As in some Irish houses, where things are so, 80, But, my lord, it's no bounce; I protest in my turn, To paint it, or eat it, just as he lik'd best. Of the neck and the breast I had next to dispose, Such dainties to send them their health it might hurt, An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, enter'd; An under-bred fine-spoken fellow was he, And he smil'd as he look'd at the venison and me. 66 Why, whose should it be?" cried I with a flounce, "I get these things often :" (but that was a bounce) ff. "Some lords my acquaintance, that settle the nation, Are pleas'd to be kind; but I hate ostentation." "If that be the case then," cried he, very gay, "I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words-I insist on 't-precisely at three; We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there; My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. And now that I think on 't, as I am a sinner, We wanted this venison to make out the dinner! Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, And "nobody with me at sea but myself,' Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, When come to the place where we all were to dine, The one is a Scotsman, the other a Jew, They're both of them merry, and authors like you. At the top a fried liver and bacon were seen, At the bottom was tripe in a swinging tureen; At the sides there was spinnage and pudding made hot; was not. Now, my lord, as for tripe, it's my utter aversion, And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian : But what vex'd me most, was that d-n'd Scottish rogue, Pray a slice of your liver; though, may I be curst, "The tripe !" quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek, "I could dine on this tripe seven days in the week: I like these here dinners so pretty and small; But your friend there, the doctor, eats nothing at all." "Oh, oh!" quoth my friend, " he 'll come on in a trice, He's keeping a corner for something that's nice: There's a pasty"'—" A pasty!" repeated the Jew; "I don't care if I keep a corner for 't too." "What the de'il, mon, a pasty!" re-echo'd the Scot; "Though splitting, I'll still keep a corner for thot." "We'll all keep a corner," the lady cried out; "We'll all keep a corner," was echo'd about. While thus we resolv'd, and the pasty delay'd, With looks that quite petrified, enter'd the maid: Wak'd Priam in drawing his curtains by night. But we quickly found out, for who could mistake her? At least, it's your temper, as very well known, That you think very slightly of things all your own : So, perhaps, in your habits of thinking amiss, You may make a mistake, and think slightly of this. 1 Lord Clare's nephew. 2 A passage in the love-letters of the then Duke of Cumberland (George the Third's brother) to Lady Grosvenor, which were making a great noise at the time. WOLCOT. (PETER PINDAR.) BORN, 1738-DIED, 1819. WOLCOT was successively a clergyman, a physician, a pensioner on the booksellers, and, it is said, on government. He had a taste for painting; introduced his countryman Opie to the world; and lived to a hale old age, mirthful to the last in spite of blindness. He was a genuine man of his sort, though his sort was not of a very dignified species. There does not seem to have been any real malice in him. He had not the petty spite and peevishness of his antagonist Gifford; nor, like him, could have constituted himself a snarler against his betters for the pay of greatness. He attacked greatness itself, because he thought it could afford the joke; and he dared to express sympathies with the poor and outcast. His serious poems, however, are nothing but common-places about Delias and the Muse. Nor have his comic ones the grace and perfection |