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TO THE AUTHOR OF AN ARTICLE IN THE LAST NUMBER OF The Quarterly Review,
ENTITLED “ROMANISM IN IRELAND.”

It glads us much to be able to say,
That a meeting is fixt for some early day,
Of all such dowagers–he or she—
(No matter the sex, so they dowagers be,)
Whose opinions concerning Church and State
From about the time of the Curfew date–
Stanch sticklers still for days bygone,
And admiring them for their rust alone–
To whom if we would a leader give,
Worthy their tastes conservative,
We need but some mummy-statesman raise,
Who was pickled and potted in Ptolemy’s days;
For that’s the man, if waked from his shelf,
To conserve and swaddle this world like himself.
Such, we’re happy to state, are the old he-dames
Who’ve met in committee and given their names
(In good hieroglyphics), with kind intent
To pay some handsome compliment
To their sister author, the nameless he,
Who wrote, in the last new Quarterly,
That charming assault upon Popery;
An article justly prized by them
As a perfect antediluvian gem–
The work, as Sir Sampson Legend would say,
Of some “fellow the Flood couldn’t wash away.”[1]

The fund being raised, there remained but to see
What the dowager-author’s gift was to be.
And here, I must say, the Sisters Blue
Showed delicate taste and judgment too.
For finding the poor man suffering greatly
From the awful stuff he has thrown up lately–
So much so indeed to the alarm of all,
As to bring on a fit of what doctors call
The Antipapistico-monomania
(I’m sorry with such a long word to detain ye),
They’ve acted the part of a kind physician,
By suiting their gift to the patient’s condition;
And as soon as ’tis ready for presentation,
We shall publish the facts for the gratification
Of this highly-favored and Protestant nation.

Meanwhile, to the great alarm of his neighbors,
He still continues his Quarterly labors;
And often has strong No-Popery fits,
Which frighten his old nurse out of her wits.
Sometimes he screams, like Scrub in the play,[2]
“Thieves! Jesuits! Popery!” night and day;
Takes the Printer’s Devil for Doctor Dens,
And shies at him heaps of High-church pens;[3]
Which the Devil (himself a touchy Dissenter)
Feels all in his hide, like arrows, enter.
‘Stead of swallowing wholesome stuff from the druggist’s,
He will keep raving of “Irish Thuggists;”[4]
Tells us they all go murdering for fun
From rise of morn till set of sun,
Pop, pop, as fast as a minute-gun![5]
If askt, how comes it the gown and cassock are
Safe and fat, mid this general massacre–
How hap sit that Pat’s own population
But swarms the more for this trucidation–
He refers you, for all such memoranda,
To the “archives of the Propaganda!”

This is all we’ve got, for the present, to say–
But shall take up the subject some future day.

NOTES:
[1] See Congreve’s “Love for Love.”

[2] “Beaux’ Stratagem.”

[3] “Pray, may we ask, has there been any rebellious movement of Popery in Ireland, since the planting of the Ulster colonies, in which something of the kind was not visible among the Presbyterians of the north.”– Quarterly Review.

[4] “Lord Lorton, for instance, who, for clearing his estate of a village of Irish Thuggists,” etc.–Quarterly Review.

[5] “Observe how murder after murder is committed like minute-guns.”– Ibid.