The Miserable Life Of A Pedagogue.

THE MISERABLE LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE.

To form the manners of our youth, To guide them in the way of truth, To lead them through the jarring schools, Arts, sciences, and grammar rules; Is certainly an arduous work, Enough to tire out Jew or Turk; And make a christian bite his nails, For do his best, he surely fails; And spite of all that some may say, His praise is trifling as his pay.

FOR my part I, tho' vers'd in booking, Still sav'd my carcase from such cooking; And always slyly shunn'd a trade, Too trifling as I thought and said; But at a certain crazy season, When men have neither sense or reason: By some confounded misadventure, I found myself just in it's centre.

ODD'S fish and blood, and noun and neuter, And tenses present, past and future; I utter'd with a wicked sigh, Where are my brains, or where am I? The dullest creature of the wood, Knows how to shun the distant flood; Whales, dolphins, and a hundred more, Are not the fools to run ashore.

WELL, now contented I must be, Forc'd by the dame Necessity, Who like the tribunal of Spain, Let's you speak once, but not again; And swift to execute the blow, Ne'er tells you why or whence it's so:

Now I am ask'd a thousand questions, Of ALEXANDERS and EPHESTIONS; With fly design to know if I Am vers'd in GRECIAN history; And then again my time destroy, With aukward grace to tell of TROY: From that huge giant POLYPHEMUS, Quite down to ROMULVS and REMUS. Then I'm oblig'd to give them lectures, On quadrants, circles, squares and sectors; Or in my wretched mem'ry bear, What weighs a cubic inch of air.

"SIR, here's my son, I beg you'd mind, The graces have been very kind, And on him all their blessings shed, [Except a genius and a head] Teach him the doctrine of the sphere, The sliding circle and the square, And starry worlds, I know not where: And let him quickly learn to say, Those learned words Penna, Pennae; Which late I heard our parson call, As learning, knowledge all in all."

AND there a city dame approaches, Known by her horsemen, chairs and coaches: "Sir, here's my son, teach him to speak The Hebrew, Latin, and the Greek: And this I half forgot, pray teach My tender boy — the parts of speech — But never let this son of me, Learn that vile thing Astronomy: Upon my word it's all a sham," — O I'm your humble servant ma'am. There certainly is something,in it— "Boy, drive the coach off in a minute." And thus I'm left in street or road, A laughing stock to half the crowd, To argue with myself the case, And prove its being to my face.

A plague I say on such employment, Where's neither pleasure nor enjoyment: Whoe'er to such a life is ty'd, Was born the day he should have dy'd; Born in an hour when angry spheres Were tearing caps, or pulling ears: And Saturn slow 'gainst swift Mercurius, Was meditating battles furious; Or comets with their blazing train, Decreed their life, a life of pain.