With other whores undone, tho' not in print,
Clubs credit for Geneva in the mint?
Ye bards! why will you sing, tho' uninspir'd?
Ye bards! why will you starve, to be admir'd?
Defunct by Phœbus' laws, beyond redress,
Why will your spectres haunt the frighted press?
Bad metre, that excrescence of the head,
Like hair, will sprout, altho' the poet's dead.
All other trades demand, verse makers beg;
A dedication is a wooden leg;