When we poor sons and daughters of reality
Are in our graves forgotten and quite dead,
And Time destroys our mottoes of morality—
The lithographic hand of Old Mortality
Shall still restore thy emblem on the stone,
A featureless death's head,
And rob Oblivion ev'n of the Unknown!
[ODE TO JOSEPH GRIMALDI, SENIOR.]
"This fellow's wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit."