[Footnote 3:  Lord Carteret had the honour of mediating peace for Sweden, with Denmark, and with the Czar.—­H.]

ON PADDY’S CHARACTER OF THE “INTELLIGENCER."[1] 1729

As a thorn bush, or oaken bough,
Stuck in an Irish cabin’s brow,
Above the door, at country fair,
Betokens entertainment there;
So bays on poets’ brows have been
Set, for a sign of wit within. 
And as ill neighbours in the night
Pull down an alehouse bush for spite;
The laurel so, by poets worn,
Is by the teeth of Envy torn;
Envy, a canker-worm, which tears
Those sacred leaves that lightning spares. 
  And now, t’exemplify this moral: 
Tom having earn’d a twig of laurel,
(Which, measured on his head, was found
Not long enough to reach half round,
But, like a girl’s cockade, was tied,
A trophy, on his temple-side,)
Paddy repined to see him wear
This badge of honour in his hair;
And, thinking this cockade of wit
Would his own temples better fit,
Forming his Muse by Smedley’s model,
Lets drive at Tom’s devoted noddle,
Pelts him by turns with verse and prose
Hums like a hornet at his nose. 
At length presumes to vent his satire on
The Dean, Tom’s honour’d friend and patron. 
The eagle in the tale, ye know,
Teazed by a buzzing wasp below,
Took wing to Jove, and hoped to rest
Securely in the thunderer’s breast: 
In vain; even there, to spoil his nod,
The spiteful insect stung the god.

[Footnote 1:  For particulars of this publication, the work of two only, Swift and Sheridan, see “Prose Works,” vol. ix, p. 311.  The satire seems To have provoked retaliation from Tighe, Prendergast, Smedley, and even from Delany.  Hence this poem.—­W.  E. B.]

AN EPISTLE TO HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN, LORD CARTERET BY DR. DELANY. 1729[1]

  Credis ob haec me, Pastor, opes fortasse rogare,
  Propter quae vulgus crassaque turba rogat. 
MART., Epig., lib. ix, 22.

Thou wise and learned ruler of our isle,
Whose guardian care can all her griefs beguile;
When next your generous soul shall condescend
T’ instruct or entertain your humble friend;
Whether, retiring from your weighty charge,
On some high theme you learnedly enlarge;
Of all the ways of wisdom reason well,
How Richelieu rose, and how Sejanus fell: 
Or, when your brow less thoughtfully unbends,
Circled with Swift and some delighted friends;
When, mixing mirth and wisdom with your wine,
Like that your wit shall flow, your genius shine: 
Nor with less praise the conversation guide,
Than in the public councils you decide: 
Or when the Dean, long privileged to rail,
Asserts his friend with more impetuous zeal;
You hear (whilst I sit by abash’d and mute)
With soft concessions shortening the dispute;