To be spoken in the character of Tony Lumpkin
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Well, now all’s ended, and my comrades gone,
Pray what becomes of mother’s only son?
A hopeful blade!—in town I’ll fix my station,
And try to make a bluster in the nation.
As for my cousin Neville, I renounce her.
Off, in a crack, I’ll carry big Bet Bouncer.
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Why should not I in the great world appear?
I soon shall have a thousand pounds a year;
No matter what a man may here inherit,
In London—gad, they’ve some regard to spirit
I see the horses prancing up the streets.
And big Bet Bouncer bobs to all she meets;
Then hoiks to jigs and pastimes every night—
Not to the plays—they say it ain’t polite:
To Sadler’s Wells, perhaps, or operas go.
And once, by chance, to the roratorio.
Thus, here and there, forever up and down.
We’ll set the fashions, too, to half the town;
And then at auctions—money ne’er regard—
Buy pictures, like the great, ten pounds a yard:
Zounds! we shall make these London gentry say,
We know what’s damned genteel as well as they!
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