APOLLO;

OR,

A PROBLEM SOLVED.

1731.

APOLLO, god of light and wit, Could verse inspire, but seldom writ, Refined all metals with his looks, As well as chemists by their books; As handsome as my lady's page; Sweet five-and-twenty was his age. His wig was made of sunny rays, He crown'd his youthful head with bays; Not all the court of Heaven could shew So nice and so complete a beau. No heir upon his first appearance, With twenty thousand pounds a-year rents, E'er drove, before he sold his land, So fine a coach along the Strand; The spokes, we are by Ovid told, Were silver, and the axle gold: I own, 'twas but a coach-and-four, For Jupiter allows no more.

Yet, with his beauty, wealth, and parts, Enough to win ten thousand hearts, No vulgar deity above

Was so unfortunate in love.

Three weighty causes were assign'd, That moved the nymphs to be unkind. Nine Muses always waiting round him, He left them virgins as he found them.

VOL. XIV.

R

His singing was another fault ;
For he could reach to B in alt:
And, by the sentiments of Pliny,
Such singers are like Nicolini.
At last, the point was fully clear'd;
In short, Apollo had no beard.

THE PLACE OF THE DAMNED.

1731.

ALL folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damn'd-I'll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damn'd do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damn'd poets, damn'd critics, damn'd blockheads,
damn'd knaves,

Damn'd senators bribed, damn'd prostitute slaves; Damn'd lawyers and judges, damn'd lords and damn'd squires;

Damn'd spies and informers, damn'd friends and damn'd liars ;

Damn'd villains, corrupted in every station;
Damn'd time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I'll readily give you

Damn'd ignorant prelates, and counsellers privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flamm'd,

For we know by these marks the place of the damn'd:

And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.

How happy for us that it is not at home!

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.*

WITH a whirl of thought oppress'd,
I sunk from reverie to rest.
A horrid vision seized my head,

I saw the graves give up their dead!
Jove, arm'd with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies!
Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne!
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
Offending race of human kind,

་་

By nature, reason, learning, blind;

You who, through frailty, stepp'd aside;
And you, who never fell from pride:
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd:
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you ;)
-The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
-I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools!-Go, go, you're bit."

* This poem was first printed (from the Dean's MS.) in a letter from Lord Chesterfield, addressed to Mr. Voltaire, dated August 27, 1752.-N.

JUDAS. 1731.

THIS seems to have been written when the majority of the Irish bishops were meditating what Swift considered as encroachments upon the rights of their clergy.

By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies.
The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;

Which though his conscience forced him to restore,
(And parsons tell us, no man can do more,)
Yet, through despair, of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang'd or burst.
Those former ages differ'd much from this;
Judas betray'd his Master with a kiss:
But some have kiss'd the gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury's the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two-inch board,
Yet keep their bishoprics, and 'scape the cord:
Like hemp, which, by a skilful spinster drawn
To slender threads, may sometimes pass for lawn.
As ancient Judas by transgression fell,
And burst asunder ere he went to hell;
So could we see a set of new Iscariots

Come headlong tumbling from their mitred chariots;
Each modern Judas perish like the first,

Drop from the tree with all his bowels burst;
Who could forbear, that view'd each guilty face,
To cry, "Lo! Judas gone to his own place,
His habitation let all men forsake,

And let his bishopric another take!”

AN EPISTLE TO MR. GAY.* 1731.

How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse's train,
To serve a tasteless court twelve years in vain! †
Fain would I think our female friend ‡ sincere,
Till Bob, the poet's foe, possess'd her ear. ||
Did female virtue e'er so high ascend,
To lose an inch of favour for a friend?

Say, had the court no better place to choose
For thee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?
How cheaply had thy liberty been sold,
To squire a royal girl of two years old:
In leading strings her infant steps to guide,
Or with her go-cart amble side by side!¶

* The Dean having been told by an intimate friend, that the Duke of Queensberry had employed Mr. Gay to inspect the accounts and management of his grace's receivers and stewards, (which, however, proved to be a mistake,) wrote this Epistle to his friend.-H. Through the whole piece, under the pretext of instructing Gay in his duty as the duke's auditor of accounts, he satirizes the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, then prime minister. † See the libel on Dr. Delany and Lord Carteret.-H. The Countess of Suffolk.-H.

§ Sir Robert Walpole.-FAULKNER.

We have had repeated occasion to remark, that, in courting Mrs. Howard, Pope, Swift, and Gay, never perceived that they were offering incense at the shrine of an inefficient, rather than an unpropitious deity; and that George II., entirely guided by the counsels of Queen Caroline, disregarded all advances made to him through the channel of Mrs. Howard. It was the queen, not the favourite, over whom Sir Robert Walpole, here termed the poet's foe, "obtained an ascendancy, through which he not only preserved, but even augmented, during the reign of George II., the influence he had possessed under George I."

The post of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa was offered to Gay, which he and his friends considered as a great indignity, her royal highness being a mere infant.