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Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain

With grammar, and nonsense, and learning : Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,

Gives genus a better discerning.
Let them brag of their heathenish gods,

Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians ; Their quis, and their quæs, and their quods, They're all but a parcel of pigeons.

Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

When methodist preachers come down,

A preaching that drinking is sinful, I'll wager the rascals a crown,

They always preach best with a skinful.
But when you come down with your pence

For a slice of their scurvy religion,
I'll leave it to all men of sense,
But you, my good friend, are the pigeon.

Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

Then come, put the jorum about,

And let us be merry and clever;
Our hearts and our liquors are stout;
Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever.

1 From “She Stoops to Conquer.'

Let some cry up woodcock or hare,

Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons ; But of all the birds in the air, Here's a health to the three jolly pigeons.

Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

Note. — We drank tea with the ladies, and Goldsmith sung Tony Lumpkins' song in his comedy, and a very pretty one, to an Irish tunő. (The Humours of Ballanagairy), which he had designed for Miss Hardcastle ; but as Mrs. Bulkley, who played the part, could not sing, it was left out. He afterwards wrote it down for me, by which means it was preserved, and now appears among his poems.

Boswell's Johnson, v. ii. p. 217

VERSES

IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO DINNER AT DR. BAKER'g.1

“This is a poem! This is a copy of verses !”

Your mandate I got,
You may all go to pot; .
Had your senses been right,
You'd have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,
I put off being shaved ;
For I could not make bold,
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,
Or to put on my duds;
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt,
And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffman beside,
And the Jessamy bride,
With the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses two,

1 Written about the year 1769, in reply to an invitation to dinner at Dr. afterwards Sir George Baker's (d. 1809,) to meet the Misses Horneck, Angelica Kauffman, Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others. For the above verses, first published in 1837, the reader is indebted to Major General Sir Henry Bunbury, Bart. P.C.

2 Miss Mary Horneck, afterwards Mrs. Gwyn. She died in 1840, aged 88. P. C.

Little Comedy's 1 face, And the Captain in lace.? (By the bye you may tell him, I have something to sell him ; Of use I insist, . When he comes to enlist.

Your worships must know · That a few days ago,

An order went out
For the foot guards so stout
To wear tails in high taste,
Twelve inches at least:
Now I've got him a scale
To measure each tail,
To lengthen a short tail,
And a long one to curtail.) -

Yet how can I when vext, Thus stray from my text ? Tell each other to rue Your Devonshire crew, For sending so late To one of my state. But 'tis Reynolds's way From wisdom to stray,

And Angelica’s whim

To be frolick like him, But, alas ! your good worships, how could they be

wiser, When both have been spoild in to-day's Advertiser ? 1

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

1 The following is the compliment alluded to:
“While fair Angelica, with matchless grace,

Paints Conway's lovely form and Stanhope's face;
Our hearts to beauty willing homage pay,
We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away.
But when the likeness she hath done for thee,
O Reynolds! with astonishment we see,
Forced to submit, with all our pride we own,
Such strength, such harmony excell'd by none,
And thou art rivall’d by thyself alone."