Answer to Dardanus’s

Image: Plan of Birmingham, drawn by J. Sherrif of Oldswinford, late of the Crescent Birmingham. J Bisset, Bisset’s Magnificent Guide or Grand Copper Plate Directory for the Town of Birmingham… (Birmingham, Printed for the Author by R Jabet, 1808). The engraving provides several indications of the town’s industrial and commercial significance and importantly, in the context of this poem, no town or guildhall.

Image from: Local Studies and History, Birmingham Central Library

A Bird is a creature I always admire,
In the regions of air, or a castle of wire;
A garden, methinks, had as well have nought in’t,
If some of its beds are not stored with mint,
I’m often delighted when Roger cries G,
And in liking a ham with the fashion agree.
By these, my friend Dardan I guess what you mean,
It is Birmingham, Birmingham! fair to be seen!
A town that in trading excels half the nation,
Because, Jove be thank’d, there is —— no Corporation!³

This anonymous verse, which appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1753, in answer to a rebus printed the previous month, is included here as a second, and gleeful, public expression of the benefit to Birmingham of the lack of a corporation.

³ Anonymous, Answer to Dardanus, page 142, Gentleman’s Magazine, London, March, 1753.