For these are actors too as well as those: Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest,

And all is splendid poverty at best.

Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell,

Like frigates fraught with spice and cochineal,

Sail in the Ladies: how each pirate eyes So weak a vessel and so rich a prize! Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim: 230 He boarding her, she striking sail to him. 'Dear countess! you have charms all hearts to hit !'

And, 'Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!'

Such wits and beauties are not prais'd for

Peace, fools! or Gonson will for papists seize you,

If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu! Nature made ev'ry Fop to plague his brother,

Just as one Beauty mortifies another. But here's the captain that will plague them both;

260

Whose air cries, Arm! whose very look 's an oath.

The captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough,

Tho' his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits foreright; his haughty chest before,

Like batt'ring rams, beats open ev'ry door;
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hang-dogs in old tapestry,
Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's
curse,

Has yet a strange ambition to look worse;
Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe,
Jests like a licens'd Fool, commands like
law.

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'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.

And where's the glory? 't will be only thought

The great man never offer'd you a groat. Go see Sir Robert

P.

See Sir Robert! — humAnd 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 a venal tribe, Smile without art, and win without a bribe. Would he oblige me? let me only find 33 He does not think me what he thinks mankind.

Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;

The only diff'rence 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. 40 A patriot is a fool in ev'ry 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

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 Heav'n forbid that I should blast their glory,

Who know how like Whig ministers to Tory,

And when three Sov'reigns died could scarce be vext,

Consid'ring 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 diguity of Vice be lost?
Ye Gods! shall Cibber's son, without re-
buke,

Swear like a Lord; or Rich outwhore a
Duke ?

A fav'rite's porter with his master vie,
Be bribed as often, and as often lie?
Shall Ward draw contracts with a states-

How should I fret to mangle ev'ry line
In rev'rence 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;

10

Ev'n Guthry saves half Newgate by a dash. Spare then the Person, and expose the Vice.

P. How, Sir! not damn the Sharper, but the Dice?

Come on then, Satire! gen'ral, unconfin'd, Spread thy broad wing, and souse on all the kind.

Ye statesmen, priests, of one religion all! Ye tradesmen vile, in army, court, or hall! Ye rev'rend atheists! F. Scandal! name them, who?

P. Why that's the thing you bid me not to do.

Who starv'd a sister, who forswore a debt,
I never named; the town 's inquiring yet. 21
The pois'ning Dame -F. You mean
P. I don't. F. You do.

P. See, now I keep the secret, and not

you! The bribing Statesman

high you go.

F. Hold, too

P. The bribed Elector-F. There you stoop too low.

P. I fain would please you, if I knew