I

Once on a time, as old stories rehearse,
  A friar would need show his talent in Latin;
But was sorely put to ’t in the midst of a verse,
  Because he could find no word to come pat in;
           Then all in the place
           He left a void space,
    And so went to bed in a desperate case: 
When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle! 
He found it was strangely fill’d up in the middle. 
  CHO.  Let censuring critics then think what they list on’t;
    Who would not write verses with such an assistant?

II

This put me the friar into an amazement;
  For he wisely consider’d it must be a sprite;
That he came through the keyhole, or in at the casement;
  And it needs must be one that could both read and write;
         Yet he did not know,
         If it were friend or foe,
  Or whether it came from above or below;
Howe’er, it was civil, in angel or elf,
For he ne’er could have fill’d it so well of himself. 
    CHO.  Let censuring, &c.

III

Even so Master Doctor had puzzled his brains
  In making a ballad, but was at a stand;
He had mixt little wit with a great deal of pains,
  When he found a new help from invisible hand. 
        Then, good Doctor Swift
        Pay thanks for the gift,
  For you freely must own you were at a dead lift;
And, though some malicious young spirit did do’t,
You may know by the hand it had no cloven foot. 
    CHO.  Let censuring, &c.

[Footnote 1:  Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the author’s room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit hand, as if a third person had done it.—­Swift.

The Cut-Purse is a ballad sung by Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in
Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,” Act III, Sc.  I. The burthen of the
ballad is: 
     “Youth, youth, thou had’st better been starv’d by thy nurse
      Than live to be hang’d for cutting a purse.”—­W.  E. B.]

THE DISCOVERY

When wise Lord Berkeley first came here,[1]
  Statesmen and mob expected wonders,
Nor thought to find so great a peer
  Ere a week past committing blunders. 
Till on a day cut out by fate,
  When folks came thick to make their court,
Out slipt a mystery of state
  To give the town and country sport. 
Now enters Bush[2] with new state airs,
  His lordship’s premier minister;
And who in all profound affairs,
  Is held as needful as his clyster.[2]
With head reclining on his shoulder,
  He deals and hears mysterious chat,
While every ignorant beholder