‘Oh, marriage is hard of digestion,
The men are all sparing of words;
And now ’stead of popping the question,
They set off to pop at the birds.’
Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet. Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left town—how
‘She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashion’d halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks...
(To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire.’
Lord Lyttelton’s ‘beauty in the country’ complains that
‘Now with mamma at tedious whist I play,
Now without scandal drink insipid tea;’
while Lady Mary Montagu’s ‘bride in the country’ deplores the fact that she is
‘Left in the lurch,
Forgot and secluded from view,
Unless when some bumpkin at church
Stares wistfully over the pew.’
Agreeably descriptive of rural pleasures is Lord Chesterfield’s ‘Advice to a Lady in Autumn.’ Of recent years the subject has been treated by a versifier who has at least a measure of the neatness of Praed, and who enumerates among the typical guests at a country house
‘A sporting parson, good at whist,
A preaching sportsman, good at gateways;’
and, again: