Our wives they grow sullen
At wearing of woollen,

And all we poor shopkeepers must our horns pull in. Then we'll buy English silks, for our wives and our daughters,

In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.

Whoever our trading with England would hinder,
To inflame both the nations do plainly conspire,
Because Irish linen will soon turn to tinder,
And wool it is greasy, and quickly takes fire.
Therefore, I assure ye,

Our noble grand jury,

When they saw the dean's book, they were in a great

fury;

They would buy English silks for their wives and their daughters,

In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.

This wicked rogue Waters, who always is sinning, And before coram nobis so oft has been call'd, Henceforward shall print neither pamphlets nor linen, And if swearing can do't shall be swingingly maul'd;

And as for the dean,

You know whom I mean,

If the printer will peach him, he'll scarce come off clean.

Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,

In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.

THE RUN UPON THE BANKERS. * 1720.

THE bold encroachers on the deep,
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.

The multitude's capricious pranks,
Are said to represent the seas,
Which, breaking bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.

Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,

Unless a proper circulation,

Its motion and its heat maintains.

Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.

We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he
pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;

The birds are met to strip the jays.

Riches, the wisest monarch sings,

"Make pinions for themselves to fly;"

*This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was therefore thought fit to be reprinted.-Dub. Ed.

They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.

No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero now is theirs,

"That they had never known their letters."

Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.

Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Expos'd with all their magic ware.

So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.

Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,

He hides within his darkest cell.

As when a conjurer takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,

Whene'er the bloody bond appears.

A baited banker thus desponds,

From his own hand foresees his fall They have his soul, who have his bonds; 'Tis like the writing on the wall.

How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,

And all his grand account to make!

For in that universal call,

Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters !"

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in mens' and angels' sight
Produc'd with all their bills and gold,

66

Weigh'd in the balance and found light !"

UPON THE HORRID PLOT

DISCOVERED BY HARLEQUIN,

THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER'S FRENCH DOG.❤

In a Dialogue between a WHIG and a TORY. 1723.

I ASK'D a whig the other night,

How came this wicked plot to light?

In Atterbury's trial a good deal of stress was laid upon the circumstance of a dog called Harlequin being mentioned in the in. tercepted correspondence. See Volume XII. p. 245, Note. The dog was sent in a present to the bishop from Paris, and its leg was broken by the way.

He answer'd, that a dog of late
Inform'd a minister of state,

Said I, from thence I nothing know
For are not all informers so?
A villain who his friend betrays,
We style him by no other phrase;
And so a perjur'd dog denotes
Porter, and Pendergast, and Oates,
And forty others I could name.

WHIG. But you must know this dog was lame.
TORY. A weighty argument indeed!

Your evidence was lame:-proceed:
Come, help your lame dog o'er the stile.

WHIG. Sir, you mistake me all this while :

I mean a dog (without a joke)

Can howl, and bark, but never spoke.

TORY. I'm still to seek, which dog you mean; Whether cur Plunkett, or whelp Skean,

An English or an Irish hound;

Or t'other puppy, that was drown'd;
Or Mason, that abandon'd bitch :
Then pray be free, and tell me which:
For every stander-by was marking,
That all the noise they made was barking.
You pay them well, the dogs have got
Their dogs-head in a porridge-pot:
And 'twas but just; for wise men say,
That every dog must have his day.
Dog Walpole laid a quart of nog on't,
He'd either make a hog or dog on't;

* John Kelly and Skin, or Skinner, were persons engaged in the plot. Neynoe, whose declaration was taken before the lords of council, and used in evidence against the bishop, is the "t'other puppy who was drowned," which fate he encountered, in attempting to escape from the messengers.