And scarcely can one page sustain
The length of such a flowing train: 
Her train of variegated dye
Shows like Thaumantia’s[6] in the sky;
Alike they glow, alike they please,
Alike imprest by Phoebus’ rays. 
  Thy verse—­(Ye Gods!  I cannot bear it)
To what, to what shall I compare it? 
’Tis like, what I have oft heard spoke on,
The famous statue of Laocoon. 
’Tis like,—­O yes, ’tis very like it,
The long, long string, with which you fly kite. 
’Tis like what you, and one or two more,
Roar to your Echo[7] in good humour;
And every couplet thou hast writ
Concludes with Rhattah-whittah-whit.[8]

[Footnote 1:  These were written all in circles, one within another, as appears from the observations in the following poem by Dr. Swift.—­F.]

[Footnote 2:  The hundred-armed giant, “centumgeminus Briareus,” Virg., “Aen.,” vi, 287; also called Aegaeon, “centum cui brachia dicunt,” Virg., “Aen.,” x, 565; see Heyne’s notes.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 3:  A mythic king, having three bodies, whose arms were carried off by Hercules.—­Lucr., v, 28, and Munro’s note; Virg.  “Aen.,” vii, 662, and viii, 202: 

                           “maxumus ultor
  Tergemini nece Geryonae spoliisque superbus
  Alcides aderat taurosque hac victor agebat
  Ingentis, vallemque boves amnemque tenebant.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  Cambyses, the warrior king of Persia, whose name is the emblem of bravado.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 5:  Represented as the perfection of female beauty in “Cassandra,” a romance by La Calprenede, romancier et auteur dramatique, 1610-1663,—­Larousse.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 6:  Iris, daughter of Thaumas, and the messenger of Juno, descending and returning on the rainbow.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 7:  At Gaulstown there is so famous an echo, that if you repeat two lines of Virgil out of a speaking-trumpet, you may hear the nymph return them to your ear with great propriety and clearness.—­F.]

[Footnote 8:  These words allude to their amusements with the echo, having no other signification but to express the sound of stones when beaten one against the other, returned by the echo.—­F.]

TO MR. THOMAS SHERIDAN UPON HIS VERSES WRITTEN IN CIRCLES BY DR. SWIFT

It never was known that circular letters,
By humble companions were sent to their betters,
And, as to the subject, our judgment, meherc’le,
Is this, that you argue like fools in a circle. 
But now for your verses; we tell you, imprimis,
The segment so large ’twixt your reason and rhyme is,
That we walk all about, like a horse in a pound,
And, before we find either, our noddles turn round. 
Sufficient it were, one would think, in your mad rant,
To give us your measures of line by a quadrant.