“If, sir, intending what you say,
Your Majesty don't flatter,——
I would the Baptist's head to-day
Were brought me in a platter.”
The bluff butcher looked about him as sternly as one of Elkanah's * blustering heroes, and, after taking a fierce stride or two across the stage to vent his royal choler, vouchsafed this reply,
* Elkanah Settle, the City Lauréat, after the Revolution,
kept a booth at Bartholomew Fair, where, in a droll, called
St. George for England, he acted in a dragon of green
leather of his own invention. In reference to the sweet
singer of “annual trophies” and “monthly wars” hissing in
his own dragon, Pope utters this charitable wish regarding
Colley,
“Avert it, heaven, that thou, my Cibber, e'er Shouldst wag a
serpent-tail in Smithfield Fair!”
“Fair cruel maid, recall thy wish,
O pray think better of it!
I'd rather abdicate, than dish
The cranium of my prophet.”