235

240

245

250

Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought,
For both the beauty and the wit are bought.
'Twould burst e'en Heraclitus with the spleen,
To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin :
The presence seems, with things so richly odd,
The mosque of Mahound, or some queer pagod.
See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules,6
Of all beau-kind the best proportion'd fools!
Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw
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 for papists seize you,
If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!

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 battering 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 breeding 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 jails to execution go;

255

260

· 265

270 275

280

For, hung with deadly sins, I see the wall,7
And lined with giants deadlier than 'em all;
Each man an Askapart,8 of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scared at the grisly 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 who 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.

285

7 The room hung with old taj
8 A giant famous in romances.

ry, representing the seven deadly sins.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.

[And published separately the same year, the first under the title of “One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-eight; a Dialogue something like Horace."]

DIALOGUE I.

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

5 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." 10

But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice; Bubo observes, he lash'd no sort of vice : ?

1 These two lines are from Horace: and the only lines that are so in the whole poem; being meant to give a handle to that which follows in the character of an impertinent censurer: “'Tis all from Horace," &c. After ver. 2 in the MS.

“You don't, I hope, pretend to quit the trade,
Because you think your reputation made:
Like good Sir Paul, of whom so much was said,
That when his name was up, he lay a-bed.
Come, come, refresh us with a livelier song,

Or, like Sir Paul, you 'll lie a-bed too long.
P. Sir, what I write, should be correctly writ.
F. Correct ! 'tis what no genius can admit.

Besides, you grow too moral for a wit.” 2 Some guilty persons very fond of making such an observation. [Bubb Dodington.]

3

15

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 cropp'd our ears, and sent them to the king.5
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.

20

1)

8 Formerly jailor of the Fleet Prison, enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled.

[Huggins was warden of the prison, a patent office. The actual jailor was Thomas Baimbridge, to whom Huggins had let the appointment. This Baimbridge was guilty of cruelty and extortion, and was satirized by Hogarth. His gross abuse of his office at length led to inquiry, and he was subsequently expelled, and committed to Newgate. Huggins was also deprived of his patent. Swift, in his description of morning, touches on one of these prison abuses :

The turnkey now his flock returning sees,

Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees."
This was literally true under the reign of Huggins and Baimbridge.]

4 [In early editions “reverend Su--n," or Sir Robert Sutton. Warburton prevailed on Pope to make the alteration.]

5 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 bade him carry them to the king his master.

[Jenkins had only one ear cut off, which he used to carry about with him in his pocket. He had been boarded and searched by a Spanish guardacosta, and though he had, as he alleged, no contraband goods on board, and had not violated the regulations of the Spanish government, he had been barbarously treated by the officers and crew of the guard.ship.

The case occurred in 1731, but it made little noise till 1738, when it was taken up by the opposition in the House of Commons to show the barbarity of the Spaniards, and the pusillanimity of the British government. Jenkins was examined before the House of Commons, and his statement had the effect of swelling the popular cry against Spain. After all, it is doubtful whether the story was not an invention. Some said that Jenkins lost his ear in the pillory! Burke seems to have disbelieved the evidence, for he mentions the affair as “the fable of Jenkins's ear.”]

“Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico

Tangit, et admissus circum præcordia ludit."--Pers. A metaphor peculiarly appropriated to a certain person in power.

6

-7

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 8 offer'd you a groat.

25

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 a venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.9

30

9 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.

[Opposite the word “ patriots,” Lord Marchmont, Pope's friend and executor, wrote “Carteret and Pulteney." See Marchmont Papers.]

8 A phrase, by common use, appropriated to the first minister.

9 [A very pleasant and graceful allusion to the great Whig minister, whose bonhommie and good humour were remarkable considering his position