ADVICE

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THE GRUB-STREET VERSE-WRITERS.

1726.

YE poets ragged and forlorn,
Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,
Not yet consign'd to paste;

I know a trick to make you thrive;
O, 'tis a quaint device :

Your still-born poems shall revive,
And scorn to wrap up spice.

Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.

Send these to paper-sparing * Pope;
And when he sets to write,

No letter with an envelope

Could give him more delight.

* The original copy of Pope's celebrated translation of Homer (preserved in the British Museum) is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.

When Pope has fill'd the margins round,
Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
And swear they are your own.

DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE,

WHILE HE WAS WRITING THE DUNCIAD.

1727.

POPE has the talent well to speak,
But not to reach the ear;
His loudest voice is low and weak,
The Dean too deaf to hear.

A while they on each other look,
Then different studies choose;
The Dean sits plodding on a book;
Pope walks, and courts the Muse.

Now backs of letters,* though design'd For those who more will need 'em, Are fill'd with hints, and interlined, Himself can hardly read 'em.

Each atom by some other struck,
All turns and motions tries;
Till in a lump together stuck,
Behold a poem rise:

* See the former poem.

Yet to the Dean his share allot ;
He claims it by a canon ;

That without which a thing is not,
Is causa sine quâ non.

Thus, Pope, in vain you boast your wit;

For, had our deaf divine Been for your conversation fit,

You had not writ a line.

Of Sherlock,* thus, for preaching famed,
The sexton reason'd well;
And justly half the merit claim'd,
Because he rang the bell.

A LOVE POEM,

FROM A PHYSICIAN TO HIS MISTRESS.

WRITTEN AT LONDON.

By poets we are well assured

That love, alas! can ne'er be cured;
A complicated heap of ills,

Despising boluses and pills.

Ah Chloe, this I find is true,
Since first I gave my heart to you.
Now, by your cruelty hard bound,
I strain my guts, my colon wound.
Now jealousy my grumbling tripes
Assaults with grating, grinding gripes.

* The Dean of St. Paul's, father to the bishop.-H.

When pity in those eyes I view,
My bowels wambling make me spew.
When I an amorous kiss design'd,

I belch'd a hurricane of wind.

Once

;

you a gentle sigh let fall Remember how I suck'd it all; What colic pangs from thence I felt, Had you but known, your heart would melt, Like ruffling winds in cavern pent,

Till Nature pointed out a vent.

How have you torn my heart to pieces
With maggots, humours, and caprices!
By which I got the hemorrhoids ;
And loathsome worms my anus voids.
Whene'er I hear a rival named,
I feel my body all inflamed ;

Which, breaking out in boils and blains,
With yellow filth my linen stains;
Or, parch'd with unextinguish'd thirst,
Small-beer I guzzle till I burst:
And then I drag a bloated corpus,
Swell'd with a dropsy, like a porpus ;
When, if I cannot purge or stale,
I must be tapp'd to fill a pail.

BOUTS RIMEZ.

ON SIGNORA DOMITILLA.

OUR schoolmaster may roar i̇' th' fit,
Of classic beauty, hæc et illa;
Not all his birch inspires such art
As th' ogling beams of Domitilla.

Let nobles toast, in bright champaign,
Nymphs higher born than Domitilla;
I'll drink her health, again, again,
In Berkeley's tar, or sars'parilla.

At Goodman's Fields I've much admired
The postures strange of Monsieur Brilla;
But what are they to the soft step,
The gliding air of Domitilla?

Virgil has eternized in song

The flying footsteps of Camilla; Sure, as a prophet, he was wrong;

He might have dream'd of Domitilla.

Great Theodose condemn'd a town
For thinking ill of his Placilla;
And deuce take London! if some knight
O' th' city wed not Domitilla.

Wheeler, Sir George, in travels wise,
Gives us a medal of Plantilla ;
But O! the empress has not eyes;
Nor lips, nor breast, like Domitilla.

Not all the wealth of plunder'd Italy,
Plied on the mules of king At-tila,
Is worth one glove (I'll not tell a bit a lie)
Or garter, snatch'd from Domitilla.

Five years a nymph at certain hamlet,
Y-cleped Harrow of the Hill, a-

-bused much my heart and was a damn'd let To verse-but now for Domitilla.