[Footnote 2:  Sir Thomas Prendergast.  See post, “The Legion Club.”]

[Footnote 3:  Tighe’s ancestor was a contractor for furnishing the Parliament forces with bread during the civil wars.  Hence Swift calls him Elsewhere Pistorides.  See “Prose Works,” vii, 233; and in “The Legion Club,” Dick Fitzbaker.—­W.E.B.]

DICK, A MAGGOT

As when, from rooting in a bin,
All powder’d o’er from tail to chin,
A lively maggot sallies out,
You know him by his hazel snout: 
So when the grandson of his grandsire
Forth issues wriggling, Dick Drawcansir,
With powder’d rump and back and side,
You cannot blanch his tawny hide;
For ’tis beyond the power of meal
The gipsy visage to conceal;
For as he shakes his wainscot chops,
Down every mealy atom drops,
And leaves the tartar phiz in show,
Like a fresh t—­d just dropp’d on snow.

CLAD ALL IN BROWN

TO DICK[1]

  Foulest brute that stinks below,
    Why in this brown dost thou appear? 
  For wouldst thou make a fouler show,
    Thou must go naked all the year. 
Fresh from the mud, a wallowing sow
Would then be not so brown as thou.

  ’Tis not the coat that looks so dun,
    His hide emits a foulness out;
  Not one jot better looks the sun
    Seen from behind a dirty clout. 
So t—­ds within a glass enclose,
The glass will seem as brown as those.

  Thou now one heap of foulness art,
    All outward and within is foul;
  Condensed filth in every part,
    Thy body’s clothed like thy soul: 
Thy soul, which through thy hide of buff
Scarce glimmers like a dying snuff.

  Old carted bawds such garments wear,
    When pelted all with dirt they shine;
  Such their exalted bodies are,
    As shrivell’d and as black as thine. 
If thou wert in a cart, I fear
Thou wouldst be pelted worse than they’re.

  Yet, when we see thee thus array’d,
    The neighbours think it is but just,
  That thou shouldst take an honest trade,
    And weekly carry out the dust. 
Of cleanly houses who will doubt,
When Dick cries “Dust to carry out!”

[Footnote 1:  This is a parody on the tenth poem of Cowley’s “Mistress,” entitled, “Clad all in White.”—­Scott.]

DICK’S VARIETY

Dull uniformity in fools
I hate, who gape and sneer by rules;
You, Mullinix, and slobbering C——­
Who every day and hour the same are
That vulgar talent I despise
Of pissing in the rabble’s eyes. 
And when I listen to the noise
Of idiots roaring to the boys;
To better judgment still submitting,
I own I see but little wit in: 
Such pastimes, when our taste is nice,
Can please at most but once or twice.