Over the hill and over the dale, And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he switched his long tail, As a gentleman switches his cane.
And how, then, was the Devil drest? Oh, he was in his Sunday best; His jacket was red, and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where his tail came through.
He saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel.
He saw an apothecary on a white horse Ride by on his own vocations; And the Devil thought of his old friend Death in the Revelations.
He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is the pride that apes humility.
He went into a rich bookseller's shop, Quoth he! we are both of one college, For I myself sate like a cormorant once, Fast by the tree of knowledge.
Down the river there plied, with wind and tide, A pig, with vast celerity, And the Devil looked wise as he saw how the while It cut its own throat. There! quoth he, with a smile, Goes "England's commercial prosperity".
As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw A solitary cell; And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in hell.
General Gascoigne's burning face He saw with consternation; And back to hell his way did take, For the Devil thought by a slight mistake It was a general conflagration.
LV. THE LETTERS OF PETER PLYMLEY--ON "NO POPERY".
In 1807 the _Letters of Peter Plymley_ to his brother Abraham on the subject of the Irish Catholics were published. "The letters", as Professor Henry Morley says, "fell like sparks on a heap of gunpowder. All London, and soon all England, were alive to the sound reason recommended by a lively wit." The example of his satiric force and sarcastic ratiocination cited below is the Second Letter in the Series.
The Catholic not respect an oath! why not? What upon earth has kept him out of Parliament, or excluded him from all the offices whence he is excluded, but his respect for oaths? There is no law which prohibits a Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be no such law; because it is impossible to find out what passes in the interior of any man's mind. Suppose it were in contemplation to exclude all men from certain offices who contended for the legality of taking tithes: the only mode of discovering that fervid love of decimation which I know you to possess would be to tender you an oath "against that damnable doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pigeon, duck", &c., and every other animal that ever existed, which of course the lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now this oath I am sure you would rather die than take; and so the Catholic is excluded from Parliament because he will not swear that he disbelieves the leading doctrines of his religion! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in favour of a dissenter.