ARGYLL, the state's whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field?
Or WYNDHAM,' just to freedom and the throne,
The master of our passions, and his own?
Names, which I long have loved, nor loved in vain,
Rank'd with their friends, not number'd with their train
And if yet higher the proud list should end,
Still let me say! No follower, but a friend.
Yet think not friendship only prompts my lays;
I follow Virtue: where she shines, I praise:
Point she to Priest or Elder, Whig or Tory,
Or round a Quaker's beaver cast a glory.
I never (to my sorrow I declare)
Dined with the MAN of Ross, or my LORD MAYOR. Some, in their choice of friends (nay, look not grave) Have still a secret bias to a knave:
To find an honest man I beat about,
And love him, court him, praise him, in or out.
F. Then why so few commended?
Find you the virtue, and I'll find the verse.
But random praise-the task can ne'er be done;
Each mother asks it for her booby son,
Each widow asks it for the best of men,
For him she weeps, for him she weds again.
Praise cannot stoop, like Satire, to the ground;
The number may be hang'd, but not be crown'd.
Enough for half the greatest of these days,
To 'scape my censure, not expect my praise.
Are they not rich? what more can they pretend?
Dare they to hope a poet for their friend?
What RICHELIEU wanted, LOUIS scarce could gain.
And what young AMMON wish'd, but wish'd in vain.
No power the muse's friendship can command;
No power when virtue claims it, can withstand:
To Cato, Virgil paid one honest line:
O let my country's friends illumine mine!
-What are you thinking? F. Faith, the thought's no sin,
I think your friends are out, and would be in.
1 Sir William Wyndham, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Anne, made early a considerable figure; but afterwards a much greater, both by his ability and eloquence, joined with the utmost Judgment and temper.
P. If merely to come in, sir, they go out, The way they take is strangely roundabout.
F. They too may be corrupted, you'll allow?
P. I only call those knaves who are so now.
Is that too little? Come, then, I'll comply-
Spirit of ARNALL! aid me while I lie.
COBHAM'S a coward, POLWARTH' is a slave,
And LYTTELTON a dark designing knave;
ST. JOHN has ever been a wealthy fool-
But let me add, SIR ROBERT's mighty dull,
Has never made a friend in private life,
And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.
But pray, when others praise him, do I blame?
Call Verres, Wolsey, any odious name?
Why rail they then, if but a wreath of mine,
O all-accomplish'd ST. JOHN! deck thy shrine?
What! shall each spurr-gall'd hackney of the day,
When Paxton gives him double pots and pay,
Or each new-pension'd sycophant, pretend
To break my windows if I treat a friend;
Then wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt,
But 'twas my guest at whom they threw the dirt?
Sure, if I spare the Minister, no rules
Of honour bind me, not to maul his tools;
Sure, if they cannot cut, it may be said
His saws are toothless, and his hatchet's lead.
It anger'd TURENNE, once upon a day,
To see a footman kick'd that took his pay:
But when he heard the affront the fellow gave,
Knew one a man of honour, one a knave;
The prudent general turn'd it to a jest,
And begg'd he'd take the pains to kick the rest:
Which not at present having time to do-
F. Hold, Sir! for God's sake, where's the affront to
you?
Against your worship when had Sherlock writ?
Or Page pour'd forth the torrent of his wit?
Or grant the bard, whose distich all commend,
[In power a servant, out of power a friend,]
To Walpole guilty of some venial sin;
What's that to you, who ne'er was out nor in?
The Hon. Hugh Hume, son of Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, distinguished in the cause of liberty.
The priest whose flattery be-dropp'd the crown,
How hurt he you? he only stain'd the gown.
And how did, pray, the florid youth offend,
Whose speech you took, and gave it to a friend?
P. Faith, it imports not much from whom it came; Whoever borrow'd could not be to blame,
Since the whole House did afterwards the same.
Let courtly wits to wits afford supply,
As hog to hog in huts of Westphaly;
If one, through Nature's bounty or his lord's,
Has what the frugal dirty soil affords,
From him the next receives it, thick or thin,
As pure a mess almost as it came in;
The blessed benefit, not there confined,
Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind;
From tail to mouth they feed and they carouse:
The last full fairly gives it to the House.
F. This filthy simile, this beastly line,
Quite turns my stomach-
P. So does flattery mine;
And all your courtly civet-cats can vent,
Perfume to you, to me is excrement.
But hear me further-Japhet, 'tis agreed,
Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read;
In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite;
But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write;
And must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown,
Because the deed he forged was not my own?
Must never patriot, then, declaim at gin,
Unless, good man! he has been fairly in?
No zealous pastor blame a failing spouse,
Without a staring reason on his brows?
And each blasphemer quite escape the rod,
Because the insult's not on man, but God?
Ask you what provocation I have had?
The strong antipathy of good to bad.
When truth or virtue an affront endures,
The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.
Mine, as a foe profess'd to false pretence,
Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense;
Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind;
And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.
F. You're strangely proud.
P. So proud, I am no slave:
So impudent, I own myself no knave:
So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave.
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for truth's defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
To all but Heaven-directed hands denied,
The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide!
Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal;
To rouse the watchman of the public weal,
To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,
And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall.
Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains,
That counts your beauties only by your stains,
Spin all your cobwebs o'er the eye of day!
The MUSE'S wing shall brush you all away:
All his grace preaches, all his lordship sings,
All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings;
All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press,
Like the last gazette, or the last address.
When black ambition stains a public cause,
A monarch's sword when mad vain-glory draws,
Not Waller's wreath can hide the nation's scar,
Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star.
Not so, when diadem'd with rays divine,
Touch'd with the flame that breaks from Virtue's shrine,
Her priestess Muse forbids the good to die,
And opes the temple of Eternity.
There, other trophies deck the truly brave,
Than such as ANSTIS' casts into the grave;
Far other stars than * and ** wear,
And may descend to Mordington from STAIR;
(Such as on HOUGH's' unsullied mitre shine.
Or beam, good DIGBY, from a heart like thine ;)
1 The chief herald at arms. It is the custom, at the funeral of great men, to cast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour.
2 John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, served in all the wars under the Duke of Marlborough.
Dr. John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby: the one an assertor of the church of England, in opposition to the false
Let Envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,
And bark at honour not conferr'd by kings;
Let Flattery sickening see the incense rise,
Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:
Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,
And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.
Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of law;
Here, last of Britons! let your names be read;
Are none, none living? let me praise the dead,
And for that cause which made your fathers shine,
Fall by the votes of their degenerate line.
F. Alas! alas! pray end what you began,
And write next winter more Essays on Man.1
LINES ON RECEIVING FROM THE
RT. HON. THE LADY FRANCES SHIRLEY
YES, I beheld the Athenian queen
Descend in all her sober charms;
"And take" (she said, and smiled serene)
"Take at this hand celestial arms:
"Secure the radiant weapons wield;
This golden lance shall guard desert,
And if a vice dares keep the field,
This steel shall stab it to the heart."
measures of King James II.; the other as firmly attached to the cause of that king; both acting out of principle, and equally men of honour and virtue.
This was the last poem of the kind printed by our author, with a resolution to publish no more, but to enter thus, in the most plain and solemn manner he could, a sort of PROTEST against that insuperable corruption and depravity of manners which he had been so unhappy as to live to see. Could he have hoped to have amended any, he had continued those attacks; but bad men were grown so shameless and so powerful, that ridicule was become as unsafe as it was ineffectual. The poem raised him, as he knew it would, some enemies: but he had reason to be satisfied with the approbation of good men, aud the testimony of his own conscience.
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