[Footnote 1:  A village near Dublin.—­F.]

SHERIDAN’S SUBMISSION BY THE DEAN

          Miserae cognosce prooemia rixae,
  Si rixa est ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.[1]

    Poor Sherry, inglorious,
    To Dan the victorious,
    Presents, as ’tis fitting,
    Petition and greeting.

To you, victorious and brave,
Your now subdued and suppliant slave
  Most humbly sues for pardon;
Who when I fought still cut me down,
And when I vanquish’d, fled the town
  Pursued and laid me hard on.

Now lowly crouch’d, I cry peccavi,
And prostrate, supplicate pour ma vie;
  Your mercy I rely on;
For you my conqueror and my king,
In pardoning, as in punishing,
  Will show yourself a lion.

Alas! sir, I had no design,
But was unwarily drawn in;
  For spite I ne’er had any;
’Twas the damn’d squire with the hard name;
The de’il too that owed me a shame,
  The devil and Delany;

They tempted me t’ attack your highness,
And then, with wonted wile and slyness,
  They left me in the lurch: 
Unhappy wretch! for now, I ween,
I’ve nothing left to vent my spleen
  But ferula and birch: 

And they, alas! yield small relief,
Seem rather to renew my grief,
  My wounds bleed all anew: 
For every stroke goes to my heart
And at each lash I feel the smart
  Of lash laid on by you.

[Footnote 1:  Juvenalis, Sat. iii, 288.—­W.  E. B.]

THE PARDON

The suit which humbly you have made
Is fully and maturely weigh’d;
  And as ’tis your petition,
I do forgive, for well I know,
Since you’re so bruised, another blow
  Would break the head of Priscian.[1]

’Tis not my purpose or intent
That you should suffer banishment;
  I pardon, now you’ve courted;
And yet I fear this clemency
Will come too late to profit thee,
  For you’re with grief transported.

However, this I do command,
That you your birch do take in hand,
  Read concord and syntax on;
The bays, your own, are only mine,
Do you then still your nouns decline,
  Since you’ve declined Dan Jackson.

[Footnote 1:  The Roman grammarian, who flourished about A.D. 450, and has left a work entitled “Commentariorum grammaticorum Libri xviii.”—­W.  E. B.]

THE LAST SPEECH AND DYING WORDS OF DANIEL JACKSON

MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,

  —­mediocribus esse poetis
  Non funes, non gryps, non concessere columnae.[1]

To give you a short translation of these two lines from Horace’s Art of Poetry, which I have chosen for my neck-verse, before I proceed to my speech, you will find they fall naturally into this sense: