I now become your humble suitor
To let me praise you as my tutor.
Poor I, a savage bred and born,
By you instructed every morn,
Already have improv'd so well,
That I have almost learnt to spell :
The neighbours who come here to dine,
Admire to hear me speak so fine.
How enviously the ladies look,
When they surprise me at my book!
And sure as they're alive at night
As soon as gone will show their spite:
Good lord! what can my lady mean,
Conversing with that rusty Dean!
She's grown so nice, and so penurious,
With Socrates and Epicurius!
How could she sit the livelong day,
Yet never ask us once to play?
But I admire your patience most;'
That when I'm duller than a post,
Nor can the plainest word pronounce,
You neither fume, nor fret, nor flounce;
Are so indulgent, and so mild,
As if I were a darling child.
So gentle is your whole proceeding,
That I could spend my life in reading.
You merit new employments daily:
Our thatcher, ditcher, gardener, baily.
And to a genius so extensive
No work is grievous or offensive:
Whether your fruitful fancy lies
To make for pigs convenient styes;
Or ponder long with anxious thought
To banish rats that haunt our vault:
Nor have you grumbled, reverend Dean,
To keep our poultry sweet and clean;
To sweep the mansion house they dwell in,
And cure the rank unsavory smelling.
Now enter as the dairy handmaid:
Such charming butter* never man made.
Let others with fanatick face
Talk of their milk for babes of grace;
From tubs their snuffling nonsense utter;
Thy milk shall make us tubs of butter.
The bishop with his foot may burn it †,
But with his hand the Dean can churn it.
How are the servants overjoy'd
To see thy deanship thus employ'd!
Instead of poring on a book,
Providing butter for the cook!
Three morning hours you toss and shake
The bottle till your fingers ake:
Hard is the toil, nor small the art,
The butter from the whey to part:
Behold a frothy substance rise;
Be cautious, or your bottle flies.
The butter comes, our fears are ceas'd;
And out you squeeze an ounce at least.
Your reverence thus, with like success,
(Nor is your skill or labour less)
When bent upon some smart lampoon,
Will toss and turn your brain till noon;
Which, in its jumblings round the skull,
Dilates and makes the vessel full:
While nothing comes but froth at first,
You think your giddy head will burst;
But, squeezing out four lines in rhyme,
Are largely paid for all your time.
But you have rais'd your generous mind
To works of more exalted kind.
Palladio was not half so skill'd in
The grandeur or the art of building.
A way of making butter for breakfast, by filling a bottle with cream, and shaking it till the butter comes.
It is a common saying, when the milk burns to, that the
devil or the bishop has set his foot in it. F.
Two temples of magnifick size
Attract the curious traveller's eyes,
That might be envy'd by the Greeks;
Rais'd up by you in twenty weeks:
Here gentle goddess Cloacine
Receives all offerings at her shrine.
In separate cells, the hes and shes,
Here pay their vows with bended knees:
For 'tis prophane when sexes mingle,
And every nymph must enter single;
And when she feels an inward motion,
Come fill'd with reverence and devotion.
The bashful maid, to hide her blush,
Shall creep no more behind a bush
Here unobserv'd she boldly goes,
As who should say, to pluck a rose.
Ye, who frequent this hallow'd scene,
Be not ungrateful to the Dean;
But duly, ere you leave your station,
Offer to him a pure libation,
Or of his own or Smedley's lay,
Or billet-doux, or lock of hay:
And, O! may all who hither come,
Return with unpolluted thumb!
Yet, when your lofty domes I praise,
I sigh to think of ancient days.
Permit me then to raise my style,
And sweetly moralize a while.
Thee, bounteous goddess Cloacine,
To temples why do we confine?
Forbid in open air to breathe,
Why are thine altars fixt beneath?
When Saturn rul'd the skies alone,
(That golden age to gold unknown)
This earthly globe, to thee assign'd,
Receiv'd the gifts of all mankind.
Ten thousand altars smoking round
Were built to thee with offerings crown'd:
And here thy daily votaries plac'd
Their sacrifice with zeal and haste:
The margin of a purling stream
Sent up to thee a grateful-steam;
Though sometimes thou wert please to wink,
If Naiads swept them from the brink:
Or where appointing lovers rove,
The shelter of a shady grove;
Or offer'd in some flowery vale,
Were, wafted by a gentle gale,
There many a flower abstersive grew,
Thy favourite flowers of yellow hue;
The crocus and the daffodil,
The cowslip soft, and sweet jonquil.
But when at last usurping Jove
Old Saturn from his empire drove;
Then gluttony, with greasy paws,
Her napkin pinn'd up to her jaws,
With watery chaps, and wagging chin,
Brac'd like a drum her oily skin;
Wedg'd in a spacious elbow chair,
And on her plate a treble share,
As if she ne'er could have enough,
Taught harmless man to cram and stuff.
She sent her priests in wooden shoes
From haughty Gaul to make ragouts;
Instead of wholesome bread and cheese,
To dress their soups and fricassees;
And, for our homebred British cheer,
Botargo, catsup, and caviare.
This bloated harpy, sprung from Hell,
Confin'd thee, goddess, to a cell:
Sprung from her womb that impious line,
Contemners of thy rites divine.
First, lolling Sloth in woollen cap
Taking her after-dinner nap:
Pale Dropsy with a sallow face,
Her belly burst, and slow her pace:
And lordly Gout, wrapt up in fur:
And wheezing Asthma, loth to stir :
Voluptuous Ease, the child of wealth,
Infecting thus our hearts by stealth.
None seek thee now in open air,
To thee no verdant altars rear;
But, in their cells and vaults obscene
Present a sacrifice unclean;
From whence unsavoury vapours rose,
Offensive to thy nicer nose.
Ah! who, in our degenerate days, As nature prompts, his offering pays? Here nature never difference made Between the sceptre and the spade. Ye great ones, why will ye disdain To pay your tribute on the plain? Why will you place in lazy pride Your altars near your couches side; When from the homeliest earthen ware Are sent up offerings more sincere, Than where the haughty duchess locks 'Her silver vase in cedar box?
Yet some devotion still remains
Among our harmless northern swains,
Whose offerings, plac'd in golden ranks,
Adorn our crystal rivers' banks;
Nor seldom grace the flowery downs,
With spiral tops and copple crowns;
Or gilding in a sunny morn
The humble branches of a thorn.
So, poets sing, with golden bough
The Trojan hero paid his vow.
Hither, by luckless errour led,
The crude consistence oft I tread:
Here, when my shoes are out of case,
Unweeting gild the tarnish'd lace;
Here, by the sacred bramble ting'd,
My petticoat is doubly fring'd.
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