370

Yet foft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit : This dreaded Sat'rift Dennis will confefs Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress: So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door, Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhym'd for Moor. Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply? Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie. 375 To please a Mistress one afpers'd his life; He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife :

Let Budgell charge low Grubstreet on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his Will;
Let the two Curlls of town and Court, abuse

380

His father, mother, body, foul, and muse.
Yet why? that Father held it for a rule,

It was a fin to call our neighbour fool :

That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore :
Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!

Unspotted names, and memorable long!
If there be force in Virtue, or in Song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause,
While yet in Britain Honour had applause)

Ver. 368. in the MS.

VARIATION.

385

Each

Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And lik'd that dangerous thing, a female wit;
Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid;
He writ no Libels, but my Lady did :
Great odds in amorous or poetic game,

Where Woman's is the fin, and Man's the shame.

Each parent sprung-A. What fortune, pray?-P.

Their own,

And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.

Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife,

390

Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife,

Stranger to civil and religious rage,

The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. 395

No Courts he saw, no suits would ever try,

Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lie.

Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's fubtile art,

No language, but the language of the heart.

By Nature honest, by Experience wife,

400

Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;

His life, though long, to fickness past unknown,

His death was inftant, and without a groan.

O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!

Who sprung from Kings shall know less joy than I.
O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine !

Be no unpleasing Melancholy mine:

Me, let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of repofing Age,

With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,

410

Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death,

VARIATION.

After ver. 405. in the MS.

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And of myself, too, something must I say?
Take then this verse, the trifle of a day.
And if it live, it lives but to commend
The man whose heart has ne'er forgot a friend,
Or head, an Author; Critic, yet polite,

And friend to Learning, yet too wife to write.

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
Preferve him focial, chearful, and ferene,
And just as rich as when he ferv'd a Queen.
A. Whether that bleffing be deny'd or given,
Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven.

SATIRES

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T HE occafion of publishing these Imitations was the Clamour raised on fome of my Epistles. An Answer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I could have made in my own perfon; and the Example of much greater Freedom in so eminent a Divine as Dr. Donne, seemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat Vice or Folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a Station. Both these Authors were acceptable to the Princes and Minifters under whom they lived. The Satires of Dr. Donne I versified, at the defire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury, who had been Secretary of State: neither of whom looked upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they served in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which Fools are so apt to fall into, and Knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a Satirift for a Libeller; whereas to a true Satirist nothing is fo odious as a Libeller, for the fame reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a Hypocrite.

" Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis."

WHOEVER