His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.s
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 offer'd you a groat.
P. 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, uncumber'd' 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 ask
any
"Who 's the man so near
His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?”
Why, answer LYTTELTON, 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.
"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit."-PERS.
in
A metaphor peculiarly appropriated to a certain person power. This appellation was generally given to those in opposition to the court. Though some of them (which our author hints at) had views too mean and interested to deserve that name.
"A phrase, by common use, appropriated to the first minister.
▾ These two verses were originally in the poem, though omitted in all the first editions.
Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity. He sometimes voted against the Court, which drew upon him the laugh here described of ONE who bestowed it equally upon religion and honesty. He died a few months after the publication of this poem.
* George Lyttelton, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, distinguished both for his writings and speeches in the spirit of liberty.
Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest FLEURY,
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, Osborn's wita!
The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,
The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Young?
The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,
And all the well-whipt cream of courtly sense,
That first was Hervey's, Fox's next, and then
The S-te's, and then Hervey's once again.
0 come, that easy, Ciceronian style,
So Latin, yet so English all the while,
As, though the pride of Middleton and Bland,
All boys may read, and girls may understand!
Then might I sing, without the least offence,
And all I sung should be the nation's sense;
Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn,
Hang the sad verse on CAROLINA's urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest,
y The one the wicked minister of Tiberius; the other of Henry VIII. The writers against the Court usually bestowed these and other odious names on the Minister, without distinction, and in the most injurious manner. See Dial. II. p. 318, line 137.
z Cardinal; and Minister to Louis XV. It was a patriot-fashion, at that time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty.
See them in their places in the Dunciad.
b Alludes to some Court sermons, and florid panegyrical speeches: particularly one very full of puerilities and flatteries; which afterwards got into an address in the same pretty style: and was lastly served up in an epitaph, between Latin and English, published by its author.
e Queen consort to King George II. She died in 1737. Her death gave occasion, as is observed above, to many indiscreet and mean performances unworthy of her memory, whose last moments manifested the utmost courage and resolution.
All parts perform'd, 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 flatter'd 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, and grave De-red.
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,
Lull'd 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 past 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?
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of Vice be lost?
Ye gods! shall Cibber's son, without rebuke,
Swear like a lord, or Rich out-rake 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?
d A title given to that lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber to King William; he was so to King George I.; he was so to King George II. This lord was very skilful in all the forms of the House, in which he discharged himself with great gravity.
• Two players: look for them in the Dunciad.
Is it for Bond, or Peter (paltry things)
To pay their debts, or keep their faith, like kings?
If Blount dispatch'd himself, he play'd the man,
And so may'st 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 gin1.
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 quean;
Let Greatness OWN HER, she's no longer mean;
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.
f Author of an impious foolish book called The Oracles of Reason, who being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died.
A nobleman of Piedmont, banished thence for his impieties; he lived in the utmost misery, but died penitent. He wrote a book, entitled "A Philosophical Discourse on Death," being a defence of suicide.
hA fact that happened in London a few years past. The unhappy man left behind him a paper justifying his action by the reasonings of some of these authors.
i A spirituous liquor, the exorbitant use of which had almost destroyed the lowest rank of the people, till it was restrained by an act of parliament in 1736.
j An eminent dissenting preacher.
The Quaker's wife was Mrs. Drummond.
A poor bishopric in Wales, as poorly supplied. This reflection on the bishop is said to be unjust.
Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car,
Old England's genius, rough with many a scar,
Dragg'd 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, a harlot's lawless power,
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 villany."
Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) Show there was one who held it in disdain.
FR. 'Tis all a libel-Paxton' (Sir) will say.
P. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow 'faith it may ;
And for that very cause I print to-day.
How should I fret to mangle every line?
In reverence to the sins of Thirty-nine?
Vice with such giant strides comes on amain,
Invention strives to be before in vain :
Feign what I will, and paint it e'er so strong,
Some rising genius sins up to my song.
F. Yet none but you by name the guilty lash;
Even Guthry
saves half Newgate by a dash.
Spare then the person, and expose the vice.
1 Paxton, late Solicitor to the Treasury.
m The Ordinary of Newgate, who publishes the memoirs of the malefactors, and is often prevailed upon to be so tender of their reputation, as to set down no more than the initials of their name.
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