Inquire what regimen I kept;
What gave me ease, and how I slept?
And more lament when I was dead,
Than all the snivellers round my bed.
My good companions, never fear:
For though you may mistake a year,
Though your prognosticks run too fast,
They must be verified at last.
Behold the fatal day arrive!
"How is the dean?" — "He's just alive."
Now the departing prayer is read;
"He hardly breathes" — "The dean is dead."
Before the passingbell begun,
The news through half the town is run.
"O! may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?
I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeathed to publick uses.
To publick uses! there's a whim!
What had the publick done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all — but first he died.
And had the dean, in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!"
Now Grubstreet wits are all employ'd;
With elegies the town is cloy'd:
Some paragraph in every paper.
To curse the dean, or bless the Drapier,
and therefore it ought to have been expressed, if the measure would have allowed it, without the article, in the plural number, how many messages. Lowth.
