{2} Now the
salt-bearers and the pages bank their collections in one common stock,
and the juvenile band partake of the captain's banquet, and drink
success to his future prospects in Botham's port. Then, too, old
Herbertus Stockhore--he must not be forgotten; I have already introduced
him to your notice in p. 59, and my friend Bob Transit has illustrated
the sketch with his portrait; yet here he demands notice in his official
character, and perhaps I cannot do better than quote the humorous
account given of him by the elegant pen of an old Etonian {3}
"Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty? Who is that old
cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and
grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?"
"That, my most noble cynic, is a prodigious personage. Shall birth-days
and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its
minstrel 1 He, sir, is Herbertus Stockhore; who first called upon his
muse in the good old days of Paul Whitehead,--
2 See plate of the Montem, sketched on the spot.
3 See Knight's Quarterly Magazine, No. II.
~102~~ run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and
fires,--and is now hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen
Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate.
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