world at large,
          As folks conceive a ship who 've seen a barge.
          This is the scope of all our actors' play,
          Who hope their wooden aims will not be thrown away!"

The dance over, King Herod, with a vast profusion of barn-door majesty, marched towards the damsel, and in "very choice Italian" (which the parson of the parish composed for the occasion, and we have translated) thus complimented her:

"Bewitching maiden I dancing sprite!

I like thy graceful motion:

Ask any boon, and, honour bright!

It is at thy devotion."

The danseuse, after whispering to a saffron-complexioned crone, who played Herodias, fell down upon both knees, and pointing to the Baptist, a grave old farmer! exclaimed,

"If, sir, intending what you say,

Your Majesty don't flatter,——

I would the Baptist's head to-day

Were brought me in a platter."

The bluff butcher looked about him as sternly as one of Elkanah's * blustering heroes, and, after taking a fierce stride or two across the stage to vent his royal choler, vouchsafed this reply,

"Fair cruel maid, recall thy wish,

O pray think better of it!

I'd rather abdicate, than dish

The cranium of my prophet."

Miss still continued pertinacious and positive.

"Your royal word's not worth a fig,

If thus in flams you glory;

I claim your promise for my jig,

The Baptist's upper story."

This satirical sally put the imperial butcher upon his mettle; he bit his thumbs, scratched his carrotty poll, paused; and, thinking he had lighted on a loop-hole, grumbled out with stiff-necked profundity,

" A wicked oath, like sixpence crack'd,

Or pie-crust, may be broken."

The damsel, however, was "down upon him" before he could articulate "Jack Robinson," with

"But not the promise of a King,

Which is a royal token."

This polished off the rough edges of his Majesty's misgivings, and the decollation of John the Baptist followed; but the good people, resolving to make their martyr some small amends, permitted his representative to receive absolution from a portly priest who stood as a spectator at one corner of the stage; while the two soldiers who had decapitated him in effigy, with looks full of contrition, threw themselves into the confessional, and implored the ghostly father to assign them a stiff penance to expiate their guilt. Thus ended this tragedy of tragedies, which, with all due deference to Joe's veracity, we suspect to have had its origin in Bartholomew Fair.

Joe Haynes shuffled off his comical coil on Friday, the 4th of April 1701. The Smithfield muses mourned his death in an elegy, * a rare broadside, with a black border, "printed for J. B. near the Strand, 1701."