But hang it-to poets who seldom can eat,
Your very good mutton's a very good treat;
Such dainties to them their health it might hurt,

It's like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.
While thus I debated, in reverie center'd,

An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, en

ter'd;

An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he,

And he smil'd as he look'd at the ven'son and me.

"What have we got here?-Why this is good eating!

Your own I suppose-or is it in waiting?"

"Why whose should it be?" cry'd I with a flounce; "I get these things often"-but that was a bounce: "Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation,

Are pleas'd to be kind-but I hate ostentation."

"If that be the case then," cry'd he, very gay, "I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words-I insist on't-precisely at three:

We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will

be there;

My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my lord Clare.
And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner!
We wanted this venison to make out a dinner.
What say you-a pasty, it shall, and it must,
And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust.
Here, porter-this venison with me to Mile-end;
No stirring, I beg-my dear friend-my dear
friend!"

Thus snatching his hat, he brush'd off like the wind,
And the porter and eatables follow'd behind.

Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, And "nobody with me at sea but myself";" Tho' I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good venison pasty, Were things that I never dislik'd in my life, Tho' clogg'd with a coxcomb, and Kitty his wife.

• See the letters that passed between his royal highness Henry duke of Cumberland, and lady Grosvenor-12°, ≥1769.

So next day in due splendor to make my approach, I drove to his door in my own hackney-coach.

When come to the place where we were all to dine,

(A chair-lumber'd closet just twelve feet by nine) My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb

With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not

come;

"For I knew it," he cried, " both eternally fail,
The one with his speeches, and t'other with Thrale;
But no matter, I'll warrant we'll make up the party,
With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty.
The one is a Scotchman, the other a Jew,
They're both of them merry, and authors like you;
The one writes the Snarler, the other the Scourge;
Some think he writes Cinna-he owns to Panurge."
While thus he describ'd them by trade and by name,
They enter'd, and dinner was serv'd as they came.

At the top a fried liver and bacon were seen,
At the bottom was tripe, in a swinging tureen;

F

At the sides there were spinage and pudding made

hot;

In the middle a place where the pasty—was not.

Now, my lord, as for tripe, it's my utter aversion, And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian; So there I sat stuck like a horse in a pound,

While the bacon and liver went merrily round:

But what vex'd me most, was that d- 'd Scottish

rogue,

With his long-winded speeches, his smiles, and his

brogue,

And, "madam," quoth he, " may this bit be my poison,

A prettier dinner I never set eyes on;

Pray a slice of your liver, though may I be curst, But I've eat of your tripe till I'm ready to burst." "The tripe," quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek,

"I could dine on this tripe seven days in a week: I like these here dinners so pretty and small;

But your friend there, the doctor, eats nothing at

all."

"O-ho!" quoth my friend, "he'll come on in a

trice,

He's keeping a corner for something that's nice: There's a pasty"-" A pasty!" repeated the Jew; "I don't care if I keep a corner for't too."

"What the de'il, mon, a pasty!" re-echo'd the Scot;

Though splitting, I'll still keep a corner for that." "We'll all keep a corner," the lady cried out; "We'll all keep a corner," was echo'd about. While thus we resolv'd, and the pasty delay'd, With looks that quite petrified, enter'd the maid; A visage so sad, and so pale with affright,

Wak'd Priam, in drawing his curtains by night.
But we quickly found out (for who could mistake

her?)

That she came with some terrible news from the

baker:

And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven

Had shut out the pasty on shutting his oven.
Sad Philomel thus-but let similes drop-
And now that I think on't the story may stop.