Thus every year their quarrel ends,
They argue, fight, and bufs, and friends
'Tis starling, thrush, and thrush and starling; You dog, you b-; my dear, my darling.
WHAT, three months gone, and ne
A fingle letter to a friend?
In that time, fure, we might have known Whether fat or lean was grown;
Whether your hoft was short or tall,
Had manners good, or none at all;
Whether the neighb'ring fquire you found
As mere a brute as fox or hound
d;
Or if the parfon of the place
(With all due rev'rence to his grace)
Took much more pains himself to keep,
Than to instruct and feed his sheep;
At what hour of the day you dine;
Whether you drink beer, punch, or wine
Whether you hunt, or fhoot, or ride;
Or, by fome muddy ditch's fide,
you, in vifionary dream,
Call bubbling rill, or purling stream,
Sigh for fome aukward country lass,
Who must of confequence surpass
All that is beautiful and bright,
As much as day surpasses night;
Whether the people eat and drink,
Or ever talk, or ever think;
If, to the honour of their parts,
The men have heads, the women hearts;
If the moon rifes and goes down,
And changes as fhe does in town;
If you've returns of night and day,
And seasons varying roll away;
Whether your mind exalted wooes
Th' embraces of a ferious mufe;
Or if you write, as I do now,
The L-d knows what, the L-d knows how.-
These, and a thousand things like these,
The friendly heart are fure to please.
Now will my friend turn up his eyes,
And look fuperlatively wife;
Wonder what all this ftuff's about,
And how the plague I found him out!
When he had taken fo much pains,
In order to regale his brains
With privacy and country air,
To go, no foul alive knew where !
Befides, 'tis folly to suppose
That any perfon breathing goes
And idly wafte his precious time
In all th' impertinence of rhyme.
My good, wife, venerable fir!
Why about nonfenfe all this ftir!
Is it, that you would ftand alone,
And read no nonfenfe but your own;
Tho' you're (to tell you, by the bye)
Not half so great a fool as I;
Or is it that you make pretence,
Being a fool, to have some sense?
And would you really have my muse
Employ herself in writing news,
And most unconscionably teize her
With rhyming to Warfaw and Wefer;
Or tofs up a poetic olio,
Merely to bring in Marshal Broglio?
Should I recite what now is doing,
Or what for future times is brewing,
Or triumph that the poor French fee all
Their hopes defeated at Montreal,
Or fhould I your attention carry
To Fredrick, Ferdinand, or Harry,
Of flying Ruffian, daftard Swede,
And baffled Auftria let you read;
Or gravely tell with what defign
The youthful Henry pass'd the Rhine?
Or should I shake my empty head,
And tell you that the king is dead,
Obferve what changes will enfue,
What will be what, and who'll be who,
Or leaving these things to my betters,
Before you set the state of letters?
Or fhould I tell domeftic jars,
How author against author wars,
How both with mutual envy rankling,
Fr--k--ng damns M--rp--y, M--rp--y Fr--k--ng?
Or will it more your mind engage
To talk of actors and the ftage,
To tell, if any words could tell,
What GARRICK acts ftill, and how well,
That SHERIDAN with all his care
Will always be a labour'd play'r,
And that his acting at the best
Is all but art, and art confeft;
That BRIDE, if reason may presume
To judge by things paft, things to come,
In future times will tread the ftage,
Equally form'd for love and rage,
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