union" 

 was off the road in 1817, and Cross could not 

 ohtain any form of employment on the railway, 

 lie had already, in 181G, petitioned Parliament, 

 hut without avail ; and now entered upon tliose 

 unhappy years in a\ liich he eked out a precarious 

 existence on the occasional aid given him hy such 

 men as Henry Villehois, the good-heaited Norfolk 

 sjxjrting squire, and others wlio liad often been 

 passengers on the box-seat of the " Union." In 

 those years he published several pieces in verse, 

 generally cast in the ambitious epic form. Un- 

 fortunately, he was not the poet lie thought 

 himself, and they are rather turgid and bombastic 

 VOL. II. 20 



