Curst be the wretch, and sure he's curst
That taught the Trade of Rhyming first
'Tis a ****' d Trade, and who pursues it,
I'll pass my word at last he rue's it
The above is an extract from a late seventeenth-century satirical ballad I stumbled across in the course of my research. It made me smile; I hope it does you! The title is the number of the ballad in the English Broadside Ballad Archive, an online database of seventeenth-century ballads, should you wish to read the entire piece yourself.
