"That's velvet for a king!" the flatterer swears 'Tis true, for ten days hence 'twill be King Lear's.
Our Court may justly to our stage give rules, That helps it both to fools-coats and to fools.
And why not players strut in courtiers' clothes?
For these are actors too, as well as those:
Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest, And all is splended poverty at best.
Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell, Like frigates fraught with spice and cochinel, Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes So weak a vessel, and so rich a prize!
Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim, He boarding her, she striking sail to him:
"Dear Countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!"And "Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!"Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought.
'Twould burst even Heraclitus with the spleen To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin:
The presence seems, with things so richly odd, The mosque of Mahound, or some queer Pagod.
See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules, Of all beau-kind the best proportioned fools!
Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw;But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole;Or should one pound of powder less bespread Those monkey tails that wag behind their head.
Thus finished, and corrected to a hair, They march, to prate their hour before the fair.
So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes, With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in him.
Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest:
Prodigious! how the things protest, protest:
Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!
Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another.
But here's the captain that will plague them both, Whose air cries Arm! whose very look's an oath:
The captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door:
And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse;Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so As men from jails to execution go;For hung with deadly sins I see the wall, And lined with giants deadlier than 'em all:
Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss For quoits, both Temple Bar and Charing Cross.
Scared at the grizzly forms, I sweat, I fly, And shake all o'er, like a discovered spy.
Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine:
Charge them with Heaven's artillery, bold divine!
From such alone the great rebukes endure Whose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure:
'Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs To deluge sin, and drown a Court in tears.
However, what's now Apocrypha, my wit, In time to come, may pass for holy writ.
EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.
IN TWO DIALOGUES.
WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.
DIALOGUE I.
Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print, And when it comes, the Court see nothing in't.
You grow correct, that once with rapture writ, And are, besides, too moral for a wit.
Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel--
Why now, this moment, don't I see you steal?
'Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye Said, "Tories called him Whig, and Whigs a Tory;"And taught his Romans, in much better metre, "To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter."But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;
Bubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice;Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown, Blunt could do business, H-ggins knew the town;In Sappho touch the failings of the sex, In reverend bishops note some small neglects, And own, the Spaniard did a waggish thing, Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king.
His sly, polite, insinuating style Could please at Court, and make Augustus smile:
An artful manager, that crept between His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.
But 'faith, your friends will soon be sore;Patriots there are, who wish you'd jest no more--And where's the glory? 'twill be only thought The Great Man never offered you a groat.
Go, see Sir Robert-- P. See Sir Robert!--hum--And never laugh--for all my life to come?
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power;Seen him, unencumbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
Would he oblige me? let me only find He does not think me what he thinks mankind.
Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;The only difference is I dare laugh out.
F. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free;A horse-laugh, if you please, at honesty:
A joke on Jekyl, or some odd old Whig Who never changed his principle, or wig:
A patriot is a fool in every age, Whom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage:
These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still, And wear their strange old virtue, as they will.
If any ask you, "Who's the man, so near His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?"Why, answer, Lyttelton, and I'll engage The worthy youth shall ne'er be in a rage;But were his verses vile, his whisper base, You'd quickly find him in Lord Fanny's case.
Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury, But well may put some statesmen in a fury.
Laugh, then, at any, but at fools or foes;These you but anger, and you mend not those.
Laugh at your friends, and, if your friends are sore, So much the better, you may laugh the more.
To vice and folly to confine the jest, Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest;Did not the sneer of more impartial men At sense and virtue, balance all again.
Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule, And charitably comfort knave and fool.
P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth;Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!
