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To Mr. Bethel
WHAT, and how great, the Virtue and the Art | |
| To live on little with a cheerful heart! | |
| (A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine) | |
| Let’s talk, my friends, but talk before we dine; | |
| Not when a gilt buffet’s reflected pride | 5 |
| Turns you from sound Philosophy aside; | |
| Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll, | |
| And the brain dances to the mantling bowl. | |
| Hear Bethel’s sermon, one not vers’d in schools | |
| But strong in sense, and wise without the rules. | 10 |
| ‘Go work, hunt, exercise! (he thus began) | |
| Then scorn a homely dinner if you can. | |
| Your wine lock’d up, your butler stroll’d abroad, | |
| Or fish denied (the river yet unthaw’d); | |
| If then plain bread and milk will do the feat, | 15 |
| The pleasure lies in you, and not the meat.’ | |
| Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men | |
| Will choose a pheasant still before a hen; | |
| Yet hens of Guinea full as good I hold, | |
| Except you eat the feathers green and gold. | 20 |
| Of carps and mullets why prefer the great, | |
| (Tho’ cut in pieces ere my Lord can eat) | |
| Yet for small turbots such esteem profess? | |
| Because God made these large, the other less. | |
| Oldfield, with more than harpy throat endued, | 25 |
| Cries, ‘Send me, Gods! a whole Hog barbecued!’ | |
| O blast it, South-winds! till a stench exhale | |
| Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit’s tail. | |
| By what criterion do you eat, d’ ye think, | |
| If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink? | 30 |
| When the tired glutton labours thro’ a treat, | |
| He finds no relish in the sweetest meat; | |
| He calls for something bitter, something sour, | |
| And the rich feast concludes extremely poor: | |
| Cheap eggs, and herbs, and olives, still we see; | 35 |
| Thus much is left of old Simplicity! | |
| The robin-redbreast till of late had rest, | |
| And children sacred held a martin’s nest, | |
| Till becaficos sold so devilish dear | |
| To one that was, or would have been, a Peer. | 40 |
| Let me extol a cat on oysters fed; | |
| I ’ll have a party at the Bedford-head: | |
| Or ev’n to crack live crawfish recommend; | |
| I ’d never doubt at court to make a friend! | |
| ’T is yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother | 45 |
| About one vice, and fall into the other: | |
| Between Excess and Famine lies a mean; | |
| Plain, but not sordid; tho’ not splendid, clean. | |
| Avidien or his wife (no matter which, | |
| For him you ’ll call a dog, and her a bitch) | 50 |
| Sell their presented partridges and fruits, | |
| And humbly live on rabbits and on roots: | |
| One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine, | |
| And is at once their vinegar and wine: | |
| But on some lucky day (as when they found | 55 |
| A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drown’d) | |
| At such a feast, old vinegar to spare, | |
| Is what two souls so gen’rous cannot bear: | |
| Oil, tho’ it stink, they drop by drop impart, | |
| But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart. | 60 |
| He knows to live who keeps the middle state, | |
| And neither leans on this side nor on that; | |
| Nor stops for one bad cork his butler’s pay, | |
| Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away; | |
| Nor lets, like Nævius, ev’ry error pass, | 65 |
| The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass. | |
| Now hear what blessings Temperance can bring | |
| (Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing): | |
| First Health: the stomach (cramm’d from ev’ry dish, | |
| A tomb of boil’d and roast, and flesh and fish, | 70 |
| Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid, jar, | |
| And all the man is one intestine war) | |
| Remembers oft the schoolboy’s simple fare, | |
| The temp’rate sleeps, and spirits light as air. | |
| How pale each worshipful and rev’rend guest | 75 |
| Rise from a clergy or a city feast! | |
| What life in all that ample body, say? | |
| What heav’nly particle inspires the clay? | |
| The Soul subsides, and wickedly inclines | |
| To seem but mortal ev’n in sound Divines. | 80 |
| On morning wings how active springs the mind | |
| That leaves the load of yesterday behind! | |
| How easy every labour it pursues! | |
| How coming to the Poet ev’ry Muse! | |
| Not but we may exceed, some holy-time, | 85 |
| Or tired in search of Truth or search of Rhyme: | |
| Ill health some just indulgence may engage, | |
| And more the sickness of long life, old age: | |
| For fainting age what cordial drop remains, | |
| If our intemp’rate youth the vessel drains? | 90 |
| Our fathers prais’d rank venison. You suppose, | |
| Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose. | |
| Not so: a buck was then a week’s repast, | |
| And ’t was their point, I ween, to make it last; | |
| More pleas’d to keep it till their friends could come, | 95 |
| Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home. | |
| Why had not I in those good times my birth, | |
| Ere coxcomb-pies or coxcombs were on earth? | |
| Unworthy he the voice of Fame to hear, | |
| That sweetest music to an honest ear | 100 |
| (For ’faith, Lord Fanny! you are in the wrong, | |
| The world’s good word is better than a song), | |
| Who has not learn’d fresh sturgeon and ham-pie | |
| Are no rewards for want and infamy! | |
| When Luxury has lick’d up all thy pelf, | 105 |
| Curs’d by thy neighbours, thy trustees, thyself; | |
| To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame, | |
| Think how posterity will treat thy name; | |
| And buy a rope, that future times may tell | |
| Thou hast at least bestow’d one penny well. | 110 |
| ‘Right,’ cries his lordship, ‘for a rogue in need | |
| To have a taste is insolence indeed: | |
| In me ’t is noble, suits my birth and state, | |
| My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.’ | |
| Then, like the sun, let Bounty spread her ray, | 115 |
| And shine that superfluity away. | |
| Oh impudence of wealth! with all thy store | |
| How darest thou let one worthy man be poor? | |
| Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall? | |
| Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall; | 120 |
| Or to thy country let that heap be lent, | |
| As M[arlbor]o’s was, but not at five percent. | |
| ‘Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind, | |
| Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind. | |
| And who stands safest? tell me, is it he | 125 |
| That spreads and swells in puff’d prosperity, | |
| Or bless’d with little, whose preventing care | |
| In peace provides fit arms against a war?’ | |
| Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought, | |
| And always thinks the very thing he ought: | 130 |
| His equal mind I copy what I can, | |
| And as I love, would imitate the man. | |
| In South-Sea days, not happier, when surmised | |
| The lord of thousands, than if now excised; | |
| In forest planted by a father’s hand, | 135 |
| Than in five acres now of rented land. | |
| Content with little, I can piddle here | |
| On brocoli and mutton round the year; | |
| But ancient friends (tho’ poor, or out of play) | |
| That touch my bell, I cannot turn away. | 140 |
| ’T is true, no turbots dignify my boards, | |
| But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords: | |
| To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down, | |
| Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own: | |
| From you old walnut tree a shower shall fall, | 145 |
| And grapes long ling’ring on my only wall; | |
| And figs from standard and espalier join; | |
| The devil is in you if you cannot dine: | |
| Then cheerful healths (your Mistress shall have place), | |
| And, what ’s more rare, a Poet shall say grace. | 150 |
| Fortune not much of humbling me can boast; | |
| Tho’ double tax’d, how little have I lost! | |
| My life’s amusements have been just the same, | |
| Before and after standing armies came. | |
| My lands are sold, my father’s house is gone; | 155 |
| I ’ll hire another’s; is not that my own— | |
| And yours, my friends—thro’ whose free opening gate | |
| None comes too early, none departs too late? | |
| (For I, who hold sage Homer’s rule the best, | |
| Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.) | 160 |
| ‘Pray Heav’n it last! (cries Swift) as you go on: | |
| I wish to God this house had been your own! | |
| Pity! to build without a son or wife: | |
| Why, you ’ll enjoy it only all your life.’ | |
| Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one | 165 |
| Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon? | |
| What ’s property? dear Swift! you see it alter | |
| From you to me, from me to Peter Walter; | |
| Or in a mortgage prove a lawyer’s share, | |
| Or in a jointure vanish from the heir; | 170 |
| Or in pure equity (the case not clear) | |
| The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year: | |
| At best it falls to some ungracious son, | |
| Who cries, ‘My father’s damn’d, and all’s my own.’ | |
| Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford, | 175 |
| Become the portion of a booby lord; | |
| And Hemsley, once proud Buckingham’s delight, | |
| Slides to a scriv’ner or a city knight. | |
| Let lands and houses have what lords they will, | |
| Let us be fix’d, and our own masters still. | 180 |
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