On any terms to _pay_ a tradesman's bill.
I'd make the insolent Mechanicks stay,
And keep my ready-money all for _play_.
I'd try if any pleasure could be found
In _tossing-up_ for twenty thousand pound.
Had I whole Counties, I to _White's_ would go,
And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw.
But should I meet with an unlucky run,
And at a throw be gloriously undone;
My _debts of honour_ I'd discharge the first,
Let all my _lawful creditors_ be curst.

Notes:

[12] As they did those of Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." "I hate your
immense loads of meat ... extreme disgusting to those who are in the
least acquainted with high life" (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i.
241).

[13]: The edible or Roman snail (_Helix pomatia_) is still
known to continental cuisines--and gipsy camps. It was introduced into
England as an epicure's dish in the seventeenth century.

[14]: Young chickens.


Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and
play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of _Tom Jones_.[15] An
anecdote of C.J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and
proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in