'Now turn to different sports (the goddess cries), And learn, my sons, the wondrous power of noise. To move, to raise, to ravish every heart, With Shakspeare's nature, or with Jonson's art, Let others aim: 'tis yours to shake the soul With thunder rumbling from the mustard bowl,[321] With horns and trumpets now to madness swell, Now sink in sorrows with a tolling bell; Such happy arts attention can command, When fancy flags, and sense is at a stand. 230 Improve we these. Three cat-calls be the bribe Of him whose chattering shames the monkey tribe: And his this drum whose hoarse heroic bass Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass.' Now thousand tongues are heard in one loud din: The monkey-mimics rush discordant in; 'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all, And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval,[322] Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, 240 And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and conclusion quick. 'Hold' (cried the queen) 'a cat-call each shall win; Equal your merits! equal is your din! But that this well-disputed game may end, Sound forth, nay brayers, and the welkin rend.' As when the long-ear'd milky mothers wait At some sick miser's triple-bolted gate, For their defrauded, absent foals they make A moan so loud, that all the guild awake; 250 Sore sighs Sir Gilbert, starting at the bray, From dreams of millions, and three groats to pay. So swells each windpipe; ass intones to ass, Harmonic twang! of leather, horn, and brass; Such as from labouring lungs the enthusiast blows, High sound, attemper'd to the vocal nose, Or such as bellow from the deep divine; There, Webster![323] peal'd thy voice, and, Whitfield![324] thine. But far o'er all, sonorous Blackmore's strain; Walls, steeples, skies, bray back to him again. 260 In Tottenham fields, the brethren, with amaze, Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze; 'Long Chancery Lane retentive rolls the sound, And courts to courts return it round and round; Thames wafts it thence to Rufus' roaring hall, And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl. All hail him victor in both gifts of song, Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long. This labour past, by Bridewell all descend, (As morning prayer, and flagellation end)[325] 270 To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,[326] And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well. Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the weekly journals[327] bound; 280 A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece[328] shall glad the rest.'