{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_2428/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_2428","id":"gutenberg_2428","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","English poetry -- 18th century"],"text":"AN ESSAY ON MAN.\nMORAL ESSAYS AND SATIRES\n\n\nBY\nALEXANDER POPE.\n\nCASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:\n_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.\n1891.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nPope's life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough\nto the three reigns in which he worked.  Under Queen Anne he was an\noriginal poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he\nwas chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the French-\nclassical taste with versions of the \"Iliad\" and \"Odyssey.\"  Under George\nI. he also edited Shakespeare, but with little profit to himself; for\nShakespeare was but a Philistine in the eyes of the French-classical\ncritics.  But as the eighteenth century grew slowly to its work, signs of\na deepening interest in the real issues of life distracted men's\nattention from the culture of the snuff-box and the fan.  As Pope's\ngenius ripened, the best part of the world in which he worked was\npressing forward, as a mariner who will no longer hug the coast but\ncrowds all sail to cross the storms of a wide unknown sea.  Pope's poetry\nthus deepened with the course of time, and the third period of his life,\nwhich fell within the reign of George II., was that in which he produced\nthe \"Essay on Man,\" the \"Moral Essays,\" and the \"Satires.\"  These deal\nwholly with aspects of human life and the great questions they raise,\naccording throughout with the doctrine of the poet, and of the reasoning\nworld about him in his latter day, that \"the proper study of mankind is\nMan.\"\n\nWrongs in high places, and the private infamy of many who enforced the\ndoctrines of the Church, had produced in earnest men a vigorous\nantagonism.  Tyranny and unreason of low-minded advocates had brought\nreligion itself into question; and profligacy of courtiers, each\nworshipping the golden calf seen in his mirror, had spread another form\nof scepticism.  The intellectual scepticism, based upon an honest search\nfor truth, could end only in making truth the surer by its questionings.\nThe other form of scepticism, which might be traced in England from the\nlow-minded frivolities of the court of Charles the Second, was widely\nspread among the weak, whose minds flinched from all earnest thought.\nThey swelled the number of the army of bold questioners upon the ways of\nGod to Man, but they were an idle rout of camp-followers, not combatants;\nthey simply ate, and drank, and died.\n\nIn 1697, Pierre Bayle published at Rotterdam, his \"Historical and\nCritical Dictionary,\" in which the lives of men were associated with a\ncomment that suggested, from the ills of life, the absence of divine care\nin the shaping of the world.  Doubt was born of the corruption of\nsociety; Nature and Man were said to be against faith in the rule of a\nGod, wise, just, and merciful.  In 1710, after Bayle's death, Leibnitz, a\nGerman philosopher then resident in Paris, wrote in French a book, with a\ntitle formed from Greek words meaning Justice of God, Theodicee, in which\nhe met Bayle's argument by reasoning that what we cannot understand\nconfuses us, because we see only the parts of a great whole.  Bayle, he\nsaid, is now in Heaven, and from his place by the throne of God, he sees\nthe harmony of the great Universe, and doubts no more.  We see only a\nlittle part in which are many details that have purposes beyond our ken.\nThe argument of Leibnitz's Theodicee was widely used; and although Pope\nsaid that he had never read the Theodicee, his \"Essay on Man\" has a like\nargument.  When any book has a wide influence upon opinion, its general\nideas pass into the minds of many people who have never read it.  Many\nnow talk about evolution and natural selection, who have never read a\nline of Darwin.\n\nIn the reign of George the Second, questionings did spread that went to\nthe roots of all religious faith, and many earnest minds were busying\nthemselves with problems of the state of Man, and of the evidence of God\nin the life of man, and in the course of Nature.  Out of this came,\nnearly at the same time, two works wholly different in method and in\ntone--so different, that at first sight it may seem absurd to speak of\nthem together.  They were Pope's \"Essay on Man,\" and Butler's \"Analogy of\nReligion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of\nNature.\"\n\nButler's \"Analogy\" was published in 1736; of the \"Essay on Man,\" the\nfirst two Epistles appeared in 1732, the Third Epistle in 1733, the\nFourth in 1734, and the closing Universal Hymn in 1738.  It may seem even\nmore absurd to name Pope's \"Essay on Man\" in the same breath with\nMilton's \"Paradise Lost;\" but to the best of his knowledge and power, in\nhis smaller way, according to his nature and the questions of his time,\nPope was, like Milton, endeavouring \"to justify the ways of God to Man.\"\nHe even borrowed Milton's line for his own poem, only weakening the verb,\nand said that he sought to \"vindicate the ways of God to Man.\"  In\nMilton's day the questioning all centred in the doctrine of the \"Fall of\nMan,\" and questions of God's Justice were associated with debate on fate,\nfore-knowledge, and free will.  In Pope's day the question was not\ntheological, but went to the root of all faith in existence of a God, by\ndeclaring that the state of Man and of the world about him met such faith\nwith an absolute denial.  Pope's argument, good or bad, had nothing to do\nwith questions of theology.  Like Butler's, it sought for grounds of\nfaith in the conditions on which doubt was rested.  Milton sought to set\nforth the story of the Fall in such way as to show that God was love.\nPope dealt with the question of God in Nature, and the world of Man.\n\nPope's argument was attacked with violence by M. de Crousaz, Professor of\nPhilosophy and Mathematics in the University of Lausanne, and defended by\nWarburton, then chaplain to the Prince of Wales, in six letters published\nin 1739, and a seventh in 1740, for which Pope (who died in 1744) was\ndeeply grateful.  His offence in the eyes of de Crousaz was that he had\nleft out of account all doctrines of orthodox theology.  But if he had\nbeen orthodox of the orthodox, his argument obviously could have been\ndirected only to the form of doubt it sought to overcome.  And when his\nclosing hymn was condemned as the freethinker's hymn, its censurers\nsurely forgot that their arguments against it would equally apply to the\nLord's Prayer, of which it is, in some degree, a paraphrase.\n\nThe first design of the Essay on Man arranged it into four books, each\nconsisting of a distinct group of Epistles.  The First Book, in four\nEpistles, was to treat of man in the abstract, and of his relation to the\nUniverse.  That is the whole work as we have it now.  The Second Book was\nto treat of Man Intellectual; the Third Book, of Man Social, including\nties to Church and State; the Fourth Book, of Man Moral, was to\nillustrate abstract truth by sketches of character.  This part of the\ndesign is represented by the Moral Essays, of which four were written, to\nwhich was added, as a fifth, the Epistle to Addison which had been\nwritten much earlier, in 1715, and first published in 1720.  The four\nMoral essays are two pairs.  One pair is upon the Characters of Men and\non the Characters of Women, which would have formed the opening of the\nsubject of the Fourth Book of the Essay: the other pair shows character\nexpressed through a right or a wrong use of Riches: in fact, Money and\nMorals.  The four Epistles were published separately.  The fourth (to the\nEarl of Burlington) was first published in 1731, its title then being \"Of\nTaste;\" the third (to Lord Bathurst) followed in 1732, the year of the\npublication of the first two Epistles on the \"Essay on Man.\"  In 1733,\nthe year of publication of the Third Epistle of the \"Essay on Man,\" Pope\npublished his Moral Essay of the \"Characters of Men.\"  In 1734 followed\nthe Fourth Epistle of the \"Essay on Man;\" and in 1735 the \"Characters of\nWomen,\" addressed to Martha Blount, the woman whom Pope loved, though he\nwas withheld by a frail body from marriage.  Thus the two works were, in\nfact, produced together, parts of one design.\n\nPope's Satires, which still deal with characters of men, followed\nimmediately, some appearing in a folio in January, 1735.  That part of\nthe epistle to Arbuthnot forming the Prologue, which gives a character of\nAddison, as Atticus, had been sketched more than twelve years before, and\nearlier sketches of some smaller critics were introduced; but the\nbeginning and the end, the parts in which Pope spoke of himself and of\nhis father and mother, and his friend Dr. Arbuthnot, were written in 1733\nand 1734.  Then follows an imitation of the first Epistle of the Second\nBook of the Satires of Horace, concerning which Pope told a friend, \"When\nI had a fever one winter in town that confined me to my room for five or\nsix days, Lord Bolingbroke, who came to see me, happened to take up a\nHorace that lay on the table, and, turning it over, dropped on the first\nsatire in the Second Book, which begins, 'Sunt, quibus in satira.'  He\nobserved how well that would suit my case if I were to imitate it in\nEnglish.  After he was gone, I read it over, translated it in a morning\nor two, and sent it to press in a week or a fortnight after\" (February,\n1733).  \"And this was the occasion of my imitating some others of the\nSatires and Epistles.\"  The two dialogues finally used as the Epilogue to\nthe Satires were first published in the year 1738, with the name of the\nyear, \"Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight.\"  Samuel Johnson's \"London,\"\nhis first bid for recognition, appeared in the same week, and excited in\nPope not admiration only, but some active endeavour to be useful to its\nauthor.\n\nThe reader of Pope, as of every author, is advised to begin by letting\nhim say what he has to say, in his own manner to an open mind that seeks\nonly to receive the impressions which the writer wishes to convey.  First\nlet the mind and spirit of the writer come into free, full contact with\nthe mind and spirit of the reader, whose attitude at the first reading\nshould be simply receptive.  Such reading is the condition precedent to\nall true judgment of a writer's work.  All criticism that is not so\ngrounded spreads as fog over a poet's page.  Read, reader, for yourself,\nwithout once pausing to remember what you have been told to think.\n\nH.M.\n\n\n\n\nPOPE'S POEMS.\n\n\nAN ESSAY ON MAN.\nTO H. ST. JOHN LORD BOLINGBROKE.\n\n\nTHE DESIGN.\n\n\nHaving proposed to write some pieces of Human Life and Manners, such as\n(to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to Men's Business and\nBosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in\nthe abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty,\nto enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or\nimperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know\nwhat condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end\nand purpose of its being.\n\nThe science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few\nclear points: there are not many certain truths in this world.  It is\ntherefore in the anatomy of the Mind as in that of the Body; more good\nwill accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible\nparts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the\nconformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation.  The\ndisputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have\nless sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and\nhave diminished the practice more than advanced the theory of Morality.\nIf I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in\nsteering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing\nover terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not\ninconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.\n\nThis I might have done in prose, but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for\ntwo reasons.  The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or\nprecepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and\nare more easily retained by him afterwards: the other may seem odd, but\nis true, I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose\nitself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well\nas grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness.  I\nwas unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without\nbecoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing\nperspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or\nbreaking the chain of reasoning: if any man can unite all these without\ndiminution of any of them I freely confess he will compass a thing above\nmy capacity.\n\nWhat is now published is only to be considered as a general Map of Man,\nmarking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits,\nand their connection, and leaving the particular to be more fully\ndelineated in the charts which are to follow.  Consequently, these\nEpistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any\nprogress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament.  I\nam here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage.  To deduce\nthe rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects,\nmay be a task more agreeable.  P.\n\n\nARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.\n\n\nOf the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the Universe.\n\nOf Man in the abstract.  I. That we can judge only with regard to our own\nsystem, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, v.17, etc.\nII. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his\nplace and rank in the Creation, agreeable to the general Order of Things,\nand conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown, v.35, etc.  III.\nThat it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon\nthe hope of future state, that all his happiness in the present depends,\nv.77, etc.  IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to\nmore Perfection, the cause of Man's error and misery.  The impiety of\nputting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or\nunfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of His\ndispensations, v.109, etc.  V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the\nfinal cause of the Creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral\nworld, which is not in the natural, v.131, etc.  VI. The unreasonableness\nof his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands\nthe Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications\nof the Brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a\nhigher degree would render him miserable, v.173, etc.  VII. That\nthroughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in\nthe sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is a\nsubordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man.  The\ngradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason\nalone countervails all the other faculties, v.207.  VIII. How much\nfurther this order and subordination of living creatures may extend,\nabove and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only,\nbut the whole connected creation, must be destroyed, v.233.  IX.  The\nextravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v.250.  X. The\nconsequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to\nour present and future state, v.281, etc., to the end.\n\n\nEPISTLE I.\n\n\nAwake, my St. John! leave all meaner things\nTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.\nLet us (since life can little more supply\nThan just to look about us and to die)\nExpatiate free o'er all this scene of man;\nA mighty maze! but not without a plan;\nA wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;\nOr garden tempting with forbidden fruit.\nTogether let us beat this ample field,\nTry what the open, what the covert yield;\nThe latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore\nOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;\nEye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,\nAnd catch the manners living as they rise;\nLaugh where we must, be candid where we can;\nBut vindicate the ways of God to man.\n\nI.  Say first, of God above, or man below\nWhat can we reason, but from what we know?\nOf man, what see we but his station here,\nFrom which to reason, or to which refer?\nThrough worlds unnumbered though the God be known,\n'Tis ours to trace Him only in our own.\nHe, who through vast immensity can pierce,\nSee worlds on worlds compose one universe,\nObserve how system into system runs,\nWhat other planets circle other suns,\nWhat varied being peoples every star,\nMay tell why Heaven has made us as we are.\nBut of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,\nThe strong connections, nice dependencies,\nGradations just, has thy pervading soul\nLooked through? or can a part contain the whole?\n   Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,\nAnd drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?\n\nII.  Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,\nWhy formed so weak, so little, and so blind?\nFirst, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,\nWhy formed no weaker, blinder, and no less;\nAsk of thy mother earth, why oaks are made\nTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?\nOr ask of yonder argent fields above,\nWhy Jove's satellites are less than Jove?\n   Of systems possible, if 'tis confest\nThat wisdom infinite must form the best,\nWhere all must full or not coherent be,\nAnd all that rises, rise in due degree;\nThen in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,\nThere must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:\nAnd all the question (wrangle e'er so long)\nIs only this, if God has placed him wrong?\n   Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,\nMay, must be right, as relative to all.\nIn human works, though laboured on with pain,\nA thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;\nIn God's one single can its end produce;\nYet serves to second too some other use.\nSo man, who here seems principal alone,\nPerhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,\nTouches some wheel, or verges to some goal;\n'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.\n   When the proud steed shall know why man restrains\nHis fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains:\nWhen the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,\nIs now a victim, and now Egypt's god:\nThen shall man's pride and dulness comprehend\nHis actions', passions', being's, use and end;\nWhy doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why\nThis hour a slave, the next a deity.\n   Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault;\nSay rather man's as perfect as he ought:\nHis knowledge measured to his state and place;\nHis time a moment, and a point his space.\nIf to be perfect in a certain sphere,\nWhat matter, soon or late, or here or there?\nThe blest to-day is as completely so,\nAs who began a thousand years ago.\n\nIII.  Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,\nAll but the page prescribed, their present state:\nFrom brutes what men, from men what spirits know:\nOr who could suffer being here below?\nThe lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,\nHad he thy reason, would he skip and play?\nPleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,\nAnd licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.\nOh, blindness to the future! kindly given,\nThat each may fill the circle, marked by Heaven:\nWho sees with equal eye, as God of all,\nA hero perish, or a sparrow fall,\nAtoms or systems into ruin hurled,\nAnd now a bubble burst, and now a world.\n   Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;\nWait the great teacher Death; and God adore.\nWhat future bliss, He gives not thee to know,\nBut gives that hope to be thy blessing now.\nHope springs eternal in the human breast:\nMan never is, but always to be blest:\nThe soul, uneasy and confined from home,\nRests and expatiates in a life to come.\n   Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind\nSees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;\nHis soul, proud science never taught to stray\nFar as the solar walk, or milky way;\nYet simple Nature to his hope has given,\nBehind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;\nSome safer world in depth of woods embraced,\nSome happier island in the watery waste,\nWhere slaves once more their native land behold,\nNo fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.\nTo be, contents his natural desire,\nHe asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;\nBut thinks, admitted to that equal sky,\nHis faithful dog shall bear him company.\n\nIV.  Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,\nWeigh thy opinion against providence;\nCall imperfection what thou fanciest such,\nSay, here He gives too little, there too much;\nDestroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,\nYet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;\nIf man alone engross not Heaven's high care,\nAlone made perfect here, immortal there:\nSnatch from His hand the balance and the rod,\nRe-judge His justice, be the God of God.\nIn pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;\nAll quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.\nPride still is aiming at the blest abodes,\nMen would be angels, angels would be gods.\nAspiring to be gods, if angels fell,\nAspiring to be angels, men rebel:\nAnd who but wishes to invert the laws\nOf order, sins against the Eternal Cause.\n\nV.  Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,\nEarth for whose use?  Pride answers, \"'Tis for mine:\nFor me kind Nature wakes her genial power,\nSuckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;\nAnnual for me, the grape, the rose renew\nThe juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;\nFor me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;\nFor me, health gushes from a thousand springs;\nSeas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;\nMy footstool earth, my canopy the skies.\"\n   But errs not Nature from this gracious end,\nFrom burning suns when livid deaths descend,\nWhen earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep\nTowns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?\n\"No, ('tis replied) the first Almighty Cause\nActs not by partial, but by general laws;\nThe exceptions few; some change since all began;\nAnd what created perfect?\"--Why then man?\nIf the great end be human happiness,\nThen Nature deviates; and can man do less?\nAs much that end a constant course requires\nOf showers and sunshine, as of man's desires;\nAs much eternal springs and cloudless skies,\nAs men for ever temperate, calm, and wise.\nIf plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,\nWhy then a Borgia, or a Catiline?\nWho knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,\nWho heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;\nPours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind,\nOr turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?\nFrom pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs;\nAccount for moral, as for natural things:\nWhy charge we heaven in those, in these acquit?\nIn both, to reason right is to submit.\n   Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,\nWere there all harmony, all virtue here;\nThat never air or ocean felt the wind;\nThat never passion discomposed the mind.\nBut all subsists by elemental strife;\nAnd passions are the elements of life.\nThe general order, since the whole began,\nIs kept in nature, and is kept in man.\n\nVI.  What would this man?  Now upward will he soar,\nAnd little less than angel, would be more;\nNow looking downwards, just as grieved appears\nTo want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears\nMade for his use all creatures if he call,\nSay what their use, had he the powers of all?\nNature to these, without profusion, kind,\nThe proper organs, proper powers assigned;\nEach seeming want compensated of course,\nHere with degrees of swiftness, there of force;\nAll in exact proportion to the state;\nNothing to add, and nothing to abate.\nEach beast, each insect, happy in its own:\nIs Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?\nShall he alone, whom rational we call,\nBe pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?\n   The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)\nIs not to act or think beyond mankind;\nNo powers of body or of soul to share,\nBut what his nature and his state can bear.\nWhy has not man a microscopic eye?\nFor this plain reason, man is not a fly.\nSay what the use, were finer optics given,\nTo inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven?\nOr touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,\nTo smart and agonize at every pore?\nOr quick effluvia darting through the brain,\nDie of a rose in aromatic pain?\nIf Nature thundered in his opening ears,\nAnd stunned him with the music of the spheres,\nHow would he wish that Heaven had left him still\nThe whispering zephyr, and the purling rill?\nWho finds not Providence all good and wise,\nAlike in what it gives, and what denies?\n\nVII.  Far as Creation's ample range extends,\nThe scale of sensual, mental powers ascends:\nMark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,\nFrom the green myriads in the peopled grass:\nWhat modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,\nThe mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:\nOf smell, the headlong lioness between,\nAnd hound sagacious on the tainted green:\nOf hearing, from the life that fills the flood,\nTo that which warbles through the vernal wood:\nThe spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!\nFeels at each thread, and lives along the line:\nIn the nice bee, what sense so subtly true\nFrom poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew?\nHow instinct varies in the grovelling swine,\nCompared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!\n'Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier,\nFor ever separate, yet for ever near!\nRemembrance and reflection how allayed;\nWhat thin partitions sense from thought divide:\nAnd middle natures, how they long to join,\nYet never passed the insuperable line!\nWithout this just gradation, could they be\nSubjected, these to those, or all to thee?\nThe powers of all subdued by thee alone,\nIs not thy reason all these powers in one?\n\nVIII.  See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,\nAll matter quick, and bursting into birth.\nAbove, how high, progressive life may go!\nAround, how wide! how deep extend below?\nVast chain of being! which from God began,\nNatures ethereal, human, angel, man,\nBeast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,\nNo glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,\nFrom thee to nothing.  On superior powers\nWere we to press, inferior might on ours:\nOr in the full creation leave a void,\nWhere, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:\nFrom Nature's chain whatever link you strike,\nTenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.\n   And, if each system in gradation roll\nAlike essential to the amazing whole,\nThe least confusion but in one, not all\nThat system only, but the whole must fall.\nLet earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,\nPlanets and suns run lawless through the sky;\nLet ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,\nBeing on being wrecked, and world on world;\nHeaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,\nAnd nature tremble to the throne of God.\nAll this dread order break--for whom? for thee?\nVile worm!--Oh, madness! pride! impiety!\n\nIX.  What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,\nOr hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?\nWhat if the head, the eye, or ear repined\nTo serve mere engines to the ruling mind?\nJust as absurd for any part to claim\nTo be another, in this general frame:\nJust as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,\nThe great directing Mind of All ordains.\n   All are but parts of one stupendous whole,\nWhose body Nature is, and God the soul;\nThat, changed through all, and yet in all the same;\nGreat in the earth, as in the ethereal frame;\nWarms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,\nGlows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,\nLives through all life, extends through all extent,\nSpreads undivided, operates unspent;\nBreathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,\nAs full, as perfect, in a hair as heart:\nAs full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,\nAs the rapt seraph that adores and burns:\nTo him no high, no low, no great, no small;\nHe fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.\n\nX.  Cease, then, nor order imperfection name:\nOur proper bliss depends on what we blame.\nKnow thy own point: this kind, this due degree\nOf blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.\nSubmit.  In this, or any other sphere,\nSecure to be as blest as thou canst bear:\nSafe in the hand of one disposing Power,\nOr in the natal, or the mortal hour.\nAll nature is but art, unknown to thee;\nAll chance, direction, which thou canst not see;\nAll discord, harmony not understood;\nAll partial evil, universal good:\nAnd, spite of pride in erring reason's spite,\nOne truth is clear, whatever is, is right.\n\n\nARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II.\n\n\nOf the Nature and State of Man with respect to Himself, as an Individual.\n\nI. The business of Man not to pry into God, but to study himself.  His\nMiddle Nature; his Powers and Frailties, v.1 to 19. The Limits of his\nCapacity, v.19, etc.  II. The two Principles of Man, Self-love and\nReason, both necessary, v.53, etc. Self-love the stronger, and why, v.67,\netc.  Their end the same, v.81, etc.  III. The Passions, and their use,\nv.93 to 130.  The predominant Passion, and its force, v.132 to 160.  Its\nNecessity, in directing Men to different purposes, v.165, etc.  Its\nprovidential Use, in fixing our Principle, and ascertaining our Virtue,\nv.177.  IV. Virtue and Vice joined in our mixed Nature; the limits near,\nyet the things separate and evident: What is the Office of Reason, v.202\nto 216.  V. How odious Vice in itself, and how we deceive ourselves into\nit, v.217.  VI. That, however, the Ends of Providence and general Good\nare answered in our Passions and Imperfections, v.238, etc.  How usefully\nthese are distributed to all Orders of Men, v.241.  How useful they are\nto Society, v.251.  And to the Individuals, v.263.  In every state, and\nevery age of life, v.273, etc.\n\n\nEPISTLE II.\n\n\nI.  Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;\nThe proper study of mankind is man.\nPlaced on this isthmus of a middle state,\nA being darkly wise, and rudely great:\nWith too much knowledge for the sceptic side,\nWith too much weakness for the stoic's pride,\nHe hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;\nIn doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;\nIn doubt his mind or body to prefer;\nBorn but to die, and reasoning but to err;\nAlike in ignorance, his reason such,\nWhether he thinks too little, or too much:\nChaos of thought and passion, all confused;\nStill by himself abused, or disabused;\nCreated half to rise, and half to fall;\nGreat lord of all things, yet a prey to all;\nSole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:\nThe glory, jest, and riddle of the world!\n   Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,\nGo, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;\nInstruct the planets in what orbs to run,\nCorrect old time, and regulate the sun;\nGo, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,\nTo the first good, first perfect, and first fair;\nOr tread the mazy round his followers trod,\nAnd quitting sense call imitating God;\nAs Eastern priests in giddy circles run,\nAnd turn their heads to imitate the sun.\nGo, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule--\nThen drop into thyself, and be a fool!\n   Superior beings, when of late they saw\nA mortal man unfold all Nature's law,\nAdmired such wisdom in an earthly shape\nAnd showed a Newton as we show an ape.\n   Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,\nDescribe or fix one movement of his mind?\nWho saw its fires here rise, and there descend,\nExplain his own beginning, or his end?\nAlas, what wonder! man's superior part\nUnchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;\nBut when his own great work is but begun,\nWhat reason weaves, by passion is undone.\n Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide;\nFirst strip off all her equipage of pride;\nDeduct what is but vanity or dress,\nOr learning's luxury, or idleness;\nOr tricks to show the stretch of human brain,\nMere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;\nExpunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts\nOf all our vices have created arts;\nThen see how little the remaining sum,\nWhich served the past, and must the times to come!\n\nII.  Two principles in human nature reign;\nSelf-love to urge, and reason, to restrain;\nNor this a good, nor that a bad we call,\nEach works its end, to move or govern all\nAnd to their proper operation still,\nAscribe all good; to their improper, ill.\n Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;\nReason's comparing balance rules the whole.\nMan, but for that, no action could attend,\nAnd but for this, were active to no end:\nFixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,\nTo draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;\nOr, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,\nDestroying others, by himself destroyed.\n Most strength the moving principle requires;\nActive its task, it prompts, impels, inspires.\nSedate and quiet the comparing lies,\nFormed but to check, deliberate, and advise.\nSelf-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;\nReason's at distance, and in prospect lie:\nThat sees immediate good by present sense;\nReason, the future and the consequence.\nThicker than arguments, temptations throng.\nAt best more watchful this, but that more strong.\nThe action of the stronger to suspend,\nReason still use, to reason still attend.\nAttention, habit and experience gains;\nEach strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.\n Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,\nMore studious to divide than to unite;\nAnd grace and virtue, sense and reason split,\nWith all the rash dexterity of wit.\nWits, just like fools, at war about a name,\nHave full as oft no meaning, or the same.\nSelf-love and reason to one end aspire,\nPain their aversion, pleasure their desire;\nBut greedy that, its object would devour,\nThis taste the honey, and not wound the flower:\nPleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,\nOur greatest evil, or our greatest good.\n\nIII.  Modes of self-love the passions we may call;\n'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all:\nBut since not every good we can divide,\nAnd reason bids us for our own provide;\nPassions, though selfish, if their means be fair,\nList under Reason, and deserve her care;\nThose, that imparted, court a nobler aim,\nExalt their kind, and take some virtue's name.\n   In lazy apathy let stoics boast\nTheir virtue fixed; 'tis fixed as in a frost;\nContracted all, retiring to the breast;\nBut strength of mind is exercise, not rest:\nThe rising tempest puts in act the soul,\nParts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.\nOn life's vast ocean diversely we sail,\nReason the card, but passion is the gale;\nNor God alone in the still calm we find,\nHe mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.\n   Passions, like elements, though born to fight,\nYet, mixed and softened, in his work unite:\nThese, 'tis enough to temper and employ;\nBut what composes man, can man destroy?\nSuffice that Reason keep to Nature's road,\nSubject, compound them, follow her and God.\nLove, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,\nHate, fear, and grief, the family of pain,\nThese mixed with art, and to due bounds confined,\nMake and maintain the balance of the mind;\nThe lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife\nGives all the strength and colour of our life.\n Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;\nAnd when in act they cease, in prospect rise:\nPresent to grasp, and future still to find,\nThe whole employ of body and of mind.\nAll spread their charms, but charm not all alike;\nOn different senses different objects strike;\nHence different passions more or less inflame,\nAs strong or weak, the organs of the frame;\nAnd hence once master passion in the breast,\nLike Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.\n   As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath\nReceives the lurking principle of death;\nThe young disease that must subdue at length,\nGrows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:\nSo, cast and mingled with his very frame,\nThe mind's disease, its ruling passion came;\nEach vital humour which should feed the whole,\nSoon flows to this, in body and in soul:\nWhatever warms the heart, or fills the head,\nAs the mind opens, and its functions spread,\nImagination plies her dangerous art,\nAnd pours it all upon the peccant part.\n   Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;\nWit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;\nReason itself but gives it edge and power;\nAs Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sour.\n   We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,\nIn this weak queen some favourite still obey:\nAh! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,\nWhat can she more than tell us we are fools?\nTeach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,\nA sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!\nOr from a judge turn pleader, to persuade\nThe choice we make, or justify it made;\nProud of an easy conquest all along,\nShe but removes weak passions for the strong;\nSo, when small humours gather to a gout,\nThe doctor fancies he has driven them out.\n   Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferred;\nReason is here no guide, but still a guard:\n'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,\nAnd treat this passion more as friend than foe:\nA mightier power the strong direction sends,\nAnd several men impels to several ends:\nLike varying winds, by other passions tossed,\nThis drives them constant to a certain coast.\nLet power or knowledge, gold or glory, please,\nOr (oft more strong than all) the love of ease;\nThrough life 'tis followed, even at life's expense;\nThe merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,\nThe monk's humility, the hero's pride,\nAll, all alike, find reason on their side.\n   The eternal art, educing good from ill,\nGrafts on this passion our best principle:\n'Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed,\nStrong grows the virtue with his nature mixed;\nThe dross cements what else were too refined,\nAnd in one interest body acts with mind.\n   As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,\nOn savage stocks inserted, learn to bear;\nThe surest virtues thus from passions shoot,\nWild nature's vigour working at the root.\nWhat crops of wit and honesty appear\nFrom spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!\nSee anger, zeal and fortitude supply;\nEven avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;\nLust, through some certain strainers well refined,\nIs gentle love, and charms all womankind;\nEnvy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,\nIs emulation in the learned or brave;\nNor virtue, male or female, can we name,\nBut what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.\n   Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)\nThe virtue nearest to our vice allied:\nReason the bias turns to good from ill\nAnd Nero reigns a Titus, if he will.\nThe fiery soul abhorred in Catiline,\nIn Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:\nThe same ambition can destroy or save,\nAnd makes a patriot as it makes a knave.\n   This light and darkness in our chaos joined,\nWhat shall divide?  The God within the mind.\n   Extremes in nature equal ends produce,\nIn man they join to some mysterious use;\nThough each by turns the other's bound invade,\nAs, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,\nAnd oft so mix, the difference is too nice\nWhere ends the virtue or begins the vice.\n   Fools! who from hence into the notion fall,\nThat vice or virtue there is none at all.\nIf white and black blend, soften, and unite\nA thousand ways, is there no black or white?\nAsk your own heart, and nothing is so plain;\n'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.\n   Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,\nAs, to be hated, needs but to be seen;\nYet seen too oft, familiar with her face,\nWe first endure, then pity, then embrace.\nBut where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:\nAsk where's the north? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;\nIn Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,\nAt Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.\nNo creature owns it in the first degree,\nBut thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;\nEven those who dwell beneath its very zone,\nOr never feel the rage, or never own;\nWhat happier nations shrink at with affright,\nThe hard inhabitant contends is right.\n   Virtuous and vicious every man must be,\nFew in th' extreme, but all in the degree,\nThe rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;\nAnd even the best, by fits, what they despise.\n'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;\nFor, vice or virtue, self directs it still;\nEach individual seeks a several goal;\nBut Heaven's great view is one, and that the whole.\nThat counter-works each folly and caprice;\nThat disappoints th' effect of every vice;\nThat, happy frailties to all ranks applied,\nShame to the virgin, to the matron pride,\nFear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,\nTo kings presumption, and to crowds belief:\nThat, virtue's ends from vanity can raise,\nWhich seeks no interest, no reward but praise;\nAnd build on wants, and on defects of mind,\nThe joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.\n   Heaven forming each on other to depend,\nA master, or a servant, or a friend,\nBids each on other for assistance call,\nTill one man's weakness grows the strength of all.\nWants, frailties, passions, closer still ally\nThe common interest, or endear the tie.\nTo these we owe true friendship, love sincere,\nEach home-felt joy that life inherits here;\nYet from the same we learn, in its decline,\nThose joys, those loves, those interests to resign;\nTaught half by reason, half by mere decay,\nTo welcome death, and calmly pass away.\n   Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,\nNot one will change his neighbour with himself.\nThe learned is happy nature to explore,\nThe fool is happy that he knows no more;\nThe rich is happy in the plenty given,\nThe poor contents him with the care of Heaven.\nSee the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,\nThe sot a hero, lunatic a king;\nThe starving chemist in his golden views\nSupremely blest, the poet in his muse.\n   See some strange comfort every state attend,\nAnd pride bestowed on all, a common friend;\nSee some fit passion every age supply,\nHope travels through, nor quits us when we die.\n   Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,\nPleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:\nSome livelier plaything gives his youth delight,\nA little louder, but as empty quite:\nScarves, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,\nAnd beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:\nPleased with this bauble still, as that before;\nTill tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.\n   Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays\nThose painted clouds that beautify our days;\nEach want of happiness by hope supplied,\nAnd each vacuity of sense by pride:\nThese build as fast as knowledge can destroy;\nIn folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy;\nOne prospect lost, another still we gain;\nAnd not a vanity is given in vain;\nEven mean self-love becomes, by force divine,\nThe scale to measure others' wants by thine.\nSee! and confess, one comfort still must rise,\n'Tis this, though man's a fool, yet God is wise.\n\n\nARGUMENT OF EPISTLE III.\n\n\nOf the Nature and State of Man with respect to Society.\n\nI. The whole Universe one system of Society, v.7, etc.  Nothing made\nwholly for itself, nor yet wholly for another, v.27.  The happiness of\nAnimals mutual, v.49.  II. Reason or Instinct operate alike to the good\nof each Individual, v.79.  Reason or Instinct operate also to Society, in\nall Animals, v.109.  III. How far Society carried by Instinct, v.115.  How\nmuch farther by Reason, v.128.  IV. Of that which is called the State of\nNature, v.144.  Reason instructed by Instinct in the invention of Arts,\nv.166, and in the Forms of Society, v.176.  V. Origin of Political\nSocieties, v.196.  Origin of Monarchy, v.207.  Patriarchal Government,\nv.212.  VI. Origin of true Religion and Government, from the same\nprinciple, of Love, v.231, etc.  Origin of Superstition and Tyranny, from\nthe same principle, of Fear, v.237, etc.  The Influence of Self-love\noperating to the social and public Good, v.266.  Restoration of true\nReligion and Government on their first principle, v.285.  Mixed\nGovernment, v.288.  Various forms of each, and the true end of all,\nv.300, etc.\n\n\nEPISTLE III.\n\n\nHere, then, we rest: \"The Universal Cause\nActs to one end, but acts by various laws.\"\nIn all the madness of superfluous health,\nThe trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,\nLet this great truth be present night and day;\nBut most be present, if we preach or pray.\n   Look round our world; behold the chain of love\nCombining all below and all above.\nSee plastic Nature working to this end,\nThe single atoms each to other tend,\nAttract, attracted to, the next in place\nFormed and impelled its neighbour to embrace.\nSee matter next, with various life endued,\nPress to one centre still, the general good.\nSee dying vegetables life sustain,\nSee life dissolving vegetate again:\nAll forms that perish other forms supply\n(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die),\nLike bubbles on the sea of matter borne,\nThey rise, they break, and to that sea return.\nNothing is foreign: parts relate to whole;\nOne all-extending, all-preserving soul\nConnects each being, greatest with the least;\nMade beast in aid of man, and man of beast;\nAll served, all serving: nothing stands alone;\nThe chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.\n   Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy Thy good,\nThy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?\nWho for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,\nFor him as kindly spread the flowery lawn:\nIs it for thee the lark ascends and sings?\nJoy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.\nIs it for thee the linnet pours his throat?\nLoves of his own and raptures swell the note.\nThe bounding steed you pompously bestride,\nShares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.\nIs thine alone the seed that strews the plain?\nThe birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain.\nThine the full harvest of the golden year?\nPart pays, and justly, the deserving steer:\nThe hog, that ploughs not nor obeys thy call,\nLives on the labours of this lord of all.\n   Know, Nature's children all divide her care;\nThe fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear.\nWhile man exclaims, \"See all things for my use!\"\n\"See man for mine!\" replies a pampered goose:\nAnd just as short of reason he must fall,\nWho thinks all made for one, not one for all.\n   Grant that the powerful still the weak control;\nBe man the wit and tyrant of the whole:\nNature that tyrant checks; he only knows,\nAnd helps, another creature's wants and woes.\nSay, will the falcon, stooping from above,\nSmit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?\nAdmires the jay the insect's gilded wings?\nOr hears the hawk when Philomela sings?\nMan cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,\nTo beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;\nFor some his interest prompts him to provide,\nFor more his pleasure, yet for more his pride:\nAll feed on one vain patron, and enjoy\nThe extensive blessing of his luxury.\nThat very life his learned hunger craves,\nHe saves from famine, from the savage saves;\nNay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,\nAnd, till he ends the being, makes it blest;\nWhich sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,\nThan favoured man by touch ethereal slain.\nThe creature had his feast of life before;\nThou too must perish when thy feast is o'er!\n   To each unthinking being, Heaven, a friend,\nGives not the useless knowledge of its end:\nTo man imparts it; but with such a view\nAs, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too;\nThe hour concealed, and so remote the fear,\nDeath still draws nearer, never seeming near.\nGreat standing miracle! that Heaven assigned\nIts only thinking thing this turn of mind.\n\nII.  Whether with reason, or with instinct blest,\nKnow, all enjoy that power which suits them best;\nTo bliss alike by that direction tend,\nAnd find the means proportioned to their end.\nSay, where full instinct is the unerring guide,\nWhat pope or council can they need beside?\nReason, however able, cool at best,\nCares not for service, or but serves when pressed,\nStays till we call, and then not often near;\nBut honest instinct comes a volunteer,\nSure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit;\nWhile still too wide or short is human wit;\nSure by quick nature happiness to gain,\nWhich heavier reason labours at in vain,\nThis too serves always, reason never long;\nOne must go right, the other may go wrong.\nSee then the acting and comparing powers\nOne in their nature, which are two in ours;\nAnd reason raise o'er instinct as you can,\nIn this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.\n   Who taught the nations of the field and wood\nTo shun their poison, and to choose their food?\nPrescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,\nBuild on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?\nWho made the spider parallels design,\nSure as Demoivre, without rule or line?\nWho did the stork, Columbus-like, explore\nHeavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?\nWho calls the council, states the certain day,\nWho forms the phalanx, and who points the way?\n\nIII.  God in the nature of each being founds\nIts proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:\nBut as He framed a whole, the whole to bless,\nOn mutual wants built mutual happiness:\nSo from the first, eternal order ran,\nAnd creature linked to creature, man to man.\nWhate'er of life all-quickening ether keeps,\nOr breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,\nOr pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds\nThe vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.\nNot man alone, but all that roam the wood,\nOr wing the sky, or roll along the flood,\nEach loves itself, but not itself alone,\nEach sex desires alike, till two are one.\nNor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;\nThey love themselves, a third time, in their race.\nThus beast and bird their common charge attend,\nThe mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;\nThe young dismissed to wander earth or air,\nThere stops the instinct, and there ends the care;\nThe link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,\nAnother love succeeds, another race.\nA longer care man's helpless kind demands;\nThat longer care contracts more lasting bands:\nReflection, reason, still the ties improve,\nAt once extend the interest and the love;\nWith choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;\nEach virtue in each passion takes its turn;\nAnd still new needs, new helps, new habits rise.\nThat graft benevolence on charities.\nStill as one brood, and as another rose,\nThese natural love maintained, habitual those.\nThe last, scarce ripened into perfect man,\nSaw helpless him from whom their life began:\nMemory and forecast just returns engage,\nThat pointed back to youth, this on to age;\nWhile pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined,\nStill spread the interest, and preserved the kind.\n\nIV.  Nor think, in Nature's state they blindly trod;\nThe state of nature was the reign of God:\nSelf-love and social at her birth began,\nUnion the bond of all things, and of man.\nPride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid;\nMan walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade;\nThe same his table, and the same his bed;\nNo murder clothed him, and no murder fed.\nIn the same temple, the resounding wood,\nAll vocal beings hymned their equal God:\nThe shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed,\nUnbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:\nHeaven's attribute was universal care,\nAnd man's prerogative to rule, but spare.\nAh! how unlike the man of times to come!\nOf half that live the butcher and the tomb;\nWho, foe to nature, hears the general groan,\nMurders their species, and betrays his own.\nBut just disease to luxury succeeds,\nAnd every death its own avenger breeds;\nThe fury-passions from that blood began,\nAnd turned on man a fiercer savage, man.\n   See him from Nature rising slow to art!\nTo copy instinct then was reason's part;\nThus then to man the voice of Nature spake--\n\"Go, from the creatures thy instructions take:\nLearn from the birds what food the thickets yield;\nLearn from the beasts the physic of the field;\nThy arts of building from the bee receive;\nLearn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;\nLearn of the little nautilus to sail,\nSpread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.\nHere too all forms of social union find,\nAnd hence let reason, late, instruct mankind:\nHere subterranean works and cities see;\nThere towns aerial on the waving tree.\nLearn each small people's genius, policies,\nThe ant's republic, and the realm of bees;\nHow those in common all their wealth bestow,\nAnd anarchy without confusion know;\nAnd these for ever, though a monarch reign,\nTheir separate cells and properties maintain.\nMark what unvaried laws preserve each state,\nLaws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate.\nIn vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,\nEntangle justice in her net of law,\nAnd right, too rigid, harden into wrong;\nStill for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.\nYet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,\nThus let the wiser make the rest obey;\nAnd, for those arts mere instinct could afford,\nBe crowned as monarchs, or as gods adored.\"\n\nV.  Great Nature spoke; observant men obeyed;\nCities were built, societies were made:\nHere rose one little state: another near\nGrew by like means, and joined, through love or fear.\nDid here the trees with ruddier burdens bend,\nAnd there the streams in purer rills descend?\nWhat war could ravish, commerce could bestow,\nAnd he returned a friend, who came a foe.\nConverse and love mankind might strongly draw,\nWhen love was liberty, and Nature law.\nThus States were formed; the name of king unknown,\n'Till common interest placed the sway in one.\n'Twas virtue only (or in arts or arms,\nDiffusing blessings, or averting harms)\nThe same which in a sire the sons obeyed,\nA prince the father of a people made.\n\nVI.  Till then, by Nature crowned, each patriarch sate,\nKing, priest, and parent of his growing state;\nOn him, their second providence, they hung,\nTheir law his eye, their oracle his tongue.\nHe from the wondering furrow called the food,\nTaught to command the fire, control the flood,\nDraw forth the monsters of the abyss profound,\nOr fetch the aerial eagle to the ground.\nTill drooping, sickening, dying they began\nWhom they revered as God to mourn as man:\nThen, looking up, from sire to sire, explored\nOne great first Father, and that first adored.\nOr plain tradition that this all begun,\nConveyed unbroken faith from sire to son;\nThe worker from the work distinct was known,\nAnd simple reason never sought but one:\nEre wit oblique had broke that steady light,\nMan, like his Maker, saw that all was right;\nTo virtue, in the paths of pleasure, trod,\nAnd owned a Father when he owned a God.\nLove all the faith, and all the allegiance then;\nFor Nature knew no right divine in men,\nNo ill could fear in God; and understood\nA sovereign being but a sovereign good.\nTrue faith, true policy, united ran,\nThis was but love of God, and this of man.\n   Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone,\nThe enormous faith of many made for one;\nThat proud exception to all Nature's laws,\nTo invert the world, and counter-work its cause?\nForce first made conquest, and that conquest, law;\nTill superstition taught the tyrant awe,\nThen shared the tyranny, then lent it aid,\nAnd gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made:\nShe, 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,\nWhen rocked the mountains, and when groaned the ground,\nShe taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,\nTo power unseen, and mightier far than they:\nShe, from the rending earth and bursting skies,\nSaw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:\nHere fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes;\nFear made her devils, and weak hope her gods;\nGods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,\nWhose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust;\nSuch as the souls of cowards might conceive,\nAnd, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.\nZeal then, not charity, became the guide;\nAnd hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride,\nThen sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more;\nAltars grew marble then, and reeked with gore;\nThen first the flamen tasted living food;\nNext his grim idol smeared with human blood;\nWith heaven's own thunders shook the world below,\nAnd played the god an engine on his foe.\n   So drives self-love, through just and through unjust,\nTo one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust:\nThe same self-love, in all, becomes the cause\nOf what restrains him, government and laws.\nFor, what one likes if others like as well,\nWhat serves one will when many wills rebel?\nHow shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,\nA weaker may surprise, a stronger take?\nHis safety must his liberty restrain:\nAll join to guard what each desires to gain.\nForced into virtue thus by self-defence,\nEven kings learned justice and benevolence:\nSelf-love forsook the path it first pursued,\nAnd found the private in the public good.\n   'Twas then, the studious head or generous mind,\nFollower of God, or friend of human-kind,\nPoet or patriot, rose but to restore\nThe faith and moral Nature gave before;\nRe-lumed her ancient light, not kindled new;\nIf not God's image, yet His shadow drew:\nTaught power's due use to people and to kings,\nTaught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings,\nThe less, or greater, set so justly true,\nThat touching one must strike the other too;\nTill jarring interests, of themselves create\nThe according music of a well-mixed state.\nSuch is the world's great harmony, that springs\nFrom order, union, full consent of things:\nWhere small and great, where weak and mighty, made\nTo serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;\nMore powerful each as needful to the rest,\nAnd, in proportion as it blesses, blest;\nDraw to one point, and to one centre bring\nBeast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.\n   For forms of government let fools contest;\nWhate'er is best administered is best:\nFor modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;\nHis can't be wrong whose life is in the right:\nIn faith and hope the world will disagree,\nBut all mankind's concern is charity:\nAll must be false that thwart this one great end;\nAnd all of God, that bless mankind or mend.\n   Man, like the generous vine, supported lives;\nThe strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.\nOn their own axis as the planets run,\nYet make at once their circle round the sun;\nSo two consistent motions act the soul;\nAnd one regards itself, and one the whole.\n   Thus God and Nature linked the general frame,\nAnd bade self-love and social be the same.\n\n\nARGUMENT OF EPISTLE IV.\n\n\nOf the Nature and State of Man with respect to Happiness.\n\nI. False Notions of Happiness, Philosophical and Popular, answered from\nv.19 to 77.  II. It is the End of all Men, and attainable by all, v.30.\nGod intends Happiness to be equal; and to be so, it must be social, since\nall particular Happiness depends on general, and since He governs by\ngeneral, not particular Laws, v.37.  As it is necessary for Order, and\nthe peace and welfare of Society, that external goods should be unequal,\nHappiness is not made to consist in these, v.51.  But, notwithstanding\nthat inequality, the balance of Happiness among Mankind is kept even by\nProvidence, by the two Passions of Hope and Fear, v.70.  III. What the\nHappiness of Individuals is, as far as is consistent with the\nconstitution of this world; and that the good Man has here the advantage,\nV.77.  The error of imputing to Virtue what are only the calamities of\nNature or of Fortune, v.94.  IV. The folly of expecting that God should\nalter His general Laws in favour of particulars, v.121.  V. That we are\nnot judges who are good; but that, whoever they are, they must be\nhappiest, v.133, etc.  VI. That external goods are not the proper\nrewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of Virtue, v.165.\nThat even these can make no Man happy without Virtue: Instanced in\nRiches, v.183.  Honours, v.191.  Nobility, v.203.  Greatness, v.215.\nFame, v.235.  Superior Talents, v.257, etc.  With pictures of human\nInfelicity in Men possessed of them all, v.267, etc.  VII. That Virtue\nonly constitutes a Happiness, whose object is universal, and whose\nprospect eternal, v.307, etc.  That the perfection of Virtue and\nHappiness consists in a conformity to the Order of Providence here, and a\nResignation to it here and hereafter, v.326, etc.\n\n\nEPISTLE IV.\n\n\nOh, happiness, our being's end and aim!\nGood, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name:\nThat something still which prompts the eternal sigh,\nFor which we bear to live, or dare to die,\nWhich still so near us, yet beyond us lies,\nO'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.\nPlant of celestial seed! if dropped below,\nSay, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?\nFair opening to some Court's propitious shine,\nOr deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?\nTwined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,\nOr reaped in iron harvests of the field?\nWhere grows?--where grows it not?  If vain our toil,\nWe ought to blame the culture, not the soil:\nFixed to no spot is happiness sincere,\n'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;\n'Tis never to be bought, but always free,\nAnd fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.\n   Ask of the learned the way?  The learned are blind;\nThis bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;\nSome place the bliss in action, some in ease,\nThose call it pleasure, and contentment these;\nSome, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;\nSome, swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain;\nOr indolent, to each extreme they fall,\nTo trust in everything, or doubt of all.\n   Who thus define it, say they more or less\nThan this, that happiness is happiness?\n   Take Nature's path, and mad opinions leave;\nAll states can reach it, and all heads conceive;\nObvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;\nThere needs but thinking right, and meaning well;\nAnd mourn our various portions as we please,\nEqual is common sense, and common ease.\n   Remember, man, \"the Universal Cause\nActs not by partial, but by general laws;\"\nAnd makes what happiness we justly call\nSubsist not in the good of one, but all.\nThere's not a blessing individuals find,\nBut some way leans and hearkens to the kind:\nNo bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,\nNo caverned hermit, rests self-satisfied:\nWho most to shun or hate mankind pretend,\nSeek an admirer, or would fix a friend:\nAbstract what others feel, what others think,\nAll pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:\nEach has his share; and who would more obtain,\nShall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain.\n   Order is Heaven's first law; and this confest,\nSome are, and must be, greater than the rest,\nMore rich, more wise; but who infers from hence\nThat such are happier, shocks all common sense.\nHeaven to mankind impartial we confess,\nIf all are equal in their happiness:\nBut mutual wants this happiness increase;\nAll Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace.\nCondition, circumstance is not the thing;\nBliss is the same in subject or in king,\nIn who obtain defence, or who defend,\nIn him who is, or him who finds a friend:\nHeaven breathes through every member of the whole\nOne common blessing, as one common soul.\nBut fortune's gifts if each alike possessed,\nAnd each were equal, must not all contest?\nIf then to all men happiness was meant,\nGod in externals could not place content.\n   Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,\nAnd these be happy called, unhappy those;\nBut Heaven's just balance equal will appear,\nWhile those are placed in hope, and these in fear:\nNor present good or ill, the joy or curse,\nBut future views of better or of worse,\n   Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,\nBy mountains piled on mountains, to the skies,\nHeaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,\nAnd buries madmen in the heaps they raise.\n   Know, all the good that individuals find,\nOr God and Nature meant to mere mankind,\nReason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,\nLie in three words, health, peace, and competence.\nBut health consists with temperance alone;\nAnd peace, oh, virtue! peace is all thy own.\nThe good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;\nBut these less taste them, as they worse obtain.\nSay, in pursuit of profit or delight,\nWho risk the most, that take wrong means, or right;\nOf vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed,\nWhich meets contempt, or which compassion first?\nCount all the advantage prosperous vice attains,\n'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains:\nAnd grant the bad what happiness they would,\nOne they must want, which is, to pass for good.\n   Oh, blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,\nWho fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!\nWho sees and follows that great scheme the best,\nBest knows the blessing, and will most be blest.\nBut fools the good alone unhappy call,\nFor ills or accidents that chance to all.\nSee Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!\nSee god-like Turenne prostrate on the dust!\nSee Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!\nWas this their virtue, or contempt of life?\nSay, was it virtue, more though Heaven ne'er gave,\nLamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave?\nTell me, if virtue made the son expire,\nWhy, full of days and honour, lives the sire?\nWhy drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,\nWhen Nature sickened, and each gale was death?\nOr why so long (in life if long can be)\nLent Heaven a parent to the poor and me?\n   What makes all physical or moral ill?\nThere deviates Nature, and here wanders will.\nGod sends not ill; if rightly understood,\nOr partial ill is universal good,\nOr change admits, or Nature lets it fall;\nShort, and but rare, till man improved it all.\nWe just as wisely might of Heaven complain\nThat righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,\nAs that the virtuous son is ill at ease\nWhen his lewd father gave the dire disease.\nThink we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause\nProne for His favourites to reverse His laws?\n   Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires,\nForget to thunder, and recall her fires?\nOn air or sea new motions be imprest,\nOh, blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast?\nWhen the loose mountain trembles from on high,\nShall gravitation cease, if you go by?\nOr some old temple, nodding to its fall,\nFor Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall?\n   But still this world (so fitted for the knave)\nContents us not.  A better shall we have?\nA kingdom of the just then let it be:\nBut first consider how those just agree.\nThe good must merit God's peculiar care:\nBut who, but God, can tell us who they are?\nOne thinks on Calvin Heaven's own spirit fell;\nAnother deems him instrument of hell;\nIf Calvin feel Heaven's blessing, or its rod.\nThis cries there is, and that, there is no God.\nWhat shocks one part will edify the rest,\nNor with one system can they all be blest.\nThe very best will variously incline,\nAnd what rewards your virtue, punish mine.\nWhatever is, is right.  This world, 'tis true,\nWas made for Caesar--but for Titus too:\nAnd which more blest? who chained his country, say,\nOr he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?\n   \"But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed.\"\nWhat then?  Is the reward of virtue bread?\nThat, vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil;\nThe knave deserves it, when he tills the soil,\nThe knave deserves it, when he tempts the main,\nWhere folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.\nThe good man may be weak, be indolent;\nNor is his claim to plenty, but content.\nBut grant him riches, your demand is o'er?\n\"No--shall the good want health, the good want power?\"\nAdd health, and power, and every earthly thing,\n\"Why bounded power? why private? why no king?\"\nNay, why external for internal given?\nWhy is not man a god, and earth a heaven?\nWho ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive\nGod gives enough, while He has more to give:\nImmense the power, immense were the demand;\nSay, at what part of nature will they stand?\n   What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,\nThe soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,\nIs virtue's prize: A better would you fix?\nThen give humility a coach and six,\nJustice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown,\nOr public spirit its great cure, a crown.\nWeak, foolish man! will heaven reward us there\nWith the same trash mad mortals wish for here?\nThe boy and man an individual makes,\nYet sighest thou now for apples and for cakes?\nGo, like the Indian, in another life\nExpect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife:\nAs well as dream such trifles are assigned,\nAs toys and empires, for a God-like mind.\nRewards, that either would to virtue bring\nNo joy, or be destructive of the thing:\nHow oft by these at sixty are undone\nThe virtues of a saint at twenty-one!\nTo whom can riches give repute or trust,\nContent, or pleasure, but the good and just?\nJudges and senates have been bought for gold,\nEsteem and love were never to be sold.\nOh, fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,\nThe lover and the love of human kind,\nWhose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,\nBecause he wants a thousand pounds a year.\n   Honour and shame from no condition rise;\nAct well your part, there all the honour lies.\nFortune in men has some small difference made,\nOne flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;\nThe cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,\nThe friar hooded, and the monarch crowned,\n\"What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?\"\nI'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.\nYou'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,\nOr, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,\nWorth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow;\nThe rest is all but leather or prunella.\n   Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings,\nThat thou mayest be by kings, or wh***s of kings.\nBoast the pure blood of an illustrious race,\nIn quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece;\nBut by your fathers' worth if yours you rate,\nCount me those only who were good and great.\nGo! if your ancient, but ignoble blood\nHas crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,\nGo! and pretend your family is young;\nNor own, your fathers have been fools so long.\nWhat can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?\nAlas! not all the blood of all the Howards.\n   Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies?\n\"Where, but among the heroes and the wise?\"\nHeroes are much the same, the points agreed,\nFrom Macedonia's madman to the Swede;\nThe whole strange purpose of their lives, to find\nOr make, an enemy of all mankind?\nNot one looks backward, onward still he goes,\nYet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.\nNo less alike the politic and wise;\nAll sly slow things, with circumspective eyes;\nMen in their loose unguarded hours they take,\nNot that themselves are wise, but others weak.\nBut grant that those can conquer, these can cheat;\n'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:\nWho wickedly is wise, or madly brave,\nIs but the more a fool, the more a knave.\nWho noble ends by noble means obtains,\nOr failing, smiles in exile or in chains,\nLike good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed\nLike Socrates, that man is great indeed.\n   What's fame? a fancied life in others' breath,\nA thing beyond us, even before our death.\nJust what you hear, you have, and what's unknown\nThe same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own.\nAll that we feel of it begins and ends\nIn the small circle of our foes or friends;\nTo all beside as much an empty shade\nAn Eugene living, as a Caesar dead;\nAlike or when, or where, they shone, or shine,\nOr on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.\nA wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;\nAn honest man's the noblest work of God.\nFame but from death a villain's name can save,\nAs justice tears his body from the grave;\nWhen what the oblivion better were resigned,\nIs hung on high, to poison half mankind.\nAll fame is foreign, but of true desert;\nPlays round the head, but comes not to the heart:\nOne self-approving hour whole years outweighs\nOf stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;\nAnd more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,\nThan Caesar with a senate at his heels.\n   In parts superior what advantage lies?\nTell (for you can) what is it to be wise?\n'Tis but to know how little can be known;\nTo see all others' faults, and feel our own;\nCondemned in business or in arts to drudge,\nWithout a second or without a judge;\nTruths would you teach or save a sinking land,\nAll fear, none aid you, and few understand.\nPainful pre-eminence! yourself to view\nAbove life's weakness, and its comforts too.\n   Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account;\nMake fair deductions; see to what they mount;\nHow much of other each is sure to cost;\nHow each for other oft is wholly lost;\nHow inconsistent greater goods with these;\nHow sometimes life is risked, and always ease;\nThink, and if still the things thy envy call,\nSay, would'st thou be the man to whom they fall?\nTo sigh for ribands if thou art so silly,\nMark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy:\nIs yellow dirt the passion of thy life?\nLook but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife;\nIf parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,\nThe wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind:\nOr ravished with the whistling of a name,\nSee Cromwell; damned to everlasting fame!\nIf all, united, thy ambition call,\nFrom ancient story learn to scorn them all.\nThere, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great,\nSee the false scale of happiness complete!\nIn hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay,\nHow happy! those to ruin, these betray.\nMark by what wretched steps their glory grows,\nFrom dirt and seaweed as proud Venice rose;\nIn each how guilt and greatness equal ran,\nAnd all that raised the hero, sunk the man:\nNow Europe's laurels on their brows behold,\nBut stained with blood, or ill exchanged for gold;\nThen see them broke with toils or sunk with ease,\nOr infamous for plundered provinces.\nOh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame\nE'er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame;\nWhat greater bliss attends their close of life?\nSome greedy minion, or imperious wife.\nThe trophied arches, storeyed halls invade\nAnd haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade.\nAlas! not dazzled with their noontide ray,\nCompute the morn and evening to the day;\nThe whole amount of that enormous fame,\nA tale, that blends their glory with their shame;\n   Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know)\n\"Virtue alone is happiness below.\"\nThe only point where human bliss stands still,\nAnd tastes the good without the fall to ill;\nWhere only merit constant pay receives,\nIs blest in what it takes, and what it gives;\nThe joy unequalled, if its end it gain,\nAnd if it lose, attended with no pain;\nWithout satiety, though e'er so blessed,\nAnd but more relished as the more distressed:\nThe broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears,\nLess pleasing far than virtue's very tears:\nGood, from each object, from each place acquired\nFor ever exercised, yet never tired;\nNever elated, while one man's oppressed;\nNever dejected while another's blessed;\nAnd where no wants, no wishes can remain,\nSince but to wish more virtue, is to gain.\n   See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow!\nWhich who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:\nYet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,\nThe bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find;\nSlave to no sect, who takes no private road,\nBut looks through Nature up to Nature's God;\nPursues that chain which links the immense design,\nJoins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine;\nSees, that no being any bliss can know,\nBut touches some above, and some below;\nLearns, from this union of the rising whole,\nThe first, last purpose of the human soul;\nAnd knows, where faith, law, morals, all began,\nAll end, in love of God, and love of man.\n   For Him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,\nAnd opens still, and opens on his soul!\nTill lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,\nIt pours the bliss that fills up all the mind\nHe sees, why Nature plants in man alone\nHope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:\n(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind\nAre given in vain, but what they seek they find)\nWise is her present; she connects in this\nHis greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;\nAt once his own bright prospect to be blest,\nAnd strongest motive to assist the rest.\n   Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,\nGives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine.\nIs this too little for the boundless heart?\nExtend it, let thy enemies have part:\nGrasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,\nIn one close system of benevolence:\nHappier as kinder, in whate'er degree,\nAnd height of bliss but height of charity.\n   God loves from whole to parts: but human soul\nMust rise from individual to the whole.\nSelf-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,\nAs the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!\nThe centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,\nAnother still, and still another spreads;\nFriend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;\nHis country next; and next all human race;\nWide and more wide, the o'erflowings of the mind\nTake every creature in, of every kind;\nEarth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,\nAnd Heaven beholds its image in his breast.\n   Come, then, my friend! my genius! come along;\nOh, master of the poet, and the song!\nAnd while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,\nTo man's low passions, or their glorious ends,\nTeach me, like thee, in various nature wise,\nTo fall with dignity, with temper rise;\nFormed by thy converse, happily to steer\nFrom grave to gay, from lively to severe;\nCorrect with spirit, eloquent with ease,\nIntent to reason, or polite to please.\nOh! while along the stream of time thy name\nExpanded flies, and gathers all its fame,\nSay, shall my little bark attendant sail,\nPursue the triumph, and partake the gale?\nWhen statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,\nWhose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,\nShall then this verse to future age pretend\nThou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?\nThat urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art\nFrom sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;\nFrom wit's false mirror held up Nature's light;\nShowed erring pride, whatever is, is right;\nThat reason, passion, answer one great aim;\nThat true self-love and social are the same;\nThat virtue only makes our bliss below;\nAnd all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.\n\n\n\nTHE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.\nDEO OPT. MAX.\n\n\nFather of all! in every age,\n   In every clime adored,\nBy saint, by savage, and by sage,\n   Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!\n\nThou Great First Cause, least understood,\n   Who all my sense confined\nTo know but this, that Thou art good,\n   And that myself am blind;\n\nYet gave me, in this dark estate,\n   To see the good from ill;\nAnd binding Nature fast in fate,\n   Left free the human will.\n\nWhat conscience dictates to be done,\n   Or warns me not to do,\nThis, teach me more than Hell to shun,\n   That, more than Heaven pursue.\n\nWhat blessings Thy free bounty gives,\n   Let me not cast away;\nFor God is paid when man receives,\n   To enjoy is to obey.\n\nYet not to earth's contracted span\n   Thy goodness let me bound,\nOr think Thee Lord alone of man,\n   When thousand worlds are round:\n\nLet not this weak, unknowing hand\n   Presume Thy bolts to throw,\nAnd deal damnation round the land,\n   On each I judge Thy foe.\n\nIf I am right, Thy grace impart,\n   Still in the right to stay;\nIf I am wrong, oh, teach my heart\n   To find that better way.\n\nSave me alike from foolish pride,\n   Or impious discontent,\nAt aught Thy wisdom has denied,\n   Or aught Thy goodness lent.\n\nTeach me to feel another's woe,\n   To hide the fault I see;\nThat mercy I to others show,\n   That mercy show to me.\n\nMean though I am, not wholly so,\n   Since quickened by Thy breath;\nOh, lead me wheresoe'er I go,\n   Through this day's life or death.\n\nThis day, be bread and peace my lot:\n   All else beneath the sun,\nThou know'st if best bestowed or not;\n   And let Thy will be done.\n\nTo Thee, whose temple is all space,\n   Whose altar earth, sea, skies,\nOne chorus let all being raise,\n   All Nature's incense rise!\n\n\n\nMORAL ESSAYS,\nIN FOUR EPISTLES TO SEVERAL PERSONS.\n\n\n   Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se\n   Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:\n   Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso,\n   Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae,\n   Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque\n   Extenuantis eas consulto.--HOR. (Sat. I. X. 9-14.)\n\n\n\nEPISTLE I.  TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM.\n\nARGUMENT.\n\n\nOf the Knowledge and Characters of Men.\n\nI. That it is not sufficient for this knowledge to consider Man in the\nAbstract: Books will not serve the purpose, nor yet our own Experience\nsingly, v.1.  General maxims, unless they be formed upon both, will be\nbut notional, v.10.  Some Peculiarity in every man, characteristic to\nhimself, yet varying from himself, v.15.  Difficulties arising from our\nown Passions, Fancies, Faculties, etc., v.31.  The shortness of Life, to\nobserve in, and the uncertainty of the Principles of action in men, to\nobserve by, v.37, etc.  Our own Principle of action often hid from\nourselves, v.41.  Some few Characters plain, but in general confounded,\ndissembled, or inconsistent, v.51.  The same man utterly different in\ndifferent places and seasons, v.71.  Unimaginable weaknesses in the\ngreatest, v.70, etc.  Nothing constant and certain but God and Nature,\nv.95.  No judging of the Motives from the actions; the same actions\nproceeding from contrary Motives, and the same Motives influencing\ncontrary actions v.100.  II. Yet to form Characters, we can only take the\nstrongest actions of a man's life, and try to make them agree: The utter\nuncertainty of this, from Nature itself, and from Policy, v.120.\nCharacters given according to the rank of men of the world, v.135.  And\nsome reason for it, v.140.  Education alters the Nature, or at least\nCharacter of many, v.149.  Actions, Passions, Opinions, Manners, Humours,\nor Principles all subject to change.  No judging by Nature, from v.158 to\n178.  III. It only remains to find (if we can) his Ruling Passion: That\nwill certainly influence all the rest, and can reconcile the seeming or\nreal inconsistency of all his actions, v.175.  Instanced in the\nextraordinary character of Clodio, v.179.  A caution against mistaking\nsecond qualities for first, which will destroy all possibility of the\nknowledge of mankind, v.210.  Examples of the strength of the Ruling\nPassion, and its continuation to the last breath, v.222, etc.\n\nYes, you despise the man to books confined,\nWho from his study rails at human kind;\nThough what he learns he speaks, and may advance\nSome general maxims, or be right by chance.\nThe coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave,\nThat from his cage cries c**d, w**e, and knave,\nThough many a passenger he rightly call,\nYou hold him no philosopher at all.\n   And yet the fate of all extremes is such,\nMen may be read as well as books, too much.\nTo observations which ourselves we make,\nWe grow more partial for the observer's sake;\nTo written wisdom, as another's, less:\nMaxims are drawn from notions, those from guess.\nThere's some peculiar in each leaf and grain,\nSome unmarked fibre, or some varying vein:\nShall only man be taken in the gross?\nGrant but as many sorts of mind as moss.\n   That each from other differs, first confess;\nNext, that he varies from himself no less:\nAdd Nature's, custom's reason's passion's strife,\nAnd all opinion's colours cast on life.\n   Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,\nQuick whirls, and shifting eddies, of our minds?\nOn human actions reason though you can,\nIt may be reason, but it is not man:\nHis principle of action once explore,\nThat instant 'tis his principle no more.\nLike following life through creatures you dissect,\nYou lose it in the moment you detect.\n   Yet more; the difference is as great between\nThe optics seeing, as the object seen.\nAll manners take a tincture from our own;\nOr come discoloured through our passions shown.\nOr fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies,\nContracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.\n   Nor will life's stream for observation stay,\nIt hurries all too fast to mark their way:\nIn vain sedate reflections we would make,\nWhen half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.\nOft, in the passion's wild rotation tost,\nOur spring of action to ourselves is lost:\nTired, not determined, to the last we yield,\nAnd what comes then is master of the field.\nAs the last image of that troubled heap,\nWhen sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep\n(Though past the recollection of the thought),\nBecomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought:\nSomething as dim to our internal view,\nIs thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do.\n   True, some are open, and to all men known;\nOthers so very close, they're hid from none\n(So darkness strikes the sense no less than light),\nThus gracious Chandos is beloved at sight;\nAnd every child hates Shylock, though his soul\nStill sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.\nAt half mankind when generous Manly raves,\nAll know 'tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves:\nWhen universal homage Umbra pays,\nAll see 'tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise.\nWhen flattery glares, all hate it in a queen,\nWhile one there is who charms us with his spleen.\n   But these plain characters we rarely find;\nThough strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind:\nOr puzzling contraries confound the whole;\nOr affectations quite reverse the soul.\nThe dull, flat falsehood serves for policy;\nAnd in the cunning, truth itself's a lie:\nUnthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise;\nThe fool lies hid in inconsistencies.\n   See the same man, in vigour, in the gout;\nAlone, in company; in place, or out;\nEarly at business, and at hazard late;\nMad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate;\nDrunk at a borough, civil at a ball;\nFriendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall.\nCatius is ever moral, ever grave,\nThinks who endures a knave is next a knave,\nSave just at dinner--then prefers, no doubt,\nA rogue with venison to a saint without.\n   Who would not praise Patritio's high desert,\nHis hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart,\nHis comprehensive head! all interests weighed,\nAll Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed.\nHe thanks you not, his pride is in piquet,\nNewmarket-fame, and judgment at a bet.\n   What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron)\nOtho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?\nA perjured prince a leaden saint revere,\nA godless regent tremble at a star?\nThe throne a bigot keep, a genius quit,\nFaithless through piety, and duped through wit?\nEurope a woman, child, or dotard rule,\nAnd just her wisest monarch made a fool?\n   Know, God and Nature only are the same:\nIn man, the judgment shoots at flying game,\nA bird of passage! gone as soon as found,\nNow in the moon, perhaps, now under ground.\n   In vain the sage, with retrospective eye,\nWould from the apparent what conclude the why,\nInfer the motive from the deed, and show,\nThat what we chanced was what we meant to do.\nBehold! if fortune or a mistress frowns,\nSome plunge in business, others shave their crowns:\nTo ease the soul of one oppressive weight,\nThis quits an empire, that embroils a state:\nThe same adust complexion has impelled\nCharles to the convent, Philip to the field.\n   Not always actions show the man: we find\nWho does a kindness, is not therefore kind;\nPerhaps prosperity becalmed his breast,\nPerhaps the wind just shifted from the east:\nNot therefore humble he who seeks retreat,\nPride guides his steps, and bids him shun the great:\nWho combats bravely is not therefore brave,\nHe dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave:\nWho reasons wisely is not therefore wise,\nHis pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.\n   But grant that actions best discover man;\nTake the most strong, and sort them as you can.\nThe few that glare each character must mark;\nYou balance not the many in the dark.\nWhat will you do with such as disagree?\nSuppress them, or miscall them policy?\nMust then at once (the character to save)\nThe plain rough hero turn a crafty knave?\nAlas! in truth the man but changed his mind,\nPerhaps was sick, in love, or had not dined.\nAsk why from Britain Caesar would retreat?\nCaesar himself might whisper he was beat.\nWhy risk the world's great empire for a punk?\nCaesar perhaps might answer he was drunk.\nBut, sage historians! 'tis your task to prove\nOne action conduct; one, heroic love.\n   'Tis from high life high characters are drawn;\nA saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;\nA judge is just, a chancellor juster still;\nA gownman, learn'd; a bishop, what you will;\nWise, if a minister; but, if a king,\nMore wise, more learned, more just, more everything.\nCourt-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,\nBorn where Heaven's influence scarce can penetrate:\nIn life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,\nThey please as beauties, here as wonders strike.\nThough the same sun with all-diffusive rays\nBlush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze,\nWe prize the stronger effort of his power,\nAnd justly set the gem above the flower.\n   'Tis education forms the common mind;\nJust as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.\nBoastful and rough, your first son is a squire;\nThe next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar;\nTom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave;\nWill sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave:\nIs he a Churchman? then he's fond of power: }\nA Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour: }\nA smart Freethinker? all things in an hour. }\n   Ask men's opinions: Scoto now shall tell\nHow trade increases, and the world goes well;\nStrike off his pension, by the setting sun,\nAnd Britain, if not Europe, is undone.\n   That gay Freethinker, a fine talker once,\nWhat turns him now a stupid silent dunce?\nSome god, or spirit he has lately found:\nOr chanced to meet a minister that frowned.\nJudge we by Nature? habit can efface,\nInterest o'ercome, or policy take place:\nBy actions? those uncertainty divides:\nBy passions? these dissimulation hides:\nOpinions? they still take a wider range:\nFind, if you can, in what you cannot change.\n   Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,\nTenets with books, and principles with times.\n\n   Search then the ruling passion: there, alone,\nThe wild are constant, and the cunning known;\nThe fool consistent, and the false sincere;\nPriests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.\nThis clue once found, unravels all the rest,\nThe prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest.\nWharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,\nWhose ruling passion was the lust of praise:\nBorn with whate'er could win it from the wise,\nWomen and fools must like him or he dies;\nThough wondering senates hung on all he spoke,\nThe club must hail him master of the joke.\nShall parts so various aim at nothing new!\nHe'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too.\nThen turns repentant, and his God adores\nWith the same spirit that he drinks and wh***s;\nEnough if all around him but admire,\nAnd now the punk applaud, and now the friar.\nThus with each gift of nature and of art,\nAnd wanting nothing but an honest heart;\nGrown all to all, from no one vice exempt;\nAnd most contemptible, to shun contempt:\nHis passion still, to covet general praise,\nHis life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;\nA constant bounty which no friend has made;\nAn angel tongue, which no man can persuade;\nA fool, with more of wit than half mankind,\nToo rash for thought, for action too refined:\nA tyrant to the wife his heart approves;\nA rebel to the very king he loves;\nHe dies, sad outcast of each church and state,\nAnd, harder still! flagitious, yet not great.\nAsk you why Wharton broke through every rule?\n'Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool.\n   Nature well known, no prodigies remain,\nComets are regular, and Wharton plain.\n   Yet, in this search, the wisest may mistake,\nIf second qualities for first they take.\nWhen Catiline by rapine swelled his store;\nWhen Caesar made a noble dame a wh***;\nIn this the lust, in that the avarice\nWere means, not ends; ambition was the vice.\nThat very Caesar, born in Scipio's days,\nHad aimed, like him, by chastity at praise.\nLucullus, when frugality could charm,\nHad roasted turnips in the Sabine farm.\n   In vain the observer eyes the builder's toil,\nBut quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile.\nIn this one passion man can strength enjoy,\nAs fits give vigour, just when they destroy.\nTime, that on all things lays his lenient hand,\nYet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand.\nConsistent in our follies and our sins,\nHere honest Nature ends as she begins.\n   Old politicians chew on wisdom past,\nAnd totter on in business to the last;\nAs weak, as earnest, and as gravely out,\nAs sober Lanesb'row dancing in the gout.\n   Behold a reverend sire, whom want of grace\nHas made the father of a nameless race,\nShoved from the wall perhaps, or rudely pressed\nBy his own son, that passes by unblessed:\nStill to his haunt he crawls on knocking knees,\nAnd envies every sparrow that he sees.\n   A salmon's belly, Helluo, was thy fate;\nThe doctor called, declares all help too late:\n\"Mercy!\" cries Helluo, \"mercy on my soul!\nIs there no hope!--Alas!--then bring the jowl.\"\n   The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend,\nStill tries to save the hallowed taper's end,\nCollects her breath, as ebbing life retires,\nFor one puff more, and in that puff expires.\n   \"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke\"\n(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke);\n\"No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace\nWrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face:\nOne would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead--\nAnd--Betty--give this cheek a little red.\"\n   The courtier smooth, who forty years had shined\nAn humble servant to all human kind,\nJust brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir,\n\"If--where I'm going--I could serve you, sir?\"\n\"I give and I devise\" (old Euclio said,\nAnd sighed) \"my lands and tenements to Ned.\"\n\"Your money, sir?\"  \"My money, sir? what, all?\nWhy--if I must\" (then wept)--\"I give it Paul.\"\n\"The Manor, sir?\"--\"The Manor! hold,\" he cried,\n\"Not that,--I cannot part with that\"--and died.\n   And you! brave Cobham, to the latest breath\nShall feel your ruling passion strong in death:\nSuch in those moments as in all the past,\n\"Oh, save my country, Heaven!\" shall be your last.\n\n\nEPISTLE II.  TO A LADY.\n\n\nOf the Characters of Women.\n\nNothing so true as what you once let fall,\n\"Most women have no characters at all.\"\nMatter too soft a lasting mark to bear,\nAnd best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.\n   How many pictures of one nymph we view,\nAll how unlike each other, all how true!\nArcadia's countess, here, in ermined pride,\nIs, there, Pastora by a fountain side.\nHere Fannia, leering on her own good man,\nAnd there, a naked Leda with a swan.\nLet then the fair one beautifully cry,\nIn Magdalen's loose hair, and lifted eye,\nOr dressed in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,\nWith simpering angels, palms, and harps divine;\nWhether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,\nIf folly grow romantic, I must paint it.\n\n   Come then, the colours and the ground prepare!\nDip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;\nChoose a firm cloud, before it fall, and in it\nCatch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.\n\n   Rufa, whose eye, quick-glancing o'er the park\nAttracts each light gay meteor of a spark,\nAgrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke,\nAs Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock;\nOr Sappho at her toilet's greasy task,\nWith Sappho fragrant at an evening masque:\nSo morning insects that in muck begun,\nShine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting sun.\n\n   How soft is Silia! fearful to offend;\nThe frail one's advocate, the weak one's friend:\nTo her, Calista proved her conduct nice;\nAnd good Simplicius asks of her advice.\nSudden, she storms! she raves!  You tip the wink,\nBut spare your censure; Silia does not drink.\nAll eyes may see from what the change arose,\nAll eyes may see--a pimple on her nose.\n\n   Papillia, wedded to her am'rous spark,\nSighs for the shades--\"How charming is a park!\"\nA park is purchased, but the fair he sees\nAll bathed in tears--\"Oh, odious, odious trees!\"\n\n   Ladies, like variegated tulips show;\n'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe;\nFine by defect, and delicately weak,\nTheir happy spots the nice admirer take,\n'Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarmed,\nAwed without virtue, without beauty charmed;\nHer tongue bewitched as oddly as her eyes,\nLess wit than mimic, more a wit than wise;\nStrange graces still, and stranger flights she had,\nWas just not ugly, and was just not mad;\nYet ne'er so sure our passion to create,\nAs when she touched the brink of all we hate.\n\n   Narcissa's nature, tolerably mild,\nTo make a wash, would hardly stew a child;\nHas even been proved to grant a lover's prayer,\nAnd paid a tradesman once to make him stare;\nGave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim,\nAnd made a widow happy, for a whim.\nWhy then declare good-nature is her scorn,\nWhen 'tis by that alone she can be borne?\nWhy pique all mortals, yet affect a name?\nA fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame:\nNow deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs,\nNow drinking citron with his grace and Chartres:\nNow Conscience chills her, and now Passion burns;\nAnd Atheism and Religion take their turns;\nA very heathen in the carnal part,\nYet still a sad, good Christian at her heart.\n\n   What then? let blood and body bear the fault,\nHer head's untouched, that noble seat of thought:\nSuch this day's doctrine--in another fit\nShe sins with poets through pure love of wit.\nWhat has not fired her bosom or her brain?\nCaesar and Tall-boy, Charles and Charlemagne.\nAs Helluo, late dictator of the feast,\nThe nose of Hautgout, and the tip of taste,\nCritic'd your wine, and analysed your meat,\nYet on plain pudding deigned at home to eat;\nSo Philomede, lecturing all mankind\nOn the soft passion, and the taste refined,\nThe address, the delicacy--stoops at once,\nAnd makes her hearty meal upon a dunce.\n   Flavia's a wit, has too much sense to pray;\nTo toast our wants and wishes, is her way;\nNor asks of God, but of her stars, to give\nThe mighty blessing, \"while we live, to live.\"\nThen all for death, that opiate of the soul!\nLucretia's dagger, Rosamonda's bowl.\nSay, what can cause such impotence of mind?\nA spark too fickle, or a spouse too kind.\nWise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please;\nWith too much spirit to be e'er at ease;\nWith too much quickness ever to be taught;\nWith too much thinking to have common thought:\nYou purchase pain with all that joy can give,\nAnd die of nothing but a rage to live.\n   Turn then from wits; and look on Simo's mate,\nNo ass so meek, no ass so obstinate.\nOr her, that owns her faults, but never mends,\nBecause she's honest, and the best of friends.\nOr her, whose life the Church and scandal share,\nFor ever in a passion, or a prayer.\nOr her, who laughs at hell, but (like her Grace)\nCries, \"Ah! how charming, if there's no such place!\"\nOr who in sweet vicissitude appears\nOf mirth and opium, ratafie and tears,\nThe daily anodyne, and nightly draught,\nTo kill those foes to fair ones, time and thought.\nWoman and fool are two hard things to hit;\nFor true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.\n   But what are these to great Atossa's mind?\nScarce once herself, by turns all womankind!\nWho, with herself, or others, from her birth\nFinds all her life one warfare upon earth:\nShines in exposing knaves, and painting fools,\nYet is, whate'er she hates and ridicules.\nNo thought advances, but her eddy brain\nWhisks it about, and down it goes again.\nFull sixty years the world has been her trade,\nThe wisest fool much time has ever made\nFrom loveless youth to unrespected age,\nNo passion gratified except her rage.\nSo much the fury still outran the wit,\nThe pleasure missed her, and the scandal hit.\nWho breaks with her, provokes revenge from hell,\nBut he's a bolder man who dares be well.\nHer every turn with violence pursued,\nNor more a storm her hate than gratitude:\nTo that each passion turns, or soon or late;\nLove, if it makes her yield, must make her hate:\nSuperiors? death! and equals? what a curse!\nBut an inferior not dependent? worse.\nOffend her, and she knows not to forgive;\nOblige her, and she'll hate you while you live:\nBut die, and she'll adore you--then the bust\nAnd temple rise--then fall again to dust.\nLast night, her lord was all that's good and great;\nA knave this morning, and his will a cheat.\nStrange! by the means defeated of the ends,\nBy spirit robbed of power, by warmth of friend\nBy wealth of followers! without one distress\nSick of herself through very selfishness!\nAtossa, cursed with every granted prayer,\nChildless with all her children, wants an heir.\nTo heirs unknown descends the unguarded store,\nOr wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor.\n   Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,\nAsks no firm hand, and no unerring line;\nSome wandering touches, some reflected light,\nSome flying stroke alone can hit 'em right:\nFor how should equal colours do the knack?\nChameleons who can paint in white and black?\n   \"Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot\"--\nNature in her then erred not, but forgot.\n\"With every pleasing, every prudent part,\nSay, what can Chloe want?\"--She wants a heart.\nShe speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought;\nBut never, never, reached one generous thought.\nVirtue she finds too painful an endeavour,\nContent to dwell in decencies for ever.\nSo very reasonable, so unmoved,\nAs never yet to love, or to be loved.\nShe, while her lover pants upon her breast,\nCan mark the figures on an Indian chest;\nAnd when she sees her friend in deep despair,\nObserves how much a chintz exceeds mohair.\nForbid it, Heaven, a favour or a debt\nShe e'er should cancel--but she may forget.\nSafe is your secret still in Chloe's ear;\nBut none of Chloe's shall you ever hear.\nOf all her dears she never slandered one,\nBut cares not if a thousand are undone.\nWould Chloe know if you're alive or dead?\nShe bids her footman put it in her head.\nChloe is prudent--would you too be wise?\nThen never break your heart when Chloe dies.\n   One certain portrait may (I grant) be seen,\nWhich Heaven has varnished out, and made a _Queen_.\nThe same for ever! and described by all\nWith truth and goodness, as with crown and ball.\nPoets heap virtues, painters gems at will,\nAnd show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.\n'Tis well--but, artists! who can paint or write,\nTo draw the naked is your true delight.\nThat robe of quality so struts and swells,\nNone see what parts of nature it conceals:\nThe exactest traits of body or of mind,\nWe owe to models of an humble kind.\nIf Queensbury to strip there's no compelling,\n'Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen,\nFrom peer or bishop 'tis no easy thing\nTo draw the man who loves his God or king:\nAlas! I copy (or my draught would fail)\nFrom honest Mah'met, or plain Parson Hale.\n   But grant in public men sometimes are shown,\nA woman's seen in private life alone:\nOur bolder talents in full light displayed;\nYour virtues open fairest in the shade.\nBred to disguise, in public 'tis you hide;\nThere, none distinguish 'twixt your shame or pride,\nWeakness or delicacy; all so nice,\nThat each may seem a virtue or a vice.\n   In men, we various ruling passions find;\nIn women, two almost divide the kind:\nThose, only fixed they first or last obey--\nThe love of pleasure, and the love of sway.\n   That, Nature gives; and where the lesson taught\nIs but to please, can pleasure seem a fault?\nExperience, this; by man's oppression curst,\nThey seek the second not to lose the first.\n   Men, some to business, some to pleasure take;\nBut every woman is at heart a rake:\nMen, some to quiet, some to public strife;\nBut every lady would be queen for life.\n   Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens!\nPower all their end, but beauty all the means:\nIn youth they conquer, with so wild a rage,\nAs leaves them scarce a subject in their age:\nFor foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam;\nNo thought of peace or happiness at home.\nBut wisdom's triumph is well-timed retreat,\nAs hard a science to the fair as great!\nBeauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,\nYet hate repose, and dread to be alone,\nWorn out in public, weary every eye,\nNor leave one sigh behind them when they die.\n   Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue,\nStill out of reach, yet never out of view;\nSure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most,\nTo covet flying, and regret when lost:\nAt last, to follies youth could scarce defend,\nIt grows their age's prudence to pretend;\nAshamed to own they gave delight before,\nReduced to feign it, when they give no more:\nAs hags hold Sabbaths, less for joy than spite,\nSo these their merry, miserable night;\nStill round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,\nAnd haunt the places where their honour died.\n   See how the world its veterans rewards!\nA youth of frolics, an old age of cards;\nFair to no purpose, artful to no end;\nYoung without lovers, old without a friend;\nA fop their passion, but their prize a sot;\nAlive, ridiculous; and dead, forgot!\n   Ah! friend! to dazzle let the vain design;\nTo raise the thought and touch the heart be thine!\nThat charm shall grow, while what fatigues the ring,\nFlaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing:\nSo when the sun's broad beam has tired the sight,\nAll mild ascends the moon's more sober light;\nSerene in virgin modesty she shines,\nAnd unobserved the glaring orb declines.\n   Oh! blest with temper whose unclouded ray\nCan make to-morrow cheerful as to-day,\nShe, who can love a sister's charms, or hear\nSighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;\nShe, who ne'er answers till a husband cools,\nOr, if she rules him, never shows she rules;\nCharms by accepting, by submitting sways,\nYet has her humour most, when she obeys;\nLet fops or fortune fly which way they will;\nDisdains all loss of tickets, or Codille:\nSpleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,\nAnd mistress of herself, though China fall.\n   And yet, believe me, good as well as ill,\nWoman's at best a contradiction still.\nHeaven, when it strives to polish all it can\nIts last best work, but forms a softer man;\nPicks from each sex, to make the fav'rite blest,\nYour love of pleasure, or desire of rest:\nBlends, in exception to all general rules,\nYour taste of follies, with our scorn of fools:\nReserve with frankness, art with truth allied,\nCourage with softness, modesty with pride;\nFixed principles, with fancy ever new;\nShakes all together, and produces--You.\n   Be this a woman's fame: with this unblest,\nToasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest.\nThis Phoebus promised (I forget the year)\nWhen those blue eyes first opened on the sphere;\nAscendant Phoebus watched that hour with care,\nAverted half your parents' simple prayer,\nAnd gave you beauty, but denied the pelf\nThat buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself.\nThe gen'rous god, who wit and gold refines,\nAnd ripens spirits as he ripens mines,\nKept dross for duchesses--the world shall know it--\nTo you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet.\n\n\nEPISTLE III.  TO ALLEN LORD BATHURST.\n\nARGUMENT.\n\n\nOf the use of Riches.\n\nThat it is known to few, most falling into one of the extremes, Avarice\nor Profusion, v.1, etc.  The point discussed, whether the invention of\nmoney has been more commodious or pernicious to Mankind, v.21 to 77.  That\nRiches, either to the Avaricious or the Prodigal, cannot afford\nHappiness, scarcely Necessaries, v.89-160.  That Avarice is an absolute\nFrenzy, without an end or purpose, v.113, etc., 152.  Conjectures about\nthe motives of Avaricious men, v.121 to 153.  That the conduct of men,\nwith respect to Riches, can only be accounted for by the Order of\nProvidence, which works the general good out of extremes, and brings all\nto its great End by perpetual Revolutions, v.161 to 178.  How a Miser\nacts upon Principles which appear to him reasonable, v.179.  How a\nProdigal does the same, v.199.  The due Medium and true use of Riches,\nv.219.  The Man of Ross, v.250.  The fate of the Profuse and the\nCovetous, in two examples; both miserable in Life and in Death, v.300,\netc.  The Story of Sir Balaam, v.339 to the end.\n\n   P. Who shall decide, when doctors disagree,\nAnd soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?\nYou hold the word, from Jove to Momus given,\nThat man was made the standing jest of Heaven;\nAnd gold but sent to keep the fools in play,\nFor some to heap, and some to throw away.\n   But I, who think more highly of our kind,\n(And surely, Heaven and I are of a mind)\nOpine, that Nature, as in duty bound,\nDeep hid the shining mischief under ground:\nBut when by man's audacious labour won,\nFlamed forth this rival to its sire, the sun,\nThen careful Heaven supplied two sorts of men,\nTo squander these, and those to hide again.\n   Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,\nWe find our tenets just the same at last.\nBoth fairly owning Riches, in effect,\nNo grace of Heaven or token of th' elect;\nGiven to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil,\nTo Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the devil.\n   B. What Nature wants, commodious gold bestows,\n'Tis thus we eat the bread another sows.\n   P. But how unequal it bestows, observe;\n'Tis thus we riot, while, who sow it, starve:\nWhat Nature wants (a phrase I much distrust)\nExtends to luxury, extends to lust:\nUseful, I grant, it serves what life requires,\nBut, dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.\n   B. Trade it may help, society extend.\n   P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend.\n   B. It raises armies in a nation's aid.\n   P. But bribes a senate, and the land's betrayed.\nIn vain may heroes fight, and patriots rave;\nIf secret gold sap on from knave to knave.\nOnce, we confess, beneath the patriot's cloak,\nFrom the cracked bag the dropping guinea spoke,\nAnd jingling down the back-stairs, told the crew,\n\"Old Cato is as great a rogue as you.\"\nBlest paper-credit! last and best supply!\nThat lends corruption lighter wings to fly!\nGold imped by thee can compass hardest things,\nCan pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;\nA single leaf shall waft an army o'er,\nOr ship off senates to a distant shore;\nA leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro\nOur fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:\nPregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,\nAnd silent sells a king, or buys a queen.\n   Oh! that such bulky bribes as all might see,\nStill, as of old, encumbered villainy!\nCould France or Rome divert our brave designs,\nWith all their brandies or with all their wines?\nWhat could they more than knights and squires confound,\nOr water all the Quorum ten miles round?\nA statesman's slumbers how this speech would spoil!\n\"Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil;\nHuge bales of British cloth blockade the door;\nA hundred oxen at your levee roar.\"\n   Poor Avarice one torment more would find;\nNor could Profusion squander all in kind.\nAstride his cheese Sir Morgan might we meet;\nAnd Worldly crying coals from street to street,\nWhom with a wig so wild, and mien so mazed,\nPity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed.\nHad Colepepper's whole wealth been hops and hogs,\nCould he himself have sent it to the dogs?\nHis Grace will game: to White's a bull be led,\nWith spurning heels and with a butting head.\nTo White's be carried, as to ancient games,\nFair coursers, vases, and alluring dames.\nShall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep,\nBear home six w****s, and make his lady weep?\nOr soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine,\nDrive to St. James's a whole herd of swine?\nOh, filthy cheek on all industrious skill,\nTo spoil the nation's last great trade, Quadrille!\nSince then, my lord, on such a world we fall,\nWhat say you?  B. Say?  Why, take it, gold and all.\n   P. What Riches give us let us then inquire:\nMeat, fire, and clothes.  B. What more?  P. Meat, clothes, and fire.\nIs this too little? would you more than live?\nAlas! 'tis more than Turner finds they give.\nAlas! 'tis more than (all his visions past)\nUnhappy Wharton, waking, found at last!\nWhat can they give? to dying Hopkins, heirs;\nTo Chartres, vigour; Japhet, nose and ears?\nCan they in gems bid pallid Hippia glow,\nIn Fulvia's buckle ease the throbs below;\nOr heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail,\nWith all th' embroid'ry plastered at thy tail?\nThey might (were Harpax not too wise to spend)\nGive Harpax' self the blessing of a friend;\nOr find some doctor that would save the life\nOf wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock's wife:\nBut thousands die, without or this or that,\nDie, and endow a college, or a cat.\nTo some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate,\nT' enrich a bastard, or a son they hate.\n   Perhaps you think the poor might have their part?\nBond damns the poor, and hates them from his heart:\nThe grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule,\nThat \"every man in want is knave or fool:\"\n\"God cannot love,\" says Blunt, with tearless eyes,\n\"The wretch He starves\"--and piously denies:\nBut the good bishop, with a meeker air,\nAdmits, and leaves them--Providence's care.\n   Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,\nEach does but hate his neighbour as himself:\nDamned to the mines, an equal fate betides\nThe slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.\n   B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own,\nMust act on motives powerful, though unknown.\n   P. Some war, some plague, or famine they foresee,\nSome revelation hid from you and me.\nWhy Shylock wants a meal, the cause is found--\nHe thinks a loaf will rise to fifty pound.\nWhat made directors cheat in South-Sea year?\nTo live on venison when it sold so dear.\nAsk you why Phryne the whole auction buys?\nPhryne foresees a general excise.\nWhy she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?\nAlas! they fear a man will cost a plum.\n   Wise Peter sees the world's respect for gold,\nAnd therefore hopes this nation may be sold:\nGlorious ambition! Peter, swell thy store,\nAnd be what Rome's great Didius was before.\n   The crown of Poland, venal twice an age,\nTo just three millions stinted modest Gage.\nBut nobler scenes Maria's dreams unfold,\nHereditary realms, and worlds of gold.\nCongenial souls! whose life one av'rice joins,\nAnd one fate buries in th' Asturian mines.\n   Much injured Blunt! why bears he Britain's hate?\nA wizard told him in these words our fate:\n\"At length corruption, like a gen'ral flood\n(So long by watchful Ministers withstood),\nShall deluge all; and av'rice, creeping on,\nSpread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun;\nStatesman and patriot ply alike the stocks,\nPeeress and butler share alike the box,\nAnd judges job, and bishops bite the town,\nAnd mighty dukes pack cards for half-a-crown.\nSee Britain sunk in Lucre's sordid charms,\nAnd France revenged of Anne's and Edward's arms!\"\n'Twas no Court-badge, great Scriv'ner! fired thy brain,\nNor lordly luxury, nor City gain:\nNo, 'twas thy righteous end, ashamed to see\nSenates degen'rate, patriots disagree,\nAnd, nobly wishing party-rage to cease,\nTo buy both sides, and give thy country peace.\n   \"All this is madness,\" cries a sober sage:\nBut who, my friend, has reason in his rage?\n\"The ruling passion, be it what it will,\nThe ruling passion conquers reason still.\"\nLess mad the wildest whimsey we can frame,\nThan even that passion, if it has no aim;\nFor though such motives folly you may call,\nThe folly's greater to have none at all.\n   Hear then the truth: \"'Tis Heaven each passion sends,\nAnd different men directs to different ends.\nExtremes in nature equal good produce,\nExtremes in man concur to gen'ral use.\"\nAsk we what makes one keep, and one bestow?\nThat POWER who bids the ocean ebb and flow,\nBids seed-time, harvest, equal course maintain,\nThrough reconciled extremes of drought and rain,\nBuilds life on death, on change duration founds,\nAnd gives th' eternal wheels to know their rounds.\n   Riches, like insects, when concealed they lie,\nWait but for wings, and in their season fly.\nWho sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,\nSees but a backward steward for the poor;\nThis year a reservoir, to keep and spare;\nThe next, a fountain, spouting through his heir,\nIn lavish streams to quench a country's thirst,\nAnd men and dogs shall drink him till they burst.\n   Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth,\nYet was not Cotta void of wit or worth:\nWhat though (the use of barbarous spits forgot)\nHis kitchen vied in coolness with his grot?\nHis court with nettles, moats with cresses stored,\nWith soups unbought and salads blessed his board?\nIf Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more\nThan Brahmins, saints, and sages did before;\nTo cram the rich was prodigal expense,\nAnd who would take the poor from Providence?\nLike some lone Chartreux stands the good old hall,\nSilence without, and fasts within the wall;\nNo raftered roofs with dance and tabor sound,\nNo noontide bell invites the country round;\nTenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey,\nAnd turn th' unwilling steeds another way;\nBenighted wanderers, the forest o'er,\nCurse the saved candle and unopening door;\nWhile the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate,\nAffrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.\n   Not so his son; he marked this oversight,\nAnd then mistook reverse of wrong for right.\n(For what to shun will no great knowledge need;\nBut what to follow is a task indeed.)\nYet sure, of qualities deserving praise,\nMore go to ruin fortunes, than to raise.\nWhat slaughtered hecatombs, what floods of wine,\nFill the capacious squire, and deep divine!\nYet no mean motive this profusion draws;\nHis oxen perish in his country's cause;\n'Tis George and Liberty that crowns the cup,\nAnd zeal for that great house which eats him up.\nThe woods recede around the naked seat;\nThe sylvans groan--no matter--for the fleet;\nNext goes his wool--to clothe our valiant bands;\nLast, for his country's love, he sells his lands.\nTo town he comes, completes the nation's hope,\nAnd heads the bold train-bands, and burns a Pope.\nAnd shall not Britain now reward his toils,\nBritain, that pays her patriots with her spoils?\nIn vain at Court the bankrupt pleads his cause,\nHis thankless country leaves him to her laws.\n   The sense to value riches, with the art\nT' enjoy them, and the virtue to impart,\nNot meanly, nor ambitiously pursued,\nNot sunk by sloth, nor raised by servitude;\nTo balance fortune by a just expense,\nJoin with economy, magnificence;\nWith splendour, charity; with plenty, health;\nO teach us, Bathurst! yet unspoiled by wealth!\nThat secret rare, between the extremes to move\nOf mad good-nature, and of mean self-love.\n   B. To worth or want well weighed, be bounty given,\nAnd ease, or emulate, the care of Heaven\n(Whose measure full o'erflows on human race);\nMend Fortune's fault, and justify her grace.\nWealth in the gross is death, but life diffused;\nAs poison heals, in just proportion used:\nIn heaps, like ambergrise, a stink it lies,\nBut well dispersed, is incense to the skies.\n   P. Who starves by nobles, or with nobles eats?\nThe wretch that trusts them, and the rogue that cheats.\nIs there a lord who knows a cheerful noon\nWithout a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon?\nWhose table, wit or modest merit share,\nUnelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or play'r?\nWho copies yours or Oxford's better part,\nTo ease the oppressed, and raise the sinking heart?\nWhere'er he shines, O Fortune, gild the scene,\nAnd angels guard him in the golden mean!\nThere, English bounty yet awhile may stand,\nAnd Honour linger ere it leaves the land.\n   But all our praises why should lords engross?\nRise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross:\nPleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,\nAnd rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.\nWho hung with woods you mountain's sultry brow?\nFrom the dry rock who bade the waters flow?\nNot to the skies in useless columns tost,\nOr in proud falls magnificently lost,\nBut clear and artless, pouring through the plain\nHealth to the sick, and solace to the swain.\nWhose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?\nWhose seats the weary traveller repose?\nWho taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?\n\"The Man of Ross,\" each lisping babe replies.\nBehold the market-place with poor o'erspread!\nThe Man of Ross divides the weekly bread;\nHe feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,\nWhere age and want sit smiling at the gate;\nHim portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest,\nThe young who labour, and the old who rest.\nIs any sick? the Man of Ross relieves,\nPrescribes, attends, the medicine makes, and gives.\nIs there a variance? enter but his door,\nBaulked are the courts, and contest is no more.\nDespairing quacks with curses fled the place,\nAnd vile attorneys, now a useless race.\n   B. Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue\nWhat all so wish, but want the power to do!\nOh say, what sums that generous hand supply?\nWhat mines, to swell that boundless charity?\n   P. Of debts, and taxes, wife and children clear,\nThis man possest--five hundred pounds a year.\nBlush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze!\nYe little stars, hide your diminished rays!\n   B. And what? no monument, inscription, stone?\nHis race, his form, his name almost unknown?\n   P. Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame,\nWill never mark the marble with his name;\nGo, search it there, where to be born and die,\nOf rich and poor makes all the history;\nEnough, that virtue filled the space between;\nProved, by the ends of being, to have been.\nWhen Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend\nThe wretch, who living saved a candle's end:\nShouldering God's altar a vile image stands,\nBelies his features, nay, extends his hands;\nThat livelong wig, which Gorgon's self might own,\nEternal buckle takes in Parian stone.\nBehold what blessings wealth to life can lend!\nAnd see what comfort it affords our end.\n   In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,\nThe floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,\nOn once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,\nWith tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,\nThe George and Garter dangling from that bed\nWhere tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,\nGreat Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,\nThat life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!--\nGallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,\nThe bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;\nOr just as gay, at council, in a ring\nOf mimic'd statesmen and their merry king.\nNo wit to flatter left of all his store!\nNo fool to laugh at, which he valued more.\nThere, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,\nAnd fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.\n   His grace's fate sage Cutler could foresee,\nAnd well (he thought) advised him, \"Live like me.\"\nAs well his grace replied, \"Like you, Sir John?\nThat I can do, when all I have is gone.\"\nResolve me, Reason, which of these is worse,\nWant with a full, or with an empty purse?\nThy life more wretched, Cutler, was confessed,\nArise, and tell me, was thy death more blessed?\nCutler saw tenants break, and houses fall,\nFor very want; he could not build a wall.\nHis only daughter in a stranger's power,\nFor very want; he could not pay a dower.\nA few grey hairs his reverend temples crowned,\n'Twas very want that sold them for two pound.\nWhat even denied a cordial at his end,\nBanished the doctor, and expelled the friend?\nWhat but a want, which you perhaps think mad,\nYet numbers feel the want of what he had!\nCutler and Brutus, dying, both exclaim,\n\"Virtue! and wealth! what are ye but a name!\"\n   Say, for such worth are other worlds prepared?\nOr are they both in this their own reward?\nA knotty point! to which we now proceed.\nBut you are tired--I'll tell a tale.   B. Agreed.\n   P. Where London's column, pointing at the skies,\nLike a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies;\nThere dwelt a citizen of sober fame,\nA plain good man, and Balaam was his name;\nReligious, punctual, frugal, and so forth;\nHis word would pass for more than he was worth.\nOne solid dish his week-day meal affords,\nAn added pudding solemnised the Lord's;\nConstant at church, and Change; his gains were sure,\nHis givings rare, save farthings to the poor.\nThe devil was piqued such saintship to behold,\nAnd longed to tempt him like good Job of old:\nBut Satan now is wiser than of yore,\nAnd tempts by making rich, not making poor.\n   Roused by the prince of Air, the whirlwinds sweep\nThe surge, and plunge his father in the deep;\nThen full against his Cornish lands they roar,\nAnd two rich shipwrecks bless the lucky shore.\n   Sir Balaam now, he lives like other folks,\nHe takes his chirping pint, and cracks his jokes;\n\"Live like yourself,\" was soon my lady's word;\nAnd lo! two puddings smoked upon the board.\n   Asleep and naked as an Indian lay,\nAn honest factor stole a gem away:\nHe pledged it to the knight; the knight had wit,\nSo kept the diamond, and the rogue was bit.\nSome scruple rose, but thus he eased his thought,\n\"I'll now give sixpence where I gave a groat;\nWhere once I went to church, I'll now go twice--\nAnd am so clear, too, of all other vice.\"\n   The Tempter saw his time; the work he plied;\nStocks and subscriptions pour on every side,\n'Till all the demon makes his full descent\nIn one abundant shower of cent. per cent.,\nSinks deep within him, and possesses whole,\nThen dubs director, and secures his soul.\n   Behold Sir Balaam, now a man of spirit,\nAscribes his gettings to his parts and merit;\nWhat late he called a blessing, now was wit,\nAnd God's good Providence, a lucky hit.\nThings change their titles, as our manners turn;\nHis counting-house employed the Sunday morn;\nSeldom at church ('twas such a busy life),\nBut duly sent his family and wife.\nThere (so the devil ordained) one Christmas tide\nMy good old lady catched a cold and died.\n   A nymph of quality admires our knight;\nHe marries, bows at court, and grows polite:\nLeaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair)\nThe well bred c*ck**ds in St. James's air;\nFirst, for his son a gay commission buys,\nWho drinks and fights, and in a duel dies;\nHis daughter flaunts a viscount's tawdry wife;\nShe bears a coronet and ---- for life.\nIn Britain's senate he a seat obtains,\nAnd one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.\nMy lady falls to play; so bad her chance,\nHe must repair it; takes a bribe from France;\nThe House impeach him; Coningsby harangues;\nThe Court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs;\nWife, son, and daughter, Satan! are thine own,\nHis wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the Crown:\nThe Devil and the King divide the prize,\nAnd sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies.\n\n\nEPISTLE IV.  TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON.\n\nARGUMENT.\n\n\nOf the Use of Riches.\n\nThe Vanity of Expense in people of Wealth and Quality.  The abuse of the\nword Taste, v.13.  That the first Principle and foundation, in this as in\neverything else, is Good Sense, v.40.   The chief Proof of it is to\nfollow Nature even in works of mere Luxury and Elegance.  Instanced in\nArchitecture and Gardening, where all must be adapted to the Genius and\nUse of the Place, and the Beauties not forced into it, but resulting from\nit, v.50.  How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings,\nfor want of this true Foundation, without which nothing can please long,\nif at all: and the best Examples and Rules will but be perverted into\nsomething burdensome or ridiculous, v.65, etc., to 92.  A description of\nthe false Taste of Magnificence; the first grand Error of which is to\nimagine that Greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the\nProportion and Harmony of the whole, v.97, and the second, either in\njoining together Parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the\nRepetition of the same too frequently, v.105, etc.  A word or two of\nfalse Taste in Books, in Music, in Painting, even in Preaching and\nPrayer, and lastly in Entertainments, v.133, etc.  Yet Providence is\njustified in giving Wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is\ndispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind, v.169 (recurring to\nwhat is laid down in the first book, Ep. ii., and in the Epistle\npreceding this, v.159, etc.).  What are the proper objects of\nMagnificence, and a proper field for the Expense of Great Men, v.177,\netc., and finally, the Great and Public Works which become a Prince,\nv.191 to the end.\n\n'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ\nTo gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:\nIs it less strange, the prodigal should waste\nHis wealth, to purchase what he ne'er can taste?\nNot for himself he sees, or hears, or eats;\nArtists must choose his pictures, music, meats:\nHe buys for Topham, drawings and designs,\nFor Pembroke, statues, dirty gods, and coins;\nRare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,\nAnd books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.\nThink we all these are for himself? no more\nThan his fine wife, alas! or finer w***e.\n   For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?\nOnly to show, how many tastes he wanted.\nWhat brought Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste?\nSome demon whispered, \"Visto! have a taste.\"\nHeaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool,\nAnd needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.\nSee! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride,\nBids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide.\nA standing sermon, at each year's expense,\nThat never coxcomb reached magnificence!\n   You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,\nAnd pompous buildings once were things of use.\nYet shall, my lord, your just, your noble rules\nFill half the land with imitating fools;\nWho random drawings from your sheets shall take,\nAnd of one beauty many blunders make;\nLoad some vain church with old theatric state,\nTurn arcs of triumph to a garden-gate;\nReverse your ornaments, and hang them all\nOn some patched dog-hole eked with ends of wall;\nThen clap four slices of pilaster on 't,\nThat, laced with bits of rustic, makes a front\nShall call the winds through long arcades to roar,\nProud to catch cold at a Venetian door;\nConscious they act a true Palladian part,\nAnd, if they starve, they starve by rules of art.\n   Oft have you hinted to your brother peer\nA certain truth, which many buy too dear:\nSomething there is more needful than expense,\nAnd something previous even to taste--'tis sense.\nGood sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,\nAnd though no science, fairly worth the seven:\nA light, which in yourself you must perceive:\nJones and Le Notre have it not to give.\n   To build, to plant, whatever you intend,\nTo rear the column, or the arch to bend,\nTo swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;\nIn all, let Nature never be forgot.\nBut treat the goddess like a modest fair,\nNor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare;\nLet not each beauty everywhere be spied,\nWhere half the skill is decently to hide.\nHe gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,\nSurprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.\n   Consult the genius of the place in all;\nThat tells the waters or to rise or fall,\nOr helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,\nOr scoops in circling theatres the vale;\nCalls in the country, catches opening glades,\nJoins willing woods, and varies shades from shades;\nNow breaks, or now directs, the intending lines;\nPaints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.\n   Still follow sense, of every art the soul,\nParts answering parts shall slide into a whole,\nSpontaneous beauties all around advance,\nStart even from difficulty, strike from chance;\nNature shall join you; Time shall make it grow\nA work to wonder at--perhaps a Stowe.\n   Without it, proud Versailles, thy glory falls;\nAnd Nero's terraces desert their walls:\nThe vast parterres a thousand hands shall make;\nLo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake:\nOr cut wide views through mountains to the plain,\nYou'll wish your hill or sheltered seat again.\nEven in an ornament its place remark,\nNor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke.\n   Behold Villario's ten years' toil complete:\nHis quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet;\nThe wood supports the plain, the parts unite,\nAnd strength of shade contends with strength of light;\nA waving glow the bloomy beds display,\nBlushing in bright diversities of day,\nWith silver-quivering rills meandered o'er--\nEnjoy them, you! Villario can no more;\nTired of the scene parterres and fountains yield,\nHe finds at last he better likes a field.\n   Through his young woods how pleased Sabinus strayed,\nOr sat delighted in the thickening shade,\nWith annual joy the reddening shoots to greet,\nOr see the stretching branches long to meet!\nHis son's fine taste an opener vista loves,\nFoe to the Dryads of his father's groves;\nOne boundless green, or flourished carpet views,\nWith all the mournful family of yews;\nThe thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,\nNow sweep those alleys they were born to shade.\n   At Timon's villa let us pass a day,\nWhere all cry out, \"What sums are thrown away!\"\nSo proud, so grand; of that stupendous air,\nSoft and agreeable come never there.\nGreatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught\nAs brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.\nTo compass this, his building is a town,\nHis pond an ocean, his parterre a down:\nWho but must laugh, the master when he sees,\nA puny insect, shivering at a breeze!\nLo, what huge heaps of littleness around!\nThe whole, a laboured quarry above ground;\nTwo Cupids squirt before; a lake behind\nImproves the keenness of the northern wind.\nHis gardens next your admiration call,\nOn every side you look, behold the wall!\nNo pleasing intricacies intervene,\nNo artful wildness to perplex the scene;\nGrove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,\nAnd half the platform just reflects the other.\nThe suffering eye inverted Nature sees,\nTrees cut to statues, statues thick as trees\nWith here a fountain, never to be played;\nAnd there a summer-house, that knows no shade;\nHere Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;\nThere gladiators fight or die in flowers;\nUnwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,\nAnd swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.\n   My lord advances with majestic mien,\nSmit with the mighty pleasure to be seen:\nBut soft--by regular approach--not yet--\nFirst through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;\nAnd when up ten steep slopes you've dragged your thighs,\nJust at his study door he'll bless your eyes.\n   His study! with what authors is it stored?\nIn books, not authors, curious is my lord;\nTo all their dated backs he turns you round:\nThese Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound,\nLo, some are vellum, and the rest as good\nFor all his lordship knows, but they are wood.\nFor Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look;\nThese shelves admit not any modern book.\n   And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,\nThat summons you to all the pride of prayer;\nLight quirks of music, broken and uneven,\nMake the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.\nOn painted ceilings you devoutly stare,\nWhere sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,\nOn gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,\nAnd bring all Paradise before your eye.\nTo rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite,\nWho never mentions hell to ears polite.\n   But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;\nA hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall:\nThe rich buffet well-coloured serpents grace,\nAnd gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.\nIs this a dinner? this a genial room?\nNo, 'tis a temple, and a hecatomb.\nA solemn sacrifice, performed in state,\nYou drink by measure, and to minutes eat.\nSo quick retires each flying course, you'd swear\nSancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.\nBetween each act the trembling salvers ring,\nFrom soup to sweet-wine, and God bless the King.\nIn plenty starving, tantalised in state,\nAnd complaisantly helped to all I hate,\nTreated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave,\nSick of his civil pride from morn to eve;\nI curse such lavish cost and little skill,\nAnd swear no day was ever past so ill.\n   Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;\nHealth to himself, and to his infants bread\nThe labourer bears; what his hard heart denies\nHis charitable vanity supplies.\n   Another age shall see the golden ear\nEmbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,\nDeep harvests bury all his pride has planned,\nAnd laughing Ceres re-assume the land.\n   Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?\nWho plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.\n'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,\nAnd splendour borrows all her rays from sense.\n   His father's acres who enjoys in peace,\nOr makes his neighbours glad, if he increase:\nWhose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,\nYet to their lord owe more than to the soil;\nWhose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed\nThe milky heifer and deserving steed;\nWhose rising forests, not for pride or show,\nBut future buildings, future navies, grow:\nLet his plantations stretch from down to down,\nFirst shade a country, and then raise a town.\n   You too proceed! make falling arts your care,\nErect new wonders, and the old repair;\nJones and Palladio to themselves restore,\nAnd be whate'er Vitruvius was before:\n'Till kings call forth the ideas of your mind\n(Proud to accomplish what such hands denied)\nBid harbours open, public ways extend,\nBid temples, worthier of the god, ascend;\nBid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,\nThe mole projected break the roaring main;\nBack to his bounds their subject sea command,\nAnd roll obedient rivers through the land:\nThese honours peace to happy Britain brings,\nThese are imperial works, and worthy kings.\n\n\nEPISTLE V.  TO MR. ADDISON.\n\n\nOccasioned by his Dialogues on Medals.\n\nSee the wild waste of all-devouring years!\nHow Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,\nWith nodding arches, broken temples spread!\nThe very tombs now vanished like their dead!\nImperial wonders raised on nations spoiled,\nWhere mixed with slaves the groaning martyr toiled:\nHuge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,\nNow drained a distant country of her floods:\nFanes, which admiring gods with pride survey,\nStatues of men, scarce less alive than they!\nSome felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,\nSome hostile fury, some religious rage.\nBarbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,\nAnd Papal piety, and Gothic fire.\nPerhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,\nSome buried marble half preserves a name;\nThat name the learned with fierce disputes pursue,\nAnd give to Titus old Vespasian's due.\n   Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust\nThe faithless column and the crumbling bust:\nHuge moles, whose shadow stretched from shore to shore,\nTheir ruins perished, and their place no more;\nConvinced, she now contracts her vast design,\nAnd all her triumphs shrink into a coin.\nA narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps;\nBeneath her palm here sad Judea weeps;\nNow scantier limits the proud arch confine,\nAnd scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;\nA small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,\nAnd little eagles wave their wings in gold.\nThe medal, faithful to its charge of fame,\nThrough climes and ages bears each form and name:\nIn one short view subjected to our eye\nGods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie.\nWith sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore,\nThe inscription value, but the rust adore.\nThis the blue varnish, that the green endears,\nThe sacred rust of twice ten hundred years!\nTo gain Pescennius one employs his schemes,\nOne grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams.\nPoor Vadius, long with learned spleen devoured,\nCan taste no pleasure since his shield was scoured;\nAnd Curio, restless by the fair one's side,\nSighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride.\n   Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine:\nTouched by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine;\nHer gods and god-like heroes rise to view,\nAnd all her faded garlands bloom anew.\nNor blush, these studies thy regard engage;\nThese pleased the fathers of poetic rage;\nThe verse and sculpture bore an equal part,\nAnd art reflected images to art.\n   Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,\nStand emulous of Greek and Roman fame?\nIn living medals see her wars enrolled,\nAnd vanquished realms supply recording gold?\nHere, rising bold, the patriot's honest face;\nThere warriors frowning in historic brass?\nThen future ages with delight shall see\nHow Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's looks agree;\nOr in fair series laurelled bards be shown,\nA Virgil there, and here an Addison.\nThen shall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine)\nOn the cast ore, another Pollio shine;\nWith aspect open, shall erect his head,\nAnd round the orb in lasting notes be read,\n\"Statesmen, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,\nIn action faithful, and in honour clear;\nWho broke no promise, served no private end,\nWho gained no title and who lost no friend;\nEnnobled by himself, by all approved,\nAnd praised, unenvied, by the muse he loved.\"\n\n\n\n\nSATIRES.\n\n\nEPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.\n\n\nADVERTISEMENT\nTo the first publication of this Epistle.\n\n\nThis Paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and\ndrawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered.  I had no\nthoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some persons of rank and\nfortune (the authors of \"Verses to the Imitator of Horace,\" and of an\n\"Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court\") to\nattack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my writings (of which,\nbeing public, the public is judge), but my person, morals, and family,\nwhereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite.\nBeing divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my\nown laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest\nway to put the last hand to this Epistle.  If it have anything pleasing,\nit will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the truth and the\nsentiment; and if anything offensive, it will be only to those I am least\nsorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.\n\nMany will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance\nbut what is true; but I have, for the most part, spared their names, and\nthey may escape being laughed at if they please.\n\nI would have some of them know, it was owing to the request of the\nlearned and candid friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as\nfree use of theirs as they have done of mine.  However, I shall have this\nadvantage and honour on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any\nabuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine,\nsince a nameless character can never be found out but by its truth and\nlikeness.--P.\n\n\nEPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT,\nBEING THE\nPROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES.\n\n\nP. Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said,\nTie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.\nThe dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,\nAll Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:\nFire in each eye, and papers in each hand,\nThey rave, recite, and madden round the land.\n   What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?\nThey pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;\nBy land, by water, they renew the charge;\nThey stop the chariot, and they board the barge.\nNo place is sacred, not the Church is free;\nEven Sunday shines no Sabbath Day to me;\nThen from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,\nHappy to catch me just at dinner-time.\n   Is there a parson, much bemused in beer,\nA maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,\nA clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross,\nWho pens a stanza when he should engross?\nIs there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls\nWith desperate charcoal round his darkened walls?\nAll fly to Twitenham, and in humble strain\nApply to me, to keep them mad or vain.\nArthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,\nImputes to me and my damned works the cause:\nPoor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,\nAnd curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.\n   Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,\nThe world had wanted many an idle song)\nWhat drop or nostrum can this plague remove?\nOr which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?\nA dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,\nIf foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.\nSeized and tied down to judge, how wretched I!\nWho can't be silent, and who will not lie.\nTo laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,\nAnd to be grave, exceeds all power of face.\nI sit with sad civility, I read\nWith honest anguish, and an aching head;\nAnd drop at last, but in unwilling ears,\nThis saving counsel, \"Keep your piece nine years.\"\n   \"Nine years!\" cries he, who high in Drury Lane,\nLulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,\nRhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends,\nObliged by hunger, and request of friends:\n\"The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it,\nI'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it.\"\n   Three things another's modest wishes bound,\nMy friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.\n   Pitholeon sends to me: \"You know his Grace,\nI want a patron; ask him for a place.\"\n'Pitholeon libelled me'--\"but here's a letter\nInforms you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.\nDare you refuse him?  Curll invites to dine,\nHe'll write a journal, or he'll turn divine.\"\n   Bless me! a packet.--\"'Tis a stranger sues,\nA virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.\"\nIf I dislike it, \"Furies, death and rage!\"\nIf I approve, \"Commend it to the stage.\"\nThere (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,\nThe players and I are, luckily, no friends,\nFired that the house reject him, \"'Sdeath I'll print it,\nAnd shame the fools--Your interest, sir, with Lintot!\"\n'Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:'\n\"Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch.\"\nAll my demurs but double his attacks;\nAt last he whispers, \"Do; and we go snacks.\"\nGlad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,\nSir, let me see your works and you no more.\n   'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring\n(Midas, a sacred person and a king),\nHis very minister who spied them first\n(Some say his queen) was forced to speak, or burst.\nAnd is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,\nWhen every coxcomb perks them in my face?\nA.  Good friend, forbear! you deal in dangerous things.\nI'd never name queens, ministers, or kings;\nKeep close to ears, and those let asses prick;\n'Tis nothing-- P. Nothing? if they bite and kick?\nOut with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,\nThat secret to each fool, that he's an ass:\nThe truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)\nThe Queen of Midas slept, and so may I.\n   You think this cruel? take it for a rule,\nNo creature smarts so little as a fool.\nLet peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,\nThou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack:\nPit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled,\nThou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.\nWho shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,\nHe spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew:\nDestroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,\nThe creature's at his dirty work again,\nThroned in the centre of his thin designs,\nProud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!\nWhom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer,\nLost the arched eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer?\nAnd has not Colley still his lord, and w***e?\nHis butchers Henley, his free-masons Moore?\nDoes not one table Bavius still admit?\nStill to one bishop Philips seem a wit?\nStill Sappho--  A. Hold! for God's sake--you'll offend,\nNo names!--be calm!--learn prudence of a friend!\nI too could write, and I am twice as tall;\nBut foes like these--  P. One flatterer's worse than all.\nOf all mad creatures, if the learned are right,\nIt is the slaver kills, and not the bite.\nA fool quite angry is quite innocent:\nAlas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.\n   One dedicates in high heroic prose,\nAnd ridicules beyond a hundred foes:\nOne from all Grubstreet will my fame defend,\nAnd more abusive, calls himself my friend.\nThis prints my letters, that expects a bribe,\nAnd others roar aloud, \"Subscribe, subscribe.\"\n   There are, who to my person pay their court:\nI cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short,\nAmmon's great son one shoulder had too high,\nSuch Ovid's nose, and \"Sir! you have an eye\"--\nGo on, obliging creatures, make me see\nAll that disgraced my betters, met in me.\nSay for my comfort, languishing in bed,\n\"Just so immortal Maro held his head:\"\nAnd when I die, be sure you let me know\nGreat Homer died three thousand years ago.\n   Why did I write? what sin to me unknown\nDipped me in ink, my parents', or my own?\nAs yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,\nI lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.\nI left no calling for this idle trade,\nNo duty broke, no father disobeyed.\nThe Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife,\nTo help me through this long disease, my life,\nTo second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,\nAnd teach the being you preserved, to bear.\n   But why then publish? Granville the polite,\nAnd knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;\nWell-natured Garth, inflamed with early praise;\nAnd Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;\nThe courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;\nEven mitred Rochester would nod the head,\nAnd St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)\nWith open arms received one poet more.\nHappy my studies, when by these approved!\nHappier their author, when by these beloved!\nFrom these the world will judge of men and books,\nNot from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.\n   Soft were my numbers; who could take offence,\nWhile pure description held the place of sense?\nLike gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,\nA painted mistress, or a purling stream.\nYet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;--\nI wished the man a dinner, and sat still.\nYet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;\nI never answered--I was not in debt.\nIf want provoked, or madness made them print,\nI waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.\n   Did some more sober critic come abroad;\nIf wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.\nPains, reading, study, are their just pretence,\nAnd all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.\nCommas and points they set exactly right,\nAnd 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.\nYet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,\nFrom slashing Bentley down to p---g Tibalds:\nEach wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,\nEach word-catcher, that lives on syllables,\nEven such small critics some regard may claim,\nPreserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.\nPretty! in amber to observe the forms\nOf hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!\nThe things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,\nBut wonder how the devil they got there.\n   Were others angry: I excused them too;\nWell might they rage, I gave them but their due.\nA man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;\nBut each man's secret standard in his mind,\nThat casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,\nThis, who can gratify? for who can guess?\nThe bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,\nWho turns a Persian tale for half a crown,\nJust writes to make his barrenness appear,\nAnd strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;\nHe, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,\nSteals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:\nAnd he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,\nMeans not, but blunders round about a meaning:\nAnd he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,\nIt is not poetry, but prose run mad:\nAll these, my modest satire bade translate,\nAnd owned that nine such poets made a Tate.\nHow did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe\nAnd swear not Addison himself was safe.\n   Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires\nTrue genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;\nBlessed with each talent and each art to please,\nAnd born to write, converse, and live with ease:\nShould such a man, too fond to rule alone,\nBear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.\nView him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,\nAnd hate for arts that caused himself to rise;\nDamn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,\nAnd without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;\nWilling to wound, and yet afraid to strike,\nJust hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;\nAlike reserved to blame, or to commend,\nA timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;\nDreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,\nAnd so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;\nLike Cato, give his little senate laws,\nAnd sit attentive to his own applause;\nWhile wits and templars every sentence raise,\nAnd wonder with a foolish face of praise:--\nWho but must laugh, if such a man there be?\nWho would not weep, if Atticus were he?\n   What though my name stood rubric on the walls,\nOr plaistered posts, with claps, in capitals?\nOr smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,\nOn wings of winds came flying all abroad?\nI sought no homage from the race that write;\nI kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:\nPoems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long)\nNo more than thou, great George! a birthday song.\nI ne'er with wits or witlings passed my days,\nTo spread about the itch of verse and praise;\nNor like a puppy, daggled through the town,\nTo fetch and carry sing-song up and down;\nNor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried,\nWith handkerchief and orange at my side;\nBut sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,\nTo Bufo left the whole Castalian state.\n   Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,\nSat full-blown Bufo puffed by every quill;\nFed with soft dedication all day long,\nHorace and he went hand in hand in song.\nHis library (where busts of poets dead\nAnd a true Pindar stood without a head)\nReceived of wits an undistinguished race,\nWho first his judgment asked, and then a place:\nMuch they extolled his pictures, much his seat,\nAnd flattered every day, and some days eat:\nTill grown more frugal in his riper days,\nHe paid some bards with port, and some with praise;\nTo some a dry rehearsal was assigned,\nAnd others (harder still) he paid in kind.\nDryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,\nDryden alone escaped this judging eye:\nBut still the great have kindness in reserve,\nHe helped to bury whom he helped to starve.\n   May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill!\nMay every Bavius have his Bufo still!\nSo, when a statesman wants a day's defence,\nOr envy holds a whole week's war with sense,\nOr simple pride for flattery makes demands,\nMay dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!\nBlessed be the great! for those they take away,\nAnd those they left me; for they left me gay;\nLeft me to see neglected genius bloom,\nNeglected die, and tell it on his tomb:\nOf all thy blameless life the soul return\nMy verse, and Queensbury weeping o'er thy urn!\n   Oh let me live my own, and die so too!\n(To live and die is all I have to do:)\nMaintain a poet's dignity and ease,\nAnd see what friends, and read what books I please;\nAbove a patron, though I condescend\nSometimes to call a minister my friend.\nI was not born for courts or great affairs;\nI pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;\nCan sleep without a poem in my head;\nNor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.\n   Why am I asked what next shall see the light?\nHeavens! was I born for nothing but to write?\nHas life no joys for me! or (to be grave)\nHave I no friend to serve, no soul to save?\n\"I found him close with Swift.\"--'Indeed? no doubt,'\n(Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.'\n'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.\n'No, such a genius never can lie still;'\nAnd then for mine obligingly mistakes\nThe first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes.\nPoor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile\nWhen every coxcomb knows me by my style?\n   Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow\nThat tends to make one worthy man my foe,\nGive virtue scandal, innocence a fear,\nOr from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!\nBut he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,\nInsults fallen worth, or beauty in distress,\nWho loves a lie, lame slander helps about,\nWho writes a libel, or who copies out:\nThat fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,\nYet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:\nWho can your merit selfishly approve,\nAnd show the sense of it without the love;\nWho has the vanity to call you friend,\nYet wants the honour, injured, to defend;\nWho tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,\nAnd, if he lie not, must at least betray:\nWho to the Dean, and silver bell can swear,\nAnd sees at Canons what was never there;\nWho reads, but with a lust to misapply,\nMake satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie.\nA lash like mine no honest man shall dread,\nBut all such babbling blockheads in his stead.\n   Let Sporus tremble--  A. What? that thing of silk,\nSporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk,\nSatire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?\nWho breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?\n   P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,\nThis painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;\nWhose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,\nYet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:\nSo well-bred spaniels civilly delight\nIn mumbling of the game they dare not bite:\nEternal smiles his emptiness betray,\nAs shallow streams run dimpling all the way.\nWhether in florid impotence he speaks\nAnd, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;\nOr at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,\nHalf froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,\nIn puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,\nOr spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.\nHis wit all see-saw, between that and this, }\nNow high, now low, now master up, now miss, }\nAnd he himself one vile antithesis. }\nAmphibious thing! that acting either part,\nThe trifling head or the corrupted heart,\nFop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,\nNow trips a lady, and now struts a lord.\nEve's tempter thus the rabbins have expressed,\nA cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;\nBeauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust;\nWit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.\n   Not fortunes worshipper, nor fashion's fool,\nNot lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,\nNot proud, nor servile;--be one poet's praise,\nThat, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:\nThat flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,\nAnd thought a lie in verse or prose the same.\nThat not in fancy's maze he wandered long:\nBut stooped to truth, and moralised his song:\nThat not for fame, but virtue's better end,\nHe stood the furious foe, the timid friend,\nThe damning critic, half approving wit,\nThe coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;\nLaughed at the loss of friends he never had,\nThe dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;\nThe distant threats of vengeance on his head,\nThe blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;\nThe tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,\nThe imputed trash, and dulness not his own;\nThe morals blackened when the writings scape,\nThe libelled person, and the pictured shape;\nAbuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,\nA friend in exile, or a father, dead;\nThe whisper, that to greatness still too near,\nPerhaps, yet vibrates, on his sovereign's ear:--\nWelcome for thee, fair virtue! all the past;\nFor thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last!\n   A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?\n   P. A knave's a knave, to me in every state:\nAlike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,\nSporus at Court, or Japhet in a jail,\nA hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,\nKnight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;\nIf on a pillory, or near a throne,\nHe gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.\n   Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,\nSappho can tell you how this man was bit;\nThis dreaded satirist Dennis will confess\nFoe to his pride, but friend to his distress:\nSo humble, he has knocked at Tibbald's door,\nHas drunk with Cibber, nay has rhymed for Moore.\nFull ten years slandered, did he once reply?\nThree thousand sons went down on Welsted's lie.\nTo please a mistress one aspersed his life;\nHe lashed him not, but let her be his wife.\nLet Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill,\nAnd write whate'er he pleased, except his will;\nLet the two Curlls of town and court abuse\nHis father, mother, body, soul, and muse.\nYet why? that father held it for a rule,\nIt was a sin to call our neighbour fool:\nThat harmless mother thought no wife a w***e:\nHear this, and spare his family, James Moore!\nUnspotted names, and memorable long!\nIf there be force in virtue, or in song.\n   Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause\nWhile yet in Britain honour had applause)\nEach parent sprung-- A. What fortune, pray?-- P. Their own,\nAnd better got, than Bestia's from the throne.\nBorn to no pride, inheriting no strife,\nNor marrying discord in a noble wife,\nStranger to civil and religious rage,\nThe good man walked innoxious through his age.\nNor courts he saw, no suits would ever try,\nNor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.\nUnlearned he knew no schoolman's subtle art,\nNo language, but the language of the heart.\nBy nature honest, by experience wise,\nHealthy by temperance, and by exercise;\nHis life, though long, to sickness past unknown,\nHis death was instant, and without a groan.\nO grant me thus to live, and thus to die!\nWho sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.\n   O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!\nBe no unpleasing melancholy mine:\nMe, let the tender office long engage,\nTo rock the cradle of reposing age,\nWith lenient arts extend a mother's breath,\nMake languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,\nExplore the thought, explain the asking eye,\nAnd keep a while one parent from the sky!\nOn cares like these if length of days attend,\nMay Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,\nPreserve him social, cheerful, and serene,\nAnd just as rich as when he served a queen.\n   A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,\nThus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven.\n\n\n\nSATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED.\n\n\nADVERTISEMENT.\n\n\nThe occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on\nsome of my Epistles.  An answer from Horace was both more full, and of\nmore dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the\nexample of much greater freedom in so eminent a divine as Dr. Donne,\nseemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat\nvice or folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a station.  Both these\nauthors were acceptable to the princes and ministers under whom they\nlived.  The Satires of Dr. Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl\nof Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who\nhad been Secretary of State, neither of whom looked upon a satire on\nvicious courts as any reflection on those they served in.  And indeed\nthere is not in the world a greater error, than that which fools are so\napt to fall into, and knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking\na satirist for a libeller; whereas to a true satirist nothing is so\nodious as a libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous\nnothing is so hateful as a hypocrite.\n\n   Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis.  P.\n\n\n\nTHE FIRST SATIRE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\nSATIRE I.  TO MR. FORTESCUE.\n\n\n   P. There are (I scarce can think it, but am told),\nThere are, to whom my satire seems too bold:\nScarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,\nAnd something said of Chartres much too rough.\nThe lines are weak another's pleased to say,\nLord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.\nTimorous by nature, of the rich in awe,\nI come to counsel learned in the law:\nYou'll give me, like a friend both sage and free,\nAdvice; and (as you use) without a fee.\n   F. I'd write no more.  P. Not write? but then I think,\nAnd for my soul I cannot sleep a wink.\nI nod in company, I wake at night,\nFools rush into my head, and so I write.\n   F. You could not do a worse thing for your life.\nWhy, if the nights seem tedious--take a wife:\nOr rather truly, if your point be rest,\nLettuce and cowslip wine: Probatum est.\nBut talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise\nHartshorn, or something that shall close your eyes.\nOr, if you needs must write, write Caesar's praise,\nYou'll gain at least a knighthood, or the bays.\n   P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,\nWith arms, and George, and Brunswick crowd the verse,\nRend with tremendous sound your ears asunder,\nWith gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?\nOr nobly wild, with Budgel's fire and force,\nPaint angels trembling round his falling horse?\n   F. Then all your muse's softer art display,\nLet Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,\nLull with Amelia's liquid name the nine,\nAnd sweetly flow through all the royal line.\n   P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear;\nThey scarce can bear their laureate twice a year;\nAnd justly Caesar scorns the poet's lays:\nIt is to history he trusts for praise.\n   F. Better be Cibber, I'll maintain it still,\nThan ridicule all taste, blaspheme quadrille,\nAbuse the city's best good men in metre,\nAnd laugh at peers that put their trust in Peter.\nEven those you touch not, hate you.  P. What should ail 'em?\n   F. A hundred smart in Timon and in Balaam:\nThe fewer still you name, you wound the more;\nBond is but one, but Harpax is a score.\n   P. Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny\nScarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie;\nRidotta sips and dances, till she see\nThe doubling lustres dance as fast as she;\nF---- loves the senate, Hockley-hole his brother,\nLike in all else, as one egg to another.\nI love to pour out all myself, as plain\nAs downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne:\nIn them, as certain to be loved as seen,\nThe soul stood forth, nor kept a thought within;\nIn me what spots (for spots I have) appear,\nWill prove at least the medium must be clear.\nIn this impartial glass, my muse intends\nFair to expose myself, my foes, my friends;\nPublish the present age; but where my text\nIs vice too high, reserve it for the next:\nMy foes shall wish my life a longer date,\nAnd every friend the less lament my fate.\nMy head and heart thus flowing through my quill,\nVerse-man or prose-man, term me which you will,\nPapist or Protestant, or both between,\nLike good Erasmus in an honest mean,\nIn moderation placing all my glory,\nWhile Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.\n   Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet\nTo run a muck, and tilt at all I meet;\nI only wear it in a land of Hectors,\nThieves, supercargoes, sharpers, and directors.\nSave but our army! and let Jove encrust\nSwords, pikes, and guns, with everlasting rust!\nPeace is my dear delight--not Fleury's more:\nBut touch me, and no minister so sore.\nWhoe'er offends, at some unlucky time\nSlides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,\nSacred to ridicule his whole life long,\nAnd the sad burthen of some merry song.\n   Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage\nHard words or hanging, if your judge be Page.\nFrom furious Sappho scarce a milder fate,\nPlagued by her love, or libelled by her hate.\nIts proper power to hurt, each creature feels;\nBulls aim their horns, and asses lift their heels;\n'Tis a bear's talent not to kick, but hug;\nAnd no man wonders he's not stung by pug.\nSo drink with Walters, or with Chartres eat,\nThey'll never poison you, they'll only cheat.\n   Then, learned sir! (to cut the matter short)\nWhate'er my fate, or well or ill at Court,\nWhether old age, with faint but cheerful ray,\nAttends to gild the evening of my day,\nOr death's black wing already be displayed,\nTo wrap me in the universal shade;\nWhether the darkened room to muse invite,\nOr whitened wall provoke the skewer to write:\nIn durance, exile, Bedlam or the Mint--\nLike Lee or Budgel, I will rhyme and print.\n   F. Alas, young man! your days can ne'er be long,\nIn flower of age you perish for a song!\nPlums and directors, Shylock and his wife,\nWill club their testers, now, to take your life!\n   P. What? armed for virtue when I point the pen,\nBrand the bold front of shameless guilty men;\nDash the proud gamester in his gilded car;\nBare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star;\nCan there be wanting, to defend her cause,\nLights of the Church, or guardians of the laws?\nCould pensioned Boileau lash in honest strain\nFlatterers and bigots even in Louis' reign?\nCould Laureate Dryden pimp and friar engage,\nYet neither Charles nor James be in a rage?\nAnd I not strip the gilding off a knave,\nUnplaced, unpensioned, no man's heir, or slave?\nI will, or perish in the generous cause:\nHear this, and tremble! you, who 'scape the laws.\nYes, while I live, no rich or noble knave\nShall walk the world, in credit, to his grave.\nTo Virtue only and her friends a friend,\nThe world beside may murmur, or commend.\nKnow, all the distant din that world can keep\nRolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.\nThere, my retreat the best companions grace,\nChiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place.\nThere St. John mingles with my friendly bowl\nThe feast of reason and the flow of soul:\nAnd he, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines,\nNow forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines\nOr tames the genius of the stubborn plain,\nAlmost as quickly as he conquered Spain.\n   Envy must own, I live among the great,\nNo pimp of pleasure, and no spy of state.\nWith eyes that pry not, tongue that ne'er repeats,\nFond to spread friendships, but to cover heats;\nTo help who want, to forward who excel;\nThis, all who know me, know; who love me, tell;\nAnd who unknown defame me, let them be\nScribblers or peers, alike are mob to me.\nThis is my plea, on this I rest my cause--\nWhat saith my counsel, learned in the laws?\n   F. Your plea is good; but still I say, beware!\nLaws are explained by men--so have a care.\nIt stands on record, that in Richard's times\nA man was hanged for very honest rhymes.\nConsult the Statute: quart. I think it is,\nEdwardi sext. or prim. et quint. Eliz.\nSee libels, satires--here you have it--read.\n   P. Libels and satires! lawless things indeed!\nBut grave epistles, bringing vice to light,\nSuch as a king might read, a bishop write;\nSuch as Sir Robert would approve--  F. Indeed?\nThe case is altered--you may then proceed;\nIn such a cause the plaintiff would be hissed;\nMy lords the judges laugh, and you're dismissed.\n\n\n\nTHE SECOND SATIRE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\nSATIRE II.  TO MR. BETHEL.\n\n\nWhat, and how great, the virtue and the art\nTo live on little with a cheerful heart\n(A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine),\nLet's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine.\nNot when a gilt buffet's reflected pride\nTurns you from sound philosophy aside;\nNot when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll,\nAnd the brain dances to the mantling bowl.\n   Hear Bethel's sermon, one not versed in schools,\nBut strong in sense, and wise without the rules.\n   Go work, hunt, exercise! (he thus began)\nThen scorn a homely dinner, if you can.\nYour wine locked up, your butler strolled abroad,\nOr fish denied (the river yet unthawed),\nIf then plain bread and milk will do the feat,\nThe pleasure lies in you, and not the meat.\n   Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men\nWill choose a pheasant still before a hen;\nYet hens of Guinea full as good I hold,\nExcept you eat the feathers green and gold.\nOf carps and mullets why prefer the great\n(Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat),\nYet for small turbots such esteem profess?\nBecause God made these large, the other less.\n   Oldfield with more than harpy throat endued,\nCries \"Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued!\nOh, b---- it, south-winds! till a stench exhale\nRank as the ripeness of a rabbit's tail.\nBy what criterion do ye eat, d'ye think,\nIf this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?\"\nWhen the tired glutton labours through a treat,\nHe finds no relish in the sweetest meat,\nHe calls for something bitter, something sour,\nAnd the rich feast concludes extremely poor:\nCheap eggs, and herbs, and olives still we see;\nThus much is left of old simplicity!\nThe robin-redbreast till of late had rest,\nAnd children sacred held a martin's nest,\nTill becca-ficos sold so devilish dear\nTo one that was, or would have been a peer.\nLet me extol a cat, on oysters fed,\nI'll have a party at the Bedford-head;\nOr even to crack live crawfish recommend;\nI'd never doubt at Court to make a friend.\n   'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother\nAbout one vice, and fall into the other:\nBetween excess and famine lies a mean;\nPlain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean.\n   Avidien, or his wife (no matter which,\nFor him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch)\nSell their presented partridges, and fruits,\nAnd humbly live on rabbits and on roots:\nOne half-pint bottle serves them both to dine,\nAnd is at once their vinegar and wine.\nBut on some lucky day (as when they found\nA lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned)\nAt such a feast, old vinegar to spare,\nIs what two souls so generous cannot bear:\nOil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart,\nBut souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart.\n   He knows to live, who keeps the middle state,\nAnd neither leans on this side, nor on that;\nNor stops, for one bad cork, his butler's pay,\nSwears, like Albutius, a good cook away;\nNor lets, like Naevius, every error pass,\nThe musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.\n   Now hear what blessings temperance can bring:\n(Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing,)\nFirst health: The stomach (crammed from every dish,\nA tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish,\nWhere bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar,\nAnd all the man is one intestine war)\nRemembers oft the schoolboy's simple fare,\nThe temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.\n   How pale, each worshipful and reverend guest\nRise from a clergy, or a city feast!\nWhat life in all that ample body, say?\nWhat heavenly particle inspires the clay?\nThe soul subsides, and wickedly inclines\nTo seem but mortal, even in sound divines.\n   On morning wings how active springs the mind\nThat leaves the load of yesterday behind!\nHow easy every labour it pursues!\nHow coming to the poet every muse!\nNot but we may exceed, some holy time,\nOr tired in search of truth, or search of rhyme;\nIll health some just indulgence may engage,\nAnd more the sickness of long life, old age;\nFor fainting age what cordial drop remains,\nIf our intemperate youth the vessel drains?\n   Our fathers praised rank venison.  You suppose,\nPerhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose.\nNot so: a buck was then a week's repast,\nAnd 'twas their point, I ween, to make it last;\nMore pleased to keep it till their friends could come,\nThan eat the sweetest by themselves at home.\nWhy had not I in those good times my birth,\nEre coxcomb pies or coxcombs were on earth?\n   Unworthy he, the voice of fame to hear,\nThat sweetest music to an honest ear;\n(For 'faith, Lord Fanny! you are in the wrong\nThe world's good word is better than a song)\nWho has not learned fresh sturgeon and ham-pie\nAre no rewards for want, and infamy?\nWhen luxury has licked up all thy pelf,\nCursed by thy neighbours, thy trustees, thyself,\nTo friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame,\nThink how posterity will treat thy name;\nAnd buy a rope, that future times may tell,\nThou hast at least bestowed one penny well.\n   \"Right,\" cries his lordship, \"for a rogue in need\nTo have a taste is insolence indeed:\nIn me 'tis noble, suits my birth and state,\nMy wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.\"\nThen, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray,\nAnd shine that superfluity away.\nOh, impudence of wealth! with all thy store,\nHow dar'st thou let one worthy man be poor?\nShall half the new-built churches round thee fall?\nMake quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall:\nOr to thy country let that heap be lent,\nAs M**o's was, but not at five per cent.\n   Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind,\nPrepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.\nAnd who stands safest? tell me, is it he\nThat spreads and swells in puffed posterity,\nOr blest with little, whose preventing care\nIn peace provides fit arms against a war?\n   Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought,\nAnd always thinks the very thing he ought:\nHis equal mind I copy what I can,\nAnd, as I love, would imitate the man.\nIn South-Sea days not happier, when surmised\nThe lord of thousands, than if now excised;\nIn forest planted by a father's hand,\nThan in five acres now of rented land.\nContent with little, I can p----e here\nOn broccoli and mutton, round the year;\nBut ancient friends (though poor, or out of play)\nThat touch my bell, I cannot turn away.\n'Tis true, no turbots dignify my boards,\nBut gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords:\nTo Hounslow Heath I point and Banstead Down,\nThence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own:\nFrom yon old walnut-tree a shower shall fall;\nAnd grapes, long lingering on my only wall,\nAnd figs from standard and espalier join;\nThe devil is in you if you cannot dine:\nThen cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place),\nAnd, what's more rare, a poet shall say grace.\n   Fortune not much of humbling me can boast;\nThough double taxed, how little have I lost?\nMy life's amusements have been just the same,\nBefore, and after, standing armies came.\nMy lands are sold, my father's house is gone;\nI'll hire another's; is not that my own,\nAnd yours, my friends? through whose free-opening gate\nNone comes too early, none departs too late;\n(For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best,\nWelcome the coming, speed the going guest).\n\"Pray Heaven it last!\" (cries Swift!) \"as you go on;\nI wish to God this house had been your own:\nPity! to build without a son or wife:\nWhy, you'll enjoy it only all your life.\"\nWell, if the use be mine, can it concern one,\nWhether the name belong to Pope or Vernon?\nWhat's property? dear Swift! you see it alter\nFrom you to me, from me to Peter Walter;\nOr, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer's share;\nOr, in a jointure, vanish from the heir;\nOr in pure equity (the case not clear)\nThe Chancery takes your rents for twenty year:\nAt best, it falls to some ungracious son,\nWho cries, \"My father's damned, and all's my own.\"\nShades, that to Bacon could retreat afford,\nBecome the portion of a booby lord;\nAnd Hemsley, once proud Buckingham's delight,\nSlides to a scrivener or a city knight.\nLet lands and houses have what lords they will,\nLet us be fixed, and our own masters still.\n\n\n\nTHE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\nEPISTLE I.  TO LORD BOLINGBROKE.\n\n\n   St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,\nMatures my present, and shall bound my last!\nWhy will you break the Sabbath of my days?\nNow sick alike of envy and of praise.\nPublic too long, ah let me hide my age!\nSee, modest Cibber now has left the stage:\nOur generals now, retired to their estates,\nHang their old trophies o'er the garden gates,\nIn life's cool evening satiate of applause,\nNor fond of bleeding, even in Brunswick's cause.\n   A voice there is, that whispers in my ear,\n('Tis Reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear)\n\"Friend Pope, be prudent, let your muse take breath,\nAnd never gallop Pegasus to death;\nLest stiff and stately, void of fire or force,\nYou limp, like Blackmore, on a lord mayor's horse.\"\n   Farewell then verse, and love, and every toy,\nThe rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;\nWhat right, what true, what fit we justly call,\nLet this be all my care--for this is all.\nTo lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste\nWhat every day will want, and most, the last.\n   But ask not, to what doctors I apply?\nSworn to no master, of no sect am I:\nAs drives the storm, at any door I knock:\nAnd house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.\nSometimes a patriot, active in debate,\nMix with the world, and battle for the State,\nFree as young Lyttelton, her cause pursue,\nStill true to virtue, and as warm as true:\nSometimes with Aristippus, or St. Paul,\nIndulge my candour, and grow all to all;\nBack to my native moderation slide,\nAnd win my way by yielding to the tide.\n Long, as to him who works for debt, the day,\nLong as the night to her whose love's away,\nLong as the year's dull circle seems to run,\nWhen the brisk minor pants for twenty-one:\nSo slow th' unprofitable moments roll,\nThat lock up all the functions of my soul;\nThat keep me from myself; and still delay\nLife's instant business to a future day:\nThat task, which as we follow, or despise,\nThe eldest is a fool, the youngest wise;\nWhich done, the poorest can no wants endure;\nAnd which not done, the richest must be poor.\n   Late as it is, I put myself to school,\nAnd feel some comfort, not to be a fool.\nWeak though I am of limb, and short of sight,\nFar from a lynx, and not a giant quite;\nI'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise,\nTo keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes.\nNot to go back, is somewhat to advance,\nAnd men must walk at least before they dance.\n   Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move\nWith wretched avarice, or as wretched love?\nKnow, there are words and spells, which can control\nBetween the fits this fever of the soul:\nKnow, there are rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied\nWill cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride.\nBe furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk,\nSlave to a wife, or vassal to a punk,\nA Switz, a High Dutch, or a Low Dutch bear;\nAll that we ask is but a patient ear.\n   'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor;\nAnd the first wisdom, to be fool no more.\nBut to the world no bugbear is so great,\nAs want of figure, and a small estate.\nTo either India see the merchant fly,\nScared at the spectre of pale poverty!\nSee him, with pains of body, pangs of soul,\nBurn through the Tropic, freeze beneath the pole!\nWilt thou do nothing for a nobler end,\nNothing, to make philosophy thy friend?\nTo stop thy foolish views, thy long desires,\nAnd ease thy heart of all that it admires?\n   Here, wisdom calls: \"Seek virtue first, be bold!\nAs gold to silver, virtue is to gold.\"\nThere, London's voice: \"Get money, money still!\nAnd then let virtue follow, if she will.\"\nThis, this the saving doctrine, preached to all,\nFrom low St. James's up to high St. Paul;\nFrom him whose quills stand quivered at his ear,\nTo him who notches sticks at Westminster.\n   Barnard in spirit, sense, and truth abounds;\n\"Pray then, what wants he?\" fourscore thousand pounds;\nA pension, or such harness for a slave\nAs Bug now has, and Dorimant would have.\nBarnard, thou art a Cit, with all thy worth;\nBut Bug and D * l, their honours, and so forth.\n   Yet every child another song will sing:\n\"Virtue, brave boys! 'tis virtue makes a king.\"\nTrue, conscious honour is to feel no sin,\nHe's armed without that's innocent within;\nBe this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass;\nCompared to this, a minister's an ass.\n   And say, to which shall our applause belong,\nThis new Court jargon, or the good old song?\nThe modern language of corrupted peers,\nOr what was spoke at Cressy and Poitiers?\nWho counsels best? who whispers, \"Be but great,\nWith praise or infamy leave that to fate;\nGet place and wealth, if possible, with grace;\nIf not, by any means get wealth and place--\"\nFor what? to have a box where eunuchs sing,\nAnd foremost in the circle eye a king.\nOr he, who bids thee face with steady view }\nProud fortune, and look shallow greatness through: }\nAnd, while he bids thee, sets th' example too? }\nIf such a doctrine, in St. James's air,\nShould chance to make the well-dressed rabble stare;\nIf honest S * z take scandal at a spark,\nThat less admires the palace than the park:\nFaith I shall give the answer Reynard gave:\n\"I cannot like, dread sir, your royal cave:\nBecause I see, by all the tracks about,\nFull many a beast goes in, but none come out.\"\nAdieu to virtue, if you're once a slave:\nSend her to Court, you send her to her grave.\n   Well, if a king's a lion, at the least,\nThe people are a many-headed beast:\nCan they direct what measures to pursue,\nWho know themselves so little what to do?\nAlike in nothing but one lust of gold,\nJust half the land would buy, and half be sold:\nTheir country's wealth our mightier misers drain,\nOr cross, to plunder provinces, the main;\nThe rest, some farm the poor-box, some the pews;\nSome keep assemblies, and would keep the stews;\nSome with fat bucks on childless dotards fawn;\nSome win rich widows by their chine and brawn;\nWhile with the silent growth of ten per cent.\nIn dirt and darkness, hundreds stink content.\n   Of all these ways, if each pursues his own,\nSatire be kind, and let the wretch alone:\nBut show me one who has it in his power\nTo act consistent with himself an hour.\nSir Job sailed forth, the evening bright and still,\n\"No place on earth,\" he cried, \"like Greenwich Hill!\"\nUp starts a palace; lo, th' obedient base }\nSlopes at its foot, the woods its sides embrace, }\nThe silver Thames reflects its marble face. }\nNow let some whimsy, or that devil within }\nWhich guides all those who know not what they mean, }\nBut give the knight (or give his lady) spleen; }\n\"Away, away! take all your scaffolds down,\nFor snug's the word: my dear! we'll live in town.\"\n   At amorous Flavio is the stocking thrown?\nThat very night he longs to lie alone.\nThe fool, whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter,\nFor matrimonial solace dies a martyr.\nDid ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch, }\nTransform themselves so strangely as the rich? }\nWell, but the poor--the poor have the same itch; }\nThey change their weekly barber, weekly news,\nPrefer a new japanner to their shoes,\nDischarge their garrets, move their beds, and run\n(They know not whither) in a chaise and one;\nThey hire their sculler, and when once aboard,\nGrow sick, and damn the climate--like a lord.\n   You laugh, half beau, half sloven if I stand,\nMy wig all powder, and all snuff my band;\nYou laugh, if coat and breeches strangely vary,\nWhite gloves, and linen worthy Lady Mary!\nBut when no prelate's lawn with hair-shirt lined,\nIs half so incoherent as my mind,\nWhen (each opinion with the next at strife,\nOne ebb and flow of follies all my life)\nI plant, root up; I build, and then confound;\nTurn round to square, and square again to round;\nYou never change one muscle of your face,\nYou think this madness but a common case,\nNor once to Chancery, nor to Hale apply;\nYet hang your lip, to see a seam awry!\nCareless how ill I with myself agree,\nKind to my dress, my figure, not to me.\nIs this my guide, philosopher, and Friend?\nThis, he who loves me, and who ought to mend?\nWho ought to make me (what he can, or none),\nThat man divine whom wisdom calls her own;\nGreat without title, without fortune blessed;\nRich even when plundered, honoured while oppressed;\nLoved without youth, and followed without power;\nAt home, though exiled; free, though in the Tower;\nIn short, that reasoning, high, immortal thing,\nJust less than Jove, and much above a king,\nNay, half in heaven--except (what's mighty odd)\nA fit of vapours clouds this demi-god.\n\n\n\nTHE SIXTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\nEPISTLE VI.  TO MR. MURRAY.\n\n\n   \"Not to admire, is all the art I know,\nTo make men happy, and to keep them so.\"\n(Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech,\nSo take it in the very words of Creech.)\nThis vault of air, this congregated ball,\nSelf-centred sun, and stars that rise and fall,\nThere are, my friend! whose philosophic eyes\nLook through, and trust the ruler with his skies,\nTo him commit the hour, the day, the year,\nAnd view this dreadful all without a fear.\nAdmire we, then, what earth's low entrails hold, }\nArabian shores, or Indian seas infold. }\nAll the mad trade of fools and slaves for gold? }\nOr popularity? or stars and strings?\nThe mob's applauses, or the gifts of kings?\nSay with what eyes we ought at courts to gaze,\nAnd pay the great our homage of amaze?\n   If weak the pleasure that from these can spring,\nThe fear to want them is as weak a thing:\nWhether we dread, or whether we desire,\nIn either case, believe me, we admire;\nWhether we joy or grieve, the same the curse,\nSurprised at better, or surprised at worse.\nThus good or bad, to one extreme betray\nTh' unbalanced mind, and snatch the man away;\nFor virtue's self may too much zeal be had;\nThe worst of madmen is a saint run mad.\n   Go then, and if you can, admire the state\nOf beaming diamonds, and reflected plate;\nProcure a taste to double the surprise,\nAnd gaze on Parian charms with learned eyes:\nBe struck with bright brocade, or Tyrian dye,\nOur birthday nobles' splendid livery.\nIf not so pleased, at council-board rejoice,\nTo see their judgments hang upon thy voice;\nFrom morn to night, at senate, rolls, and hall,\nPlead much, read more, dine late, or not at all.\nBut wherefore all this labour, all this strife?\nFor fame, for riches, for a noble wife?\nShall one whom nature, learning, birth, conspired\nTo form not to admire but be admired,\nSigh, while his Chloe blind to wit and worth\nWeds the rich dulness of some son of earth?\nYet time ennobles, or degrades each line;\nIt brightened Craggs's, and may darken thine:\nAnd what is fame? the meanest have their day,\nThe greatest can but blaze and pass away.\nGraced as thou art, with all the power of words,\nSo known, so honoured, at the House of Lords:\nConspicuous scene! another yet is nigh,\n(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;\nWhere Murray (long enough his country's pride)\nShall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde!\n   Racked with sciatics, martyred with the stone,\nWill any mortal let himself alone?\nSee Ward by battered beaux invited over,\nAnd desperate misery lays hold on Dover.\nThe case is easier in the mind's disease;\nThere all men may be cured, whene'er they please,\nWould ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains; }\nDisdain whatever Cornbury disdains; }\nBe virtuous and be happy for your pains. }\n   But art thou one, whom new opinions sway,\nOne who believes as Tindal leads the way,\nWho virtue and a church alike disowns,\nThinks that but words, and this but brick and stones?\nFly then on all the wings of wild desire,\nAdmire whate'er the maddest can admire.\nIs wealth thy passion?  Hence! from pole to pole,\nWhere winds can carry, or where waves can roll,\nFor Indian spices, for Peruvian gold,\nPrevent the greedy, and out-bid the bold:\nAdvance thy golden mountain to the skies;\nOn the broad base of fifty thousand rise,\nAdd one round hundred, and (if that's not fair)\nAdd fifty more, and bring it to a square.\nFor, mark th' advantage; just so many score\nWill gain a wife with half as many more,\nProcure her beauty, make that beauty chaste,\nAnd then such friends--as cannot fail to last.\nA man of wealth is dubbed a man of worth,\nVenus shall give him form, and Antis birth.\n(Believe me, many a German Prince is worse,\nWho proud of pedigree, is poor of purse.)\nHis wealth brave Timon gloriously confounds;\nAsked for a groat, he gives a hundred pounds;\nOr if three ladies like a luckless play,\nTakes the whole house upon the poet's day.\nNow, in such exigencies not to need,\nUpon my word, you must be rich indeed;\nA noble superfluity it craves,\nNot for yourself, but for your fools and knaves:\nSomething, which for your honour they may cheat,\nAnd which it much becomes you to forget.\nIf wealth alone then make and keep us blest,\nStill, still be getting, never, never rest.\n   But if to power and place your passion lie,\nIf in the pomp of life consist the joy;\nThen hire a slave, or (if you will) a lord\nTo do the honours, and to give the word;\nTell at your levee, as the crowds approach,\nTo whom to nod, whom take into your coach,\nWhom honour with your hand: to make remarks,\nWho rules in Cornwall, or who rules in Berks:\n\"This may be troublesome, is near the chair;\nThat makes three members, this can choose a mayor.\"\nInstructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest, }\nAdopt him son, or cousin at the least, }\nThen turn about, and laugh at your own jest. }\n   Or if your life be one continued treat,\nIf to live well means nothing but to eat;\nUp, up! cries gluttony, 'tis break of day,\nGo drive the deer, and drag the finny prey;\nWith hounds and horns go hunt an appetite--\nSo Russel did, but could not eat at night,\nCalled happy dog! the beggar at his door,\nAnd envied thirst and hunger to the poor.\n   Or shall we every decency confound,\nThrough taverns, stews, and bagnios take our round,\nGo dine with Chartres, in each vice out-do\nK---l's lewd cargo, or Ty---y's crew,\nFrom Latian Syrens, French Circean feasts,\nReturn well travelled, and transformed to beasts.\n   If, after all, we must with Wilmot own,\nThe cordial drop of life is love alone,\nAnd Swift cry wisely, \"Vive la Bagatelle!\"\nThe man that loves and laughs, must sure do well.\nAdieu--if this advice appear the worst,\nE'en take the counsel which I gave you first:\nOr better precepts if you can impart,\nWhy do, I'll follow them with all my heart.\n\n\n\nTHE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\nADVERTISEMENT.\n\n\nThe Reflections of Horace, and the Judgments past in his Epistle to\nAugustus, seemed so seasonable to the present Times, that I could not\nhelp applying them to the use of my own Country.  The Author thought them\nconsiderable enough to address them to his Prince; whom he paints with\nall the great and good qualities of a Monarch, upon whom the Romans\ndepended for the Increase of an Absolute Empire.  But to make the Poem\nentirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which\ncontribute to the Happiness of a Free People, and are more consistent\nwith the Welfare of our Neighbours.\n\nThis Epistle will show the learned World to have fallen into Two\nmistakes: one, that Augustus was a Patron of Poets in general; whereas he\nnot only prohibited all but the Best Writers to name him, but recommended\nthat Care even to the Civil Magistrate: Admonebat Praetores, ne\npaterentur Nomen suum obsolefieri, etc.  The other, that this Piece was\nonly a general Discourse of Poetry; whereas it was an Apology for the\nPoets, in order to render Augustus more their Patron.  Horace here pleads\nthe Cause of his Contemporaries, first against the Taste of the Town,\nwhose humour it was to magnify the Authors of the preceding Age; secondly\nagainst the Court and Nobility, who encouraged only the Writers for the\nTheatre; and lastly against the Emperor himself, who had conceived them\nof little Use to the Government.  He shows (by a View of the Progress of\nLearning, and the Change of Taste among the Romans) that the Introduction\nof the Polite Arts of Greece had given the Writers of his Time great\nadvantages over their Predecessors; that their Morals were much improved,\nand the Licence of those ancient Poets restrained: that Satire and Comedy\nwere become more just and useful; that, whatever extravagances were left\non the Stage, were owing to the Ill Taste of the Nobility; that Poets,\nunder due Regulations, were in many respects useful to the State, and\nconcludes, that it was upon them the Emperor himself must depend for his\nFame with Posterity.\n\nWe may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his Court to\nthis great Prince by writing with a decent Freedom toward him, with a\njust Contempt of his low Flatterers, and with a manly Regard to his own\nCharacter.  P.\n\n\nEPISTLE I.  TO AUGUSTUS.\n\n\nWhile you, great patron of mankind! sustain\nThe balanced world, and open all the main;\nYour country, chief, in arms abroad defend,\nAt home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;\nHow shall the muse from such a monarch, steal\nAn hour, and not defraud the public weal?\n   Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,\nAnd virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,\nAfter a life of generous toils endured,\nThe Gaul subdued, or property secured,\nAmbition humbled, mighty cities stormed,\nOur laws established, and the world reformed;\nClosed their long glories with a sigh, to find\nTh' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!\nAll human virtue, to its latest breath,\nFinds envy never conquered but by death.\nThe great Alcides, every labour past,\nHad still this monster to subdue at last.\nSure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray\nEach star of meaner merit fades away!\nOppressed we feel the beam directly beat,\nThose suns of glory please not till they set.\n   To thee, the world its present homage pays,\nThe harvest early, but mature the praise:\nGreat friend of liberty! in kings a name\nAbove all Greek, above all Roman fame:\nWhose word is truth, as sacred and revered,\nAs heaven's own oracles from altars heard.\nWonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes\nNone e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.\n   Just in one instance be it yet confest\nYour people, sir, are partial in the rest:\nFoes to all living worth except your own,\nAnd advocates for folly dead and gone.\nAuthors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;\nIt is the rust we value, not the gold.\nChaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote,\nAnd beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:\nOne likes no language but the Faery Queen;\nA Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:\nAnd each true Briton is to Ben so civil,\nHe swears the Muses met him at the devil.\n   Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,\nWhy should not we be wiser than our sires?\nIn every public virtue we excel;\nWe build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,\nAnd learned Athens to our art must stoop,\nCould she behold us tumbling through a hoop.\n   If time improve our wit as well as wine,\nSay at what age a poet grows divine?\nShall we or shall we not account him so,\nWho died, perhaps, a hundred years ago?\nEnd all dispute; and fix the year precise\nWhen British bards begin t' immortalise?\n   \"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,\nI hold that wit a classic, good in law.\"\n   Suppose he wants a year, will you compound;\nAnd shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,\nOr damn to all eternity at once,\nAt ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?\n   \"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;\nBy courtesy of England, he may do.\"\nThen by the rule that made the horse-tail bear,\nI pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,\nAnd melt down ancients like a heap of snow:\nWhile you to measure merits, look in Stowe,\nAnd estimating authors by the year\nBestow a garland only on a bier.\n   Shakespeare (whom you and every play-house bill\nStyle the divine, the matchless, what you will)\nFor gain, not glory, winged his roving flight,\nAnd grew immortal in his own despite.\nBen, old and poor, as little seemed to heed\nThe life to come, in every poet's creed.\nWho now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,\nHis moral pleases, not his pointed wit;\nForget his epic, nay Pindaric art;\nBut still I love the language of his heart.\n   \"Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!\nWhat boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?\nIn all debates where Critics bears a part,\nNot one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,\nOf Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;\nHow Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ;\nHow Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;\nBut for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe.\nThese, only these, support the crowded stage,\nFrom eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age.\"\n   All this may be; the people's voice is odd,\nIt is, and it is not, the voice of God.\nTo Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,\nAnd yet deny the careless husband praise.\nOr say our fathers never broke a rule;\nWhy then, I say, the public is a fool.\nBut let them own, that greater faults than we\nThey had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.\nSpenser himself affects the obsolete,\nAnd Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:\nMilton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound,\nNow serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,\nIn quibbles angel and archangel join,\nAnd God the Father turns a school divine.\nNot that I'd lop the beauties from his book,\nLike slashing Bentley with his desperate hook,\nOr damn all Shakespeare, like the affected fool\nAt court, who hates whate'er he read at school.\n   But for the wits of either Charles's days,\nThe mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;\nSprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,\n(Like twinkling stars the miscellanies o'er)\nOne simile, that solitary shines\nIn the dry desert of a thousand lines,\nOr lengthened thought that gleams through many a page,\nHas sanctified whole poems for an age.\nI lose my patience, and I own it too,\nWhen works are censured, not as bad but new;\nWhile if our elders break all reason's laws,\nThese fools demand not pardon, but applause.\n   On Avon's bank, where flowers eternal blow,\nIf I but ask, if any weed can grow;\nOne tragic sentence if I dare deride\nWhich Betterton's grave action dignified,\nOr well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims,\n(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names)\nHow will our fathers rise up in a rage,\nAnd swear, all shame is lost in George's age!\nYou'd think no fools disgraced the former reign,\nDid not some grave examples yet remain,\nWho scorn a lad should teach his father skill,\nAnd, having once been wrong, will be so still.\nHe, who to seem more deep than you or I,\nExtols old bards, or Merlin's Prophecy,\nMistake him not; he envies, not admires,\nAnd to debase the sons, exalts the sires.\nHad ancient times conspired to disallow\nWhat then was new, what had been ancient now?\nOr what remained, so worthy to be read\nBy learned critics, of the mighty dead?\n   In days of ease, when now the weary sword\nWas sheathed, and luxury with Charles restored;\nIn every taste of foreign courts improved,\n\"All, by the king's example, lived and loved.\"\nThen peers grew proud in horsemanship t' excel,\nNewmarket's glory rose, as Britain's fell;\nThe soldier breathed the gallantries of France,\nAnd every flowery courtier wrote romance.\nThen marble, softened into life, grew warm:\nAnd yielding metal flowed to human form:\nLely on animated canvas stole\nThe sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.\nNo wonder then, when all was love and sport,\nThe willing Muses were debauched at court:\nOn each enervate string they taught the note\nTo pant, or tremble through an eunuch's throat.\n   But Britain, changeful as a child at play,\nNow calls in princes, and now turns away.\nNow Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate;\nNow all for pleasure, now for Church and State;\nNow for prerogative, and now for laws;\nEffects unhappy from a noble cause.\n   Time was, a sober Englishman would knock\nHis servants up, and rise by five o'clock,\nInstruct his family in every rule,\nAnd send his wife to church, his son to school.\nTo worship like his fathers, was his care;\nTo teach their frugal virtues to his heir;\nTo prove, that luxury could never hold;\nAnd place, on good security, his gold.\nNow times are changed, and one poetic itch\nHas seized the court and city, poor and rich:\nSons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,\nOur wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,\nTo theatres, and to rehearsals throng,\nAnd all our grace at table is a song.\nI, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,\nNot ----'s self e'er tells more fibs than I;\nWhen sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,\nAnd promise our best friends to rhyme no more;\nWe wake next morning in a raging fit,\nAnd call for pen and ink to show our wit.\n   He served a 'prenticeship, who sets up shop;\nWard tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop;\nEven Radcliff's doctors travel first to France,\nNor dare to practise till they've learned to dance.\nWho builds a bridge that never drove a pile?\n(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile)\nBut those who cannot write, and those who can,\nAll rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.\n   Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;\nThese madmen never hurt the Church or State;\nSometimes the folly benefits mankind;\nAnd rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind.\nAllow him but his plaything of a pen,\nHe ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:\nFlight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;\nAnd knows no losses while the Muse is kind.\nTo cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter;\nThe good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,\nEnjoys his garden and his book in quiet;\nAnd then--a perfect hermit in his diet.\n   Of little use the man you may suppose,\nWho says in verse what others say in prose;\nYet let me show, a poet's of some weight,\nAnd (though no soldier) useful to the State.\nWhat will a child learn sooner than a song?\nWhat better teach a foreigner the tongue?\nWhat's long or short, each accent where to place,\nAnd speak in public with some sort of grace?\nI scarce can think him such a worthless thing,\nUnless he praise some monster of a king;\nOr virtue, or religion turn to sport,\nTo please a lewd or unbelieving court.\nUnhappy Dryden!--In all Charles's days,\nRoscommon only boasts unspotted bays;\nAnd in our own (excuse some courtly stains)\nNo whiter page than Addison remains.\nHe, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,\nAnd sets the passions on the side of truth,\nForms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,\nAnd pours each human virtue in the heart.\nLet Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,\nHer trade supported, and supplied her laws;\nAnd leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved:\n'The rights a court attacked, a poet saved.'\nBehold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,\nStretched to relieve the idiot and the poor,\nProud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn,\nAnd stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.\nNot but there are, who merit other palms;\nHopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:\nThe boys and girls whom charity maintains,\nImplore your help in these pathetic strains:\nHow could devotion touch the country pews,\nUnless the gods bestowed a proper Muse?\nVerse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,\nVerse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.\nThe silenced preacher yields to potent strain,\nAnd feels that grace his prayer besought in vain;\nThe blessing thrills through all the lab'ring throng,\nAnd Heaven is won by violence of song.\n   Our rural ancestors, with little blest,\nPatient of labour when the end was rest,\nIndulged the day that housed their annual grain,\nWith feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain:\nThe joy their wives, their sons, and servants share,\nEase of their toil, and partners of their care:\nThe laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,\nSmoothed every brow, and opened every soul:\nWith growing years the pleasing licence grew,\nAnd taunts alternate innocently flew.\nBut times corrupt, and Nature, ill-inclined,\nProduced the point that left a sting behind;\nTill friend with friend, and families at strife,\nTriumphant malice raged through private life.\nWho felt the wrong, or feared it, took th' alarm,\nAppealed to law, and justice lent her arm.\nAt length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound,\nThe poets learned to please, and not to wound:\nMost warped to flatt'ry's side; but some more nice,\nPreserved the freedom, and forebore the vice.\nHence satire rose, that just the medium hit,\nAnd heals with morals what it hurts with wit.\n   We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms;\nHer arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms;\nBritain to soft refinements less a foe,\nWit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow.\nWaller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join }\nThe varying verse, the full-resounding line, }\nThe long majestic march, and energy divine. }\nThough still some traces of our rustic vein\nAnd splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain.\nLate, very late, correctness grew our care,\nWhen the tired nation breathed from civil war.\nExact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire,\nShowed us that France had something to admire.\nNot but the tragic spirit was our own,\nAnd full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:\nBut Otway failed to polish or refine,\nAnd fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line.\nE'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot\nThe last and greatest art, the art to blot.\nSome doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire\nThe humbler Muse of comedy require.\nBut in known images of life, I guess\nThe labour greater, as th' indulgence less.\nObserve how seldom even the best succeed:\nTell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?\nWhat pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ!\nHow Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!\nThe stage how loosely does Astraea tread,\nWho fairly puts all characters to bed!\nAnd idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,\nTo make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!\nBut fill their purse, our poet's work is done,\nAlike to them, by pathos or by pun.\n   O you! whom vanity's light bark conveys\nOn fame's mad voyage by the wind of praise,\nWith what a shifting gale your course you ply,\nFor ever sunk too low, or borne too high!\nWho pants for glory finds but short repose,\nA breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.\nFarewell the stage! if just as thrives the play,\nThe silly bard grows fat, or falls away.\n   There still remains, to mortify a wit,\nThe many-headed monster of the pit;\nA senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd;\nWho, to disturb their betters mighty proud,\nClatt'ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke,\nCall for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke.\nWhat dear delight to Britons farce affords!\nEver the taste of mobs, but now of lords;\n(Taste, that eternal wanderer, which flies\nFrom heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes).\nThe play stands still; damn action and discourse,\nBack fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse;\nPageants on pageants, in long order drawn,\nPeers, Heralds, Bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn;\nThe champion too! and, to complete the jest,\nOld Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast,\nWith laughter sure Democritus had died,\nHad he beheld an audience gape so wide.\nLet bear or elephant be e'er so white,\nThe people, sure, the people are the sight!\nAh luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar,\nThat bear or elephant shall heed thee more;\nWhile all its throats the gallery extends,\nAnd all the thunder of the pit ascends!\nLoud as the wolves, on Orcas' stormy steep,\nHowl to the roarings of the Northern deep,\nSuch is the shout, the long-applauding note,\nAt Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat;\nOr when from court a birthday suit bestowed,\nSinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.\nBooth enters--hark! the universal peal!\n\"But has he spoken?\"  Not a syllable.\nWhat shook the stage, and made the people stare?\nCato's long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair.\n   Yet lest you think I rally more than teach,\nOr praise malignly arts I cannot reach,\nLet me for once presume t' instruct the times,\nTo know the poet from the man of rhymes:\n'Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,\nCan make me feel each passion that he feigns;\nEnrage, compose, with more than magic art,\nWith pity, and with terror, tear my heart;\nAnd snatch me, o'er the earth, or through the air,\nTo Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.\n   But not this part of the poetic state\nAlone, deserves the favour of the great;\nThink of those authors, sir, who would rely\nMore on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.\nOr who shall wander where the Muses sing?\nWho climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?\nHow shall we fill a library with wit,\nWhen Merlin's cave is half unfurnished yet?\n   My liege! why writers little claim your thought,\nI guess; and, with their leave, will tell the fault:\nWe poets are (upon a poet's word)\nOf all mankind, the creatures most absurd:\nThe season, when to come, and when to go,\nTo sing, or cease to sing, we never know;\nAnd if we will recite nine hours in ten,\nYou lose your patience, just like other men.\nThen too we hurt ourselves, when to defend\nA single verse, we quarrel with a friend;\nRepeat unasked; lament, the wit's too fine\nFor vulgar eyes, and point out every line.\nBut most, when straining with too weak a wing,\nWe needs will write epistles to the King;\nAnd from the moment we oblige the town,\nExpect a place, or pension from the Crown;\nOr dubbed historians, by express command,\nT' enrol your triumphs o'er the seas and land,\nBe called to Court to plan some work divine,\nAs once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.\n   Yet think, great sir! (so many virtues shown)\nAh think, what poet best may make them known?\nOr choose at least some minister of grace,\nFit to bestow the laureate's weighty place.\n   Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair,\nAssigned his figure to Bernini's care;\nAnd great Nassau to Kneller's hand decreed\nTo fix him graceful on the bounding steed;\nSo well in paint and stone they judged of merit:\nBut kings in wit may want discerning spirit.\nThe hero William and the martyr Charles,\nOne knighted Blackmore, and one pensioned Quarles;\nWhich made old Ben, and surly Dennis swear,\n\"No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear.\"\n   Not with such majesty, such bold relief,\nThe forms august, of king, or conquering chief,\nE'er swelled on marble; as in verse have shined\n(In polished verse) the manners and the mind.\nOh! could I mount on the Maeonian wing,\nYour arms, your actions, your repose to sing!\nWhat seas you traversed, and what fields you fought!\nYour country's peace, how oft, how dearly bought!\nHow barb'rous rage subsided at your word,\nAnd nations wondered while they dropped the sword!\nHow, when you nodded, o'er the land and deep,\nPeace stole her wing, and wrapped the world in sleep;\nTill earth's extremes your mediation own,\nAnd Asia's tyrants tremble at your throne--\nBut verse, alas! your majesty disdains;\nAnd I'm not used to panegyric strains:\nThe zeal of fools offends at any time,\nBut most of all, the zeal of fools in rhyme.\nBesides, a fate attends on all I write,\nThat when I aim at praise, they say I bite.\nA vile encomium doubly ridicules:\nThere's nothing blackens like the ink of fools.\nIf true, a woeful likeness; and if lies,\n\"Praise undeserved is scandal in disguise:\"\nWell may he blush, who gives it, or receives;\nAnd when I flatter, let my dirty leaves\n(Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things\nAs Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings)\nClothe spice, line trunks, or, flutt'ring in a row,\nBefringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho.\n\n\n\nTHE SECOND EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.\n\n\n   \"Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.\"  HOR. (v.124.)\n\nDear Colonel, Cobham's and your country's friend!\nYou love a verse, take such as I can send.\nA Frenchman comes, presents you with his boy,\nBows and begins--\"This lad, sir, is of Blois:\nObserve his shape how clean! his locks how curled!\nMy only son, I'd have him see the world:\nHis French is pure; his voice too--you shall hear.\nSir, he's your slave for twenty pound a year.\nMere wax as yet, you fashion him with ease,\nYour barber, cook, upholsterer, what you please:\nA perfect genius at an opera song--\nTo say too much might do my honour wrong.\nTake him with all his virtues, on my word;\nHis whole ambition was to serve a lord:\nBut, sir, to you, with what would I not part?\nThough faith, I fear 'twill break his mother's heart.\nOnce (and but once) I caught him in a lie,\nAnd then, unwhipped, he had the grace to cry:\nThe fault he has I fairly shall reveal,\n(Could you o'erlook but that) it is to steal.\"\n   If, after this, you took the graceless lad,\nCould you complain, my friend, he proved so bad?\nFaith, in such case, if you should prosecute,\nI think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit:\nWho sent the thief that stole the cash away,\nAnd punished him that put it in his way.\n   Consider then, and judge me in this light;\nI told you when I went, I could not write;\nYou said the same; and are you discontent\nWith laws to which you gave your own assent?\nNay worse, to ask for verse at such a time!\nD'ye think me good for nothing but to rhyme?\n   In Anna's wars, a soldier poor and old\nHad dearly earned a little purse of gold;\nTired with a tedious march, one luckless night,\nHe slept, poor dog! and lost it to a doit.\nThis put the man in such a desperate mind, }\nBetween revenge, and grief, and hunger joined }\nAgainst the foe, himself, and all mankind, }\nHe leaped the trenches, scaled a castle wall,\nTore down a standard, took the fort and all.\n\"Prodigious well,\" his great commander cried,\nGave him much praise and some reward beside.\nNext pleased his excellence a town to batter:\n(Its name I know not, and it's no great matter).\n\"Go on, my friend,\" he cried, \"see yonder walls,\nAdvance and conquer! go where glory calls!\nMore honours, more rewards attend the brave.\"\nDon't you remember what reply he gave?\n\"D'ye think me, noble general, such a sot?\nLet him take castles who has ne'er a groat.\"\n   Bred up at home, full early I begun\nTo read in Greek the wrath of Peleus' son.\nBesides, my father taught me from a lad,\nThe better art to know the good from bad:\n(And little sure imported to remove,\nTo hunt for truth in Maudlin's learned grove).\nBut knottier points we knew not half so well,\nDeprived us soon of our paternal cell;\nAnd certain laws, by sufferers thought unjust,\nDenied all posts of profit or of trust:\nHopes after hopes of pious Papists failed,\nWhile mighty William's thundering arm prevailed,\nFor right hereditary taxed and fined,\nHe stuck to poverty with peace of mind;\nAnd me, the Muses helped to undergo it;\nConvict a Papist he, and I a poet.\nBut (thanks to Homer) since I live and thrive,\nIndebted to no prince or peer alive,\nSure I should want the care of ten Monroes,\nIf I would scribble rather than repose.\nYears following years, steal something every day,\nAt last they steal us from ourselves away;\nIn one our frolics, one amusements end,\nIn one a mistress drops, in one a friend:\nThis subtle thief of life, this paltry time,\nWhat will it leave me, if it snatch my rhyme?\nIf every wheel of that unwearied mill,\nThat turned ten thousand verses, now stands still?\n   But after all, what would you have me do?\nWhen out of twenty I can please not two;\nWhen this heroics only deigns to praise,\nSharp satire that, and that Pindaric lays?\nOne likes the pheasant's wing, and one the leg;\nThe vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg;\nHard task! to hit the palate of such guests,\nWhen Oldfield loves what Dartineuf detests.\n   But grant I may relapse, for want of grace,\nAgain to rhyme, can London be the place?\nWho there his Muse, or self, or soul attends,\nIn crowds, and courts, law, business, feasts, and friends?\nMy counsel sends to execute a deed;\nA poet begs me I will hear him read;\n'In Palace Yard at nine you'll find me there--'\n'At ten for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square--'\n'Before the Lords at twelve my cause comes on--'\n'There's a rehearsal, sir, exact at one.--'\n\"Oh, but a wit can study in the streets,\nAnd raise his mind above the mob he meets.\"\nNot quite so well, however, as one ought;\nA hackney coach may chance to spoil a thought;\nAnd then a nodding beam or pig of lead,\nGod knows, may hurt the very ablest head.\nHave you not seen, at Guildhall's narrow pass,\nTwo aldermen dispute it with an ass?\nAnd peers give way, exalted as they are,\nEven to their own s-r-v-ance in a car?\n   Go, lofty poet! and in such a crowd,\nSing thy sonorous verse--but not aloud.\nAlas! to grottoes and to groves we run,\nTo ease and silence, every Muse's son:\nBlackmore himself, for any grand effort,\nWould drink and doze at Tooting or Earl's Court.\nHow shall I rhyme in this eternal roar?\nHow match the bards whom none e'er matched before?\nThe man, who, stretched in Isis' calm retreat,\nTo books and study gives seven years complete,\nSee! strewed with learned dust, his night-cap on,\nHe walks, an object new beneath the sun!\nThe boys flock round him, and the people stare: }\nSo stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear, }\nStepped from its pedestal to take the air! }\nAnd here, while town, and court, and city roars,\nWith mobs, and duns, and soldiers at their doors;\nShall I, in London, act this idle part?\nComposing songs for fools to get by heart?\nThe Temple late two brother sergeants saw,\nWho deemed each other oracles of law;\nWith equal talents these congenial souls,\nOne lulled th' Exchequer, and one stunned the Rolls;\nEach had a gravity would make you split,\nAnd shook his head at Murray as a wit.\n\"'Twas, sir, your law\"--and \"Sir, your eloquence--\"\n\"Yours, Cowper's manner\"--and \"yours, Talbot's sense.\"\nThus we dispose of all poetic merit,\nYours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit.\nCall Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine,\nDear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine.\nLord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see\nNo poets there, but Stephen, you, and me.\nWalk with respect behind, while we at ease\nWeave laurel crowns, and take what names we please.\n\"My dear Tibullus!\" if that will not do,\n\"Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you:\nOr, I'm content, allow me Dryden's strains,\nAnd you shall rise up Otway for your pains.\"\nMuch do I suffer, much, to keep in peace\nThis jealous, waspish, wrong-head, rhyming race;\nAnd much must flatter, if the whim should bite\nTo court applause by printing what I write:\nBut let the fit pass o'er, I'm wise enough,\nTo stop my ears to their confounded stuff.\n   In vain bad rhymers all mankind reject,\nThey treat themselves with most profound respect;\n'Tis to small purpose that you hold your tongue:\nEach praised within, is happy all day long;\nBut how severely with themselves proceed\nThe men, who write such verse as we can read?\nTheir own strict judges, not a word they spare\nThat wants, or force, or light, or weight, or care,\nHowe'er unwillingly it quits its place,\nNay though at Court, perhaps, it may find grace:\nSuch they'll degrade; and sometimes, in its stead,\nIn downright charity revive the dead;\nMark where a bold expressive phrase appears,\nBright through the rubbish of some hundred years;\nCommand old words that long have slept, to wake,\nWords that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spake;\nOr bid the new be English, ages hence,\n(For use will farther what's begot by sense)\nPour the full tide of eloquence along, }\nSerenely pure, and yet divinely strong, }\nRich with the treasures of each foreign tongue; }\nPrune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine,\nBut show no mercy to an empty line:\nThen polish all, with so much life and ease,\nYou think 'tis nature, and a knack to please:\n\"But ease in writing flows from art, not chance;\nAs those move easiest who have learned to dance.\"\n   If such the plague and pains to write by rule,\nBetter, say I, be pleased and play the fool;\nCall, if you will, bad rhyming a disease,\nIt gives men happiness, or leaves them ease.\nThere lived in primo Georgii, they record,\nA worthy member, no small fool, a lord;\nWho, though the House was up, delighted sate,\nHeard, noted, answered, as in full debate:\nIn all but this, a man of sober life,\nFond of his friend, and civil to his wife;\nNot quite a madman, though a pasty fell,\nAnd much too wise to walk into a well.\nHim, the damned doctors and his friends immured,\nThey bled, they cupped, they purged; in short, they cured.\nWhereat the gentleman began to stare--\n\"My friends!\" he cried, \"plague take you for your care!\nThat from a patriot of distinguished note,\nHave bled and purged me to a simple vote.\"\nWell, on the whole, plain prose must be my fate:\nWisdom (curse on it) will come soon or late.\nThere is a time when poets will grow dull:\nI'll e'en leave verses to the boys at school:\nTo rules of poetry no more confined,\nI learn to smooth and harmonise my mind,\nTeach every thought within its bounds to roll,\nAnd keep the equal measure of the soul.\n   Soon as I enter at my country door\nMy mind resumes the thread it dropt before;\nThoughts, which at Hyde Park Corner I forgot,\nMeet and rejoin me, in the pensive grot.\nThere all alone, and compliments apart,\nI ask these sober questions of my heart.\n   If, when the more you drink, the more you crave,\nYou tell the doctor; when the more you have,\nThe more you want; why not with equal ease\nConfess as well your folly, as disease?\nThe heart resolves this matter in a thrice,\n\"Men only feel the smart but not the vice.\"\n   When golden angels cease to cure the evil,\nYou give all royal witchcraft to the devil;\nWhen servile chaplains cry, that birth and place\nEndure a peer with honour, truth, and grace,\nLook in that breast, most dirty D----! be fair,\nSay, can you find out one such lodger there?\nYet still, not heeding what your heart can teach,\nYou go to church to hear these flatterers preach.\n   Indeed, could wealth bestow or wit or merit,\nA grain of courage, or a spark of spirit,\nThe wisest man might blush, I must agree,\nIf D*** loved sixpence more than he.\n   If there be truth in law, and use can give\nA property, that's yours on which you life.\nDelightful Abs Court, if its fields afford\nTheir fruits to you, confesses you its lord;\nAll Worldly's hens, nay partridge, sold to town:\nHis venison too, a guinea makes your own:\nHe bought at thousands, what with better wit\nYou purchase as you want, and bit by bit;\nNow, or long since, what difference will be found?\nYou pay a penny, and he paid a pound.\n   Heathcote himself, and such large-acred men,\nLords of fat E'sham, or of Lincoln fen,\nBuy every stick of wood that lends them heat,\nBuy every pullet they afford to eat.\nYet these are wights, who fondly call their own\nHalf that the Devil o'erlooks from Lincoln town.\nThe laws of God, as well as of the land,\nAbhor, a perpetuity should stand:\nEstates have wings and hang in fortune's power\nLoose on the point of every wavering hour,\nReady, by force, or of your own accord,\nBy sale, at least by death, to change their lord.\nMan? and for ever? wretch! what wouldst thou have?\nHeir urges heir, like wave impelling wave.\nAll vast possessions (just the same the case\nWhether you call them villa, park, or chase).\nAlas, my Bathurst! what will they avail?\nJoin Cotswold hills to Saperton's fair dale,\nLet rising granaries and temples here,\nThere mingled farms and pyramids appear,\nLink towns to towns with avenues of oak,\nEnclose whole downs in walls, 'tis all a joke!\nInexorable death shall level all,\nAnd trees, and stones, and farms, and farmer fall.\n   Gold, silver, ivory, vases sculptured high,\nPaint, marble, gems, and robes of Persian dye,\nThere are who have not--and thank heaven there are,\nWho, if they have not, think not worth their care,\nTalk what you will of taste, my friend, you'll find,\nTwo of a face, as soon as of a mind.\nWhy, of two brothers, rich and restless one\nPloughs, burns, manures, and toils from sun to sun;\nThe other slights, for women, sports, and wines,\nAll Townshend's turnips, and all Grosvenor's mines;\nWhy one like Bu--with pay and scorn content,\nBows and votes on, in Court and Parliament;\nOne, driven by strong benevolence of soul,\nShall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole;\nIs known alone to that directing power,\nWho forms the genius in the natal hour;\nThat God of Nature, who, within us still,\nInclines our action, not constrains our will:\nVarious of temper, as of face or frame.\nEach individual: His great end the same.\n   Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap,\nA part I will enjoy, as well as keep.\nMy heir may sigh, and think it want of grace\nA man so poor would live without a place;\nBut sure no statute in his favour says\nHow free, or frugal, I shall pass my days:\nI, who at some times spend, at others spare,\nDivided between carelessness and care.\n'Tis one thing madly to disperse my store;\nAnother, not to heed to treasure more!\nGlad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day,\nAnd pleased, if sordid want be far away.\n   What is't to me (a passenger, God wot)\nWhether my vessel be first-rate or not?\nThe ship itself may make a better figure,\nBut I that sail, am neither less nor bigger,\nI neither strut with every favouring breath,\nNor strive with all the tempest in my teeth.\nIn power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed\nBehind the foremost and before the last.\n   \"But why all this of avarice? I have none.\"\nI wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone;\nBut does no other lord it at this hour,\nAs wild and mad: the avarice of power?\nDoes neither rage inflame, nor fear appal?\nNot the black fear of death, that saddens all?\nWith terrors round, can Reason hold her throne,\nDespise the known, nor tremble at the unknown?\nSurvey both worlds, intrepid and entire,\nIn spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire?\nPleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,\nAnd count each birthday with a grateful mind?\nHas life no sourness, drawn so near its end?\nCanst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend?\nHas age but melted the rough parts away,\nAs winter fruits grow mild ere they decay?\nOr will you think, my friend, your business done,\nWhen, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one?\n   Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;\nYou've played, and loved, and ate, and drank your fill:\nWalk sober off; before a sprightlier age\nComes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage;\nLeave such to trifle with more grace and ease,\nWhere folly pleases, and whose follies please.\n\n\n\nTHE SATIRES OF DR. JOHN DONNE, DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.\nVERSIFIED.\n\n\n   \"Quid vetat et nosmet _Lucili_ scripta legentes\n   Quaerere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit\n   Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes\n   Mollius?\"\n\n   HOR. (Sat. LX. 56-9).\n\n\n\nSATIRE II.\n\n\nYes; thank my stars! as early as I knew\nThis town, I had the sense to hate it too;\nYet here; as even in hell, there must be still\nOne giant-vice, so excellently ill,\nThat all beside, one pities, not abhors;\nAs who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.\n   I grant that poetry's a crying sin;\nIt brought (no doubt) the excise and army in:\nCatched like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how,\nBut that the cure is starving, all allow.\nYet like the Papist's, is the poet's state,\nPoor and disarmed, and hardly worth your hate!\nHere a lean bard, whose wit could never give\nHimself a dinner, makes an actor live:\nThe thief condemned, in law already dead,\nSo prompts, and saves a rogue who cannot read.\nThus, as the pipes of some carved organ move,\nThe gilded puppets dance and mount above.\nHeaved by the breath the inspiring bellows blow:\nThe inspiring bellows lie and pant below.\n   One sings the fair; but songs no longer move;\nNo rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love:\nIn love's, in nature's spite, the siege they hold,\nAnd scorn the flesh, the devil, and all but gold.\n   These write to lords, some mean reward to get,\nAs needy beggars sing at doors for meat.\nThose write because all write, and so have still\nExcuse for writing, and for writing ill.\n   Wretched, indeed! but far more wretched yet\nIs he who makes his meal on others' wit:\n'Tis changed, no doubt, from what it was before;\nHis rank digestion makes it wit no more:\nSense, past through him, no longer is the same;\nFor food digested takes another name.\n   I pass o'er all those confessors and martyrs\nWho live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chartres,\nOut-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir,\nOut-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear;\nWicked as pages, who in early years\nAct sins which Prisca's confessor scarce hears.\nEven those I pardon, for whose sinful sake\nSchoolmen new tenements in hell must make;\nOf whose strange crimes no canonist can tell\nIn what Commandment's large contents they dwell.\n   One, one man only breeds my just offence;\nWhom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence:\nTime brings all natural events to pass,\nAnd made him an attorney of an ass.\nNo young divine, new beneficed, can be\nMore pert, more proud, more positive than he.\nWhat further could I wish the fop to do,\nBut turn a wit, and scribble verses too;\nPierce the soft labyrinth of a lady's ear\nWith rhymes of this per cent. and that per year?\nOr court a wife, spread out his wily parts,\nLike nets or lime-twigs, for rich widows' hearts;\nCall himself barrister to every wench,\nAnd woo in language of the pleas and bench?\nLanguage, which Boreas might to Auster hold\nMore rough than forty Germans when they scold.\n   Cursed be the wretch, so venal and so vain:\nPaltry and proud, as drabs in Drury Lane.\n'Tis such a bounty as was never known,\nIf Peter deigns to help you to your own:\nWhat thanks, what praise, if Peter but supplies,\nAnd what a solemn face if he denies!\nGrave, as when prisoners shake the head and swear\n'Twas only suretyship that brought 'em there.\nHis office keeps your parchment fates entire,\nHe starves with cold to save them from the fire;\nFor you he walks the streets through rain or dust,\nFor not in chariots Peter puts his trust;\nFor you he sweats and labours at the laws,\nTakes God to witness he affects your cause,\nAnd lies to every lord in every thing,\nLike a king's favourite--or like a king.\nThese are the talents that adorn them all,\nFrom wicked waters even to godly * *\nNot more of simony beneath black gowns,\nNor more of bastardy in heirs to crowns.\nIn shillings and in pence at first they deal;\nAnd steal so little, few perceive they steal;\nTill, like the sea, they compass all the land,\nFrom Scots to Wight, from mount to Dover strand:\nAnd when rank widows purchase luscious nights,\nOr when a duke to Jansen punts at White's,\nOr City-heir in mortgage melts away;\nSatan himself feels far less joy than they.\nPiecemeal they win this acre first, then that,\nGlean on, and gather up the whole estate.\nThen strongly fencing ill-got wealth by law,\nIndentures, covenants, articles thy draw,\nLarge as the fields themselves, and larger far\nThan civil codes, with all their glosses, are;\nSo vast, our new divines, we must confess,\nAre fathers of the Church for writing less.\nBut let them write for you, each rogue impairs\nThe deeds, and dexterously omits, ses heires;\nNo commentator can more slily pass\nO'er a learned, unintelligible place;\nOr, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out\nThose words, that would against them clear the doubt.\n   So Luther thought the Paternoster long,\nWhen doomed to say his beads and even-song;\nBut having cast his cowl, and left those laws,\nAdds to Christ's prayer, the Power and Glory clause.\n   The lands are bought; but where are to be found\nThose ancient woods, that shaded all the ground?\nWe see no new-built palaces aspire,\nNo kitchens emulate the vestal fire.\nWhere are those troops of poor, that thronged of yore\nThe good old landlord's hospitable door?\nWell, I could wish, that still in lordly domes\nSome beasts were killed, though not whole hecatombs;\nThat both extremes were banished from their walls,\nCarthusian fasts, and fulsome bacchanals;\nAnd all mankind might that just mean observe,\nIn which none e'er could surfeit, none could starve.\nThese as good works, 'tis true, we all allow;\nBut oh! these works are not in fashion now:\nLike rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare,\nExtremely fine, but what no man will wear.\n   Thus much I've said, I trust, without offence;\nLet no Court sycophant pervert my sense,\nNor sly informer watch these words to draw\nWithin the reach of treason, or the law.\n\n\nSATIRE IV.\n\n\nWell, if it be my time to quit the stage,\nAdieu to all the follies of the age!\nI die in charity with fool and knave,\nSecure of peace at least beyond the grave.\nI've had my purgatory here betimes,\nAnd paid for all my satires, all my rhymes.\nThe poet's hell, its tortures, fiends, and flames,\nTo this were trifles, toys, and empty names.\n   With foolish pride my heart was never fired,\nNor the vain itch to admire, or be admired;\nI hoped for no commission from his Grace;\nI bought no benefice, I begged no place;\nHad no new verses, nor new suit to show;\nYet went to Court!--the Devil would have it so.\nBut, as the fool that in reforming days\nWould go to Mass in jest (as story says)\nCould not but think, to pay his fine was odd,\nSince 'twas no formed design of serving God;\nSo was I punished, as if full as proud\nAs prone to ill, as negligent of good,\nAs deep in debt, without a thought to pay, }\nAs vain, as idle, and as false, as they }\nWho live at Court, for going once that way! }\nScarce was I entered, when, behold! there came\nA thing which Adam had been posed to name;\nNoah had refused it lodging in his Ark,\nWhere all the race of reptiles might embark:\nA verier monster, that on Afric's shore\nThe sun e'er got, or slimy Nilus bore,\nOr Sloane or Woodward's wondrous shelves contain,\nNay, all that lying travellers can feign.\nThe watch would hardly let him pass at noon,\nAt night, would swear him dropped out of the moon.\nOne whom the mob, when next we find or make\nA Popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take,\nAnd the wise Justice starting from his chair\nCry: \"By your priesthood tell me what you are?\"\n   Such was the wight; the apparel on his back\nThough coarse, was reverend, and though bare, was black:\nThe suit, if by the fashion one might guess,\nWas velvet in the youth of good Queen Bess,\nBut mere tuff-taffety what now remained;\nSo time, that changes all things, had ordained!\nOur sons shall see it leisurely decay,\nFirst turn plain rash, then vanish quite away.\n   This thing has travelled, speaks each language too,\nAnd know what's fit for very state to do;\nOf whose best phrase and courtly accent joined,\nHe forms one tongue, exotic and refined,\nTalkers I've learned to bear; Motteux I knew,\nHenley himself I've heard, and Budgel too.\nThe doctor's wormwood style, the hash of tongues\nA pedant makes, the storm of Gonson's lungs,\nThe whole artillery of the terms of war,\nAnd (all those plagues in one) the bawling bar:\nThese I could bear; but not a rogue so civil,\nWhose tongue will compliment you to the devil.\nA tongue that can cheat widows, cancel scores,\nMake Scots speak treason, cozen subtlest w***es,\nWith royal favourites in flattery vie,\nAnd Oldmixon and Burnet both outlie.\n   He spies me out, I whisper: \"Gracious God!\nWhat sin of mine could merit such a rod?\nThat all the shot of dulness now must be\nFrom this thy blunderbuss discharged on me!\"\n\"Permit\" (he cries) \"no stranger to your fame\nTo crave your sentiment, if ----'s your name.\nWhat speech esteem you most?\"  \"The King's,\" said I\n\"But the best words?\"--\"O, sir, the dictionary.\"\n\"You miss my aim; I mean the most acute\nAnd perfect speaker?\"--\"Onslow, past dispute.\"\n\"But, sir, of writers?\"  \"Swift, for closer style,\nBut Ho**y for a period of a mile.\"\n\"Why, yes, 'tis granted, these indeed may pass:\nGood common linguists, and so Panurge was;\nNay troth the Apostles (though perhaps too rough)\nHad once a pretty gift of tongues enough:\nYet these were all poor gentlemen!  I dare\nAffirm, 'twas travel made them what they were.\"\n   Thus others' talents having nicely shown,\nHe came by sure transition to his own:\nTill I cried out: \"You prove yourself so able,\nPity! you was not Druggerman at Babel;\nFor had they found a linguist half so good\nI make no question but the tower had stood.\"\n\"Obliging sir! for courts you sure were made:\nWhy then for ever buried in the shade?\nSpirits like you should see and should be seen,\nThe King would smile on you--at least the Queen.\"\n\"Ah, gentle sir! you courtiers so cajole us--\nBut Tully has it, Nunquam minus solus:\nAnd as for courts, forgive me, if I say\nNo lessons now are taught the Spartan way:\nThough in his pictures lust be full displayed,\nFew are the converts Aretine has made;\nAnd though the Court show vice exceeding clear,\nNone should, by my advice, learn virtue there.\"\n   At this entranced, he lifts his hands and eyes,\nSqueaks like a high-stretched lutestring, and replies:\n\"Oh, 'tis the sweetest of all earthly things\nTo gaze on princes, and to talk of kings!\"\n\"Then, happy man who shows the tombs!\" said I,\n\"He dwells amidst the Royal Family;\nHe every day, from king to king can walk,\nOf all our Harries, all our Edwards talk,\nAnd get by speaking truth of monarchs dead,\nWhat few can of the living, ease and bread.\"\n\"Lord, sir, a mere mechanic! strangely low,\nAnd coarse of phrase--your English all are so.\nHow elegant your Frenchmen?\"  \"Mine, d'ye mean?\nI have but one, I hope the fellow's clean.\"\n\"Oh! sir, politely so! nay, let me die,\nYour only wearing is your Paduasoy.\"\n\"Not, sir, my only, I have better still,\nAnd this you see is but my dishabille--.\"\nWild to get loose, his patience I provoke,\nMistake, confound, object at all he spoke.\nBut as coarse iron, sharpened, mangles more,\nAnd itch most hurts when angered to a sore;\nSo when you plague a fool, 'tis still the curse,\nYou only make the matter worse and worse.\n   He past it o'er; affects an easy smile\nAt all my peevishness, and turns his style.\nHe asks, \"What news?\"  I tell him of new plays,\nNew eunuchs, harlequins, and operas.\nHe hears, and as a still with simples in it\nBetween each drop it gives, stays half a minute,\nLoth to enrich me with too quick replies,\nBy little and by little drops his lies.\nMere household trash! of birth-nights, balls, and shows,\nMore than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowes.\nWhen the Queen frowned, or smiled, he knows; and what\nA subtle minister may make of that;\nWho sins with whom: who got his pension rug,\nOr quickened a reversion by a drug;\nWhose place is quartered out, three parts in four,\nAnd whether to a bishop, or a w***e;\nWho having lost his credit, pawned his rent,\nIs therefore fit to have a Government;\nWho in the secret, deals in stocks secure,\nAnd cheats the unknowing widow and the poor;\nWho makes a trust or charity a job,\nAnd gets an Act of Parliament to rob;\nWhy turnpikes rise, and now no cit nor clown\nCan gratis see the country, or the town;\nShortly no lad shall chuck, or lady vole,\nBut some excising courtier will have toll.\nHe tells what strumpet places sells for life,\nWhat 'squire his lands, what citizen his wife:\nAnd last (which proves him wiser still than all)\nWhat lady's face is not a whited wall.\n   As one of Woodward's patients, sick, and sore,\nI puke, I nauseate--yet he thrusts in more:\nTrims Europe's balance, tops the statesman's part,\nAnd talks gazettes and post-boys o'er by heart.\nLike a big wife at sight of loathsome meat\nReady to cast, I yawn, I sigh and sweat.\nThen as a licensed spy, whom nothing can\nSilence or hurt, he libels the great man;\nSwears every place entailed for years to come,\nIn sure succession to the day of doom;\nHe names the price for every office paid,\nAnd says our wars thrive ill, because delayed;\nNay hints, 'tis by connivance of the Court,\nThat Spain robs on, and Dunkirk's still a port.\nNot more amazement seized on Circe's guests,\nTo see themselves fall endlong into beasts,\nThan mine, to find a subject staid and wise\nAlready half turned traitor by surprise.\nI felt the infection slide from him to me,\nAs in the ---- some give it to get free;\nAnd quick to swallow me, methought I saw\nOne of our giant statutes ope its jaw.\n   In that nice moment, as another lie\nStood just a-tilt, the minister came by.\nTo him he flies, and bows, and bows again,\nThen, close as Umbra, joins the dirty train.\nNot Fannius' self more impudently near,\nWhen half his nose is in his Prince's ear.\nI quaked at heart; and still afraid, to see\nAll the Court filled with stranger things than he,\nRan out as fast as one that pays his bail\nAnd dreads more actions, hurries from a jail.\n   Bear me, some god! oh, quickly bear me hence\nTo wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense:\nWhere Contemplation plumes her ruffled wings,\nAnd the free soul looks down to pity kings!\nThere sober thought pursued the amusing theme,\nTill fancy coloured it, and formed a dream.\nA vision hermits can to hell transport,\nAnd forced even me to see the damned at Court.\nNot Dante dreaming all the infernal state,\nBeheld such scenes of envy, sin, and hate.\nBase fear becomes the guilty, not the free;\nSuits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me:\nShall I, the terror of this sinful town,\nCare, if a liveried lord or smile or frown?\nWho cannot flatter, and detest who can,\nTremble before a noble serving-man?\nO, my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee\nFor huffing, braggart, puffed nobility?\nThou, who since yesterday hast rolled o'er all\nThe busy, idle blockheads of the ball,\nHast thou, oh, sun! beheld an emptier fort,\nThan such who swell this bladder of a Court?\nNow plague on those who show a Court in wax!\nIt ought to bring all courtiers on their backs:\nSuch painted puppets! such a varnished race\nOf hollow gewgaws, only dress and face!\nSuch waxen noses, stately staring things--\nNo wonder some folks bow, and think them kings.\n   See! where the British youth, engaged no more\nAt Fig's, at White's, with felons, or a bore,\nPay their last duty to the Court and come\nAll fresh and fragrant, to the drawing-room;\nIn hues as gay, and odours as divine,\nAs the fair fields they sold to look so fine.\n\"That's velvet for a king!\" the flatterer swears\n'Tis true, for ten days hence 'twill be King Lear's.\nOur Court may justly to our stage give rules,\nThat helps it both to fools-coats and to fools.\nAnd why not players strut in courtiers' clothes?\nFor these are actors too, as well as those:\nWants reach all states; they beg but better drest,\nAnd all is splended poverty at best.\nPainted for sight, and essenced for the smell,\nLike frigates fraught with spice and cochinel,\nSail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes\nSo weak a vessel, and so rich a prize!\nTop-gallant he, and she in all her trim,\nHe boarding her, she striking sail to him:\n\"Dear Countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!\"\nAnd \"Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!\"\nSuch wits and beauties are not praised for nought,\nFor both the beauty and the wit are bought.\n'Twould burst even Heraclitus with the spleen\nTo see those antics, Fopling and Courtin:\nThe presence seems, with things so richly odd,\nThe mosque of Mahound, or some queer Pagod.\nSee them survey their limbs by Durer's rules,\nOf all beau-kind the best proportioned fools!\nAdjust their clothes, and to confession draw\nThose venial sins, an atom, or a straw;\nBut oh! what terrors must distract the soul\nConvicted of that mortal crime, a hole;\nOr should one pound of powder less bespread\nThose monkey tails that wag behind their head.\nThus finished, and corrected to a hair,\nThey march, to prate their hour before the fair.\nSo first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes,\nWith band of lily, and with cheek of rose,\nSweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim,\nNeatness itself impertinent in him.\nLet but the ladies smile, and they are blest:\nProdigious! how the things protest, protest:\nPeace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you,\nIf once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!\n   Nature made every fop to plague his brother,\nJust as one beauty mortifies another.\nBut here's the captain that will plague them both,\nWhose air cries Arm! whose very look's an oath:\nThe captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough,\nThough his soul's bullet, and his body buff.\nHe spits fore-right; his haughty chest before,\nLike battering rams, beats open every door:\nAnd with a face as red, and as awry,\nAs Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry,\nScarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse,\nHas yet a strange ambition to look worse;\nConfounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe,\nJests like a licensed fool, commands like law.\n   Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so\nAs men from jails to execution go;\nFor hung with deadly sins I see the wall,\nAnd lined with giants deadlier than 'em all:\nEach man an Askapart, of strength to toss\nFor quoits, both Temple Bar and Charing Cross.\nScared at the grizzly forms, I sweat, I fly,\nAnd shake all o'er, like a discovered spy.\n   Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine:\nCharge them with Heaven's artillery, bold divine!\nFrom such alone the great rebukes endure\nWhose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure:\n   'Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs\nTo deluge sin, and drown a Court in tears.\nHowever, what's now Apocrypha, my wit,\nIn time to come, may pass for holy writ.\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.\nIN TWO DIALOGUES.\nWRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.\n\n\nDIALOGUE I.\n\n\n   Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,\nAnd when it comes, the Court see nothing in't.\nYou grow correct, that once with rapture writ,\nAnd are, besides, too moral for a wit.\nDecay of parts, alas! we all must feel--\nWhy now, this moment, don't I see you steal?\n'Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye\nSaid, \"Tories called him Whig, and Whigs a Tory;\"\nAnd taught his Romans, in much better metre,\n\"To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter.\"\n   But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;\nBubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice;\nHorace would say, Sir Billy served the crown,\nBlunt could do business, H-ggins knew the town;\nIn Sappho touch the failings of the sex,\nIn reverend bishops note some small neglects,\nAnd own, the Spaniard did a waggish thing,\nWho cropped our ears, and sent them to the king.\nHis sly, polite, insinuating style\nCould please at Court, and make Augustus smile:\nAn artful manager, that crept between\nHis friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.\nBut 'faith, your friends will soon be sore;\nPatriots there are, who wish you'd jest no more--\nAnd where's the glory? 'twill be only thought\nThe Great Man never offered you a groat.\nGo, see Sir Robert--P. See Sir Robert!--hum--\nAnd never laugh--for all my life to come?\nSeen him I have, but in his happier hour\nOf social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power;\nSeen him, unencumbered with the venal tribe,\nSmile without art, and win without a bribe.\nWould he oblige me? let me only find\nHe does not think me what he thinks mankind.\nCome, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;\nThe only difference is I dare laugh out.\n   F. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free;\nA horse-laugh, if you please, at honesty:\nA joke on Jekyl, or some odd old Whig\nWho never changed his principle, or wig:\nA patriot is a fool in every age,\nWhom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage:\nThese nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still,\nAnd wear their strange old virtue, as they will.\nIf any ask you, \"Who's the man, so near\nHis prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?\"\nWhy, answer, Lyttelton, and I'll engage\nThe worthy youth shall ne'er be in a rage;\nBut were his verses vile, his whisper base,\nYou'd quickly find him in Lord Fanny's case.\nSejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury,\nBut well may put some statesmen in a fury.\n   Laugh, then, at any, but at fools or foes;\nThese you but anger, and you mend not those.\nLaugh at your friends, and, if your friends are sore,\nSo much the better, you may laugh the more.\nTo vice and folly to confine the jest,\nSets half the world, God knows, against the rest;\nDid not the sneer of more impartial men\nAt sense and virtue, balance all again.\nJudicious wits spread wide the ridicule,\nAnd charitably comfort knave and fool.\n   P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth;\nAdieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!\nCome, harmless characters, that no one hit;\nCome, Henley's oratory, Osborne's wit!\nThe honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,\nThe flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Y--ng!\nThe gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,\nAnd all the well-whipped cream of courtly sense,\nThat first was H--vy's, F---'s next, and then\nThe S--te's, and then H--vy's once again.\nO, come, that easy Ciceronian style,\nSo Latin, yet so English all the while,\nAs, though the pride of Middleton and Bland,\nAll boys may read, and girls may understand!\nThen might I sing, without the least offence,\nAnd all I sung should be the nation's sense;\nOr teach the melancholy muse to mourn,\nHang the sad verse on Carolina's urn,\nAnd hail her passage to the realms of rest,\nAll parts performed, and all her children blessed!\nSo--satire is no more--I feel it die--\nNo Gazetteer more innocent than I--\nAnd let, a' God's name, every fool and knave\nBe graced through life, and flattered in his grave.\n   F. Why so? if satire knows its time and place\nYou still may lash the greatest--in disgrace:\nFor merit will by turns forsake them all;\nWould you know when? exactly when they fall.\nBut let all satire in all changes spare\nImmortal S--k, and grave De--re.\nSilent and soft, as saints remove to heaven,\nAll ties dissolved and every sin forgiven,\nThese may some gentle ministerial wing\nReceive, and place for ever near a king!\nThere, where no passion, pride, or shame transport,\nLulled with the sweet nepenthe of a Court;\nThere, where no father's, brother's, friend's disgrace\nOnce break their rest, or stir them from their place:\nBut past the sense of human miseries,\nAll tears are wiped for ever from all eyes;\nNo cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,\nSave when they lose a question, or a job.\n   P. Good Heaven forbid, that I should blast their glory,\nWho know how like Whig ministers to Tory,\nAnd, when three sovereigns died, could scarce be vexed,\nConsidering what a gracious prince was next.\nHave I, in silent wonder, seen such things\nAs pride in slaves, and avarice in kings;\nAnd at a peer, or peeress, shall I fret,\nWho starves a sister, or forswears a debt?\nVirtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;\nBut shall the dignity of vice be lost?\nYe gods! shall Cibber's son, without rebuke,\nSwear like a lord, or rich out-rake a duke?\nA favourite's porter with his master vie,\nBe bribed as often, and as often lie?\nShall Ward draw contracts with a statesman's skill?\nOr Japhet pocket, like his grace, a will?\nIs it for Bond or Peter (paltry things)\nTo pay their debts, or keep their faith, like kings?\nIf Blount despatched himself, he played the man,\nAnd so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran!\nBut shall a printer, weary of his life,\nLearn, from their books, to hang himself and wife?\nThis, this, my friend, I cannot, must not bear;\nVice thus abused, demands a nation's care;\nThis calls the Church to deprecate our sin,\nAnd hurls the thunder of the laws on gin.\n   Let modest Foster, if he will, excel\nTen Metropolitans in preaching well;\nA simple Quaker, or a Quaker's wife,\nOutdo Llandaff in doctrine--yea in life:\nLet humble Allen, with an awkward shame,\nDo good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.\nVirtue may choose the high or low degree,\n'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me;\nDwell in a monk, or light upon a king,\nShe's still the same, beloved, contented thing.\nVice is undone, if she forgets her birth,\nAnd stoops from angels to the dregs of earth:\nBut 'tis the Fall degrades her to a w***e;\nLet greatness own her, and she's mean no more;\nHer birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess;\nChaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless;\nIn golden chains the willing world she draws,\nAnd hers the Gospel is, and hers the laws,\nMounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,\nAnd sees pale Virtue carted in her stead.\nLo! at the wheels of her triumphal car\nOld England's genius, rough with many a scar,\nDragged in the dust! his arms hang idly round,\nHis flag inverted trails along the ground!\nOur youth, all liveried o'er with foreign gold,\nBefore her dance: behind her crawl the old!\nSee thronging millions to the Pagod run,\nAnd offer country, parent, wife, or son;\nHear her black trumpet through the land proclaim\nThat not to be corrupted is the shame.\nIn soldier, Churchman, patriot, man in power,\n'Tis avarice all, ambition is no more!\nSee, all our nobles begging to be slaves!\nSee, all our fools aspiring to be knaves!\nThe wit of cheats, the courage of a w***e,\nAre what ten thousand envy and adore;\nAll, all look up, with reverential awe,\nAt crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the law;\nWhile truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry--\n\"Nothing is sacred now but villainy.\"\n   Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)\nShow there was one who held it in disdain.\n\n\nDIALOGUE II.\n\n\n   Fr. 'Tis all a libel--Paxton (sir) will say. }\n   P. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow 'faith it may }\nAnd for that very cause I print to-day. }\nHow should I fret to mangle every line,\nIn reverence to the sins of thirty-nine!\nVice with such giant strides comes on amain,\nInvention strives to be before in vain;\nFeign what I will, and paint it e'er so strong,\nSome rising genius sins up to my song.\n   F. Yet none but you by name the guilty lash;\nEven Guthry saves half Newgate by a dash.\nSpare, then, the person, and expose the vice.\n   P. How, sir? not damn the sharper, but the dice?\nCome on, then, satire! general, unconfined,\nSpread thy broad wing, and souse on all the kind.\nYe statesmen, priests, of one religion all!\nYe tradesmen vile, in army, court, or hall,\nYe reverend atheists--\n             F. Scandal! name them! who?\n   P. Why that's the thing you bid me not to do.\nWho starved a sister, who forswore a debt,\nI never named; the town's inquiring yet.\nThe poisoning dame--\n      F. You mean--\n         P. I don't.\n            F. You do!\n   P. See, now I keep the secret, and not you!\nThe bribing statesman--\n            F. Hold, too high you go.\n   P. The bribed elector--\n            F. There you stoop too low.\n   P. I fain would please you, if I knew with what;\nTell me, which knave is lawful game, which not?\nMust great offenders, once escaped the Crown,\nLike royal harts, be never more run down?\nAdmit your law to spare the knight requires,\nAs beasts of nature may we hunt the squires?\nSuppose I censure--you know what I mean--\nTo save a bishop, may I name a dean?\n   F. A dean, sir? no: his fortune is not made;\nYou hurt a man that's rising in the trade.\n   P. If not the tradesman who set up to-day,\nMuch less the 'prentice who to-morrow may.\nDown, down, proud satire! though a realm be spoiled,\nArraign no mightier thief than wretched Wild;\nOr, if a court or country's made a job,\nGo drench a pickpocket, and join the mob.\n   But, sir, I beg you (for the love of vice!)\nThe matter's weighty, pray consider twice;\nHave you less pity for the needy cheat,\nThe poor and friendless villain, than the great?\nAlas! the small discredit of a bribe\nScarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe.\nThen better, sure, it charity becomes\nTo tax directors, who (thank God!) have plums;\nStill better, ministers; or, if the thing\nMay pinch even there--why lay it on a king.\n   F. Stop! stop!\n         P. Must satire, then, nor rise nor fall?\nSpeak out, and bid me blame no rogues at all.\n   F. Yes, strike that Wild, I'll justify the blow.\n   P. Strike? why the man was hanged ten year ago:\nWho now that obsolete example fears?\nEven Peter trembles only for his ears.\n   F. What? always Peter? Peter thinks you mad;\nYou make men desperate if they once are bad:\nElse might he take to virtue some years hence--\n   P. As S---k, if he lives, will love the prince.\n   F. Strange spleen to S---k!\n            P. Do I wrong the man?\nGod knows, I praise a courtier where I can.\nWhen I confess, there is who feels for fame,\nAnd melts to goodness, need I Scarb'row name?\nPlease let me own, in Esher's peaceful grove\n(Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love),\nThe scene, the master, opening to my view,\nI sit and dream I see my Craggs anew!\n   Even in a bishop I can spy desert;\nSecker is decent, Rundel has a heart,\nManners with candour are to Benson given,\nTo Berkeley, every virtue under Heaven.\n   But does the Court a worthy man remove?\nThat instant, I declare, he has my love:\nI shun his zenith, court his mild decline;\nThus Somers once, and Halifax, were mine.\nOft, in the clear, still mirror of retreat,\nI studied Shrewsbury, the wise and great:\nCarleton's calm sense, and Stanhope's noble flame,\nCompared, and knew their generous end the same;\nHow pleasing Atterbury's softer hour!\nHow shined the soul, unconquered in the tower!\nHow can I Pulteney, Chesterfield forget,\nWhile Roman spirit charms, and attic wit:\nArgyll, the state's whole thunder born to wield,\nAnd shake alike the senate and the field:\nOr Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne,\nThe master of our passions, and his own?\nNames, which I long have loved, nor loved in vain,\nRanked with their friends, not numbered with their train;\nAnd if yet higher the proud list should end,\nStill let me say: No follower, but a friend.\n   Yet think not, friendship only prompts my lays;\nI follow Virtue: where she shines, I praise:\nPoint she to priest or elder, Whig or Tory,\nOr round a Quaker's beaver cast a glory.\nI never (to my sorrow, I declare)\nDined with the Man of Ross, or my Lord Mayor.\nSome in their choice of friends (nay, look not grave)\nHave still a secret bias to a knave:\nTo find an honest man I beat about,\nAnd love him, court him, praise him, in or out.\n   F. Then why so few commended?\n         P. Not so fierce!\nFind you the virtue, and I'll find the verse.\nBut random praise--the task can ne'er be done;\nEach mother asks it for her booby son,\nEach widow asks it for the best of men,\nFor him she weeps, and him she weds again.\nPraise cannot stoop, like satire, to the ground;\nThe number may be hanged, but not be crowned.\nEnough for half the greatest of these days\nTo 'scape my censure, not expect my praise.\nAnd they not rich? what more can they pretend?\nDare they to hope a poet for their friend?\nWhat Richelieu wanted, Louis scarce could gain,\nAnd what young Ammon wished, but wished in vain.\nNo power the muse's friendship can command;\nNo power when virtue claims it, can withstand:\nTo Cato, Virgil paid one honest line;\nO let my country's friends illumine mine!\nWhat are you thinking?\n   F. 'Faith, the thought's no sin:\nI think your friends are out, and would be in.\n   P. If merely to come in, sir, they go out,\nThe way they take is strangely round about.\n   F. They too may be corrupted, you'll allow?\n   P. I only call those knaves who are so now.\nIs that too little?  Come, then, I'll comply--\nSpirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie.\nCobham's a coward, Polwarth is a slave,\nAnd Littelton a dark, designing knave,\nSt. John has ever been a wealthy fool--\nBut let me add, Sir Robert's mighty dull,\nHas never made a friend in private life,\nAnd was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.\n   But pray, when others praise him, do I blame?\nCall Verres, Wolsey, any odious name?\nWhy rail they, then, if but a wreath of mine,\nOh, all-accomplished St. John! deck thy shrine?\n   What? shall each spur-galled hackney of the day,\nWhen Paxton gives him double pots and pay,\nOr each new-pensioned sycophant, pretend\nTo break my windows, if I treat a friend?\nThen wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt,\nBut 'twas my guest at whom they threw the dirt?\nSure, if I spare the minister, no rules\nOf honour bind me, not to maul his tools;\nSome, if they cannot cut, it may be said\nHis saws are toothless, and his hatchet's lead.\n   If angered Turenne, once upon a day,\nTo see a footman kicked that took his pay:\nBut when he heard the affront the fellow gave,\nKnew one a man of honour, one a knave;\nThe prudent general turned it to a jest,\nAnd begged, he'd take the pains to kick the rest:\nWhich not at present having time to do--\n   F. Hold, sir! for God's sake where's the affront to you?\nAgainst your worship when had S---k writ?\nOr P--ge poured forth the torrent of his wit?\nOr grant the bard whose distich all commend\n(In power a servant, out of power a friend)\nTo W---le guilty of some venial sin;\nWhat's that to you who ne'er was out nor in?\n   The priest whose flattery be-dropt the Crown,\nHow hurt he you? he only stained the gown.\nAnd how did, pray, the florid youth offend,\nWhose speech you took, and gave it to a friend?\n   P. 'Faith, it imports not much from whom it came; }\nWhoever borrowed, could not be to blame, }\nSince the whole house did afterwards the same. }\nLet courtly wits to wits afford supply,\nAs hog to hog in huts of Westphaly;\nIf one, through Nature's bounty, or his Lord's,\nHas what the frugal, dirty soil affords,\nFrom him the next receives it, thick or thin,\nAs pure a mess almost as it came in;\nThe blessed benefit, not there confined,\nDrops to the third, who nuzzles close behind;\nFrom tail to mouth, they feed and they carouse:\nThe last full fairly gives it to the House.\n   F. This filthy simile, this beastly line,\nQuite turns my stomach--\n         P. So does flattery mine;\nAnd all your courtly civet-cats can vent,\nPerfume to you, to me is excrement.\nBut hear me further--Japhet, 'tis agreed,\nWrit not, and Chartres scarce could write or read,\nIn all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite;\nBut pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write;\nAnd must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown\nBecause the deed he forged was not my own?\nMust never patriot, then, declaim at gin,\nUnless, good man! he has been fairly in?\nNo zealous pastor blame a failing spouse\nWithout a staring reason on his brows?\nAnd each blasphemer quite escape the rod\nBecause the insult's not on man, but God?\n   Ask you what provocation I have had?\nThe strong antipathy of good to bad.\nWhen truth or virtue an affront endures,\nThe affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.\nMine, as a foe professed to false pretence,\nWho think a coxcomb's honour like his sense;\nMine, as a friend to every worthy mind\nAnd mine as man, who feel for all mankind.\n   F. You're strangely proud.\n         P. So proud, I am no slave: }\nSo impudent I own myself no knave: }\nSo odd, my country's ruin makes me grave. }\nYes, I am proud; I must be proud to see\nMen not afraid of God afraid of me:\nSafe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne,\nYet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.\n   O, sacred weapon left for truth's defence,\nSole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!\nTo all but heaven-directed hands denied\nThe muse may give thee, but the gods must guide:\nReverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,\nTo rouse the watchmen of the public weal;\nTo virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,\nAnd goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.\nYe tinsel insects whom a Court maintains\nThat counts your beauties only by your stains,\nSpin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day!\nThe muse's wing shall brush you all away;\nAll his Grace preaches, all his Lordship sings,\nAll that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings.\nAll, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,\nLike the last gazette or the last address.\n   When black ambition stains a public cause,\nA monarch's sword when mad vain-glory draws,\nNot Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar\nNor Boileau turn the feather to a star.\n   Not so, when diademed with rays divine,\nTouched with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine,\nHer priestless muse forbids the good to die,\nAnd opes the temple of Eternity.\nThere other trophies deck the truly brave,\nThan such as Anstis casts into the grave;\nFar other stars than * and * * wear,\nAnd may descend to Mordington from Stair:\n(Such as on Hough's unsullied mitre shine,\nOr beam, good Digby, from a heart like thine).\nLet envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,\nAnd bark at honour not conferred by kings:\nLet flattery sickening see the incense rise\nSweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:\nTruth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,\nAnd makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.\n   Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw,\nWhen truth stands trembling on the edge of law;\nHere, last of Britons! let your names be read;\nAre none, none living? let me praise the dead,\nAnd for that cause which made your fathers shine\nFall by the votes of their degenerate line.\n   Fr.  Alas! alas! pray end what you began,\nAnd write next winter more essays on man.","title":"An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":46865}