The Coming K--.: a Set of Idyll Lays

"The Coming K--.: A Set Of Idyll Lays" by Samuel Orchart Beeton. This satirical verse collection—a playful mock-heroic panorama of late-Victorian English society—uses the guise of chivalric romance to lampoon politics, fashion, money, and public entertainment. Framed around the figure of the Coming K—, a ceremonial patron who presides over a court of self-styled ‘Dinner-Table Knights,’ the poems traverse a sprawling mosaic of London life. In episodes such as The Coming of Guelpho, Heraint and Shenid, Vilien, Loosealot and Delaine, The Glass of Ale, Silleas and Gettarre, The Last Carnival, and Goanveer, Beeton exposes vanity, appetite, duplicity, and social performance. The verse blends whimsy with sharp caricature, puncturing pretensions of power and wealth while following the foibles and follies of lovers, rivals, mountebanks, and sport. The work imitates prophecy and epic cadence to illuminate a world where fashion, gambling, and flirtation govern reputations as surely as law or warfare. A kaleidoscopic satire, it remains a witty, corrosive portrait of an urban culture hungry for spectacle and status.