CIV.—Dr. Rudd is an ass! Oh, my Sylvanus, I am sick at heart! Only two days since I did purchase a delectable book of poems, called “Foliage,” purposely to read under your trees, but how can I enjoy it, when the very foliage of nature is, as the booksellers say, out of print! “Bare ruined quires where late the sweet birds sung.”
SYL.—My friend, take comfort. This tea-tray will not be brought up another year, for the counterfeit herb hath all been seized, and condemned to be burnt in the yard of the Excise.
CIV.—I am glad on’t, for it will be, as the French say, “a feu-de-joie;” and verily all the little singing birds ought to collect on the chimney-pots to chaunt a Tea Deum. In the mean time I must borrow Job’s patience under my boils, though they be of the size of kettles, and have boiled away my summer at a gallop. Possibly you may have fewer locusts another season; but by way of precaution, the next time I come down by the stage I shall attend to an old stage direction in Macbeth, namely, “Enter the army with their green boughs in their hands.”
PAIR’D NOT MATCH’D.
OF wedded bliss
Bards sing amiss,
I cannot make a song of it;
For I am small,
My wife is tall,