YES, thank my stars! as early as I knew | |
| This town, I had the sense to hate it too; | |
| Yet here, as ev’n in Hell, there must be still | |
| One giant vice, so excellently ill, | |
| That all beside one pities, not abhors; | 5 |
| As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores. | |
| I grant that Poetry ’s a crying sin; | |
| It brought (no doubt) th’ excise and army in: | |
| Catch’d like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how, | |
| But that the cure is starving, all allow. | 10 |
| Yet like the Papist’s is the Poet’s state, | |
| Poor and disarm’d, and hardly worth your hate! | |
| Here a lean bard, whose wit could never give | |
| Himself a dinner, makes an actor live: | |
| The thief condemn’d, in law already dead, | 15 |
| So prompts and saves a rogue who cannot read. | |
| Thus as the pipes of some carv’d organ move, | |
| The gilded puppets dance and mount above, | |
| Heav’d by the breath th’ inspiring bellows blow: | |
| Th’ inspiring bellows lie and pant below. | 20 |
| One sings the Fair; but songs no longer move; | |
| No rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love: | |
| In Love’s, in Nature’s spite the siege they hold, | |
| And scorn the flesh, the Devil, and all but gold. | |
| These write to Lords, some mean reward to get, | 25 |
| As needy beggars sing at doors for meat: | |
| Those write because all write, and so have still | |
| Excuse for writing, and for writing ill. | |
| Wretched, indeed! but far more wretched yet | |
| Is he who makes his meal on others’ wit: | 30 |
| ’T is changed, no doubt, from what it was before; | |
| His rank digestion makes it wit no more: | |
| Sense pass’d thro’ him no longer is the same; | |
| For food digested takes another name. | |
| I pass o’er all those confessors and martyrs, | 35 |
| Who live like S[u]tt[o]n, or who die like Chartres, | |
| Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir, | |
| Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear; | |
| Wicked as pages, who in early years | |
| Act sins which Prisca’s confessor scarce hears. | 40 |
| Ev’n those I pardon, for whose sinful sake | |
| Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make; | |
| Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell | |
| In what commandment’s large contents they dwell. | |
| One, one man only breeds my just offence, | 45 |
| Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence: | |
| Time, that at last matures a clap to pox, | |
| Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox, | |
| And brings all natural events to pass, | |
| Hath made him an attorney of an ass. | 50 |
| No young Divine, new beneficed, can be | |
| More pert, more proud, more positive than he. | |
| What further could I wish the fop to do, | |
| But turn a Wit, and scribble verses too? | |
| Pierce the soft labyrinth of a lady’s ear | 55 |
| With rhymes of this per cent. and that per year; | |
| Or court a wife, spread out his wily parts, | |
| Like nets, or lime twigs, for rich widows’ hearts; | |
| Call himself barrister to ev’ry wench, | |
| And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench; | 60 |
| Language which Boreas might to Auster hold, | |
| More rough than forty Germans when they scold. | |
| Curs’d be the wretch, so venal and so vain, | |
| Paltry and proud as drabs in Drury Lane. | |
| ’T is such a bounty as was never known, | 65 |
| If Peter deigns to help you to your own. | |
| What thanks, what praise, if Peter but supplies! | |
| And what a solemn face if he denies! | |
| Grave, as when pris’ners shake the head, and swear | |
| ’T was only suretyship that brought them there. | 70 |
| His office keeps your parchment fates entire, | |
| He starves with cold to save them from the fire; | |
| For you he walks the streets thro’ rain or dust, | |
| For not in chariots Peter puts his trust; | |
| For you he sweats and labours at the laws, | 75 |
| Takes God to witness he affects your cause, | |
| And lies to ev’ry Lord in ev’rything, | |
| Like a King’s favourite—or like a King. | |
| These are the talents that adorn them all, | |
| From wicked Waters ev’n to godly [Paul]. | 80 |
| Not more of simony beneath black gowns, | |
| Nor more of bastardy in heirs to crowns. | |
| In shillings and in pence at first they deal, | |
| And steal so little, few perceive they steal; | |
| Till like the sea, they compass all the land, | 85 |
| From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand; | |
| And when rank widows purchase luscious nights, | |
| Or when a Duke to Jansen punts at White’s, | |
| Or city heir in mortgage melts away, | |
| Satan himself feels far less joy than they. | 90 |
| Piecemeal they win this acre first, then that, | |
| Glean on, and gather up the whole estate; | |
| Then strongly fencing ill-got wealth by law, | |
| Indentures, cov’nants, articles, they draw, | |
| Large as the fields themselves, and larger far | 95 |
| Than civil codes, with all their glosses, are; | |
| So vast, our new divines, we must confess, | |
| Are fathers of the church for writing less. | |
| But let them write; for you each rogue impairs | |
| The deeds, and dext’rously omits ses heires: | 100 |
| No commentator can more slily pass | |
| O’er a learn’d unintelligible place; | |
| Or in quotation shrewd divines leave out | |
| Those words that would against them clear the doubt. | |
| So Luther thought the Paternoster long, | 105 |
| When doom’d to say his beads and even-song; | |
| But having cast his cowl, and left those laws, | |
| Adds to Christ’s prayer, the Power and Glory clause. | |
| The lands are bought; but where are to be found | |
| Those ancient woods that shaded all the ground? | 110 |
| We see no new-built palaces aspire, | |
| No kitchens emulate the vestal fire. | |
| Where are those troops of Poor, that throng’d of yore | |
| The good old Landlord’s hospitable door? | |
| Well I could wish that still, in lordly domes, | 115 |
| Some beasts were kill’d, tho’ not whole hecatombs; | |
| That both extremes were banish’d from their walls, | |
| Carthusian fasts and fulsome Bacchanals; | |
| And all mankind might that just mean observe, | |
| In which none e’er could surfeit, none could starve. | 120 |
| These are good works, ’t is true, we all allow, | |
| But, oh! these works are not in fashion now: | |
| Like rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare, | |
| Extremely fine, but what no man will wear. | |
| Thus much I ’ve said, I trust without offence; | 125 |
| Let no Court Sycophant pervert my sense, | |
| Nor sly informer watch, these words to draw | |
| Within the reach of Treason or the Law. | |
| |
Satire IV
WELL, if it be my time to quit the stage, | |
| Adieu to all the follies of the age! | 130 |
| I die in charity with fool and knave, | |
| Secure of peace at least beyond the grave. | |
| I ’ve had my Purgatory here betimes, | |
| And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes. | |
| The poet’s Hell, its tortures, fiends, and flames, | 135 |
| To this were trifles, toys, and empty names. | |
| With foolish pride my heart was never fired, | |
| Nor the vain itch t’ admire or be admired: | |
| I hoped for no commission from His Grace; | |
| I bought no benefice, I begg’d no place; | 140 |
| Had no new verses nor new suit to show, | |
| Yet went to Court!—the Devil would have it so. | |
| But as the fool that in reforming days | |
| Would go to mass in jest (as story says) | |
| Could not but think to pay his fine was odd, | 145 |
| Since ’t was no form’d design of serving God; | |
| So was I punish’d, as if full as proud | |
| As prone to ill, as negligent of good, | |
| As deep in debt, without a thought to pay, | |
| As vain, as idle, and as false as they | 150 |
| Who live at Court, for going once that way! | |
| Scarce was I enter’d, when, behold! there came | |
| A thing which Adam had been posed to name; | |
| Noah had refused it lodging in his ark, | |
| Where all the race of reptiles might embark; | 155 |
| A verier monster than on Afric’s shore | |
| The sun e’er got, or slimy Nilus bore, | |
| Or Sloane or Woodward’s wondrous shelves contain, | |
| Nay, all that lying travellers can feign. | |
| The watch would hardly let him pass at noon, | 160 |
| At night would swear him dropp’d out of the moon: | |
| One whom the Mob, when next we find or make | |
| A Popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take, | |
| And the wise justice, starting from his chair, | |
| Cry, ‘By your priesthood, tell me what you are!’ | 165 |
| Such was the wight: th’ apparel on his back, | |
| Tho’ coarse, was rev’rend, and tho’ bare, was black. | |
| The suit, if by the fashion one might guess, | |
| Was velvet in the youth of good Queen Bess, | |
| But mere tuff-taffety what now remain’d: | 170 |
| So Time, that changes all things, had ordain’d! | |
| Our sons shall see it leisurely decay, | |
| First turn plain rash, then vanish quite away. | |
| This thing has travell’d, speaks each language too, | |
| And knows what ’s fit for ev’ry state to do; | 175 |
| Of whose best phrase and courtly accent join’d | |
| He forms one tongue, exotic and refin’d. | |
| Talkers I ’ve learn’d to bear; Motteux I knew, | |
| Henley himself I ’ve heard, and Budgell too, | |
| The Doctor’s wormwood style, the hash of tongues | 180 |
| A Pedant makes, the storm of Gonson’s lungs, | |
| The whole artill’ry of the terms of War, | |
| And (all those plagues in one) the bawling Bar: | |
| These I could bear; but not a rogue so civil | |
| Whose tongue will compliment you to the Devil: | 185 |
| A tongue that can cheat widows, cancel scores, | |
| Make Scots speak treason, cozen subtlest whores, | |
| With royal favourites in flatt’ry vie, | |
| And Oldmixon and Burnet both outlie. | |
| He spies me out; I whisper, ‘Gracious God! | 190 |
| What sin of mine could merit such a rod, | |
| That all the shot of dulness now must be | |
| From this thy blunderbuss discharged on me!’ | |
| ‘Permit,’ he cries, ‘no stranger to your fame, | |
| To crave your sentiment, if —— ’s your name. | 195 |
| What speech esteem you most? ‘The King’s,’ said I. | |
| But the best words?—‘O, sir, the Diction’ry.’ | |
| You miss my aim; I mean the most acute, | |
| And perfect speaker?—‘Onslow, past dispute.’ | |
| But, Sir, of writers?—‘Swift, for closer style, | 200 |
| But Hoadley for a period of a mile.’ | |
| Why, yes, ’t is granted, these indeed may pass; | |
| Good common linguists, and so Panurge was; | |
| Nay, troth, th’ Apostles (tho’ perhaps too rough) | |
| Had once a pretty gift of tongues enough: | 205 |
| Yet these were all poor gentlemen! I dare | |
| Affirm ’t was Travel made them what they were. | |
| Thus others’ talents having nicely shown, | |
| He came by sure transition to his own; | |
| Till I cried out, ‘You prove yourself so able, | 210 |
| Pity you was not druggerman at Babel; | |
| For had they found a linguist half so good, | |
| I make no question but the tower had stood.’ | |
| ‘Obliging Sir! for courts you sure were made, | |
| Why then for ever buried in the shade? | 215 |
| Spirits like you should see and should be seen; | |
| The King would smile on you—at least the Queen. | |
| Ah, gentle Sir! you courtiers so cajole us— | |
| But Tully has it Nunquam minus solus: | |
| And as for courts, forgive me if I say, | 220 |
| No lessons now are taught the Spartan way. | |
| Tho’ in his pictures lust be full display’d, | |
| Few are the converts Aretine has made; | |
| And tho’ the court show Vice exceeding clear, | |
| None should, by my advice, learn Virtue there.’ | 225 |
| At this entranc’d, he lifts his hands and eyes, | |
| Squeaks like a high-stretch’d lutestring, and replies, | |
| ‘Oh! ’t is the sweetest of all earthly things | |
| To gaze on Princes, and to talk of Kings!’ | |
| ‘Then, happy man who shows the tombs! (said I) | 230 |
| He dwells amidst the royal family; | |
| He ev’ry day from King to King can walk, | |
| Of all our Harries, all our Edwards talk, | |
| And get, by speaking truth of monarchs dead, | |
| What few can of the living: Ease and Bread.’ | 235 |
| ‘Lord, Sir, a mere mechanic! strangely low. | |
| And coarse of phrase—your English all are so. | |
| How elegant your Frenchmen!’—‘Mine, d’ ye mean? | |
| I have but one; I hope the fellow ’s clean.’ | |
| ‘O Sir, politely so! nay, let me die, | 240 |
| Your only wearing is your paduasoy.’ | |
| ‘Not, Sir, my only; I have better still, | |
| And this you see is but my dishabille.’— | |
| Wild to get loose, his patience I provoke, | |
| Mistake, confound, object at all he spoke: | 245 |
| But as coarse iron, sharpen’d, mangles more, | |
| And itch most hurts when anger’d to a sore, | |
| So when you plague a fool, ’t is still the curse, | |
| You only make the matter worse and worse. | |
| He pass’d it o’er; affects an easy smile | 250 |
| At all my peevishness, and turns his style. | |
| He asks, ‘What news?’ I tell him of new Plays, | |
| New Eunuchs, Harlequins, and Operas. | |
| He hears, and as a still, with simples in it, | |
| Between each drop it gives stays half a minute, | 255 |
| Loath to enrich me with too quick replies, | |
| By little and by little drops his lies. | |
| Mere household trash! of birthnights, balls, and shows, | |
| More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowes. | |
| When the Queen frown’d or smiled he knows, and what | 260 |
| A subtle minister may make of that: | |
| Who sins, with whom: who got his pension rug, | |
| Or quicken’d a reversion by a drug: | |
| Whose place is quarter’d but three parts in four, | |
| And whether to a Bishop or a Whore: | 265 |
| Who having lost his credit, pawn’d his rent, | |
| Is therefore fit to have a government: | |
| Who, in the secret, deals in stocks secure, | |
| And cheats th’ unknowing widow and the poor: | |
| Who makes a trust or charity a job, | 270 |
| And gets an act of Parliament to rob: | |
| Why turnpikes rise, and how no cit nor clown | |
| Can gratis see the country or the town: | |
| Shortly no lad shall chuck, or lady vole, | |
| But some excising courtier will have toll: | 275 |
| He tells what strumpet places sells for life, | |
| What ’squire his lands, what citizen his wife: | |
| And last (which proves him wiser still than all) | |
| What lady’s face is not a whited wall. | |
| As one of Woodward’s patients, sick, and sore, | 280 |
| I puke, I nauseate—yet he thrusts in more; | |
| Trims Europe’s balance, tops the statesman’s part, | |
| And talks Gazettes and Postboys o’er by heart. | |
| Like a big wife at sight of loathsome meat | |
| Ready to cast, I yawn, I sigh, and sweat. | 285 |
| Then as a licens’d spy, whom nothing can | |
| Silence or hurt, he libels the great man; | |
| Swears ev’ry place entail’d for years to come, | |
| In sure succession to the day of doom. | |
| He names the price for every office paid, | 290 |
| And says our wars thrive ill because delay’d: | |
| Nay, hints ’t is by connivance of the Court | |
| That Spain robs on, and Dunkirk’s still a port. | |
| Not more amazement seiz’d on Circe’s guests | |
| To see themselves fall endlong into beasts, | 295 |
| Than mine, to find a subject staid and wise | |
| Already half turn’d traitor by surprise. | |
| I felt th’ infection slide from him to me, | |
| As in the pox some give it to get free; | |
| And quick to swallow me, methought I saw | 300 |
| One of our Giant Statues ope its jaw. | |
| In that nice moment, as another lie | |
| Stood just a-tilt, the Minister came by. | |
| To him he flies, and bows and bows again, | |
| Then, close as Umbra, joins the dirty train, | 305 |
| Not Fannius’ self more impudently near, | |
| When half his nose is in his prince’s ear. | |
| I quaked at heart; and, still afraid to see | |
| All the court fill’d with stranger things than he, | |
| Ran out as fast as one that pays his bail | 310 |
| And dreads more actions, hurries from a jail. | |
| Bear me, some God! Oh, quickly bear me hence | |
| To wholesome Solitude, the nurse of sense, | |
| Where contemplation prunes her ruffled wings, | |
| And the free soul looks down to pity Kings! | 315 |
| There sober thought pursued th’ amusing theme, | |
| Till Fancy colour’d it, and form’d a dream: | |
| A vision hermits can to Hell transport, | |
| And forced ev’n me to see the damn’d at court. | |
| Not Dante, dreaming all th’ infernal state, | 320 |
| Beheld such scenes of envy, sin, and hate. | |
| Base fear becomes the guilty, not the free, | |
| Suits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me: | |
| Shall I, the terror of this sinful town, | |
| Care if a liv’ried Lord or smile or frown? | 325 |
| Who cannot flatter, and detest who can, | |
| Tremble before a noble serving man? | |
| O my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee | |
| For huffing, braggart, puff nobility? | |
| Thou who, since yesterday, hast roll’d o’er all | 330 |
| The busy idle blockheads of the ball, | |
| Hast thou, O sun! beheld an emptier sort | |
| Than such as swell this bladder of a court? | |
| Now pox on those who show a Court in Wax! | |
| It ought to bring all courtiers on their backs; | 335 |
| Such painted puppets! such a varnish’d race | |
| Of hollow gewgaws, only dress and face! | |
| Such waxen noses, stately staring things | |
| No wonder some folks bow, and think them Kings. | |
| See! where the British youth, engaged no more | 340 |
| At Fig’s, at White’s, with felons, or a whore, | |
| Pay their last duty to the Court, and come | |
| All fresh and fragrant to the drawing room; | |
| In hues as gay, and odours as divine, | |
| As the fair fields they sold to look so fine. | 345 |
| ‘That ’s velvet for a king!’ the flatt’rer swears; | |
| ’T is true, for ten days hence ’t will be King Lear’s. | |
| Our Court may justly to our Stage give rules, | |
| That helps it both to fools’ coats and to fools. | |
| And why not players strut in courtiers’ clothes? | 350 |
| For these are actors too as well as those: | |
| Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest, | |
| And all is splendid poverty at best. | |
| Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell, | |
| Like frigates fraught with spice and cochineal, | 355 |
| Sail in the Ladies: how each pirate eyes | |
| So weak a vessel and so rich a prize! | |
| Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim: | |
| He boarding her, she striking sail to him. | |
| ‘Dear countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!’ | 360 |
| And, ‘Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!’ | |
| Such wits and beauties are not prais’d for nought, | |
| For both the beauty and the wit are bought. | |
| ’T would burst ev’n Heraclitus with the spleen | |
| To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: | 365 |
| The Presence seems, with things so richly odd, | |
| The mosque of Mahound, or some queer pagod. | |
| See them survey their limbs by Durer’s rules, | |
| Of all beau-kind the best proportion’d fools! | |
| Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw | 370 |
| Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw: | |
| But oh! what terrors must distract the soul | |
| Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole; | |
| Or should one pound of powder less bespread | |
| Those monkey tails that wag behind their head! | 375 |
| Thus finish’d, and corrected to a hair, | |
| They march, to prate their hour before the Fair. | |
| So first to preach a white-glov’d Chaplain goes, | |
| With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, | |
| Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, | 380 |
| Neatness itself impertinent in him. | |
| 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! | 385 |
| Nature made ev’ry 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, | 390 |
| Tho’ his soul’s bullet, and his body buff. | |
| He spits foreright; his haughty chest before, | |
| Like batt’ring rams, beats open ev’ry door; | |
| And with a face as red, and as awry, | |
| As Herod’s hang-dogs in old tapestry, | 395 |
| 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 | 400 |
| 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 Ask apart, of strength to toss, | |
| For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross. | 405 |
| Scared 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 Heav’n’s Artill’ry, bold Divine! | |
| From such alone the Great rebukes endure, | 410 |
| Whose satire’s sacred, and whose rage secure: | |
| ’T is 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. | 415 |
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