William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinderGeorge Canning (17701827)
Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order—
Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in’t.
So have your breeches!
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike
Road, what hard work ’tis crying all day, ‘Knives and
Scissors to grind O!’
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
Was it some squire? or parson of the parish?
Or the attorney?
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story.
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.
Custody; they took me before the justice;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish
Stocks for a vagrant.
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir.
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance—
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!
(Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)