The Answer, By Dr. Sheridan

Sir,

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 notions 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.

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is remembered for works such as "A Tale of a Tub" (1704), "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity" (1712), and "Gulliver's Travels" (1726). Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, Drapier's Letters as MB Drapier—and works were sometimes attributed to Anonymous.

Jonathan Swift

The Gulf Of All Human Possessions

Jonathan Swift, Simple Poetry

Vanbrugh's House,[1] Built From The Ruins Of Whitehall That Was Burnt, 1703

Jonathan Swift, Simple Poetry

Epigram[1]

Jonathan Swift, Simple Poetry

Epitaph In Berkeley Church-Yard, Gloucestershire

Jonathan Swift, Simple Poetry

English

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To Dr. Sheridan.

Whate'er your predecessors taught us,
I have a great esteem for Plautus;
And think your boys may gather there-hence
More wit and humour than from Terence;
But as to comic Aristophanes,
The rogue too vicious and too profane is.
I went in vain to look for Eupolis
Down in the Strand,[1] just where the New Pole[2] is;
For I can tell you one thing, that I can,
You will not find it in the Vatican.
He and Cratinus used, as Horace says,
To take his greatest grandees for asses.
Poets, in those days, used to venture high;
But these are lost full many a century.
Thus you may see, dear friend, ex pede hence,
My judgment of the old comedians.
    Proceed to tragics: first Euripides
(An author where I sometimes dip a-days)
Is rightly censured by the Stagiri...

Jonathan Swift

Poetical Epistle To Dr. Sheridan

Some ancient authors wisely write,
That he who drinks will wake at night,
Will never fail to lose his rest,
And feel a streightness in his chest;
A streightness in a double sense,
A streightness both of breath and pence:
Physicians say, it is but reasonable,
He that comes home at hour unseasonable,
(Besides a fall and broken shins,
Those smaller judgments for his sins;)
If, when he goes to bed, he meets
A teasing wife between the sheets,
'Tis six to five he'll never sleep,
But rave and toss till morning peep.
Yet harmless Betty must be blamed
Because you feel your lungs inflamed
But if you would not get a fever,
You never must one moment leave her.
This comes of all your drunken tricks,
Your Parry's and your brace of Dicks;
Your hunting Hel...

Jonathan Swift

Another Reply, By Sheridan

My pedagogue dear, I read with surprise
Your long sorry rhymes, which you made on my eyes;
As the Dean of St. Patrick's says, earth, seas, and skies!
I cannot lie down, but immediately rise,
To answer your stuff and the Doctor's likewise.
Like a horse with a gall, I'm pester'd with flies,
But his head and his tail new succour supplies,
To beat off the vermin from back, rump, and thighs.
The wing of a goose before me now lies,
Which is both shield and sword for such weak enemies.
Whoever opposes me, certainly dies,
Though he were as valiant as Condé or Guise.
The women disturb me a-crying of pies,
With a voice twice as loud as a horse when he neighs.
By this, Sir, you find, should we rhyme for a prize,
That I'd gain cloth of gold, when you'd scarce merit frize.

Jonathan Swift

Dr. Sheridan's Reply To The Dean

Don't think these few lines which I send, a reproach,
From my Muse in a car, to your Muse in a coach.
The great god of poems delights in a car,
Which makes him so bright that we see him from far;
For, were he mew'd up in a coach, 'tis allow'd
We'd see him no more than we see through a cloud.
    You know to apply this - I do not disparage
Your lines, but I say they're the worse for the carriage.
    Now first you deny that a woman's a sieve;
I say that she is: What reason d'ye give?
Because she lets out more than she takes in.
Is't that you advance for't? you are still to begin.
Your major and minor I both can refute,
I'll teach you hereafter with whom to dispute.
A sieve keeps in half, deny't if you can.
D. "Adzucks, I mistook it, who thought of the bran?"
I ...

Jonathan Swift

Book I. Epistle VII.

IMITATED IN THE MANNER OF DR SWIFT.

'Tis true, my lord, I gave my word,
I would be with you, June the third;
Changed it to August, and (in short)
Have kept it--as you do at court.
You humour me when I am sick,
Why not when I am splenetic?
In town, what objects could I meet?
The shops shut up in every street,
And funerals blackening all the doors,
And yet more melancholy whores:
And what a dust in every place!
And a thin court that wants your face,
And fevers raging up and down,
And W---- and H---- both in town!

'The dog-days are no more the case.'
'Tis true, but winter comes apace:
Then southward let your bard retire,
Hold out some months 'twixt sun and fire,
And you shall see, the first warm weather,
Me and the butterflies toge...

Alexander Pope

An Epistle Upon An Epistle

FROM A CERTAIN DOCTOR TO A CERTAIN GREAT LORD. BEING A CHRISTMAS-BOX FOR DR. DELANY


As Jove will not attend on less,
When things of more importance press:
You can't, grave sir, believe it hard,
That you, a low Hibernian bard,
Should cool your heels a while, and wait
Unanswer'd at your patron's gate;
And would my lord vouchsafe to grant
This one poor humble boon I want,
Free leave to play his secretary,
As Falstaff acted old king Harry;[1]
I'd tell of yours in rhyme and print,
Folks shrug, and cry, "There's nothing in't."
And, after several readings over,
It shines most in the marble cover.
    How could so fine a taste dispense
With mean degrees of wit and sense?
Nor will my lord so far beguile
The wise and learned of our isle;
To ma...

Jonathan Swift