  One day, as Dr. Young was walking in his garden at Welwyn in company with two ladies, (one of whom he afterwards married,) the servant came to acquaint him that a gentleman wished to speak with him. “Tell him,” said the doctor, “I am too happily engaged to change my situation.” The ladies insisted that he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his patron, and his friend. But, as persuasion had no effect, one took him by the right arm, the other by the left, and led him to the garden-gate; when, finding resistance in vain, he bowed, laid his hand upon his heart, and, in that expressive manner for which he was so remarkable, spoke the following lines:— Thus Adam looked when from the garden driven, And thus disputed orders sent from heaven. Like him I go, but yet to go I’m loath; Like him I go, for angels drove us both. Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind: His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind. Ben Jonson having been invited to dine at the Falcon Tavern, where he was already deeply in debt, the landlord promised to wipe out the score if he would tell him what God, and the devil, and the world, and the landlord himself, would be best pleased with. To which the ready poet promptly replied:— God is best pleased when men forsake their sin; The devil is best pleased when they persist therein; The world’s best pleased when thou dost sell good wine; And you’re best pleased when I do pay for mine. A well-known instance of self-extrication from a dilemma is thus rendered in rhyme:— When Queen Elizabeth desired That Melville would acknowledge fairly Whether herself he most admired, Or his own sovereign, Lady Mary? The puzzled knight his answer thus expressed:— “In her own country each is handsomest.” Fair maid, you need not take the hint, Nor idle texts pursue: ’Twas only sinners that he meant, Not angels such as you. One evening at the King’s Arms, Dumfries, Burns was called from a party of friends to see an impertinent coxcomb in the form of an English commercial traveller, who patronizingly invited the Ayrshire Ploughman to a glass of wine at his table. Entering into conversation with the condescending stranger, Burns soon saw what sort of person he had to deal with. About to leave the room, the poet was urged to give a specimen of his facility in impromptu versifying, when, having asked the name and age of the conceited traveller, he instantly penned and handed him the following stanza,—after which he abruptly departed:— In seventeen hundred forty-nine, Satan took stuff to make a swine, And cuist it in a corner; But wilily he changed his plan, Shaped it to something like a man, And ca’d it Andrew Horner. After Burke had finished his extraordinary speech against Warren Hastings, the latter (according to the testimony of his private secretary, Mr. Evans) wrote the following sarcastic impromptu:— Oft have we wondered that on Irish ground No poisonous reptile ever yet was found; The secret stands revealed in Nature’s work: She saved her venom to create a Burke! Dr. Johnson’s definition of a note of admiration (!), made on the moment, is very neat:— I see a dash above a dot, Presenting to my contemplation A perfect point of admiration! An old gentleman named Gould, having married a young lady of nineteen, thus addressed his friend Dr. G. at the wedding festival:— So you see, my dear sir, though eighty years old, A girl of nineteen falls in love with old Gould. To which the doctor replied,— A girl of nineteen may love Gould, it is true, But believe me, dear sir, it is Gold without U. When Percy first published his collection of Ancient English Ballads, he was rather lavish in commendation of their beautiful simplicity. This provoked Dr. Johnson to say one evening, at the tea-table of Miss Reynolds, that he could rhyme as well and as elegantly in common narrative and conversation. “For instance,” said he,— “As, with my hat upon my head, I walked along the strand, I there did meet another man With his hat in his hand. Or, to render such poetry subservient to my own immediate use,— I therefore pray thee, Renny dear That thou wilt give to me, With cream and sugar softened well, Another cup of tea. Nor fear that I, my gentle maid, Shall long detain the cup, When once unto the bottom I Have drank the liquor up. Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth, Nor hear it with a frown; Thou canst not make the tea as fast As I can gulp it down.” Mr. Fox, the great orator, was on one occasion told by a lady that she “did not care three skips of a louse for him.” He immediately took out his pencil and wrote the following:— That she cares not for me “three skips of a louse.” I forgive the dear creature for what she has said, Since women will talk of what runs in their head. Barty Willard, who formerly lived in the northern part of Vermont, was noted for his careless, vagabond habits, ready wit, and remarkable facility at extempore rhyming. Sitting one day in a village store, among a crowd of idlers who always gathered about him on his arrival, the merchant asked Barty “why he always wore that shocking bad hat.” Barty replied that it was simply because he was unable to purchase a new one. “Come,” said the merchant; “make me a good rhyme on the old hat immediately, without stopping to think, and I’ll give you the best castor in the store.” Whereupon Barty threw his old tile on the floor, and began:— Here lies my old hat, And, pray, what of that? ’Tis as good as the rest of my raiment: If I buy me a better, You’ll make me your debtor And send me to jail for the payment. The new hat was adjudged, by the “unanimous vote of the house,” to belong to Barty, who wore it off in triumph, saying, “it was a poor head that couldn’t take care of itself.” An Oxford and Cambridge man, who had had frequent disputes concerning the divinity of Christ, chancing to meet in company, the former, with a serio-comical air, wrote the following lines and handed them to the latter:— Tu JudÆ similis Dominumque Deumque negasti; Dissimilis Judas est tibi—poenituit. [You, Judas like, your Lord and God denied; Judas, unlike to you, repentant sighed.] Whereupon the “heretic” retorted,— Tu simul et similis JudÆ, tu dissimilisque; JudÆ iterum similis sis, laqueumque petas. [You are like Judas, yet unlike that elf; Once more like Judas be, and hang yourself.] Here lies James Dodge, who dodged all good, And never dodged an evil: And, after dodging all he could, He could not dodge the Devil! Mr. Dodge sent back to the gentlemen the annexed impromptu reply, which may be considered equal to any thing ever expressed in the best days of Queens Anne or Bess:— Here lies a Hillman and a Swain; Their lot let no man choose: They lived in sin, and died in pain, And the Devil got his dues! (Dews.) A lady wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass,— God did at first make man upright; but he— To which a gentleman added,— Most surely had continued so; but she— A lady wrote upon a window some verses, intimating her design of never marrying. A gentleman wrote the following lines underneath:— The lady whose resolve these words betoken, Wrote them on glass, to show it may be broken. Sir Walter Raleigh having written on a window,— Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,— Queen Elizabeth, the instant she saw it, wrote under it,— If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all. Perhaps the most delicate flattery ever uttered was that of the ambassador, who, being asked by a beautiful queen, upon his introduction to her court, whether a celebrated beauty in his own country was the handsomest woman he had ever seen, replied, “I thought so yesterday.”
Jew, Turk or Atheist enter here; But let no Papist dare appear,— wrote the following smart reply underneath:— He who wrote this wrote it well; The same is written on the gates of hell. At one of Burns’ convivial dinners he was requested to say grace; whereupon he gave the following impromptu:— Lord, we do thee humbly thank For that we little merit.— Now Jean may take the flesh away, And Will bring in the spirit. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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