re gladden you all with a
specimen--without note or comment--from the second part of _Absalom and
Achitophel_.

"Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody;
Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And in one word, heroically mad:
He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, }
But fagoted his notions as they fell, }
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well. }
Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satyr,
For still there goes some thinking to ill nature:
He needs no more than birds and beasts to think,
All his occasions are to eat and drink.
If he call rogue and rascal from a garret,
He means you no more mischief than a parrot:
The words for friend and foe alike were made,
To fetter them in verse is all his trade.
For almonds he'll cry whore to his own mother:
And call young Absalom king David's brother.
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason,
This animal's below committing treason:
Shall he be hang'd who never could rebel?
That's a preferment for Achitophel.
Railing in other men may be a crime,
But ought to pass for mere instinct in him:
Instinct he follows and no further knows,
For to write verse with him is to transprose.
'Twere pity treason at his door to lay,
Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key:
Let him rail on, let his invective Muse
Have four and twenty letters to abuse,
Which, if he jumbles to one line of sense,
Indict him of a capital offence,
In fire-works give him leave to vent his spight,
Those are the only serpents he can write;
The height of his ambition is, we know,
But to be master of a puppet-show,
On that one stage his works may yet appear,
And a month's harvest keeps him all the year.

"Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, }
For here's a tun of midnight-work to come, }
Og from a treason-tavern rowling home, }
Round as a globe, and liquor'd every chink,
Goodly and great he sails behind his link;
With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue:
A monstrous mass of foul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the batter,
When wine has given him cou