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 foreright; his haughty chest before,
Like battering rams, beats open every door;
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hang-dogs 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 licens'd fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so
As men from jails to execution go;
For hung with deadly sins I see the wall,
And lin❜d with giants deadlier than them all:
Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss,
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scar'd 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;

8 See note 4 p. 94.

From such alone the great rebukes endure,
Whose satire's sacred, and whose 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.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN 1738.

DIALOGUE I.

Fr. Nor 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-
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.'

But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice; Bubo1 observes, he lash'd no sort of vice: Horace would say, Sir Billy 2 serv'd the crown,

1 Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.

2 Sir William Young, who was frequently employed to make long speeches in the House till the minister's friends were gathered together.

8

4

Blunt could do business, Higgins 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,5 Who cropt our ears, and sent them to the king. 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.
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 offer'd you a groat.
Go see Sir Robert 6—___

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 exchang'd for power;
Seen him, uncumber'd with a venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
Would he oblige me? let me only find
He does not think me what he thinks mankind.
Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;
The only difference is-I dare laugh out.

8 See note 4 vol. ii. p. 122.

4 Gaoler of the Fleet prison, enriched himself by exactions, for which he was tried and dismissed from his office.

5 The captain of a Spanish ship is said to have cut off the ears of the captain of an English ship, named Jenkins, bid ding him carry them home to the king his master.

6 Sir Robert Walpole.

Fr. Why, yes: with scripture still you may be

free;

A horselaugh, if you please, at honesty ;
A joke on Jekyl, or some odd old Whig,
Who never chang'd his principle or wig:
A patriot is a fool in every age,

Whom all lord chamberlains allow the stage:
These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,
And wear their strange old virtue as they will.

If any ask you, 'Who's the man so near His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?' Why, answer, Lyttelton! and I'll engage The worthy youth shall ne'er be in a rage; But were his verses vile, his whisper base, You'd quickly find him in lord Fanny's case. Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury, But well may put some statesmen in a fury.

Laugh then at any but at fools or foes; These you but anger, and you mend not those. Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore, So much the better, you may laugh the more. To vice and folly to confine the jest

Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest, Did not the sneer of more impartial men

At sense and virtue balance all again.

Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule,

And charitably comfort knave and fool.

7 Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true whig, and a man of perfect probity: he sometimes voted against the

court.

P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth: Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth! Come, harmless characters that no one hit; Come, Henley's oratory, Osborne's wit! The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue, The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Young!9 The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence, And all the well-whipt cream of courtly sense; The first was H**vy's, F**'s next, and then The S**te's, and then H**vy's once again. O come! that easy Ciceronian style,

So Latin, yet so English all the while,

As, though the pride of Middleton and Bland,1
All boys may read, and girls may understand!
Then might I sing without the least offence,
And all I sung should be the nation's sense;
Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn,
Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest,
All parts perform'd, and all her children blest! 2
So-Satire is no more-I feel it die-

No gazetteer more innocent than I—

And let, a God's name! every fool and knave
Be grac'd through life, and flatter'd in his grave.
F. Why so? if satire knows its time and place,

8 See note 6 p. 5, and note on Dunciad, B. ii. v. 312. 9 See notes 1 and 2 p. 102.

1 Dr. Middleton, the well known author of the Life of Cicero; Dr. Bland, Master of Eton College.

2 See Memoir prefixed to these volumes, p. cxiii.