Ecce iterum Crispinus!

This is to give notice, I Tom the great scribbler,
The punster, the poet, the pedant, the quibbler,
The critic, the antic, the mighty comedian
Of old — but of late the noted tragedian;
Who, like the chameleon, ne'er stuck to one color,
Yet still as I changed I ever grew duller;
Who, more than old Ogilby, Hobbes or Sylvester,
The world with voluminous nonsense did pester;
Weak in my attempts, pressed by melancholy,
Bid adieu to my former amusements and folly;
In hopes of forgiveness, assure the whole nation
Of this my sincere, though my late, recantation.

Farewell, my false Muse, by whose instigation
I freely submitted to every temptation,
Who for a dull jest have betrayed thy poor master
To the envy and malice of each poetaster;
Nay, made me more odious than gruff Punchinello,
And clothed me with fustian instead of prunello;
Yet bad as you are, not one among fifty
Will say (to my sorrow) my wife is so thrifty,
That proud crowing hen, that eternal Xantippe —
Parnassus, farewell; farewell, Aganippe.

Apollo, farewell, and ye Muses seraphic;
No longer in meter shall Punsibi traffic:
A wife and a Muse! — no need of the latter;
The former may very well serve for a satire,
And since I must dance in a conjugal fetter,
I of the two evils have chosen the better.

O would that I never had tallied with Phoebus,
Or traded in dogg'rel, in puns or in rebus!
Ne'er meddled with catches or satires or farces,
And lashed at nothing but at innocent a — !
But Tom was conceited and naught would content him
But forsooth an exegi (alas!) monumentum .
Moreover, since now you've put me i' the head on't,
The dull poetaster undid the good pedant;
For whilst with hard labor and toil I did hammer
Out of my thick noddle an exquisite grammar,
(As Jonathan said) for a word to come pat in,
I maimed all my rules, and I butchered the Latin,
But frankly confessed that at length it was silly,
Although I at first had preferred it to Lilly.
In short, to be serious, I now must acknowledge
I'm the jest o' the town and burlesque o' the college.
Thus have I miscarried in all my adventures;
Was ever poor mortal so set on the tenters! —
Yet should I not thus my calamity nourish,
But that I see wretcheder criminals flourish,
Who weekly perplex us with journals and libels,
And divert honest folk from reading their Bibles;
At least let 'em link me to some barking spaniel,
To C-ffey, Jet Black, or the journalist Daniel,
Who all are (like Balaam's) but talkative asses,
And pound us, if ever we graze on Parnassus.