And, slipping through the palsgrave, bilked poor hack.
"There's the utile which ought to be in all poetry. Many a young Templar will save his shilling by this stratagem of my mice.
Smith. Why, will any young Templar eat out the back of a coach?
Bayes. No, egad! But you'll grant, it is mighty natural for a mouse."—Hind and Panther Transversed.
Such was the wit, which, bolstered up by the applause of party, was deemed an unanswerable ridicule of Dryden's favourite poem.
[76] Preface to the Second Part of "The Reasons of Mr Bayes changing his Religion."
[77] i.e. Dryden himself.
[78] I know not, however, but a critic might here also point out an example of that discrepancy, which is censured by Johnson, and ridiculed by Prior. The cause of dissatisfaction in the pigeon-house is, that the proprietor chuses rather to feed upon the flesh of his domestic poultry, than upon theirs; no very rational cause of mutiny on the part of the doves.
[79] Butler, however, assigns the Bear-Garden as a type of my Mother Kirk; and the resemblance is thus proved by Ralpho:
Synods are mystical bear-gardens,