'Tis no hard matter to divine How I, who love a wench and wine, That Lamb or Locket can devise, With foot on chair in velvet shoe. Beyond a penny chop of mutton, And can't tell what sixth sense, or whore is, And Goody is his only Chloris: How such a one should have intestine Saline, and acid so infesting, Is strange to me, and as obscure A riddle almost as the cure. The learned Sydenham does not doubt Indeed I'm apt to think in you Th' hypothesis is very true : So ori and dori full, That, hunting things through common-places, Y' are lost in entelechian mazęs: And as when to an house we come To know if any one 's at home, We knock; so one must kick your shin, Your brains (if any) sure would work well EPISTLE XXXV. THE SPLEEN. ΤΟ MR. CUTHBERT JACKSON. BY MR. MATTHEW GREEN, of the Custom-House. THIS motley piece to you I send, The want of method pray excuse, The child is genuine, you may trace Throughout the sire's transmitted face. Nothing is stol'n: my Muse, though mean, Draws from the spring she finds within; Nor vainly buys what Gildon sells, School-helps I want, to climb on high, Who only with the moderns deal? Whose stamp of genius marks their ware, : From More so lash'd, example fit, First know, my friend, I do not mean To write a treatise on the Spleen; Nor to prescribe when nerves convulse; Nor mend th' alarum watch, your pulse. If I am right, your question lay, What course I take to drive away The day-mare Spleen, by whose false pleas Men prove meer suicides in ease; And how I do myself demean In stormy world to live serene. When by its magic lantern Spleen Reason, some quiet to restore, Shew'd part was substance, shadow more ; I always choose the plainest food Thy help love's confessors implore, To thee, I fly, by thee dilute Through veins my blood doth quicker shoot, And by swift current throws off clean Prolific particles of Spleen. I never sick by drinking grow, Nor keep myself a cup too low, And seldom Cloe's lodgings haunt, Thrifty of spirits, which I want. Hunting I reckon very good To brace the nerves, and stir the blood; |