YES,

This town, I had the sense to hate it too: Yet here, as e'en in hell, there must be still One giant-vice, so excellently ill,

That all beside, one pities, not abhors;

As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.
I grant that poetry 's a crying sin;

It brought (no doubt) the Excise and Army in:

Catch'd like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how,
But that the cure is starving, all allow.

Yet like the papist's is the poet's state,

Poor and disarm'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 saves a rogue who cannot read.
Thus as the pipes of some carved organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above.
Heaved by the breath the inspiring bellows blow:
The inspiring bellows lie and pant below.

One sings the fair: but songs no longer move;
No rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love:
In love's, in nature's spite, the siege they hold,
And scorn the flesh, the devil, and all-but gold.
These write to lords, some mean reward to get,
As needy beggars sing at doors for meat.
Those write because all write, and so have still
Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.

Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others' wit:
"Tis changed, no doubt, from what it was before;
His rank digestion makes it wit no more:
Sense, pass'd through him, no longer is the same;
For food digested takes another name.

I pass o'er all those confessors and martyrs,
Who live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chartres,
Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir,
Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear;
Wicked as pages, who in early years

Act sins which Prisca's confessor scarce hears.

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E'en those I pardon, for whose sinful sake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make;
Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell

In what commandment's large contents they dwell.
One, one man only, breeds my just offence;

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Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence :

Time, that at last matures a clap to pox,

Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox,

And brings all natural events to pass,

Hath made him an attorney of an ass.

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1 [Sir Robert Sutton, a privy councillor, and M. P. for Northamptonshire. He was one of the parties implicated in the frauds of the company called the Charitable Corporation, and was expelled the House of Commons.]

No young divine, new-beneficed, can be

More pert, more proud, more positive than he.
What further could I wish the fop to do,
But turn a wit, and scribble verses too?
Pierce the soft labyrinth of a lady's ear

With rhymes of this per cent. and that per year?
Or court a wife, spread out his wily parts,
Like nets or lime-twigs, for rich widow's hearts;
Call himself barrister to every wench,

And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench?
Language, which Boreas might to Auster hold,
More rough than forty Germans when they scold.
Cursed be the wretch, so venal and so vain :
Paltry and proud, as drabs in Drury-lane.
'Tis such a bounty as was never known,
If Peter deigns to help you to your own:2

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What thanks, what praise, if Peter but supplies!
And what a solemn face, if he denies!

Grave, as when prisoners shake the head and swear
'Twas only suretyship that brought 'em there.
His office keeps your parchment fates entire,

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He starves with cold to save them from the fire;

For you he walks the streets through rain or dust,
For not in chariots Peter puts his trust;

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For you he sweats and labours at the laws,
Takes God to witness he affects your cause,
And lies to every lord in every thing,
Like a king's favourite, or like a king.
These are the talents that adorn them all,
From wicked Waters e'en to godly ** 3
Not more of simony beneath black gowns,
Not more of bastardy in heirs to crowns.
In shillings and in pence at first they deal ;
And steal so little, few perceive they steal;
Till, like the sea, they compass all the land,
From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand:
And when rank widows purchase luscious nights,
Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White's,

2 [Peter Walter, whose name occurs so often in Pope's satires.]

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85

[Perhaps Paul Benfield, M.P., who was engaged in the jobbing transac

tions of that period.]

Or city heir in mortgage melts away;
Satan himself feels far less joy than they.
Piecemeal they win this acre first, then that,
Glean on, and gather up the whole estate.
Then, strongly fencing ill-got wealth by law,
Indentures, covenants, articles they draw,
Large as the fields themselves, and larger far
Than civil codes, with all their glosses, are ;
So vast, our new divines, we must confess,
Are fathers of the church for writing less.
But let them write for you, each rogue impairs
The deeds, and dexterously omits, ses heires:
No commentator can more slily pass
O'er a learn'd, unintelligible place:

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Or, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out

Those words, that would against them clear the doubt.
So Luther thought the Pater-noster long,

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When doom'd to say his beads and even-song;
But, having cast his cowl, and left those laws,

Adds to Christ's prayer, the power and glory clause.1
The lands are bought; but where are to be found
Those ancient woods, that shaded all the ground?
We see no new-built palaces aspire,

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No kitchens emulate the vestal fire.

Where are those troops of poor, that throng'd of yore
The good old landlord's hospitable door?

Well, I could wish, that still in lordly domes

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Some beasts were kill'd, though not whole hecatombs ;

That both extremes were banish'd from their walls,
Carthusian fasts, and fulsome Bacchanals;

And all mankind might that just mean observe,

In which none e'er could surfeit, none could starve.
These, as good works, 'tis true we all allow,
But oh these works are not in fashion now:
Like rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare,
Extremely fine, but what no man will wear.

Thus much I've said, I trust, without offence;
Let no court sycophant pervert my sense,
Nor sly informer watch these words to draw
Within the reach of treason, or the law.

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[The doxology to the Lord's Prayer, Matthew vi. 13, has been pronounced

spurious by biblical critics.]

SATIRE IV.

WELL, if it be my time to quit the stage,

Adieu to all the follies of the age!

I die in charity with fool and knave,
Secure of peace at least beyond the grave.
I've had my purgatory here betimes,
And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes.
The poet's hell, its tortures, fiends, and flames,
To this were trifles, toys, and empty names.

With foolish pride my heart was never fired,
Nor the vain itch to admire, or be admired;
I hoped for no commission from his grace;
I bought no benefice, I begg'd no place:
Had no new verses, nor new suit to show;
Yet went to Court! the devil would have it so.
But, as the fool that in reforming days
Would go to mass in jest (as story says)
Could not but think, to pay his fine was odd,
Since 'twas no form'd design of serving God;
So was I punish'd, as if full as proud,
As prone to ill, as negligent of good,
As deep in debt, without a thought to pay,
As vain, as idle, and as false, as they
Who live at Court, for going once that way!
Scarce was I enter'd, when, behold! there came
A thing which Adam had been posed to name;
Noah had refused it lodging in his ark,

Where all the race of reptiles might embark:
A verier monster than on Afric's shore

The sun e'er got, or slimy Nilus bore,

Or Sloane or Woodward's wondrous shelves contain,

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Nay, all that lying travellers can feign.
The watch would hardly let him pass at noon;

At night would swear him dropp'd out of the moon.
One, whom the mob, when next we find or make
A popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take,

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