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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 cochine'l,
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!"
And "Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!"
Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought,
For both the beauty and the wit are bought.
"Twould burst even Heraclitus with the spleen,
To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin:
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
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.
Thus finish'd, and corrected to a hair,

They march, to prate their hour before the fair.
So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes,
With band of lily, and with cheek of rose,
Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim,
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!

Nature made every 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,
Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before,
Like batt'ring rams, beats open every door:
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hang-dogs in old tapestry,

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 licensed fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so
As men from gaols to execution go;
For, hung with deadly sins,' I see the wall,
And lined with giants deadlier than them all:
Each man an Ascapart,2 of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scared at the grizly 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 Heaven's artillery, bold divine!
From such alone the great rebukes endure,
Whose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure:
"Tis 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.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.
IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN 1738.

DIALOGUE I.

FR. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,
And when it comes, the court see nothing in't.
You grow correct that once with rapture writ,
And are, besides, too moral for a wit.
Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel-
Why now, this moment, don't I see you steal?
'Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye
Said, "Tories call'd him whig, and whigs a tory;"
And taught his Romans, in much better metre,
"To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter."

1 The room hung with old tapestry, representing the seven deadly sins.

2 A giant famous in romances.

But Horace, Sir, was delicate, was nice
Bubo observes,' he lash'd no sort of vice:
Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown,
Blunt could do business, H―ggins2 knew the town;
In Sappho touch the failings of the sex,

In reverend bishops note some small neglects,
And own, the Spaniard did a waggish thing,
Who cropt our ears, and sent them to the king.
His sly, polite, insinuating style

Could please at court, and make AUGUSTUS Smile:
An artful manager, that crept between

His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.
But 'faith your very friends will soon be sore;
Patriots there are, who wish you'd jest no more-
And where's the glory? 'twill be only thought
The Great man never offer'd you a groat.
Go see SIR ROBERT

P. See SIR ROBERT!-hum!
And never laugh-for all my life to come?
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
Seen him, uncumber'd with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
Would he oblige me? let me only find,

He does not think me what he thinks mankind.
Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;
The only difference is, I dare laugh out.

F. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free;
A horse-laugh, if you please, at Honesty;
A joke on JEKYL, or some odd Old Whig
Who never changed his principle, or wig:
A patr.ot is a fool in every age,

Whom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage:
These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,
And wear their strange old virtue, as they will.

1 Some guilty person, very fond of making such an observation. Formerly gaoler of the Fleet prison, enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled.

3 Said to be executed by the captain of a Spanish ship on one Jenkins, a captain of an English one. He cut off his ears, and bid him carry them to the king his master.

4 Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity. He sometimes voted against the Court, which drew upon him the laugh here described of ONE who bestowed it equally upon religion and honesty.

If any ask you, "Who's the man so near His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?” Why, answer LYTTELTON,' and I'll engage The worthy youth shall ne'er be in a rage: But were his verses vile, his whisper base, You'd quickly find him in Lord Fanny's case. Sejanus, Wolsey,2 hurt not honest FLEURY,3 But well may put some statesmen in a fury. Laugh then at any, but at fools or foes; These you but anger, and you mend not those. Laugh at your friends, and, if your friends are

sore,

So much the better, you may laugh the more.

To vice and folly to confine the jest,

Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest;
Did not the sneer of more impartial men
At sense and virtue balance all again.
Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule,
And charitably comfort knave and fool.

P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:
Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!
Come, harmless characters that no one hit;
Come Henley's oratory, Osborn's wit!
The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,
The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Young!
The gracious dew' of pulpit eloquence,
And all the well-whipt cream of courtly sense,
That first was H-vy's, F-'s next, and then
The S-te's, and then H-vy's once again.
O come, that easy, Ciceronian style,
So Latin, yet so English all the while,
As, though the pride of Middleton and Bland,
All boys may read, and girls may understand!
Then might I sing, without the least offence,
And all I ung should be the nation's sense;

1 George Lyttelton, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, distinguished both for his writings and speeches in the spirit of liberty.

2 The one the wicked minister of Tiberius; the other of Henry VIII. The writers against the Court usually bestowed these and other odious names on the Minister, without distinction.

3 Cardinal; and Minister to Louis XV. It was a patriot-fashion, at that time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty.

4 Alludes to some Court sermons, and florid panegyrical speechos particularly one very full of puerilities and flatteries.

Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn,
Hang the sad verse on CAROLINA's1 urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest,
All parts perform'd, and all her children blest!
So-Satire is no more-I feel it die-

No Gazetteer more innocent than I—

And let, a God's-name, every fool and knave
Be graced through life, and flatter'd in his grave.
F. Why so? if Satire knows its time and place
You still may lash the greatest-in disgrace:
For merit will by turns forsake them all;
Would you know when? exactly when they fall.
But let all satire in all changes spare
Immortal S-k, and grave Dre.2
Silent and soft, as saints remove to heaven,
All ties dissolved, and every sin forgiven,
These may some gentle ministerial wing
Receive, and place for ever near a king!

There, where no passion, pride, or shame transport,
Lull'd with the sweet Nepenthe of a court;

There, where no father's, brother's, friend's disgrace
Once break their rest, or stir them from their place:
But past the sense of human miseries,

All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes;

No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,
Save when they lose a question, or a job.

P. Good heaven forbid that I should blast their glory, Who know how like Whig Ministers to Tory,

And when three sovereigns died, could scarce be vext, Considering what a gracious prince was next.

Have I, in silent wonder, seen such things

As pride in slaves, and avarice in kings;
And at a peer, or peeress, shall I fret,
Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt?
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of Vice be lost?

Ye gods! shall Cibber's son,3 without rebuke,
Swear like a lord, or Rich3 outwhore a duke

1 Queen consort to King George II. She died in 1737. Her death gave occasion, as is observed above, to many indiscreet and mean performances unworthy of her memory.

2 A title given to that lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber to King William; he was so to King George I.; he was so to King George II. His lordship was very skilful in all the forms of the House, which he discharged with great gravity.

3 Two players.

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