Once more, and no more, since few words are best,
I charge you all present, by way of request,
      If ye honour, as I do,
      Our dear royal widow,
      Or have any compassion
      For church or the nation;
      And would live a long while
      In continual smile,
      And eat roast and boil,
      And not be forgotten,
      When ye are dead and rotten;
That ye would be quiet, and peaceably dwell,
And never fall out, but p—­s all in a quill.

[Footnote 1:  Dr. Offspring Blackall.  He was made Bishop of Exeter in 1707, and died in 1716.—­Scott.]

[Footnote 2:  Swift hated the word “mob,” and insisted that the proper word to use was “rabble.”  See “Letters of Swift,” edit.  Birkbeck Hill, p. 55; and “Prose Works,” ix, p. 35, n.—­W.  E. B._]

PARODY ON THE RECORDER’S SPEECH

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND, 4TH JULY, 1711

This city can omit no opportunity of expressing their hearty affection for her majesty’s person and government; and their regard for your grace, who has the honour of representing her in this kingdom.

We retain, my lord, a grateful remembrance of the mild and just Administration of the government of this kingdom by your noble ancestors; and, when we consider the share your grace had in the happy Revolution, in 1688, and the many good laws you have procured us since, particularly that for preventing the farther growth of Popery, we are assured that that liberty and property, that happy constitution in church and state, to which we were restored by King William of glorious memory, will be inviolably preserved under your grace’s administration.  And we are persuaded that we cannot more effectually recommend ourselves to your grace’s favour and protection, than by assuring you that we will, to the utmost of our power, contribute to the honour and safety of her majesty’s government, the maintenance of the succession in the illustrious house of Hanover, and that we shall at all times oppose the secret and open attempts of the Pretender, and all his abettors.

THE RECORDER’S SPEECH EXPLAINED BY THE TORIES

An ancient metropolis, famous of late
For opposing the Church, and for nosing the State,
For protecting sedition and rejecting order,
Made the following speech by their mouth, the Recorder: 
First, to tell you the name of this place of renown,
Some still call it Dublin, but most Forster’s town.

THE SPEECH

May it please your Grace,
We cannot omit this occasion to tell,
That we love the Queen’s person and government well;
Then next, to your Grace we this compliment make,
That our worships regard you, but ’tis for her sake: 
Though our mouth be a Whig, and our head a Dissenter,