The Adventures of Peregrine PickleSmollett, T. (Tobias)
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The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Adventure stories; Fiction; Picaresque literature
His mother, a housewife neat, artful, and wise,
Renown'd for her delicate biscuit and pies,
soon alter'd his studies, by flattering his taste,
From the raising of walls to the rearing of paste!
But all her instructions were fruitless and vain;
The pie-making mystery he ne'er could attain.
Yet true to his race, in his labours were seen
A jumble of both their professions, I ween;
For, when his own genius he ventured to trust,
His pies seemed of brick, and his houses of crust.
Then good Mr. Tutor, pray be not so vain,
Since your family arts you could never attain.
This impudent production was the most effectual vengeance he could
have taken on his tutor, who had all the supercilious arrogance and
ridiculous pride of a low-born pedant. Instead of overlooking this
petulant piece of satire with that temper and decency of disdain that
became a person of his gravity and station, he no sooner cast his eye
over the performance, than the blood rushed into his countenance, and
immediately after exhibited a ghastly pale colour. With a quivering lip,
he told his pupil, that he was an impertinent jackanapes; and he would
take care that he should be expelled from the university, for having
presumed to write and deliver such a licentious and scurrilous libel.
Peregrine answered, with great resolution, that when the provocation
he had received should be known, he was persuaded that he should be
acquitted by the opinion of all impartial people; and that he was ready
to submit the whole to the decision of the master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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