[In the original broadside, there are Deaths with darts, winged hour-glasses, crossed marrow-bones, &c.]

[JONATHAN SWIFT.]

An Elegy on Mr. PATRIGE, the Almanack maker, who died on the 29th of this instant March, 1708.

[Original broadside in the British Museum, C. 39. k./74.]

    Well, ’tis as BICKERSTAFF has guest;
    Though we all took it for a jest;
    PATRIGE is dead! nay more, he died
    Ere he could prove the good Squire lied! 
    Strange, an Astrologer should die
    Without one wonder in the sky
    Not one of all his crony stars
    To pay their duty at his hearse! 
    No meteor, no eclipse appeared,
    No comet with a flaming beard! 
    The sun has rose and gone to bed
    Just as if PATRIGE were not dead;
    Nor hid himself behind the moon
    To make a dreadful night at noon. 
    He at fit periods walks through Aries,
    Howe’er our earthly motion varies;
    And twice a year he’ll cut th’Equator,
    As if there had been no such matter.

    Some Wits have wondered what analogy
    There is ’twixt[11] Cobbling and Astrology? 
    How PATRIGE made his optics rise
    From a shoe-sole, to reach the skies? 
    A list, the cobblers’ temples ties,
    To keep the hair out of their eyes;
    From whence, ’tis plain, the diadem
    That Princes wear, derives from them: 
    And therefore crowns are now-a-days
    Adorned with golden stars and rays;
    Which plainly shews the near alliance
    ’Twixt Cobbling and the Planet science.

      Besides, that slow-paced sign Bo-otes
    As ’tis miscalled; we know not who ’tis? 
    But PATRIGE ended all disputes;
    He knew his trade! and called it Boots![12]
    The Horned Moon which heretofore
    Upon their shoes, the Romans wore,
    Whose wideness kept their toes from corns,
    And whence we claim our Shoeing Horns,
    Shews how the art of Cobbling bears
    A near resemblance to the Spheres.

    A scrap of parchment hung by Geometry,
    A great refinement in Barometry,
    Can, like the stars, foretell the weather: 
    And what is parchment else, but leather? 
    Which an Astrologer might use
    Either for Almanacks or shoes.

    Thus PATRIGE, by his Wit and parts,
    At once, did practise both these Arts;
    And as the boding owl (or rather
    The bat, because her wings are leather)
    Steals from her private cell by night,
    And flies about the candle light: 
    So learned PATRIGE could as well
    Creep in the dark, from leathern cell;
    And in his fancy, fly as far,
    To peep upon a twinkling star! 
    Besides, he could confound the Spheres
    And set the Planets by the ears,
    To shew his skill, he, Mars would join
    To Venus, in aspect malign,
    Then call in Mercury for aid,
    And cure the wounds that Venus made.