You are no text for my handling; so take that from me:
I was never taken for a Conjurer before, I'd have you to

know."

"Lord!" said I, "don't be angry, I am sure I never thought

you so;

You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a Parson's wife;

I never took one in your coat for a conjurer in all my life."

With that he twisted his girdle at me like a rope, as who should say,

"Now you may go hang yourself for me!" and so went

away.

Well: I thought I should have swoon'd. "Lord!" said I, "what shall I do?

I have lost my money, and shall lose my true love too!" Then my lord call'd me: "Harry," ,"1 said my lord, “don't

cry;

I'll give you something toward thy loss:" "And," says my lady, "so will Ĭ."

Oh! but, said I, what if, after all, the Chaplain won't come to?

For that, he said (an't please your Excellencies), I must petition you.

The premisses tenderly consider'd, I desire your Excellencies' protection,

And that I may have a share in next Sunday's collection; And, over and above, that I may have your Excellencies' letter,

With an order for the Chaplain aforesaid, or, instead of him, a better:

And then your poor petitioner, both night and day,

Or the Chaplain (for 'tis his trade,2) as in duty bound, shall ever pray.

1A cant word of Lord and Lady Berkeley to Mrs. Harris.

2 Swift elsewhere terms his own calling a trade. See his letter to Pope, 29th Sept., 1725, cited in Introduction to Gulliver, "Prose Works," vol. viii, p. xxv.-W. E. B.

A BALLAD ON THE GAME OF TRAFFIC

WRITTEN AT THE CASTLE OF DUBLIN, 1699

Y

My Lord,' to find out who must deal,

Delivers cards about,

But the first knave does seldom fail
To find the doctor out.

But then his honour cried, Gadzooks!
And seem'd to knit his brow:
For on a knave he never looks
But he thinks upon Jack How.2

My lady, though she is no player,
Some bungling partner takes,
And, wedged in corner of a chair,
Takes snuff, and holds the stakes.

3

Dame Floyd looks out in grave suspense
For pair royals and sequents;
But, wisely cautious of her pence,
The castle seldom frequents.

Quoth Herries,* fairly putting cases,
I'd won it, on my word,

If I had but a pair of aces,
And could pick up a third.

But Weston has a new-cast gown
On Sundays to be fine in,
And, if she can but win a crown,
"Twill just new dye the lining.

The Earl of Berkeley.

2 Paymaster to the Forces, "Prose Works," ii, 23.

3 A beauty and a favourite with Swift. See his verses on her, post, p. 50. He often mentions her in the Journal to Stella, especially with respect to her having the smallpox, and her recovery. "Prose Works,"

ii, 138, 141, 143, 259.-W. E. B.

4 Mrs. Frances Harris, the heroine of the preceding poem.

"With these is Parson Swift,'

Not knowing how to spend his time,
Does make a wretched shift,

To deafen them with puns and rhyme."

A BALLAD

TO THE TUNE OF THE CUT-PURSE 2

WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702

I

NCE on a time, as old stories rehearse,

ΟΝ

A friar would need show his talent in Latin; But was sorely put to 't in the midst of a verse, Because he could find no word to come pat in; Then all in the place

He left a void space,

And so went to bed in a desperate case:

When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle!
He found it was strangely fill'd up in the middle.

CHO. Let censuring critics then think what they list on't;
Who would not write verses with such an assistant?

II

This put me the friar into an amazement;

For he wisely consider'd it must be a sprite;

1 Written by Lady Betty Berkeley, afterwards wife of Sir John Germaine.

2

Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the author's room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit hand, as if a third person had done it.-Swift.

The Cut-Purse is a ballad sung by Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," Act III, Sc. 1. The burthen of the ballad is:

"Youth, youth, thou had'st better been starv'd by thy nurse
Than live to be hang'd for cutting a purse."-W. E. B.

That he came through the keyhole, or in at the casement; And it needs must be one that could both read and write; Yet he did not know,

If it were friend or foe,

Or whether it came from above or below;
Howe'er, it was civil, in angel or elf,

For he ne'er could have fill'd it so well of himself.
CHO. Let censuring, &c.

III

Even so Master Doctor had puzzled his brains
In making a ballad, but was at a stand;
He had mixt little wit with a great deal of pains,
When he found a new help from invisible hand.
Then, good Doctor Swift

Pay thanks for the gift,

For you freely must own you were at a dead lift; And, though some malicious young spirit did do't, You may know by the hand it had no cloven foot. CHO. Let censuring, &c.

THE DISCOVERY

HEN wise Lord Berkeley first came here,1
Statesmen and mob expected wonders,

WE

Nor thought to find so great a peer

Ere a week past committing blunders.

Till on a day cut out by fate,

When folks came thick to make their court,

Out slipt a mystery of state

To give the town and country sport.
Now enters Bush' with new state airs,

1 To Ireland, as one of the Lords Justices.

2 Who, by insinuating that the post of secretary was unsuitable for a clergyman, obtained it for himself, though it had been promised to Swift; and when Swift claimed the Deanery of Derry, in virtue of Lord Berkeley's promise of the “first good preferment that should fall in his

His lordship's premier minister;
And who in all profound affairs,

Is held as needful as his clyster.1
With head reclining on his shoulder,
He deals and hears mysterious chat,
While every ignorant beholder

Asks of his neighbour, who is that?
With this he put up to my lord,

The courtiers kept their distance due,
He twitch'd his sleeve, and stole a word;
Then to a corner both withdrew.
Imagine now my lord and Bush

Whispering in junto most profound,
Like good King Phys and good King Ush,"
While all the rest stood gaping round.
At length a spark, not too well bred,
Of forward face and ear acute,
Advanced on tiptoe, lean'd his head,
To overhear the grand dispute;
To learn what Northern kings design,
Or from Whitehall some new express,
Papists disarm'd, or fall of coin;

For sure (thought he) it can't be less.
My lord, said Bush, a friend and I,

Disguised in two old threadbare coats,
Ere morning's dawn, stole out to spy

How markets went for hay and oats.
With that he draws two handfuls out,

The one was oats, the other hay;

gift," the earl referred him to Bush, who told him that it was promised to another, but that if he would lay down a thousand pounds for it he should have the preference. Swift, enraged at the insult, immediately left the castle; but was ultimately pacified by being presented with the Rectory of Agher and the Vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. See Forster's "Life of Swift," p. 111; Birkbeck Hill's "Letters of Swift," and "Prose Works," vol. xi, 380.-W. E. B.

Always taken before my lord went to council.-Dublin Edition. 2 The usurping kings in "The Rehearsal "; the celebrated farce written by the Duke of Buckingham, in conjunction with Martin Clifford, Butler, Sprat, and others, in ridicule of the rhyming tragedies then in vogue, and especially of Dryden in the character of Bayes.-See Malone's "Life of Dryden," p. 95.-W. E. B.