Genre:

Poetry, Satire, Serial

Subjects:

Politics, Magic, Medical Practitioners, Crime, Medical Treatment

    Imagines the new breed of government spy and agents provocateurs as latter-day knights-errant. Describes the 'installation' of one such spy at a black magic ceremony, with 'the chief magician / A side-mouth-looking state physician, / Who every nostrum, but relief, / Applies to cure a nation's grief' (431). He advised the spy: 'Plots we must have for our security / We must have blood to prove their surety: / you must excite those plots, and urge, / Our victims to prepare a purge / For church and state; which we'll call poison, / As rank as e'er we clapt our eyes on: / Our antidote, a rope, produce, / And teach 'em all its instant use' (432).