How could these self-elected monarchs raise So large an empire on so sinall a base? In what retreat, inglorious and unknown, Did Genius sleep, when Dullness seiz'd the throne? Whence, absolute now grown, and free from awe, She to the subject world dispenses law. Without her licence not a letter stirs, And all the captive criss-cross-row is her's. The Stagyrite, who rules from Nature drew, • Opinions gave, but gave his reasons too. Our great dictators take a shorter wayWho shall dispute what the reviewers say? Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason, In such a state as theirs, is downright treason. True judgment now with them alone can dwell; Like church of Rome, they're grown infallible. Dull superstitious readers they deceive, Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, And, knowing nothing, ev'ry thing believe! But why repine we, that these puny elves Shoot into giants?-We may thank ourselves; Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore, The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore. But let true Reason once resume her reign, This god shall dwindle to a calf again.

Founded on arts which shum the face of day,
By the same arts they still maintain their sway.
Wrapp'd in mysterious secresy they rise,
And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise.
At whomsoever aim'd, howe'er severe

Th' envenom'd stander flies, no names appear,
Prudence forbids that step.-Then all might know
And on more equal terms engage the foe.
But now, what Quixote of the age would care
To wage a war with dirt, and fight with air?
By int'rest join'd, th' expert confederates stand,
And play the game into each other's hand.
The vile abuse, in turn by all deny'd,
Is bandy'd up and down from side to side:
It flies--hey-presto!-like a juggler's ball,
Till it belongs to nobody at all.

[known,
All men and things they know, themselves un-
And publish ev'ry name-except their own.
Nor think this strange-secure from vulgar eyes
The nameless author passes in disguise.
But vet'ran critics are not so deceiv'd,
If vet'ran critics are to be believ'd.

Once seen, they know an author evermore,
Nay swear to hands they never saw before.
Thus in the Rosciad, beyond chance or doubt,
They, by the writing, found the writers out.
"That's Lloyd's-his manner there you plainly

trace,

And all the actor stares you in the face.
By Colman that was written.--On my life,
The strongest symptoms of the Jealous Wife.
That little disingenuous piece of spite,
Churchill, a wretch unknown, perhaps might write."
How doth it make judicious readers smile,
When authors are detected by their style:
Though ev'ry one who knows this author, knows
He shifts his style much oft ner than his clothes?
Whence could arise this mighty critic spleen,
The Muse a trißer, and her theme so mean?
What had I done, that angry Heav'n should send
The bitt'rest foe where most I wish'd a friend?
Oft hath my tongue been wanton at thy name,
And hail'd the honours of thy matchless fame.
For me let hoary Fielding bite the ground,
So nobler Pickle stands superbly bound.

From Livy's temples tear th' historic crown,
Which with more justice blooms upon thine own.
Compar'd with thee, be all life-writers dumb,
But he who wrote the Life of Tommy Thumb.
Who ever read the Regicide, but swore
The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before ?
Others for plots and under-plots may call,
Here's the right method-have no plot at all.
Who can so often in his cause engage

The tiny pathos of the Grecian stage,
Whilst horrours rise, and tears spontaneous flow,
At tragic Ha! and no less tragic Oh!
To praise his nervous weakness all agree;
And then for sweetness, who so sweet as he!
Too big for utterance when sorrows swell,
The too big sorrows flowing tears must tell :
But when those flowing tears shall cease to flow,
Why-then the voice must speak again, you know.
Rude and unskilful in the poet's trade,

I kept no Naiads by me ready-made;
Ne'er did I colours high in air advance,
Torn from the bleeding fopperies of France;
No flimsy linsey-woolsey scenes I wrote,
With patches here and there like Joseph's coat.
Me humbler themes befit: secure, for me,
Let playwrights smuggle nonsense, duty free:
Secure, for me, ye lambs, ye lambkins bound,
And frisk, and frolic o'er the fairy ground:
Secure, for me, thou pretty little fawn,
Lick Sylvia's hand, and crop the flow'y lawn:
Uncensur'd let the gentle breezes rove
Through the green umbrage of th' enchanted grove :
Secure, for me, let foppish Nature smile,
And play the coxcomb in the Desert Isle.

The stage I chose--a subject fair and free-
'Tis yours-'tis mine-'tis public property.
All common exhibitions open lie

For praise or censure to the common eve.
Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
Hence monthly crities earn their daily bread.
This is a genral tax which all must pay,
from those who scribble, down to those who lay.
Actors, a venal crew, receive support
From public bounty, for the public sport.
To clap or hiss, all have an equal claim,

The cobler's and his lordship's right the same.

All join for their subsistence; all expect

Free leave to praise their worth, their faults correct.
When active Pickle Smithfield stage ascendis,
The three days' wonder of his laughing friends;
Each, or as judgment, or as fancy guides,
The lively witling praises or derides.
And where's the mighty diffrence, tell me where,
Betwixt a merry-andrew and a player?

The strolling tribe, a despicable race,
Like wand'ring Arabs, shift from place to place.
Vagrants by law, to justice open laid,
They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid,
And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life,
To Madain Mayoress, or his Worship's wite.
The mighty monarch, in theatrie sack,
Carries his whole regalia at his back;
I's royal consort heads the female band,
And leads the heir-apparent in her hand;
The pannier'd ass erceps on with conscious pride,
Bearing a future prince on either side.
No choice musicians in this troop are found
To varnish nonsense with the charms of sound;
No swords, no daggers, not one poison'd bowl;
No lightning flashes here, no thunders roll;

While soul is join'd to body, whether Fate Allot a longer or a shorter date;

I'll make them live, as brother should with brother,
And keep them in good-humour with each other.
The surest road to health, say what they will,
Is never to suppose we shall be ill.
Most of those evils we poor mortals know,
From doctors and imagination flow.
Hence to old women with your boasted rules,
Stale traps, and only sacred now to fools;
As well may sons of physic hope to find
One med'cine, as one hour, for all mankind.

If Rupert after ten is out of bed,
The fool next morning can't hold up his head.
What reason this which me to bed must call,
Whose head (thank Heaven) never aches at all?
In difi'rent courses diff'rent tempers run,
He hates the Moon, I sicken at the Sun.
Wound up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right,
Mine better goes, wound up at twelve at night.
Then in Oblivion's grateful cup I drown
The galling sneer, the supercilious frown,
The strange reserve, the proud affected state
Of upstart knaves grown rich, and fools grown great.
No more that abject wretch disturbs my rest,
Who meanly overlooks a friend distrest.
Purblind to poverty the worldling goes,
And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose;
But from a crowd can single out his grace,
And cringe and creep to fools who strut in lace.
Whether those classic regions are survey'd
Where we in earliest youth together stray'd,
Where hand in hand we trod the flow'ry shore,
Though now thy happier genius runs before,
When we conspir'd a thankless wretch to raise,
And taught a stump to shoot with pilfer'd praise,
Who once for rev'rend merit famous grown,
Gratefully strove to kick his Maker down;
Or if more gen'ral arguments engage,
The court or camp, the pulpit, bar or stage;
If half-bred surgeons, whom men doctors call,
And lawyers, who were never bred at all,
Those mighty letter'd monsters of the Earth,
Our pity move, or exercise our mirch;
Or if in tittle-tattle, tooth-pick way,
Our rambling thoughts with easy freedom stray;
A gainer still thy friend himself must find,
His grief suspended, and improv'd his mind.

Whilst peaceful slumbers bless the homely bed, Where Virtue, self-approv'd, reclines her head; Whilst Vice beneath imagin'd horrours mourns, And Conscience plants the villain's conch with thorns; Impatient of restraint, the active Mind, No more by servile Prejudice confin'd, Leaps from her seat, as waken'd from a trance, And darts through Nature at a single glance. Then we our friends, our foes, ourselves, survey, And see by night what fools we are by day.

Stript of her gaudy plumes and vain disguise, See where Ambition mean and loathsome lies; Reflection with relentless hand pulls down The tyrant's bloody wreath and ravish'd crown. In vain he tells of battles bravely won, Of nations conquer'd, and of worlds undone: Triumphs like these but ill with manhood su ́, And sink the conqueror beneath the brute. But if, in searching round the world, we find Some gen'rous youth, the friend of all manki id, Whose anger, like the bolt of Jove, is sped la terrours only at the guilty head,

Whose mercies, like Heaven's dew, refreshing fall
In gen'ral love and charity to all,

Pleas'd we behold such worth on any throne,
And doubly pleas'd we find it on our own.

Through a false medium things are shown by day,
Pomp, wealth, and titles, judgment lead astray.
How many from appearance borrow state,
Whom Night disdains to number with the great!
Must not we laugh to see yon lordling proud
Snuff up vile incense from a fawning crowd?
Whilst in his beam surrounding clients play,
Like insects in the Sun's enliv'ning ray,
Whilst, Jehu-like, he drives at furious rate,
And seems the only charioteer of state,
Talking himself into a little god,
And ruling empires with a single nod;
Who would not think, to hear him law dispense,
That he had int'rest, and that they had sense?
Injurious thought! Beneath Night's honest shade,
When pomp is buried and false colours fade,
Plainly we see at that impartial hour
Them dupes to pride, and him the tool of pow'r.
God help the man, condemn'd by cruel Fate
To court the seeming, or the real great.
Much sorrow shall he feel, and suffer more
Than any slave who labours at the oar.
By slavish methods must he learn to please,
By smooth-tongu'd Flatt'ry, that curst court-disease,
Supple to ev'ry wayward mood strike sail,
And shift with shifting Humour's peevish gale.
To Nature dead he must adopt vile Art,
And wear a smile, with anguish in his heart.
A sense of honour would destroy his schemes,
And Conscience ne'er must speak unless in dreams.
When he hath tamely borne for many years
Cold looks, forbidding frowns, contemptuous sncers;
When he at last expects, good easy man,
To reap the profits of his labour'd plan,
Some cringing lacquey, or rapacious whore,
To favours of the great the surest door,
Some catamite, or pimp, in credit grown,
Who tempts another's wife, or sells his own,
Steps cross his hopes, the promis'd boon denies,
And for some minion's minion claims the prize
Foe to restraint, unpractis'd in deceit,
Too resolute, from Nature's active heat,
To brook affronts, and tamely pass them by;
Too proud to flatter, too sincere to lie,
Too plain to please, too honest to be great;
Give me, kind Heav'n, an humbler, happier state:
Far from the place where men with pride deceive,
Where rascals promise, and where fools believe;
Far from the walk of folly, vice, and strife,
Calm, independent, let me steal through life,
Nor one vain wish my steady thoughts beguile
To fear his lordship's frown, or court his smile.
Unfit for Greatness, I her snares defy,
And look on riches with untainted eye.
To others let the glitt'ring bawbles fall,
Content shall place us far above them all.

Spectators only on this bustling stage, We see what vain designs mankind engage; Vice after vice with ardour they pursue, And one old folly brings forth twenty new. Perplex'd with trifles through the vale of life, Man strives 'gainst man, without a cause for strife; Armies embattled meet, and thousands bleed For some vile spot, where fifty cannot eed. Squirre's for nuts contend, and, wrong r right, For the world's empire kings amb tous fight;

What odds?-To us 'tis all the self-same thing,
A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.

Britons, like Roman spirits fam'd of old,
Are cast by Nature in a patriot mould;
No private joy, no private grief they know,
Their soul's engross'd by public weal or woe.
Inglorious case, like ours, they greatly scorn:
Let care with nobler wreaths their brows adorn.
Gladly they toil beneath the statesman's pains,
Give them but credit for a statesman's brains.
All would be deem'd, e'en from the cradle, fit
To rule in politics as well as wit.

The grave, the gay, the fopling, and the dunce,
Start up (God bless us!) statesmen all at once.

His mighty charge of souls the priest forgets,
The court-bred lord his promises and debts,
Soldiers their fame, misers forget their pelf,
The rake his mistress, and the fop himself;
Whilst thoughts of higher moment claim their care,
And their wise heads the weight of kingdoms bear.
Females themselves the glorious ardour fee',
And boast an equal, or a greater zeal;
From nymph to nymph the state-infection flies,
Swells in her breast, and sparkles in her eyes.
O'erwhelm'd by polities lie malice, pride,
Envy, and twenty other faults beside.
No more their little Butt'ring hearts confess
A passion for applause, or rage for dress;
No more they pant for public raree-shows,
Or lose one thought on monkeys or on beaux.
Coquettes no more pursue the j lting plan,
And lustful prudes forget to rad at man.
The darling theme Cæcilia's self will choose,
Nor thinks of scandal whilst she talks of news.
The CT, a common-council-man by place,
Ten thousand mighty nothings in his face,
By situation as by nature great,
With nice precision parcels out the state;
Proves and disproves, afirms, and then denies,
Objects himself, and to himself replies;
Wielding aloft the politician rod,
Makes Pitt by turns a devil and a god;
Maintains, e'en to the very teeth of pow'r,
The same thing right and wrong in half an hour.
Now all is well, now he suspects a plot,
And plainly proves, WHATEVER IS, IS NOT.
Fearfully wise, he shakes his empty head,
And deals out empires as he deals out thread.
His useless scales are in a corner flung,
And Europe's balance hangs upon his tongue.
Peace to such triflers; be our happier plan
To pass through life as easy as we can.
Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity, nor spleen.
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show;
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master-wire.
What is't to us, if taxes rise or fall,
Thanks to our fortune we pay none at all.
Let muckworms, who in dirty acres deal,
Lament those hardships which we cannot feel.
His grace, who smarts, may bellow if he please,
But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
By custom safe, the poet's numbers flow,
Free as the light and air some years ago.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
Burthens like these vile earthly buildings bea,
No tribute's laid on castles in the air.

Let then the flames of war destructive reicn,
And England's terrours awe imperious San;
Let ev'ry venal clan and neutral tribe-
Learn to receive conditions, not prescribe;
Let each new year call loud for new supplies,
And tax on tax with double burthen rise;
Exempt we sit, by no rude cares opprest,
And, having little, are with little blest.
All real ills in dark oblivion lie,

And joys, by fancy form'd, their place supply.
Night's laughing hours unheeded slip away,
Nor one dull thought foretells th' approach of day.
Thus have we liv'd, and whilst the Taves allerd
Plain plenty to supply the frugal beard,
Whilst Mirth, with Decency his lovely bride,
And wine's gay god, with Temp'rance by his side,
Their welcome visit pay; whilst Health attends
The narrow circle of our chosen friends,
Whilst frank Good-Humour conscerates the treat,
And woman makes society complete,
Thus will we live, though in our teeth are build
Those hackney strumpels, Prudence and the World.
Prudence, of old a sacred tem, imply'd
Virtue, with godlike Wisdom for her guide,
But now in general use is known to mean
The stalking-horse of Vice, and Folly's screen.
The sense perverted we retain the name,
Hypocrisy and Prudence are the same.

A tutor once, more read in men thin books,
A kind of crafty knowledge in his looks,
Demurely sly, with high preferment blcst,
His fav`rite pupil in these words address`d:

Would'st thou, my son, be wise and virtuous By all mankind a prodigy esteem'd? Tacem'd, Be this thy rule; be what men prude it co.i; Prudence, almighty Prudence, gives thee ad. Keep up appearances, there lies the test, The world will give the credit for the rest. Outward be fair, however foul within; Sin if thou wilt, but then in secret sin. This maxim's into common favour grown, Vice is no longer vice, unless 't's knov u. Virtue indeed may barefae'd take the held; But vice is virtue when 'tis well conceal d. Should raging passions dive thee to a whore, Let Prudence lead thee to a fostern door; Stay out all night, but take especial care That Prudence bring thee back to early prayer. As one with watching and with study fart, Reel in a drunkard, and reel out a saint."

With joy the youth this useful lesson Leard, And in his memory stor❜d each precious word, Successfully pursu'd the plan, and not,

Room for my lord,-Virtue stand by and bow." And is this all-is this the worldling's art, To mask, but not amend a vicious heart? Shall Jukewarm caution and demeanour grave For wise and good stamp evry supple knave? Shall wretches, whom no real vatne warms, Cild fair their numes and states with empty forms, Whilst Virtue sceks in vain the wish'd-for prize, Because, d ́s laining 1, she hates disguise; Because sie frankly pours forth all her store, Seems what she is, and scorns to pass for mere? Well-be it so-let vile dissemblers hold

Uu nvy'd pow'r, and boast their dear-bought gold, Me neither pow'r shall tempt, nor thirst o pelf, To Hatter others or deny myself;

Might the whole world be plac'd within my span, I would not be that Thing, that Prudent Man.