To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter Had a great taste for the Castalian water-- A Wordsworth worshipper--a Southey wooer,-- (Though men that deal in water-colour cakes May disbelieve the fact--yet nothing’s truer) She got the _bluer_ The more she dipped and dabbled in the _Lakes_. The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver, At future Authorship was apt to hint, Producing what some call the _Type-us_ Fever, Which means a burning to be seen in print. Of learning’s laurels--Miss Joanna Baillie-- Of Mrs. Hemans--Mrs. Wilson--daily Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley; And Fancy hinting that she had the better Of L.E.L. by one initial letter, She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see “LOVE LAYS AND LYRICS BY A P I G.” Accordingly, with very great propriety, She joined the H. N. B. and double S., That is,--Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society; And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited, Contributed Her pork and poetry towards the mess. This feast, we said, one Friday was the case, When farmer Grayley--from Macbeth to quote-- Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,” Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;-- A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke, Showing the little sympathy of _big-wigs_ With _pig-wigs_! The swine--poor wretch!--with nobody to speak for it, And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it; So--like the fabled swan--died singing out, And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard A note that notified without a card, An invitation to the evening rout. And when the time came duly,--“At the close of The day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham--” Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of, And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,-- Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s, All in appropriate and swinish dresses, For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke, Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it, They came--each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnet We call _a poke_. The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman At pork and poetry was chosen _chairwoman_;-- In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey, Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy, She always named the authoress of “_Psyche_”-- As Mrs. _Tiggey_! And now arose a question of some moment,-- What author for a lecture was the richer, Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont, But some for _Flitcher_; While others, with a more sagacious reasoning, Proposed another work, And thought their pork Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!