THE DOG AND THIEF.
345
From London they come, silly people to chouse,
Their lands and their faces unknown:
Who'd vote a rogue into the parliament house,
That would turn a man out of his own?
YE poets ragged and forlorn,
Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers dead as soon as born,
Not yet consigned to paste.
I know a trick to make you thrive;
O, 'tis a quaint device:
Your stillborn poems shall revive,
And scorn to wrap up spice.
Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing[1] Pope;
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.
- ↑ The original copy of Mr. Pope's celebrated translation of Homer (preserved in the British Museum) is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.
When
