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'Tis sure enough to make one sick,
When, fighting hard for single trick,
To view the fool, who then might choose it,
Trump your best card, and thereby lose it.*

'Gainst player fam'd the idiot see,
Who bets at billiards gallantly,
To strike a cannon, pocket balls;

When mark what sad mischance befals:

He makes the daring effort, silly elf!

And, missing all, naught pockets but himself.†

In all those games which skill require,
Your fools, thus obstinate, admire

* For a splenetic man, and a very fine player, or a crabbed old maid, that has, for the last twenty years, been glued to a whist table, and who places great reliance on her card money, to experience this circumstance, is a shock easier conceived than expressed, and productive of effects, not unlikely to set all the company present in a dreadful uproar.

†This game, which solely depends on science and practice, is too often mangled by unskilful hands: and the ridiculous attitudes into which it frequently throws, not only the player, but the bye standers, is well exposed in Bunbury's caricature of the Billiard Room.

To persevere, and thereby choose

Their time and cash at once to lose.

Nay, more they'll laugh, and think it funny,
To squander thus their partner's money.*

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

If thou enact's the zany, 'tis no rule,

That others should be deck'd in idiot fame. 'Tis sure, enough to play thyself the fool; And not make them the partners of thy game.

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, row on each Rara Avis,
Crowds flock to man my Stultifera Navis.

* This race of fools is very extensive; no card room being without some of its votaries, to the no small discomfiture of such as have to own them for partners in a game.

SECTION LVII.

OF FOOLS WHO PLACE THEIR TRUST IN HERI

TAGE.

Tho' I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For, in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did I, with unbashful forehead, woo
The means of weakness and debility:
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly.

THINE uncle, fool, thou say'st, is sickly,
And therefore, doubtless, will die quickly,
And leave to thee his lands and gold.
But, folks in years, will act contrary;
And, growing of their pelf quite wary,
Will live to guard it till they're old.

Year after year is still succeeding,
While, anxious, thou thine uncle heeding;
At eighty view'st him hale as thee:

*

'Tis then thou think'st he'll sudden hop off,
In fit of apoplexy pop off,

And end, at length, thy misery.

How vain thine hope! To heritage farewel!
Thine uncle, hearty, hears thy passing bell.*

Every day affords instances of this nature; proving the fallacy of this species of dependence in fools: an instance, however, of rather a different nature, and where the youth was greatly to be pitied, is recorded in the Lowther family, to the following effect: The uncle of that name, who was as rich as he was penurious, had a nephew, without a shilling, and whose whole dependence was on his relative's will, which would have been in the young man's favour, but for the following circumstance: Old Lowther, returning home one night, fell down, and dangerously wounded his leg; for which, however, he would not have advice, on account of the expense which would be thereby incurred: when the nephew, feeling for his relative's situation, applied to a surgeon, explaining the penurious principle of the old gentleman, and requesting that he would attend him, as if through charity, but that he should be secretly paid by himself for his trouble; which being agreed upon, the nephew informed old Lowther that he could procure advice, gratis, which greatly delighted his uncle; who, in consequence, assumed a different name, and took a mean lodg ing in the purlieus of St. Giles's, where he was attended by

Or else prim aunt. Old women live long,
Is the dear burden of some youth's song,

Who rests all hope upon her will;
Stifles to please her jocund pleasures,
And ponders o'er the bible's treasures;
And heeds those morals she'll instil.

Thus in hope's bright sunshine basking,
The youth, one day, his spleen unmasking,
Pinches her pet; loud Ponto cries:

Or treads on tabby's tail-unwilling;

For which, poor youth, he finds one shilling
In will bequeath'd him when she dies.*

the surgeon, who, after some weeks, saved the loss of his leg, and, in all probability, his life, by effecting a complete cure. Unfortunately for the youth, the real fact came to the uncle's ear, who had amused himself with the supposition of his cure having been completed without cost: when, in return for the kind proceedings of his nephew, he not only discountenanced him from that hour, but made a fresh will, and cut him off with a shilling.

*Lady Dy afforded an instance of this kind, who literally left every shilling away from her next of kin, because he one day chanced to tear out a fly leaf from her prayer book.

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