University of Virginia Library

All people, languages, and nations,
In summer-time, have country stations,
And have contrivances and ways,
Some very old and others new,
To get the better of long days,
Which are the hardest to subdue.
In Italy the morning passes
In visiting and hearing masses;
And every creature, after dinner,
Retire, in couples or alone;
Both male and female, saint and sinner,
Strip themselves naked as a stone.
All the world's out when night approaches,
A-foot, in curricles, and coaches;
Then they give concerts and act plays,
And sup at one another's houses:
The Wives go with their Chechisbays,
Their Mates with other people's Spouses.
In France, and probably in Spain,
Summer gets on with toil and pain;
The Ladies sally, with long canes,
To gather flowers, or pick a sallet,
Attended by fantastic swains,
Like Figure-dancers in a ballet.
Some stay within and do much better;
Some only stay to write a letter;
Others into the garden run,
To bowl, or shoot with bows and arrows;
Strephon, with Chloe and a gun,
Makes love, and fires among the sparrows;
Kills all the tenants of the grove,
But let those live that only live to love.
Pray, how do English Summers go?
They pass their Summers but so so;
More like the Germans than the French,
Drinking as long as they are able,
And never thinking of a wench,
Till all the liquor's off the table:
But when they give their mind that way,
No people more alert than they.
Venus is cruelly afraid,
Bacchus encroaches there so much,
Lest he should spoil the Cyprian trade,
As Plutus spoils it with the Dutch.
One summer, in the month of June,
My Lady was quite out of tune;
To set things right, she and my Lord
Repair to the old country-seat,
Which to enjoy, with one accord,
They lie apart, and seldom meet.
They neither need to mope alone,
Each have companions of their own;
His are the worst, without all question,
Led-Captains, Squires, and Parsons, without end;
Hers, females of a strong digestion,
Mingotti and her Fiddling Friend.—
But then my Lord had a resource,
Which made things equaller of course:
There is a place his Lordship chuses,
I know not upon what pretence,
To call the Temple of the Muses,
Built with less judgement than expence.
To push on time a little faster,
My Lord appointing a toast-master,
Oft to the Temple's sacred shade
Retires, like Numa to his charmer,
To meet some favourite Chamber-maid,
Or the fair Daughter of some farmer.
One afternoon a spy reveal'd
The secrets that those walls conceal'd.—
When my Lord was inclin'd to take it,
There was a room for making tea,
My Lady's woman us'd to make it,
And always us'd to keep the key.
He had left off tea some time; but why,
Abigail was resolv'd to spy.
Within the room she made, or found,
A hole to peep into the next;
Her labour with success was crown'd,
Though the discovery made her vex'd.
He left off tea, you may infer,
Because he was tir'd to death of her.
She saw, as plain as eyes could see,
And never saw him half so keen,
My Lord as busy as a bee,
Sipping the sweets of sweet Eighteen.
To be discarded and turn'd off,
Of every servant-wench the scoff!
For whom? The Wife of a mean Taylor:
Such was the Nymph in the Muses house;
She look'd as if she could impale her,
Even as a Taylor would a louse.
My Lord return'd, sated with glory,
And Betty ran to tell her story—
Says she, Your Ladyship's so kind,
My zeal for you made me suspicious;
I watch'd; but never thought to find
Any thing downright flagitious.
Against mankind she declaim'd next,
And then stuck closely to her text;
Minutely painted the whole scene,
The Nymph, her age, her lovely figure;
And, to increase her Lady's spleen,
She magnify'd his Lordship's vigour.
Great was her Ladyship's distress,
How she would act, is hard to guess.
All folks allow revenge is sweet,
And many think that nothing's sweeter;
But 'tis a maxim with the Great,
The meaner the Revenge the greater
Caprice, according to Fontaine,
Guides almost every female brain;
If mere caprice can raise a flame,
To make a Dwarf enjoy a Queen,
Revenge may make the noblest Dame
Employ an instrument as mean.
Nature, left to herself, most prone is,
To follow the Lex talionis,
In every nice and doubtful case.
My Lady drove as nature led;
And so she took, in my Lord's place,
Her rival's Husband to her bed.
A Taylor's nothing on his board,
In bed he's better than a Lord,
Her Ladyship found him so there;
And by his help, after ten years,
At last produc'd a Son and Heir,
That made my Lord the happiest of Peers.

TO THE LADIES.

Ladies, you have heard of Tit for Tat—
Lex Talionis was like that:
It was an equitable law, whereby
You weigh'd the person and the failure;
It gave you tooth for tooth, and eye for eye,
And for a Lord, sometimes a Taylor.