To hold her council in the pantry;
Or, with prophetic soul, foretelling
The peas will boil well by the shelling;
Or, bustling in her private closet,
Prepare her lord his morning posset;
And, while the hallowed mixture thickens,
Signing death-warrants for the chickens:
Else, greatly pensive, poring o'er
Accounts her cook had thumbed before;
One eye cast up upon that _great book_,
Yclep'd _The Family Receipt Book_;
By which she's ruled in all her courses,
From stewing figs to drenching horses.
--Then pans and pickling skillets rise,
In dreadful lustre, to our eyes,
With store of sweetmeats, rang'd in order,
And _potted nothings_ on the border;
While salves and caudle-cups between,
With squalling children, close the scene."

We find here, too, the source of one of those familiar lines, which so
many quote without knowing whence they come;--one of those stray
fragments, whose parentage is doubtful, but to which (as the law says of
illegitimate children) "_pater est populus_."

"You write with ease, to show your breeding,
_But easy writing's curst hard reading_."

In the following passage, with more of the tact of a man of the world
than the ardor of a poet, he dismisses the object nearest his heart with