Dear Sheridan! a gentle pair
Of Gaulstown lads (for such they are)
Besides a brace of grave divines,
Adore the smoothness of thy lines:
Smooth as our basin's silver flood,
Ere George had robb'd it of its mud;
Smoother than Pegasus' old shoe,
Ere Vulcan comes to make him new.
The board on which we set our a--s,
Is not so smooth as are thy verses;
Compared with which (and that's enough)
A smoothing-iron itself is rough.
Nor praise I less that circumcision,
By modern poets call'd elision,
With which, in proper station placed,
Thy polish'd lines are firmly braced.[1]
Thus a wise tailor is not pinching,
But turns at every seam an inch in:
Or else, be sure, your broad-cloth breeches
Will ne'er be smooth, nor hold their stitches.
Thy verse, like bricks, defy the weather,
When smooth'd by rubbing them together;
Thy words so closely wedged and short are,
Like walls, more lasting without mortar;
By leaving out the needless vowels,
You save the charge of lime and trowels.
One letter still another locks,
Each grooved and dovetail'd like a box;
Thy muse is tuckt up and succinct;
In chains thy syllables are linkt;
Thy words together tied in small hanks,
Close as the Macedonian phalanx;[2]
Or like the _umbo_[3] of the Romans,
Which fiercest foes could break by no means.
The critic, to his grief will find,
How firmly these indentures bind.
So, in the kindred painter's art,
The shortening is the nicest part.
Philologers of future ages,
How will they pore upon thy pages!
Nor will they dare to break the joints,
But help thee to be read with points:
Or else, to show their learned labour, you
May backward be perused like Hebrew,
In which they need not lose a bit
Or of thy harmony or wit.
To make a work completely fine,
Number and weight and measure join;
Then all must grant your lines are weighty
Where thirty weigh as much as eighty;
All must allow your numbers more,
Where twenty lines exceed fourscore;
Nor can we think your measure short,
Where less than forty fill a quart,
With Alexandrian in the close,
Long, long, long, long, like Dan's long nose.[4]
[Footnote 1: In the Dublin edition:
"Makes thy verse smooth, and makes them last."]
[Footnote 2: For a clear description of the phalanx, see Smith's "Greek
and Roman Antiquities," p. 488.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 3: The projection in the centre of the shield, which caused the
missiles of the enemy to glance off. See Smith, as above,
p. 298.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: See _post_, the poems on Dan Jackson's Picture.--_W. E. B._]
GEORGE-NIM-DAN-DEAN'S INVITATION
TO THOMAS SHERIDAN
Gaulstown, Aug. 2, 1721.
Dear Tom, this verse, which however the beginning may appear, yet in the
end's good metre,
Is sent to desire that, when your August vacation comes, your friends
you'd meet here.
For why should you stay in that filthy hole, I mean the city so smoky,
When you have not one friend left in town, or at least not one that's
witty, to joke w' ye?
For as for honest John,[1] though I'm not sure on't, yet I'll be hang'd,
lest he
Be gone down to the county of Wexford with that great peer the Lord
Anglesey.[2]
O! but I forgot; perhaps, by this time, you may have one come to town,
but I don't know whether he be friend or foe, Delany:
But, however, if he be come, bring him down, and you shall go back in a
fortnight, for I know there's no delaying ye.
O! I forgot too: I believe there may be one more, I mean that great fat
joker, friend Helsham, he
That wrote the prologue,[3] and if you stay with him, depend on't, in the
end, he'll sham ye.
Bring down Longshanks Jim[4] too; but, now I think on't, he's not yet
come from Courtown,[5] I fancy;
For I heard, a month ago, that he was down there a-courting sly Nancy.
However, bring down yourself, and you bring down all; for, to say it we
may venture,
In thee Delany's spleen, John's mirth, Helsham's jokes, and the soft soul
of amorous Jemmy, centre.