Some fly, like Pendulums, from Good to Evil, To what will thefe vile Maxims tend? And where, fweet Sir, will your Reflections end? In You. SERVANT. POET. In Me, you Knave? Make out your Charge. You praise low-living, but you live at large. To pafs thefe tedious Hours, thefe Winter Nights, The Seat of JOHN PITT, Efquire, in Dorfetfhire. On your old batter'd Mare you'll needs be gone, I love good Eating, and I take my Glafs : All this is bare refining on a Name, To make a Difference where the Fault's the fame. My Father fold me to your Service here, For this fine Livery and four Pounds a Year. A Livery you should wear as well as I, And this I'll prove but lay your Cudgel by. You ferve your Paffions. Thus, without a Jeft, Both are but Fellow-fervants at the beft. Yourself, good Sir, are play'd by your Defires, A mere tall Puppet dancing on the Wires. POET POET. Who, at this Rate of talking, can be free? The brave, wife, honeft Man, and only He. Not to-and-fro by Fears and Factions hurl'd, In every Turn of Fortune ftill the fame, But when in Hemfkirk's Pictures you delight, More than myself, to fee two Drunkards fight, Fool, Rogue, Sot, Blockhead,' or fuch Names, are mine; ، Yours are, a Connoiffeur, or deep Divine.' The facred Prize of Learning, Worth, and Wit: And yet fome fell their Lands thefe Rits to buy ; Befides, high Living, Sir, muft wear you out With Surfeits, Qualms, a Fever, or the Gout. By fome new Pleasures are you ftill engrofs'd, And when you fave an Hour, you think it loft. To Sports, Plays, Races, from your Books you run, And like all Company, except your own. You hunt, drink, fleep, or (idler ftill) you rhyme: Why?-but to banish Thought, and murderTime. And yet that Thought, which you discharge in Like a foul loaded Piece, recoils again. POET. [vain, Tom, fetch a Cane, a Whip, a Club, a Stone He's in a mad, or in a rhyming Fit. POET. Fly, fly, you Rafcal, for your Spade and Fork; For once I'll fet your lazy Bones to work. Fly, or I'll fend you back without a Groat To the bleak Mountains where you firft were caught. NOTE NOTE. The Author of this Imitation was educated at Winchefter School. When he was near the Head of it, he gave up, as an Exercife after the Holidays, a poetical Verfion of the ten Books of Lucan. He was Fellow of New-College, Oxford, and afterwards Rector of Pimpern, near Blandford, in Dorsetshire. He is well known to the learned World as the Tranflator of Vida's Art of Poetry, and Virgil's Æneid. The former would have been more ufeful, had it been illuftrated with Notes. He also pub. lished a Volume of occafional Poems. The above Imitation, and fome others in this Collection, were printed fince his Decease. He was related to the Pitts of Dorfetfhire, who have fo eminently diftinguished themselves in Parliament, and to Dr. Lowth. One of Mr. Pitt's learned Friends wrote the following Lines on his Translation of Vida: Vida no more the long Oblivion fears, Which hid his Virtues through a Length of Years; GLOCESTER RIDLEY. |