English Satires

by Unknown

ALEXANDER POPE.

(1688-1744.)

[XXXV.] THE DUNCIAD—THE DESCRIPTION OF DULNESS.

One of the most scathing satires in the history of literature. Pope in the latest editions of it rather spoilt its point by substituting Colley Gibber for Theobald as the "hero" of it. Our text is from the edition of 1743. The satire first appeared in 1728, and other editions, greatly altered, were issued in 1729, 1742, 1743.

The mighty mother, and her son, who brings

The Smithfield muses[183] to the ear of kings,

I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!

Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and fate:

You by whose care, in vain decried and curst,

Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;

Say, how the goddess bade Britannia sleep,

And poured her spirit o'er the land and deep.

In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read,

Ere Pallas issued from the Thunderer's head,

Dulness o'er all possessed her ancient right,

Daughter of chaos and eternal night:

Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,

Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave

Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,

She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.

Still her old empire to restore she tries,

For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.

O thou! whatever title please thine ear,

Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!

Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,

Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,

Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,[184]

Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind;

From thy Boeotia though her power retires,

Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires,

Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread

To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.

Close to those walls where folly holds her throne,

And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,

Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,[185]

Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand;

One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,

The cave of poverty and poetry,

Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,

Emblem of music caused by emptiness.

Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,

Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.

Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast

Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:[186]

Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,[187]

Hence journals, medleys, mercuries, magazines;

Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,

And new-year odes,[188] and all the Grub Street race.

In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;

Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne:

Fierce champion fortitude, that knows no fears

Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:

Calm temperance, whose blessings those partake

Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake:

Prudence, whose glass presents the approaching jail:

Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise.

Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,

Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,

Till genial Jacob,[189] or a warm third day,

Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:

How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,

How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry,

Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet,

And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,

And ductile dulness new meanders takes

There motley images her fancy strike,

Figures ill paired, and similes unlike.

She sees a mob of metaphors advance,

Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance;

How tragedy and comedy embrace;

How farce and epic get a jumbled race;

How Time himself[190] stands still at her command,

Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.

Here gay description Egypt glads with showers,

Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers;

Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen,

There painted valleys of eternal green;

In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,

And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

All these and more the cloud-compelling queen

Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene.

She, tinselled o'er in robes of varying hues,

With self-applause her wild creation views;

Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,

And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.

'Twas on the day when Thorold rich and grave,[191]

Like Cimon, triumphed both on land and wave:

(Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,

Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces)

Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er,

But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.[192]

Now mayors and shrieves all hushed and satiate lay,

Yet ate, in dreams, the custard of the day;

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,

Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Much to the mindful queen the feast recalls

What city swans once sung within the walls;

Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise,

And sure succession down from Heywood's[193] days.

She saw, with joy, the line immortal run,

Each sire impressed, and glaring in his son:

So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,

Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear.

She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel[194] shine,

And Eusden eke out[195] Blackmore's endless line;

She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's poor page,

And all the mighty mad[196] in Dennis rage.

In each she marks her image full exprest,

But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast,

Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless,

And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.

Dulness, with transport eyes the lively dunce,

Remembering she herself was pertness once.

Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play

Blanked his bold visage, and a thin third day:

Swearing and supperless the hero sate,

Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate;

Then gnawed his pen, then dashed it on the ground,

Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!

Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there;

Yet wrote and floundered on in mere despair.

Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,

Much future ode, and abdicated play;

Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,

That slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head;

All that on folly frenzy could beget,

Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit,

Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole,

How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,

And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug.

Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here

The frippery of crucified Molière;

There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,

Wished he had blotted for himself before.

The rest on outside merit but presume,

Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;

Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,

Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;

Or where the pictures for the page atone,

And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.

Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;

There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete:

Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,

And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:

A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome

Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.

[183] Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows and dramatical entertainments were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II.
[184] Ironicé, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both.—The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to recall.
[185] Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.
[186] Two booksellers. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.
[187] It was an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time or before.
[188] Made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every New Year's Day.
[189] Jacob Tonson the bookseller.
[190] Alluding to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets.
[191] Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720. The procession of a Lord Mayor was made partly by land, and partly by water.—Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and barbarians.
[192] Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the Lord Mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants: but that part of the shows being at length abolished, the employment of the city poet ceased; so that upon Settle's death there was no successor appointed to that place.
[193] John Heywood, whose "Interludes" were printed in the time of Henry VIII.
[194] The first edition had it,—

"She saw in Norton all his father shine":

[XXXVI.] SANDYS' GHOST;
OR, A PROPER NEW BALLAD OF THE NEW OVID'S METAMORPHOSES,
AS IT WAS INTENDED TO BE TRANSLATED BY PERSONS OF QUALITY.

This satire owed its origin to the fact that Sir Samuel Garth was about to publish a new translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. George Sandys—the old translator—died in 1643.

Ye Lords and Commons, men of wit,

And pleasure about town;

Read this ere you translate one bit

Of books of high renown.

Beware of Latin authors all!

Nor think your verses sterling,

Though with a golden pen you scrawl,

And scribble in a Berlin:

For not the desk with silver nails,

Nor bureau of expense,

Nor standish well japanned avails

To writing of good sense.

Hear how a ghost in dead of night,

With saucer eyes of fire,

In woeful wise did sore affright

A wit and courtly squire.

Rare Imp of Phoebus, hopeful youth,

Like puppy tame that uses

To fetch and carry, in his mouth,

The works of all the Muses.

Ah! why did he write poetry

That hereto was so civil;

And sell his soul for vanity,

To rhyming and the devil?

A desk he had of curious work,

With glittering studs about;

Within the same did Sandys lurk,

Though Ovid lay without.

Now as he scratched to fetch up thought,

Forth popped the sprite so thin;

And from the key-hole bolted out,

All upright as a pin.

With whiskers, band, and pantaloon,

And ruff composed most duly;

The squire he dropped his pen full soon,

While as the light burnt bluely.

"Ho! Master Sam," quoth Sandys' sprite,

"Write on, nor let me scare ye;

Forsooth, if rhymes fall in not right,

To Budgell seek, or Carey.

"I hear the beat of Jacob's drums,

Poor Ovid finds no quarter!

See first the merry P—— comes[197]

In haste, without his garter.

"Then lords and lordlings, squires and knights,

Wits, witlings, prigs, and peers!

Garth at St. James's, and at White's,

Beats up for volunteers.

"What Fenton will not do, nor Gay,

Nor Congreve, Rowe, nor Stanyan,

Tom Burnett or Tom D'Urfey may,

John Dunton, Steele, or anyone.

"If Justice Philips' costive head

Some frigid rhymes disburses;

They shall like Persian tales be read,

And glad both babes and nurses.

"Let Warwick's muse with Ashurst join,

And Ozell's with Lord Hervey's:

Tickell and Addison combine,

And Pope translate with Jervas.

"Lansdowne himself, that lively lord,

Who bows to every lady,

Shall join with Frowde in one accord,

And be like Tate and Brady.

"Ye ladies too draw forth your pen,

I pray where can the hurt lie?

Since you have brains as well as men,

As witness Lady Wortley.

"Now, Tonson, 'list thy forces all,

Review them, and tell noses;

For to poor Ovid shall befall

A strange metamorphosis.

"A metamorphosis more strange

Than all his books can vapour;"

"To what" (quoth squire) "shall Ovid change?"

Quoth Sandys: "To waste paper".

[197] The Earl of Pembroke, probably.—Roscoe.

[XXXVII.] SATIRE ON THE WHIG POETS.

This is practically the whole of Pope's famous Epistle to Arbuthnot, otherwise the Prologue to the Satires. The only portion I have omitted, in order to include in this collection one of the greatest of his satires, is the introductory lines, which are frequently dropped, as the poem really begins with the line wherewith it is represented as opening here.

Soft were my numbers; who could take offence,

While pure description held the place of sense?

Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,

A painted mistress, or a purling stream.

Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;—

I wished the man a dinner, and sat still.

Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;

I never answered,—I was not in debt.

If want provoked, or madness made them print,

I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.

Did some more sober critic come abroad;

If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.

Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,

And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.

Commas and points they set exactly right,

And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.

Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,

From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds:

Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,

Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,

Even such small critic some regard may claim,

Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!

The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,

But wonder how the devil they got there.

Were others angry: I excused them too;

Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.

A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;

But each man's secret standard in his mind,

That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,

This, who can gratify? for who can guess?

The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,

Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,[198]

Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a-year;

He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,

Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:

And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,

Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:

And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,

It is not poetry, but prose run mad:

All these, my modest satire bade translate,

And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.[199]

How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!

And swear, not Addison himself was safe.

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires

True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;

Blest with each talent and each art to please,

And born to write, converse, and live with ease:

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.

View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,

And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,

A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;

Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,

And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;

Like Cato, give his little senate laws,

And sit attentive to his own applause;

While wits and templars every sentence raise,

And wonder with a foolish face of praise:—

Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?

Who would not weep, if Atticus[200] were he?

Who though my name stood rubric on the walls,

Or plaistered posts, with claps, in capitals?

Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,

On wings of winds came flying all abroad?[201]

I sought no homage from the race that write;

I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:

Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long)

No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.

I ne'er with wits or witlings passed my days,

To spread about the itch of verse and praise;

Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town,

To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;

Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried,

With handkerchief and orange at my side;

But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,

To Bufo left the whole Castillan state.

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,

Sat full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill;[202]

Fed with soft dedication all day long,

Horace and he went hand in hand in song.

His library (where busts of poets dead

And a true Pindar stood without a head),

Received of wits an undistinguished race,

Who first his judgment asked, and then a place:

Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat,

And flattered every day, and some days eat:

Till grown more frugal in his riper days,

He paid some bards with port, and some with praise

To some a dry rehearsal was assigned,

And others (harder still) he paid in kind,

Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,

Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:

But still the great have kindness in reserve,

He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.

May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill!

May every Bavias have his Bufo still!

So, when a statesman wants a day's defence,

Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense,

Or simple pride for flattery makes demands,

May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!

Blest be the great! for those they take away,

And those they left me; for they left me Gay;

Left me to see neglected genius bloom,

Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:

Of all thy blameless life the sole return

My verse, and Queensbury weeping o'er thy urn!

Oh, let me live my own, and die so too!

(To live and die is all I have to do:)

Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,

And see what friends, and read what books I please;

Above a patron, though I condescend

Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

I was not born for courts or great affairs;

I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;

Can sleep without a poem in my head;

Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.

Why am I asked what next shall see the light?

Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write?

Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)

Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?

"I found him close with Swift"—"Indeed? no doubt,"

(Cries prating Balbus) "something will come out."

'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.

No, such a genius never can lie still;

And then for mine obligingly mistakes

The first lampoon Sir Will,[203] or Bubo[204] makes.

Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,

When every coxcomb knows me by my style?

Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,

That tends to make one worthy man my foe,

Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!

But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,

Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress,

Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,

Who writes a libel, or who copies out:

That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,

Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:

Who can your merit selfishly approve,

And show the sense of it without the love;

Who has the vanity to call you friend,

Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend;

Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,

And, if he lie not, must at least betray:

Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,[205]

And sees at canons what was never there;

Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,

Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie.

A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,

But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus[206] tremble—

A.What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:

So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,

In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.

His wit all see-saw, between that and this,

Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,

And he himself one vile antithesis.

Amphibious thing! that acting either part,

The trifling head or the corrupted heart,

Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,

Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.

Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool,

Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,

Not proud, nor servile;—be one poet's praise,

That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:

That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,

And thought a lie in verse or prose the same.

That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,

But stooped to truth, and moralized his song:

That not for fame, but virtue's better end,

He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,

The damning critic, half-approving wit,

The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;

Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,

The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;

The distant threats of vengeance on his head,

The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;

The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,

The imputed trash, and dulness not his own;

The morals blackened when the writings scape,

The libelled person, and the pictured shape;

Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,

A friend in exile, or a father, dead;

The whisper, that to greatness still too near,

Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear:—

Welcome for thee, fair virtue! all the past;

For thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last!

A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?

P. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state:

Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,

Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,

A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,

Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;

If on a pillory, or near a throne,

He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,

Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;

This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess

Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress;

So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald's door,

Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore.

Full ten years slandered, did he once reply?

Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.

To please a mistress one aspersed his life;

He lashed him not, but let her be his wife.

Let Budgel charge low Grub Street on his quill,

And write whate'er he pleased, except his will.

Let the two Curlls of town and court, abuse

His father, mother, body, soul, and muse

Yet why? that father held it for a rule,

It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:

That harmless mother thought no wife a whore:

Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!

Unspotted names, and memorable long!

If there be force in virtue, or in song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,

While yet in Britain honour had applause)

Each parent sprung—

A.What fortune, pray?—

P.Their own,

And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.

Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,

Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,

Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walked innoxious through his age,

No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,

Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.

Unlearned, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,

No language, but the language of the heart.

By nature honest, by experience wise,

Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;

His life, though long, to sickness passed unknown,

His death was instant, and without a groan.

O, grant me, thus to live, and thus to die!

Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.

O, friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!

Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:

Me, let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of reposing age,

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep awhile one parent from the sky!

On cares like these if length of days attend,

May heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,

Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,

And just as rich as when he served a queen.

A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,

Thus far was right, the rest belongs to heaven.

[198] Ambrose Philips translated a book called the Persian Tales.
[199] Nahum Tate, the joint-author with Brady of the version of the Psalms.
[200] Addison.
[201] Hopkins, in the 104th Psalm.
[202] Lord Halifax.
[203] Sir William Yonge.
[204] Bubb Dodington.
[205] Meaning the man who would have persuaded the Duke of Chandos that Pope meant to ridicule him in the Epistle on Taste.
[206] Lord Hervey.

[XXXVIII.] EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

The following piece represents the first dialogue in the Epilogue to the Satires. Huggins mentioned in the poem was the jailer of the Fleet Prison, who had enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled. Jekyl was Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a man of great probity, who, though a Whig, frequently voted against the Court, which drew on him the laugh here described. Lyttleton was George Lyttleton, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, distinguished for his writings in the cause of liberty. Written in 1738, and first published in the following year.

Fr[iend]. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,

And when it comes, the court see nothing in 't.

You grow correct, that once with rapture writ,

And are, besides, too moral for a wit.

Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel—

Why now, this moment, don't I see you steal?

'Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye

Said, "Tories called him Whig, and Whigs a Tory";

And taught his Romans, in much better metre,

"To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter".

But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;

Bubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice:

Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown,

Blunt could do business, Huggins knew the town;

In Sappho touch the failings of the sex,

In reverend bishops note some small neglects,

And own, the Spaniard did a waggish thing,

Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king.

His sly, polite, insinuating style

Could please at court, and make Augustus smile:

An artful manager, that crept between

His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.

But 'faith your very friends will soon be sore:

Patriots there are, who wish you'd jest no more—

And where's the glory? 'twill be only thought

The great man never offered you a groat.

Go see Sir Robert—

P[ope].See Sir Robert!—hum—

And never laugh—for all my life to come?

Seen him I have, but in his happier hour

Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;

Seen him, uncumbered with the venal tribe,

Smile without art, and win without a bribe.

Would he oblige me? let me only find,

He does not think me what he thinks mankind.

Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;

The only difference is, I dare laugh out.

F. Why yes: with Scripture still you may be free:

A horse-laugh, if you please, at honesty;

A joke on Jekyl, or some odd old Whig

Who never changed his principle or wig.

A patriot is a fool in every age,

Whom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage:

These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,

And wear their strange old virtue, as they will.

If any ask you, "Who's the man, so near

His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?"

Why, answer, Lyttleton, and I'll engage

The worthy youth shall ne'er be in a rage;

But were his verses vile, his whisper base,

You'd quickly find him in Lord Fanny's case.

Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury,[207]

But well may put some statesmen in a fury.

Laugh then at any, but at fools or foes;

These you but anger, and you mend not those.

Laugh at your friends, and, if your friends are sore,

So much the better, you may laugh the more.

To vice and folly to confine the jest,

Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest;

Did not the sneer of more impartial men

At sense and virtue, balance all again.

Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule,

And charitably comfort knave and fool.

P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:

Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!

Come, harmless characters, that no one hit;

Come, Henley's oratory, Osborne's wit!

The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,

The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Yonge!

The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,

And all the well-whipped cream of courtly sense,

That first was H——vy's, F——'s next, and then

The S——te's and then H——vy's once again.[208]

O come, that easy Ciceronian style,

So Latin, yet so English all the while,

As, though the pride of Middleton[209] and Bland,

All boys may read, and girls may understand!

Then might I sing, without the least offence,

And all I sung shall be the nation's sense;

Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn,

Hang the sad verse on Carolina's[210] urn,

And hail her passage to the realms of rest,

All parts performed, and all her children blest!

So—satire is no more—I feel it die—

No gazetteer more innocent than I—

And let, a' God's name, every fool and knave

Be graced through life, and flattered in his grave.

F. Why so? if satire knows its time and place,

You still may lash the greatest—in disgrace:

For merit will by turns forsake them all;

Would you know when? exactly when they fall.

But let all satire in all changes spare

Immortal Selkirk[211], and grave De——re.

Silent and soft, as saints remove to heaven,

All ties dissolved and every sin forgiven,

These may some gentle ministerial wing

Receive, and place for ever near a king!

There, where no passion, pride, or shame transport,

Lulled with the sweet nepenthe of a court;

There, where no father's, brother's, friend's disgrace

Once break their rest, or stir them from their place:

But passed the sense of human miseries,

All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes;

No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,

Save when they lose a question, or a job.

P. Good heaven forbid, that I should blast their glory,

Who know how like Whig ministers to Tory,

And, when three sovereigns died, could scarce be vext,

Considering what a gracious prince was next.

Have I, in silent wonder, seen such things

As pride in slaves, and avarice in kings;

And at a peer, or peeress, shall I fret,

Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt?[212]

Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;

But shall the dignity of vice be lost?

Ye gods! shall Gibber's son, without rebuke,

Swear like a lord, or Rich out-whore a duke?

A favourite's porter with his master vie,

Be bribed as often, and as often lie?

Shall Ward draw contracts with a statesman's skill?

Or Japhet pocket, like his grace, a will?

Is it for Bond, or Peter (paltry things),

To pay their debts, or keep their faith, like kings?

If Blount dispatched himself, he played the man,

And so mayest thou, illustrious Passeran!

But shall a printer, weary of his life,

Learn, from their books, to hang himself and wife?

This, this, my friend, I cannot, must not bear;

Vice thus abused, demands a nation's care;

This calls the Church to deprecate our sin,

And hurls the thunder of the laws on gin.

Let modest Foster, if he will, excel

Ten metropolitans in preaching well;

A simple Quaker, or a Quaker's wife,

Outdo Llandaff in doctrine,—yea in life:

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Virtue may choose the high or low degree,

'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me;

Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,

She's still the same, beloved, contented thing.

Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth,

And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth:

But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore;

Let greatness own her, and she's mean no more;

Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess;

Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless;

In golden chains the willing world she draws,

And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws,

Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,

And sees pale virtue carted in her stead.

Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car,

Old England's genius, rough with many a scar,

Dragged in the dust! his arms hang idly round,

His flag inverted trails along the ground!

Our youth, all liveried o'er with foreign gold,

Before her dance: behind her crawl the old!

See thronging millions to the Pagod run,

And offer country, parent, wife, or son!

Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim,

That not to be corrupted is the shame.

In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in power,

'Tis avarice all, ambition is no more!

See, all our nobles begging to be slaves!

See, all our fools aspiring to be knaves!

The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore,

Are what ten thousand envy and adore;

All, all look up, with reverential awe,

At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the law;

While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry—

"Nothing is sacred now but villainy ".

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)

Show, there was one who held it in disdain.

[207] Cardinal: and Minister to Louis XV.
[208] This couplet alludes to the preachers of some recent Court Sermons of a florid panegyrical character; also to some speeches of a like kind, some parts of both of which were afterwards incorporated in an address to the monarch.
[209] Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of the Life of Cicero.
[210] Queen Consort to King George II. She died in 1737.
[211] A title given to Lord Selkirk by King James II. He was Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to William III., to George I., and to George II. He was proficient in all the forms of the House, in which he comported himself with great dignity.
[212] Referring to Lady M.W. Montagu and her sister, the Countess of Mar.