Then virtue, from preferment barr'd,
Gets nothing but its own reward.
A gang of petty knaves attend 'em,
With proper parts to recommend 'em.
Then if his patron burn with lust,
The first in favour's pimp the first.
His doors are never closed to spies,
Who cheer his heart with double lies;
They flatter him, his foes defame,
So lull the pangs of guilt and shame.
If schemes of lucre haunt his brain,
Projectors swell his greedy train:
Vile brokers ply his private ear
With jobs of plunder for the year;
All consciences must bend and ply;
You must vote on and not know why:
Through thick and thin you must go on;
One scruple, and your place is gone.
Since plagues like these have cursed a land,
And favourites cannot always stand,
Good courtiers should for change be ready,
And not have principles too steady;
For should a knave engross the power,
(God shield the realm from that sad hour!)
He must have rogues or slavish fools;
For what's a knave without his tools?
Wherever those a people drain,
And strut with infamy and gain,
(1) See Swift's Gulliver's Travels, "Voyage to Laputa." The poet here describes placemen, who make a high road of their conscience for their patrons to walk on. For an instance of a successful member of this species, see Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, in the Life of the Marquis of Winchester.
I envy not their guilt and state,
And scorn to share the public hate.
Let their own servile creatures rise,
By screening fraud, and venting lies:
Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,1
A mind serene for contemplation:
Title and profit I resign;
The post of honour shall be mine.
My Fable read, their merits view,
Then herd who will, with such a crew.2
In days of yore (my cautious rhymes
Always except the present times)
A greedy Vulture, skill'd in game,
Inured to guilt, unawed by shame,
Approach'd the throne in evil hour,
And step by step intrudes to power:
When at the royal Eagle's ear,
He longs to ease the monarch's care.
The monarch grants. With pride elate,
Behold him minister of state!
Around him throng the feather'd rout;
Friends must be served, and some must out;
Each thinks his own the best pretension;
This asks a place, and that a pension.
The Nightingale was set aside:
A forward Daw his room supplied.
"This bird," says he, "for business fit,
Hath both sagacity and wit:
With all his turns, and shifts, and tricks,
He's docile, and at nothing sticks:
-When impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.-ADDISON.
(2) No one is so upright and philosophical as your disappointed man; had Gay been successful, we should probably not have heard this virtuous outburst.
Then with his neighbours one so free
At all times will connive at me."
The Hawk had due distinction shown,
For parts and talents like his own.
Thousands of hireling Cocks attend him,
As blustering bullies to defend him.
At once the Ravens were discarded,
And Magpies with their posts rewarded.
Those fowls of omen I detest,
That pry into another's nest.
State-lies must lose all good intent,
For they foresee and croak the' event.
My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote,
Speak what they're taught, and so to vote.
"When rogues like these," a Sparrow cries,
"To honours and employments rise,
I court no favour, ask no place,
For such preferment is disgrace.
Within my thatch'd retreat I find
(What these ne'er feel) true peace of mind.” 1
(1) Thus a venal minister promotes sagacity, rapacity, pugnacity, audacity, and every other quality of the kind except-capacity. Yet the criticism of the sparrow is deceptive, as he apes the virtue which he has not, for had he been promoted, he would have been the first to uphold the system he now condemns. Hence the excellence of the parties and their measures, depends, not upon their professed principles, but simply upon whether one is in, and the other out of office! "A trim reckoning!" The fable, of course, pointing out the venality of courtiers, evinces the grand quality necessary for advancement to be elasticity, or rather absence of conscience; whilst the desire of the sparrow for quiet, his assumption of content, and his vociferous integrity, are subtle touches at that hypocritical honour which owes its stability to its never having been-tempted.
WE frequently misplace esteem,
By judging men by what they seem.1
To birth, wealth, power, we should allow
Precedence, and our lowest bow:
In that is due distinction shown;
Esteem is Virtue's right alone.
(1) "Decipimur specie recti." Juvenal's admonition of "Fronti nulla fides," is applicable here.
With partial eye we're apt to see
The man of noble pedigree:
We're prepossess'd my Lord inherits,
In some degree, his grandsire's merits;
For those we find upon record,
But find him nothing but "my Lord."1
When we, with superficial view,
Gaze on the rich, we're dazzled too.
We know that wealth, well understood,
Hath frequent power of doing good,
Then fancy that the thing is done;
As if the power and will were one.
Thus oft the cheated crowd adore
The thriving knaves that keep 'em poor.2
The cringing train of power survey;
What creatures are so low as they!
With what obsequiousness they bend!
To what vile actions condescend!
Their rise is on their meanness built,
And flattery is their smallest guilt.
What homage, reverence, adoration,
In
every nation,
Have sycophants to power address'd!
No matter who the power possess'd.
Let ministers be what they will,
You find their levees always fill.3
(1) Great families are often like potatoes, the best part of them is under ground.
(2) It was a remark of Dr. Henry Owen, the celebrated Hebrew scholar, that the Almighty showed what He thought of money, by the knaves to whom He gave it.
(3) Because a court is like a whirlpool, which drawing in every substance into itself, brings up the vile and refuse, to the top, and sends all weighty and valuable materials to the bottom!
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