And they, alas! yield small relief,
Seem rather to renew my grief,
My wounds bleed all anew:
For every stroke goes to my heart,
And at each lash I feel the smart
Of lash laid on by you.

THE PARDON.

THE suit which humbly you have made
Is fully and maturely weigh'd;
And as 'tis your petition,

I do forgive, for well I know,
Since you're so bruised, another blow
Would break the head of Priscian.

"Tis not my purpose or intent
That you should suffer banishment;
I pardon, now you've courted;
And yet I fear this clemency
Will come too late to profit thee,
For you're with grief transported.
However, this I do command,
That you your birch do take in hand,
Read concord and syntax on;
The bays, you own, are only mine,
Do you then still your nouns decline,
Since you've declined Dan Jackson.

THE LAST SPEECH AND DYING WORDS OF
DANIEL JACKSON.

MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,

MEDIOCRIBUS esse poetis

Non funes, non gryps, non concessere columnæ.

To give you a short translation of these two lines from "Horace's Art of Poetry," which I have chosen for my neck-verse, before I proceed to my speech, you will find they fall naturally into this sense:— For poets who can't tell [high] rocks from stones, The rope, the hangman, and the gallows groans.

I was born in a fen near the foot of Mount Parnassus, commonly called the Logwood Bog. My mother, whose name was Stanza, conceived me in a dream, and was delivered of me in her sleep. Her dream was, that Apollo, in the shape of a gander with a prodigious long bill, had embraced her; upon which she consulted the Oracle of Delphos, and the following answer was made::

You'll have a gosling - call it Dan,
And do not make your goose a swan.
'Tis true, because the god of wit
To get him in that shape thought fit,

Venture you may to turn him loose,
But let it be to another goose.

The time will come, the fatal time,
When he shall dare a swan to rhyme;
The tow'ring swan comes sousing down,
And breaks his pinions, cracks his crown.
From that sad time, and sad disaster,
IIe'll be a lame, crack'd poetaster.

At length, for stealing rhymes and triplets,
He'll be content to hang in giblets.

You see now, gentlemen, this is fatally and literally come to pass; for it was my misfortune to engage with that Pindar of the times, Tom Sheridan, who did so confound me by sousing on my crown, and did so batter my pinions, that I was forced to make use of borrowed wings; though my false accusers have deposed that I stole my feathers from Hopkins, Sternhold, Silvester, Ogilby, Durfey, &c., for which I now forgive them and all the world. I die a poet; and this ladder shall be my Gradus ad Parnassum; and I hope the critics will have mercy on my works.

Then lo, I mount as slowly as I sung,

And then I'll make a line for every rung;
There's nine, I see, the Muses, too, are nine.
Who would refuse to die a death like mine?
1. Thou first rung, Clio, celebrate my name;
2. Euterp, in tragic numbers do the same.
3. This rung, I see, Terpsichore's thy flute;
4. Erato, sing me to the gods; ah, do't;
5. Thalia, don't make me a comedy;

6. Urania, raise me tow'rds the starry sky:

7. Calliope, to ballad-strains descend,

8. And, Polyhymnia, tune them for your friend ;
9. So shall Melpomene mourn my fatal end.

POOR DAN JACKSON.

TO THE REV. DANIEL JACKSON.

TO BE HUMBLY PRESENTED BY MR. SHERIDAN IN PERSON, WITH RESPECT, CARE, AND SPEED.

DEAR DAN,

Here I return my trust, nor ask,
One penny for remittance;
If I have well perform'd my task,
Pray send me an acquittance.

Too long I bore this weighty pack,
As Hercules the sky;

Now take him you, Dan Atlas, back,
Let me be stander-by.

Not all the witty things you speak,

In compass of a day,

Not half the puns you make a-week,

Should bribe his longer stay.

With me you left him out at nurse,
Yet are you not my debtor;
For, as he hardly can be worse,

I ne'er could make him better.

He rhymes and puns, and puns and rhymes,
Just as he did before;

And, when he's lash'd an hundred times,
He rhymes and puns the more.

When rods are laid on schoolboys' bums,
The more they frisk and skip:
The schoolboys' top but louder hums
The more they use the whip.

Thus, a lean beast beneath a load

(A beast of Irish breed)

Will, in a tedious dirty road,

Outgo the prancing steed.

You knock him down and down in vain,
And lay him flat before ye,
For soon as he gets up again,
He'll strut and cry Victoria!
At every stroke of mine he fell;
'Tis true he roar'd and cried;
But his impenetrable shell

Could feel no harm beside.

The tortoise thus, with motion slow,
Will clamber up a wall;

Yet, senseless to the hardest blow,

Gets nothing but a fall.

Dear Dan, then, why should you, or I,

Attack his pericrany?

And, since it is in vain to try,

We'll send him to Delany.

POSTSCRIPT.

LEAN TOM, when I saw him last week on his horse awry,
Threaten'd loudly to turn me to stone with his sorcery.
But, I think, little Dan, in spite of what our foe says,
He will find I read Ovid and his Metamorphoses,
For omitting the first (where I make a comparison,
With a sort of allusion to Putland or Harrison),
Yet, by my description, you'll find he in short is
A pack and a garran, a top and a tortoise.

So I hope from henceforward you ne'er will ask can I maul
This teazing, conceited, rude, insolent animal?

And, if this rebuke might turn to his benefit,

SWIFT TO SHERIDAN.

Toм, for a goose you keep but base quills,
They're fit for nothing else but pasquils,
I've often heard it from the wise,

That inflammation in the eyes

Will quickly fall upon the tongue.

And thence, as famed John Bunyan sung,
From out the pen will presently

On paper dribble daintily.

Suppose I call'd you goose, it is hard

One word should stick thus in your gizzard;
You're my goose, no other man's;

And you know, all my geese are swans:
Only one scurvy thing I find,

Swans sing when dying, geese when blind.
But now I smoke where lies the slander,-
I call'd you goose instead of gander:
For that, dear Tom, ne'er fret and vex,
I'm sure you cackle like the sex.
I know the gander always goes
With a quill stuck across his nose:
So your eternal pen is still
Or in your claw, or in your bill.
But whether you can tread or hatch,
I've something else to do than watch.
As for your writing I am dead,
I leave it for the second head.

Deanery-house, Oct. 27, 1718.

SWIFT TO SHERIDAN.

POOR Tom, wilt thou never accept a defiance,
Though I dare you to more than quadruple alliance?
You're so retrograde, sure you were born under Cancer;
Must I make myself hoarse with demanding an answer?
If this be your practice, mean scrub I assure ye,

And swear by each Fate and your new friends, each Fury,
I'll drive you to Cavan, from Cavan to Dundalk;
I'll tear all your rules, and demolish your pun-talk:
Nay, further, the moment you're free from your scalding,
I'll chew you to bullets, and puff you at Baldwin.

MARY THE COOK-MAID'S LETTER

TO DR. SHERIDAN. 1723.

WELL, if ever I saw such another man since my mother bound up my head!

You a gentleman! Marry come up! I wonder where you were bred.

I'm sure such words does not become a man of your cloth.

I would not give such language to a dog, faith and troth.

Yes, you call'd my master a knave; fie, Mr. Sheridan! 'tis a shame
For a parson, who should know better things, to come out with such a

name.

Knave in your teeth, Mr. Sheridan! 'tis both a shame and a sin;

And the dean, my master, is an honester man than you and all your kin: He has more goodness in his little finger than you have in your whole body:

My master is a parsonable man, and not a spindle-shank'd hoddy doddy. And now, whereby I find you would fain make an excuse,

Because my master one day in anger call'd you a goose:

Which, and I am sure I have been his servant four years since October,
And he never call'd me worse than sweetheart, drunk or sober:
Not that I know his reverence was ever concern'd to my knowledge,
Though you and your come-rogues keep him out so late in your college.
You say you will eat grass on his grave: a christian eat grass!
Whereby you now confess yourself to be a goose or an ass:

But that's as much as to say that my master should die before ye;
Well, well, that's as God pleases; and I don't believe that's a true story:
And so say I told you so, and you may go tell my master; what care I?
And I don't care who knows it; 'tis all one to Mary.

Everybody knows that I love to tell truth, and shame the devil;

I am but a poor servant; but I think gentlefolks should be civil.
Besides, you found fault with our victuals one day that you was here;
I remember it was on a Tuesday, of all days in the year.

And Saunders, the man, says you are always jesting and mocking;
Mary, said he (one day as I was mending my master's stocking),
My master is so fond of that minister that keeps the school-

I thought my master a wise man, but that man makes him a fool.

Saunders, said I, I would rather than a quart of ale

He would come into our kitchen, and I would pin a dishclout to his tail. And now I must go, and get Saunders to direct this letter;

For I write but a bad scrawl; but my sister Marget she writes better. Well, but I must run and make the bed, before my master comes from

prayers:

And see now, it strikes ten, and I hear him coming up stairs
Whereof I could say more to your verses, if I could write written hand;
And so I remain, in a civil way, your servant to command.

A PORTRAIT

FROM THE LIFE.

COME, sit by my side, while this picture I draw:
In chattering a magpie, in pride a jackdaw;
A temper the devil himself could not bridle;

Impertinent mixture of busy and idle;

As rude as a bear, no mule half so crabbed;

She swills like a sow, and she breeds like a rabbit;

A housewife in bed, at table a slattern;

For all an example, for no one a pattern.

MARY.

Now tell me, friend Thomas, Ford,2 Grattan,3 and Merry Dan,"

Has this any likeness to good madam Sheridan ?

Chas. Ford, of Woodpark.