nyan sung,
From out the pen will presently
On paper dribble daintily.
Suppose I call'd you goose, it is hard
One word should stick thus in your gizzard.
You're my goose, and no other man's;
And you know, all my geese are swans:
Only one scurvy thing I find,
Swans sing when dying, geese when blind.
But now I smoke where lies the slander,--
I call'd you goose instead of gander;
For that, dear Tom, ne'er fret and vex,
I'm sure you cackle like the sex.
I know the gander always goes
With a quill stuck across his nose:
So your eternal pen is still
Or in your claw, or in your bill.
But whether you can tread or hatch,
I've something else to do than watch.
As for your writing I am dead,
I leave it for the second head.

Deanery-House, Oct. 27, 1718.

AN ANSWER BY SHERIDAN

Perlegi versus versos, Jonathan bone, tersos;
Perlepidos quidem; scribendo semper es idem.
Laudibus extollo te, tu mihi magnus Apollo;
Tu frater Phoebus, oculis collyria praebes,
Ne minus insanae reparas quoque damna Dianae,
Quae me percussit radiis (nec dixeris ussit)
Frigore collecto; medicus moderamine tecto
Lodicem binum premit, atque negat mihi vinum.
O terra et coelum! quam redit pectus anhelum.
Os mihi jam siccum, liceat mihi bibere dic cum?
Ex vestro grato poculo, tam saepe prolato,
Vina crepant: sales ostendet quis mihi tales?
Lumina, vos sperno, dum cuppae gaudia cerno:
Perdere etenim pellem nostram, quoque crura mavellem.
Amphora, quam dulces risus queis pectora mulces,
Pangitur a Flacco, cum pectus turget Iaccho:
Clarius evohe ingeminans geminatur et ohe;
Nempe jocosa propago, haesit sic vocis imago.

TO DR. SHERIDAN. 1718

Whate'er your predecessors taught us,
I have a great esteem for Plautus;
And think your boys may gather there-hence
More wit and humour than from Terence;
But as to comic Aristophanes,
The rogue too vicious and too profane is.
I went in vain to look for Eupolis
Down in the Strand,[1] just where the New Pole[2] is;
For I can tell you one thing, that I can,
You will not find it in the Vatican.
He and Cratinus used, as Horace says,
To take his greatest grandees for asses.
Poets, in those days, used to venture high;
But these are lost full many a century.
Thus you may see, dear friend, _ex pede_ hence,
My judgment of the old comedians.
Proceed to tragics: first Euripides
(An author where I sometimes dip a-days)
Is rightly censured by the Stagirite,
Who says, his numbers do not fadge aright.