When join'd to such a son of prate, His queries I anticipate, And thus my lee-way fetch up-- "Sir, all my relatives, I vow, Are perfectly in health--and now I'd thank you for the ketchup!" Others there are who but retail Their breakfast journal, now grown stale, In print ere day was dawning; When folks like these sit next to me, They send me dinnerless to tea; One cannot chew while yawning. Seat not good talkers one next one, As Jacquier beards the Clarendon; Thus shrouded you undo 'em; Rather confront them, face to face, Like Holles-street and Harewood-place, And let the town run through 'em. Poets are dangerous to sit nigh-- You waft their praises to the sky, And when you think you're stirring Their gratitude, they bite you. (That's The reason I object to cats-- They scratch amid their purring.) For those who ask you if you "malt," Who "beg your pardon" for the salt, And ape our upper grandees, By wondering folks can touch Port-wine; That, reader's your affair, not mine-- I never mess with dandies. Relations mix not kindly; shun Inviting brothers; sire and son Is not a wise selection: Too intimate, they either jar In converse, or the evening mar By mutual circumspection. Lawyers are apt to think the view That interests them must interest you; Hence they appear at table Or supereloquent, or dumb, Fluent as nightingales, or mum As horses in a stable. When men amuse their fellow guests With Crank and Jones, or Justice Best's Harangue in Dobbs and Ryal-- The host, beneath whose roof they sit, Must be a puny judge of wit, Who grants them a new trial. Shun technicals in each extreme, Exclusive talk, whate'er the theme, The proper boundary passes: Nobles as much offend, whose clack's For ever running on Almack's, As brokers on molasses. I knew a man, from glass to delf, Who talk'd of nothing but himself, 'Till check'd by a vertigo; The party who beheld him "fluor'd," Bent o'er the liberated board, And cried, "Hic jacet ego." Some aim to tell a thing that hit Where last they dined; what there was wit Here meets rebuffs and crosses. Jokes are like trees; their place of birth Best suits them; stuck in foreign earth, They perish in the process. Ah! Merriment! when men entrap Thy bells, and women steal thy cap, They think they have trepann'd thee. Delusive thought! aloof and dumb, Thou wilt not at a bidding come, Though Royalty command thee. The rich, who sigh for thee--the great, Who court thy smiles with gilded plate, But clasp thy cloudy follies: I've known thee turn, in Portman-square, From Burgundy and Hock, to share A pint of Port at Dolly's.