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Epigram On Josiah Hort[1]
By Jonathan Swift
ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM, WHO, ON ONE OCCASION, LEFT HIS CHURCH DURING SERVICE IN ORDER TO WAIT ON THE DUKE OF DORSET[2]
Lord Pam[3] in the church (you'd you think it) kneel'd down;
When told that the Duke was just come to Town -
His station despising, unawed by the place,
He flies from his God to attend to his Grace.
To the Court it was better to pay his devotion,
Since God had no hand in his Lordship's promotion.
Extra Info:
[Footnote 1: See vol. i, "The Storm," at p. 242.]
[Footnote 2: Lionel Cranfield, first Duke of Dorset, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1730 to 1735.]
[Footnote 3: Pam, the cant name for the knave of clubs, from the French Pamphile. The person here intended was a famous B. known through the whole kingdom by the name of Lord Pam. He was a great enemy to all men of wit and learning, being himself the most ignorant as well as the most vicious P. of all who had ever been honoured with that Title from the days of the Apostles to the present year of the Christian Aera. He was promoted non tam providentia divina quam temporum iniquitate E-scopus. From a note in "The Toast," by Frederick Scheffer, written in Latin verse, done into English by Peregrine O Donald, Dublin and London, 1736.]
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