22 So cunning was the apparatus,
       The powerful pothooks did so move him,
     That will-he, nill-he, to the great house
       He went as if the devil drove him.

  23 Yet on his way (no sign of grace,
       For folks in fear are apt to pray)
     To Phoebus he preferr’d his case,
       And begg’d his aid that dreadful day.

  24 The godhead would have back’d his quarrel: 
       But with a blush, on recollection,
     Own’d that his quiver and his laurel
       ’Gainst four such eyes were no protection.

  25 The court was set, the culprit there;
       Forth from their gloomy mansions creeping,
     The Lady Janes and Joans repair,
       And from the gallery stand peeping: 

  26 Such as in silence of the night
       Come sweep along some winding entry,
     (Styack[3] has often seen the sight)
       Or at the chapel-door stand sentry;

  27 In peaked hoods and mantles tarnish’d,
       Sour visages enough to scare ye,
     High dames of honour once that garnish’d
       The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary!

  28 The peeress comes:  the audience stare,
       And doff their hats with due submission;
     She curtsies, as she takes her chair,
       To all the people of condition.

  29 The Bard with many an artless fib
       Had in imagination fenced him,
     Disproved the arguments of Squib,[4]
       And all that Grooms[5] could urge against him.

  30 But soon his rhetoric forsook him,
       When he the solemn hall had seen;
     A sudden fit of ague shook him;
       He stood as mute as poor Maclean.[6]

  31 Yet something he was heard to mutter,
       How in the park, beneath an old tree,
     (Without design to hurt the butter,
       Or any malice to the poultry,)

  32 He once or twice had penn’d a sonnet,
       Yet hoped that he might save his bacon;
     Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
       He ne’er was for a conjuror taken.

  33 The ghostly prudes, with hagged[7] face,
       Already had condemn’d the sinner: 
     My Lady rose, and with a grace—­
       She smiled, and bid him come to dinner,

  34 ’Jesu-Maria!  Madam Bridget,
       Why, what can the Viscountess mean?’
     Cried the square hoods, in woeful fidget;
       ’The times are alter’d quite and clean!

  35 ’Decorum’s turn’d to mere civility! 
       Her air and all her manners show it: 
     Commend me to her affability! 
       Speak to a commoner and poet!’

  [Here 500 stanzas are lost.]

  36 And so God save our noble king,
       And guard us from long-winded lubbers,
     That to eternity would sing,
       And keep my lady from her rubbers.

[Footnote 1:  ‘Pile of building:’  the mansion-house at Stoke-Pogeis, then in the possession of Viscountess Cobham.  The style of building which we now call Queen Elizabeth’s, is here admirably described, both with regard to its beauties and defects; and the third and fourth stanzas delineate the fantastic manners of her time with equal truth and humour.  The house formerly belonged to the Earls of Huntingdon and the family of Hatton.]