L

Singleton, revised by Barralet.

Come on! begin the grand attack;
With aloes, squills, and ipecac

Pelt the vile foe with weapons missile;
Make vials round their sconces whistle;

There will be monsters

Come on! Begin the grand attack
With aloes, squills, and ipecac;
And then with clyster-pipe and squirt-gun,
There will be monstrous deal of hurt done!

Each wry-fac'd rogue, and dirty trollop,
Must well be dos'd with drastick jalap,
And though their insides you should call up,
Still make the numsculls take it all up.

Cram all the ninny-hammers' gullets,
With pills as big as pistol bullets;
Then, Frenchman like, give each a clyster,
And next go on to bleed and blister.

Dash at them escharoticks gnawing,
Their carcases to pick a flaw in;
Of nitrous acid huge carboys,
Fill'd to the brim, like Margate hoys.

Thus when the Greeks with their commander,

That fighting fellow, Alexander,

Set out one morning, full of ire,

To take and burn the town of Tyre;

A patriotick stout old woman

Look'd out, and saw the chaps a coming;

When on a sudden she bethought her
To heat a kettle full of water;

And as they went to climb the ladder,
(Sure never vixen could be madder,
But so the historian of the fray says)
She fir'd her water in their faces !

But to return to our great battle;

Now rant! rave! roar! and rend! and rattle! 18

Like earth-born giants when they strove,
To pull the ears of thundering Jove !

Pelt the vile foe with weapons missile;
Make vials round their sconces whistle;
Shower on them a tremendous torrent,
Of gally pots and bottles horrent.

Make at 'em now like mad Mendozas;
With forceps pinch and pull their noses,

18 Now rant! rave! roar! and rend! and rattle.

I Christopher. Caustick, censured by criticks, for my apt alliterations, though artfully allied, yet presume it is policy, for a pennyless poet to polish his puny lays to such a pitch of perfection, that posterity may please to place the pithy production paramount to the peaked point of the pinnacle of Pierian Parnassus.

With tournequet and dire tooth-drawers,
First gird their necks, then break both jaws,

But lo! They bid our dread alliance
Of doctors, quacks, and drugs defiance;
And, firm as host of cavaliers,
Convert their tractors into spears!

See host to host and man to man set!
A tractor each, and each a lancet!
Each meets his foe, so fierce attacks him!
That sure some god or demon backs him!

Fell Ate's shriek the world alarms!
Bellona bellows "ARMS! TO ARMS!"
War's demon dire, a great red dragon,
Drives, Jehu-like, Death's iron wagon!! 19

19 Drives, Jehu-like, Death's iron wagon!!

A poet of less judgment than myself would have seated Mars in the chariot of Victory, a Vauxhall car, or some other flimsy vehicle of that kind, which would be sure to be dashed to pieces in a conflict like this in which we are at present engaged. The carriage here introduced was made by Vulcan, in his best style of workmanship, for the express purpose of this attack, and in point of strength and size, bears no more proportion to the chariot commonly used by the god of war, than one of those huge broad-wheeled Manchester wagons to the little whalebone