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Was rather given to saying "

yes,"

Because, as yet, she knew no better!

Each night they held a coterie,

Where, every fear to slumber charm'd, Lovers were all they ought to be,

And husbands not the least alarm'd!

They call'd up all their school-day pranks,
Nor thought it much their sense beneath
To play at riddles, quips, and cranks,

And lords show'd wit, and ladies teeth.

As-"Why are husbands like the Mint?"
Because, forsooth, a husband's duty

Is just to set the name and print
That give a currency to beauty.

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Why is a garden's wilder'd maze

"Like a young widow, fresh and fair?" Because it wants some hand to raise

The weeds, which "have no business there!

And thus they miss'd and thus they hit,

And now they struck and now they parried, And some lay-in of full-grown wit, While others of a pun miscarried.

VOL. II.

13

'Twas one of those facetious nights
That Grammont gave this forfeit ring,
For breaking grave conundrum rites,
Or punning ill, or-some such thing;

From whence it can be fairly traced
Through many a branch and many a bough,
From twig to twig, until it graced
The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then-to you,
Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical,
I swear by H-the-te's eye of blue,
To dedicate the important chronicle.

Long may your ancient inmates give
Their mantles to your modern lodgers,
And Charles' loves in H-thc-te live,
And Charles' bards revive in Rogers!

Let no pedantic fools be there,

For ever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware,

And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd.

But still receive the mild, the gay,

The few, who know the rare delight

Of reading Grammont every day,
And acting Grammont every night!

ΤΟ

NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses,
You want not antiquity's stamp,

The lip that's so scented by roses,
Oh! never must smell of the lamp.

Old Cloe, whose withering kisses
Have long set the loves at defiance,
Now, done with the science of blisses,
May fly to the blisses of science!

Young Sappho, for want of employments,
Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
Condemn'd but to read of enjoyments
Which wiser Corinna had felt.

But for you to be buried in books-
Oh, FANNY! they're pitiful sages,
Who could not in one of your looks

Read more than in millions of pages!

Astronomy finds in your eye

Better light than she studies above,
And music must borrow your sigh
As the melody dearest to love.

In Ethics-'tis you that can check,

In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels; Oh! show but that mole on your neck,

And 'twill soon put an end to their morals.

Your Arithmetic only can trip

When to kiss and to count you

But eloquence glows on your lip

endeavour;

When you swear that you'll love me for ever.

Thus you see what a brilliant alliance

Of arts is assembled in you

A course of more exquisite science

Man never need wish to go through !

And, oh!—if a fellow like me

May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts!

EXTRACT FROM

"THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS."*

ΤΙ ΚΑΚΟΝ Ὁ ΓΕΛΩΣ ;

CHRYSOST. Homil. in Epist. ad Hebræos.

BUT, whither have these gentle ones,
The rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,
Led my truant brains a dancing?
Instead of wise encomiastics

Upon the Doctors and Scholastics,

Polymaths, and Polyhistors,

Polyglots and all their sisters,
The instant I have got the whim in,
Off I fly with nuns and women,

* I promised that I would give the remainder of this Poem, but, as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning which it contains, they shall have no more of it. With a view, however, to the edification of these gentlemen, I have prevailed on an industrious friend of mine, who has read a great number of unnecessary books, to illuminate the extract with a little of his precious erudition.

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