Those men who wore the breeches least
Call'd him a cuckold, fool, and beast.
At home he was pursued with noise;
Abroad was pester'd by the boys:
Within, his wife would break his bones;
Without, they pelted him with stones:
The 'prentices procured a riding',
To act his patience and her chiding.
False patience and mistaken pride!
There are ten thousand Dicks beside;
Slaves to their Quiet and Good Name,
Are used like Dick, and bear the blame.
ON THE UPRIGHT JUDGE WHO CONDEMNED THE
DRAPIER'S PRINTER.
THE church I hate, and have good reason,
For there my grandsire cut his weason:
He cut his weason at the altar;
I keep my gullet for the halter.
IN church your grandsire cut his throat:
To do the job too long he tarried;
He should have had my hearty vote
To cut his throat before he married.
A riding, a humorous cavalcade still practised in some parts of England, to ridicule a scolding wife and henpecked husband. A woman bestrides the horse, and with a ladle chastises a man, who sits on a pillion behind her, with his face to the horse's tail. Hawkes.
I'm not the grandson of that ass Quin,
Nor can you prove it, Mr. Pasquin :
My grand-dame had gallants by twenties,
And bore my mother by a 'prentice;
This when my grandsire knew, they tell us he
In Christ Church cut his throat for jealousy:
And since the alderman was mad, you say,
Then I must be so too ex traduce.
ON OUR WANT OF SILVER; AND THE ONLY WAY TO REMEDY IT.
As when of old some sorceress threw
O'er the moon's face a sable hue,
To drive unseen her magic chair
At midnight through the darken'd air,
Wise people, who believed with reason
That this eclipse was out of season,
Affirm'd the moon was sick, and fell,
To cure her by a counter-spell.
Ten thousand cymbals now begin
To rend the skies with brazen din;
The cymbals' rattling sounds dispel
The cloud, and drive the hag to hell:
The moon, deliver'd from her pain,
Displays her silver face again.
(Note here, that in the chemic style
The moon is silver all this while.)
So (if my simile you minded,
Which I confess is too long-winded)
When late a feminine magician,
Join'd with a brazen politician,
Exposed, to blind the nation's eyes,
A parchment of prodigious size,
Conceal'd behind that ample screen,
There was no Silver to be seen;
But to this parchment let the Drapier
Oppose his counter charm of paper,
And ring Wood's copper in our ears
So loud till all the nation hears;
That sound will make the parchment shrivel,
And drive the conjurers to the devil;
And when the sky is grown serene,
Our Silver will appear again.
SALMONEUS, as the Grecian tale is,
Was a mad coppersmith of Elis ;
Up at his forge by morning peep,
No creature in the lane could sleep:
Among a crew of roistering fellows,
Would sit whole evenings at the alehouse:
His wife and children wanted bread,
While he went always drunk to bed.
This vapouring scab must needs devise
To ape
the thunder of the skies:
With brass two fiery steeds he shod,
To make a clattering as they trod.
Of polish'd brass his flaming car
Like lightning dazzled from afar ;
And up he mounts into the box,
And he must thunder, with a pox!
Then furious he begins his march,
Drives rattling o'er a brazen arch,
With squibs and crackers arm'd, to throw
Among the trembling crowd below.
All ran to prayers, both priests and laity,
To pacify this angry deity;
When Jove, in pity to the town,
With real thunder knock'd him down.
Then what a huge delight were all in,
To see the wicked varlet sprawling!
They search'd his pockets on the place,
And found his copper all was base;
They laugh'd at such an Irish blunder,
To take the noise of brass for thunder.
The moral of this tale is proper,
Applied to Wood's adulterate copper,
Which, as he scatter'd, we, like dolts,
Mistook at first for thunderbolts;
Before the Drapier shot a letter,
(Nor Jove himself could do it better)
Which lighting on the' impostor's crown,
Like real thunder knock'd him down.
By long observation I have understood
That two little vermin are kin to Will Wood:
The first is an insect they call a Wood-louse,
That folds up itself in itself for a house,
As round as a ball, without head, without tail,
Inclosed cap-à-pie in a strong coat of mail:
And thus William Wood to my fancy appears,
In fillets of brass roll'd up to his ears,
And over these fillets he wisely has thrown,
To keep out of danger a doublet of stone1.
The louse of the wood for a medicine is used,
Or swallow'd alive, or skilfully bruised:
And let but our mother Hibernia contrive
To swallow Will Wood either bruised or alive,
She need be no more with her jaundice possess'd,
Or sick of obstructions and pains in her chest.
The next is an insect we call a Wood-worm, That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form; With teeth or with claws it will bite or will scratch, And chambermaids christen this worm a Deathwatch,
Because, like a watch, it always cries Click; Then woe be to those in the house who are sick; For as sure as a gun they will give up the ghost, If the maggot cries Click when it scratches the post: But a kettle of scalding-hot water injected, Infallibly cures the timber affected;
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