Doubly distress'd, what author shall we find
Discreetly daring, and severely kind,
The courtly Roman's * shining path to tread,
And sharply smile prevailing folly dead?
Will no superior genius snatch the quill,
And save me on the brink from writing ill?
Tho' vain the strife, I'll strive my voice to raise.
What will not men attempt for sacred praise?
The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art,
Reigns, more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure.
O'er globes and sceptres, now on thrones it swells,
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells:
"Tis Tory, Whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads,
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades:
Here Se's humour makes a bold pretence,
There bolder aims at Py's eloquence:
It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead;
Nor ends with life, but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs.
What is not proud? the pimp is proud to see
So many like himself in high degree:
The whore is proud her beauties are the dread
Of peevish virtue and the marriage bed;
And the brib'd cuckold, like crown'd victims borne To slaughter, glories in his gilded horn.
Some go to church, proud humbly to repent,
And come back much more guilty than they went:
One way they look, another way they steer,
Pray to the gods, but would have mortals hear;
And when their sins they set sincerely down,
They'll find that their religion has been one.
Others with wishful eyes on glory look
When they have got their picture tow❜rds a book,
Or pompous title, like a gaudy sign,
Meant to betray dull sots to wretched wine.
If at his title T-had dropp'd his quill,
T-might have pass'd for a great genius still.
But Talas! (excuse him, if
you can)
Is now a scribbler, who was once a man.
Imperious, some a classic fame demand,
For heaping up, with a laborious hand,
A waggon-load of meanings for one word,
While A's depos'd, and B with pomp restor❜d.
Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
To patchwork learn'd quotations are ally'd;
Both strive to make our poverty our pride.
On glass how witty is a nobler peer?
Did ever di'mond cost a man so dear?
Polite diseases make some idiots vain,
Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.
Of folly, vice, disease, men proud we see;
And (stranger still!) of blockheads' flattery,
Whose praise defames: as if a fool should mean,
By spitting on your face to make it clean.
Nor is't enough all hearts are swoln with Pride,
Her power is mighty, as her realm is wide.
What can she not perform? the love of Fame
Made bold Alphonsus his Creator blame;
Empedocles hurl'd down the burning steep;
And (stronger still!) made Alexander weep :
Nay, it holds Delia from a second bed,
Tho' her lov'd lord has four half months been dead
This passion with a pimple have I seen Retard a cause, and give a judge the spleen.
By this inspir'd (O ne'er to be forgot!)
Some lords have learn'd to spell, and some to knot.
It makes Globose a speaker in the House;
He hems, and is deliver❜d of his mouse:
It makes dear self on well-bred tongues prevail,
And I, the little hero of each tale.
Sick with the love of Fame, what throngs pour in,, Unpeople courts, and leave the senate thin?
My growing subject seems but just begun,
And, chariot-like, I kindle as I run.
Aid me, great Homer! with thy epic rules, To take a catalogue of British fools.
Satire! had I thy Dorset's force divine,
A knave or fool should perish in each line;
Tho' for the first all Westminster should plead,
And for the last all Gresham intercede.
Begin. Who first the catalogue shall grace?
To quality belongs the highest place.
My Lord comes forward; forward let him come!
Ye Vulgar! at your peril give him room :
He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet,
By heraldry prov'd valiant or discreet.
With what a decent pride he throws his eyes
Above the man by three descents less wise?
If virtues at his noble hands you crave,
You bid him raise his fathers from the grave.
Men should press forward in Fame's glorious chase; Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.
Let high birth triumph! what can be more great! Nothing-but merit in a low estate.
To virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, tho' descended from the Conqueror.
Shall men, like figures, pass for high or base,
Slight or important, only by their place?
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise;
The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
Dorset! let those who proudly boast their line,
Like thee in worth hereditary shine.
Vain as false greatness is, the Muse must own
We want not fools to buy that Bristol stone:
Mean sons of Earth, who, on a South-sea tide
Of full success, swam into wealth and pride,
Knock with a purse of gold at Anstis' gate,
And beg to be descended from the great.
When men of infamy to grandeur soar,
They light a torch to shew their shame the more.
Those governments which curb not evils cause,
And a rich knave's a libel on our laws.
Belus with solid glory will be crown'd;
He buys no phantom, no vain empty sound;
But builds himself a name; and, to be great,
Sinks in a quarry an immense estate !
In cost and grandeur Cdos he'll out do;
And, B-i-ton, thy taste is not so true.
The pile is finish'd, ev'ry toil is past,
And full perfection is arriv'd at last!
When, lo! my Lord to some small corner runs,
And leaves state rooms to strangers and to duns.
The man who builds, and wants wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away.
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