Pray let us pay in mimic coin.” 
  Quoth he, “Thou lovest, Punch, to prate,
And couldst for ever hold debate;
But think’st thou I have nought to do
But to stand prating thus with you? 
Therefore to stop your noisy parly,
I do at once assure you fairly,
That not a puppet of you all
Shall stir a step without this wall,
Nor merry Andrew beat thy drum,
Until you pay the foresaid sum.” 
Then marching off with swiftest race
To write dispatches for his grace,
The revel-master left the room,
And us condemn’d to fatal doom. 
Now, fair ones, if e’er I found grace,
Or if my jokes did ever please,
Use all your interest with your sec,[2]
(They say he’s at the ladies’ beck,)
And though he thinks as much of gold
As ever Midas[3] did of old: 
Your charms I’m sure can never fail,
Your eyes must influence, must prevail;
At your command he’ll set us free,
Let us to you owe liberty. 
Get us a license now to play,
And we’ll in duty ever pray.

[Footnote 1:  Lord Chancellor Middleton, against whom a vote of censure passed in the House of Lords for delay of justice occasioned by his absence in England.  It was instigated by Grafton, then Lord-Lieutenant, who had a violent quarrel at this time with Middleton.—­Scott.]

[Footnote 2:  Abridged from Secretary, rythmi gratia.—­Scott.]

[Footnote 3:  See Ovid, “Metam.” xi, 85; Martial, vi, 86.—­W.  E. B.]

EPIGRAM

Great folks are of a finer mould;
Lord! how politely they can scold! 
While a coarse English tongue will itch,
For whore and rogue, and dog and bitch.

EPIGRAM ON JOSIAH HORT[1]

ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM, WHO, ON ONE OCCASION, LEFT HIS CHURCH DURING SERVICE IN ORDER TO WAIT ON THE DUKE OF DORSET[2]

Lord Pam[3] in the church (you’d you think it) kneel’d down;
When told that the Duke was just come to Town—­
His station despising, unawed by the place,
He flies from his God to attend to his Grace. 
To the Court it was better to pay his devotion,
Since God had no hand in his Lordship’s promotion.

[Footnote 1:  See vol. i, “The Storm,” at p. 242.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2:  Lionel Cranfield, first Duke of Dorset, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1730 to 1735.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 3:  Pam, the cant name for the knave of clubs, from the French Pamphile.  The person here intended was a famous B. known through the whole kingdom by the name of Lord Pam.  He was a great enemy to all men of wit and learning, being himself the most ignorant as well as the most vicious P. of all who had ever been honoured with that Title from the days of the Apostles to the present year of the Christian Aera.  He was promoted non tam providentia divina quam temporum iniquitate E-scopus.  From a note in “The Toast,” by Frederick Scheffer, written in Latin verse, done into English by Peregrine O Donald, Dublin and London, 1736.—­W.  E. B.]