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*Published Apr. 15. 1807. by LAURIE & WHITTLE, 53. Fleet Street, London.*

TOWN LIFE;

*In Answer to CAPTAIN MORRIS's celebrated Song of "COUNTRY LIFE."—Written by the late MR. HEWERDINE.*

AS town-bitten bards, bred in fashion and noise,
The country decry, and its health yielding joys;
Let us fairly examine the preference due
To the smoak-smother'd town, o'er the villa's clear view.

At ev'ry town tavern you turn in to dine,
Tho' your dinner's half cold, smoaking hot is your wine;
Then how pleasant and wholesome while picking your bone,
The mix'd odour of other folk's food and your own.

In a vortex of dust, thro' the sun's scorching ray,
A rotten-row ride on a Sunday how gay;
Thro' a long lane of lacqueys you meet your hard fate,
Screw'd in and screw'd out of a damn'd narrow gate.

Then how cursedly civil when folks in town roam,
To leave cards with their friends, when they know they're from home;
In the country, glad welcome our visits attends,
We've no humbugging, card-dropping, shy-fighting friends.

In London, while day-light, not long are you clean;
At night you're bug-bitten, scarce fit to be seen;
Thus amusement and exercise fall in your way,
For you're scratching all night, and you're scrubbing all day.

In the streets oft you meet a queer stick of a fellow,
Who pokes in your eye his sharp-pointed umbrella;
But the measure of danger is scarcely half full,
When a flower-pot dropt down, breaks itself and your scull.

If in London the doctors should shorten life's date,
To lie long in the grave's not the dead bodies fate;
For surgeon, clerk, sexton, and coachman, conspire
To mangle the corpse, and the bones join with wire.

In the country we're healthy, all vigour and spunk,
No doctor we want, but to make him dead drunk;
Nor yet patent coffins; for, once in the ground,
Our bodies are snug, till the trumpet's last sound.

Now suppose you a flat, and addicted to play,
In London a sharp will seize on you as prey;
He'll the passion promote, make you drink, though not dry,
And filch your fair prospects by loading the die.

Then the sports of the field, a fine view of the sea,
Friend and bottle, girl, cutter, and cottage give me;
At smoak'd rus in urbe let other bards dwell,
Keep me from Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and Hell!\*

\* A famous subscription-house so called in the vicinity of St. James's.