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PUNCH.]
NATURE OF PUNCH'S PERFORMANCES.
43
In all his course he scrupled not
To make a jest of murder,
So fathers, brothers, went to pot:—
It really makes one shudder
To think upon the horrid track
Of blood he shed on system;
And, though with hump upon his back,
The dames could not resist him.

'Tis said, that he a compact sign'd
With one they call "Old Nich'lass;"
But if I knew them, I've no mind
To go into partic'lars.
To it, perhaps, he ow'd success
Wherever he might go, sir;
But I believe we must confess,
The ladies were so so, sir.

At last he back to England came,
A jolly rake and rover,
And pass'd him by another name,
An alias, when at Dover.
But soon the police laid a scheme,
To clap him into prison:
They took him, when he least could dream
Of such a fate as his'n.[1]

And now the day was drawing near,
The day of retribution;
The trial o'er, he felt but queer
At thought of execution.
But when the hangman, all so grim,
Declar'd that all was ready,
Punch only tipp'd the wink at him,
And ask'd after his lady.


  1. This sounds like an ignorant vulgarism; but it is, in fact, only an abbreviation, per illipsin, of his own. We find it applied to the pronoun her in George Chapman's "Humorous Day's Mirth," a comedy printed in 1599, sign: G.

    "What shall I do at sight of her and her'n?"