Whose very name once stuck in their gorge.

It has turned a number of novelists

Into amateur armchair strategists.

It has raised the lowly and humbled the wise

And forced us in dozens of ways to revise

The hasty opinions we formed of our neighbours

In view of their lives and deaths and labours.

It has cured many freaks of their futile hobbies,

It has made us acquainted with female bobbies.

It has very largely emptied the ranks