Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw;
But oh what terrors must distract the soul
Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole;
Or should one pound of powder less bespread
Those monkey-tails that wag behind their head.
Thus finish'd, and corrected to a hair,
They march, to prate their hour before the fair.
So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes,
With band of lily, and with cheek of rose,
Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim,
Neatness itself impertinent in him.
Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest:
Prodigious! how the things protest, protest:
Peace, fools, or Gonson will As papists WATCH you,
If once he CAN AT SUCH DEVOTIONS catch you,
Nature made every fop to plague his brother,
Just as one beauty mortifies another.
But here's the captain that will plague them both,
Whose air cries Arm! whose very look's an oath :
The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough,
Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before,
Like batt'ring rams, beats open every door:
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry,
Scarecrow to boys, the MODEST woman's curse,
Has yet a strange ambition to look worse;
Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe,
Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so
As men from gaols to execution go;
For, hung with deadly sins,* I see the wall,
And lined with giants deadlier than them all:
Each man an Ascapart, + of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple Bar and Charing Cross.
Scared at the grizly forms, I sweat, I fly,
And shake all o'er, like a discover'd spy.
Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine:
Charge them with Heaven's artillery, bold divine!
From such alone the great rebukes endure,
Whose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure :
'Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs
To deluge sin, and drown a court in tears.
Howe'er what's now Apocrypha, my wit,
In time to come, may pass for Holy Writ.
* The room hung with old tapestry, representing the seven deadly sins. A giant in romances.
FR. 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 call'd 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 lash'd no sort of vice:
Horace would say, Sir Billy served the Crown,
Blunt could do business, H-ggins* 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 cropt 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
Formerly jailer of the Fleet prison, enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled.
† Said to be executed by the captain of a Spanish ship on one Jenkins, a captain of an English one. He cut off his ears, and bid him carry them to the king his master.
The great man never offered you a groat.
Go see SIR ROBERT-
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 any ask you, "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.
Sejanus, Wolsey, ‡ hurt not honest FLEURY, S
But well may put some statesmen iu 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, ALL know, 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.
Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:
Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!
Come, harmless characters that no one hit;
* Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity.
+ George Lyttelton, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, distinguished both for his writings and speeches in the spirit of liberty.
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.
§ Cardinal, and minister to Louis XV. time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty.
It was a patriot-fashion, at that
Come Henley's oratory, Osborn's wit!
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 H-vy's, F -'s next, and then
The S-te's, and then H- -vy's once again.
Oh 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,
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, FOR MERCY'S SAKE, EACH 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 S- -k, and grave D▬▬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,
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
Queen-consort to King George II. She died in 1737.
A title given to that lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber co King William; he was so to King George I.; and to King George II. This lord was very skilful in all the forms of the House, which he discharged with great gravity.
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-drink 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* despatch'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 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 THAT ALL IN her deplore;
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.
Author of an impious foolish book called "The Oracles of Reason," who, being in love with a near kinswoman, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died.
A fact that happened in London a few years previous. The unhappy man left behind him a paper justifying his action by the reasonings of some of these authors.
The exorbitant use of this spirit had done such great mischief to the lowest rank of the people, that the sale of it was restrained by an act of Parliament in 1736.
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