You keep your countenance for shame,
Yet still you think your
For though men cry they love a jest,
"Tis but when others stand the test;
And (would you have their meaning known)
They love a jest that is their own.
You must although the point be nice,
Bestow your friend some good advice;
One hint from you will set him right,
And teach him how to be polite.
Bid him like you observe with care,
Whom to be hard on, whom to spare;
Nor indistinctly to suppose
All subjects like Dan Jackson's nose.*
To study the obliging jest,
By reading those who teach it best;
For prose I recommend Voiture's,
For verse (I speak my judgment) yours.
He'll find the secret out from thence,
To rhyme all day without offence;
And I no more shall then accuse
The flirts of his ill-manner'd muse.
If he be guilty, you must mend him?
If he be innocent, defend him.
* Which was afterward the subject of several poems by Dr. Swift and others. H.
DELANY reports it, and he has a shrewd tongue, That we both act the part of the clown and the
Welye cramming ourselves, and are ready to burst,
Yet still are no wiser than we were at first.
Pudet hæc opprobria, I freely must tell ye,
Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.
Though Delany advis'd you to plague me no longer,
You reply and rejoin like Hoadly of Bangor;
I must now, at one sitting, pay off my old score;
How many to answer? One, two, three or four,
But, because the three former are long ago past,
I shall, for method sake, begin with the last.
You treat me like a boy that knocks down his foe,
Who, ere t'other gets up, demands the rising blow.
Yet I know a young rogue, that, thrown flat on
the field,
Would, as he lay under, cry out Sirrah! yield.
So the French when our generals soundly did pay
Went triumphant to church, and sang stoutly Te
So the famous Tom Leigh, when quite run aground, Comes off by outlaughing the company round:
*The humour of this poem is partly lost, by the impossibility of printing it left-handed as it was written. H.
In every vile pamphlet you'll read the same fancies, Having thus overthrown all our farther advances. My offers of peace you ill understood:
Friend Sheridan, when will you know your own good?
'Twas to teach you in moderate language your duty;
For, were you a dog, I could not be rude t'ye;
As a good quiet soul, who no mischief intends
To a quarrelsome fellow, cries, Let us be friends.
But we like Anteus and Hercules fight,
The oftener you fall, the oftener you write;
And I'll use you as he did that overgrown clown,
I'll first take you up, and then take you down :
And, 'tis your own case, for you never can wound
The worst dunce in your school, till he's heav'd
from the ground.
I beg your pardon for using my left hand, but I was in great haste, and the other hand was employ'd at the same time in writing some letters of business. I will send you the rest when I have leisure but pray come to dinner with the company you met here last.
WHATE'ER your predecessors taught us,
I have a great esteem for Plautus ;
And think your boys may gather there-hence
More wit and humour than from Terence;
But as to comic Aristophanes,
The rogue too vicious and too prophane is.
I went in vain to look for Eupolis
Down in the strand,* just where the New Pole is ;
For I can tell you one thing, that I can,
You will not find it in the Vatican.
He and Cratinus us'd, as Horace says,
To take his greatest grandees for asses.
Poets, in those days, us'd to venture high;
But these are lost full many a century.
Thus you may see, dear friend, ex pede hence,
My judgment of the old comedians.
Proceed to tragics: first, Euripides
(An author where I sometimes dip a-days)
Is rightly censur'd by the Stagirite,
Who says, his numbers do not fadge aright.
A friend of mine that author despises
So much, he swears the very best piece is,
For aught he knows, as bad as Thespis's;
And that a woman, in these tragedies,
Commonly speaking, but a sad jade is.
At least, I'm well assur'd, that no folk lays
The weight on him they do on Sophocles.
But, above all, I prefer Eschylus,
Whose moving touches, when they please kill us.
And now I find my Muse but ill able,
To hold out longer in trissyllable.
I chose those rhymes out for their difficulty;
Will you return as hard ones if I call t'ye?
The fact may not be true; but the rhyme cost me some trouble. SWIFT.
DR. SHERIDAN TO DR. SWIFT. 1718.
DEAR Dean, since in cruxes and puns you and I deal,
Pray why is a woman a sieve and a riddle?
'Tis a thought that came into my noddle this
morning,
In bed as I lay, Sir, a tossing and turning.
You'll find, if you read but a few of your histories,
All women, as Eve, all women are mysteries.
To find out this riddle I know you'll be eager,
And make every one of the sex a Belphegor.
But that will not do, for I mean to commend them:
I swear without jest I an honour intend them.
In a sieve, Sir, their ancient extraction I quite tell,
In a riddle I give you their power and their title.
This I told
know what I mean,
before do
you
"Not I, by my troth, sir."-Then read it again, sir. The reason I send you these lines of rhymes double Is purely through pity, to save you the trouble Of thinking two hours for a rhyme as you did last, When your Pegasus canter'd in triple, and rid fast.
As for my little nag, which I keep at Parnassus, With Phoebus's leave, to run with his asses, He goes slow and sure, and he never is jaded, While your fiery steed is whipp'd, spurr'd, bastinaded.
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