APPENDIX. 449
“ The loaded cart itself cannot withstand their fury, and the hideous yells of Coal Johnie resound through
the vaulted sky.-The sour-milk barrels are overturned, and deluges of Corstorphine cream ran down our
strands, while the poor unhappy milk-maid wrings her hands with sorrow.
‘‘ Who, then, can blame the wise guardians of Edina, whose greatest care is the preservation of her people
and the safety of her inhabitants 1-Be hush, therefore, ye malevolent tongues, let sedition perish, and animosities
be forgotten.”
This is followed by a soliloquy of the old Port, narrating some facts in its own hktory not unworthy of
being recorded :-
. 66 The Last Speech, hfession, and Dying Words, of the Nether Bm Porch of Edin6urgh, which was mp8ed
,
to roup and sale on Thursday, the 9th of August 1764 :-
“ I was erected by King James VI. of ever-glorious memory, whose effigies was put upon my inside, and stood
there, till demoliahed by CromweZE the Usurper. My inscription is a8 follows :-
Anag.
Aris ercubo.
Jacobus Fkx.
Non sic excubie, nec circumtantia pila,
Ut tutatur amor.-
Englihed thus :-
Watch-tow’rs, and thund’ring wall4 vain fencee prove;
No guards to monarchs l i e their people’s love.
Jacobua VI. Rex, Anna Regina, 1606.
‘‘ May my clock be struck dumb in the other world, if I lie in this ; and may Mack, the reformer of Edina’s
lofty spires,never bestride my weathercock on high, if I deviate from truth in these my last words. Tho’ my fabric
shall be levelled with the dust of the earth, yet I fall in hope, that my Cock shall be exalted on some more
modern dome, where it shall shine like the burr&hed gold, reflecting the rays of the sun to the eyes of ages
unborn. The daring Mack shall yet look down from my Cock, high in the airy region, to the brandy shops
below, where large grey-beards shall appear to him no bigger than mutchkin bottles, and mutchkin bottles shall
be in his sight like the spark of a diamond.
“Many, alas ! have been my crimes, but the greatest of all wm, receiving the head of the brave Marquis of
Montrose from the hands of dastardly miscreants,” &c.
What the exact date or the incidents that marked the close 01 the poet’s histoiy were, we are not aware,
though it is not very dscult to guess the probable career of such a worshipper at the shrines of Bacchus and
the Muses. We learn from his poems that he visited London in 1765-if we are safe in drawing such inferences
from any declaration of his verse. He seems to hint at a h a 1 abandonment of Edinburgh, its tasteleas citizens
being left free to get a bill for removing, not the Cross alone, but even King Charles’s statue, the pride of the
Scottish capital,from Parliament Close, without any one molesting themwith remonstrance in prose’or rhyme. All
classes are represented as mourning the loss of this persodication of virtue clad in satiric guise. There is no
doubt, however, that he died at Ediburgh in 1759, after having been one of the most noted among the minor
characters in its compact little community for upwards of thirty years. His ghost may address the bereaved
capital on his final exit, in a verse of the ‘‘ Epistle to Claudero, on his arrival at London, 1765 : ”-
“ Now vice may rear her hydra’s head,
And strike defenceless virtue dead ;
Religion’s heart may melt and bleed
Since satire from your streets is fled,
With grief and sorrow,
Poor Edinburrow I ”
3 L
