Nor will they dare to break the joints,
But help thee to be read with points:
Or else, to show their learned labour, you
May backward be perus'd like Hebrew,
In which they need not lose a bit
Or of thy harmony or wit.
To make a work completely fine,
Number and weight and measure join;
Then all must grant your lines are weighty,
Where thirty weigh as much as eighty;
All must allow your numbers more,
Where twenty lines exceed fourscore;
Nor can we think your measure short,
Where less than forty fill a quart,
With Alexandrian in the close,
Long, long, long, long, like Dan's long nose.
GEORGE-NIM-DAN-DEAN'S[1] INVITATION TO THOMAS SHERIDAN.
Gaulstown, Aug. 2, 1721.
DEAR Tom, this verse, which however the beginning may appear, yet in the end's good metre,
Is sent to desire that, when your August vacation comes, your friends you'd meet here.
For
- ↑ In 1721, Dr. Swift, Dr. Delany, Dr. Sheridan, Dr. Stopford, the reverend Dan Jackson, and some other company, spent a great part of the summer at Gaulstown, in the county of Westmeath, the seat of George Rochfort, esq. father to the present earl of Belvidere. Many of the gentlemen assembled in
this
