High dames of honour once that garnish'd
The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary!

28 The peeress comes: the audience stare,
And doff their hats with due submission;
She curtsies, as she takes her chair,
To all the people of condition.

29 The Bard with many an artless fib
Had in imagination fenced him,
Disproved the arguments of Squib,[4]
And all that Grooms[5] could urge against him.

30 But soon his rhetoric forsook him,
When he the solemn hall had seen;
A sudden fit of ague shook him;
He stood as mute as poor Maclean.[6]

31 Yet something he was heard to mutter,
How in the park, beneath an old tree,
(Without design to hurt the butter,
Or any malice to the poultry,)

32 He once or twice had penn'd a sonnet,
Yet hoped that he might save his bacon;
Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
He ne'er was for a conjuror taken.

33 The ghostly prudes, with hagged[7] face,
Already had condemn'd the sinner: