  “This is a poem! This is a copy of verses!” Your mandate I got— You may all go to pot: Had your senses been right, You’d have sent before night. As I hope to be sav’d, I put off being shav’d, For I could not make bold, While the matter was cold, To meddle in suds, Or to put on my duds. So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, And Baker and his bit, And Kauffman beside, And the Jessamy44 bride, With the rest of the crew, The Reynoldses two, Little Comedy’s45 face, And the Captain46 in lace. —(By the by, you may tell him I have something to sell him; When he comes to enlist. Your worships must know, That a few days ago An order went out, For the foot-guards so stout To wear tails in high taste— Twelve inches at least: Now, I’ve got him a scale To measure each tail; To lengthen a short tail, And a long one to curtail.) Yet how can I, when vext, Thus stray from my text! Tell each other to rue Your Devonshire crew. For sending so late To one of my state. But ’tis Reynolds’s way, From wisdom to stray, And Angelica’s whim To be frolick like him— But, alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil’d in to-day’s Advertiser?47 Oliver Goldsmith. FOOTNOTES:44Miss Mary Horneck. 45Miss Catherine Horneck, afterwards Mrs. Bunbury. 46Ensign Horneck. 47The allusion is to some complimentary verses, in the Advertiser, on Kauffman and Reynolds. |
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