cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I replied, that “it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton.”  This clench’d our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey.  Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to the full as my fellow-traveller.  What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom!  He talk’d on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg’d me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.

      FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS

        Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
        Just as the whim bites.  For my part,
        I do not care a farthing candle
        For either of them, or for Handel. 
        Cannot a man live free and easy,
        Without admiring Pergolesi! 
        Or thro’ the world with comfort go
        That never heard of Doctor Blow! 
        So help me God, I hardly have;
        And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
        Like other people, (if you watch it,)
        And know no more of stave and crotchet
        Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians;
        Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians
        That lived in the unwash’d world with Jubal,
        Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal,
        By stroke on anvil, or by summ’at,
        Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. 
        I care no more for Cimerosa
        Than he did for Salvator Rosa,
        Being no Painter; and bad luck
        Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! 
        Old Tycho Brahe and modern Herschel
        Had something in them; but who’s Purcel? 
        The devil, with his foot so cloven,
        For aught I care, may take Beethoven;
        And, if the bargain does not suit,
        I’ll throw him Weber in to boot! 
        There’s not the splitting of a splinter
        To chuse ’twixt him last named, and Winter. 
        Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido
        Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. 
        I would not go four miles to visit
        Sebastian Bach-or Batch-which is it? 
        No more I would for Bononcini. 
        As for Novello and Rossini,
        I shall not say a word about [to grieve] ’em,
        Because they’re living.  So I leave ’em.