is wholly to wave the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they fhould be treafon. Fall feverely on the mifcarriages of government; for if fcandal be not allowed, you are no freeborn fubjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome: let your verfes run upon my feet: and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and in utter despair of your own fatyr, make me fatyrize myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but, above all the reft, commend me to the non-conformist parfon, who writ the Whip and Key. I am afraid it is not read fo much as the piece deferves, because the bookfeller is every week crying help at the end of his Gazette, to get it off. You fee I am charitable enough to do him a kindness, that it may be publifhed as well as printed; and that so much skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for wafte-paper in the shop. Yet I half suspect he went no farther for his learning, than the index of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of fome English bibles. If Achitophel fignify the brother of a fool, the author of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And perhaps it is the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verfes are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service. Now footmen you know have the generofity to make a purfe for a member of their fociety, who has had his name. : livery pulled over his ears and even protestant socks are bought up among you, out of veneration to the A diffenter in poetry from sense and English will make as good a proteftant rhymer, as a diffenter from the church of England a proteftant parfon. Befides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his ftyle a little above the vulgar epithets of prophane, and fawcy Jack, and atheistic fcribler, with which he treats me, when the fit of enthufiafin is ftrong upon him: by which well-mannered and charitable expreffions I was certain of his fect before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has damned me in your caufe from Genefis to the Revelations and has half the texts of both the Teftaments against me, if you will be fo civil to yourfelves as to take him for your interpreter; and not to take them for Irish witneffes. After all, perhaps, you will tell me, that you retained him only for the opening of your caufe, and that your main lawyer is yet behind. Now if it fo happen he meet with no more reply than his predeceffors, you may either conclude that I truft to the goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or difdain him, or what you please; for the fhort of it is, it is indifferent to your humble fervant, whatever your party fays or thinks of him. THE THE MED A L. F all our antic fights and pageantry, OF Which English ideots run in crowds to see, The day, month, year, to the great act are join'd: Five days he fat, for every caft and look; Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war. P } A A beardlefs chief, a rebel, ere a man: Yet ftill he found his fortune at a stay; Whole droves of blockheads choaking up his way; Power was his aim: but, thrown from that pretence, Behold him now exalted into trust; His counfel's oft convenient, feldom juft. Ev'n in the moft fincere advice he gave When he cut down the banks that made the bar? P 2 } Main |