| |
| P. SHUT, 1 shut the door, good John! 2 fatigu’d, I said, | |
| Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead. | |
| The Dog-star rages! nay ’tis 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 3 walks forth the Man of rhyme, | |
| Happy to catch me just at Dinner-time. | |
| Is there a Parson, 4 much bemus’d 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 at Twit’nam, and in humble strain | |
| Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain. | |
| Arthur, whose giddy son 5 neglects the Laws, | |
| Imputes to me and my damn’d works the cause: | |
| Poor Cornus 6 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 delemma! 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 Pow’r 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, | |
| Oblig’d 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 his Patron; ask him for a Place.’ | 50 |
| ‘Pitholeon 7 libell’d me,’—‘but here’s a letter | |
| Informs you, Sir, ’twas when he knew no better. | |
| Dare you refuse him? Curll 8 invites to dine, | |
| He’ll write a Journal or he’ll turn Divine.’ | |
| ‘Bless me! a packet.—’ ’Tis 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 Play’rs and I are, luckily no friends, | 60 |
| ‘Fir’d that the house reject 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. | |
| ’Tis 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 foc’ed to speak, or burst. | |
| And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case, | |
| When every coxcomb perks them in my face? | |
| A. Good friend, forbear! you deal in dang’rous things. | 75 |
| I’d never name Queens, Ministers, or Kings; | |
| Keep close to Ears, and those let asses prick; | |
| ’Tis 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, | |
| Thron’d 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 eye-brow, or Parnassian sneer? | |
| And has not Colley 9 still his Lord, and whore? | |
| His butchers Henley, 10 his free-masons Moore? 11 | |
| Does not one table Bavius still admit? | |
| Still to one Bishop Philips seem a wit? 12 | 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’rers 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! ’tis ten times worse when they repent. | |
| One dedicates in high heroic prose, | |
| And redicules beyond a hundred foes: | 110 |
| One from all Grubstreet 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 13 one shoulder had too high, | |
| Such Ovid’s nose, and ‘Sir! you have an Eye.’— | |
| Go on, obliging creatures, make me see, | |
| All that disgrac’d my Betters, met in me. | 120 |
| Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, | |
| ‘Just to immortal Maro 14 held his head:’ | |
| And when I die, be sure you let me know | |
| Great Homer died three thousand year ago. | |
| Why did I write? what sin to me unknown | 125 |
| Dipt 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. | |
| But why then publish? Granville 15 the polite, | 135 |
| And knowing Walsh, 16 would tell me I could write; | |
| Well-natur’d Garth 17 inflam’d with early praise; | |
| And Congreve lov’d, and Swift endured my lays; | |
| The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield 18 read; | |
| Ev’n mitred Rochester 19 would nod the head, | 140 |
| And St. John’s self 20 (great Dryden’s friend before) | |
| With open arms receiv’d one Poet more. | |
| Happy my studies, when by these approv’d! | |
| Happier their author, when by these beloved! | |
| From these the world will judge of men and books, | 145 |
| Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes. 21 | |
| Soft were my numbers; who could take offence, | |
| While pure Description held the place of Sense? | |
| Like gentle Fanny’s was my flow’ry 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 provok’d, or madness made them print, | 155 |
| I wag’d no war with Bedlam or the Mint. | |
| Did some more sober Critic come abroad; | |
| If wrong, I smil’d; 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 ’twere a sin to rob them of their mite. | |
| Yet ne’er one sprig of laurel grac’d these ribalds, | |
| From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds: | |
| 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 Shakespeare’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 excus’d them too; | |
| Well might they rage, I gave them but their due. | |
| A man’s true merit ’tis 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 22 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. 23 | 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; | |
| Blest 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 beseig’d, | |
| And so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d; | |
| 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 rubic on the walls, | 215 |
| Or plaister’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 be-rhym’d so long) | |
| No more than thou, great GEORGE! a birth-day 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 24 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 helped to bury whom he help’d to starve. | |
| May some choice patron bless each gray goose quill! | |
| May ev’ry Bavius have his Bufo still! | 250 |
| So, when a Stateman want 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! | |
| Blest 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: 25 | |
| Of all thy blameless life the sole return | |
| My Verse, and Queensbury weeping 26 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 pray’rs; | |
| Can sleep without a Poem in my head; | |
| Nor know, if Dennis, 27 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 28) ‘something will come out.’ | |
| ‘’Tis 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. 29 or Bubo 30 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, injur’d, 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 31 can swear, | |
| And sees at Canons 32 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 33 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 mortaliz’d 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 reviv’d, 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 pictur’d 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 34 in a jail, | |
| A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, | |
| Knight of the post 35 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 36 can tell you how this man was bit; | |
| This dreaded Sat’rist 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 rhym’d for Moore. | |
| Full ten years slander’d, did he once reply? | |
| Three thousand suns went down on Welsted’s lie. 37 | 375 |
| To please a Mistress one aspers’d his life; | |
| He lash’d him not, but let her be his wife. | |
| Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill, | |
| And write whate’er he pleas’d, 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 Bertia’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 |
| Nor Courts he saw, no suits would ever try, | |
| Nor dar’d 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 past 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 deny’d or giv’n, | |
| Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heav’n. | |
