"To Cradock next in order turn ye, "Now, Doctor, you're an honest sticker, So take your glass, and choose your liquor. And, Doctor, I would have ye know it, Come, draw your chair, and stir the fire; And, boy!-a pot of Thrale's entire!" Dean Barnard, who wrote verses with facility, printed the following lines after perusing those of Goldsmith and Cumberland "Dear Noll and dear Dick, since you've made us so merry, Accept the best thanks of the poor Dean of Derry! Though I here must confess that your meat and your wine Now there's nothing I hate so as drinking alone: It may do for your Monks, or your Curates and Vicars, But for my part, I'm fond of more sociable liquors. Your Ven'son's delicious, though too sweet your sauce is- So soon as you please you may serve me your dish up, * [Joseph Cradock, Esq. The allusion is to his having altered and adapted Voltaire's Zobeide' to the English stage.'] MISCELLANIES. THE CLOWN'S REPLY. John Trott was desir'd by two witty peers, "An't please you," quoth John, "I'm not given to letters, Edinburgh, 1753.* PROLOGUE, WRITTEN AND SPOKEN BY THE POET LABERIUS, A ROMAN KNIGHT, WHOM CESAR FORCED UPON THE STAGE. Preserved by Macrobius.t WHAT! no way left to shun th' inglorious stage, [This is the only effusion preserved of several, which Goldsmith is said to have written while a student at Edinburgh.] [This translation was first printed in "The Present State of Polite Learning," in 1759; but was omitted in the second edition, which appeared in 1774. Decimus Laberius was made a Roman knight by Julius Cæsar. For a long period he maintained the first character as a farce writer; but Publius Syrus at last became his rival, and carried off the applause of the theatre See Aulus Gellius, 1. iii., c. 7; and Hor. Sat. lib. i. sat. x.] |