Even so Master Doctor had puzzled his brains
In making a ballad, but was at a stand;
He had mixt little wit with a great deal of pains,
When he found a new help from invisible hand.
Then, good Doctor Swift
Pay thanks for the gift,
For you freely must own you were at a dead lift;
And, though some malicious young spirit did do't,
You may know by the hand it had no cloven foot.
CHO. Let censuring, &c.
[Footnote 1: Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the
author's room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which
gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit
hand, as if a third person had done it.--_Swift_.
The _Cut-Purse_ is a ballad sung by Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in
Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," Act III, Sc. I. The burthen of the
ballad is:
"Youth, youth, thou had'st better been starv'd by thy nurse
Than live to be hang'd for cutting a purse."--_W. E. B._]