That Downpatrick's Dean, or Patrick's down went, Like two arrand Deans, two Deans errant I meant; So that Christmas appears at Bellcampe like a Lent, Gives the gamesters of both houses great discontent. Our parsons agree here, as those did at Trent, Dan's forehead has got a most damnable dent, Besides a large hole in his Michaelmas rent. But your fancy on rhyming so cursedly bent, With your bloody ouns in one stanza pent; Does Jack's utter ruin at picket prevent, For an answer in specie to yours must be sent; So this moment at crambo (not shuffling) is spent, And I lose by this crotchet quaterze, point, and quint, Which you know to a gamester is great bitterment; But whisk shall revenge me on you, Batt, and Brent. Bellcampe, January 1, 1717. A LEFT-HANDED LETTER[1] TO DR. SHERIDAN, 1718 Delany reports it, and he has a shrewd tongue, That we both act the part of the clown and cow-dung; We lie cramming ourselves, and are ready to burst, Yet still are no wiser than we were at first. _Pudet haec opprobria_, I freely must tell ye, _Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli._ Though Delany advised you to plague me no longer, You reply and rejoin like Hoadly of Bangor[2]; I must now, at one sitting, pay off my old score; How many to answer? One, two, three, or four, But, because the three former are long ago past, I shall, for method-sake, begin with the last. You treat me like a boy that knocks down his foe, Who, ere t'other gets up, demands the rising blow. Yet I know a young rogue, that, thrown flat on the field, Would, as he lay under, cry out, Sirrah! yield. So the French, when our generals soundly did pay them, Went triumphant to church, and sang stoutly, _Te Deum._ So the famous Tom Leigh[3], when quite run a-ground, Comes off by out-laughing the company round: In every vile pamphlet you'll read the same fancies, Having thus overthrown all our farther advances. My offers of peace you ill understood; Friend Sheridan, when will you know your own good? 'Twas to teach you in modester language your duty; For, were you a dog, I could not be rude t'ye; As a good quiet soul, who no mischief intends To a quarrelsome fellow, cries, Let us be friends. But we like Antæus and Hercules fight, The oftener you fall, the oftener you write: And I'll use you as he did that overgrown clown, I'll first take you up, and then take you down; And, 'tis your own case, for you never can wound The worst dunce in your school, till he's heaved from the ground. I beg your pardon for using my left hand, but I was in great haste, and the other hand was employed at the same time in writing some letters of business. September 20, 1718.--I will send you the rest when I have leisure: but pray come to dinner with the company you met here last. [Footnote 1: The humour of this poem is partly lost, by the impossibility of printing it left-handed as it was written.--_H_.] [Footnote 2: Bishop of Bangor. For an account of him, see "Prose Works," v, 326.--_W. E. B._]