The Characters of the Christ-Cross Row, By a Critic, To Mrs — Great D draws near---the Duchess sure is come, Open the doors of the withdrawing-room: Her daughters decked most daintily I see, The dowager grows a perfect double D. E enters next and with her Eve appears. Not like yon dowager depressed with years: What ease and elegance her person grace, Bright beaming as the evening-star her face. Queen Esther next---how fair e'en after death; Then one faint glimpse of Queen Elizabeth; No more, our Esthers now are nought but Hetties, Elizabeths all dwindled into Betties. In vain you think to find them under E, They're all diverted into H and B. F follows fast the fair---and in his rear See folly, fashion, foppery straight appear, All with fantastic clues, fantastic clothes, With fans and flounces, fringe and furbelows. Here Grub-street geese presume to joke and jeer, All, all but Grannam Osborne's <emph xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">Gazetteer</emph>. High heaves his hugeness H: methinks we see Henry the Eighth's most monstrous majesty. But why on such <emph xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">mock</emph> grandeur should we dwell? H mounts to heaven and H descends to hell. As H the Hebrew found, so I the Jew: See Isaac, Joseph, Jacob pass in view. The walls of old Jerusalem appear, See Israel and all Judah thronging there. [...] P pokes his head out, yet has not a pain: Like Punch he peeps, but soon pops in again. Pleased with his pranks, the pisgys calls him Puck, Mortals he loves to prick and pinch and pluck. Now a pert prig, he perks upon your face; Now peers, pores, ponders with profound grimace; Now a proud prince, in pompous purple dressed, And now a player, a peer, a pimp or priest, A pea, a pin, in a perpetual round, Now seems a penny, and now shows a pound. Like perch or pike in pond you see him come; He in plantations hangs like pear or plum, Pippin or peach, then perches on the spray, In form of parrot, pye or popinjay. P, Proteus-like, all tricks, all shapes can show, The pleasantest person in the Christ-cross Row. [...] As K a king, Q represents a queen, And seems small difference the sounds between. K as a man with hoarser accent speaks; In shriller notes Q like a female squeaks. Behold, K struts as might a king become; Q draws her train along the drawing-room. Slow follow all the quality of state: Queer Queensberry only does refuse to wait. [...] Thus great R reigns in town, while different far, Rests in retirement <emph xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">little</emph> rural R; Remote from cities lives in lone retreat, With rooks and rabbit-burrows round his seat. S sails the swan slow down the silver stream. [...] So, big with weddings, waddles W, And brings all womankind before your view: A wench, a wife, a widow and a w[hor]e, With woe behind and wantonness before. 