So hard and so pat
Till he hides with his hat
His monstrous cravat. 
The pulpit alone
Can never preach down
The fops of the town
Then pardon Tho’ Brown
And let him write on;
But if you had rather convert the poor sinner
His foul writing mouth may be stopped with a dinner. 
Give him clothes to his back, some meat and some drink
Then clap him close prisoner without pen and ink
And your petitioner shall neither pray, write, or think.”

Unfortunately his pecuniary difficulties were not removed, but accompanied him through life.  What a strange mixture of gaiety, learning and destitution is brought before us, when on a clamorons dun vowing she would not leave him until she had her money, he exclaimed in an extempore version of two lines of Martial—­

  “Sextus, thou nothing ow’st, nothing I say! 
   He something owes, that something has to pay.”

In an imitation of another epigram of Martial he gives an account of the unpromising position of his affairs:—­

  “Without formal petition
   Thus stands my condition,
   I am closely blocked up in a garret,
   Where I scribble and smoke,
   And sadly invoke
   The powerful assistance of claret. 
   Four children and a wife
   ’Tis hard on my life,
   Besides myself and a Muse
   To be all clothed and fed,
   Now the times are so dead,
   By my scribbling of doggrel and news;
   And what I shall do,
   I’m a wretch if I know
   So hard is the fate of a poet,
   I must either turn rogue,
   Or what’s as bad—­pedagogue,
   And so drudge like a thing that has no wit.”

How much are we indebted to the pecuniary embarrassments of poets for the interest we take in them.  Who could read sentiment written by a man faring sumptuously every day?  Towards the end of his life, Brown became acquainted with Lord Dorset, and we read of his once dining with that nobleman and finding a note for fifty pounds under his plate.  Tom Brown seems to have regarded with great contempt his contemporary Tom D’Urfey—­best known as a composer of sonnets—­words and music.  He addresses to him “upon his incomparable ballads, called by him Pindaric Odes,” the following acrimonious lines—­

  “Thou cur, half French half English breed,
   Thou mongrel of Parnassus,
   To think tall lines, run up to seed,
   Should ever tamely pass us.

  “Thou write Pindaricks and be damned
   Write epigrams for cutlers,
   None with thy lyricks can be shammed
   But chambermaids and butlers.

  “In t’other world expect dry blows;
   No tears can wash thy stains out,
   Horace will pluck thee by the nose
   And Pindar beat thy brains out.”