Volume Ii Part 38 (1/2)

Foulest brute that stinks below, Why in this brown dost thou appear?

For wouldst thou make a fouler show, Thou must go naked all the year.

Fresh from the mud, a wallowing sow Would then be not so brown as thou.

'Tis not the coat that looks so dun, His hide emits a foulness out; Not one jot better looks the sun Seen from behind a dirty clout.

So t--ds within a gla.s.s enclose, The gla.s.s will seem as brown as those.

Thou now one heap of foulness art, All outward and within is foul; Condensed filth in every part, Thy body's clothed like thy soul: Thy soul, which through thy hide of buff Scarce glimmers like a dying snuff.

Old carted bawds such garments wear, When pelted all with dirt they s.h.i.+ne; Such their exalted bodies are, As shrivell'd and as black as thine.

If thou wert in a cart, I fear Thou wouldst be pelted worse than they're.

Yet, when we see thee thus array'd, The neighbours think it is but just, That thou shouldst take an honest trade, And weekly carry out the dust.

Of cleanly houses who will doubt, When d.i.c.k cries ”Dust to carry out!”

[Footnote 1: This is a parody on the tenth poem of Cowley's ”Mistress,”

ent.i.tled, ”Clad all in White.”--_Scott_.]

d.i.c.k'S VARIETY

Dull uniformity in fools I hate, who gape and sneer by rules; You, Mullinix, and s...o...b..ring C---- Who every day and hour the same are That vulgar talent I despise Of p.i.s.sing in the rabble's eyes.

And when I listen to the noise Of idiots roaring to the boys; To better judgment still submitting, I own I see but little wit in: Such pastimes, when our taste is nice, Can please at most but once or twice.

But then consider d.i.c.k, you'll find His genius of superior kind; He never muddles in the dirt, Nor scours the streets without a s.h.i.+rt; Though d.i.c.k, I dare presume to say, Could do such feats as well as they.

d.i.c.k I could venture everywhere, Let the boys pelt him if they dare, He'd have them tried at the a.s.sizes For priests and jesuits in disguises; Swear they were with the Swedes at Bender, And listing troops for the Pretender.

But d.i.c.k can f--t, and dance, and frisk, No other monkey half so brisk; Now has the speaker by his ears, Next moment in the House of Peers; Now scolding at my Lady Eustace, Or thras.h.i.+ng Baby in her new stays.[1]

Presto! begone; with t'other hop He's powdering in a barber's shop; Now at the antichamber thrusting His nose, to get the circle just in; And d.a.m.ns his blood that in the rear He sees a single Tory there: Then woe be to my lord-lieutenant, Again he'll tell him, and again on't[2]

[Footnote 1: ”d.i.c.k Tighe and his wife lodged over against us; and he has been seen, out of our upper windows, beating her two or three times; ...

I am told she is the most urging, provoking devil that ever was born; and he a hot whiffling puppy, very apt to resent.”--Journal to Stella, ”Prose Works,” ii, 229.--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 2: Farquhar, who inscribed his play of the ”Inconstant” to Richard Tighe, has painted him in very different colours from those of the Dean's satirical pencil. Yet there may be discerned, even in that dedication, the oulines of a light mercurial character, capable of being represented as a c.o.xcomb or fine gentleman, as should suit the purpose of the writer who was disposed to immortalize him.--_Scott_.]

TRAULUS. PART I

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TOM AND ROBIN[1]

1730

_Tom_.

Say, Robin, what can Traulus[2] mean By bellowing thus against the Dean?

Why does he call him paltry scribbler, Papist, and Jacobite, and libeller, Yet cannot prove a single fact?

_Robin_. Forgive him, Tom: his head is crackt.

_T_. What mischief can the Dean have done him, That Traulus calls for vengeance on him?

Why must he sputter, spawl, and slaver it In vain against the people's favourite?

Revile that nation-saving paper, Which gave the Dean the name of Drapier?