If you unus'd have scarcely strength
To gain this walk's untoward length;
If, frighten'd at a scene so rude,
Through long disuse of solitude;
If, long confin'd to fires and screens,
You dread the waving of these greens;
who long have breath'd the fumes
Of city fogs and crowded rooms,
Do now solicitously shun
The cooler air and dazzling sun;
If his majestic eye you flee,
Learn hence t' excuse and pity me.
Consider what it is to bear
The powder'd courtier's witty sneer;
To see th' important man of dress
Scoffing my college awkwardness;
To be the strutting cornet's sport,
To run the gauntlet of the court,
Winning my way by slow approaches,
Through crowds of coxcombs and of coaches,
From the first fierce cockaded sentry,
Quite through the tribe of waiting gentry;
To pass so many crowded stages,
And stand the staring of your pages;
And after all, to crown my spleen,
Be told-You are not to be seen:
Or, if you are, be forc'd to bear
The awe of your majestic air.
And can I then be faulty found,
In dreading this vexatious round?
Can it be strange, if I eschew
A scene so glorious and so new?
Or is he criminal that flies
The living lustre of your eyes?
THE DEAN'S MANNER OF LIVING.
ON rainy days alone I dine
Upon a chick and pint of wine.
On rainy days I dine alone,
And pick my chicken to the bone:
But this my servants much enrages,
No scraps remain to save board wages.
In weather fine I nothing spend,
But often spunge upon a friend :
Yet, where he's not so rich as I,
I pay my club, and so good b'ye.
VERSES MADE POR FRUIT WOMEN, &c.
COME buy my fine wares,
Plumbs, apples, and pears,
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husband a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthing will gain them,
And I must maintain them.
RIPE 'sparagras,
Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
O, 'tis pretty picking
With a tender chicken!
COME, follow me by the smell, Here are delicate onions to sell, I promise to use you well. They make the blood warmer; You'll feed like a farmer: For this is every cook's opinion, No savoury dish without an onion ; But, lest your kissing should be spoil'd, Your onions must be thoroughly boil'd: Or else you may spare
Your mistress a share,
The secret will never be known;
She cannot discover
The breath of her lover,
But think it as sweet as her own:
CHARMING Oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They'll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They'll please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She'll be fruitful, never fear her.
Be not sparing,
Leave off swearing.
Buy my herring
Fresh from Malahide,*
Better never was tri'd.
Come, eat them with pure fresh butter and mustard,
Their bellies are soft, and as white as a custard.
Come, sixpence a dozen to get me some bread,
Or, like my own herrings, I soon shall be dead.
COME Buy my fine oranges, sauce for your veal, And charming when squeez'd in a pot of brown ale; Well roasted, with sugar and wine in a cup, They'll make a sweet bishop when gentlefolks sup.
ON ROVER. A LADY'S SPANIEL.
INSTRUCTIONS TO A PAINTER.*
HAPPIEST of the spaniel race,
Painter, with thy colours grace:
Draw his forehead large and high,
Draw his blue and humid eye;
Draw his neck so smooth and round,
Little neck with ribbands bound!
And the muscly swelling breast
Where the Loves and Graces rest;
And the spreading even back,
Soft, and sleek, and glossy black;
And the tail that gently twines,
Like the tendrils of the vines;
And the silky twisted hair,
Shadowing thick the velvet ear;
Velvet ears, which, hanging low,
O'er the veiny temples flow.
With a proper light and shade,
Let the winding hoop be laid;
* In ridicule of Philips' poem on Miss Carteret. VOL. XI.
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