A Satire Anthology

by Unknown

THE LITERARY LADY

WHAT motley cares Corilla’s mind perplex,

Whom maids and metaphors conspire to vex!

In studious dishabille behold her sit,

A letter’d gossip and a household wit:

At once invoking, though for different views,

Her gods, her cook, her milliner, and muse.

Round her strew’d room a frippery chaos lies,

A checker’d wreck of notable and wise,

Bills, books, caps, couplets, combs, a varied mass,

Oppress the toilet and obscure the glass;

Unfinish’d here an epigram is laid,

And there a mantua-maker’s bill unpaid.

There new-born plays foretaste the town’s applause,

There dormant patterns pine for future gauze.

A moral essay now is all her care,

A satire next, and then a bill of fare.

A scene she now projects, and now a dish;

Here Act the First, and here Remove with Fish.

Now, while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls,

That soberly casts up a bill for coals;

Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks,

And tears, and threads, and bowls, and thimbles mix.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan.