The scriptures affirm (as I heard in my youth,
For indeed I ne’er read them, to speak for once truth)
That death is the wages of sin, but the just
Shall die not, although they be laid in the dust. 
They say so; so be it, I care not a straw,
Although I be dead both in gospel and law;
In verse I shall live, and be read in each climate;
What more can be said of prime sergeant or primate? 
While Carter and Prendergast both may be rotten,
And damn’d to the bargain, and yet be forgotten.

AN EPIGRAM INSCRIBED TO THE HONOURABLE SERGEANT KITE

In your indignation what mercy appears,
While Jonathan’s threaten’d with loss of his ears;
For who would not think it a much better choice,
By your knife to be mangled than rack’d with your voice. 
If truly you [would] be revenged on the parson,
Command his attendance while you act your farce on;
Instead of your maiming, your shooting, or banging,
Bid Povey[1] secure him while you are haranguing. 
Had this been your method to torture him, long since,
He had cut his own ears to be deaf to your nonsense.

[Footnote 1:  Povey was sergeant-at-arms to the House of Commons.—­Scott.]

THE YAHOO’S OVERTHROW, OR, THE KEVAN BAYL’S NEW BALLAD, UPON SERGEANT KITE’S INSULTING THE DEAN [1]

To the Tune of “Derry Down.”

  Jolly boys of St. Kevan’s,[2] St. Patrick’s, Donore
And Smithfield, I’ll tell you, if not told before,
How Bettesworth, that booby, and scoundrel in grain,
Has insulted us all by insulting the Dean. 
    Knock him down, down, down, knock him down.

  The Dean and his merits we every one know,
But this skip of a lawyer, where the de’il did he grow? 
How greater his merit at Four Courts or House,
Than the barking of Towzer, or leap of a louse! 
    Knock him down, etc.

  That he came from the Temple, his morals do show;
But where his deep law is, few mortals yet know: 
His rhetoric, bombast, silly jests, are by far
More like to lampooning, than pleading at bar. 
    Knock him down, etc.

  This pedler, at speaking and making of laws,
Has met with returns of all sorts but applause;
Has, with noise and odd gestures, been prating some years,
What honester folk never durst for their ears. 
    Knock him down, etc.

  Of all sizes and sorts, the fanatical crew
Are his brother Protestants, good men and true;
Red hat, and blue bonnet, and turban’s the same,
What the de’il is’t to him whence the devil they came. 
    Knock him down, etc.

  Hobbes, Tindal, and Woolston, and Collins, and Nayler,
And Muggleton, Toland, and Bradley the tailor,
Are Christians alike; and it may be averr’d,
He’s a Christian as good as the rest of the herd. 
    Knock him down, etc.