(Unlucky T——­ll, doom’d to daily cares
    By pugilistic pupils and by bears!)
    Fines, tutors, tasks, conventions, threat in vain,
    Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket plain: 
    Rough with his elders; with his equals rash;
    Civil to sharpers; prodigal of cash. 
    Fool’d, pillaged, dunn’d, he wastes his terms away;
    And, unexpell’d perhaps, retires M.A.:—­
    Master of Arts!—­as Hells and Clubs[10] proclaim,
    Where scarce a black-leg bears a brighter name.

    “Launch’d into life, extinct his early fire,
    He apes the selfish prudence of his sire;
    Marries for money; chooses friends for rank;
    Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
    Sits in the senate; gets a son and heir;
    Sends him to Harrow—­for himself was there;
    Mute though he votes, unless when call’d to cheer,
    His son’s so sharp—­he’ll see the dog a peer!

    “Manhood declines; age palsies every limb;
    He quits the scene, or else the scene quits him;
    Scrapes wealth, o’er each departing penny grieves,
    And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
    Counts cent. per cent., and smiles, or vainly frets
    O’er hoards diminish’d by young Hopeful’s debts;
    Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
    Complete in all life’s lessons—­but to die;
    Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
    Commending every time save times like these;
    Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
    Expires unwept, is buried—­let him rot!”

In speaking of the opera, he says:—­

    “Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
    Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,
    Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
    His anguish doubled by his own ‘encore!’
    Squeezed in ‘Fop’s Alley,’ jostled by the beaux,
    Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes,
    Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease
    Till the dropp’d curtain gives a glad release: 
    Why this and more he suffers, can ye guess?—­
    Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!”

The concluding couplet of the following lines is amusingly characteristic of that mixture of fun and bitterness with which their author sometimes spoke in conversation;—­so much so, that those who knew him might almost fancy they hear him utter the words:—­

    “But every thing has faults, nor is’t unknown
    That harps and fiddles often lose their tone,
    And wayward voices at their owner’s call,
    With all his best endeavours, only squall;
    Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark,
    And double barrels (damn them) miss their mark!"[11]

One more passage, with the humorous note appended to it, will complete the whole amount of my favourable specimens:—­