My
bowels yearned with sympathy, and putting in his hand a small
token of my gratitude and goodness, I departed with a hearty
benediction on him, Dame Honeyball, and the parish club of
Crooked Lane--not forgetting my shabby, but sententious friend,
in the oil-cloth hat and copper nose.
Thus have I given a "tedious brief" account of this interesting
research, for which, if it prove too short and unsatisfactory, I
can only plead my inexperience in this branch of literature, so
deservedly popular at the present day. I am aware that a more
skilful illustrator of the immortal bard would have swelled the
materials I have touched upon to a good merchantable bulk,
comprising the biographies of William Walworth, Jack Straw, and
Robert Preston; some notice of the eminent fishmongers of St.
Michael's; the history of Eastcheap, great and little; private
anecdotes of Dame Honeyball and her pretty daughter, whom I have
not even mentioned; to say nothing of a damsel tending the breast
of lamb (and whom, by the way, I remarked to be a comely lass
with a neat foot and ankle);--the whole enlivened by the riots of
Wat Tyler, and illuminated by the great fire of London.
All this I leave, as a rich mine, to be worked by future
commentators, nor do I despair of seeing the tobacco-box, and the
"parcel-gilt goblet " which I have thus brought to light the
subject of future engravings, and almost as fruitful of
voluminous dissertations and disputes as the shield of Achilles
or the far-famed Portland Vase.
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