Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 8.djvu/42

Whenever you see a cassock and gown,
A hundred to one but it covers a clown.
Observe how a parson comes into a room;
G—d d—n me! he hobbles as bad as my groom;
A scholard, when just from his college broke loose,
Can hardly tell how to cry bo to a goose;
Your Noveds^[1], and Bluturcks, and Omurs, and stuff,
By G—, they don't signify this pinch of snuff.
To give a young gentleman right education,
The army's the only good school in the nation:
My schoolmaster call'd me a dunce and a fool,
But at cuffs I was always the cock of the school;
I never could take to my book for the blood o' me,
And the puppy confess'd he expected no good o' me.
He caught me one morning coquetting his wife,
But he maul'd me, I ne'er was so maul'd in my life:
So I took to the road, and, what's very odd,
The first man I robb'd was a parson, by G—.
Now, madam, you'll think it a strange thing to say,
But the sight of a book makes me sick to this day.'
"Never since I was born did I hear so much wit,
And, madam, I laugh'd till I thought I should split.
So then you look'd scornful, and snift at the dean,
As who should say, 'Now, am I skinny^[2] and lean?'
But he durst not so much as once open his lips,
And the doctor was plaguily down in the hips."

1. Ovids, Plutarchs, Homers.
2. Nicknames for my lady.

Thus