And daily threaten to drive thence

My little garrison of sense:

The fierce banditti, which I mean,

Are gloomy thoughts, led on by Spleen.
Then there's another reason yet,
Which is, that I may fairly quit
The debt, which justly became due
The moment when I heard from you:
And you might grumble, crony mine,
If paid in any other coin;

Since twenty sheets of lead, God knows,
(I would say twenty sheets of prose),
Can ne'er be deem'd worth half so much

As one of gold, and your's was such.
Thus, the preliminaries settled,

I fairly find myself pitch-kettled;*
And cannot see, tho' few see better,
How I shall hammer out a letter.

* Pitch-kettled, a favourite phrase at the time when this Epistle was written, expressive of being puzzled, or what in the Spectator's time would have been called bamboozled.

First, for a thought-since all agree-
A thought-I have it-let me sec—
'Tis gone again-plague on't! I thought
I had it but I have it not.

Dame Gurton thus, and Hodge her son,
That useful thing, her needle, gone!
Rake well the cinders :-sweep the floor,
And sift the dust behind the door;
While eager Hodge beholds the prize
In old grimalkin's glaring eyes;
And gammer finds it on her knees
In every shining straw she sees.
This simile were apt enough;
But I've another, critic-proof!
The virtuoso thus, at noon,
Broiling beneath a July sun,
The gilded butterfly pursues,
O'er hedge and ditch, thro'

gaps

And after many a vain essay,

To captivate the tempting prey,

and mews;

Gives him at length the lucky pat,
And has him safe beneath his hat:
Then lifts it gently from the ground;
But ah! tis lost as soon as found;
Culprit his liberty regains;

Flits out of sight, and mocks his pains.

The sense was dark; 'twas therefore fit

With simile t' illustrate it;

But as too much obscures the sight,

As often as too little light,

We have our similes cut short,

For matters of more grave import.

That Matthew's numbers run with ease

Each man of common sense agrees!

All men of common sense allow,

That Robert's lines are easy too:
Where then the pref'rence shall we place,
Or how do justice in this case?

Matthew (says Fame) with endless pains,

Smooth'd and refin'd the meanest strains;

Nor suffer'd one ill-chosen rhyme

T'escape him at the idlest time;

And thus o'er all a lustre cast,

That, while the language lives, shall last.
An't please your ladyship (quoth I),
For 'tis my business to reply;

Sure so much labour, so much toil,

Bespeak at least a stubborn soil:

Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed,

Who both write well, and write full speed!

Who throw their Helicon about

As freely as a conduit spout!

Friend Robert, thus like chien scavant,

Lets fall a poem en passant,

Nor needs his genuine ore refine!

"Tis ready polish'd from the mine.

THE FIFTH SATIRE

OF THE

FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

[Printed in Duncombe's Horace.]

1759.

A humourous Description of the Author's Journey from Rome to Brundusium.

"TWAS a long journey lay before us,

When I, and honest Heliodorus,

Who far in point of rhetoric
Surpasses ev'ry living Greek,
Each leaving our respective home
Together sallied forth from Rome.

First at Aricia we alight,

And there refresh, and pass the night,

Our entertainment rather coarse

Than sumptuous, but I've met with worse.