Ah! quanto rectius, tu adepte,
Qui nil moliris tam inepte?
Smedley, theu Jonathan of Clogher,
"When thou thy humble lay dost offer
To Grafton's grace, with grateful heart,
Thy thanks and verse devoid of art:
Content with what his bounty gave,
No larger income dost thou crave."
But you must have cascades, and all
Ierne's lake for your canal,
Your vistos, barges, and (a pox on
All pride!) our speaker for your coxon :
It's pity that he can't bestow you
Twelve commoners in caps to row you.
Thus Edgar proud, in days of yore,
Held monarchs labouring at the oar;
And, as he pass'd, so swell'd the Dee,
Enrag'd, as Ern would do at thee.
How different is this from Smedley!
(His name is up, he may in bed lie)
"Who only asks some pretty cure,
In wholesome soil and ether pure;
The garden stor'd with artless flowers,
In either angle shady bowers:
No gay parterre with costly green
Must in the ambient hedge be seen;
But Nature freely takes her course,
Nor fears from him ungrateful force:
No sheers to check her sprouting vigour,
Or shape the yews to antic figure."
But you, forsooth, your all must squander
On that poor spot, call'd Dell-ville yonder:
And when you 've been at vast expenses
In whims, parterres, canals, and fences,
Your assets fail, and cash is wanting,
Nor farther buildings, farther planting:
No wonder, when you raise and level,
Think this wall low, and that wall bevel.
Here a convenient box you found,
Which you demolish'd to the ground:
Then built, then took up with your arbour,
And set the house to Rupert Barber.
You sprang an arch, which, in a scurvy
Humour, you tumbled topsy-turvy.
You change a circle to a square,
Then to a circle as you were:
Who can imagine whence the fund is,
That you quadrata change rotundis ?
T. Fame a temple you erect,
A Flora does the dome protect;
Mounts, walks, on high: and in a hollow
You place the Muses and Apollo;
There shining 'midst his train, to grace
Your whimsical poetic place.
These stories were of old design'd
As fables; but you have refin'd
The poets' mythologic dreams,
To real Muses, gods, and streams.
Who would not swear, when you contrive thus,
That you 're Don Quixote Redivivus?
Beneath, a dry canal there lies,
Which only winter's rain supplies.
Oh! couldst thou, by some magic spell,
Hither convey St. Patrick's well!
Here may it re-assume its stream 2,
And take a greater Patrick's name!
1 Sec a Petition to the Duke of Grafton, p. 427. 2 See Dr. Swift's verses on the drying-up of this well, in this volume, p. 451.
If your expenses rise so high,
What income can your wants supply?
Yet still you fancy you inherit
A fund of such superior merit,
That you can't fail of more provision,
All by my lady's kind decision.
For, the more livings you can fish up,
You think you'll sooner be a bishop:
That could not be my lord's intent,
Nor can it answer the event.
Most think what has been heap'd on you,
To other sort of folk was due:
Rewards too great for your flim-flams,
Epistles, riddles, epigrams.
Though now your depth must not be sounded,
The time was, when you 'd have compounded
For less than Charley Grattan's school:
Five hundred pound a year 's no fool!
Take this advice then from your friend:
To your ambition put an end.
Be frugal, Pat: pay what you owe,
Before you build and you bestow.
Be modest; nor address your betters
With begging, vain, familiar letters.
A passage may be found 3, I 've heard,
In some old Greek or Latian bard,
Which says, "Would crows in silence eat
Their offals, or their better meat,
Their generous feeders not provoking
By loud and unharmonious croaking;
They might, unhurt by Envy's claws,
Live on, and stuff to boot their maws."
JOHN LORD CARTERET. 1729. DELUDED mortals, whom the great Choose for companions téte à téte; Who at their dinners, en famille, Get leave to sit whene'er you will; Then boasting tell us where you din'd, And how his lordship was so kind; How many pleasant things he spoke, And how you laugh'd at every joke: Swear he's a most facetious man; That you and he are cup and can: You travel with a heavy load, And quite mistake preferment's road.
Suppose my lord and you alone; Hint the least interest of your own, His visage drops, he knits his brow, He cannot talk of business now:
Or, mention but a vacant post,
He'll turn it off with, " Name your toast:" Nor could the nicest artist paint
A countenance with more constraint.
For as, their appetites to quench,
Lords keep a pimp to bring a wench;
So men of wit are but a kind
Of pandars to a vicious mind ;
3 Hor. Lib. Ep. I. xvii,
Who proper objects must provide
To gratify their lust of pride,
When, wearied with intrigues of state,
They find an idle hour to prate.
Then, shall you dare to ask a place,
You forfeit all your patron's grace,
And disappoint the sole design
For which he summon'd you to dine.
Thus Congreve speut in writing plays,
And one poor office, half his days:
While Montagne, who claim'd the station
To be Mecenas of the nation,
For poets open table kept,
But ne'er consider'd where they slept:
Himself as rich as fifty Jews;
Was easy, though they wanted shoes:
And crazy Congreve scarce could spare
A shilling to discharge his chair;
Till prudence taught him to appeal
From Pæan's fire to party zeal;
Not owing to his happy vein
The fortunes of his later scene,
Took proper principles to thrive ;
And so might every dunce alive.
Thus Steele, who own'd what others writ,
And flourish'd by imputed wit,
From perils of a hundred jails
Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales.
Thus Gay, the hare with many friends,
Twice seven long years the court attends:
Who, under tales conveying truth,
To virtue form'd a princely youth 1:
Who paid his courtship with the crowd
As far as modest pride allow'd;
Rejects a servile usher's place,
And leaves St. James's in disgrace.
Thus Addison, by lords carest,
Was left in foreign lands distrest;
Forgot at home, became for hire
A travelling tutor to a squire:
But wisely left the Muses' hill,
To business shap'd the poet's quill,
Let all his barren laurels fade,
Took up himself the courtier's trade,
And, grown a minister of state,
Saw poets at his levee wait.
Hail, happy Pope! whose generous mind
Detesting all the statesman kind,
Contemning courts, at courts unseen,
Refus'd the visits of a queen.
A soul with every virtue fraught,
By sages, priests, or poets taught;
Whose filial piety excels
Whatever Grecian story tells;
A genius for all stations fit,
Whose meanest talent is his wit;
His heart too great, though fortune little,
To lick a rascal statesman's spittle;
Appealing to the nation's taste,
Above the reach of want is plac'd :
By Homer dead was taught to thrive,
Which Homer never could alive;
And sits aloft on Pindus' head,
Despising slaves that cringe for bread.
True politicians only pay
For solid work, but not for play;
Nor ever chuse to work with tools
Forg'd up in colleges and schools.
Consider how much more is due
To all their journeymen than you:
At table you can Horace quote;
They at a pinch can bribe a vote :
You show your skill in Grecian story;
But they can manage Whig and Tory:
You, as a critic, are so curious
To find a verse in Virgil spurious;
But they can smoke the deep designs,
When Bolingbroke with Pulteney dines.
Besides, your patron may upbraid ye,
That you have got a place already;
An office for your talents fit,
To flatter, carve, and show your wit;
To snuff the lights, and stir the fire,
And get a dinner for your hire.
What claim have you to place or pension!
He overpays in condescension.
But, reverend doctor, you, we know,
Could never condescend so low :
The vice-roy, whom you now attend,
Would, if he durst, be more your friend;
Nor will in you those gifts despise,
By which himself was taught to rise:
When he has virtue to retire,
He'll grieve he did not raise you higher,
And place you in a better station,
Although it might have pleas'd the nation.
This may be true-submitting still
To Walpole's more than royal will;
And what condition can be worse?
He comes to drain a beggar's purse;
He comes to tie our chains on faster,
And show us, England is our master!
Caressing knaves, and dunces wooing,
To make them work their own undoing.
What has he else to bait his traps,
Or bring his vermin in, but scraps?
The offals of a church distrest;
A hungry vicarage at best;
Or some remote inferior post,
With forty pounds a year at most?
But here again you interpose-
Your favourite lord is none of those
Who owe their virtues to their stations,
And characters to dedications:
For keep him in, or turn him out,
His learning none will call in doubt;
His learning, though a poet said it
Before a play, would lose no credit;
Nor Pope would dare deny him wit,
Although to praise it Phillips writ.
I own, he hates an action base,
His virtues battling with his place 3
Nor wants a nice discerning spirit
Betwixt a true and spurious merit;
Can sometimes drop a voter's claim,
And give up party to his fame.
I do the most that friendship can;
I hate the vice-roy, love the man.
But you who, till your fortune 's made,
Must be a sweetener by your trade,
Should swear he never meant us ill;
We suffer sore against his will;
That, if we could but see his heart,
He would have chose a milder part
We rather should lament his case,
Who must obey, or lose his place.
Since this reflection slipt your pen,
1 William duke of Cumberland, son to George II. Insert it when you write again:
Aud, to illustrate it, produce
This simile for his excuse:
"So to destroy a guilty land
An angel 2 sent by heaven's command,
While he obeys almighty will,
Perhaps may feel compassion still;
And wish the task had been assign'd
To spirits of less gentle kind."
But I, in politics grown old,
Whose thoughts are of a different mould,
Who from my soul sincerely hate
Both kings and ministers of state,
Who look on courts with stricter eyes
To see the seeds of vice arise,
Can lend you an allusion fitter,
Though flattering knaves may call it bitter;
Which, if you durst but give it place,
Would show you many a statesman's face:
Fresh from the tripod of Apollo
I had it in the words that follow
(Take notice, to avoid offence,
1 here except his excellence).
"So, to effect his monarch's ends,
From Hell a vice-roy devil ascends;
His budget with corruptions cramm'd,
The contributions of the damn'd;
Which with unsparing hand he strows
Through courts and senates as he goes;
And then at Beelzebub's black hall
Complains his budget was too small.”
Your simile may better shine
In verse; but there is truth in mine.
For no imaginable things
Can differ more than gods and kings:
And statesmen by ten thousand odds
Are angels just as kings are gods.
LIBELS WRITTEN AGAINST HIM.
-Tanti tibi non sit opaci Omnis arena Tagi.
As some raw youth in country bred,
To arms by thirst of honour led,
When at a skirmish first he hears
The bullets whistling round his ears,
Will duck his head aside, will start,
And feel a trembling at his heart,
Till 'scaping oft without a wound
Lessens the terrour of the sound;
Fly bullets now as thick as hops,
He runs into a cannon's chops:
An author thus, who pants for fame,
Begins the world with fear and shame ;
When first in print, you see him dread
Each pop-gun level'd at his head :
The lead yon critic's quill contains,
Is destin'd to beat out his brains:
As if he heard loud thunders roll,
Cries, Lord, have mercy on his soul!
Concluding, that another shot
Will strike him dead upon the spot.
* So when an angel by divine command, &c. Addison's Campaign,
But, when with squibbing, flashing, popping.
He cannot see one creature dropping;
That, missing fire, or missing aim,
His life is safe, I mean bis fame ;
The danger past, takes heart of grace,
And looks a critic in the face.
Though splendour gives the fairest mark
To poison'd arrows from the dark,
Yet, in yourself when smooth and round,
They glance aside without a wound.
'Tis said, the gods try'd all their art,
How pain they might from pleasure parti
But little could their strength avail;
Both still are fasten'd by the tail.
Thus fame and censure with a tether
By fate are always link'd together.
Why will you aim to be preferr'd
In wit before the common herd;
And yet grow mortify'd and vex'd
To pay the penalty annexed?
'Tis eminence makes envy rise;
As fairest fruits attract the flies.
Should stupid libels grieve your mind,
You soon a remedy may find;
Lie down obscure like other folks
Below the lash of snarlers' jokes.
Their faction is five hundred odds :-
For every coxcomb lends them rods,
And sneers as learnedly as they,
Like females o'er their morning tea.
You say, the Muse will not contain,
And write you must, or break a vein.,
Then, if you find the terms too hard,
No longer my advice regard :
But raise your fancy on the wing;
The Irish senate's praises sing:
How jealous of the nation's freedom,
And for corruptions how they weed 'em;
How each the public good pursues,
How far their hearts from private views:
Make all true patriots, up to shoe-boys,
Huzza their brethren at the Blue-boys.ar
Thus grown a member of the club,
No longer dread the rage of Grub.
How oft am I for rhyme to seek!
To dress a thought, may toil a week:
And then how thankful to the town,
If all my pains will earn a crown !
Whilst every critic can devour
My work and me in half an hour.
Would men of genius cease to write,
The rogues must die for want and spite;
Must die for want of food and rainent,
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 b;
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
Ware by the vulgar thought magicians; So academic dull ale-drinkers Pronounce all men of wit free-thinkers.
Wit, as the chief of virtue's friends, Disdains to serve ign ble 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 after-birth 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 verinin 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 poet's 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 libel'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 on 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.
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 long'd to eat his son :
But this, I think, will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint him 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 school-boy 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 falchion 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 ale-house 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 rhymes
To sing of wars, choose peaceful times.
What though, for fifteen years and more,
Janus had lock'd his temple-door;
DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A BIRTH-DAY SONG.
Though not a coffee-house we read in
Hath 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.
Old Phœbus is but half as bright,
For yours can shine both day and night.
The first, perhaps, may once an age
Inspire you with poetic rage;
Your Phoebus royal, every day,
Not only can inspire, but pay.
Then make this new Apollo sit
Sole patron, judge, and god of wit.
"How from his altitude he stoops
To raise up virtue when she droops;
On learning how his bounty flows,
And with what justice he bestows:
Fair Isis, and ye banks of Cam!
Be witness if I tell a flam.
What prodigies in arts we drain,
From both your streams, in George's reign.
As from the flowery bed of Nile❞—
But here's enough to show your style.
Broad innuendos, such as this,
If well applied, can hardly miss :
For, when you bring your song in print,
He'll get it read, and take the hint,
(It must be read before 'tis warbled,
The paper gilt, and cover marbled)
And will be so much more your debtor,
Because he never knew a letter;
And, as he hears his wit and sense
(To which he never made pretence)
Set out in hyperbolic strains,
A guinea shall reward your pains :
For patrons never pay so well,
As when they scarce have learn'd to spell.
Next call him Neptune: with his trident
He rules the sea; you see him ride in 't :
And, if provok'd, he soundly firks his
Rebellious waves with rods, like Xerxes.
He would have seiz'd the Spanish plate,
Had not the fleet gone out too late;
And in their very ports besiege them,
But that he would not disoblige them;
And make the rascals pay him dearly
For those affronts they give him yearly,
'Tis not deny'd, that, when we write,
Our ink is black, our paper white;
And, when we scrawl our paper o'er,
We blacken what was white before:
I think this practice only fit
For dealers in satiric wit.
But you some white-lead ink must get,
And write on paper black as jet;
Your interest lies to learn the knack
Of whitening what before was black.
Thus your encomium, to be strong,
Must be applied directly wrong.
A tyrant for his mercy praise,
And crown a royal dunce with bays:
VOL. XI.
A squinting monkey load with charms,
And paint a coward fierce in arms.
Is he to avarice inclin'd?
Extol him for his generous mind:
And, when we starve for want of corn,
Come out with Amalthea's horn.
For all experience this evinces
The only art of pleasing princes:
For princes' love you should descant
On virtues which they know they want.
One compliment 1 had forgot,
But songsters must omit it not;
I freely grant the thought is old:
Why, then, your hero must be told,
In him such virtues lie inherent,
To qualify him God's vicegerent;
That, with no title to inherit,
He must have been a king by merit.
Yet, be the fancy old or new,
'Tis partly false, and partly true:
And, take it right, it means no more
Than George and William claim'd before.
Should some obscure inferior fellow,
Like Julius, or the youth of Pella,
When all your list of gods is out,
Presume to show his mortal snout,
And as a deity intrude,
Because he had the world subdued;
Oh, let him not debase your thoughts,
Or name him but to tell his faults.-
Of gods I only quote the best,
But you may hook-in all the rest.
Now, birth-day bard, with joy proceed
To praise your empress and her breed.
First of the first, to vouch your lies,
Bring all the females of the skies;
The Graces, and their mistress Venus,
Must venture down to entertain us:
With bended knees when they adore her,
What dowdies they appear before her!
Nor shall we think you talk at random,
For Venus might be her great-grandam :
Six thousand years has liv'd the goddess,
Your heroine hardly fifty odd is.
Besides, your songsters oft have shown
That she hath graces of her own;
Three graces by Lucina brought her,
Just three, and every grace a daughter.
Here many a king his heart and crown
Shall at their snowy feet lay down;
In royal robes, they come by dozens:
To court their English German cousins:
Besides a pair of princely babies,
That, five years hence, will both be Hebes
Now see her seated in her throne
With genuine lustre, all her own:
Poor Cynthia never shone so bright,
Her splendour is but borrow'd light;
And only with her brother linkt
Can shine, without him is extinct.
But Carolina shines the clearer
With neither spouse nor brother near her;
And darts her beams o'er both our isles,
Though George is gone a thousand miles
Thus Berecynthia takes her place,
Attended by her heavenly race;
And sees a son in every god,
Unaw'd by Jove's all-shaking nod
II
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