The three tours of Doctor Syntax In search of 1. The picturesque, 2. Of consolation, 3. Of a wife. The text complete. [By William Combe] With four illustrations |
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 | The three tours of Doctor Syntax |  |
Dick Razor.—
“While I the razor can prepare,
Or give new fashion to the hair;
While I can smooth the bristly chin, Nor ever wound the tender skin;
While I the Pleader's head prepare In all the dignity of hair;
To make, as he lays down the laws, The worse appear the better cause:
Ne'er shall I from my mem'ry drive
The strange events by which men thrive,
Nor e'er forget these imps of prey,
Or Lawyers who are worse than they.”
Thus Dick unto his home departed,
With cash in hand and merry-hearted.
Syntax with the meridian sun Had his day's journey now begun:
When as the Landlord scratch'd his pate,
And humbly bow'd beside the gate,
Says Pat, “my friend as I am starting,
I'll give you a kind word at parting.
There was a man in former time, But in what age or in what clime
I cannot say, a sportsman he, A perfect hunting prodigy,
Who, as he beat about his grounds,
Was chas'd and eat up by his hounds:
If you would, therefore, save your skin, And all the flesh it buckles in,
Look, that you keep a guard of cats, Or you'll be eat up by your rats.”
“While I the razor can prepare,
Or give new fashion to the hair;
While I can smooth the bristly chin, Nor ever wound the tender skin;
While I the Pleader's head prepare In all the dignity of hair;
To make, as he lays down the laws, The worse appear the better cause:
Ne'er shall I from my mem'ry drive
The strange events by which men thrive,
176
Or Lawyers who are worse than they.”
Thus Dick unto his home departed,
With cash in hand and merry-hearted.
Syntax with the meridian sun Had his day's journey now begun:
When as the Landlord scratch'd his pate,
And humbly bow'd beside the gate,
Says Pat, “my friend as I am starting,
I'll give you a kind word at parting.
There was a man in former time, But in what age or in what clime
I cannot say, a sportsman he, A perfect hunting prodigy,
Who, as he beat about his grounds,
Was chas'd and eat up by his hounds:
If you would, therefore, save your skin, And all the flesh it buckles in,
Look, that you keep a guard of cats, Or you'll be eat up by your rats.”
| The three tours of Doctor Syntax | |