FullReads

Four o’clock.

Such a sermon!–tho’ not about dancing, my dear;
‘Twas only on the end of the world being near.
Eighteen Hundred and Forty’s the year that some state
As the time for that accident–some Forty Eight[1]
And I own, of the two, I’d prefer much the latter,
As then I shall be an old maid, and ‘twon’t matter.
Once more, love, good-by–I’ve to make a new cap;
But am now so dead tired with this horrid mishap
Of the end of the world that I must take a nap.

[1] With regard to the exact time of this event, there appears to be a difference only of about two or three years among the respective calculators. M. Alphonse Nicole, Docteur en Droit. et Avocat, merely doubts whether it is to be in 1846 or 1847.

LETTER IV. FROM PATRICK MAGAN, ESQ., TO THE REV. RICHARD —-.

He comes from Erin’s speechful shore
Like fervid kettle, bubbling o’er
With hot effusions–hot and weak;
Sound, Humbug, all your hollowest drums,
He comes, of Erin’s martyrdoms
To Britain’s well-fed Church to speak.

Puff him, ye Journals of the Lord,[1]
Twin prosers, Watchman and Record!
Journals reserved for realms of bliss,
Being much too good to sell in this,
Prepare, ye wealthier Saints, your dinners,
Ye Spinsters, spread your tea and crumpets;
And you, ye countless Tracts for Sinners,
Blow all your little penny trumpets.
He comes, the reverend man, to tell
To all who still the Church’s part take,
Tales of parsonic woe, that well
Might make even grim Dissenter’s heart ache:–
Of ten whole bishops snatched away
For ever from the light of day;
(With God knows, too, how many more,
For whom that doom is yet in store)–
Of Rectors cruelly compelled
From Bath and Cheltenham to haste home,
Because the tithes, by Pat withheld,
Will not to Bath or Cheltenham come;
Nor will the flocks consent to pay
Their parsons thus to stay away;–
Tho’ with such parsons, one may doubt
If ’tisn’t money well laid out;–
Of all, in short, and each degree
Of that once happy Hierarchy,
Which used to roll in wealth so pleasantly;
But now, alas! is doomed to see
Its surplus brought to nonplus presently!

Such are the themes this man of pathos,
Priest of prose and lord of bathos,
Will preach and preach t’ye, till you’re dull again;
Then, hail him, Saints, with joint acclaim,
Shout to the stars his tuneful name,
Which Murtagh was, ere known to fame,
But now is Mortimer O’Mulligan!

All true, Dick, true as you’re alive–
I’ve seen him, some hours since, arrive.
Murtagh is come, the great Itinerant–
And Tuesday, in the market-place,
Intends, to every saint and sinner in’t,
To state what he calls Ireland’s Case;
Meaning thereby the case of his shop,-
Of curate, vicar, rector, bishop,
And all those other grades seraphic,
That make men’s souls their special traffic,
Tho’ caring not a pin which way
The erratic souls go, so they pay.–
Just as some roguish country nurse,
Who takes a foundling babe to suckle,
First pops the payment in her purse,
Then leaves poor dear to–suck its knuckle:
Even so these reverend rigmaroles
Pocket the money–starve the souls.
Murtagh, however, in his glory,
Will tell, next week, a different story;
Will make out all these men of barter,
As each a saint, a downright martyr,
Brought to the stake–i.e. a beef one,
Of all their martyrdoms the chief one;
Tho’ try them even at this, they’ll bear it,
If tender and washt down with claret.