Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes,
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease
Till the dropp'd curtain gives a glad release:
Why this and more he suffers, can ye guess?--
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!"

The concluding couplet of the following lines is amusingly
characteristic of that mixture of fun and bitterness with which their
author sometimes spoke in conversation;--so much so, that those who knew
him might almost fancy they hear him utter the words:--

"But every thing has faults, nor is't unknown
That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
And wayward voices at their owner's call,
With all his best endeavours, only squall;
Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
And double barrels (damn them) miss their mark!"[11]

One more passage, with the humorous note appended to it, will complete
the whole amount of my favourable specimens:--

"And that's enough--then write and print so fast,--
If Satan take the hindmost, who'd be last?
They storm the types, they publish one and all,
They leap the counter, and they leave the stall:--
Provincial maidens, men of high command,
Yea, baronets, have ink'd the bloody hand!
Cash cannot quell them--Pollio play'd this prank:
(Then Phoebus first found credit in a bank;)
Not all the living only, but the dead