twice in Shakespeare—first in the Tempest,
when Stephano informs Caliban that he
was the Man in the Moon, "when time
was," and when Caliban replies, "I have
seen thee in her, and I do adore thee.
My mistress showed me thee, thy dog, and
thy bush;" and, second, in Midsummer
Night's Dream, where Quince says, "One
must come in with a bush of thorns and a
lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or
to present the person of Moonshine." At
a later period than that of Shakespeare
(when tobacco was, if known, unpopular,
and its use infrequent), the Man in the
Moon was represented with a pipe in addition
to his thorns, his lantern, and his dog.
In the time of the great Civil Wars and
of the Restoration, and again in that of
the Revolution, there are constant
allusions in ballad literature to the Man in the
Moon, a mysterious personage, whose real
name and true whereabouts are not to be
divulged. In the famous old song, "When
the King shall enjoy his Own Again," the
Man in the Moon is cited as the title of an
astrological almanack, whose maker, or
editor, was contemporary with Booker,
Pond, Rivers, Swallow, Dove, and Dade—
the Zadkiels and Francis Moores of the
period, who for the most part predicted
ill fortune to the royal cause, but who
never succeeded in convincing the royalists
that the star of the Stuarts was not in the
ascendant, and that there would not be a
restoration of the dynasty.

   The Man in the Moon may wear out his shoon
       In running after Charles's Wain,
   But it's all to no end, for the times will not mend
       Till the king shall enjoy his own again!

This chorus was sung by the convivial
royalists over many a bumper of claret
and Burgundy. In a still later time—
after the Stuarts had "enjoyed their own
again" for a brief space, after they had been
tried a second time, found wanting, and been
dismissed ignominiously; and when it was
treason to King George the First to breathe
the name of King James the Third, except
to call him a Pretender—the Man in the
Moon became synonymous with the royal
exile, and formed the burden of many a
Jacobite ditty, of which the meaning was
well known to the initiated:

   Brave Man o' the Moon, we hail thee!
   The true heart ne'er shall fail thee!
          For the day that is gone,
          And the day that's our own,
   Brave Man o' the Moon we hail thee!

   We have seen the Bear bestride thee,
   And the clouds of winter hide thee,
          But the Moon is changed,
          And here we are ranged;
   Brave Man o' the Moon, we bide thee!

In our day, the Man in the Moon is a
political character of much importance at
election times in small boroughs, where the
people, as a rule, are not troubled with a
political conscience—at least he was so
until the passing of Mr. Disraeli's Reform
Bill. Whether there be any Men in the
Moon at the present time, I cannot say,
though I suspect; or whether there be but
one Man in the Moon, as there is but one
Jack Ketch, I am unable to state; but I
know well that I saw, spoke to, and
transacted business with a real, veritable,
tangible, palpable Man in the Moon, and
found him an adroit, wary, excellent good
fellow, and in many ways a remarkable
person. I made his acquaintance in a
small borough, where there was a hotly
contested election between a Whig and
Tory, and where both sides were determined
to win—by fair means, if possible, by foul
means, if necessary. I was not myself the
candidate, but the friend and counsellor of
the gentleman who occupied that position
on the Liberal side. I need not particularly
specify the borough, but shall call it,
for the nonce, Great Lumpington, and say
of it, generally, that it was a very expensive
place to contest, and that, although all the
electors were not corruptible, in the sense
of taking actual money as a bribe from the
candidate who sought their votes, they
expected the said candidate to be extremely
liberal in the support of their local institutions
and charities, and, if elected, their
member to be very diligent and influential
in procuring tide-waiterships and clerk-
ships in the Post-office, the Custom House,
or the Circumlocution-office, for the incapables
in their families who were not able by
other means to turn an honest penny. The
Liberal candidate had gained a start over the
opposite party by learning for a certainty
that one of the sitting members was about
to be raised to the peerage, and had
hastened down from London at least a week
before the fact was known to any one in
Great Lumpington, to feel his way among
the electors. The advantage which he
thus gained he maintained to the last,
although a few days before the nomination
he grew so nervous about his chances of
success as to consult me and his legal
agent on the propriety of seeing the great
Mr. Potts, a man of large and peculiar
experience, who was understood to know
more about the management of elections,
in cases of delicacy or difficulty, than any
man or dozen of men in the kingdom. The
result of our consultation was that I went