I might have told how oft dean Percival[1]
Displays his pedantry unmerciful,80
How haughtily he cocks his nose,
To tell what every schoolboy knows:
And with his finger and his thumb,
Explaining, strikes opposers dumb:
But now there needs no more be said on't,85
Nor how his wife, that female pedant,
Shows all her secrets of housekeeping;
For candles how she trucks her dripping;
Was forc'd to send three miles for yeast,
To brew her ale, and raise her paste;90
Tells every thing that you can think of,
How she cur'd Charly of the chin cough;
What gave her brats and pigs the measles,
And how her doves were kill'd by weasles;
How Jowler howl'd, and what a fright95
She had with dreams the other night.
But now, since I have gone so far on,
A word or two of lord chief baron;
And tell how little weight he sets
On all whig papers and gazettes;100
But for the politicks of Pue,
Thinks every syllable is true.
And since he owns the king of Sweden
Is dead at last, without evading,
Now all his hopes are in the czar:105
"Why, Muscovy is not so far:
Down the Black Sea, and up the Straits,
And in a month he's at your gates;
Perhaps, from what the packet brings,
By Christmas we shall see strange things."110
Why
