University of Virginia Library

Take fifty of your modern bards—
(Your porter's sure to have their cards—
Alike to them the saint or sinner;
The true Amphitryon gives the dinner)—
I'll bet you fifty pounds a-piece
They plunge their pens at once in Greece;
No matter though the subject roam
Not half of fifty miles from home;
Some fact that lay before your eye:
Who last gave gallant B******the lie:
Who, to the mirth of all beholders,
Last laid the switch across his shoulders;

18

Who last rubb'd up thy fur, my H***,
In what Sir Francis calls “that room,”
And show'd the world its great debater
In every sense a calculator.
Not one of them could pen a line
With “sweet simplicity” like mine.