I scorn thy spurious and degenerate line, And from this hour my patronage resign.
ON READING DR. YOUNG'S SATIRES,
CALLED THE UNIVERSAL PASSION.
IF there be truth in what you sing,
Such godlike virtues in the king;
A minister who fill'd with zeal
And wisdom for the commonweal;
If he † who in the chair presides
So steadily the senate guides:
If others, whom you make your theme,
Are seconds in the glorious scheme:
If every peer, whom you commend,
To worth and learning be a friend:
If this be truth, as you attest,
What land was ever half so blest!
No falsehood now among the great,
And tradesmen now no longer cheat;
Now on the bench fair Justice shines;
Her scale to neither side inclines:
Now Pride and Cruelty are flown,
And Mercy here exalts her throne:
For such is good example's power,
It does its office every hour,
Where governors are good and wise;
Or else the truest maxim lies:
* Sir Robert Walpole, afterward earl of Orford. H.
↑ Sir Spencer Compton, then speaker, afterward earl of Wilmington. H.
For so we find all ancient sages
Decree, that, ad exemplum regis,
Through all the realm his virtues run,
Ripening and kindling like the sun.
If this be true, then how much more
When you have nam'd at least a score
Of courtiers, each in their degree,
If possible, as good as he!
Or take it in a different view.
I ask (if what you say be true)
If you affirm the present age
Deserves your satire's keenest rage:
If that same universal passion
With every vice has fill'd the nation:
If virtue dares not venture down
A single step beneath the crown :
If clergymen, to show their wit,
Praise classics more than holy writ:
If bankrupts, when they are undone,
Into the senate house can run,
And sell their votes at such a rate,
As will retrieve a lost estate:
If law be such a partial whore,
To spare the rich, and plague the poor:
If these be of all crimes the worst,
What land was ever half so curst?
QUOTH the thief to the dog, let me into your
And I'll give you these delicate bits. Quoth the dog, I shall then be more villain than you're,
And besides must be out of my wits.
Your delicate bits will not serve me a meal,
But my master each day gives me bread;
You'll fly, when you get what you came here to
steal,
And I must be hang'd in your stead.
The stockjobber thus from 'Change alley goes down,
And tips you the freeman a wink;
Let me have but your vote to serve for the town, And here is a guinea to drink.
Says the freeman, your guinea to night would be spent!
Your offers of bribery cease:
I'll vote for my landlord, to whom I pay rent,
Or else I may forfeit my lease.
From London they come, silly people to chouše;
Their lands and their faces unknown:
Who'd vote a rogue into the parliament house, That would turn a man out of his own?
TO THE GRUB-STREET VERSE WRITERS.
YE poets ragged and forlorn,
Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers dead as soon as born,
Not yet consign'd to paste,
I know a trick to make you thrive ;
O, 'tis a quaint device:
Your stillborn poems shall revive,
And scorn to wrap up spice.
Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing * Pope;
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.
When Pope has fill'd the margins round,
Why then recal your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
And swear they are your own.
* The original copy of Pope's celebrated translation of Homer (preserved in the British Museum) is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.
WHO DESIRED THE AUTHOR TO WRITE SOME VERSES UPON HER IN THE
AFTER venting all my spite,
Tell me, what have I to write?
Every error I could find
Through the mazes of your mind,
Have my busy Muse employ'd,
Till the company was cloy'd.
Are you positive and fretful,
Heedless, ignorant, forgetful?
Those, and twenty follies more,
I have often told before.
Hearken what my lady says:
Have I nothing then to praise?
Ill it fits you to be witty,
Where a fault should move your pity.
If
you think me too conceited,
Or to passion quickly heated;
If my wandering head be less
Set on reading than on dress;
If I always seem too dull t' ye;
I can solve the difficulty.
You would teach me to be wise:
Truth and honour how to prize;
How to shine in conversation,
And with credit fill my station;
How to relish notions high;
How to live, and how to die.
DD 3
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