t your
hour is come! The character of Billy is inimitably well supported
throughout, or, as Horace says--

"Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constat."

'Tis true, he deserts his mistress; but 'tis for a lady of similar
disposition; it is a lady _gay_ with whom he walks: thus, though he is
false, he shows himself _full of mirth_: he is still Billy Taylor. Mark
the artifice of the poet! Like Virgil who drops the epithet "pious" on a
similar occasion, the poet here calls Billy by the appropriate epithet
"false." There is an elegance and simplicity perfectly Homeric in the
repetition of the line, "Valking with his lady gay."

"Straight she call'd for swords and pistols,
Brought they vas at her command."

Let not the sceptical reader sneer, and ask where she got, or who
brought the swords and pistols. Some kind deity, willing to assist the
purposes of her just revenge, interposed and brought her arms. Surely
Horace would allow that this was "dignus vindice nodus." But to
proceed:--

"She fell on shooting Billy Taylor
Vith his lady in his hand."

Here is an interesting incident! here a melancholy subject! what a scene
for a picture! On one side, a lady impelled by jealousy with a
discharged pistol in her hand, and a face expressive of the triumph of
revenge; on the other Billy Taylor, stretched on the cold ground, with
his hand in that of his lady, now we may suppose no longer gay, and
perhaps weeping! Observe, Billy died in the situation in which Tibullus
wished to die: he held his mistress, "_deficiente manu_."[H] O! come
here all ye young men! ye Billy Taylors for the world is full of you! ye
deserters of true-lovers, ye walkers with ladies gay, come here and
contemplate! Taylor, who a few days before was gay like you, is now alas
"stone dead," or, to use the pathetic and expressive language of
Falstaff--who by the by, was, like Billy, a gay deceiver--is now no
better than a "shotten herring!

"When the captain kim for to know it;
He very much applauded her for what she had done."

From this passage, some have taken occasion to accuse the captain of a
connivance with Billy's escape and connexion with a lady gay, that he
might enjoy Billy's first mistress. But surely this is unfounded: the
captain saw this mistress of Billy's by chance alone: and could not
therefore be supposed to have a longing for a lady whom he had never
seen till Billy had left the ship. Some have also ac