Page:Comic reciter.pdf/17

                                       17

Upon the floor, as if he swam for life: A third takes the bass-viol for the cock-boat, Sits in the belly on't, labours, and rows; His oar the stick with which the fiddler play'd:            A fourth bestrides his fellow, thinking to 'scape (As did Arion) on the dolphin's back, Still fumbling on a gittern. The rude multitude, Watching without, and gaping for the spoil Cast from the windows, went by th' ears about it            The constable is call'a t' atone the broil; Which done, and hearing such a noise within Of imminent shipwreck, enters the house, and finds them In this confusion: they adore his staff, And think it Neptune's Trident; and that he            Comes with his Tritons (so they call'd his watch,) To calm the tempest, and appease the waves; And at this point we left them.---

--

T O B Y T O S S P O T.

Alas! what pity 'tis, that regularity, Like Isaac Shove's, is such a rarity! But there are swilling wights in London town, Term'd, Jolly Dogs--Choice Spirits--alias Swine; Who pour, in midnight revel, bumpers down, Making their throats a thoroughfare for wine.

These spendthrifts, who life's pleasures thus outrun, Dosing, with headaches, till the afternoon, Lose half men's regular estate of sun, By borrowing too largely of the moon.

One of this kidney, Toby Tosspot hight, Was coming from the Bedford, late at night; And being Bacchi plenus, full of wine, Although he had a tolerable notion, Of aiming at progressive motion, 'Twas not direct, 'twas serpentine, He work'd, with sinuosities, along, Like Monsieur Corkscrew, worming thro' a cork; Not straight, like Corkscrew's proxy--stiff Don Prong, A fork. At length, with near four bottles in his pate, He saw the moon shining on Shove's brass plate,