Would men of genius cease to write,

The rogues must die for want and spite;
Must die for want of food and raiment,
If scandal did not find them payment.
How cheerfully the hawkers cry
A satire, and the gentry buy!
While my hard-labour'd poem pines
Unsold upon the printer's lines.

A genius in the reverend gown
Must ever keep its owner down;
'Tis an unnatural conjunction,
And spoils the credit of the function.
Round all your brethren cast your eyes,
Point out the surest men to rise;
That club of candidates in black,
The least deserving of the pack,
Aspiring, factious, fierce, and loud,
With grace and learning unendow'd, '
Can turn their hands to every job,
The fittest tools to work for Bob ;
Will sooner coin a thousand lies,
Than suffer men of parts to rise;
They crowd about preferment's gate,
And press you down with all their weight,
For, as of old, mathematicians

Were by the vulgar thought magicians;
So academick dull ale drinkers,
Pronounce all men of wit, freethinkers.

Wit, as the chief of virtue's friends,
Disdains to serve ignoble ends.
Observe what loads of stupid rhymes
Oppress us in corrupted times:

What pamphlets in a court's defence
Show reason, grammar, truth, or sense?

For, though the Muse delights in fiction,
She ne'er inspires against conviction.
Then keep your virtue still unmixt,
And let not faction come betwixt:
By party-steps no grandeur climb at,

Though it would make you England's primate :
First learn the science to be dull,

You then may soon your conscience lull;
If not, however seated high,

Your genius in your face will fly.

When Jove was from his teeming head
Of Wit's fair goddess brought to bed,
There follow'd at his lying-in
For afterbirth a sooterkin;

Which, as the nurse pursued to kill,
Attain'd by flight the Muses' hill,
There in the soil began to root,

And litter'd at Parnassus' foot.
From hence the critic vermin sprung,
With harpy claws and poisonous tongue;

Who fatten on poetic scraps,

Too cunning to be caught in traps.

Dame Nature, as the learned show,

Provides each animal its foe:

Hounds hunt the hare, the wily fox
Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks.
Thus Envy pleads a natural claim
To persecute the Muses' fame;
On poets in all times abusive,
From Homer down to Pope inclusive.
Yet what avails it to complain?
You try to take revenge in vain.
A rat your utmost rage defies,
That safe behind the wainscot lies.

Say, did you ever know by sight

In cheese an individual mite ?
Show me the same numeric flea,
That bit your neck but yesterday:
You then may boldly go in quest
To find the Grub-street poets' nest;
What spunging house, in dread of jail,
Receives them, while they wait for bail;
What alley they are nestled in,
To flourish o'er a cup of gin;
Find the last garret where they lay,
Or cellar where they starve to-day.
Suppose you had them all trepann'd,
With each a libel in his hand,
What punishment would you inflict?
Or call them rogues, or get them kickt?
These they have often try'd before;
You but oblige them so much more:
Themselves would be the first to tell,
To make their trash the better sell.

You have been libell'd-Let us know,
What fool officious told you so?
Will you regard the hawker's cries,
Who in his titles always lies?
Whate'er the noisy scoundrel says,

It might be something in your praise:
And praise bestow'd in Grub-street rhymes
Would vex one more a thousand times.
Till critics blame, and judges praise,
The poet cannot claim his bays.
On me when dunces are satiric,
I take it for a panegyric.
Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.

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1

DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A BIRTH-DAY SONG. 1729.

To form a just and finish'd piece,
Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece,
Whose godships are in chief request,
And fit your present subject best :
And, should it be your

hero's case,

To have both male and female race,
Your business must be to provide

A score of goddesses beside.

Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn,
For which they bring a modern pattern;
Because they might have heard of one,
Who often loug'd to eat his son :
But this, I think, will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint hini son of Jove,
Who met his mother in a grove:
To this we freely shall consent,
Well knowing what the poets meant ;
And in their sense, 'twixt me and you,
It may be literally true.

Next, as the laws of verse require,
He must be greater than his sire;

For Jove, as every schoolboy knows,

Was able Saturn to depose;

And sure no Christian poet breathing

Would be more scrupulous than a Heathen!

Or, if to blasphemy it tends,

That's but a trifle among friends.

Your hero now another Mars is,

Makes mighty armies turn their a―s.
Behold his glittering faulchion mow
Whole squadrons at a single blow;
While Victory, with wings outspread,
Flies, like an eagle, o'er his head;
His milk white steed upon its haunches,
Or pawing into dead men's paunches:
As Overton has drawn his sire,
Still seen o'er many an alehouse fire.
Then from his arms hoarse thunder rolls,
As loud as fifty mustard bowls;
For thunder still his arm supplies,
And lightning always in his eyes.

They both are cheap enough in conscience,
And serve to echo rattling nonsense.
The rumbling words march fierce along,
Made trebly dreadful in your song.

Sweet poet, hir'd for birth-day rhymės, To sing of wars, choose peaceful times. What though, for fifteen years and more, Janus has lock'd his temple door; Though not a coffeehouse we read in Has mention'd arms on this side Sweden; Nor London Journals, nor the Postmen, Though fond of warlike lies as most men ; Thou still with battles stuff thy head full: For, must thy hero not be dreadful? Dismissing Mars, it next must follow Your conqueror is become Apollo : That he's Apollo is as plain as That Robin Walpole is Mæcenas; But that he struts, and that he squints, You'd know him by Apollo's prints.