SCENE III.-- A Room in BOOKWEIGHT'S house .--DASH, BLOTPAGE, QUIBBLE, writing at several tables .

Dash. Pox on't, I'm as dull as an ox, tho' I have not a bit of one within me. I have not dined these two days, and yet my head is as heavy as any alderman's or lord's. I carry about me symbols of all the elements; my head is as heavy as water, my pockets are as light as air, my appetite is as hot as fire, and my coat is as dirty as earth.

Blot. Lend me your Bysshe, Mr Dash, I want a rhime for wind.

Dash. Why there's blind, and kind, and behind, and find, and mind: it is of the easiest termination imaginable; I have had it four times in a page.

Blot. None of those words will do.

Dash. Why then you may use any that end in ond, or and, or end. I am never so exact: if the two last letters are alike, it will do very well. Read the verse.

Blot. "Inconstant as the seas or as the wind."

Dash. What would you express in the next line?

Blot. Nay, that I don't know, for the sense is out already. I would say something about inconstancy.

Dash. I can lend you a verse, and it will do very well too.

"Inconstancy will never have an end."

End rhimes very well with wind.

Blot. It will do well enough for the middle of a poem.

Dash. Ay, ay, anything will do well enough for the middle of a poem. If you can but get twenty good lines to place at the beginning for a taste, it will sell very well.

Quib. So that, according to you, Mr Dash, a poet acts pretty much on the same principles with an oister-woman.

Dash. Pox take your simile, it has set my chaps a watering: but come, let us leave off work for a while, and hear Mr Quibble's song.

Quib. My pipes are pure and clear, and my stomach is as hollow as any trumpet in Europe.

Dash. Come, the song.

SONG.

AIR. Ye Commons and Peers.

How unhappy's the fate
To live by one's pate,

And be forced to write hackney for bread!
An author's a joke
To all manner of folk,
Wherever he pops up his head, his head,
Wherever he pops up his head.

Tho' he mount on that hack,
Old Pegasus' back,
And of Helicon drink till he burst,
Yet a curse of those streams,
Poetical dreams,
They never can quench one's thirst, &c.

Ah! how should he fly
On fancy so high,
When his limbs are in durance and hold?
Or how should he charm,
With genius so warm,
When his poor naked body's a cold, &c.