XII.
Our church and our state dear England maintains,
For which all true Protestant hearts should be glad:
She sends us our bishops, our judges, and deans,
And better would give us, if better she had.
But, lord! how the rabble will stare and will gape,
When the good English dean is hang'd up for a rape.
ON STEPHEN DUCK,
THE THRESHER AND FAVOURITE POET.
A QUIBBLING EPIGRAM. 1730.
THE thresher Duck could o'er the queen prevail,
The proverb says, "no fence against a flail."
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains;
For which her majesty allows him grains:
Though 'tis confest, that those, who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw!
Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble!
Thy toil is lessen'd, and thy profits double.
THE LADY'S DRESSING ROOM[1]. 1730.
FIVE hours (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Cælia spent in dressing;
- ↑ A defence of "The Lady's Dressing Room," by some facetious friend of our author, is printed in Faulkner's edition; which, after a humorous travesty of ten lines only of "Horace's Art of Poetry," decides clearly that there are ten times more slovenly expressions in those ten lines of Horace, than in the whole poem of Dr. Swift.
