Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast
As long as monarchy should last; 270
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate
A sacrifice to fall of state;
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters[1] 275
Did twist together with its whiskers,
And twine so close, that Time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever;
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow. 280
So learned Taliacotius, from
The brawny part of porter's bum,
Cut supplemental noses, which
Would last as long as parent breech:[2]
But when the date of Nock was out,[3] 285
Off dropt the sympathetic snout.
His back, or rather burthen, show'd
As if it stoop'd with its own load.
For as Æneas bore his sire
Upon his shoulders thro' the fire, 290
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back:
Which now had almost got the upper-
Hand of his head, for want of crupper.
To poise this equally, he bore 295
A paunch of the same bulk before:
Which still he had a special care
To keep well-cramm'd with thrifty fare;
As white-pot,[4] butter-milk, and curds,
Such as a country-house affords; 300
- ↑ Clotho, Lachosis, and Atropos, the three destinies whom the ancient poets feigned to spin and determine how long the thread of life should last.
- ↑ Taliacotius was professor of physic and surgery at Bologna, where he was born, 1553. His treatise in Latin, on the art of ingrafting noses, is well known. See a very humorous account of him, Tatler, No. 260.
- ↑ Nock is a British word, signifying a slit or crack, and hence, figuratively, the fundament; but the more usual term was nock-andro. Nock, Nockys, is used by Gawin Douglas in his version of the Æneid, for the bottom or extremity of anything.
- ↑ A Devonshire dish.
