We may observe that there is humour in the rhymes in the above stanzas. He often used absurd terminations to his lines as—
"For bating Covent garden, I can hit on
No place that's called Piazza in Great Britain."
People going to Italy, are to take with them—
"Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye."
We are here reminded of the endings of some of Butler's lines. Such rhymes were then regarded as poetical, but in our improved taste we only use them for humour. Lamb considered them to be a kind of punning, but in one case the same position, in the other the same signification is given to words of the same sound. The following couplet was written humorously by Swift for a dog's collar—
"Pray steal me not: I'm Mrs. Dingley's
Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies."
Pope has the well known lines,
"Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow,
And all the rest is leather and prunella."
Miss Sinclair also, in her description of the Queen's visit to Scotland, has adopted these irregular terminations with good effect—
"Our Queen looks far better in Scotland than England
No sight's been like this since I once saw the King land.
Edina! long thought by her neighbours in London
A poor country cousin by poverty undone;
The tailors with frantic speed, day and night cut on,
While scolded to death if they misplace a button.
And patties and truffles are better for Verrey's aid,
And cream tarts like those which once almost killed Scherezade."