No cruel mafter could require
From flaves employ'd for daily hire,
What Stella, by her friendship warm'd,
With vigour and delight perform'd:
My finking fpirits now fupplies
With cordials in her hands and eyes;
Now with a foft and filent tread
Unheard the moves about my bed.
I fee her tafte each naufeous draught,
And fo obligingly am caught:
I blefs the hand from whence they came,
Nor dare diftort my face for fhame.
Beft pattern of true friends, beware:
You pay too dearly for your care,
If, while your tenderness fecures
My life, it must endanger yours;
For fuch a fool was never found,
Who pull'd a palace to the ground,
Only to have the ruins made
Materials for an houfe decay'd.
VERSES on the Death of Dr. SWIFT, occafioned by reading the following Maxim in ROCHEFOUCAULT.
Dans l'adverfité de nos mellieurs amis nous trouvons toujours quelque chofe, qui ne nous deplaist pas.
In the adversity of our best friends, we always find fomething that doth not displease us.
S Rochefoucault his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.
This maxim more than all the reft Is thought too bafe for human breast : "In all diftreffes of our friends "We first confult our private ends "While nature, kindly bent to cafe us, "Points out fome circumstance to please us."
If this perhaps your patience move, Let reafon and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equal rais'd above our fize.
Who would not at a crouded show
Stand high himfelf, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you :
But why fhould he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post;
Suppofe it but an inch at moft.
If in a battle you fhould find
One, whom you love of all mankind,
Had fome heroic action done,
A champion kill'd, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopt,
Would you not wifh his laurels cropt?
Dear honeft Ned is in the gout,
Lies rack'd with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad, the cafe is not your own!
What poet would not grieve to fee
His brother write as well as he?
But, rather than they fhould excel,
Would with his rivals all in hell?
Her end when Emulation miffes,
She turns to envy, ftings, and hiffes:
The strongest friendship yields to pride,
Unlefs the odds be on our fide.
Vain human-kind! fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide.
Give others riches, power, and station ;
'Tis all on me an ufurpation.
I have no title to afpire;
Yet, when you fink, I feem the higher.
In Pope I cannot read a line,
But with a figh I wifbit mine:
When he can in one couplet fix
More fenfe than I can do in fix;
It gives me fuch a jealous fit,
cry, Pox take him and his wit.
VOL. VIII.
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own hum'rous biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce,
Refin'd it first, and thew'd its use.
St. John *, as well as Pultney +, knows
That I had fome repute for profe;
And, till they drove me out of date,
Could maul a minifter of state.
If they have mortify'd my pride,
And made me throw my pen afide;
If with fuch talents heav'n hath bless'd 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em ?
To all my foes, dear fortune, fend Thy gifts, but never to my
I tamely can endure the first;
But this with envy makes me burst.
Thus much ferve by way may Proceed we therefore to our poem.
The time is not remote, when I
Muft by the courfe of nature die;
When, I forcfee, my fpecial friends
Will try to find their private ends:
And, though 'tis hardly understood,
Which way my death can do them good,
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them fpeak;
See, how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentlemen! he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him, till he'dead.
* Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.
† William Pultney, Efq; now Earl of Bath.
Befides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he fays;
He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where laft he din'd;
Plies you with ftories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy, we can fit
To hear his out-of-fashion wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
'Faith he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a-quarter :
In half the time he talks them round:
There muft another fet be found.
For poetry, he's past his prime;
He takes an hour to find a rhyme:
His fire is out, his wit decay'd,
His fancy funk, his mufe a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen;-
But there's no talking to some men.
And then their tenderness appears
By adding largely to my years:
He's older than he would be reckon'd,
And well remembers Charles the Second.
He hardly drinks a pint of wine;
And that, I doubt, is no good fign.
His ftomach too begins to fail:
Laft year we thought him ftrong and hale;
But now he's quite another thing:
I wish he may hold out till spring.
They hug themselves, and reason thus;
It is not yet fo bad with us.
In fuch a cafe they talk in tropes.
And by their fears exprefs their hopes.
Some great misfortune to portend,
enemy can match a friend.
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