I thank you for your comedies. 
I’ll stay and read ’em now at home a-days,
Because Parcus wrote but sorrily
Thy notes, I’ll read Lambinus thoroughly;
And then I shall be stoutly set a-gog
To challenge every Irish Pedagogue. 
I like your nice epistle critical,
Which does in threefold rhymes so witty fall;
Upon the comic dram’ and tragedy
Your notion’s right, but verses maggotty;
’Tis but an hour since I heard a man swear it,
The Devil himself could hardly answer it. 
As for your friend the sage Euripides,
I[1] believe you give him now the slip o’ days;
But mum for that—­pray come a Saturday
And dine with me, you can’t a better day: 
I’ll give you nothing but a mutton chop,
Some nappy mellow’d ale with rotten hop,
A pint of wine as good as Falern’,
Which we poor masters, God knows, all earn;
We’ll have a friend or two, sir, at table,
Right honest men, for few’re comeatable;
Then when our liquor makes us talkative,
We’ll to the fields, and take a walk at eve. 
  Because I’m troubled much with laziness,
  These rhymes I’ve chosen for their easiness.

[Footnote 1:  N.B.—­You told me you forgot your Greek.]

DR. SHERIDAN TO DR. SWIFT 1718

Dear Dean, since in cruxes and puns you and I deal,
Pray why is a woman a sieve and a riddle? 
’Tis a thought that came into my noddle this morning,
In bed as I lay, sir, a-tossing and turning. 
You’ll find if you read but a few of your histories,
All women, as Eve, all women are mysteries. 
To find out this riddle I know you’ll be eager,
And make every one of the sex a Belphegor. 
But that will not do, for I mean to commend them;
I swear without jest I an honour intend them. 
In a sieve, sir, their ancient extraction I quite tell,
In a riddle I give you their power and their title. 
This I told you before; do you know what I mean, sir? 
“Not I, by my troth, sir.”—­Then read it again, sir. 
The reason I send you these lines of rhymes double,
Is purely through pity, to save you the trouble
Of thinking two hours for a rhyme as you did last,
When your Pegasus canter’d in triple, and rid fast. 
  As for my little nag, which I keep at Parnassus,
With Phoebus’s leave, to run with his asses,
He goes slow and sure, and he never is jaded,
While your fiery steed is whipp’d, spurr’d, bastinaded.

THE DEAN’S ANSWER

In reading your letter alone in my hackney,
Your damnable riddle my poor brains did rack nigh. 
And when with much labour the matter I crack’d,
I found you mistaken in matter of fact. 
  A woman’s no sieve, (for with that you begin,)
Because she lets out more than e’er she takes in. 
And that she’s a riddle can never be right,
For a riddle is dark, but a woman is light. 
But grant her a sieve, I can say something archer;
Pray what is a man? he’s a fine linen searcher. 
Now tell me a thing that wants interpretation,
What name for a maid,[1] was the first man’s damnation? 
If your worship will please to explain me this rebus,
I swear from henceforward you shall be my Phoebus.