SATIRE II.

SIR, though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town; yet there's one state
In all ill things, fo excellently best,

That hate towards them, breeds pity towards the reft. Though Poetry, indeed, be such a fin,

As, I think, that brings Dearth and Spaniards in: Though

NOTES.

VER. I. Yes; thank my stars!] Two noblemen of taste and learning, the Duke of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Oxford, defired Pope to melt down and caft anew, the weighty bullion of Dr. Donne's Satires; who had degraded and deformed a vast fund of sterling wit and ftrong fenfe, by the most harsh and uncouth diction. Pope fucceeded in giving harmony to a writer, more rough and rugged than even any of his age, and who profited fottle by the example Spencer had fet, of a moft mufical and mellifluous verfification; far beyond the verfification of Fairfax, who is frequently mentioned as the greatest improver of the harmony of our language The Satires of Hall, written in very fmooth and pleafing numbers, preceded thofe of Donne many years; for his Virgidemiarum were published, in fix books, in the year 1597; in which he calls himself the very first English Satirift. This, however, was not true in fact; for Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington Caftle in Kent, the friend and favourite of Henry VIII. and, as was fuggefted, of Ann Boleyn, was our first writer of Satire worth notice. But it was not in his numbers only that Donne was reprehenfible. He abounds in falfe thoughts, in far-fought fentiments, in forced unnatural conceits. the first corrupter of Cowley. Dryden was the first who called him a metaphyfical poet. He had a confiderable fhare of learn. ing, and though he entered late into orders, yet he was escemed a good

He was

SATIRE II.

ES; thank

my ftars! as early as I knew

This Town, I had the sense to hate it too: Yet here, as ev'n in Hell, there must be still One Giant-Vice, fo excellently ill,

That all befide, one pities, not abhors;

As who knows Sappho, fmiles at other whores.
I grant that Poetry's a crying fin;
It brought (no doubt) th' Excife and Army in :

5

Catch'd

NOTES.

a good divine. James I. was fo earneft to prefer him in the church, that he even refufed the Earl of Somerset, his favourite, the request he earnestly made, of giving Donne an office in the council. In the entertaining account of that conversation, which Ben Jonfon is faid to have held with Mr. Drummond, of Hauthornden in Scotland, in the year 1619, containing his judgments of the English Poets, he speaks thus of Donne, (who was his intimate friend, and had frequently addreffed him in various poems :) "Donne was originally a poet; his grand-father, on the mother's fide, was Heywood the epigrammatit; but for not being undertood, he would perifh. He efteemed him the first poet in the world for fome things; his Verfes of the Loft Ochadine, he had by heart; and that paffage of the Calm, that duft and feather, did not flir, all was fo quiet." He affirmed, that Donne wrote all his best pieces before he was twenty-five years of age.

Donne was one of our Poets who wrote elegantly in Latin; as did Ben Jonfon, Cowley, Milton, Addifon, and Gray. The private character of Donne, the inconvenience he underwent on account of his early marriage, and his remarkable fenfibility of temper, render him very amiable. WARTON.

Though like the peftilence, and old-fashion❜d love,
Ridlingly it catch men, and doth remove
Never, till it be starv'd out; yet their state
Is poor, difarm'd, like Papifts, not worth hate.

One (like a wretch, which at barre judg'd as dead,

Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot read,

And faves his life) gives Idiot Actors means, (Starving himself,) to live by's labour'd fcenes. As in fome Organs, Puppits dance above, And bellows pant below, which them do move. One would move love by rhymes; but witchcraft's charms

Bring not now their old fears, nor their old harms: Rams and flings now are filly battery,

Pistolets are the best artillery.

And they who write to Lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like fingers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
That 'scuse for writing, and for writing ill.

But he is worst, who beggarly doth chaw
Others wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth these things out-fpue,
As his own things; and they're his own, 'tis true,
For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, the excrement's his own.
But thefe do me no harm, nor they which use,
to out-ufure Jews,

3

T' out

10

Catch'd like the Plague, or Love, the Lord knows how,
But that the cure is ftarving, all allow.
Yet like the Papift's, is the Poet's state,
Poor and difarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!
Here a lean Bard, whose wit could never give
Himself a dinner, makes an Actor live:
The Thief condemn'd, in law already dead,
So prompts, and faves a rogue who cannot read.
Thus as the pipes of fome carv'd Organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above.
Heav'd by the breath, th' inspiring bellows blow:
Th' infpiring bellows lie and pant below.

One fings the Fair; but fongs no longer move;
No rat is rhym'd to death, nor maid to love:
In love's, in nature's fpite, the fiege they hold,
And scorn the flesh, the dev'l, and all but gold.

Thefe write to Lords, fome mean reward to get, As needy beggars fing at doors for meat. 26 Those write because all write, and so have still Excufe for writing, and for writing ill.

Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others wit:

'Tis chang'd, no doubt, from what it was before,
His rank digeftion makes it wit no more;
Senfe, past through him, no longer is the fame;
For food digested takes another name.

I pafs o'er all those Confeffors and Martyrs
Who live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chartres,
Out-cant old Efdras, or out-drink his heir,
Out-ufure Jews, or Irishmen out-fwear;

15

20

30

35

Wicked

T'out-drink the fea, t' out-fwear the Letanie,
Who with fins all kinds as familiar be
As Confeffors, and for whofe finful fake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell muft make;
Whose strange fins Canonifts could hardly tell
In which Commandment's large receit they dwell.
But thefe punish themfelves. The infolence
Of Cofcus, only, breeds my just offence,
Whom time (which rots all, and makes botches
And plodding on, muft make a calf an ox)
Hath made a Lawyer; which (alas) of late ;
But scarce a Poet: jollier of this ftate,
Than are new-benefic'd Minifters, he throws,
Like nets or lime-twigs, wherefoe'er he goes
His title of Barrister on ev'ry wench,

And wooes in language of the Pleas and Bench.**
Words, words which would tear

The tender labyrinth of a Maid's foft ear:

NOTES.

VER. 38. Irishmen out-frear ;] The Original fays, "out-fwear the Letanie,"

poxi

More,

improved by the Imitator into a juft ftroke of Satire. Dr. Donne's is a low allufion to a licentious quibble used at that time by the enemies of the English Liturgy: who, difliking the frequent invocations in the Letanie, called them the taking God's Name in vain, which is the Scripture periphrafis for fwearing.

WARBURTON.

VER. 43. Of whofe frange crimes] Such as Sanchez de Matrimonio has minutely enumerated and described. Such Canonifts deferved this animadverfion. In Pafcal's fine Provincial Letters are also some strange and ftriking examples.

WARTON