LXXVI.
THE DEAN OF FACULTY.
A NEW BALLAD.
[The Hal and Bob of these satiric lines were Henry Erskine, and Robert Dundas: and their contention was, as the verses intimate, for the place of Dean of the Faculty of Advocates: Erskine was successful. It is supposed that in characterizing Dundas, the poet remembered “the incurable wound which his pride had got” in the affair of the elegiac verses on the death of the elder Dundas. The poem first appeared in the Reliques of Burns.]
I.
Dire was the hate at old Harlaw,
That Scot to Scot did carry;
And dire the discord Langside saw,
For beauteous, hapless Mary:
But Scot with Scot ne’er met so hot,
Or were more in fury seen, Sir,
Than ’twixt Hal and Bob for the famous job—
Who should be Faculty’s Dean, Sir.—
II.
This Hal for genius, wit, and lore,
Among the first was number’d;
But pious Bob, ‘mid learning’s store,
Commandment tenth remember’d.—
Yet simple Bob the victory got,
And won his heart’s desire;
Which shows that heaven can boil the pot,
Though the devil p—s in the fire.—
III.