Princes can never satisfy
That Worth that rates itself too high.
What pity it is! some Men of Parts
Should have such haughty stubborn Hearts:
When once they are courted they grow vain:
Ambitious Souls cannot contain
Their Joy, which when they strive to hide,
They cover it with so much Pride,
So Saucy to Superiors,
Impatient of Competitors,
Th' are utterly untractable,
And put off like our Nightingale.
Many with him might have been great,
Promoted Friends, and serv'd the State,
That have beheld, with too much Joy,
The wish'd for Opportunity;
Then slipt it by their own Delays,
Sloth, Pride, or other willful Ways.
And ever after strove in vain
To see the Forelock once again.[23]
In some respects this poem looks forward to The Fable of the Bees. Mandeville subjects the nightingale to a brief psychological analysis and looks on his failure with a blend of detached pity and satiric mordancy; he strips away the sophisticated defenses that hide the basic emotions, recommending honesty with oneself and with others; he identifies the personal interests of the members of society with the interests of the state. It remains to point out that neither here nor elsewhere in this collection does Mandeville assert that private vices are public benefits.
Washington University
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1.] F. B. Kaye, ed., The Fable of the Bees (Oxford, 1924), I, xxx.
[2.] The Preface to Miscellanies in Verse and Prose is reprinted in Edward Niles Hooker's edition of The Critical Works of John Dennis, I (Baltimore, 1939), 6-10.
[3.] Richmond P. Bond, English Burlesque Poetry, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 147.
[4.] Bond, pp. 3-5.
[5.] Bond, p. 153, cites several narrative poems of this sort.