LXXXIII.

I've seen more than I'll say: but we will see
How our villeggiatura will get on.
The party might consist of thirty-three,

Of highest caste-the Brahmins of the ton.
I have named a few, not foremost in degree,
But ta'en at hazard as the rhyme may run.
By way of sprinkling, scatter'd amongst these,
There also were some Irish absentees.
LXXXIV.

1 There was Parolles, too, the legal bully, Who limits all his battles to the bar And senate: when invited elsewhere, truly, He shows more appetite for words than war. There was the young bard Rackrhyme, who had newly

Come out, and glimmer'd as a six weeks' star : There was Lord Pyrrho, too, the great freethinker ;

And Sir John Pottledeep, the mighty drinker.

If all these seem a heterogeneous mass

To be assembled at a country seat, Yet think, a specimen of every class

Is better than a humdrum tete-a-tete. The days of Comedy are gone, alas, When Congreve's fool could vic with Molière's béte;

Society is smooth'd to that excess,

That manners hardly differ more than dress.

XCV.

Our ridicules are kept in the background-
Ridiculous enough, but also dull:
Professions, too, are no more to be found
Professional: and there is nought to cull
Of folly's fruit: for though your fools abound,
They're barren, and not worth the pains to
pull.