P. ‘SHUT, shut the door, good John!’ fatigued, I said; | |
| ‘Tie up the knocker, say I ’m sick, I ’m dead.’ | |
| The Dog-star rages! nay, ’t is past a doubt | |
| All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out: | |
| Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, | 5 |
| They rave, recite, and madden round the land. | |
| What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? | |
| They pierce my thickets, thro’ my grot they glide, | |
| By land, by water, they renew the charge, | |
| They stop the chariot, and they board the barge. | 10 |
| No place is sacred, not the church is free, | |
| Ev’n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me: | |
| Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, | |
| Happy to catch me just at dinner time. | |
| Is there a Parson much bemused in beer, | 15 |
| A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer, | |
| A clerk foredoom’d his father’s soul to cross, | |
| Who pens a stanza when he should engross? | |
| Is there who, lock’d from ink and paper, scrawls | |
| With desp’rate charcoal round his darken’d walls? | 20 |
| All fly to TWIT’NAM, and in humble strain | |
| Apply to me to keep them mad or vain, | |
| Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, | |
| Imputes to me and my damn’d works the cause: | |
| Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope, | 25 |
| And curses Wit and Poetry, and Pope. | |
| Friend to my life (which did not you prolong, | |
| The world had wanted many an idle song)! | |
| What Drop or Nostrum can this plague remove? | |
| Or which must end me, a fool’s wrath or love? | 30 |
| A dire dilemma! either way I ’m sped; | |
| If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead. | |
| Seiz’d and tied down to judge, how wretched I! | |
| Who can’t be silent, and who will not lie. | |
| To laugh were want of goodness and of grace, | 35 |
| And to be grave exceeds all power of face. | |
| I sit with sad civility, I read | |
| With honest anguish and an aching head, | |
| And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, | |
| This saving counsel, ‘Keep your piece nine years.’ | 40 |
| ‘Nine years!’ cries he, who, high in Drury lane, | |
| Lull’d by soft zephyrs thro’ the broken pane, | |
| Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, | |
| Obliged by hunger and request of friends: | |
| ‘The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it! | 45 |
| I ’m all submission: what you ’d have it—make it.’ | |
| Three things another’s modest wishes bound, | |
| ‘My friendship, and a Prologue, and ten pound.’ | |
| Pitholeon sends to me: “You know his Grace, | |
| I want a patron; ask him for a place.’ | 50 |
| Pitholeon libell’d me—‘But here ’s a letter | |
| Informs you, Sir, ’t was when he knew no better. | |
| Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine, | |
| He ’ll write a Journal, or he ’ll turn Divine.’ | |
| Bless me! a packet.—’T is a stranger sues, | 55 |
| A Virgin Tragedy, an Orphan Muse. | |
| If I dislike it, ‘Furies, death, and rage!’ | |
| If I approve, ‘Commend it to the stage.’ | |
| There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends, | |
| The players and I are, luckily, no friends. | 60 |
| Fired that the house rejects him, ‘’Sdeath, I ’ll print it, | |
| And shame the fools—your int’rest, Sir, with Lintot.’ | |
| Lintot, dull rogue, will think your price too much: | |
| ‘Not, Sir, if you revise it, and retouch.’ | |
| All my demurs but double his attacks; | 65 |
| At last he whispers, ‘Do, and we go snacks.’ | |
| Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door; | |
| ‘Sir, let me see your works and you no more.’ | |
| ’T is sung, when Midas’ ears began to spring | |
| (Midas, a sacred person and a king), | 70 |
| His very Minister who spied them first | |
| (Some say his Queen) was fore’d to speak or burst. | |
| And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case, | |
| When ev’ry coxcomb perks them in my face? | |
| A. Good friend, forbear! you deal in dangerous things; | 75 |
| I ’d never name Queens, Ministers, or Kings; | |
| Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick, | |
| ’T is nothing— P. Nothing! if they bite and kick? | |
| Out with it, DUNCIAD! let the secret pass, | |
| That secret to each fool, that he ’s an ass: | 80 |
| The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?) | |
| The Queen of Midas slept, and so may I. | |
| You think this cruel? take it for a rule, | |
| No creature smarts so little as a fool. | |
| Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, | 85 |
| Thou unconcern’d canst hear the mighty crack: | |
| Pit, Box, and Gall’ry in convulsions hurl’d, | |
| Thou stand’st unshook amidst a bursting world. | |
| Who shames a Scribbler? break one cobweb thro’, | |
| He spins the slight self-pleasing thread anew: | 90 |
| Destroy his fib, or sophistry—in vain! | |
| The creature’s at his dirty work again, | |
| Throned in the centre of his thin designs, | |
| Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines. | |
| Whom have I hurt? has Poet yet or Peer | 95 |
| Lost the arch’d eyebrow or Parnassian sneer? | |
| And has not Colley still his lord and whore? | |
| His butchers Henley? his freemasons Moore? | |
| Does not one table Bavius still admit? | |
| Still to one Bishop Philips seem a wit? | 100 |
| Still Sappho— A. Hold! for God’s sake—you ’ll offend. | |
| No names—be calm—learn prudence of a friend. | |
| I too could write, and I am twice as tall; | |
| But foes like these— P. One flatt’rer’s worse than all. | |
| Of all mad creatures, if the learn’d are right, | 105 |
| It is the slaver kills, and not the bite. | |
| A fool quite angry is quite innocent: | |
| Alas! ’t is ten times worse when they repent. | |
| One dedicates in high heroic prose, | |
| And ridicules beyond a hundred foes; | 110 |
| One from all Grub-street will my fame defend, | |
| And, more abusive, calls himself my friend: | |
| This prints my Letters, that expects a bribe, | |
| And others roar aloud, ‘Subscribe, subscribe!’ | |
| There are who to my person pay their court: | 115 |
| I cough like Horace; and tho’ lean, am short; | |
| Ammon’s great son one shoulder had too high, | |
| Such Ovid’s nose, and ‘Sir! you have an eye—’ | |
| Go on, obliging creatures! make me see | |
| All that disgraced my betters met in me. | 120 |
| Say, for my comfort, languishing in bed, | |
| ‘Just so immortal Maro held his head:’ | |
| And when I die, be sure you let me know | |
| Great Homer died three thousand years ago. | |
| Why did I write? what sin to me unknown | 125 |
| Dipp’d me in ink, my parents’, or my own? | |
| As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, | |
| I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came: | |
| I left no calling for this idle trade, | |
| No duty broke, no father disobey’d: | 130 |
| The Muse but serv’d to ease some friend, not wife, | |
| To help me thro’ this long disease my life, | |
| To second, ARBUTHNOT! thy art and care, | |
| And teach the being you preserv’d, to bear. | |
| A. But why then publish? P. Granville the polite, | 135 |
| And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; | |
| Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, | |
| And Congreve lov’d, and Swift endured my lays; | |
| The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read; | |
| Ev’n mitred Rochester would nod the head, | 140 |
| And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friends before) | |
| With open arms receiv’d one poet more. | |
| Happy my studies, when by these approv’d! | |
| Happier their author, when by these belov’d! | |
| From these the world will judge of men and books, | 145 |
| Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes. | |
| Soft were my numbers; who could take offence | |
| While pure description held the place of sense? | |
| Like gentle Fanny’s was my flowery theme, | |
| ‘A painted mistress, or a purling stream.’ | 150 |
| Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill; | |
| I wish’d the man a dinner, and sat still: | |
| Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; | |
| I never answer’d; I was not in debt. | |
| If want provoked, or madness made them print, | 155 |
| I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint. | |
| Did some more sober critic come abroad; | |
| If wrong, I smiled, if right, I kiss’d the rod. | |
| Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, | |
| And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. | 160 |
| Commas and points they set exactly right, | |
| And ’t were a sin to rob them of their mite. | |
| Yet ne’er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds, | |
| From slashing Bentleys down to piddling Tibbalds. | |
| Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells, | 165 |
| Each word-catcher that lives on syllables, | |
| Ev’n such small critics some regard may claim, | |
| Preserv’d in Milton’s or in Shakspeare’s name. | |
| Pretty! in amber to observe the forms | |
| Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! | 170 |
| The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, | |
| But wonder how the devil they got there. | |
| Were others angry: I excused them too; | |
| Well might they rage, I gave them but their due. | |
| A man’s true merit ’t is not hard to find; | 175 |
| But each man’s secret standard in his mind, | |
| That casting-weight Pride adds to emptiness, | |
| This, who can gratify? for who can guess? | |
| The bard whom pilfer’d pastorals renown, | |
| Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown, | 180 |
| Just writes to make his barrenness appear, | |
| And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year; | |
| He who still wanting, tho’ he lives on theft, | |
| Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left; | |
| And he who now to sense, now nonsense, leaning, | 185 |
| Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: | |
| And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, | |
| It is not poetry, but prose run mad: | |
| All these my modest satire bade translate, | |
| And own’d that nine such poets made a Tate. | 190 |
| How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe! | |
| And swear not ADDISON himself was safe. | |
| Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires | |
| True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires, | |
| Bless’d with each talent and each art to please, | 195 |
| And born to write, converse, and live with ease; | |
| Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, | |
| Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne; | |
| View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, | |
| And hate for arts that caus’d himself to rise; | 200 |
| Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, | |
| And without sneering teach the rest to sneer; | |
| Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, | |
| Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; | |
| Alike reserv’d to blame or to commend, | 205 |
| A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend; | |
| Dreading ev’n fools; by flatterers besieged, | |
| And so obliging that he ne’er obliged; | |
| Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, | |
| And sit attentive to his own applause: | 210 |
| While Wits and Templars ev’ry sentence raise, | |
| And wonder with a foolish face of praise— | |
| Who but must laugh if such a man there be? | |
| Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? | |
| What tho’ my name stood rubric on the walls, | 215 |
| Or plaster’d posts, with claps, in capitals? | |
| Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers load, | |
| On wings of winds came flying all abroad? | |
| I sought no homage from the race that write; | |
| I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight: | 220 |
| Poems I heeded (now berhymed so long) | |
| No more than thou, great George! a birthday song. | |
| I ne’er with Wits or Witlings pass’d my days | |
| To spread about the itch of verse and praise; | |
| Nor like a puppy daggled thro’ the town | 225 |
| To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; | |
| Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth’d, and cried, | |
| With handkerchief and orange at my side; | |
| But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, | |
| To Bufo left the whole Castalian state. | 230 |
| Proud as Apollo on his forked hill | |
| Sat full-blown Bufo, puff’d by ev’ry quill: | |
| Fed with soft dedication all day long, | |
| Horace and he went hand in hand in song. | |
| His library (where busts of poets dead, | 235 |
| And a true Pindar stood without a head) | |
| Receiv’d of Wits an undistinguish’d race, | |
| Who first his judgment ask’d, and then a place: | |
| Much they extoll’d his pictures, much his seat, | |
| And flatter’d ev’ry day, and some days eat: | 240 |
| Till grown more frugal in his riper days, | |
| He paid some bards with port, and some with praise; | |
| To some a dry rehearsal was assign’d, | |
| And others (harder still) he paid in kind. | |
| Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh; | 245 |
| Dryden alone escaped this judging eye: | |
| But still the great have kindness in reserve; | |
| He help’d to bury whom he help’d to starve. | |
| May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill! | |
| May every Bavius have his Bufo still! | 250 |
| So when a statesman wants a day’s defence, | |
| Or Envy holds a whole week’s war with Sense, | |
| Or simple Pride for flatt’ry makes demands, | |
| May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! | |
| Bless’d be the great! for those they take away, | 255 |
| And those they left me—for they left me Gay; | |
| Left me to see neglected Genius bloom, | |
| Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: | |
| Of all thy blameless life the sole return | |
| My Verse, and Queensb’ry weeping o’er thy urn! | 260 |
| Oh let me live my own, and die so too | |
| (To live and die is all I have to do)! | |
| Maintain a poet’s dignity and ease, | |
| And see what friends, and read what books I please; | |
| Above a Patron, tho’ I condescend | 265 |
| Sometimes to call a minister my Friend. | |
| I was not born for courts or great affairs; | |
| I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; | |
| Can sleep without a poem in my head, | |
| Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead. | 270 |
| Why am I ask’d what next shall see the light? | |
| Heav’ns! was I born for nothing but to write? | |
| Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave) | |
| Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save? | |
| ‘I found him close with Swift’—‘Indeed? no doubt | 275 |
| (Cries prating Balbus) something will come out.’ | |
| ’T is all in vain, deny it as I will; | |
| ‘No, such a genius never can lie still:’ | |
| And then for mine obligingly mistakes | |
| The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes. | 280 |
| Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile, | |
| When ev’ry coxcomb knows me by my style? | |
| Curst be the verse, how well soe’er it flow, | |
| That tends to make one worthy man my foe, | |
| Give Virtue scandal, Innocence a fear, | 285 |
| Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! | |
| But he who hurts a harmless neighbour’s peace, | |
| Insults fall’n Worth, or Beauty in distress, | |
| Who loves a lie, lame Slander helps about, | |
| Who writes a libel, or who copies out; | 290 |
| That fop whose pride affects a patron’s name, | |
| Yet absent, wounds an author’s honest fame; | |
| Who can your merit selfishly approve, | |
| And show the sense of it without the love; | |
| Who has the vanity to call you friend, | 295 |
| Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend; | |
| Who tells whate’er you think, whate’er you say, | |
| And, if he lie not, must at least betray; | |
| Who to the Dean and Silver Bell can swear, | |
| And sees at Canons what was never there; | 300 |
| Who reads but with a lust to misapply, | |
| Make satire a lampoon, and fiction lie: | |
| A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, | |
| But all such babbling blockheads in his stead. | |
| Let Sporus tremble— A. What? that thing of silk, | 305 |
| Sporus, that mere white curd of Ass’s milk? | |
| Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? | |
| Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? | |
| P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, | |
| This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; | 310 |
| Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, | |
| Yet Wit ne’er tastes, and Beauty ne’er enjoys; | |
| So well-bred spaniels civilly delight | |
| In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. | |
| Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, | 315 |
| As shallow streams run dimpling all the way, | |
| Whether in florid impotence he speaks, | |
| And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks, | |
| Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, | |
| Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, | 320 |
| In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, | |
| Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies; | |
| His wit all see-saw between that and this, | |
| Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, | |
| And he himself one vile Antithesis. | 325 |
| Amphibious thing! that acting either part, | |
| The trifling head, or the corrupted heart; | |
| Fop at the toilet, flatt’rer at the board, | |
| Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. | |
| Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, | 330 |
| A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest; | |
| Beauty that shocks you, Parts that none will trust, | |
| Wit that can creep, and Pride that licks the dust. | |
| Not Fortune’s worshipper, nor Fashion’s fool, | |
| Not Lucre’s madman, nor Ambition’s tool, | 335 |
| Not proud nor servile;—be one poet’s praise, | |
| That if he pleas’d, he pleas’d by manly ways: | |
| That flatt’ry ev’n to Kings, he held a shame, | |
| And thought a lie in verse or prose the same; | |
| That not in fancy’s maze he wander’d long, | 340 |
| But stoop’d to truth, and moralized his song; | |
| That not for Fame, but Virtue’s better end, | |
| He stood the furious foe, the timid friend, | |
| The damning critic, half approving wit, | |
| The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit; | 345 |
| Laugh’d at the loss of friends he never had, | |
| The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad; | |
| The distant threats of vengeance on his head, | |
| The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed; | |
| The tale revived, the lie so oft o’erthrown, | 350 |
| Th’ imputed trash and dulness not his own; | |
| The morals blacken’d when the writings ’scape, | |
| The libell’d person, and the pictured shape; | |
| Abuse on all he lov’d, or lov’d him, spread, | |
| A friend in exile, or a father dead; | 355 |
| The whisper, that, to greatness still too near, | |
| Perhaps yet vibrates on his SOV’REIGN’S ear— | |
| Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past: | |
| For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev’n the last! | |
| A. But why insult the poor? affront the great? | 360 |
| P. A knave ’s a knave to me in ev’ry state; | |
| Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail, | |
| Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail; | |
| A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, | |
| Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire; | 365 |
| If on a Pillory, or near a Throne, | |
| He gain his prince’s ear, or lose his own. | |
| Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, | |
| Sappho can tell you how this man was bit: | |
| This dreaded Satirist Dennis will confess | 370 |
| 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 rhymed for Moore. | |
| Full ten years slander’d, did he once reply? | |
| Three thousand suns went down on Welsted’s lie. | 375 |
| To please a mistress one aspers’d his life; | |
| He lash’d him not, but let her be his wife: | |
| Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on his quill, | |
| And write whate’er he pleased, except his will; | |
| Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse | 380 |
| His father, mother, body, soul, and muse: | |
| Yet why? that father held it for a rule, | |
| It was a sin to call our neighbour fool; | |
| That harmless mother thought no wife a whore: | |
| Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore! | 385 |
| 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) | |
Each parent sprung— A. What fortune, pray?—
P. Their own; | 390 |
| And better got than Bestia’s from the throne. | |
| Born to no pride, inheriting no strife, | |
| Nor marrying discord in a noble wife, | |
| Stranger to civil and religious rage, | |
| The good man walk’d innoxious thro’ his age. | 395 |
| No courts he saw, no suits would ever try, | |
| Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie. | |
| Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art, | |
| No language but the language of the heart. | |
| By Nature honest, by Experience wise, | 400 |
| Healthy by Temp’rance and by Exercise; | |
| His life, tho’ long, to sickness pass’d unknown, | |
| His death was instant and without a groan. | |
| O grant me thus to live, and thus to die! | |
| Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I. | 405 |
| 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 reposing Age, | |
| With lenient arts extend a Mother’s breath, | 410 |
| Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death; | |
| 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 Heav’n, to bless those days, preserve my friend! | 415 |
| Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene, | |
| And just as rich as when he serv’d a Queen. | |
| A. Whether that blessing be denied or giv’n, | |
| Thus far was right;—the rest belongs to Heav’n. | |
| |
