"The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
J. Strahan
Date
1789
Metaphor
"The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word."
Metaphor in Context
  Three sprigs of Hecate in three districts born;
  The Horse-guards, York, and Grub-street did adorn;
  The first, in matchless mummery was clever,
  And sold her mother, Common Sense, for ever.
  The second beldam all the rest surpast,
  In ease and arrogance--to mould the last;
  As Nature's powers could no farther go,
  To make a third, she join'd the other two;
  Who calls mankind to marvel at her dealing,
  And gets her pence by--literary stealing.
Such beldams as these ne'er encounter'd before,
And ne'er will again, until Time is no more;
They met in the World, and shook hands like Scotch cousins,
And were wedded by Fate, to get monsters by dozens.
       These witches agreed,
       In an hour of--need,
  As the only means left them to fatten and feed,
  To mount all at once, on Apollo's own steed;
  And, by joining their stock, like three empyric doctors,
  To gorge on men's vices, like bailiffs and proctors,
  The first, a vile sybil, who seeks paupers huts,
  To coax little spinsters with ginger-bread nuts:
    Gave lies and salt-petre;
    Some malice, some metre;
    A few pointless strokes,
    Old songs and stale jokes;
  With witless bon mots from a vile memorandum;
    Which the witch did essay,
    Once to weave in a play,
    But Pit, Box, or Gods could not stand 'em.
The second presented some well-temper'd fuel,
  To kindle a flame in the World's busy ball,
  As prejudice, pique, or occasion should call;
With ample decoctions of weak water-gruel;
  Some cowslips half wither'd, and ill gather'd daisies,
  An ounce of crampt wit, and a pound of strange phrases;
Which she stole on the side of the Parnassian mountain,
When she sipt the foul streams from the helicon fountain.
       The third,
       More absurd,
       Than the iron-fed bird;
And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd,
Had nothing of value to give but her--Word
.
  Except a small treatise 'gainst--running in debt;
And some tomes of the chaste Aretine,
  With a few comic traits of the fair Antoinette,
When she wanders to see and be seen.
Provenance
Searching in HDIS (Poetry)
Citation
2 entries in ESTC (1789).

See Poems: By Anthony Pasquin. (London: Printed for J. Strahan, No. 67, near the Adelphi, Strand; W. Creech, Edinburgh; J. Exshaw, Dublin; and the author, No. 125, Strand, [London], [1789]). <Link to ESTC>

Text from Poems: By Anthony Pasquin, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for J. Strahan, No. 67, Near the Adelphi, Strand; W. Creech, Edinburgh; J. Potts, and P. Byrne, Dublin; and the author, [London] No. 125, Strand, 1789). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO><Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
06/27/2012

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.