When you pertly raise your snout,
Fleer, and gibe, and laugh, and flout;
This among Hibernian asses

For sheer wit and humour passes.
Thus indulgent Chloe, bit,

Swears you have a world of wit.

DEATH AND DAPHNE:

TO AN AGREEABLE YOUNG LADY, BUT EXTREMELY LEAN. 1730.

DEATH Went upon a solemn day

At Pluto's hall his court to pay :
The phantom, having humbly kiss'd
His grisly monarch's sooty fist,
Presented him the weekly bills
Of doctors, fevers, plagues, and pills.
Pluto, observing since the peace
The burial article decrease,

And, vex'd to see affairs miscarry,
Declar'd in council, Death must marry
Vow'd he no longer could support
Old batchelors about his court;

The interest of his realm had need

That Death should get a numerous breed ;
Young Deathlings, who, by practice made
Proficient in their father's trade,
With colonies might stock around
His large dominions under ground.
A consult of coquettes below
Was call'd, to rig him out a beau :
From her own head Megara takes
A periwig of twisted snakes;

Which in the nicest fashion curl'd,

(Like toupets of this upper world)
With flowers of sulphur powder'd well,
That graceful on his shoulders fell;
An adder of the sable kind
In line direct hung down behind;
The owl, the raven, and the bat,
Clubb'd for a feather to his hat;
His coat, a usurer's velvet pall,
Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all.
But, loath his person to expose
Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows,
A lawyer o'er his hands and face
Stuck artfully a parchment case.
No new flux'd rake show'd fairer skin;
Nor Phyllis after lying in.

With snuff was fill'd his ebon box,
Of shin-bones rotted by the pox.
Nine spirits of blaspheming fops,
With aconite anoint his chops;

And give him words of dreadful sounds,
G-d d-n his blood! and bd and w-ds!

Thus furnish'd out, he sent his train

To take a house in Warwick-lane :
The faculty, his humble friends,
A complimental message.sends:
Their president in scarlet gown
Harangued, and welcom'd him to town.
But Death had business to despatch
His mind was running on his match.
And, hearing much of Daphne's fame,
His majesty of terrors came,
Fine as a colonel of the guards,

To visit where she sate at cards 3

She, as he came into the room, Thought him Adonis in his bloom. And now her heart with pleasure jumps, She scarce remembers what is trumps; For such a shape of skin and bone Was never seen, except her own: Charmed with his eyes, and chin, and snout, Her pocket glass drew slily out; And grew enamour'd with her phiz, As just the counterpart of his. She darted many a private glance, And freely made the first advance; Was of her beauty grown so vain, She doubted not to win the swain. Nothing she thought could sooner gain him, Than with her wit to entertain him. She ask'd about her friends below; This meagre fop, that batter'd beau : Whether some late departed toasts Had got gallants among the ghosts? If Chloe were a sharper still As great as ever at quadrille ? (The ladies there must needs be rooks, For cards, we know, are Pluto's books.) If Florimel had found her love, For whom she hang'd herself above? How oft a week was kept a ball By Proserpine at Pluto's hall? She fancied these Elysian shades The sweetest place for masquerades: How pleasant on the banks of Styx, To troll it in a coach and six!

What pride a female heart inflames! How endless are ambition's aims!

Cease, haughty nymph; the Fates decree
Death must not be a spouse for thee:
For, when by chance the meagre shade
Upon thy hand his finger laid,

Thy hand as dry and cold as lead,
His matrimonial spirit fled;

He felt about his heart a damp,
That quite extinguish'd Cupid's lamp;
Away the frighted spectre scuds,
And leaves my lady in the suds.

DAPHNE.*

DAPHNE knows, with equal ease,
How to vex and how to please;
But the folly of her sex
Makes her sole delight to vex.
Never woman more devis'd

Surer ways to be despis'd:
Paradoxes weakly wielding,

Always conquer'd, never yielding.

* Lord Orrery, in his Remarks, has given a singular representation of his interview with Daphne. The lady, it seems, was proud of her portrait as drawn by the Dean; his lordship, in his politeness, could not see the least resemblance. She still persisting, that she had Father be Daphne drawn by him, than Sacharissa by any other pencil, Lord Orrery had no other way of retrieving his error, than by whispering in her ear, as he was conducting her down stairs to dinner, that indeed he found "her hand as dry, as cold as lead." I appeal to all the Daphnes in both kingdoms, whether his lordship might not very safely have compounded the matter, and told her, that though her hand was cold, he still believed her heart was warm; as the fruitful earth preserves its central heat, while virgin snow adorns its surface. Something of this sort might have been expected from tom elegans formarum spectator. W. B.

Then let him use you e'er so rough,
""Twas all for love," and that's enough.
But, though he sputter through a session,
It never makes the least impression :
Whate'er he speaks for madness goes,
With no effect on friends or foes.

Toм. The scrubbiest cur in all the pack
Can set the mastiff on your back.
I own, his madness is a jest,
If that were all. But he's possest,
Incarnate with a thousand imps,

To work whose ends his madness pimps;
Who o'er each string and wire preside,
Fill every pipe, each motion guide;
Directing every vice we find

In Scripture to the Devil assign'd :
Sent from the dark infernal region,

In him they lodge, and make him legion.
Of brethren he's a false accuser;
A slanderer, traitor, and seducer;
A fawning, base, trepanning liar;
The marks peculiar of his sire.
Or, grant him but a drone at best;
A drone can raise a hornet's nest.
The Dean had felt their stings before;
And must their malice ne'er give o'er?
Still swarm and buz about his nose?
But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes.
A patriot is a dangerous post,
When wanted by his country most;
Perversely comes in evil times,
Where virtues are imputed crimes.
His guilt is clear, the proofs are pregnant;
A traitor to the vices regnant.