n
We may place Boat in his old post again.
The way is thus: and well deserves your thanks:
Take the three strongest of his broken planks,
Fix them on high, conspicuous to be seen,
Form'd like the triple tree near Stephen's Green:[6]
And, when we view it thus with thief at end on't,
We'll cry; look, here's our Boat, and there's the pendant.

THE EPITAPH

Here lies Judge Boat within a coffin:
Pray, gentlefolks, forbear your scoffing.
A Boat a judge! yes; where's the blunder?
A wooden judge is no such wonder.
And in his robes you must agree,
No boat was better deckt than he.
'Tis needless to describe him fuller;
In short, he was an able sculler.[7]

[Footnote 1: A street in Dublin, leading to the harbour.]

[Footnote 2: A village near the sea.]

[Footnote 3: It was said he died of a dropsy.]

[Footnote 4: A cant word for a Jacobite.]

[Footnote 5: In condemning malefactors, as a judge.]

[Footnote 6: Where the Dublin gallows stands.]

[Footnote 7: Query, whether the author meant scholar, and wilfully
mistook?--_Dublin Edition._]

VERSES OCCASIONED BY WHITSHED'S [1] MOTTO ON HIS COACH. 1724

Libertas _et natale solum:_ [2]
Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
Could nothing but thy chief reproach
Serve for a motto on thy coach?
But let me now the words translate:
_Natale solum_, my estate;
My dear estate, how well I love it,
My tenants, if you doubt, will prove it,
They swear I am so kind and good,
I hug them till I squeeze their blood.
_Libertas_ bears a large import:
First, how to swagger in a court;
And, secondly, to show my fury
Against an uncomplying jury;
And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention,
To favour Wood, and keep my pension;
And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick,
Get the great seal and turn out Broderick;[3]
And, fifthly, (you know whom I mean,)
To humble that vexatious Dean:
And, sixthly, for my soul to barter it
For fifty times its worth to Carteret.[4]
Now since your motto thus you construe,
I must confess you've spoken once true.
_Libertas et natale solum:_
You had good reason when you stole 'em.

[Footnote 1: That noted chief-justice who twice prosecuted the Drapier,
and dissolved the grand jury for not finding the bill against him.--_F._]

[Footnote 2: This motto is repeatedly mentioned in the Drapier's
Letters.--_Scott_.]

[Footnote 3: Allan Broderick, Lord Middleton, was then lord-chancellor of
Ireland. See the Drapier's Letters, "Prose Works," vi, 135.--