With clouted iron shoes and sheep-skin breeches,
More rags than manners, and more dirt than riches;
From driving cows and calves to Leyton Market,
While of my greatness there appeared no spark yet,
Behold I come, to let you see the pride
With which exalted beggars always ride.
Born to the needful labours of the plough,
The cart-whip graced me, as the chain does now.
Nature and Fate, in doubt what course to take,
Whether I should a lord or plough-boy make,
Kindly at last resolved they would promote me,
And first a knave, and then a knight, they vote me.
What Fate appointed, Nature did prepare,
And furnished me with an exceeding care,
To fit me for what they designed to have me;
And every gift, but honesty, they gave me.
And thus equipped, to this proud town I came,
In quest of bread, and not in quest of fame.
Blind to my future fate, a humble boy,
Free from the guilt and glory I enjoy,
The hopes which my ambition entertained
Were in the name of foot-boy all contained.
The greatest heights from small beginnings rise;
The gods were great on earth before they reached the skies.
B—— well, the generous temper of whose mind
Was ever to be bountiful inclined,
Whether by his ill-fate or fancy led,
First took me up, and furnished me with bread.
The little services he put me to
Seemed labours, rather than were truly so.
But always my advancement he designed,
For ’twas his very nature to be kind.
Large was his soul, his temper ever free;
The best of masters and of men to me.
And I, who was before decreed by Fate
To be made infamous as well as great,
With an obsequious diligence obeyed him,
Till trusted with his all, and then betrayed him.
All his past kindnesses I trampled on,
Ruined his fortunes to erect my own.
So vipers in the bosom bred, begin
To hiss at that hand first which took them in.
With eager treachery I his fall pursued,
And my first trophies were Ingratitude.
Ingratitude, the worst of human wit,
The basest action mankind can commit;
Which, like the sin against the Holy Ghost,
Has least of honour, and of guilt the most;
Distinguished from all other crimes by this,
That ’tis a crime which no man will confess.
That sin alone, which should not be forgiven
On earth, although perhaps it may in Heaven.
Thus my first benefactor I o’erthrew;
And how should I be to a second true?
The public trusts came next into my care,
And I to use them scurvily prepare.
My needy sovereign lord I played upon,
And lent him many a thousand of his own;
For which great interests I took care to charge,
And so my ill-got wealth became so large.
My predecessor, Judas, was a fool,
Fitter to have been whipped and sent to school
Than sell a Saviour. Had I been at hand,
His Master had not been so cheap trepanned;
I would have made the eager Jews have found,
For forty pieces, thirty thousand pound.
My cousin, Ziba, of immortal fame
(Ziba and I shall never want a name),
First-born of treason, nobly did advance
His master’s fall for his inheritance,
By whose keen arts old David first began
To break his sacred oath with Jonathan:
The good old king, ’tis thought, was very loth
To break his word, and therefore broke his oath.
Ziba’s a traitor of some quality,
Yet Ziba might have been informed by me:
Had I been there, he ne’er had been content
With half the estate, nor have the government.
In our late revolution ’twas thought strange
That I, of all mankind, should like the change;
But they who wondered at it never knew
That in it I did my old game pursue;
Nor had they heard of twenty thousand pound,
Which never yet was lost, nor ne’er was found.
Thus all things in their turn to sale I bring,
God and my master first, and then the King;
Till, by successful villanies made bold,
I thought to turn the nation into gold;
And so to forgery my hand I bent,
Not doubting I could gull the Government;
But there was ruffled by the Parliament.
And if I ’scaped the unhappy tree to climb,
’Twas want of law, and not for want of crime.