George Cruikshank's Omnibus

ENIGMA.

George Cruikshank

"A delinquent there is, and we ever shall scout him,

For roguery never would flourish without him.

We're lovers of peace; but regardless of quiet,

This knave is the first in a row or a riot;

A strange, paradoxical elf, we declare,

That shies at a couple but clings to a pair.

Though at first in the right, still he's found in the wrong;

And though harmony wakes him, yet dies in the song.

Three fifths of the error that poisons our youth,

Yet boasts of a formal acquaintance with truth.

Though not fond of boasting, yet given to brag;

And though proud of a dress, still content with a rag.

He sticks to our ribs, and he hangs by our hair,

And brings with him trouble, and torment and care;

Stands thick in our sorrows and floats in our tears,

Never leads us to Hope, but returns with our Fears;

To the worst of our passions is ever allied,

Grief, Anger, and Hatred, Rage, Terror, and Pride.

Yet still, notwithstanding, the rogue we might spare

If he kept back his old ugly phiz from the Fair."

We had by this time stopped at the end of Drury Lane to take up a passenger, who now appeared, emerging from that very dirty avenue, with an exceedingly small roll of MS. under his arm. The new-comer's eye was evidently in a fine frenzy rolling, and it was at once suspected from one end of the vehicle to the other, that he had just been writing a German Opera for Drury-lane Theatre. "Gentlemen," said he, the instant he had taken his seat, "you're all mistaken. Through that miserable cranny I have been picking a path to the theatre for the sole purpose of taking off my hat to the statue of Shakspeare, over the portico, in celebration of the event which renders its presence there no longer a libel and a mockery. You guess what I allude to. Mr. Macready has become the lessee of Drury; and the noble task which he assigned to himself in the management of Covent Garden, he purposes here to complete. The whole public will rejoice in the renewal of his experiment, which should be hailed in golden verse. I wish I could write sonnets like Milton or Wordsworth. Here are two, such as they are, addressed to the regenerator of the stage."

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