Where Contemplation prunes her ruffled wings,
And the free soul looks down to pity kings!
There sober thought pursued the amusing theme
Till fancy colour'd it, and form'd a dream.
A vision hermits can to hell transport,
And forced even me to see the damn'd at court.
Not Dante dreaming all the infernal state
Beheld such scenes of envy, sin, and hate.
Base fear becomes the guilty, not the free;
Suits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me:
Shall I, the terror of this sinful town,
Care, if a liveried lord or smile or frown?
Who cannot flatter, and detest who can,
Tremble before a noble serving-man?
O my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee
For huffing, braggart, puff'd nobility?
Thou, who since yesterday hast roll'd o'er all
The busy, idle blockheads of the ball,
Hast thou, O Sun! beheld an emptier sort,
Than such as swell this bladder of a court?
Now pox on those who show a court in wax!1
It ought to bring all courtiers on their backs:
Such painted puppets! such a varnish'd race
Of hollow gew-gaws, only dress and face!
Such waxen noses, stately staring things—
No wonder some folks bow, and think them kings.
See! where the British youth, engaged no more
At Fig's, at White's,' with felons, or a whore,
Pay their last duty to the court, and come
All fresh and fragrant to the drawing room;
In hues as gay, and odours as divine,
As the fair fields they sold to look so fine.
"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:
1 A famous show of the court of France, in wax-work.
2 White's was a noted gaming-house: Fig's, a prize-fighter's academy, where the young nobility received instruction in those days: it was also customary for the nobility and gentry to visit the condemned criminals in Newgate.
Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest,
And all is splendid poverty at best.
Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell,
Like frigates fraught with spice and cochine'l,
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 proportion'd 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 finish'd, 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 batt'ring rams, beats open every door:
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hang-dogs 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 gaols to execution go;
For, hung with deadly sins,' I see the wall,
And lined with giants deadlier than them all:
Each man an Ascapart,' of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scared at the grizly forms, I sweat, I fly,
And shake all o'er, like a discover'd 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.
Howe'er what's now Apocrypha, my wit,
In time to come, may pass for Holy Writ.
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 call'd him whig, and whigs a tory;"
And taught his Romans, in much better metre,
"To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter."
1 The room hung with old tapestry, representing the seven deadly sins.
2 A giant famous in romances.
But Horace, Sir, was delicate, was nice
Bubo observes,' he lash'd 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 cropt 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 very 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 offer'd 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, uncumber'd 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.
1 Some guilty person, very fond of making such an observation. 2 Formerly gaoler of the Fleet prison, enriched himself by many exactions, for which he was tried and expelled.
3 Said to be executed by the captain of a Spanish ship on one Jenkins, a captain of an English one. He cut off his ears, and bid him carry them to the king his master.
4 Sir Joseph Jekyl, Master of the Rolls, a true Whig in his principles, and a man of the utmost probity. He sometimes voted against the Court, which drew upon him the laugh here described of ONE who bestowed it equally upon religion and honesty.
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,3
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
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!
Come, harmless characters that no one hit;
Come Henley's oratory, Osborn's wit!
The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,
The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Young!
The gracious dew' of pulpit eloquence,
And all the well-whipt cream of courtly sense,
That first was H-vy's, F-'s next, and then
The S-te's, and then H-vy's once again.
O come, that easy, Ciceronian style,
So Latin, yet so English all the while,
As, though the pride of Middleton and Bland,
All boys may read, and girls may understand!
Then might I sing, without the least offence,
And all I sung should be the nation's sense;
1 George Lyttelton, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, distinguished both for his writings and speeches in the spirit of liberty.
2 The one the wicked minister of Tiberius; the other of Henry VIII. The writers against the Court usually bestowed these and other odious names on the Minister, without distinction.
3 Cardinal; and Minister to Louis XV. It was a patriot-fashion, at that time, to cry up his wisdom and honesty.
4 Alludes to some Court sermons, and florid panegyrical speeches particularly one very ful of puerilities and flatteries.
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