A skilful leech is better far, 245
Than half a hundred men of war;[1]
So he appear'd, and by his skill,
No less than dint of sword, could kill.
The gallant Bruin march' d next him,
With visage formidably grim, 250
And rugged as a Saracen,
Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin,[2]
Clad in a mantle de la guerre
Of rough, impenetrable fur; 255
And in his nose, like Indian king,
He wore, for ornament, a ring;
About his neck a threefold gorget,
As rough as trebled leathern target;
Armed, as heralds cant, and langued,
Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged: 260
For as the teeth in beasts of prey
Are swords, with which they fight in fray,
So swords, in men of war, are teeth,
Which they do eat their victual with.
He was by birth, some authors write, 265
A Russian, some a Muscovite,
And 'mong the Cossacks[3] had been bred,
Of whom we in diurnals read.
That serve to fill up pages here,
As with their bodies ditches there.[4] 270
Scrimansky was his cousin-german,[5]
With whom he served, and fed on vermin;
- ↑ See Homer's Iliad, b. xi. line 514. Leech is the old Saxon term for physician.
- ↑ Sandys, in his Travels, observes, that the Turks are generally well complexioned, of good stature, except Mahomet's kindred, who are the most ill-favoured people upon earth, branded, perhaps, by God for the sin of their seducing ancestor.
- ↑ The Cossacks are a people living near Poland, on the borders of the Don, whence the term "Don Cossack." Grey derives that name from Cosa, the Polish for a goat, to which they are compared for their extraordinary nimbleness and wandering habits.
- ↑ The story of the Russian soldiers marching into the ditch at the siege of Schweidnitz is well known. The Cossacks had, in Butler's time, recently put themselves under the protection of Russia.
- ↑ Some favourite bear perhaps; or a caricatured Russian name.
