Punch: Punch (52.1867)

192

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 11, 1867.

BRUSHING PA’S NEW HAT.

Edith. “ Now, Tommy, you keep Turning slowly, till we’ve Done it all round.”

SOLVITUR ABERRANDO;

OR, WALPOLE'S WANDERINGS.

Oh, weep for the hour
When Home Secretary’s power
To the man of tears and terrors, Spencer Walpole, came,

The clerks were puzzled quite,

And Waddington waxed white.

At first for consternation, then red for shame.

A Sec we may have soon,

Who to quite another tune

Would handle blatant Beales if to conference he came ;

But none will see the day
When the stain will pass away

Which the tears for Hyde Park railings left on Walpole’s name.

When Wager took the life
Of his miserable wife.

And deserved, if ever murderer deserved, to swing,

Walpole clapped his veto’s check
’Twixt the gallows and his neck,

And mercy’s self to disrepute contrived to bring.

Then the Toomer business lay,

Like a rat-trap in the way,

For Walpole to get oaught in, till Waddington quite swore:
His chief so blundered in’t,

Both in and out of print,

You’d have thought it quite impossible to blunder more.

First, the verdict he’d respect;

Then, the proofs he would dissect;

'fill, at last ’twixt would and wouldn’t, he wandered to the light:
But his reasons when we get
Why the verdict he upset,

We find he had wrong reasons for doing what was right!

To be now right, now wrong,

To mortals doth belong;

If Humanum est errare, then Walpole’s twice a man ;
With the best intent, we know,

Wrong he still contrives to go.

The most persistent bungler since bungling first began.

EXTRAORDINARY ATTRACTION.

Mr. Punch,

A Play-house Advertisement takes me mightily. It gives
out that:—

THE SATYR is the title of a New Ballet Divertissement at the
*- Lyceum Theatre, iu which the extraordinary dancer, M. Espinosa, will make
his fifth appearance in London these five years; Mdlle. Sophie and a numerous
Corps de Ballet.

I suppose M. Espinosa, the extraordinary dancer, is to play the
character the Ballet is named after. It is no doubt very proper that
he who plays a dancing Satyr should be an extraordinary dancer; and
truly, methinks to do it well he ought to be a very extraordinary dancer
indeed. I do mean to go, if I can get away, and see M. Espinosa
dance. If, as I suppose, he act the Satyr, his dancing cannot but be
extraordinary if he do it right; and the rather because while other
dancers trip it, as the saying is, on the light fantastique toe, a Satyr must
needs trip it on his hoofs; which is more fantastique. I long to see
M. Espinosa with Mdlle. Sophie dance as a Satyr among the corps
de ballet, and expect the dancing to be mighty pretty, and most extra-
ordinary, and myself to be pleased and delighted with it more than I
ever was with anything iu my life almost; for nothing ever did or doth,
I think, please me so much as extraordinary dancing such as I do
imagine a Satyr’s would be. It is very strange that I should continue
to like such things just as much as I ever did in the flesh, and perhaps
more; and I very much admire your new Table, and the fair Medium
you get this communication by from g p£rys