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Ode to Doctor William Sancroft
Ode to Sir William Temple
Ode to King William
Ode to The Athenian Society
To Mr. Congreve
Occasioned by Sir William Temple’s late illness
and recovery
Written in a Lady’s Ivory Table Book
Mrs. Frances Harris’s Petition
A Ballad on the game of Traffic
A Ballad to the tune of the Cutpurse
The Discovery
The Problem
The Description of a Salamander
To Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough
On the Union
On Mrs. Biddy Floyd
The Reverse
Apollo Outwitted
Answer to Lines from May Fair
Vanbrugh’s House
Vanbrugh’s House
Baucis and Philemon
Baucis and Philemon
The History of Vanbrugh’s House
A Grub Street Elegy
The Epitaph
A Description of the Morning
A Description of a City Shower
On the Little House
A Town Eclogue
A Conference
To Lord Harley on his Marriage
Phyllis
Horace, Book iv, Ode ix
To Mr. Delany
An Elegy
To Mrs. Houghton
Verses written on a Window
On another Window
Apollo to the Dean
News from Parnassus
Apollo’s Edict
The Description of an Irish Feast
The Progress of Beauty
The Progress of Marriage
The Progress of Poetry
The South Sea Project
Fabula Canis et Umbrae
A Prologue
Epilogue
Prologue
Epilogue
Answer to Prologue and Epilogue
On Gaulstown House
The Country Life
Dr. Delany’s Villa
On one of the Windows at Delville
Carberiae Rupes
Carbery Rocks
Copy of the Birthday Verses on Mr. Ford
On Dreams
Dr. Delany to Dr. Swift
The Answer
A Quiet Life and a Good Name
Advice
A Pastoral Dialogue
Desire and Possession
On Censure
The Furniture of a Woman’s Mind
Clever Tom Clinch
Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope
A Love Poem
Bouts Rimez
Helter Skelter
The Puppet Show
The Journal of a Modern Lady
The Logicians Refuted
The Elephant; or the Parliament Man
Paulus; an Epigram
The Answer
A Dialogue
On burning a dull Poem
An excellent new Ballad
On Stephen Duck
The Lady’s Dressing Room
The Power of Time
Cassinus and Peter
A Beautiful young Nymph
Strephon and Chloe
Apollo; or a Problem solved
The Place of the Damned
The Day of Judgment
Judas
An Epistle to Mr. Gay
To a Lady
Epigram on Busts in Richmond Hermitage
Another
A Conclusion from above Epigrams
Swift’s Answer
To Swift on his Birthday with a Paper Book from the
Earl of Orrery
Verses on Swift’s Birthday with a Silver Standish
Verses occasioned by foregoing Presents
Verses sent to the Dean with an Eagle quill
An Invitation, by Dr. Delany
The Beasts’ Confession
The Parson’s Case
The hardship upon the Ladies
A Love Song
The Storm
Ode on Science
A Young Lady’s Complaint
On the Death of Dr. Swift
Dr. Johnson, in his “Life of Swift,” after citing with approval Delany’s character of him, as he describes him to Lord Orrery, proceeds to say: “In the poetical works there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style—they consist of ‘proper words in proper places.’”
Of his earliest poems it is needless to say more than that if nothing better had been written by him than those Pindaric Pieces, after the manner of Cowley—then so much in vogue—the remark of Dryden, “Cousin Swift, you will never be a Poet,” would have been fully justified. But conventional praise and compliments were foreign to his nature, for his strongest characteristic was his intense sincerity. He says of himself that about that time he had writ and burnt and writ again upon all manner of subjects more than perhaps any man in England; and it is certainly remarkable that in so doing his true genius was not sooner developed, for it was not till he became chaplain in Lord Berkeley’s household that his satirical humour was first displayed—at least in verse—in “Mrs. Frances Harris’ Petition.”—His great prose satires, “The Tale of a Tub,” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” though planned, were reserved to a later time.—In other forms of poetry he soon afterwards greatly excelled, and the title of poet cannot be refused to the author of “Baucis and Philemon”; the verses on “The Death of Dr. Swift”; the “Rhapsody on Poetry”; “Cadenus and Vanessa”; “The Legion Club”; and most of the poems addressed to Stella, all of which pieces exhibit harmony, invention, and imagination.
Swift has been unduly censured for the coarseness of his language upon Certain topics; but very little of this appears in his earlier poems, and what there is, was in accordance with the taste of the period, which never hesitated to call a spade a spade, due in part to the reaction from the Puritanism of the preceding age, and in part to the outspeaking frankness which disdained hypocrisy. It is shown in Dryden, Pope, Prior, of the last of whom Johnson said that no lady objected to have his poems in her library; still more in the dramatists of that time, whom Charles Lamb has so humorously defended, and in the plays of Mrs. Aphra Behn, who, as Pope says, “fairly puts all characters to bed.” But whatever coarseness there may be in some of Swift’s poems, such as “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” and a few other pieces, there is nothing licentious, nothing which excites to lewdness; on the contrary, such pieces create simply a feeling of repulsion. No one, after reading the “Beautiful young Nymph going to bed,” or “Strephon and Chloe,” would desire any personal acquaintance with the ladies, but there is a moral in these pieces, and the latter poem concludes with excellent matrimonial advice. The coarseness of some of his later writings must be ascribed to his misanthropical hatred of the “animal called man,” as expressed in his famous letter to Pope of September 1725, aggravated as it was by his exile from the friends he loved to a land he hated, and by the reception he met with there, about which he speaks very freely in his notes to the “Verses on his own Death.”
On the morning of Swift’s installation as Dean, the following scurrilous lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral:
To-day this Temple gets a Dean
Of parts and fame uncommon,
Us’d both to pray and to prophane,
To serve both God and mammon.
When Wharton reign’d a Whig he was;
When Pembroke—that’s
dispute, Sir;
In Oxford’s time, what Oxford pleased,
Non-con, or Jack, or Neuter.
This place he got by wit and rhime,
And many ways most odd,
And might a Bishop be in time,
Did he believe in God.
Look down, St. Patrick, look, we pray,
On thine own church and steeple;
Convert thy Dean on this great day,
Or else God help the people.
And now, whene’er his Deanship dies,
Upon his stone be graven,
A man of God here buried lies,
Who never thought of heaven.
It was by these lines that Smedley earned for himself a niche in “The Dunciad.” For Swift’s retaliation, see the poems relating to Smedley at the end of the first volume, and in volume ii, at p. 124, note.
This bitterness of spirit reached its height in “Gulliver’s Travels,” surely the severest of all satires upon humanity, and writ, as he tells us, not to divert, but to vex the world; and ultimately, in the fierce attack upon the Irish Parliament in the poem entitled “The Legion Club,” dictated by his hatred of tyranny and oppression, and his consequent passion for exhibiting human nature in its most degraded aspect.
But, notwithstanding his misanthropical feelings towards
mankind in general, and his “scorn of fools
by fools mistook for pride,” there never existed
a warmer or sincerer friend to those whom he loved—witness
the regard in which he was held by Oxford, Bolingbroke,
Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, and Congreve, and his readiness
to assist those who needed his help, without thought
of party or politics. Although, in some of his
poems, Swift rather severely exposed the follies and
frailties of the fair sex, as in “The Furniture
of a Woman’s Mind,” and “The Journal
of a Modern Lady,” he loved the companionship
of beautiful and accomplished women, amongst whom
he could count some of his dearest and truest friends;
but
He loved to be bitter at
A lady illiterate;
and therefore delighted in giving them literary instruction,
most notably in the cases of Stella and Vanessa, whose
relations with him arose entirely from the tuition
in letters which they received from him. Again,
when on a visit at Sir Arthur Acheson’s, he insisted
upon making Lady Acheson read such books as he thought
fit to advise, and in the doggerel verses entitled
“My Lady’s Lamentation,” she is supposed
to resent his “very imperious” manner
of instruction:
No book for delight
Must come in my sight;
But instead of new plays,
Dull Bacon’s Essays,
And pore every day on
That nasty Pantheon.
As a contrast to his imperiousness, there is an affectionate simplicity in the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends. Sir William Temple’s wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to “deafen them with puns and rhyme.”
Into the vexed question of the relations between Swift and Stella I do not purpose to enter further than to record my conviction that she was never more to him than “the dearest friend that ever man had.” The suggestion of a concealed marriage is so inconsistent with their whole conduct to each other from first to last, that if there had been such a marriage, instead of Swift having been, as he was, a man of intense sincerity, he must be held to have been a most consummate hypocrite. In my opinion, Churton Collins settled this question in his essays on Swift, first published in the “Quarterly Review,” 1881 and 1882. Swift’s relation with Vanessa is the saddest episode in his life. The story is amply told in his poem, “Cadenus and Vanessa,” and in the letters which passed between them: how the pupil became infatuated with her tutor; how the tutor endeavoured to dispel her passion, but in vain, by reason; and how, at last, she died from love for the man who was unable to give love in return.
Long be the day that gave you birth
Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth;
Late dying may you cast a shred
Of your rich mantle o’er my head;
To bear with dignity my sorrow
One day alone, then die tomorrow.
Stella naturally expected to survive Swift, but it was not to be. She died in the evening of the 28th January 1727-8; and on the same night he began the affecting piece, “On the Death of Mrs. Johnson.” (See “Prose Works,” vol. xi.)
With the death of Stella, Swift’s real happiness ended, and he became more and more possessed by the melancholy which too often accompanies the broadest humour, and which, in his case, was constitutional. It was, no doubt, to relieve it, that he resorted to the composition of the doggerel verses, epigrams, riddles, and trifles exchanged betwixt himself and Sheridan, which induced Orrery’s remark that “Swift composing Riddles is Titian painting draught-boards;” on which Delany observes that “a Riddle may be as fine painting as any other in the world. It requires as strong an imagination, as fine colouring, and as exact a proportion and keeping as any other historical painting”; and he instances “Pethox the Great,” and should also have alluded to the more learned example—“Louisa to Strephon.”
On Orrery’s seventh Letter, Delany says that if some of the “coin is base,” it is the fine impression and polish which adds value to it, and cites the saying of another nobleman, that “there is indeed some stuff in it, but it is Swift’s stuff.” It has been said that Swift has never taken a thought from any writer ancient or modern. This is not literally true, but the instances are not many, and in my notes I have pointed out the lines snatched from Milton, Denham, Butler—the last evidently a great favourite.
It seems necessary to state shortly the causes of Swift not having obtained higher preferment. Besides that Queen Anne would never be reconciled to the author of the “Tale of a Tub”—the true purport of which was so ill-understood by her—he made an irreconcilable enemy of her friend, the Duchess of Somerset, by his lampoon entitled “The Windsor Prophecy.” But Swift seldom allowed prudence to restrain his wit and humour, and admits of himself that he “had too much satire in his vein”; and that “a genius in the reverend gown must ever keep its owner down”; and says further:
Humour and mirth had place in all he writ;
He reconciled divinity and wit.
But that was what his enemies could not do.
Whatever the excellences and defects of the poems, Swift has erected, not only by his works, but by his benevolence and his charities, a monumentum aere perennius, and his writings in prose and verse will continue to afford instruction and delight when the malevolence of Jeffrey, the misrepresentations of Macaulay, and the sneers and false statements of Thackeray shall have been forgotten.
#Poems of Jonathan swift#
Ode to doctor William Sancroft[1]
late lord bishop of Canterbury
Written in may, 1689,
at the desire of the late
lord bishop of Ely
Truth is eternal, and the Son of Heaven,
Bright effluence of th’immortal
ray,
Chief cherub, and chief lamp, of that high sacred
Seven,
Which guard the throne by night, and are its light
by day;
First of God’s darling
attributes,
Thou daily seest him face
to face,
Nor does thy essence fix’d depend on giddy circumstance
Of time or place,
Two foolish guides in every sublunary dance;
How shall we find Thee then in dark disputes?
How shall we search Thee in a battle gain’d,
Or a weak argument by force maintain’d?
In dagger contests, and th’artillery of words,
(For swords are madmen’s tongues, and tongues
are madmen’s swords,)
Contrived to tire all patience
out,
And not to satisfy the doubt?
But where is even thy Image on our earth?
For of the person much I fear,
Since Heaven will claim its residence, as well as
birth,
And God himself has said, He shall not find it here.
For this inferior world is but Heaven’s dusky
shade,
By dark reverted rays from its reflection made;
Whence the weak shapes wild and imperfect
pass,
Like sunbeams shot at too far distance
from a glass;
Which all
the mimic forms express,
Though in strange uncouth postures, and uncomely dress;
So when Cartesian artists
try
To solve appearances of sight
In its reception to the eye,
And catch the living landscape through a scanty light,
The figures all inverted show,
And colours of a faded hue;
Here a pale shape with upward footstep
treads,
And men seem walking on their
heads;
There whole herds suspended
lie,
Ready to tumble down into the sky;
Such are the ways ill-guided mortals go
To judge of things above by things below.
Disjointing shapes as in the fairy land of dreams,
Or images that sink in streams;
No wonder, then, we talk amiss
Of truth, and what, or where it is;
Say, Muse, for thou, if any, know’st,
Since the bright essence fled, where haunts the reverend
ghost?
If all that our weak knowledge titles virtue, be
(High Truth) the best resemblance of exalted Thee,
If a mind fix’d to combat
fate
With those two powerful swords, submission and humility,
Sounds truly good, or truly
great;
Ill may I live, if the good Sancroft, in his holy
rest,
In the divinity of retreat,
Be not the brightest pattern earth can
show
Of heaven-born Truth below;
But foolish man still judges what is best
In his own balance, false
and light,
Following opinion, dark and
blind,
That vagrant leader of the
mind,
Till honesty and conscience are clear out of sight.
And some, to be large ciphers in a state,
Pleased with an empty swelling to be counted great,
Make their minds travel o’er infinity of space,
Rapt through the wide expanse of thought,
And oft in contradiction’s vortex
caught,
To keep that worthless clod, the body, in one place;
Errors like this did old astronomers misguide,
Led blindly on by gross philosophy and pride,
Who, like hard masters, taught
the sun
Through many a heedless sphere
to run,
Many an eccentric and unthrifty motion make,
And thousand incoherent journeys take,
Whilst all th’advantage
by it got,
Was but to light earth’s
inconsiderable spot.
The herd beneath, who see the weathercock of state
Hung loosely on the church’s pinnacle,
Believe it firm, because perhaps the day is mild and
still;
But when they find it turn with the first blast of
fate,
By gazing upward giddy grow,
And think the church itself
does so;
Thus fools, for being strong and num’rous
known,
Suppose the truth, like all the world,
their own;
And holy Sancroft’s motion quite irregular appears,
Because ’tis opposite
to theirs.
In vain then would the Muse the multitude advise,
Whose peevish knowledge thus perversely
lies
In gath’ring follies
from the wise;
Rather put on thy anger and thy spite,
And some kind power for once
dispense
Through the dark mass, the dawn of so
much sense,
To make them understand, and feel me when I write;
The muse and I no more revenge desire,
Each line shall stab, shall blast, like daggers and
like fire;
Ah, Britain, land of angels! which of
all thy sins,
(Say, hapless isle, although
It is a bloody list we know,)
Has given thee up a dwelling-place to fiends?
Sin and the plague ever abound
In governments too easy, and too fruitful ground;
Evils which a too gentle
king,
Too flourishing a spring,
And too warm summers
bring:
Our British soil is over rank, and
breeds
Among the noblest flowers a thousand
Forgive (original mildness) this ill-govern’d
zeal,
’Tis all the angry slighted Muse can do
In the pollution of
these days;
No province now is left her but to rail,
And poetry has lost the art to praise,
Alas, the occasions
are so few:
None e’er but
you,
And your Almighty Master,
knew
With heavenly peace of mind to bear
(Free from our tyrant passions, anger, scorn, or fear)
The giddy turns of popular rage,
And all the contradictions of a poison’d age;
The Son of God pronounced by the same
breath
Which straight pronounced
his death;
And though I should but ill be understood,
In wholly equalling our sin and theirs,
And measuring by the scanty thread of
wit
What we call holy, and great, and just,
and good,
(Methods in talk whereof our pride and ignorance make
use,)
And which our wild ambition foolishly
compares
With endless and with infinite;
Yet pardon, native Albion, when I say,
Among thy stubborn sons there haunts that spirit of
the Jews,
That those forsaken wretches who to-day
Revile his great ambassador,
Seem to discover what they would have
done
(Were his humanity on earth once more)
To his undoubted Master, Heaven’s Almighty Son.
But zeal is weak and ignorant, though wondrous proud,
Though very turbulent and very loud;
The crazy composition shows,
Like that fantastic medley in the idol’s toes,
Made up of iron mixt with clay,
This crumbles into dust,
That moulders into rust,
Or melts by the first shower away.
Nothing is fix’d that mortals see or know,
Unless, perhaps, some stars above be so;
And those, alas, do show,
Like all transcendent excellence below;
In both, false mediums cheat
our sight,
And far exalted objects lessen by their height:
Thus primitive Sancroft moves
too high
To be observed by vulgar eye,
And rolls the silent year
On his own secret regular
sphere,
And sheds, though all unseen, his sacred influence
here.
Kind star, still may’st thou shed thy sacred
influence here,
Or from thy private peaceful orb appear;
For, sure, we want some guide from Heaven,
to show
The way which every wand’ring fool
below
Pretends so perfectly to know;
And which, for aught I see, and much I
fear,
The world has wholly
miss’d;
I mean the way which leads to Christ:
Mistaken idiots! see how giddily they run,
Necessity, thou tyrant conscience of the great,
Say, why the church is still led blindfold by the
state;
Why should the first be ruin’d and
laid waste,
To mend dilapidations in the last?
And yet the world, whose eyes are on our mighty Prince,
Thinks Heaven has cancell’d
all our sins,
And that his subjects share his happy influence;
Follow the model close, for so I’m sure they
should,
But wicked kings draw more examples than the good:
And divine Sancroft, weary with the weight
Of a declining church, by faction, her worst foe,
oppress’d,
Finding the mitre almost grown
A load as heavy as the crown,
Wisely retreated to his heavenly rest.
Ah! may no unkind earthquake of the state,
Nor hurricano from the crown,
Disturb the present mitre, as that fearful storm of
late,
Which, in its dusky march along the plain,
Swept up whole churches as
it list,
Wrapp’d in a whirlwind
and a mist;
Like that prophetic tempest in the virgin reign,
And swallow’d them at last, or flung
them down.
Such were the storms good Sancroft long
has borne;
The mitre, which his sacred head has worn,
Was, like his Master’s Crown, inwreath’d
with thorn.
Death’s sting is swallow’d up in victory
at last,
The bitter cup is from him
past:
Fortune in both extremes
Though blasts from contrariety of winds,
Yet to firm heavenly minds,
Is but one thing under two different names;
And even the sharpest eye that has the prospect seen,
Confesses ignorance to judge between;
And must to human reasoning opposite conclude,
To point out which is moderation, which is fortitude.
Thus Sancroft, in the exaltation of retreat,
Shows lustre that was shaded in his seat;
Short glimm’rings of
the prelate glorified;
Which the disguise of greatness only served to hide.
Why should the Sun, alas!
be proud
To lodge behind a golden cloud?
Though fringed with evening gold the cloud appears
so gay,
’Tis but a low-born vapour kindled by a ray:
At length ’tis overblown
and past,
Puff’d by the people’s
Since, happy saint, since it has been of late
Either our blindness or our fate,
To lose the providence of thy cares
Pity a miserable church’s tears,
That begs the powerful blessing of thy
prayers.
Some angel, say, what were the nation’s
crimes,
That sent these wild reformers to our
times:
Say what their senseless malice
meant,
To tear religion’s lovely
face:
Strip her of every ornament and grace;
In striving to wash off th’imaginary paint?
Religion now does on her death-bed lie,
Heart-sick of a high fever and consuming atrophy;
How the physicians swarm to show their mortal skill,
And by their college arts methodically kill:
Reformers and physicians differ but in name,
One end in both, and the design the same;
Cordials are in their talk, while all they mean
Is but the patient’s death, and
gain—
Check in thy satire, angry Muse,
Or a more worthy subject choose:
Let not the outcasts of an outcast age
Provoke the honour of my Muse’s rage,
Nor be thy mighty spirit rais’d,
Since Heaven and Cato both are pleas’d—
[The rest of the poem is lost.]
[Footnote 1: Born Jan., 1616-17; died 1693. For his life, see “Dictionary of National Biography.”—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN AT MOOR-PARK IN JUNE 1689
Virtue, the greatest of all monarchies!
Till its first
emperor, rebellious man,
Deposed from off his seat,
It fell, and broke with its own weight
Into small states and principalities,
By many a petty lord possess’d,
But ne’er since seated in one single breast.
’Tis you
who must this land subdue,
The mighty conquest’s
left for you,
The conquest and
We have too long
been led astray;
Too long have our misguided souls been taught
With rules from
musty morals brought,
’Tis you
must put us in the way;
Let us (for shame!)
no more be fed
With antique relics
of the dead,
The gleanings of philosophy;
Philosophy, the lumber of
the schools,
The roguery of alchymy;
And we, the bubbled
fools,
Spend all our present life, in hopes of golden rules.
But what does our proud ignorance Learning call?
We oddly Plato’s paradox
make good,
Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all;
Remembrance is our treasure and our food;
Nature’s fair table-book, our tender souls,
We scrawl all o’er with old and empty rules,
Stale memorandums of the schools:
For learning’s mighty
treasures look
Into that deep
grave, a book;
Think that she there does all her treasures
hide,
And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since
she died;
Confine her walks to colleges and schools;
Her priests, her train, and
followers, show
As if they all were spectres
too!
They purchase knowledge at
th’expense
Of common breeding, common
sense,
And grow at once scholars
and fools;
Affect ill-manner’d
pedantry,
Rudeness, ill-nature, incivility,
And, sick with dregs and knowledge
grown,
Which greedily they swallow
down,
Still cast it up, and nauseate company.
Curst be the wretch! nay,
doubly curst!
(If it may lawful
be
To curse our greatest enemy,)
Who learn’d himself that heresy
first,
(Which since has seized on
all the rest,)
That knowledge forfeits all humanity;
Taught us, like Spaniards, to be proud and poor,
And fling our scraps before our door!
Thrice happy you have ’scaped this general pest;
Those mighty epithets, learned, good, and great,
Which we ne’er join’d before, but in romances
meet,
We find in you at last united grown.
You cannot be
compared to one:
I must, like him that painted
Venus’ face,
Borrow from every one a grace;
Virgil and Epicurus will not do,
Their courting
a retreat like you,
Unless I put in Caesar’s learning too:
Your happy frame at once controls
This great triumvirate of
souls.
Let not old Rome boast Fabius’ fate;
He sav’d his country
by delays,
But you by peace.[1]
You bought it at a cheaper
rate;
Nor has it left the usual bloody scar,
To show it cost
its price in war;
War, that mad game the world so loves to play,
And for it does
so dearly pay;
For, though with loss, or victory, a while
Fortune the gamesters
does beguile,
Yet at the last the box sweeps all away.
Only the laurel
got by peace
No
thunder e’er can blast:
Th’artillery
of the skies
Shoots
to the earth and dies:
And ever green and flourishing ’twill last,
Nor dipt in blood, nor widows’ tears, nor orphans’
cries.
About the head
crown’d with these bays,
Like lambent fire,
the lightning plays;
Nor, its triumphal cavalcade to grace,
Makes up its solemn train
with death;
It melts the sword of war, yet keeps it in the sheath.
The wily shafts of state, those jugglers’ tricks,
Which we call deep designs and politics,
(As in a theatre the ignorant fry,
Because the cords escape their
eye,
Wonder to see
the motions fly,)
Methinks, when you expose
the scene,
Down the ill-organ’d
engines fall;
Off fly the vizards, and discover all:
How plain I see
through the deceit!
How shallow, and
how gross, the cheat!
Look where the pulley’s tied above!
Great God! (said I) what have I seen!
On what poor engines
move
The thoughts of monarchs and designs of states!
What petty motives rule their fates!
How the mouse makes the mighty mountains shake!
The mighty mountain labours with its birth,
Away the frighten’d peasants fly,
Scared at the unheard-of prodigy,
Expect some great gigantic son of earth;
Lo!
it appears!
See how they tremble! how they quake!
Out starts the little beast, and mocks their idle
fears.
Then tell, dear favourite Muse!
What serpent’s that which still
resorts,
Still lurks in palaces and courts?
Take thy unwonted flight,
And on the terrace light.
See where she
lies!
See how she rears her head,
And rolls about her dreadful
eyes,
To drive all virtue out, or look it dead!
’Twas sure this basilisk sent Temple thence,
And though as some (’tis said) for their defence
Have worn a casement o’er
their skin,
So wore he his
within,
Made up of virtue and transparent innocence;
And though he oft renew’d
the fight,
And almost got priority of sight,
He ne’er could overcome
her quite,
In pieces cut, the viper still did reunite;
Till, at last, tired with
loss of time and ease,
Resolved to give himself, as well as country, peace.
Sing, beloved Muse! the pleasures of retreat,
And in some untouch’d virgin strain,
Show the delights thy sister Nature yields;
Sing of thy vales, sing of thy woods, sing of thy
fields;
Go,
publish o’er the plain
How mighty a proselyte you
gain!
How noble a reprisal on the great!
How is the Muse
luxuriant grown!
Whene’er
she takes this flight,
She
soars clear out of sight.
These are the paradises of her own:
Thy Pegasus, like
an unruly horse,
Though
ne’er so gently led,
To the loved pastures where he used to feed,
Runs violent o’er his usual course.
Wake from thy wanton dreams,
Come from thy
dear-loved streams,
The crooked paths of wandering
Thames.
Fain
the fair nymph would stay,
Oft she looks
back in vain,
Oft ’gainst her fountain
does complain,
And softly steals
in many windings down,
As loth to see
the hated court and town;
And murmurs as she glides away.
In this new happy scene
Are nobler subjects for your learned pen;
Here we expect from you
More than your predecessor Adam knew;
Whatever moves our wonder, or our sport,
Whatever serves for innocent emblems of the court;
How that which we a kernel
see,
(Whose well-compacted forms escape the light,
Unpierced by the blunt rays of sight,)
Shall ere long grow into a
tree;
Whence takes it its increase, and whence its birth,
Or from the sun, or from the air, or from the earth,
Where all the fruitful atoms
lie;
How some go downward to the root,
Some more ambitious upwards
fly,
And form the leaves, the branches, and
the fruit.
You strove to cultivate a barren court in vain,
Your garden’s better worth your nobler pain,
Here mankind fell, and hence must rise again.
Shall I believe a spirit so divine
Was cast in the
same mould with mine?
Why then does Nature so unjustly share
Among her elder sons the whole estate,
And all her jewels
and her plate?
Poor we! cadets of Heaven, not worth her care,
Take up at best with lumber and the leavings of a
fare:
Some she binds
’prentice to the spade,
Some to the drudgery
of a trade:
Some she does to Egyptian bondage draw,
Bids us make bricks, yet sends us to look out for
straw:
Some she condemns
for life to try
To dig the leaden mines of deep philosophy:
Me she has to the Muse’s galleys tied:
In vain I strive to cross the spacious main,
In vain I tug and pull the
oar;
And when I almost reach the
shore,
Straight the Muse turns the helm, and I launch out
again:
And yet, to feed
my pride,
Whene’er I mourn, stops my complaining breath,
With promise of a mad reversion after death.
Then, Sir, accept this worthless verse,
The tribute of an humble Muse,
’Tis all the portion of my niggard stars;
Nature the hidden spark did at my birth
infuse,
And kindled first with indolence and ease;
And since too oft debauch’d
by praise,
’Tis now grown an incurable disease:
In vain to quench this foolish fire I try
In wisdom and philosophy:
In vain all wholesome herbs
I sow,
Where nought but
weeds will grow
Whate’er I plant (like corn on barren earth)
By an equivocal
birth,
Seeds, and runs up to poetry.
[Footnote 1: Sir William Temple was ambassador to the States of Holland, and had a principal share in the negotiations which preceded the treaty of Nimeguen, 1679.]
ON HIS SUCCESSES IN IRELAND
To purchase kingdoms and to buy renown,
Are arts peculiar to dissembling France;
You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown,
And solid virtue does your name advance.
Your matchless courage with your prudence joins,
The glorious structure of your fame to
raise;
With its own light your dazzling glory shines,
And into adoration turns our praise.
Had you by dull succession gain’d your crown,
(Cowards are monarchs by that title made,)
Part of your merit Chance would call her own,
And half your virtues had been lost in
shade.
But now your worth its just reward shall have:
What trophies and what triumphs are your
due!
Who could so well a dying nation save,
At once deserve a crown, and gain it too.
You saw how near we were to ruin brought,
You saw th’impetuous torrent rolling
on;
And timely on the coming danger thought,
Which we could neither obviate nor shun.
Britannia stripp’d of her sole guard, the laws,
Ready to fall Rome’s bloody sacrifice;
You straight stepp’d in, and from the monster’s
jaws
Did bravely snatch the lovely, helpless
prize.
Nor this is all; as glorious is the care
To preserve conquests, as at first to
gain:
In this your virtue claims a double share,
Which, what it bravely won, does well
maintain.
Your arm has now your rightful title show’d,
An arm on which all Europe’s hopes
depend,
To which they look as to some guardian God,
That must their doubtful liberty defend.
Amazed, thy action at the Boyne we see!
When Schomberg started at the vast design:
The boundless glory all redounds to thee,
The impulse, the fight, th’event,
were wholly thine.
The brave attempt does all our foes disarm;
You need but now give orders and command,
Your name shall the remaining work perform,
And spare the labour of your conquering
hand.
France does in vain her feeble arts apply,
To interrupt the fortune of your course:
Your influence does the vain attacks defy
Of secret malice, or of open force.
Boldly we hence the brave commencement date
Of glorious deeds, that must all tongues
employ;
William’s the pledge and earnest given by fate,
Of England’s glory, and her lasting
joy.
Moor Park, Feb. 14, 1691.
As when the deluge first began to fall,
That mighty ebb never to flow again,
When this huge body’s moisture was so great,
It quite o’ercame the vital heat;
That mountain which was highest, first of all
Appear’d above the universal main,
To bless the primitive sailor’s weary sight;
And ’twas perhaps Parnassus, if in height
It be as great as ’tis in fame,
And nigh to Heaven as is its name;
So, after the inundation of a war,
When learning’s little household did embark,
With her world’s fruitful system, in her sacred
ark,
At the first ebb of noise and fears,
Philosophy’s exalted head appears;
And the Dove-Muse will now no longer stay,
But plumes her silver wings, and flies away;
And now a laurel wreath she brings from
far,
To crown the happy conqueror,
To show the flood begins to cease,
And brings the dear reward of victory and peace.
The eager Muse took wing upon the waves’ decline,
When war her cloudy aspect just withdrew,
When the bright sun of peace began to
shine,
And for a while in heavenly contemplation sat,
On the high top of peaceful Ararat;
And pluck’d a laurel branch, (for laurel was
the first that grew,
The first of plants after the thunder, storm and rain,)
And thence, with joyful, nimble wing,
Flew dutifully back again,
And made an humble chaplet for the king.[2]
And the Dove-Muse is fled once more,
(Glad of the victory, yet frighten’d at the
war,)
And now discovers from afar
A peaceful and a flourishing shore:
No sooner did she land
On the delightful strand,
Than straight she sees the country all
around,
Where fatal Neptune ruled erewhile,
Scatter’d with flowery vales, with fruitful
gardens crown’d,
And many a pleasant wood;
As if the universal Nile
Had rather water’d it than drown’d:
It seems some floating piece of Paradise,
Preserved by wonder from the flood,
Long wandering through the deep, as we are told
Famed Delos[3]
did of old;
And the transported Muse imagined it
To be a fitter birth-place for the God of wit,
Or the much-talk’d-of
oracular grove;
When, with amazing joy, she hears
An unknown music all around,
Pardon, ye great unknown, and far-exalted men,
The wild excursions of a youthful pen;
Forgive a young and (almost) virgin Muse,
Whom blind and eager curiosity
(Yet curiosity,
they say,
Is in her sex a crime needs no excuse)
Has forced to
grope her uncouth way,
After a mighty light that leads her wandering eye:
No wonder then she quits the narrow path of sense
For a dear ramble through impertinence;
Impertinence! the scurvy of mankind.
And all we fools, who are the greater part of it,
Though we be of two different factions
still,
Both the good-natured and
the ill,
Yet wheresoe’er you look, you’ll
always find
We join, like flies and wasps, in buzzing about wit.
In me, who am of the first sect of these,
All merit, that transcends the humble
rules
Of my own dazzled scanty sense,
Begets a kinder folly and impertinence
Of admiration and of praise.
And our good brethren of the surly sect,
Must e’en all herd us with their
kindred fools:
For though possess’d of present
vogue, they’ve made
Railing a rule of wit, and obloquy a trade;
Yet the same want of brains produces each effect.
And you, whom Pluto’s helm does
wisely shroud
From us, the blind and thoughtless
crowd,
Like the famed hero in his mother’s
cloud,
Who both our follies and impertinences see,
Do laugh perhaps at theirs, and pity mine and me.
But censure’s
to be understood
Th’authentic
mark of the elect,
The public stamp Heaven sets on all that’s great
and good,
Our shallow search and judgment to direct.
The war, methinks,
has made
Our wit and learning narrow as our trade;
Instead of boldly sailing far, to buy
A stock of wisdom and philosophy,
We fondly stay
at home, in fear
Of every censuring
privateer;
Forcing a wretched trade by beating down the sale,
And selling basely
by retail.
The wits, I mean the atheists of the age,
Who fain would rule the pulpit, as they do the stage,
Wondrous refiners of philosophy,
Of morals and divinity,
By the new modish system of reducing all to sense,
Against all logic, and concluding laws,
Do own th’effects of
Providence,
And yet deny the cause.
This hopeful sect, now it begins to see
How little, very little, do prevail
Their first and
chiefest force
To censure, to cry down, and
rail,
Not knowing what, or where, or who you be,
Will quickly take another
course:
And, by their
never-failing ways
Of solving all appearances
they please,
We soon shall see them to their ancient methods fall,
And straight deny you to be men, or anything at all.
I laugh at the grave answer they will
make,
Which they have always ready, general, and cheap:
’Tis but to say, that what we daily
meet,
And by a fond mistake
Perhaps imagine to be wondrous wit,
And think, alas! to be by mortals writ,
Is but a crowd of atoms justling in a heap:
Which, from eternal
seeds begun,
Justling some thousand years, till ripen’d by
the sun:
They’re now, just now, as naturally
born,
As from the womb of earth a field of corn.
But as for poor contented
me,
Who must my weakness and my ignorance confess,
That I believe in much I ne’er can hope to see;
Methinks I’m satisfied
to guess,
That this new, noble, and delightful scene,
Is wonderfully moved by some exalted men,
Who have well studied in the world’s disease,
(That epidemic error and depravity,
Or in our judgment or our
eye,)
That what surprises us can only please.
We often search contentedly the whole world round,
To make some great discovery,
And scorn it when ’tis
found.
Just so the mighty Nile has suffer’d in its
fame,
Because ’tis said (and perhaps only
said)
We’ve found a little inconsiderable head,
That feeds the huge unequal
stream.
Consider human folly, and you’ll quickly own,
That all the praises it can
give,
By which some fondly boast they shall for ever live,
Won’t pay th’impertinence
of being known:
Else why should the famed
Lydian king,[4]
(Whom all the charms of an usurped wife and state,
With all that power unfelt, courts mankind to be great,
Did with new unexperienced glories wait,)
Still wear, still dote on his invisible ring?
Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
Which is, perhaps, as hard t’imagine
right,
As to paint Echo to the sight,
I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
Because, alas! when we all
die,
Careless and ignorant posterity,
Although they praise the learning and
the wit,
And though the title seems
to show
The name and man by whom the book was
writ,
Yet how shall they be brought
to know,
Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
Less should I daub it o’er with transitory praise,
And water-colours of these
days:
These days! where e’en th’extravagance
The juggling sea-god,[5] when by chance
trepann’d
By some instructed querist sleeping on the sand,
Impatient of all answers, straight became
A stealing brook, and strove to creep
away
Into his native sea,
Vex’d at their follies, murmur’d
in his stream;
But disappointed of his fond desire,
Would vanish in a pyramid of fire.
This surly, slippery God, when he design’d
To furnish his escapes,
Ne’er borrow’d more variety
of shapes
Than you, to please and satisfy mankind,
And seem (almost) transform’d to water, flame,
and air,
So well you answer all phenomena there:
Though madmen and the wits, philosophers and fools,
With all that factious or enthusiastic dotards dream,
And all the incoherent jargon of the schools;
Though all the fumes of fear, hope, love,
and shame,
Contrive to shock your minds with many a senseless
doubt;
Doubts where the Delphic God would grope in ignorance
and night,
The God of learning and of
light
Would want a God himself to help him out.
Philosophy, as it before us lies,
Seems to have borrow’d some ungrateful taste
Of doubts, impertinence, and niceties,
From every age through which
it pass’d,
But always with a stronger relish of the last.
This beauteous queen, by Heaven design’d
To be the great original
For man to dress and polish his uncourtly mind,
In what mock habits have they put her since the fall!
More oft in fools’ and madmen’s
hands than sages’,
She seems a medley of all
ages,
With a huge farthingale to swell her fustian stuff,
A new commode, a topknot, and a ruff,
Her face patch’d o’er with
modern pedantry,
With a long sweeping
train
Of comments and disputes, ridiculous and vain,
All of old cut with a new
dye:
How soon have you restored
her charms,
And rid her of her lumber and her books,
Drest her again genteel and
neat,
And rather tight
than great!
How fond we are to court her to our arms!
How much of heaven is in her naked looks!
Thus the deluding Muse oft blinds me to her ways,
And ev’n my very thoughts transfers
And changes all to beauty and the praise
Of that proud tyrant sex of
hers.
The rebel Muse, alas! takes
part,
But with my own rebellious
heart,
And you with fatal and immortal wit conspire
To fan th’unhappy
fire.
Cruel unknown! what is it
you intend?
Ah! could you, could you hope a poet for your friend!
Rather forgive what my first transport
said:
May all the blood, which shall by woman’s scorn
be shed,
Lie upon you and on your children’s
head!
For you (ah! did I think I e’er should live
to see
The fatal time when that could be!)
Have even increased their pride and cruelty.
Woman seems now above all vanity grown,
Still boasting of her great unknown
Platonic champions, gain’d without one female
wile,
Or the vast charges of a smile;
Which ’tis a shame to see how much
of late
You’ve taught the covetous wretches
to o’errate,
And which they’ve now the consciences to weigh
In the same balance with our
tears,
And with such scanty wages pay
The bondage and the slavery of years.
Let the vain sex dream on; the empire comes from us;
And had they common
generosity,
They
would not use us thus.
Well—though you’ve
raised her to this high degree,
Ourselves are raised as well
as she;
And, spite of all that they or you can
do,
’Tis pride and happiness enough to me,
Still to be of the same exalted sex with you.
Alas, how fleeting and how
vain
Is even the nobler man, our learning and our wit!
I
sigh whene’er I think of it:
As at the closing
an unhappy scene
Of some great
king and conqueror’s death,
When the sad melancholy Muse
Stays but to catch his utmost breath.
I grieve, this nobler work, most happily begun,
So quickly and so wonderfully carried on,
May fall at last to interest, folly, and abuse.
There is a noontide
in our lives,
Which still the
sooner it arrives,
Although we boast our winter sun looks bright,
And foolishly are glad to see it at its height,
Yet so much sooner comes the long and gloomy night.
No conquest ever yet begun,
And by one mighty hero carried to its height,
E’er flourished under a successor or a son;
It lost some mighty pieces through all hands it pass’d,
And vanish’d to an empty title in the last.
For, when the animating mind is fled,
(Which nature never can retain,
Nor e’er
call back again,)
The body, though gigantic, lies all cold and dead.
And thus undoubtedly ’twill
fare
With what unhappy men shall
dare
To be successors to these great unknown,
On learning’s high-establish’d
throne.
Censure, and Pedantry, and
Pride,
Numberless nations, stretching far and wide,
Shall (I foresee it) soon with Gothic swarms come
forth
From Ignorance’s universal
North,
And with blind rage break all this peaceful government:
Yet shall the traces of your wit remain,
Like a just map, to tell the vast extent
Of conquest in your short and happy reign:
And to all future mankind
shew
How strange a paradox is true,
That men who lived and died without a
name
Are the chief heroes in the sacred lists of fame.
[Footnote 1: “I have been told, that Dryden having perused these verses, said, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet;’ and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift’s perpetual malevolence to Dryden.”—Johnson in his “Life of Swift.”—W. E. B.
In Malone’s “Life of Dryden,” p. 241, it is stated that John Dunton, the original projector of the Athenian Society, in his “Life and Errours,” 1705, mentions this Ode, “which being an ingenious poem, was prefixed to the fifth Supplement of the Athenian Mercury.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The Ode I writ to the king in Ireland.—Swift.]
[Footnote 3: The floating island, which, by order of Neptune, became fixed for the use of Latona, who there brought forth Apollo and Diana. See Ovid, “Metam.,” vi, 191, etc.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Gyges, who, thanks to the possession of a golden ring, which made him invisible, put Candaules to death, married his widow, and mounted the throne, 716 B.C. See the story in Cicero, “De Off.,” iii, 9.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Proteus. See Ovid, “Fasti,” lib. i.—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1693
Thrice, with a prophet’s voice, and prophet’s
power,
The Muse was called in a poetic hour,
And insolently thrice the slighted maid
Dared to suspend her unregarded aid;
Then with that grief we form in spirits divine,
Pleads for her own neglect, and thus reproaches mine.
Once highly honoured! false is the pretence
You make to truth, retreat, and innocence!
Who, to pollute my shades, bring’st with thee
down
The most ungenerous vices of the town;
Ne’er sprung a youth from out this isle before
I once esteem’d, and loved, and favour’d
more,
Nor ever maid endured such courtlike scorn,
So much in mode, so very city-born;
’Tis with a foul design the Muse you send,
Like a cast mistress, to your wicked friend;
But find some new address, some fresh deceit,
Nor practise such an antiquated cheat;
These are the beaten methods of the stews,
Stale forms, of course, all mean deceivers use,
[Footnote 1: Where Swift lived with Sir William Temple, who had bought an estate near Farnham, called Compton Hall, which he afterwards named Moor Park. See “Prose Works,” vol. xi, 378.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Dryden. See “The Rehearsal,” and post, p. 43.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Will’s coffee-house in Russell Street, Covent Garden, where the wits of that time used to assemble. See “The Tatler,” No. I, and notes, edit. 1786.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: To this resolution Swift always adhered; for of the infinite multitude of libellers who personally attacked him, there is not the name mentioned of any one of them throughout his works; and thus, together with their writings, have they been consigned to eternal oblivion.—S.]
[Footnote 5: This alludes to Sir William Temple, to whom he presently gives the name of Apollo.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: Out of an Ode I writ, inscribed “The Poet.” The rest of it is lost.—Swift.]
[Footnote 7: For an account of Congreve, see Leigh Hunt’s edition of “Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.”—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1693
Strange to conceive, how the same objects strike
At distant hours the mind with forms so like!
Whether in time, Deduction’s broken chain
Meets, and salutes her sister link again;
Or haunted Fancy, by a circling flight,
Comes back with joy to its own seat at night;
Or whether dead Imagination’s ghost
Oft hovers where alive it haunted most;
[Footnote 1: Dorothy, Sir William Temple’s wife, a daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. She was in some way related to Swift’s mother, which led to Temple taking Swift into his family. Dorothy died in January, 1695, at Moor Park, aged 65, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Sir William died in January, 1698, “and with him,” says Swift, “all that was good and amiable among men.” He was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Swift’s poetical name for Dorothy, Lady Temple.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: “—when swift Camilla
scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’unbending
corn, and skims along the main.”
POPE, Essay on Criticism, 372-3.]
[Footnote 4: “Hic murus aheneus esto,
Nil conseire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.”
HOR., Epist. 1, I, 60.]
Peruse my leaves thro’ ev’ry part,
And think thou seest my owner’s heart,
Scrawl’d o’er with trifles thus, and quite
As hard, as senseless, and as light;
Expos’d to ev’ry coxcomb’s eyes,
But hid with caution from the wise.
Here you may read, “Dear charming saint;”
Beneath, “A new receipt for paint:”
Here, in beau-spelling, “Tru tel deth;”
There, in her own, “For an el breth:”
Here, “Lovely nymph, pronounce my doom!”
There, “A safe way to use perfume:”
Here, a page fill’d with billets-doux;
On t’other side, “Laid out for shoes”—
“Madam, I die without your grace”—
“Item, for half a yard of lace.”
Who that had wit would place it here,
For ev’ry peeping fop to jeer?
To think that your brains’ issue is
Exposed to th’excrement of his,
In pow’r of spittle and a clout,
Whene’er he please, to blot it out;
And then, to heighten the disgrace,
Clap his own nonsense in the place.
Whoe’er expects to hold his part
In such a book, and such a heart,
If he be wealthy, and a fool,
Is in all points the fittest tool;
Of whom it may be justly said,
He’s a gold pencil tipp’d with lead.
This, the most humorous example of vers de societe in the English language, well illustrates the position of a parson in a family of distinction at that period.—W. E. B.
To their Excellencies the Lords Justices of Ireland,[1]
The humble petition of Frances Harris,
Who must starve and die a maid if it miscarries;
Humbly sheweth, that I went to warm myself in Lady
Betty’s[2] chamber,
because I was cold;
And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings,
and sixpence,
(besides farthings) in money and gold;
So because I had been buying things for my lady last
night,
I was resolved to tell my money, to see if it was
right.
Now, you must know, because my trunk has a very bad
lock,
Therefore all the money I have, which, God knows,
is a very small stock,
I keep in my pocket, ty’d about my middle, next
my smock.
So when I went to put up my purse, as God would have
it, my smock was
unript,
And instead of putting it into my pocket, down it
slipt;
Then the bell rung, and I went down to put my lady
to bed;
And, God knows, I thought my money was as safe as
my maidenhead.
So, when I came up again, I found my pocket feel very
light;
But when I search’d, and miss’d my purse,
Lord! I thought I should have
sunk outright.
“Lord! madam,” says Mary, “how d’ye
do?”—“Indeed,” says I,
“never worse:
But pray, Mary, can you tell what I have done with
my purse?”
“Lord help me!” says Mary, “I never
stirr’d out of this place!”
“Nay,” said I, “I had it in Lady
Betty’s chamber, that’s a plain case.”
So Mary got me to bed, and cover’d me up warm:
However, she stole away my garters, that I might do
myself no harm.
So I tumbled and toss’d all night, as you may
very well think,
But hardly ever set my eyes together, or slept a wink.
So I was a-dream’d, methought, that I went and
search’d the folks round,
And in a corner of Mrs. Duke’s[3] box, ty’d
in a rag, the money was
found.
So next morning we told Whittle,[4] and he fell a
swearing:
Then my dame Wadgar[5] came, and she, you know, is
thick of hearing.
“Dame,” said I, as loud as I could bawl,
“do you know what a loss I have
had?”
“Nay,” says she, “my Lord Colway’s[6]
folks are all very sad:
For my Lord Dromedary[7] comes a Tuesday without fail.”
“Pugh!” said I, “but that’s
not the business that I ail.”
Says Cary,[8] says he, “I have been a servant
this five and twenty years
come spring,
And in all the places I lived I never heard of such
a thing.”
“Yes,” says the steward,[9] “I remember
when I was at my Lord
Shrewsbury’s,
Such a thing as this happen’d, just about the
time of gooseberries.”
So I went to the party suspected, and I found her
full of grief:
(Now, you must know, of all things in the world I
[Footnote 1: The Earl of Berkeley and the Earl of Galway.]
[Footnote 2: Lady Betty Berkeley, afterwards Germaine.]
[Footnote 3: Wife to one of the footmen.]
[Footnote 4: The Earl of Berkeley’s valet.]
[Footnote 5: The old deaf housekeeper.]
[Footnote 6: Galway.]
[Footnote 7: The Earl of Drogheda, who, with the primate, was to succeed the two earls, then lords justices of Ireland.]
[Footnote 8: Clerk of the kitchen.]
[Footnote 9: Ferris; whom the poet terms in his Journal to Stella, 21st Dec., 1710, a “beast,” and a “Scoundrel dog.” See “Prose Works,” ii, p. 79—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 10: A usual saying of hers.—Swift.]
[Footnote 11: Swift.]
[Footnote 12: Dr. Bolton, one of the chaplains.—Faulkner.]
[Footnote 13: A cant word of Lord and Lady Berkeley to Mrs. Harris.]
[Footnote 14: Swift elsewhere terms his own calling a trade. See his letter to Pope, 29th Sept., 1725, cited in Introduction to Gulliver, “Prose Works,” vol. viii, p. xxv.—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN AT THE CASTLE OF DUBLIN, 1699
My Lord,[1] to find out who must deal,
Delivers cards about,
But the first knave does seldom fail
To find the doctor out.
But then his honour cried, Gadzooks!
And seem’d to knit his brow:
For on a knave he never looks
But he thinks upon Jack How.[2]
My lady, though she is no player,
Some bungling partner takes,
And, wedged in corner of a chair,
Takes snuff, and holds the stakes.
Dame Floyd[3] looks out in grave suspense
For pair royals and sequents;
But, wisely cautious of her pence,
The castle seldom frequents.
Quoth Herries,[4] fairly putting cases,
I’d won it, on my word,
If I had but a pair of aces,
And could pick up a third.
But Weston has a new-cast gown
On Sundays to be fine in,
And, if she can but win a crown,
’Twill just new dye the lining.
“With these is Parson Swift,[5]
Not knowing how to spend his time,
Does make a wretched shift,
To deafen them with puns and rhyme.”
[Footnote 1: The Earl of Berkeley.]
[Footnote 2: Paymaster to the Forces, “Prose Works,” ii, 23.]
[Footnote 3: A beauty and a favourite with Swift. See his verses on her, post, p. 50. He often mentions her in the Journal to Stella, especially with respect to her having the smallpox, and her recovery. “Prose Works,” ii, 138, 141, 143. 259.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Mrs. Frances Harris, the heroine of the preceding poem.]
[Footnote 5: Written by Lady Betty Berkeley, afterwards wife of Sir John Germaine.]
WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702
Once on a time, as old stories rehearse,
A friar would need show his talent in
Latin;
But was sorely put to ’t in the midst of a verse,
Because he could find no word to come
pat in;
Then
all in the place
He
left a void space,
And so went to bed in a desperate
case:
When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle!
He found it was strangely fill’d up in the middle.
CHO. Let censuring critics then think
what they list on’t;
Who would not write verses
with such an assistant?
This put me the friar into an amazement;
For he wisely consider’d it must
be a sprite;
That he came through the keyhole, or in at the casement;
And it needs must be one that could both
read and write;
Yet
he did not know,
If
it were friend or foe,
Or whether it came from above or below;
Howe’er, it was civil, in angel or elf,
For he ne’er could have fill’d it so well
of himself.
CHO. Let censuring, &c.
Even so Master Doctor had puzzled his brains
In making a ballad, but was at a stand;
He had mixt little wit with a great deal of pains,
When he found a new help from invisible
hand.
Then,
good Doctor Swift
Pay
thanks for the gift,
For you freely must own you were at a
dead lift;
And, though some malicious young spirit did do’t,
You may know by the hand it had no cloven foot.
CHO. Let censuring, &c.
[Footnote 1: Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the author’s room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit hand, as if a third person had done it.—Swift.
The Cut-Purse is a ballad sung by Nightingale,
the ballad-singer, in
Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,”
Act III, Sc. I. The burthen of the
ballad is:
“Youth, youth,
thou had’st better been starv’d by thy
nurse
Than live to be
hang’d for cutting a purse.”—W.
E. B.]
When wise Lord Berkeley first came here,[1]
Statesmen and mob expected wonders,
Nor thought to find so great a peer
Ere a week past committing blunders.
Till on a day cut out by fate,
When folks came thick to make their court,
Out slipt a mystery of state
To give the town and country sport.
Now enters Bush[2] with new state airs,
His lordship’s premier minister;
And who in all profound affairs,
Is held as needful as his clyster.[2]
With head reclining on his shoulder,
He deals and hears mysterious chat,
While every ignorant beholder
[Footnote 1: To Ireland, as one of the Lords Justices.]
[Footnote 2: Who, by insinuating that the post of secretary was unsuitable for a clergyman, obtained it for himself, though it had been promised to Swift; and when Swift claimed the Deanery of Derry, in virtue of Lord Berkeley’s promise of the “first good preferment that should fall in his gift,” the earl referred him to Bush, who told him that it was promised to another, but that if he would lay down a thousand pounds for it he should have the preference. Swift, enraged at the insult, immediately left the castle; but was ultimately pacified by being presented with the Rectory of Agher and the Vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. See Forster’s “Life of Swift,” p. 111; Birkbeck Hill’s “Letters of Swift,” and “Prose Works,” vol. xi, 380.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Always taken before my lord went to council.—Dublin Edition.]
[Footnote 3: The usurping kings in “The Rehearsal”; the celebrated farce written by the Duke of Buckingham, in conjunction with Martin Clifford, Butler, Sprat, and others, in ridicule of the rhyming tragedies then in vogue, and especially of Dryden in the character of Bayes.—See Malone’s “Life of Dryden,” p. 95.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: The usurping kings in “The Rehearsal,” Act I, Sc. 1; Act II, Sc. 1; always whispering each other.—W. E. B.]
“THAT MY LORD BERKELEY STINKS WHEN HE IS IN LOVE”
Did ever problem thus perplex,
Or more employ the female sex?
So sweet a passion who would think,
Jove ever form’d to make a stink?
The ladies vow and swear, they’ll try,
Whether it be a truth or lie.
Love’s fire, it seems, like inward heat,
Works in my lord by stool and sweat,
Which brings a stink from every pore,
And from behind and from before;
Yet what is wonderful to tell it,
None but the favourite nymph can smell it.
But now, to solve the natural cause
By sober philosophic laws;
Whether all passions, when in ferment,
Work out as anger does in vermin;
So, when a weasel you torment,
You find his passion by his scent.
We read of kings, who, in a fright,
Though on a throne, would fall to sh—.
Beside all this, deep scholars know,
That the main string of Cupid’s bow,
Once on a time was an a— gut;
Now to a nobler office put,
By favour or desert preferr’d
From giving passage to a t—;
But still, though fix’d among the stars,
Does sympathize with human a—.
Thus, when you feel a hard-bound breech,
Conclude love’s bow-string at full stretch,
Till the kind looseness comes, and then,
Conclude the bow relax’d again.
And now, the ladies all are bent,
To try the great experiment,
Ambitious of a regent’s heart,
Spread all their charms to catch a f—
Watching the first unsavoury wind,
Some ply before, and some behind.
My lord, on fire amid the dames,
F—ts like a laurel in the flames.
The fair approach the speaking part,
To try the back-way to his heart.
For, as when we a gun discharge,
Although the bore be none so large,
Before the flame from muzzle burst,
Just at the breech it flashes first;
So from my lord his passion broke,
He f—d first and then he spoke.
The ladies vanish in the smother,
To confer notes with one another;
And now they all agreed to name
Whom each one thought the happy dame.
Quoth Neal, whate’er the rest may think,
I’m sure ’twas I that smelt the stink.
You smell the stink! by G—d, you lie,
Quoth Ross, for I’ll be sworn ’twas I.
Ladies, quoth Levens, pray forbear;
Let’s not fall out; we all had share;
And, by the most I can discover,
My lord’s a universal lover.
From Pliny, “Hist. Nat.,” lib. x, 67; lib. xxix.
As mastiff dogs, in modern phrase, are
Call’d Pompey, Scipio, and Caesar;
As pies and daws are often styl’d
With Christian nicknames, like a child;
As we say Monsieur to an ape,
Without offence to human shape;
So men have got, from bird and brute,
Names that would best their nature suit.
The Lion, Eagle, Fox, and Boar,
Were heroes’ titles heretofore,
Bestow’d as hi’roglyphics fit
[Footnote 1: The famous Mareschal Turenne, general of the French forces, called the greatest commander of the age.]
[Footnote 2: Admiral of the States General in their war with England, eminent for his courage and his victories.]
[Footnote 3: Who obtained this name from his coolness under fire at the siege of Namur. See Journal to Stella, “Prose Works,” vol. ii, p. 267.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: “Animal lacertae figura, stellatum, numquam nisi magnis imbribus proveniens et serenitate desinens.”—Pliny, “Hist. Nat.,” lib. x, 67.]
[Footnote 5: “Huic tantus rigor ut ignem tactu restinguat non alio modo quam glacies. ejusdem sanie, quae lactea ore vomitur, quacumque parte corporis humani contacta toti defluunt pili, idque quod contactum est colorem in vitiliginem mutat.”—Lib. x, 67. “Inter omnia venenata salamandrae scelus maximum est. . . . nam si arbori inrepsit omnia poma inficit veneno, et eos qui ederint necat frigida vi nihil aconito distans.”—Lib. xxix, 4, 23.—W. E. B.]
Mordanto fills the trump of fame,
The Christian world his deeds proclaim,
And prints are crowded with his name.
In journeys he outrides the post,
Sits up till midnight with his host,
Talks politics, and gives the toast.
Knows every prince in Europe’s face,
Flies like a squib from place to place,
And travels not, but runs a race.
From Paris gazette a-la-main,
This day arriv’d, without his train,
Mordanto in a week from Spain.
A messenger comes all a-reek
Mordanto at Madrid to seek;
He left the town above a week.
Next day the post-boy winds his horn,
And rides through Dover in the morn:
Mordanto’s landed from Leghorn.
Mordanto gallops on alone,
The roads are with his followers strewn,
This breaks a girth, and that a bone;
His body active as his mind,
Returning sound in limb and wind,
Except some leather lost behind.
A skeleton in outward figure,
His meagre corps, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him, were it bigger.
So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion,
He’s with you like an apparition.
Shines in all climates like a star;
In senates bold, and fierce in war;
A land commander, and a tar:
Heroic actions early bred in,
Ne’er to be match’d in modern reading,
But by his namesake, Charles of Sweden.[2]
[Footnote 1: Who in the year 1705 took Barcelona, and in the winter following with only 280 horse and 900 foot enterprized and accomplished the conquest of Valentia.—Pope.
“—he whose lightning
pierc’d th’Iberian lines,
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my
vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquer’d
Spain.”
POPE, Imitations
of Horace, ii, Sat. 1.
Lord Peterborough seems to have been equally famous for his skill in cookery. See note to above Satire, Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, iii, 298.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: See Voltaire’s “History
of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.”
“He left the name at which the world
grew pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale.”
JOHNSON, Vanity of
Human Wishes.]
The queen has lately lost a part
Of her ENTIRELY-ENGLISH[1] heart,
For want of which, by way of botch,
She pieced it up again with SCOTCH.
Blest revolution! which creates
Divided hearts, united states!
See how the double nation lies,
Like a rich coat with skirts of frize:
As if a man, in making posies,
Should bundle thistles up with roses.
Who ever yet a union saw
Of kingdoms without faith or law?[2]
Henceforward let no statesman dare
A kingdom to a ship compare;
Lest he should call our commonweal
A vessel with a double keel:
Which, just like ours, new rigg’d and mann’d,
And got about a league from land,
By change of wind to leeward side,
The pilot knew not how to guide.
So tossing faction will o’erwhelm
Our crazy double-bottom’d realm.
[Footnote 1: The motto on Queen Anne’s coronation medal.—N.]
[Footnote 2: I.e., Differing in religion and law.]
OR, THE RECEIPT TO FORM A BEAUTY. 1707
When Cupid did his grandsire Jove entreat
To form some Beauty by a new receipt, Jove sent, and
found, far in a
country scene,
Truth, innocence, good nature, look serene:
From which ingredients first the dext’rous boy
Pick’d the demure, the awkward, and the coy.
The Graces from the court did next provide
Breeding, and wit, and air, and decent pride:
These Venus cleans’d from ev’ry spurious
grain
Of nice coquet, affected, pert, and vain.
Jove mix’d up all, and the best clay employ’d;
Then call’d the happy composition FLOYD.
(TO SWIFT’S VERSES ON BIDDY FLOYD); OR, MRS. CLUDD
Venus one day, as story goes,
But for what reason no man knows,
In sullen mood and grave deport,
Trudged it away to Jove’s high court;
And there his Godship did entreat
To look out for his best receipt:
And make a monster strange and odd,
Abhorr’d by man and every god.
Jove, ever kind to all the fair,
Nor e’er refused a lady’s prayer,
Straight oped ’scrutoire, and forth he took
A neatly bound and well-gilt book;
Sure sign that nothing enter’d there,
But what was very choice and rare.
Scarce had he turn’d a page or two,—
It might be more, for aught I knew;
But, be the matter more or less,
’Mong friends ’twill break no squares,
I guess.
Then, smiling, to the dame quoth he,
Here’s one will fit you to a T.
But, as the writing doth prescribe,
’Tis fit the ingredients we provide.
Away he went, and search’d the stews,
And every street about the Mews;
Diseases, impudence, and lies,
Are found and brought him in a trice.
From Hackney then he did provide,
A clumsy air and awkward pride;
From lady’s toilet next he brought
TO THE HONOURABLE MRS. FINCH,[1] UNDER HER NAME OF ARDELIA
Phoebus, now short’ning every shade,
Up to the northern tropic came,
And thence beheld a lovely maid,
Attending on a royal dame.
The god laid down his feeble rays,
Then lighted from his glitt’ring
coach;
But fenc’d his head with his own bays,
Before he durst the nymph approach.
Under those sacred leaves, secure
From common lightning of the skies,
He fondly thought he might endure
The flashes of Ardelia’s eyes.
The nymph, who oft had read in books
Of that bright god whom bards invoke,
Soon knew Apollo by his looks,
And guess’d his business ere he
spoke.
He, in the old celestial cant,
Confess’d his flame, and swore by
Styx,
Whate’er she would desire, to grant—
But wise Ardelia knew his tricks.
Ovid had warn’d her to beware
Of strolling gods, whose usual trade is,
Under pretence of taking air,
To pick up sublunary ladies.
Howe’er, she gave no flat denial,
As having malice in her heart;
And was resolv’d upon a trial,
To cheat the god in his own art.
“Hear my request,” the virgin said;
“Let which I please of all the Nine
Attend, whene’er I want their aid,
Obey my call, and only mine.”
By vow oblig’d, by passion led,
The god could not refuse her prayer:
He way’d his wreath thrice o’er her head,
Thrice mutter’d something to the
air.
And now he thought to seize his due;
But she the charm already try’d:
Thalia heard the call, and flew
To wait at bright Ardelia’s side.
On sight of this celestial prude,
Apollo thought it vain to stay;
Nor in her presence durst be rude,
But made his leg and went away.
He hop’d to find some lucky hour,
When on their queen the Muses wait;
But Pallas owns Ardelia’s power:
For vows divine are kept by Fate.
Then, full of rage, Apollo spoke:
“Deceitful nymph! I see thy
art;
And, though I can’t my gift revoke,
I’ll disappoint its nobler part.
“Let stubborn pride possess thee long,
And be thou negligent of fame;
With ev’ry Muse to grace thy song,
May’st thou despise a poet’s
name!
“Of modest poets be thou first;
To silent shades repeat thy verse,
Till Fame and Echo almost burst,
Yet hardly dare one line rehearse.
“And last, my vengeance to compleat,
May you descend to take renown,
Prevail’d on by the thing you hate,
A Whig! and one that wears a gown!”
[Footnote 1: Afterwards Countess of Winchelsea.—Scott. See Journal to Stella Aug. 7, 1712. The Countess was one of Swift’s intimate friends and correspondents. See “Prose Works,” xi, 121.—W. E. B.]
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED
In pity to the empty’ng Town,
Some God May Fair invented,
When Nature would invite us down,
To be by Art prevented.
What a corrupted taste is ours
When milk maids in mock state
Instead of garlands made of Flowers
Adorn their pails with plate.
So are the joys which Nature yields
Inverted in May Fair,
In painted cloth we look for fields,
And step in Booths for air.
Here a Dog dancing on his hams
And puppets mov’d by wire,
Do far exceed your frisking lambs,
Or song of feather’d quire.
V
Howe’er, such verse as yours I grant
Would be but too inviting:
Were fair Ardelia not my Aunt,
Or were it Worsley’s writing.[2]
[Footnote 1: Some ladies, among whom were Mrs. Worsley and Mrs. Finch, to the latter of whom Swift addressed, under the name of Ardelia, the preceding poem, appear to have written verses to him from May Fair, offering him such temptations as that fashionable locality supplied to detain him from the country and its pleasures: and thus he replies.—Forster.]
[Footnote 1: There is some playful allusion in this last stanza, not now decipherable.—Forster.]
BUILT FROM THE RUINS OF WHITEHALL THAT WAS BURNT, 1703
In times of old, when Time was young,
And poets their own verses sung,
A verse would draw a stone or beam,
That now would overload a team;
Lead ’em a dance of many a mile,
Then rear ’em to a goodly pile.
Each number had its diff’rent power;
Heroic strains could build a tower;
Sonnets and elegies to Chloris,
Might raise a house about two stories;
A lyric ode would slate; a catch
Would tile; an epigram would thatch.
Now Poets feel this art is lost,
Both to their own and landlord’s cost.
Not one of all the tuneful throng
Can hire a lodging for a song.
For Jove consider’d well the case,
That poets were a numerous race;
And if they all had power to build,
The earth would very soon be fill’d:
Materials would be quickly spent,
[Footnote 1: This is the earlier version of the Poem discovered by Forster at Narford, the residence of Mr. Fountaine. See Forster’s “Life of Swift,” p. 163.—W. E. B.]
BUILT FROM THE RUINS OF WHITEHALL THAT WAS BURNT, 1703
In times of old, when Time was young,
And poets their own verses sung,
A verse would draw a stone or beam,
That now would overload a team;
Lead ’em a dance of many a mile,
Then rear ’em to a goodly pile.
Each number had its diff’rent power;
Heroic strains could build a tower;
Sonnets, or elegies to Chloris,
Might raise a house about two stories;
A lyric ode would slate; a catch
Would tile; an epigram would thatch.
But, to their own or landlord’s
cost,
Now Poets feel this art is lost.
Not one of all our tuneful throng
Can raise a lodging for a song.
For Jove consider’d well the case,
Observed they grew a numerous race;
And should they build as fast as write,
’Twould ruin undertakers quite.
This evil, therefore, to prevent,
He wisely changed their element:
On earth the God of Wealth was made
Sole patron of the building trade;
Leaving the Wits the spacious air,
With license to build castles there:
And ’tis conceived their old pretence
To lodge in garrets comes from thence.
Premising thus, in modern way,
The better half we have to say;
Sing, Muse, the house of Poet Van,
In higher strains than we began.
Van (for ’tis fit the reader know
it)
Is both a Herald[2] and a Poet;
No wonder then if nicely skill’d
In both capacities to build.
As Herald, he can in a day
Repair a house gone to decay;
Or, by achievements, arms, device,
Erect a new one in a trice;
And as a poet, he has skill
To build in speculation still.
“Great Jove!” he cried, “the art
restore
To build by verse as heretofore,
And make my Muse the architect;
What palaces shall we erect!
No longer shall forsaken Thames
Lament his old Whitehall in flames;
A pile shall from its ashes rise,
Fit to invade or prop the skies.”
Jove smiled, and, like a gentle god,
Consenting with the usual nod,
Told Van, he knew his talent best,
And left the choice to his own breast.
So Van resolved to write a farce;
But, well perceiving wit was scarce,
With cunning that defect supplies:
Takes a French play as lawful prize;[3]
Steals thence his plot and ev’ry joke,
Not once suspecting Jove would smoke;
And (like a wag set down to write)
Would whisper to himself, “a bite.”
Then, from this motley mingled style,
Proceeded to erect his pile.
So men of old, to gain renown, did
Build Babel with their tongues confounded.
Jove saw the cheat, but thought it best
To turn the matter to a jest;
Down from Olympus’ top he slides,
Laughing as if he’d burst his sides:
Ay, thought the god, are these your tricks,
Why then old plays deserve old bricks;
And since you’re sparing of your stuff,
Your building shall be small enough.
He spake, and grudging, lent his aid;
[Footnote 1: Here follows the later version of the poem, as printed in all editions of Swift’s works.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Sir John Vanbrugh at that time held the office of Clarencieux king of arms.—Scott.]
[Footnote 3: Several of Vanbrugh’s plays are taken from Moliere.—Scott. This is a very loose statement. That Vanbrugh was indebted for some of his plays to French sources is true; but the only one taken from Moliere was “The Mistake,” adapted from “Le Depit Amoureux”; while his two best plays, “The Relapse” and “The Provoked Wife,” were original.—W. E. B.]
ON THE EVER-LAMENTED LOSS OF THE TWO YEW-TREES
IN THE PARISH OF CHILTHORNE, SOMERSET. 1706.
IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID
In ancient time, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people’s hospitality.
It happen’d on a winter’s
night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Came to a village hard by Rixham,[2]
Ragged and not a groat betwixt ’em.
It rain’d as hard as it could pour,
Yet they were forced to walk an hour
From house to house, wet to the skin,
Before one soul would let ’em in.
They call’d at every door: “Good
people,
My comrade’s blind, and I’m a creeple!
Here we lie starving in the street,
’Twould grieve a body’s heart to see’t,
No Christian would turn out a beast,
In such a dreadful night at least;
Give us but straw and let us lie
In yonder barn to keep us dry.”
Thus in the stroller’s usual cant,
They begg’d relief, which none would grant.
No creature valued what they said,
One family was gone to bed:
The master bawled out half asleep,
“You fellows, what a noise you keep!
So many beggars pass this way,
We can’t be quiet, night nor day;
We cannot serve you every one;
Pray take your answer, and be gone.”
One swore he’d send ’em to the stocks;
A third could not forbear his mocks;
But bawl’d as loud as he could roar
“You’re on the wrong side of the door!”
One surly clown look’t out and said,
“I’ll fling the p—pot on your
head:
You sha’nt come here, nor get a sous!
You look like rogues would rob a house.
Can’t you go work, or serve the King?
You blind and lame! ’Tis no such thing.
That’s but a counterfeit sore leg!
For shame! two sturdy rascals beg!
If I come down, I’ll spoil your trick,
And cure you both with a good stick.”
Our wand’ring saints, in woful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having thro’ all the village past,
To a small cottage came at last
Where dwelt a good old honest ye’man,
Call’d thereabout good man Philemon;
Who kindly did the saints invite
In his poor house to pass the night;
And then the hospitable sire
Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire;
Whilst he from out the chimney took
A flitch of bacon off the hook,
And freely from the fattest side
Cut out large slices to be fry’d;
Which tost up in a pan with batter,
And served up in an earthen platter,
Quoth Baucis, “This is wholesome fare,
Eat, honest friends, and never spare,
And if we find our victuals fail,
We can but make it out in ale.”
To a small kilderkin of beer,
Brew’d for the good time of the year,
Philemon, by his wife’s consent,
Stept with a jug, and made a vent,
And having fill’d it to the brink,
[Footnote 1: I here give the original version of this poem, which Forster found in Swift’s handwriting at Narford; and which has never been published. It is well known that, at Addison’s suggestion, Swift made extensive changes in this, “one of the happiest of his poems,” concerning which Forster says, in his “Life of Swift,” at p. 165: “The poem, as printed, contains one hundred and seventy-eight lines; the poem, as I found it at Narford, has two hundred and thirty; and the changes in the latter bringing it into the condition of the former, by which only it has been thus far known, comprise the omission of ninety-six lines, the addition of forty-four, and the alteration of twenty-two. The question can now be discussed whether or not the changes were improvements, and, in my opinion, the decision must be adverse to Addison.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The “village hard by Rixham” of the original has as little connection with “Chilthorne” as the “village down in Kent” of the altered version, and Swift had probably no better reason than his rhyme for either.—Forster.]
[Footnote 3: See the next poem for note on this line. Chevy Chase seems more suitable to the characters than the Joan of Arc of the altered version.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: A lace so called after the celebrated French Minister, M. Colbert Planche’s “Costume,” p. 395.—W. E. B.]
ON THE EVER-LAMENTED LOSS OF THE TWO YEW-TREES IN
THE PARISH OF
CHILTHORNE, SOMERSET. 1706.
IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID
In ancient times, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people’s hospitality.
It happen’d on a winter night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguis’d in tatter’d habits, went
To a small village down in Kent;
Where, in the strollers’ canting strain,
They begg’d from door to door in vain,
Try’d ev’ry tone might pity win;
But not a soul would let them in.
Our wand’ring saints, in woful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having thro’ all the village past,
To a small cottage came at last
Where dwelt a good old honest ye’man,
Call’d in the neighbourhood Philemon;
Who kindly did these saints invite
In his poor hut to pass the night;
And then the hospitable sire
Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire;
While he from out the chimney took
A flitch of bacon off the hook,
And freely from the fattest side
Cut out large slices to be fry’d;
Then stepp’d aside to fetch ’em drink,
Fill’d a large jug up to the brink,
And saw it fairly twice go round;
Yet (what was wonderful) they found
’Twas still replenished to the top,
As if they ne’er had touch’d a drop.
[Footnote 1: This is the version of the poem as altered by Swift in accordance with Addison’s suggestions.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: La Pucelle d’Orleans. See “Hudibras,” “Lady’s Answer,” verse 285, and note in Grey’s edition, ii, 439.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Mary Ambree, on whose exploits in
Flanders the popular ballad was written. The
line in the text is from “Hudibras,” Part
I, c. 2, 367, where she is compared with Trulla:
“A bold virago, stout and tall,
As Joan of France, or English Mall.”
The ballad is preserved in Percy’s “Reliques
of English Poetry,” vol. ii, 239.—W.
E. B.]
[Footnote 4: The tribes of Israel were sometimes distinguished in country churches by the ensigns given to them by Jacob.—Dublin Edition.]
[Footnote 5: In the churchyard to fetch a walk.—Dublin Edition.]
THE HISTORY OF VANBRUGH’S HOUSE 1708
When Mother Cludd[1] had rose from play,
And call’d to take the cards away,
Van saw, but seem’d not to regard,
How Miss pick’d every painted card,
And, busy both with hand and eye,
Soon rear’d a house two stories high.
Van’s genius, without thought or lecture
Is hugely turn’d to architecture:
He view’d the edifice, and smiled,
Vow’d it was pretty for a child:
It was so perfect in its kind,
He kept the model in his mind.
But, when he found the boys at play
And saw them dabbling in their clay,
He stood behind a stall to lurk,
And mark the progress of their work;
With true delight observed them all
Raking up mud to build a wall.
The plan he much admired, and took
The model in his table-book:
Thought himself now exactly skill’d,
And so resolved a house to build:
A real house, with rooms and stairs,
Five times at least as big as theirs;
Taller than Miss’s by two yards;
Not a sham thing of play or cards:
And so he did; for, in a while,
He built up such a monstrous pile,
That no two chairmen could be found
Able to lift it from the ground.
Still at Whitehall it stands in view,
Just in the place where first it grew;
There all the little schoolboys run,
Envying to see themselves outdone.
From such deep rudiments as these,
Van is become, by due degrees,
For building famed, and justly reckon’d,
At court,[2] Vitruvius the Second:[3]
No wonder, since wise authors show,
That best foundations must be low:
And now the duke has wisely ta’en him
To be his architect at Blenheim.
But raillery at once apart,
If this rule holds in every art;
Or if his grace were no more skill’d in
The art of battering walls than building,
We might expect to see next year
A mouse-trap man chief engineer.
[Footnote 1: See ante, p. 51, “The Reverse.”—W, E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Vitruvius Pollio, author of the treatise “De Architectura.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Sir John Vanbrugh held the office of Comptroller-General of his majesty’s works.—Scott.]
ON THE SUPPOSED DEATH OF PARTRIDGE THE ALMANACK MAKER.[1] 1708
Well; ’tis as Bickerstaff has guest,
Though we all took it for a jest:
Partridge is dead; nay more, he dy’d,
Ere he could prove the good ’squire ly’d.
Strange, an astrologer should die
Without one wonder in the sky;
Not one of all his crony stars
To pay their duty at his hearse!
No meteor, no eclipse appear’d!
No comet with a flaming beard!
The sun hath rose and gone to bed,
Just as if Partridge were not dead;
Nor hid himself behind the moon
To make a dreadful night at noon.
He at fit periods walks through Aries,
Howe’er our earthly motion varies;
And twice a-year he’ll cut th’ Equator,
As if there had been no such matter.
Some wits have wonder’d what analogy
There is ’twixt cobbling[2] and astrology;
How Partridge made his optics rise
From a shoe-sole to reach the skies.
A list the cobbler’s temples ties,
To keep the hair out of his eyes;
From whence ’tis plain the diadem
That princes wear derives from them;
And therefore crowns are now-a-days
Adorn’d with golden stars and rays;
Which plainly shows the near alliance
’Twixt cobbling and the planet’s science.
Besides, that slow-paced sign Boeoetes,
As ’tis miscall’d, we know not who ’tis;
But Partridge ended all disputes;
He knew his trade, and call’d it boots.[3]
The horned moon,[4] which heretofore
Upon their shoes the Romans wore,
Whose wideness kept their toes from corns,
And whence we claim our shoeing-horns,
Shows how the art of cobbling bears
A near resemblance to the spheres.
A scrap of parchment hung by geometry,
(A great refiner in barometry,)
Can, like the stars, foretell the weather;
And what is parchment else but leather?
Which an astrologer might use
Either for almanacks or shoes.
Thus Partridge, by his wit and parts,
At once did practise both these arts:
And as the boding owl (or rather
The bat, because her wings are leather)
Steals from her private cell by night,
And flies about the candle-light;
So learned Partridge could as well
Creep in the dark from leathern cell,
And in his fancy fly as far
To peep upon a twinkling star.
Besides, he could confound the spheres,
And set the planets by the ears;
To show his skill, he Mars could join
To Venus in aspect malign;
Then call in Mercury for aid,
And cure the wounds that Venus made.
Great scholars have in Lucian read,
When Philip King of Greece was dead
His soul and spirit did divide,
And each part took a different side;
One rose a star; the other fell
Beneath, and mended shoes in Hell.[5]
Thus Partridge still shines in each art,
The cobbling and star-gazing part,
And is install’d as good a star
As any of the Caesars are.
Triumphant star! some pity show
[Footnote 1: For details of the humorous persecution of this impostor by Swift, see “Prose Works,” vol. i, pp. 298 et seq.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Partridge was a cobbler.—Swift.]
[Footnote 3: See his Almanack.—Swift.]
[Footnote 4: Allusion to the crescent-shaped
ornament of gold or silver which distinguished the
wearer as a senator.
“Appositam nigrae lunam subtexit
alutae.”—Juvenal, Sat. vii,
192; and
Martial, i, 49, “Lunata nusquam pellis.”—W.
E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Luciani Opera, xi, 17.]
[Footnote 6:
“ipse tibi iam brachia
contrahit ardens
Scorpios, et coeli iusta plus parte reliquit.”
VIRG., Georg., i, 34.]
Here, five feet deep, lies on his back
A cobbler, starmonger, and quack;
Who to the stars, in pure good will,
Does to his best look upward still.
Weep, all you customers that use
His pills, his almanacks, or shoes;
And you that did your fortunes seek,
Step to his grave but once a-week;
This earth, which bears his body’s print,
You’ll find has so much virtue in’t,
That I durst pawn my ears, ’twill tell
Whate’er concerns you full as well,
In physic, stolen goods, or love,
As he himself could, when above.
WRITTEN IN APRIL 1709, AND FIRST PRINTED IN “THE TATLER"[1]
Now hardly here and there an hackney-coach
Appearing, show’d the ruddy morn’s approach.
Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own;
The slip-shod ’prentice from his master’s
door
Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl’d her mop with dext’rous
airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel’s edge, where wheels had worn the
place.[2]
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drown’d in shriller notes of chimney-sweep:
Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream’d through half
the street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:[3]
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
[Footnote 1: No. 9. See the excellent edition in six vols., with notes, 1786.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: To find old nails.—Faulkner.]
[Footnote 3: To meet the charges levied upon them by the keeper of the prison.—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN IN OCT., 1710; AND FIRST PRINTED IN “THE TATLER,” NO. 238
Careful observers may foretell the hour,
(By sure prognostics,) when to dread a shower.
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If you be wise, then, go not far to dine:
You’ll spend in coach-hire more than save in
wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old a-ches[2] throb, your hollow tooth will rage;
Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen;
He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,
That swill’d more liquor than it could contain,
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope;
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean:
You fly, invoke the gods; then, turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunn’d the unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
’Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was
dust.[3]
Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade?
Sole[4] coat! where dust, cemented by the rain,
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain!
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach,
Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tuck’d-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil’d umbrella’s
sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,[5]
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box’d in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by
fits,
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through,)
Laocoon[6] struck the outside with his spear,
[Footnote 1: Swift was very proud of the “Shower,” and so refers to it in the Journal to Stella. See “Prose Works,” vol. ii, p. 33: “They say ’tis the best thing I ever writ, and I think so too. I suppose the Bishop of Clogher will show it you. Pray tell me how you like it.” Again, p. 41: “there never was such a Shower since Danaee’s,” etc.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: “Aches” is two syllables,
but modern printers, who had lost the right pronunciation,
have aches as one syllable; and then to complete
the metre have foisted in “aches will
throb.” Thus, what the poet and the linguist
wish to preserve, is altered and finally lost.
See Disraeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,”
vol. i, title “Errata,” p. 81, edit. 1858.
A good example occurs in “Hudibras,” Part
III, canto 2, line 407, where persons are mentioned
who
“Can by their Pangs and Aches
find
All turns and changes of the wind.”—W.
E. B.]
[Footnote 3: “’Twas doubtful which was sea and which was sky.” GARTH’S Dispensary.]
[Footnote 4: Originally thus, but altered when
Pope published the
“Miscellanies”:
“His only coat, where dust confused
with rain,
Roughens the nap, and leaves a mingled
stain.”—Scott.]
[Footnote 5: Alluding to the change of ministry at that time.]
[Footnote 6: Virg., “Aeneid,” lib. ii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: Fleet Ditch, in which Pope laid the famous diving scene in “The Dunciad”; celebrated also by Gay in his “Trivia.” There is a view of Fleet Ditch as an illustration to “The Dunciad” in Warburton’s edition of Pope, 8vo, 1751.—W. E. B.]
ON THE LITTLE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD OF CASTLENOCK 1710
Whoever pleases to inquire
Why yonder steeple wants a spire,
The grey old fellow, Poet Joe,[1]
The philosophic cause will show.
Once on a time a western blast,
At least twelve inches overcast,
Reckoning roof, weathercock, and all,
Which came with a prodigious fall;
And, tumbling topsy-turvy round,
Lit with its bottom on the ground:
For, by the laws of gravitation,
It fell into its proper station.
This is the little strutting pile
You see just by the churchyard stile;
[Footnote 1: Mr. Beaumont of Trim, remarkable, though not a very old man, for venerable white locks.—Scott. He had a claim on the Irish Government, which Swift assisted him in getting paid. See “Prose Works,” vol. ii, Journal to Stella, especially at p. 174, respecting Joe’s desire for a collector’s place.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Archdeacon Wall, a correspondent of Swift’s.—Dublin Edition.]
[Footnote 3: Dr. Swift’s curate at Laracor.]
[Footnote 4: Stella.]
[Footnote 5: Minister of Trim.]
[Footnote 6: The waiting-woman.]
Scene, the Royal Exchange
Now the keen rigour of the winter’s o’er,
No hail descends, and frost can pinch no more,
While other girls confess the genial spring,
And laugh aloud, or amorous ditties sing,
Secure from cold, their lovely necks display,
And throw each useless chafing-dish away;
Why sits my Phillis discontented here,
Nor feels the turn of the revolving year?
Why on that brow dwell sorrow and dismay,
Where Loves were wont to sport, and Smiles to play?
Ah, Corydon! survey the ’Change around,
Through all the ’Change no wretch like me is
found:
Alas! the day, when I, poor heedless maid,
Was to your rooms in Lincoln’s Inn betray’d;
Then how you swore, how many vows you made!
Ye listening Zephyrs, that o’erheard his love,
Waft the soft accents to the gods above.
Alas! the day; for (O, eternal shame!)
I sold you handkerchiefs, and lost my fame.
When I forget the favour you bestow’d,
Red herrings shall be spawn’d in Tyburn Road:
Fleet Street, transform’d, become a flowery
green,
And mass be sung where operas are seen.
The wealthy cit, and the St. James’s beau,
Shall change their quarters, and their joys forego;
Stock-jobbing, this to Jonathan’s shall come,
At the Groom Porter’s, that play off his plum.
But what to me does all that love avail,
If, while I doze at home o’er porter’s
ale,
Each night with wine and wenches you regale?
My livelong hours in anxious cares are past,
And raging hunger lays my beauty waste.
On templars spruce in vain I glances throw,
And with shrill voice invite them as they go.
Exposed in vain my glossy ribbons shine,
And unregarded wave upon the twine.
The week flies round, and when my profit’s known,
I hardly clear enough to change a crown.
Hard fate of virtue, thus to be distrest,
Thou fairest of thy trade, and far the best;
As fruitmen’s stalls the summer market grace,
And ruddy peaches them; as first in place
Plumcake is seen o’er smaller pastry ware,
And ice on that: so Phillis does appear
In playhouse and in Park, above the rest
Of belles mechanic, elegantly drest.
And yet Crepundia, that conceited fair,
Amid her toys, affects a saucy air,
And views me hourly with a scornful eye.
She might as well with bright Cleora vie.
With this large petticoat I strive in vain
To hide my folly past, and coming pain;
’Tis now no secret; she, and fifty more,
Observe the symptoms I had once before:
A second babe at Wapping must be placed,
When I scarce bear the charges of the last.
What I could raise I sent; a pound of plums,
Five shillings, and a coral for his gums;
To-morrow I intend him something more.
I sent a frock and pair of shoes before.
However, you shall home with me to-night,
Forget your cares, and revel in delight,
I have in store a pint or two of wine,
Some cracknels, and the remnant of a chine.
And now on either side, and all around,
The weighty shop-boards fall, and bars resound;
Each ready sempstress slips her pattens on,
And ties her hood, preparing to be gone.
L. B. W. H. J. S. S. T.
[Footnote 1: Swift and Pope delighted to ridicule Philips’ “Pastorals,” and wrote several parodies upon them, the fame of which has been eclipsed by Gay’s “Shepherd’s Week.”—Scott.]
BETWEEN SIR HARRY PIERCE’S CHARIOT, AND MRS. D. STOPFORD’S CHAIR [1]
My pretty dear Cuz, tho’ I’ve roved the
town o’er,
To dispatch in an hour some visits a score;
Though, since first on the wheels, I’ve been
every day
At the ’Change, at a raffling, at church, or
a play;
And the fops of the town are pleased with the notion
Of calling your slave the perpetual motion;—
Though oft at your door I have whined [out] my love
As my Knight does grin his at your Lady above;
Yet, ne’er before this, though I used all my
care,
I e’er was so happy to meet my dear Chair;
And since we’re so near, like birds of a feather,
Let’s e’en, as they say, set our horses
together.
By your awkward address, you’re that thing which
should carry,
With one footman behind, our lover Sir Harry.
By your language, I judge, you think me a wench;
He that makes love to me, must make it in French.
Thou that’s drawn by two beasts, and carry’st
a brute,
Canst thou vainly e’er hope, I’ll answer
thy suit?
Though sometimes you pretend to appear with your six,
No regard to their colour, their sexes you mix:
Then on the grand-paw you’d look very great,
With your new-fashion’d glasses, and nasty old
seat.
Thus a beau I have seen strut with a cock’d
hat,
And newly rigg’d out, with a dirty cravat.
You may think that you make a figure most shining,
But it’s plain that you have an old cloak for
a lining.
Are those double-gilt nails? Where’s the
lustre of Kerry,
To set off the Knight, and to finish the Jerry?
If you hope I’ll be kind, you must tell me what’s
due
In George’s-lane for you, ere I’ll buckle
to.
Why, how now, Doll Diamond, you’re very alert;
Is it your French breeding has made you so pert?
Because I was civil, here’s a stir with a pox:
Who is it that values your —— or
your fox?
Sure ’tis to her honour, he ever should bed
His bloody red hand to her bloody red head.
You’re proud of your gilding; but I tell you
each nail
Is only just tinged with a rub at her tail;
And although it may pass for gold on a ninny,
Sure we know a Bath shilling soon from a guinea.
Nay, her foretop’s a cheat; each morn she does
black it,
Yet, ere it be night, it’s the same with her
placket.
I’ll ne’er be run down any more with your
cant;
Your velvet was wore before in a mant,
On the back of her mother; but now ’tis much
duller,—
The fire she carries hath changed its colour.
Those creatures that draw me you never would mind,
If you’d but look on your own Pharaoh’s
lean kine;
They’re taken for spectres, they’re so
meagre and spare,
Drawn damnably low by your sorrel mare.
We know how your lady was on you befriended;
You’re not to be paid for ’till the lawsuit
is ended:
But her bond it is good, he need not to doubt;
She is two or three years above being out.
Could my Knight be advised, he should ne’er
spend his vigour
On one he can’t hope of e’er making bigger.
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Dorothy Stopford, afterwards Countess of Meath, of whom Swift says, in his Journal to Stella, Feb. 23, 1711-12, “Countess Doll of Meath is such an owl, that, wherever I visit, people are asking me, whether I know such an Irish lady, and her figure and her foppery.” See, post, the Poem entitled, “Dicky and Dolly.”—W. E. B.]
TO LORD HARLEY, ON HIS MARRIAGE[1] OCTOBER 31, 1713
Among the numbers who employ
Their tongues and pens to give you joy,
Dear Harley! generous youth, admit
What friendship dictates more than wit.
Forgive me, when I fondly thought
(By frequent observations taught)
A spirit so inform’d as yours
Could never prosper in amours.
The God of Wit, and Light, and Arts,
With all acquired and natural parts,
Whose harp could savage beasts enchant,
Was an unfortunate gallant.
Had Bacchus after Daphne reel’d,
The nymph had soon been brought to yield;
Or, had embroider’d Mars pursued,
The nymph would ne’er have been a prude.
Ten thousand footsteps, full in view,
Mark out the way where Daphne[2] flew;
For such is all the sex’s flight,
They fly from learning, wit, and light;
They fly, and none can overtake
But some gay coxcomb, or a rake.
How then, dear Harley, could I guess
That you should meet, in love, success?
For, if those ancient tales be true,
Phoebus was beautiful as you;
Yet Daphne never slack’d her pace,
For wit and learning spoil’d his face.
And since the same resemblance held
[Footnote 1: Lord Harley, only son of the first Earl of Oxford, married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, only daughter of John, Duke of Newcastle. He took no part in public affairs, but delighted in the Society of the poets and men of letters of his day, especially Pope and Swift.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Pursued in vain by Apollo, and changed by him into a laurel tree. Ovid, “Metam.,” i, 452; “Heroides,” xv, 25.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Aurora, who married Tithonus, and took him up to Heaven; hence in Ovid, “Tithonia conjux.,” “Fasti,” lib. iii, 403.—W. E. B.]
Desponding Phyllis was endu’d
With ev’ry talent of a prude:
She trembled when a man drew near;
Salute her, and she turn’d her ear:
If o’er against her you were placed,
She durst not look above your waist:
She’d rather take you to her bed,
Than let you see her dress her head;
In church you hear her, thro’ the crowd,
Repeat the absolution loud:
In church, secure behind her fan,
She durst behold that monster man:
There practis’d how to place her head,
And bite her lips to make them red;
Or, on the mat devoutly kneeling,
Would lift her eyes up to the ceiling.
And heave her bosom unaware,
For neighb’ring beaux to see it bare.
At length a lucky lover came,
And found admittance to the dame,
Suppose all parties now agreed,
The writings drawn, the lawyer feed,
The vicar and the ring bespoke:
Guess, how could such a match be broke?
See then what mortals place their bliss in!
Next morn betimes the bride was missing:
The mother scream’d, the father chid;
Where can this idle wench be hid?
No news of Phyl! the bridegroom came,
And thought his bride had skulk’d for shame;
Because her father used to say,
The girl had such a bashful way!
Now John the butler must be sent
To learn the road that Phyllis went:
The groom was wish’d[1] to saddle Crop;
For John must neither light nor stop,
But find her, wheresoe’er she fled,
And bring her back alive or dead.
See here again the devil to do!
For truly John was missing too:
The horse and pillion both were gone!
Phyllis, it seems, was fled with John.
Old Madam, who went up to find
What papers Phyl had left behind,
A letter on the toilet sees,
“To my much honour’d father—these—”
(’Tis always done, romances tell us,
When daughters run away with fellows,)
Fill’d with the choicest common-places,
By others used in the like cases.
“That long ago a fortune-teller
Exactly said what now befell her;
And in a glass had made her see
A serving-man of low degree.
It was her fate, must be forgiven;
For marriages were made in Heaven:
His pardon begg’d: but, to be plain,
She’d do’t if ’twere to do again:
Thank’d God, ’twas neither shame nor sin;
For John was come of honest kin.
Love never thinks of rich and poor;
She’d beg with John from door to door.
Forgive her, if it be a crime;
She’ll never do’t another time.
She ne’er before in all her life
Once disobey’d him, maid nor wife.”
One argument she summ’d up all in,
“The thing was done and past recalling;
And therefore hoped she should recover
His favour when his passion’s over.
She valued not what others thought her,
And was—his most obedient daughter.”
Fair maidens all, attend the Muse,
Who now the wand’ring pair pursues:
Away they rode in homely sort,
[Footnote 1: A tradesman’s phrase.—Swift.]
HORACE, BOOK IV, ODE IX ADDRESSED TO ARCHBISHOP KING,[1] 1718
Virtue conceal’d within our breast
Is inactivity at best:
But never shall the Muse endure
To let your virtues lie obscure;
Or suffer Envy to conceal
Your labours for the public weal.
Within your breast all wisdom lies,
Either to govern or advise;
Your steady soul preserves her frame,
In good and evil times, the same.
Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud,
Stand in your sacred presence awed;
Your hand alone from gold abstains,
Which drags the slavish world in chains.
Him for a happy man I own,
Whose fortune is not overgrown;[2]
And happy he who wisely knows
To use the gifts that Heaven bestows;
Or, if it please the powers divine,
Can suffer want and not repine.
The man who infamy to shun
Into the arms of death would run;
That man is ready to defend,
With life, his country or his friend.
[Footnote 1: With whom Swift was in constant correspondence, more or less friendly. See Journal to Stella, “Prose Works,” vol. ii, passim; and an account of King, vol. iii, p. 241, note.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2:
“Non possidentem multa vocaveris
recte beatum: rectius occupat
nomen beati, qui deorum
muneribus sapienter
uti
duramque callet pauperiem pati,
pejusque leto flagitium timet.”]
OCT. 10, 1718 NINE IN THE MORNING
To you whose virtues, I must own
With shame, I have too lately known;
To you, by art and nature taught
To be the man I long have sought,
Had not ill Fate, perverse and blind,
Placed you in life too far behind:
Or, what I should repine at more,
Placed me in life too far before:
To you the Muse this verse bestows,
Which might as well have been in prose;
No thought, no fancy, no sublime,
But simple topics told in rhyme.
Three gifts for conversation fit
Are humour, raillery, and wit:
The last, as boundless as the wind,
Is well conceived, though not defined;
For, sure by wit is only meant
Applying what we first invent.
What humour is, not all the tribe
Of logic-mongers can describe;
Here only nature acts her part,
Unhelp’d by practice, books, or art:
For wit and humour differ quite;
That gives surprise, and this delight,
Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild,
Only by affectation spoil’d;
’Tis never by invention got,
Men have it when they know it not.
Our conversation to refine,
True humour must with wit combine:
From both we learn to rally well,
Wherein French writers most excel;
[2]Voiture, in various lights, displays
That irony which turns to praise:
His genius first found out the rule
For an obliging ridicule:
He flatters with peculiar air
The brave, the witty, and the fair:
And fools would fancy he intends
A satire where he most commends.
But as a poor pretending beau,
Because he fain would make a show,
Nor can afford to buy gold lace,
Takes up with copper in the place:
So the pert dunces of mankind,
Whene’er they would be thought refined,
Because the diff’rence lies abstruse
’Twixt raillery and gross abuse,
To show their parts will scold and rail,
Like porters o’er a pot of ale.
Such is that clan of boisterous bears,
Always together by the ears;
Shrewd fellows and arch wags, a tribe
That meet for nothing but to gibe;
Who first run one another down,
And then fall foul on all the town;
Skill’d in the horse-laugh and dry rub,
And call’d by excellence The Club.
I mean your butler, Dawson, Car,
All special friends, and always jar.
The mettled and the vicious steed
Do not more differ in their breed,
Nay, Voiture is as like Tom Leigh,
As rudeness is to repartee.
If what you said I wish unspoke,
’Twill not suffice it was a joke:
Reproach not, though in jest, a friend
For those defects he cannot mend;
His lineage, calling, shape, or sense,
If named with scorn, gives just offence.
What use in life to make men fret,
Part in worse humour than they met?
Thus all society is lost,
Men laugh at one another’s cost:
And half the company is teazed
That came together to be pleased:
For all buffoons have most in view
To please themselves by vexing you.
[Footnote 1: The Rev. Patrick Delany, one of Swift’s most valued friends, born about 1685. When Lord Carteret became Lord Lieutenant, Swift urged Delany’s claims to preferment, and he was appointed Chancellor of St. Patrick’s. He appears to have been warm-hearted and impetuous, and too hospitable for his means. He died at Bath, 1768.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Famous as poet and letter writer, born 1598, died 1648.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Dr. Sheridan.]
[Footnote 4: Mentioned in “The Country Life,” as one of that lively party, post, p. 137.—W. E. B.]
ON THE DEATH OF DEMAR, THE USURER;
WHO DIED ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 1720
Know all men by these presents, Death, the tamer,
By mortgage has secured the corpse of Demar;
Nor can four hundred thousand sterling pound
Redeem him from his prison underground.
His heirs might well, of all his wealth possesst
Bestow, to bury him, one iron chest.
Plutus, the god of wealth, will joy to know
His faithful steward in the shades below.
He walk’d the streets, and wore a threadbare
cloak;
He din’d and supp’d at charge of other
folk:
And by his looks, had he held out his palms,
He might be thought an object fit for alms.
So, to the poor if he refus’d his pelf,
He us’d ’em full as kindly as himself.
Where’er he went, he never saw his
betters;
Lords, knights, and squires, were all his humble debtors;
And under hand and seal, the Irish nation
[Footnote 1: The subject was John Demar, a great merchant in Dublin who died 6th July, 1720. Swift, with some of his usual party, happened to be in Mr. Sheridan’s, in Capel Street, when the news of Demar’s death was brought to them; and the elegy was the joint composition of the company.—C. Walker.]
[Footnote 2: A tavern in Dublin, where Demar kept his office.—F.]
[Footnote 3: These four lines were written by Stella.—F.]
Beneath this verdant hillock lies
Demar, the wealthy and the wise,
His heirs,[1] that he might safely rest,
Have put his carcass in a chest;
The very chest in which, they say,
His other self, his money, lay.
And, if his heirs continue kind
To that dear self he left behind,
I dare believe, that four in five
Will think his better self alive.
[Footnote 1:
“His heirs for winding sheet bestow’d
His money bags together sew’d
And that he might securely rest,”
Variation—From the Chetwode MS.—W.
E. B.]
TO MRS. HOUGHTON OF BOURMONT, ON PRAISING HER HUSBAND TO DR. SWIFT
You always are making a god of your spouse;
But this neither Reason nor Conscience allows;
Perhaps you will say, ’tis in gratitude due,
And you adore him, because he adores you.
Your argument’s weak, and so you will find;
For you, by this rule, must adore all mankind.
VERSES WRITTEN ON A WINDOW, AT THE DEANERY HOUSE, ST. PATRICK’S
Are the guests of this house still doom’d to
be cheated?
Sure the Fates have decreed they by halves should
be treated.
In the days of good John[1] if you came here to dine,
You had choice of good meat, but no choice of good
wine.
In Jonathan’s reign, if you come here to eat,
You have choice of good wine, but no choice of good
meat.
O Jove! then how fully might all sides be blest,
Wouldst thou but agree to this humble request!
Put both deans in one; or, if that’s too much
trouble,
Instead of the deans, make the deanery double.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Sterne, the predecessor of Swift in the deanery of St. Patrick’s, and afterwards Bishop of Clogher, was distinguished for his hospitality. See Journal to Stella, passim, “Prose Works,” vol. ii—W. E. B.]
A bard, on whom Phoebus his spirit bestow’d,
Resolving t’acknowledge the bounty he owed,
Found out a new method at once of confessing,
And making the most of so mighty a blessing:
To the God he’d be grateful; but mortals he’d
chouse,
By making his patron preside in his house;
And wisely foresaw this advantage from thence,
That the God would in honour bear most of th’expense;
So the bard he finds drink, and leaves Phoebus to
treat
With the thoughts he inspires, regardless of meat.
Hence they that come hither expecting to dine,
Are always fobb’d off with sheer wit and sheer
wine.
[Footnote 1: Written by Dr. Delany, in conjunction with Stella, as appears from the verses which follow.—Scott.]
Right Trusty, and so forth—we let you know
We are very ill used by you mortals below.
For, first, I have often by chemists been told,
(Though I know nothing on’t,) it is I that make
gold;
Which when you have got, you so carefully hide it,
That, since I was born, I hardly have spied it.
Then it must be allow’d, that, whenever I shine,
I forward the grass, and I ripen the vine;
To me the good fellows apply for relief,
Without whom they could get neither claret nor beef:
Yet their wine and their victuals, those curmudgeon
lubbards
Lock up from my sight in cellars and cupboards.
That I have an ill eye, they wickedly think,
And taint all their meat, and sour all their drink.
But, thirdly and lastly, it must be allow’d,
I alone can inspire the poetical crowd:
This is gratefully own’d by each boy in the
College,
Whom, if I inspire, it is not to my knowledge.
This every pretender in rhyme will admit,
Without troubling his head about judgment or wit.
These gentlemen use me with kindness and freedom,
And as for their works, when I please I may read ’em.
They lie open on purpose on counters and stalls,
And the titles I view, when I shine on the walls.
[Footnote 1: Collated with the original MS. in Swift’s writing, and also with the copy transcribed by Stella.—Forster.]
[Footnote 2: Stella’s copy has “the.”—Forster.]
[Footnote 3: Diana.]
[Footnote 4: As originally written, this passage
ran:
“Wherein she distinctly could read
ev’ry line
And found by the wit the Fancy was mine
For none of his poems were ever yet shown
Which he in his conscience could claim
for his own.”
Forster.]
NEWS FROM PARNASSUS BY DR. DELANY
OCCASIONED BY “APOLLO TO THE DEAN” 1720
Parnassus, February the twenty-seventh.
The poets assembled here on the eleventh,
Convened by Apollo, who gave them to know
He’d have a vicegerent in his empire below;
But declared that no bard should this honour inherit,
Till the rest had agreed he surpass’d them in
merit:
Now this, you’ll allow, was a difficult case,
For each bard believed he’d a right to the place;
So, finding the assembly grow warm in debate,
He put them in mind of his Phaethon’s fate:
’Twas urged to no purpose; disputes higher rose,
Scarce Phoebus himself could their quarrels compose;
Till at length he determined that every bard
Should (each in his turn) be patiently heard.
First, one who believed he excell’d
in translation,[1]
Founds his claim on the doctrine of man’s transmigration:
“Since the soul of great Milton was given to
me,
I hope the convention will quickly agree.”—
“Agree;” quoth Apollo: “from
[Footnote 1: Dr. Trapp or Trap, ridiculed by Swift in “The Tatler,” No. 66, as parson Dapper. He was sent to Ireland as chaplain to Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor, in 1710-11. But in July, 1712, Swift writes to Stella, “I have made Trap chaplain to Lord Bolingbroke, and he is mighty happy and thankful for it.” He translated the “Aeneid” into blank verse.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Prior, concerning whose “Journey to France,” Swift wrote a “formal relation, all pure invention,” which had a great sale, and was a “pure bite.” See Journal to Stella, Sept., 1711.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Pope, and his translations of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Gay; alluding to his “Trivia.”—N.]
[Footnote 5: Diana.]
APOLLO’S EDICT OCCASIONED BY “NEWS FROM PARNASSUS”
Ireland is now our royal care,
We lately fix’d our viceroy there.
How near was she to be undone,
Till pious love inspired her son!
What cannot our vicegerent do,
As poet and as patriot too?
Let his success our subjects sway,
Our inspirations to obey,
And follow where he leads the way:
Then study to correct your taste;
Nor beaten paths be longer traced.
No simile shall be begun,
With rising or with setting sun;
And let the secret head of Nile
Be ever banish’d from your isle.
When wretched lovers live on air,
I beg you’ll the chameleon spare;
And when you’d make a hero grander,
Forget he’s like a salamander.[1]
No son of mine shall dare to say,
Aurora usher’d in the day,
Or ever name the milky-way.
You all agree, I make no doubt,
Elijah’s mantle is worn out.
The bird of Jove shall toil no more
To teach the humble wren to soar.
Your tragic heroes shall not rant,
Nor shepherds use poetic cant.
Simplicity alone can grace
The manners of the rural race.
Theocritus and Philips be
Your guides to true simplicity.
When Damon’s soul shall take its
flight,
Though poets have the second-sight,
They shall not see a trail of light.
Nor shall the vapours upwards rise,
Nor a new star adorn the skies:
For who can hope to place one there,
As glorious as Belinda’s hair?
Yet, if his name you’d eternize,
And must exalt him to the skies;
Without a star this may be done:
So Tickell mourn’d his Addison.
If Anna’s happy reign you praise,
Pray, not a word of halcyon days:
Nor let my votaries show their skill
In aping lines from Cooper’s Hill;[2]
For know I cannot bear to hear
The mimicry of “deep, yet clear.”
Whene’er my viceroy is address’d,
Against the phoenix I protest.
When poets soar in youthful strains,
No Phaethon to hold the reins.
When you describe a lovely girl,
No lips of coral, teeth of pearl.
Cupid shall ne’er mistake another,
However beauteous, for his mother;
Nor shall his darts at random fly
From magazine in Celia’s eye.
With woman compounds I am cloy’d,
Which only pleased in Biddy Floyd.[3]
For foreign aid what need they roam,
Whom fate has amply blest at home?
Unerring Heaven, with bounteous hand,
Has form’d a model for your land,
[Footnote 1: See the “Description of a Salamander,” ante, p. 46.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Denham’s Poem.]
[Footnote 3: Ante, p. 50.]
[Footnote 4: Lady Catherine Forbes, daughter of the first Earl of Granard, and second wife of Arthur, third Earl of Donegal.—Scott.]
Given by O’Rourke, a powerful chieftain of Ulster in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, previously to his making a visit to her court. A song was composed upon the tradition of the feast, the fame of which having reached Swift, he was supplied with a literal version, from which he executed the following very spirited translation.—W. E. B.
O’ROURKE’S noble fare
Will ne’er be forgot,
By those who were there,
Or those who were not.
His revels to keep,
We sup and we dine
On seven score sheep,
Fat bullocks, and swine.
Usquebaugh to our feast
In pails was brought up,
A hundred at least,
And a madder[1] our cup.
O there is the sport!
We rise with the light
In disorderly sort,
From snoring all night.
O how was I trick’d!
My pipe it was broke,
My pocket was pick’d,
I lost my new cloak.
I’m rifled, quoth Nell,
Of mantle and kercher,[2]
Why then fare them well,
The de’el take the searcher.
Come, harper, strike up;
But, first, by your favour,
Boy, give us a cup:
Ah! this hath some savour.
O’Rourke’s jolly boys
Ne’er dreamt of the matter,
Till, roused by the noise,
And musical clatter,
They bounce from their nest,
No longer will tarry,
They rise ready drest,
Without one Ave-Mary.
They dance in a round,
Cutting capers and ramping;
A mercy the ground
Did not burst with their stamping.
The floor is all wet
With leaps and with jumps,
While the water and sweat
Splish-splash in their pumps.
Bless you late and early,
Laughlin O’Enagin![3]
But, my hand,[4] you dance rarely.
Margery Grinagin.[5]
Bring straw for our bed,
Shake it down to the feet,
Then over us spread
The winnowing sheet.
To show I don’t flinch,
Fill the bowl up again:
Then give us a pinch
Of your sneezing, a Yean.[6]
Good lord! what a sight,
After all their good cheer,
For people to fight
In the midst of their beer!
They rise from their feast,
And hot are their brains,
A cubit at least
The length of their skeans.[7]
What stabs and what cuts,
What clattering of sticks;
What strokes on the guts,
What bastings and kicks!
With cudgels of oak,
Well harden’d in flame,
A hundred heads broke,
A hundred struck lame.
You churl, I’ll maintain
My father built Lusk,
The castle of Slane,
And Carrick Drumrusk:
The Earl of Kildare,
And Moynalta his brother,
As great as they are,
I was nurst by their mother.[8]
Ask that of old madam:
She’ll tell you who’s who,
As far up as Adam,
She knows it is true.
Come down with that beam,
If cudgels are scarce,
A blow on the weam,
Or a kick on the a——se.
[Footnote 1: A wooden vessel.—F.]
[Footnote 2: A covering of linen, worn on the heads of the women.—F.]
[Footnote 3: The name of an Irishman.—F.]
[Footnote 4: An Irish oath.—F.]
[Footnote 5: The name of an Irishwoman.—F.]
[Footnote 6: Surname of an Irishwoman.—F.]
[Footnote 7: Daggers, or short swords,—F.]
[Footnote 8: It is the custom in Ireland to call nurses, foster-mothers; their husbands, foster-fathers; and their children, foster-brothers or foster-sisters; and thus the poorest claim kindred to the rich.—F.]
When first Diana leaves her bed,
Vapours and steams her looks disgrace,
A frowzy dirty-colour’d red
Sits on her cloudy wrinkled face:
But by degrees, when mounted high,
Her artificial face appears
Down from her window in the sky,
Her spots are gone, her visage clears.
’Twixt earthly females and the moon,
All parallels exactly run;
If Celia should appear too soon,
Alas, the nymph would be undone!
To see her from her pillow rise,
All reeking in a cloudy steam,
Crack’d lips, foul teeth, and gummy eyes,
Poor Strephon! how would he blaspheme!
The soot or powder which was wont
To make her hair look black as jet,
Falls from her tresses on her front,
A mingled mass of dirt and sweat.
Three colours, black, and red, and white
So graceful in their proper place,
Remove them to a different light,
They form a frightful hideous face:
For instance, when the lily slips
Into the precincts of the rose,
And takes possession of the lips,
Leaving the purple to the nose:
So Celia went entire to bed,
All her complexion safe and sound;
But, when she rose, the black and red,
Though still in sight, had changed their
ground.
The black, which would not be confined,
A more inferior station seeks,
Leaving the fiery red behind,
And mingles in her muddy cheeks.
The paint by perspiration cracks,
And falls in rivulets of sweat,
On either side you see the tracks
While at her chin the conflu’nts
meet.
A skilful housewife thus her thumb,
With spittle while she spins anoints;
And thus the brown meanders come
In trickling streams betwixt her joints.
But Celia can with ease reduce,
By help of pencil, paint, and brush,
Each colour to its place and use,
And teach her cheeks again to blush.
She knows her early self no more,
But fill’d with admiration stands;
As other painters oft adore
The workmanship of their own hands.
Thus, after four important hours,
Celia’s the wonder of her sex;
Say, which among the heavenly powers
Could cause such wonderful effects?
Venus, indulgent to her kind,
Gave women all their hearts could wish,
When first she taught them where to find
White lead, and Lusitanian dish.
Love with white lead cements his wings;
White lead was sent us to repair
Two brightest, brittlest, earthly things,
A lady’s face, and China-ware.
She ventures now to lift the sash;
The window is her proper sphere;
Ah, lovely nymph! be not too rash,
Nor let the beaux approach too near.
Take pattern by your sister star;
Delude at once and bless our sight;
When you are seen, be seen from far,
And chiefly choose to shine by night.
In the Pall Mall when passing by,
Keep up the glasses of your chair,
Then each transported fop will cry,
“G——d d——n
me, Jack, she’s wondrous fair!”
But art no longer can prevail,
When the materials all are gone;
The best mechanic hand must fail,
Where nothing’s left to work upon.
Matter, as wise logicians say,
Cannot without a form subsist;
And form, say I, as well as they,
Must fail if matter brings no grist.
And this is fair Diana’s case;
For, all astrologers maintain,
Each night a bit drops off her face,
When mortals say she’s in her wane:
While Partridge wisely shows the cause
Efficient of the moon’s decay,
That Cancer with his pois’nous claws
Attacks her in the milky way:
But Gadbury,[2] in art profound,
From her pale cheeks pretends to show
That swain Endymion is not sound,
Or else that Mercury’s her foe.
But let the cause be what it will,
In half a month she looks so thin,
That Flamsteed[3] can, with all his skill,
See but her forehead and her chin.
Yet, as she wastes, she grows discreet,
Till midnight never shows her head;
So rotting Celia strolls the street,
When sober folks are all a-bed:
For sure, if this be Luna’s fate,
Poor Celia, but of mortal race,
In vain expects a longer date
To the materials of her face.
When Mercury her tresses mows,
To think of oil and soot is vain:
No painting can restore a nose,
Nor will her teeth return again.
Two balls of glass may serve for eyes,
White lead can plaister up a cleft;
But these, alas, are poor supplies
If neither cheeks nor lips be left.
Ye powers who over love preside!
Since mortal beauties drop so soon,
If ye would have us well supplied,
Send us new nymphs with each new moon!
[Footnote 1: Collated with the copy transcribed by Stella.—Forster.]
[Footnote 2: Gadbury, an astrologer, wrote a series of ephemerides.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: John Flamsteed, the celebrated astronomer-royal, born in August, 1646, died in December, 1719. For a full account of him, see “Dictionary of National Biography.”—W. E. B.]
AETATIS SUAE fifty-two,
A reverend Dean began to woo[2]
A handsome, young, imperious girl,
Nearly related to an earl.[3]
Her parents and her friends consent;
The couple to the temple went:
They first invite the Cyprian queen;
’Twas answer’d, “She would not be
seen;”
But Cupid in disdain could scarce
Forbear to bid them kiss his ——
The Graces next, and all the Muses,
Were bid in form, but sent excuses.
Juno attended at the porch,
With farthing candle for a torch;
While mistress Iris held her train,
The faded bow bedropt with rain.
Then Hebe came, and took her place,
But show’d no more than half her face.
Whate’er these dire forebodings
meant,
In joy the marriage-day was spent;
The marriage-day, you take me right,
I promise nothing for the night.
The bridegroom, drest to make a figure,
Assumes an artificial vigour;
A flourish’d nightcap on, to grace
His ruddy, wrinkled, smirking face;
Like the faint red upon a pippin,
Half wither’d by a winter’s keeping.
And thus set out this happy pair,
The swain is rich, the nymph is fair;
But, what I gladly would forget,
The swain is old, the nymph coquette.
Both from the goal together start;
Scarce run a step before they part;
No common ligament that binds
The various textures of their minds;
Their thoughts and actions, hopes and fears,
Less corresponding than their years.
The Dean desires his coffee soon,
She rises to her tea at noon.
While the Dean goes out to cheapen books,
She at the glass consults her looks;
While Betty’s buzzing at her ear,
Lord, what a dress these parsons wear!
So odd a choice how could she make!
Wish’d him a colonel for her sake.
Then, on her finger ends she counts,
[Footnote 1: Collated with Swift’s original MS. in my possession, dated January, 1721-2.—Forster.]
[Footnote 2:
“A rich divine began to woo,”
“A grave divine resolved to woo,”
are Swift’s successive changes of this line.—Forster.]
[Footnote 3: “Philippa, daughter to an Earl,” is the original text, but he changed it on changing the lady’s name to Jane.—Forster.]
[Footnote 4: Scott prints “her.”—Forster.]
[Footnote 5: Swift has writ in the margin:
“If by a more than usual grace
She lends him in her chariot place,
Her hoop is hoist above his nose
For fear his gown should soil her clothes.”—Forster.]
[Footnote 6: For this fable, see Ovid, “Metam.,” lib. ix.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: So named from a very curious cross or pillar which was erected in it in 1687 by John, Earl of Melfort, Secretary of State to James the Second, in honour of the King’s second wife, Mary Beatrice of Modena, having conceived after bathing there.—Collinson’s “History of Somersetshire.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 8: “Meanwhile stands cluckling at the brim,” the first draft.—Forster.]
[Footnote 9: “The best of heirs” in first draft.—Forster.]
The farmer’s goose, who in the stubble
Has fed without restraint or trouble,
Grown fat with corn and sitting still,
Can scarce get o’er the barn-door sill;
And hardly waddles forth to cool
Her belly in the neighbouring pool!
Nor loudly cackles at the door;
For cackling shows the goose is poor.
But, when she must be turn’d to
graze,
And round the barren common strays,
Hard exercise, and harder fare,
Soon make my dame grow lank and spare;
Her body light, she tries her wings,
And scorns the ground, and upward springs;
While all the parish, as she flies,
Hear sounds harmonious from the skies.
Such is the poet fresh in pay,
The third night’s profits of his play;
His morning draughts till noon can swill,
Among his brethren of the quill:
With good roast beef his belly full,
Grown lazy, foggy, fat, and dull,
Deep sunk in plenty and delight,
What poet e’er could take his flight?
Or, stuff’d with phlegm up to the throat,
What poet e’er could sing a note?
Nor Pegasus could bear the load
Along the high celestial road;
The steed, oppress’d, would break his girth,
To raise the lumber from the earth.
But view him in another scene,
When all his drink is Hippocrene,
His money spent, his patrons fail,
His credit out for cheese and ale;
His two-years coat so smooth and bare,
Through every thread it lets in air;
With hungry meals his body pined,
His guts and belly full of wind;
And, like a jockey for a race,
His flesh brought down to flying case:
Now his exalted spirit loathes
Encumbrances of food and clothes;
And up he rises like a vapour,
Supported high on wings of paper.
He singing flies, and flying sings,
While from below all Grub-Street rings.
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto,
Arma virum, tabulaeque, et Troia gaza per undas.
VIRG.
For particulars of this famous scheme for reducing the National Debt, projected by Sir John Blunt, who became one of the Directors of it, and ultimately one of the greatest sufferers by it, when the Bubble burst, see Smollett’s “History of England,” vol. ii; Pope’s “Moral Essays,” Epist. iii, and notes; and Gibbon’s “Memoirs,” for the violent and arbitrary proceedings against the Directors, one of whom was his grandfather.—W. E. B.
Ye wise philosophers, explain
What magic makes our money rise,
When dropt into the Southern main;
Or do these jugglers cheat our eyes?
Put in your money fairly told;
Presto! be gone—’Tis
here again:
Ladies and gentlemen, behold,
Here’s every piece as big as ten.
Thus in a basin drop a shilling,
Then fill the vessel to the brim,
You shall observe, as you are filling,
The pond’rous metal seems to swim:
It rises both in bulk and height,
Behold it swelling like a sop;
The liquid medium cheats your sight:
Behold it mounted to the top!
In stock three hundred thousand pounds,
I have in view a lord’s estate;
My manors all contiguous round!
A coach-and-six, and served in plate!
Thus the deluded bankrupt raves,
Puts all upon a desperate bet;
Then plunges in the Southern waves,
Dipt over head and ears—in
debt.
So, by a calenture misled,
The mariner with rapture sees,
On the smooth ocean’s azure bed,
Enamell’d fields and verdant trees:
With eager haste he longs to rove
In that fantastic scene, and thinks
It must be some enchanted grove;
And in he leaps, and down he sinks.
Five hundred chariots just bespoke,
Are sunk in these devouring waves,
The horses drown’d, the harness broke,
And here the owners find their graves.
Like Pharaoh, by directors led,
They with their spoils went safe before;
His chariots, tumbling out the dead,
Lay shatter’d on the Red Sea shore.
Raised up on Hope’s aspiring plumes,
The young adventurer o’er the deep
An eagle’s flight and state assumes,
And scorns the middle way to keep.
On paper wings he takes his flight,
With wax the father bound them fast;
The wax is melted by the height,
And down the towering boy is cast.
A moralist might here explain
The rashness of the Cretan youth;[1]
Describe his fall into the main,
And from a fable form a truth.
His wings are his paternal rent,
He melts the wax at every flame;
His credit sunk, his money spent,
In Southern Seas he leaves his name.
Inform us, you that best can tell,
Why in that dangerous gulf profound,
Where hundreds and where thousands fell,
Fools chiefly float, the wise are drown’d?
So have I seen from Severn’s brink
A flock of geese jump down together;
Swim where the bird of Jove would sink,
And, swimming, never wet a feather.
But, I affirm, ’tis false in fact,
Directors better knew their tools;
We see the nation’s credit crack’d,
Each knave has made a thousand fools.
One fool may from another win,
And then get off with money stored;
But, if a sharper once comes in,
He throws it all, and sweeps the board.
As fishes on each other prey,
The great ones swallowing up the small,
So fares it in the Southern Sea;
The whale directors eat up all.
When stock is high, they come between,
Making by second-hand their offers;
Then cunningly retire unseen,
With each a million in his coffers.
So, when upon a moonshine night,
An ass was drinking at a stream,
A cloud arose, and stopt the light,
By intercepting every beam:
The day of judgment will be soon,
Cries out a sage among the crowd;
An ass has swallow’d up the moon!
The moon lay safe behind the cloud.
Each poor subscriber to the sea
Sinks down at once, and there he lies;
Directors fall as well as they,
Their fall is but a trick to rise.
So fishes, rising from the main,
Can soar with moisten’d wings on
high;
The moisture dried, they sink again,
And dip their fins again to fly.
Undone at play, the female troops
Come here their losses to retrieve;
Ride o’er the waves in spacious hoops,
Like Lapland witches in a sieve.
Thus Venus to the sea descends,
As poets feign; but where’s the
moral?
It shows the Queen of Love intends
To search the deep for pearl and coral.
The sea is richer than the land,
I heard it from my grannam’s mouth,
Which now I clearly understand;
For by the sea she meant the South.
Thus, by directors we are told,
“Pray, gentlemen, believe your eyes;
Our ocean’s cover’d o’er with gold,
Look round, and see how thick it lies:
“We, gentlemen, are your assisters,
We’ll come, and hold you by the
chin.”—
Alas! all is not gold that glisters,
Ten thousand sink by leaping in.
O! would those patriots be so kind,
Here in the deep to wash their hands,
Then, like Pactolus,[2] we should find
The sea indeed had golden sands.
A shilling in the bath you fling,
The silver takes a nobler hue,
By magic virtue in the spring,
And seems a guinea to your view.
But, as a guinea will not pass
At market for a farthing more,
Shown through a multiplying glass,
Than what it always did before:
So cast it in the Southern seas,
Or view it through a jobber’s bill;
Put on what spectacles you please,
Your guinea’s but a guinea still.
One night a fool into a brook
Thus from a hillock looking down,
The golden stars for guineas took,
And silver Cynthia for a crown.
The point he could no longer doubt;
He ran, he leapt into the flood;
There sprawl’d a while, and scarce got out,
All cover’d o’er with slime
and mud.
“Upon the water cast thy bread,
And after many days thou’lt find
it;"[3]
But gold, upon this ocean spread,
Shall sink, and leave no mark behind it:
There is a gulf, where thousands fell,
Here all the bold adventurers came,
A narrow sound, though deep as Hell—
’Change Alley is the dreadful name.
Nine times a-day it ebbs and flows,
Yet he that on the surface lies,
Without a pilot seldom knows
The time it falls, or when ’twill
rise.
Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down;
Each paddling in his leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
“Now buried in the depth below,
Now mounted up to Heaven again,
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wits’ end, like drunken
men."[4]
Meantime, secure on Garway[5] cliffs,
A savage race, by shipwrecks fed,
Lie waiting for the founder’d skiffs,
And strip the bodies of the dead.
But these, you say, are factious lies,
From some malicious Tory’s brain;
For, where directors get a prize,
The Swiss and Dutch whole millions drain.
Thus, when by rooks a lord is plied,
Some cully often wins a bet,
By venturing on the cheating side,
Though not into the secret let.
While some build castles in the air,
Directors build them in the seas;
Subscribers plainly see them there,
For fools will see as wise men please.
Thus oft by mariners are shown
(Unless the men of Kent are liars)
Earl Godwin’s castles overflown,
And palace roofs, and steeple spires.
Mark where the sly directors creep,
Nor to the shore approach too nigh!
The monsters nestle in the deep,
To seize you in your passing by.
Then, like the dogs of Nile, be wise,
Who, taught by instinct how to shun
The crocodile, that lurking lies,
Run as they drink, and drink and run.
Antaeus could, by magic charms,
Recover strength whene’er he fell;
Alcides held him in his arms,
And sent him up in air to Hell.
Directors, thrown into the sea,
Recover strength and vigour there;
But may be tamed another way,
Suspended for a while in air.
Directors! for ’tis you I warn,
By long experience we have found
What planet ruled when you were born;
We see you never can be drown’d.
Beware, nor overbulky grow,
Nor come within your cully’s reach;
For, if the sea should sink so low
To leave you dry upon the beach,
You’ll owe your ruin to your bulk:
Your foes already waiting stand,
To tear you like a founder’d hulk,
While you lie helpless on the sand.
Thus, when a whale has lost the tide,
The coasters crowd to seize the spoil:
The monster into parts divide,
And strip the bones, and melt the oil.
Oh! may some western tempest sweep
These locusts whom our fruits have fed,
That plague, directors, to the deep,
Driven from the South Sea to the Red!
May he, whom Nature’s laws obey,
Who lifts the poor, and sinks the proud,
“Quiet the raging of the sea,
And still the madness of the crowd!”
But never shall our isle have rest,
Till those devouring swine run down,
(The devils leaving the possest)
And headlong in the waters drown.
The nation then too late will find,
Computing all their cost and trouble,
Directors’ promises but wind,
South Sea, at best, a mighty bubble.
[Footnote 1: Phaethon. Ovid, “Metam.,” lib. ii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: See the fable of Midas. Ovid, “Metam.,” lib. xi.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Ecclesiastes, xi, I.]
[Footnote 4: Psalm cvii, 26, 27.]
[Footnote 5: Garraway’s auction room and coffee-house, closed in 1866.—W. E. B.]
ORE cibum portans catulus dum spectat in undis,
Apparet liquido praedae melioris imago:
Dum speciosa diu damna admiratur, et alte
Ad latices inhiat, cadit imo vortice praeceps
Ore cibus, nee non simulacrum corripit una.
Occupat ille avidus deceptis faucibus umbram;
Illudit species, ac dentibus aera mordet.
BILLET TO A COMPANY OF PLAYERS SENT WITH THE PROLOGUE
The enclosed prologue is formed upon the story of
the secretary’s not allowing you to act, unless
you would pay him L300 per annum; upon which you got
a license from the Lord Mayor to act as strollers.
The prologue supposes, that upon your
being forbidden to act, a company
of country strollers came and hired the playhouse,
and your clothes, etc. to act in.
Our set of strollers, wandering up and down,
Hearing the house was empty, came to town;
And, with a license from our good lord mayor,
Went to one Griffith, formerly a player:
Him we persuaded, with a moderate bribe,
To speak to Elrington[1] and all the tribe,
To let our company supply their places,
And hire us out their scenes, and clothes, and faces.
Is not the truth the truth? Look full on me;
I am not Elrington, nor Griffith he.
When we perform, look sharp among our crew,
There’s not a creature here you ever knew.
The former folks were servants to the king;
We, humble strollers, always on the wing.
Now, for my part, I think, upon the whole,
Rather than starve, a better man would stroll.
Stay! let me see—Three hundred
pounds a-year,
For leave to act in town!—’Tis plaguy
dear.
Now, here’s a warrant; gallants, please to mark,
For three thirteens, and sixpence to the clerk.
Three hundred pounds! Were I the price to fix,
The public should bestow the actors six;
A score of guineas given underhand,
For a good word or so, we understand.
To help an honest lad that’s out of place,
May cost a crown or so; a common case:
And, in a crew, ’tis no injustice thought
To ship a rogue, and pay him not a groat.
But, in the chronicles of former ages,
Who ever heard of servants paying wages?
I pity Elrington with all my heart;
Would he were here this night to act my part!
[Footnote 1: Thomas Elrington, born in 1688, an English actor of great reputation at Drury Lane from 1709 till 1712, when he was engaged by Joseph Ashbury, manager of the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. After the death of Ashbury, whose daughter he had married, he succeeded to the management of the theatre, and enjoyed high social and artistic consideration. He died in July, 1732.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Two celebrated actors: Betterton in tragedy, and Wilks in comedy. See “The Tatler,” Nos. 71, 157, 167, 182, and notes, edit. 1786; Colley Cibber’s “Apology “; and “Dictionary of National Biography.”—W. E. B.]
TO MR. HOPPY’S BENEFIT-NIGHT, AT SMOCK-ALLEY
HOLD! hold, my good friends; for one moment, pray
stop ye,
I return ye my thanks, in the name of poor Hoppy.
He’s not the first person who never did write,
And yet has been fed by a benefit-night.
The custom is frequent, on my word I assure ye,
In our famed elder house, of the Hundreds of Drury.
But then you must know, those players still act on
Some very good reasons, for such benefaction.
A deceased poet’s widow, if pretty,
can’t fail;
From Cibber she holds, as a tenant in tail.
Your emerited actors, and actresses too,
For what they have done (though no more they can do)
And sitters, and songsters, and Chetwood and G——,
And sometimes a poor sufferer in the South Sea;
A machine-man, a tire-woman, a mute, and a spright,
Have been all kept from starving by a benefit-night.
Thus, for Hoppy’s bright merits,
at length we have found
That he must have of us ninety-nine and one pound,
[Footnote 1: This piece, which relates, like the former, to the avaricious demands which the Irish Secretary of State made upon the company of players, is said, in the collection called “Gulliveriana,” to have been composed by Swift, and delivered by him at Gaulstown House. But it is more likely to have been written by some other among the joyous guests of the Lord Chief Baron, since it does not exhibit Swift’s accuracy of numbers.—Scott. Perhaps so, but the note to this piece in “Gulliveriana” is “Spoken by the Captain, one evening, at the end of a private farce, acted by gentlemen, for their own diversion at Gallstown”; the “Captain” being Swift, as the leader of the “joyous guests.” This is very different from “composed.”—W. E. B.]
TO A PLAY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE DISTRESSED WEAVERS. BY DR. SHERIDAN. SPOKEN BY MR. ELRINGTON. 1721
Great cry, and little wool—is now become
The plague and proverb of the weaver’s loom;
No wool to work on, neither weft nor warp;
Their pockets empty, and their stomachs sharp.
Provoked, in loud complaints to you they cry;
Ladies, relieve the weavers; or they die!
Forsake your silks for stuff’s; nor think it
strange
To shift your clothes, since you delight in change.
One thing with freedom I’ll presume to tell—
The men will like you every bit as well.
See I am dress’d from top to toe
in stuff,
And, by my troth, I think I’m fine enough;
My wife admires me more, and swears she never,
In any dress, beheld me look so clever.
And if a man be better in such ware,
What great advantage must it give the fair!
Our wool from lambs of innocence proceeds;
Silks come from maggots, calicoes from weeds;
Hence ’tis by sad experience that we find
Ladies in silks to vapours much inclined—
And what are they but maggots in the mind?
For which I think it reason to conclude,
That clothes may change our temper like our food.
Chintzes are gawdy, and engage our eyes
Too much about the party-colour’d dyes;
Although the lustre is from you begun,
We see the rainbow, and neglect the sun.
How sweet and innocent’s the country
maid,
With small expense in native wool array’d;
Who copies from the fields her homely green,
While by her shepherd with delight she’s seen!
Should our fair ladies dress like her, in wool
How much more lovely, and how beautiful,
Without their Indian drapery, they’d prove!
While wool would help to warm us into love!
Then, like the famous Argonauts of Greece,
We’ll all contend to gain the Golden Fleece!
[Footnote 1: In connection with this Prologue and the Epilogue by the Dean which follows, see Swift’s Papers relating to the use of Irish Manufactures in “Prose Works,” vol. vii.—W. E. B.]
EPILOGUE
TO A BENEFIT PLAY, GIVEN IN BEHALF OF THE DISTRESSED
WEAVERS.
BY THE DEAN. SPOKEN BY MR. GRIFFITH
Who dares affirm this is no pious age,
When charity begins to tread the stage?
When actors, who at best are hardly savers,
Will give a night of benefit to weavers?
Stay—let me see, how finely will it sound!
Imprimis, From his grace[1] a hundred pound.
Peers, clergy, gentry, all are benefactors;
And then comes in the item of the actors.
Item, The actors freely give a day—
The poet had no more who made the play.
But whence this wondrous charity in players?
They learn it not at sermons, or at prayers:
Under the rose, since here are none but friends,
(To own the truth) we have some private ends.
Since waiting-women, like exacting jades,
Hold up the prices of their old brocades;
We’ll dress in manufactures made at home;
Equip our kings and generals at the Comb.[2]
[Footnote 1: Archbishop King.]
[Footnote 2: A street famous for woollen manufactures.—F.]
[Footnote 3: See the fable of Pallas and Arachne in Ovid, “Metamorph.,” lib. vi, applied in “A proposal for the Universal use of Irish Manufacture,” “Prose Works,” vii, at p. 21.—W. E. B.]
ANSWER
TO DR. SHERIDAN’S PROLOGUE, AND TO DR. SWIFT’S
EPILOGUE.
IN BEHALF OF THE DISTRESSED WEAVERS. BY DR. DELANY.
Femineo generi tribuantur.
The Muses, whom the richest silks array,
Refuse to fling their shining gowns away;
The pencil clothes the nine in bright brocades,
And gives each colour to the pictured maids;
Far above mortal dress the sisters shine,
Pride in their Indian Robes, and must be fine.
And shall two bards in concert rhyme, and huff
And fret these Muses with their playhouse stuff?
The player in mimic piety may storm,
Deplore the Comb, and bid her heroes arm:
The arbitrary mob, in paltry rage,
May curse the belles and chintzes of the age:
Yet still the artist worm her silk shall share,
And spin her thread of life in service of the fair.
The cotton plant, whom satire cannot blast,
Shall bloom the favourite of these realms, and last;
Like yours, ye fair, her fame from censure grows,
Prevails in charms, and glares above her foes:
Your injured plant shall meet a loud defence,
And be the emblem of your innocence.
Some bard, perhaps, whose landlord was
a weaver,
Penn’d the low prologue to return a favour:
Some neighbour wit, that would be in the vogue,
THE SEAT OF GEORGE ROCHFORT, ESQ.
BY DR. DELANY
’Tis so old and so ugly, and yet so convenient,
You’re sometimes in pleasure, though often in
pain in’t;
’Tis so large, you may lodge a few friends with
ease in’t,
You may turn and stretch at your length if you please
in’t;
’Tis so little, the family live in a press in’t,
And poor Lady Betty[1] has scarce room to dress in’t;
’Tis so cold in the winter, you can’t
bear to lie in’t,
And so hot in the summer, you’re ready to fry
in’t;
’Tis so brittle, ’twould scarce bear the
weight of a tun,
Yet so staunch, that it keeps out a great deal of
sun;
’Tis so crazy, the weather with ease beats quite
through it,
And you’re forced every year in some part to
renew it;
’Tis so ugly, so useful, so big, and so little,
’Tis so staunch and so crazy, so strong and
so brittle,
’Tis at one time so hot, and another so cold,
It is part of the new, and part of the old;
It is just half a blessing, and just half a curse—
wish then, dear George, it were better or worse.
[Footnote 1: Daughter of the Earl of Drogheda, and married to George Rochfort, Esq.—F.]
PART OF A SUMMER SPENT AT GAULSTOWN HOUSE,
THE SEAT OF GEORGE ROCHFORT, ESQ.
The Baron, Lord Chief Baron Rochfort. George, his eldest son. Nim, his second son, John, so called from his love of hunting. Dan, Mr. Jackson, a parson. Gaulstown, the Baron’s seat. Sheridan, a pedant and pedagogue. Delany, chaplain to Sir Constantine Phipps, when Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Dragon, the name of the boat on the canal. Dean Percival and his wife, friends of the Baron and his lady.
Thalia, tell, in sober lays,
How George, Nim, Dan, Dean,[1] pass their days;
And, should our Gaulstown’s wit grow fallow,
Yet Neget quis carmina Gallo?
Here (by the way) by Gallus mean I
Not Sheridan, but friend Delany.
Begin, my Muse! First from our bowers
We sally forth at different hours;
At seven the Dean, in night-gown drest,
Goes round the house to wake the rest;
At nine, grave Nim and George facetious,
Go to the Dean, to read Lucretius;[2]
At ten my lady comes and hectors
And kisses George, and ends our lectures;
And when she has him by the neck fast,
Hauls him, and scolds us, down to breakfast.
We squander there an hour or more,
And then all hands, boys, to the oar;
All, heteroclite Dan except,
Who never time nor order kept,
But by peculiar whimseys drawn,
Peeps in the ponds to look for spawn:
O’ersees the work, or Dragon rows,
Or mars a text, or mends his hose;
Or—but proceed we in our journal—
At two, or after, we return all:
From the four elements assembling,
Warn’d by the bell, all folks come trembling,
From airy garrets some descend,
Some from the lake’s remotest end;
My lord and Dean the fire forsake,
Dan leaves the earthy spade and rake;
The loiterers quake, no corner hides them
And Lady Betty soundly chides them.
Now water brought, and dinner done;
With “Church and King” the ladies gone.
Not reckoning half an hour we pass
In talking o’er a moderate glass.
Dan, growing drowsy, like a thief
Steals off to doze away his beef;
And this must pass for reading Hammond—
While George and Dean go to backgammon.
George, Nim, and Dean, set out at four,
And then, again, boys, to the oar.
But when the sun goes to the deep,
(Not to disturb him in his sleep,
Or make a rumbling o’er his head,
His candle out, and he a-bed,)
We watch his motions to a minute,
And leave the flood when he goes in it.
Now stinted in the shortening day,
We go to prayers and then to play,
Till supper comes; and after that
We sit an hour to drink and chat.
’Tis late—the old and younger pairs,
By Adam[3] lighted, walk up stairs.
The weary Dean goes to his chamber;
And Nim and Dan to garret clamber,
So when the circle we have run,
The curtain falls and all is done.
I might have mention’d several facts,
Like episodes between the acts;
And tell who loses and who wins,
Who gets a cold, who breaks his shins;
How Dan caught nothing in his net,
And how the boat was overset.
For brevity I have retrench’d
How in the lake the Dean was drench’d:
It would be an exploit to brag on,
How valiant George rode o’er the Dragon;
How steady in the storm he sat,
And saved his oar, but lost his hat:
How Nim (no hunter e’er could match him)
Still brings us hares, when he can catch ’em;
[Footnote 1: Dr. Swift.—F.]
[Footnote 2: For his philosophy and his exquisite verse, rather than for his irreligion, which never seems to have affected Swift.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: The butler.—F.]
[Footnote 4: A Tory news-writer. See “Prose Works,” vii, p. 347.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Charles XII, killed by a musket ball, when besieging a “petty fortress” in Norway in the winter of 1718.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: Mr. Clement Barry, called, in the notes appended to “Gulliveriana,” p. 12, chief favourite and governor of Gaulstown.—W. E. B.]
WOULD you that Delville I describe?
Believe me, Sir, I will not gibe:
For who would be satirical
Upon a thing so very small?
You scarce upon the borders enter,
Before you’re at the very centre.
A single crow can make it night,
When o’er your farm she takes her flight:
Yet, in this narrow compass, we
Observe a vast variety;
Both walks, walls, meadows, and parterres,
Windows and doors, and rooms and stairs,
And hills and dales, and woods and fields,
And hay, and grass, and corn, it yields:
All to your haggard brought so cheap in,
Without the mowing or the reaping:
A razor, though to say’t I’m loth,
Would shave you and your meadows both.
Though small’s the farm, yet here’s
a house
Full large to entertain a mouse;
But where a rat is dreaded more
Than savage Caledonian boar;
For, if it’s enter’d by a rat,
There is no room to bring a cat.
A little rivulet seems to steal
Down through a thing you call a vale,
Like tears adown a wrinkled cheek,
Like rain along a blade of leek:
And this you call your sweet meander,
Which might be suck’d up by a gander,
Could he but force his nether bill
To scoop the channel of the rill.
For sure you’d make a mighty clutter,
Were it as big as city gutter.
Next come I to your kitchen garden,
Where one poor mouse would fare but hard in;
And round this garden is a walk
No longer than a tailor’s chalk;
Thus I compare what space is in it,
A snail creeps round it in a minute.
One lettuce makes a shift to squeeze
Up through a tuft you call your trees:
And, once a year, a single rose
Peeps from the bud, but never blows;
In vain then you expect its bloom!
It cannot blow for want of room.
In short, in all your boasted seat,
There’s nothing but yourself that’s GREAT.
[Footnote 1: This poem has been stated to have been written by Swift’s friend, Dr. Sheridan, on the authority of his son, but it is unquestionably by Swift. See “Prose Works,” xii, p. 79.—W. E. B.]
A bard, grown desirous of saving his pelf,
Built a house he was sure would hold none but himself.
This enraged god Apollo, who Mercury sent,
And bid him go ask what his votary meant?
“Some foe to my empire has been his adviser:
’Tis of dreadful portent when a poet turns miser!
Tell him, Hermes, from me, tell that subject of mine,
I have sworn by the Styx, to defeat his design;
For wherever he lives, the Muses shall reign;
And the Muses, he knows, have a numerous train.”
IN COMITATU CORGAGENSI. SCRIPSIT JUN. ANN. DOM. 1723
Ecce ingens fragmen scopuli, quod vertice summo
Desuper impendet, nullo fundamine nixum,
Decidit in fluctus: maria undique et undique
saxa
Horrisono stridore tenant, et ad aethera murmur
Erigitur; trepidatque suis Neptunus in undis.
Nam, longa venti rabie, atque aspergine crebra
Aequorei laticis, specus ima rupe cavatur:
Jam fultura ruit, jam summa cacumina nutant;
Jam cadit in praeceps moles, et verberat undas.
Attonitus credas, hinc dejecisse Tonantem
Montibus impositos montes, et Pelion altum
In capita anguipedum coelo jaculasse gigantum.
Saepe etiam spelunca immani aperitur hiatu
Exesa e scopulis, et utrinque foramina pandit,
Hinc atque hinc a ponto ad pontum pervia Phoebo
Cautibus enorme junctis laquearia tecti
Formantur; moles olim ruitura superne.
Fornice sublimi nidos posuere palumbes,
Inque imo stagni posuere cubilia phocae.
Sed, cum saevit hyems, et venti, carcere
rupto,
Immensos volvunt fluctus ad culmina montis;
Non obsessae arces, non fulmina vindice dextra
Missa Jovis, quoties inimicus saevit in urbes,
Exaequant sonitum undarum, veniente procella:
Littora littoribus reboant; vicinia late,
Gens assueta mari, et pedibus percurrere rupes,
Terretur tamen, et longe fugit, arva relinquens.
Gramina dum carpunt pendentes rupe capellae,
Vi salientis aquae de summo praecipitantur,
Et dulces animas imo sub gurgite linquunt.
Piscator terra non audet vellere funem;
Sed latet in portu tremebundus, et aera sudum
Haud sperans, Nereum precibus votisque fatigat.
TRANSLATED BY DR. DUNKIN
Lo! from the top of yonder cliff, that shrouds
Its airy head amid the azure clouds,
Hangs a huge fragment; destitute of props,
Prone on the wave the rocky ruin drops;
With hoarse rebuff the swelling seas rebound,
From shore to shore the rocks return the sound:
The dreadful murmur Heaven’s high convex cleaves,
And Neptune shrinks beneath his subject waves:
For, long the whirling winds and beating tides
Had scoop’d a vault into its nether sides.
Now yields the base, the summits nod, now urge
Their headlong course, and lash the sounding surge.
Not louder noise could shake the guilty world,
When Jove heap’d mountains upon mountains hurl’d;
Retorting Pelion from his dread abode,
To crush Earth’s rebel sons beneath the load.
Oft too with hideous yawn the cavern wide
Presents an orifice on either side.
A dismal orifice, from sea to sea
Extended, pervious to the God of Day:
Uncouthly join’d, the rocks stupendous form
An arch, the ruin of a future storm:
High on the cliff their nests the woodquests make,
And sea-calves stable in the oozy lake.
But when bleak Winter with his sullen
train
Awakes the winds to vex the watery plain;
ON MR. FORD[1]
COME, be content, since out it must,
For Stella has betray’d her trust;
And, whispering, charged me not to say
That Mr. Ford was born to-day;
Or, if at last I needs must blab it,
According to my usual habit,
She bid me, with a serious face,
Be sure conceal the time and place;
And not my compliment to spoil,
By calling this your native soil;
Or vex the ladies, when they knew
That you are turning forty-two:
But, if these topics shall appear
Strong arguments to keep you here,
I think, though you judge hardly of it,
Good manners must give place to profit.
The nymphs, with whom you first began,
Are each become a harridan;
And Montague so far decay’d,
Her lovers now must all be paid;
And every belle that since arose,
Has her contemporary beaux.
Your former comrades, once so bright,
With whom you toasted half the night,
Of rheumatism and pox complain,
And bid adieu to dear champaign.
Your great protectors, once in power,
Are now in exile or the Tower.
Your foes triumphant o’er the laws,
Who hate your person and your cause,
If once they get you on the spot,
You must be guilty of the plot;
For, true or false, they’ll ne’er inquire,
But use you ten times worse than Prior.
In London! what would you do there?
Can you, my friend, with patience bear
(Nay, would it not your passion raise
Worse than a pun, or Irish phrase)
To see a scoundrel strut and hector,
A foot-boy to some rogue director,
To look on vice triumphant round,
And virtue trampled on the ground?
Observe where bloody **** stands
With torturing engines in his hands,
Hear him blaspheme, and swear, and rail,
Threatening the pillory and jail:
If this you think a pleasing scene,
To London straight return again;
[Footnote 1: Dr. Swift had been used to celebrate the birth-day of his friend Charles Ford, which was on the first day of January. See also the poem, “Stella at Wood Park.”—Dr. Delany mentions also, among the Dean’s intimate friends, “Matthew Ford, Esq., a man of family and fortune, a fine gentleman, and the best lay scholar of his time and nation.”—Nichols.]
[Footnote 1: A celebrated tavern in St. James’ Street, from 1711 till about 1865. Since then and now, The Thatched House Club.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Mary, youngest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, “exquisitely beautiful, lively in temper, and no less amiable in mind than elegant in person,” married in 1703, to Lord Mounthermer, son of the Earl, afterwards Duke, of Montagu. See Coxe’s “Life of Marlborough,” i, 172.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Dr. Corbet, afterwards Dean of St. Patrick’s, on the death of Dr. Maturine, who succeeded Dr. Swift.]
[Footnote 5: Robert and John Grattan, and John and Daniel Jackson.—H.]
[Footnote 6: In Fingal, about five miles from Dublin.—H.]
[Footnote 7: The law for burying in woollen was extended to Ireland in 1733.]
AN IMITATION OF PETRONIUS
Petronii Fragmenta, xxx.
THOSE dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shades our minds delude
Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
But are all mere productions of the brain,
And fools consult interpreters in vain.[1]
For when in bed we rest our weary limbs,
The mind unburden’d sports in various whims;
The busy head with mimic art runs o’er
The scenes and actions of the day before.[2]
The drowsy tyrant, by his minions led,
To regal rage devotes some patriot’s head.
With equal terrors, not with equal guilt,
The murderer dreams of all the blood he spilt.
The soldier smiling hears the widow’s cries,
And stabs the son before the mother’s eyes.
With like remorse his brother of the trade,
The butcher, fells the lamb beneath his blade.
The statesman rakes the town to find a plot,
And dreams of forfeitures by treason got.
Nor less Tom-t—d-man, of true statesman
mould,
Collects the city filth in search of gold.
Orphans around his bed the lawyer sees,
And takes the plaintiff’s and defendant’s
fees.
His fellow pick-purse, watching for a job,
Fancies his fingers in the cully’s fob.
The kind physician grants the husband’s prayers,
Or gives relief to long-expecting heirs.
The sleeping hangman ties the fatal noose,
Nor unsuccessful waits for dead men’s shoes.
The grave divine, with knotty points perplext,
As if he were awake, nods o’er his text:
While the sly mountebank attends his trade,
Harangues the rabble, and is better paid.
The hireling senator of modern days
Bedaubs the guilty great with nauseous praise:
And Dick, the scavenger, with equal grace
Flirts from his cart the mud in Walpole’s face.
[Footnote 1:
“Somnia quae mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
Non delubra deum nec ab aethere numina mittunt,
Sed sibi quisque facit.”]
[Footnote 2:
“Nam
cum prostrata sopore
Urguet membra quies et mens sine pondere ludit,
Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit.”—W.
E. B.]
SENT BY DR. DELANY TO DR. SWIFT, IN ORDER TO BE ADMITTED TO SPEAK TO HIM WHEN HE WAS DEAF. 1724
Dear Sir, I think, ’tis doubly hard,
Your ears and doors should both be barr’d.
Can anything be more unkind?
Must I not see, ’cause you are blind?
Methinks a friend at night should cheer you,—
A friend that loves to see and hear you.
Why am I robb’d of that delight,
When you can be no loser by’t
Nay, when ’tis plain (for what is plainer?)
That if you heard you’d be no gainer?
For sure you are not yet to learn,
That hearing is not your concern.
Then be your doors no longer barr’d:
Your business, sir, is to be heard.
The wise pretend to make it clear,
’Tis no great loss to lose an ear.
Why are we then so fond of two,
When by experience one would do?
’Tis true, say they, cut off the
head,
And there’s an end; the man is dead;
Because, among all human race,
None e’er was known to have a brace:
But confidently they maintain,
That where we find the members twain,
The loss of one is no such trouble,
Since t’other will in strength be double.
The limb surviving, you may swear,
Becomes his brother’s lawful heir:
Thus, for a trial, let me beg of
Your reverence but to cut one leg off,
And you shall find, by this device,
The other will be stronger twice;
For every day you shall be gaining
New vigour to the leg remaining.
So, when an eye has lost its brother,
You see the better with the other,
Cut off your hand, and you may do
With t’other hand the work of two:
Because the soul her power contracts,
And on the brother limb reacts.
But yet the point is not so clear in
Another case, the sense of hearing:
For, though the place of either ear
Be distant, as one head can bear,
Yet Galen most acutely shows you,
(Consult his book de partium usu)
That from each ear, as he observes,
There creep two auditory nerves,
Not to be seen without a glass,
Which near the os petrosum pass;
Thence to the neck; and moving thorough there,
One goes to this, and one to t’other ear;
Which made my grandam always stuff her ears
Both right and left, as fellow-sufferers.
You see my learning; but, to shorten it,
When my left ear was deaf a fortnight,
To t’other ear I felt it coming on:
And thus I solve this hard phenomenon.
’Tis true, a glass will bring supplies
To weak, or old, or clouded eyes:
Your arms, though both your eyes were lost,
Would guard your nose against a post:
Without your legs, two legs of wood
Are stronger, and almost as good:
And as for hands, there have been those
Who, wanting both, have used their toes.[1]
But no contrivance yet appears
To furnish artificial ears.
[Footnote 1: There have been instances of a man’s writing with his foot. And I have seen a man, in India, who painted pictures, holding the brush betwixt his toes. The work was not well done: the wonder was to see it done at all.—W. E. B.]
A QUIET LIFE AND A GOOD NAME TO A FRIEND WHO MARRIED A SHREW. 1724
NELL scolded in so loud a din,
That Will durst hardly venture in:
He mark’d the conjugal dispute;
Nell roar’d incessant, Dick sat mute;
But, when he saw his friend appear,
Cried bravely, “Patience, good my dear!”
At sight of Will she bawl’d no more,
But hurried out and clapt the door.
Why, Dick! the devil’s in thy Nell,
(Quoth Will,) thy house is worse than Hell.
Why what a peal the jade has rung!
D—n her, why don’t you slit her tongue?
For nothing else will make it cease.
Dear Will, I suffer this for peace:
I never quarrel with my wife;
I bear it for a quiet life.
Scripture, you know, exhorts us to it;
Bids us to seek peace, and ensue it.
Will went again to visit Dick;
And entering in the very nick,
He saw virago Nell belabour,
With Dick’s own staff, his peaceful neighbour.
Poor Will, who needs must interpose,
Received a brace or two of blows.
But now, to make my story short,
Will drew out Dick to take a quart.
Why, Dick, thy wife has devilish whims;
Ods-buds! why don’t you break her limbs?
If she were mine, and had such tricks,
I’d teach her how to handle sticks:
Z—ds! I would ship her to Jamaica,[1]
Or truck the carrion for tobacco:
I’d send her far enough away——
Dear Will; but what would people say?
Lord! I should get so ill a name,
The neighbours round would cry out shame.
Dick suffer’d for his peace and
credit;
But who believed him when he said it?
Can he, who makes himself a slave,
Consult his peace, or credit save?
Dick found it by his ill success,
His quiet small, his credit less.
She served him at the usual rate;
She stunn’d, and then she broke his pate:
And what he thought the hardest case,
The parish jeer’d him to his face;
Those men who wore the breeches least,
Call’d him a cuckold, fool, and beast.
At home he was pursued with noise;
Abroad was pester’d by the boys:
Within, his wife would break his bones:
Without, they pelted him with stones;
The ’prentices procured a riding,[2]
To act his patience and her chiding.
False patience and mistaken pride!
There are ten thousand Dicks beside;
Slaves to their quiet and good name,
Are used like Dick, and bear the blame.
[Footnote 1: See post, p. 200, “A beautiful young nymph.”]
[Footnote 2: A performance got up by the rustics in some counties to ridicule and shame a man who has been guilty of beating his wife (or in this case, who has been beaten by her), by having a cart drawn through the village, having in it two persons dressed to resemble the woman and her master, and a supposed representation of the beating is inflicted, enacted before the offender’s door. “Notes and Queries,” 1st S., ix, 370, 578.—W. E. B.]
ADVICE TO THE GRUB-STREET VERSE-WRITERS 1726
Ye poets ragged and forlorn,
Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,
Not yet consign’d to paste;
I know a trick to make you thrive;
O, ’tis a quaint device:
Your still-born poems shall revive,
And scorn to wrap up spice.
Get all your verses printed fair,
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll[1] must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing[2] Pope;
And when he sets to write,
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.
When Pope has fill’d the margins round,
Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
And swear they are your own.
[Footnote 1: The infamous piratical bookseller. See Pope’s Works, passim.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The original copy of Pope’s celebrated translation of Homer (preserved in the British Museum) is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.]
WRITTEN JUNE, 1727, JUST AFTER THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF GEORGE I, WHO DIED THE 12TH OF THAT MONTH IN GERMANY [1]
This poem was written when George II succeeded his father, and bore the following explanatory introduction:
Richmond Lodge is a house with a small park belonging to the crown. It was usually granted by the crown for a lease of years. The Duke of Ormond was the last who had it. After his exile, it was given to the Prince of Wales by the king. The prince and princess usually passed their summer there. It is within a mile of Richmond.
“Marble Hill is a house built by Mrs. Howard, then of the bedchamber, now Countess of Suffolk, and groom of the stole to the queen. It is on the Middlesex side, near Twickenham, where Pope lives, and about two miles from Richmond Lodge. Pope was the contriver of the gardens, Lord Herbert the architect, the Dean of St. Patrick’s chief butler, and keeper of the ice-house. Upon King George’s death, these two houses met, and had the above dialogue.”—Dublin Edition, 1734.
In spight of Pope, in spight of Gay,
And all that he or they can say;
Sing on I must, and sing I will,
Of Richmond Lodge and Marble Hill.
Last Friday night, as neighbours use,
This couple met to talk of news:
For, by old proverbs, it appears,
That walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
Quoth Marble Hill, right well I ween,
Your mistress now is grown a queen;
You’ll find it soon by woful proof,
She’ll come no more beneath your roof.
The kingly prophet well evinces,
That we should put no trust in princes:
My royal master promised me
To raise me to a high degree:
But now he’s grown a king, God wot,
I fear I shall be soon forgot.
You see, when folks have got their ends,
How quickly they neglect their friends;
Yet I may say, ’twixt me and you,
Pray God, they now may find as true!
My house was built but for a show,
My lady’s empty pockets know;
And now she will not have a shilling,
To raise the stairs, or build the ceiling;
For all the courtly madams round
Now pay four shillings in the pound;
’Tis come to what I always thought:
My dame is hardly worth a groat.[2]
Had you and I been courtiers born,
We should not thus have lain forlorn;
For those we dext’rous courtiers call,
Can rise upon their masters’ fall:
But we, unlucky and unwise,
Must fall because our masters rise.
My master, scarce a fortnight since,
Was grown as wealthy as a prince;
But now it will be no such thing,
For he’ll be poor as any king;
And by his crown will nothing get,
But like a king to run in debt.
No more the Dean, that grave divine,
Shall keep the key of my (no) wine;
My ice-house rob, as heretofore,
And steal my artichokes no more;
Poor Patty Blount[3] no more be seen
Bedraggled in my walks so green:
Plump Johnny Gay will now elope;
And here no more will dangle Pope.
Here wont the Dean, when he’s to seek,
To spunge a breakfast once a-week;
To cry the bread was stale, and mutter
Complaints against the royal butter.
But now I fear it will be said,
No butter sticks upon his bread.[4]
We soon shall find him full of spleen,
For want of tattling to the queen;
Stunning her royal ears with talking;
His reverence and her highness walking:
While Lady Charlotte,[5] like a stroller,
Sits mounted on the garden-roller.
A goodly sight to see her ride,
With ancient Mirmont[6] at her side.
In velvet cap his head lies warm,
His hat, for show, beneath his arm.
Some South-Sea broker from the city
Will purchase me, the more’s the pity;
Lay all my fine plantations waste,
To fit them to his vulgar taste:
Chang’d for the worse in ev’ry part,
My master Pope will break his heart.
In my own Thames may I be drownded,
If e’er I stoop beneath a crown’d head:
Except her majesty prevails
To place me with the Prince of Wales;
And then I shall be free from fears,
For he’ll be prince these fifty years.
I then will turn a courtier too,
And serve the times as others do.
Plain loyalty, not built on hope,
I leave to your contriver, Pope;
None loves his king and country better,
Yet none was ever less their debtor.
Then let him come and take a nap
In summer on my verdant lap;
Prefer our villas, where the Thames is,
To Kensington, or hot St. James’s;
Nor shall I dull in silence sit;
For ’tis to me he owes his wit;
My groves, my echoes, and my birds,
Have taught him his poetic words.
We gardens, and you wildernesses,
Assist all poets in distresses.
Him twice a-week I here expect,
To rattle Moody[7] for neglect;
An idle rogue, who spends his quartridge
In tippling at the Dog and Partridge;
And I can hardly get him down
Three times a-week to brush my gown.
I pity you, dear Marble Hill;
But hope to see you flourish still.
All happiness—and so adieu.
Kind Richmond Lodge, the same to you.
[Footnote 1: The King left England on the 3rd June, 1727, and after supping heartily and sleeping at the Count de Twellet’s house near Delden on the 9th, he continued his journey to Osnabruck, where he arrived at the house of his brother, the Duke of York, on the night of the 11th, wholly paralyzed, and died calmly the next morning, in the very same room where he was born.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Swift was probably not aware how nearly he described the narrowed situation of Mrs. Howard’s finances. Lord Orford, in a letter to Lord Strafford, 29th July, 1767, written shortly after her death, described her affairs as so far from being easy, that the utmost economy could by no means prevent her exceeding her income considerably; and states in his Reminiscences, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, she did not leave above twenty thousand pounds to her family.—See “Lord Orford’s Works,” vol. iv, p. 304; v, p. 456.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Who was “often in Swift’s thoughts,” and “high in his esteem”; and to whom Pope dedicated his second “Moral Epistle.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: This also proved a prophecy more true than the Dean suspected.]
[Footnote 5: Lady Charlotte de Roussy, a French lady.—Dublin Edition.]
[Footnote 6: Marquis de Mirmont, a Frenchman, who had come to England after the Edict of Nantes (by which Henri IV had secured freedom of religion to Protestants) had been revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. See Voltaire, “Siecle de Louis XIV.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: The gardener.]
’Tis strange what different thoughts
inspire
In men, Possession and Desire!
Think what they wish so great a blessing;
So disappointed when possessing!
A moralist profoundly sage
(I know not in what book or page,
Or whether o’er a pot of ale)
Related thus the following tale.
Possession, and Desire, his brother,
But still at variance with each other,
Were seen contending in a race;
And kept at first an equal pace;
’Tis said, their course continued long,
For this was active, that was strong:
Till Envy, Slander, Sloth, and Doubt,
Misled them many a league about;
Seduced by some deceiving light,
They take the wrong way for the right;
Through slippery by-roads, dark and deep,
They often climb, and often creep.
Desire, the swifter of the two,
Along the plain like lightning flew:
Till, entering on a broad highway,
Where power and titles scatter’d lay,
He strove to pick up all he found,
And by excursions lost his ground:
No sooner got, than with disdain
He threw them on the ground again;
And hasted forward to pursue
Fresh objects, fairer to his view,
In hope to spring some nobler game;
But all he took was just the same:
Too scornful now to stop his pace,
He spurn’d them in his rival’s face.
Possession kept the beaten road,
And gather’d all his brother strew’d;
But overcharged, and out of wind,
Though strong in limbs, he lagg’d behind.
Desire had now the goal in sight;
It was a tower of monstrous height;
Where on the summit Fortune stands,
A crown and sceptre in her hands;
Beneath, a chasm as deep as Hell,
Where many a bold adventurer fell.
Desire, in rapture, gazed awhile,
And saw the treacherous goddess smile;
But as he climb’d to grasp the crown,
She knock’d him with the sceptre down!
He tumbled in the gulf profound;
There doom’d to whirl an endless round.
Possession’s load was grown so great,
He sunk beneath the cumbrous weight;
And, as he now expiring lay,
Flocks every ominous bird of prey;
The raven, vulture, owl, and kite,
At once upon his carcass light,
And strip his hide, and pick his bones,
Regardless of his dying groans.
ON CENSURE 1727
Ye wise, instruct me to endure
An evil, which admits no cure;
Or, how this evil can be borne,
Which breeds at once both hate and scorn.
Bare innocence is no support,
When you are tried in Scandal’s court.
Stand high in honour, wealth, or wit;
All others, who inferior sit,
Conceive themselves in conscience bound
To join, and drag you to the ground.
Your altitude offends the eyes
Of those who want the power to rise.
The world, a willing stander-by,
Inclines to aid a specious lie:
Alas! they would not do you wrong;
But all appearances are strong.
Yet whence proceeds this weight we lay
THE FURNITURE OF A WOMAN’S MIND 1727
A set of phrases learn’d by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play, to laugh or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why;
Never to hold her tongue a minute,
While all she prates has nothing in it;
Whole hours can with a coxcomb sit,
And take his nonsense all for wit;
Her learning mounts to read a song,
But half the words pronouncing wrong;
Has every repartee in store
She spoke ten thousand times before;
Can ready compliments supply
On all occasions cut and dry;
Such hatred to a parson’s gown,
The sight would put her in a swoon;
For conversation well endued,
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing;
Nor make a scruple to expose
Your bandy leg, or crooked nose;
Can at her morning tea run o’er
The scandal of the day before;
Improving hourly in her skill,
To cheat and wrangle at quadrille.
In choosing lace, a critic nice,
Knows to a groat the lowest price;
Can in her female clubs dispute,
What linen best the silk will suit,
What colours each complexion match,
And where with art to place a patch.
If chance a mouse creeps in her sight,
Can finely counterfeit a fright;
So sweetly screams, if it comes near her,
She ravishes all hearts to hear her.
Can dext’rously her husband teaze,
By taking fits whene’er she please;
By frequent practice learns the trick
At proper seasons to be sick;
Thinks nothing gives one airs so pretty,
At once creating love and pity;
If Molly happens to be careless,
And but neglects to warm her hair-lace,
She gets a cold as sure as death,
And vows she scarce can fetch her breath;
Admires how modest women can
Be so robustious like a man.
In party, furious to her power;
A bitter Whig, or Tory sour;
Her arguments directly tend
Against the side she would defend;
Will prove herself a Tory plain,
From principles the Whigs maintain;
And, to defend the Whiggish cause,
Her topics from the Tories draws.
O yes! if any man can find
More virtues in a woman’s mind,
Let them be sent to Mrs. Harding;[1]
She’ll pay the charges to a farthing;
Take notice, she has my commission
To add them in the next edition;
They may outsell a better thing:
So, holla, boys; God save the King!
[Footnote 1: Widow of John Harding, the Drapier’s printer.—F.]
As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,
Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling,
He stopt at the George for a bottle of sack,
And promised to pay for it when he came back.
His waistcoat, and stockings, and breeches, were white;
His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie’t.
The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,
And said, “Lack-a-day, he’s a proper young
man!”
But, as from the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau in the box, he bow’d low on each
side!
And when his last speech the loud hawkers did cry,
He swore from his cart, “It was all a damn’d
lie!”
The hangman for pardon fell down on his knee;
Tom gave him a kick in the guts for his fee:
Then said, I must speak to the people a little;
But I’ll see you all damn’d before I will
whittle.[1]
My honest friend Wild[2] (may he long hold his place)
He lengthen’d my life with a whole year of grace.
Take courage, dear comrades, and be not afraid,
Nor slip this occasion to follow your trade;
My conscience is clear, and my spirits are calm,
And thus I go off, without prayer-book or psalm;
Then follow the practice of clever Tom Clinch,
Who hung like a hero, and never would flinch.
[Footnote 1: A cant word for confessing at the gallows.—F.]
[Footnote 2: The noted thief-catcher, under-keeper of Newgate, who was the head of a gang of thieves, and was at last hanged as a receiver of stolen goods. See Fielding’s “Life of Jonathan Wild.”—W. E. B.]
1727
POPE has the talent well to speak,
But not to reach the ear;
His loudest voice is low and weak,
The Dean too deaf to hear.
Awhile they on each other look,
Then different studies choose;
The Dean sits plodding on a book;
Pope walks, and courts the Muse.
Now backs of letters, though design’d
For those who more will need ’em,
Are fill’d with hints, and interlined,
Himself can hardly read ’em.
Each atom by some other struck,
All turns and motions tries;
Till in a lump together stuck,
Behold a poem rise:
Yet to the Dean his share allot;
He claims it by a canon;
That without which a thing is not,
Is causa sine qua non.
Thus, Pope, in vain you boast your wit;
For, had our deaf divine
Been for your conversation fit,
You had not writ a line.
Of Sherlock,[1] thus, for preaching framed
The sexton reason’d well;
And justly half the merit claim’d,
Because he rang the bell.
WRITTEN AT LONDON
By poets we are well assured
That love, alas! can ne’er be cured;
A complicated heap of ills,
Despising boluses and pills.
Ah! Chloe, this I find is true,
Since first I gave my heart to you.
Now, by your cruelty hard bound,
I strain my guts, my colon wound.
Now jealousy my grumbling tripes
Assaults with grating, grinding gripes.
When pity in those eyes I view,
My bowels wambling make me spew.
When I an amorous kiss design’d,
I belch’d a hurricane of wind.
Once you a gentle sigh let fall;
Remember how I suck’d it all;
What colic pangs from thence I felt,
Had you but known, your heart would melt,
Like ruffling winds in cavern pent,
Till Nature pointed out a vent.
How have you torn my heart to pieces
With maggots, humours, and caprices!
By which I got the hemorrhoids;
And loathsome worms my anus voids.
Whene’er I hear a rival named,
I feel my body all inflamed;
Which, breaking out in boils and blains,
With yellow filth my linen stains;
Or, parch’d with unextinguish’d thirst,
Small-beer I guzzle till I burst;
And then I drag a bloated corpus,
Swell’d with a dropsy, like a porpus;
When, if I cannot purge or stale,
I must be tapp’d to fill a pail.
[Footnote 1: The Dean of St. Paul’s, father to the Bishop.—H.]
ON SIGNORA DOMITILLA
Our schoolmaster may roar i’ th’ fit,
Of classic beauty, haec et illa;
Not all his birch inspires such wit
As th’ogling beams of Domitilla.
Let nobles toast, in bright champaign,
Nymphs higher born than Domitilla;
I’ll drink her health, again, again,
In Berkeley’s tar,[2] or sars’parilla.
At Goodman’s Fields I’ve much admired
The postures strange of Monsieur Brilla;
But what are they to the soft step,
The gliding air of Domitilla?
Virgil has eternized in song
The flying footsteps of Camilla;[3]
Sure, as a prophet, he was wrong;
He might have dream’d of Domitilla.
Great Theodose condemn’d a town
For thinking ill of his Placilla:[4]
And deuce take London! if some knight
O’ th’ city wed not Domitilla.
Wheeler,[5] Sir George, in travels wise,
Gives us a medal of Plantilla;
But O! the empress has not eyes,
Nor lips, nor breast, like Domitilla.
Not all the wealth of plunder’d Italy,
Piled on the mules of king At-tila,
Is worth one glove (I’ll not tell a bit a lie)
Or garter, snatch’d from Domitilla.
Five years a nymph at certain hamlet,
Y-cleped Harrow of the Hill, a-
—bused much my heart, and was a damn’d
let
To verse—but now for Domitilla.
Dan Pope consigns Belinda’s watch
To the fair sylphid Momentilla,[6]
And thus I offer up my catch
To the snow-white hands of Domitilla.
[Footnote 1: Verses to be made upon a given name or word, at the end of a line, and to which rhymes must be found.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, famous, inter alia, for his enthusiasm in urging the use of tar-water for all kinds of complaints. See his Works, edit. Fraser. Fielding mentions it favourably as a remedy for dropsy, in the Introduction to his “Journal of a voyage to Lisbon”; and see Austin Dobson’s note to his edition of the “Journal.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: “Aeneid,” xi.]
[Footnote 4: Qu. Flaccilla? see Gibbon, iii, chap, xxvii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Who lived from 1650 to 1723, and wrote and published several books of travels in Greece and Italy, etc.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: See “The Rape of the Lock.”]
HELTER SKELTER; OR, THE HUE AND CRY AFTER THE ATTORNEYS UPON THEIR RIDING THE CIRCUIT
Now the active young attorneys
Briskly travel on their journeys,
Looking big as any giants,
On the horses of their clients;
Like so many little Marses
With their tilters at their a—s,
Brazen-hilted, lately burnish’d,
And with harness-buckles furnish’d,
And with whips and spurs so neat,
And with jockey-coats complete,
And with boots so very greasy,
And with saddles eke so easy,
And with bridles fine and gay,
Bridles borrow’d for a day,
Bridles destined far to roam,
Ah! never, never to come home.
And with hats so very big, sir,
And with powder’d caps and wigs, sir,
And with ruffles to be shown,
Cambric ruffles not their own;
And with Holland shirts so white,
Shirts becoming to the sight,
Shirts bewrought with different letters,
As belonging to their betters.
With their pretty tinsel’d boxes,
Gotten from their dainty doxies,
And with rings so very trim,
Lately taken out of lim—[1]
And with very little pence,
And as very little sense;
With some law, but little justice,
Having stolen from my hostess,
From the barber and the cutler,
Like the soldier from the sutler;
From the vintner and the tailor,
Like the felon from the jailor;
Into this and t’other county,
Living on the public bounty;
Thorough town and thorough village,
All to plunder, all to pillage:
Thorough mountains, thorough valleys,
Thorough stinking lanes and alleys,
Some to—kiss with farmers’ spouses,
And make merry in their houses;
Some to tumble country wenches
On their rushy beds and benches;
And if they begin a fray,
Draw their swords, and——run away;
All to murder equity,
And to take a double fee;
Till the people are all quiet,
And forget to broil and riot,
Low in pocket, cow’d in courage,
Safely glad to sup their porridge,
And vacation’s over—then,
Hey, for London town again.
[Footnote 1: Limbo, any place of misery
and restraint.
“For he no sooner was at large,
But Trulla straight brought on the charge,
And in the selfsame Limbo put
The knight and squire where he was shut.”
Hudibras,
Part i, canto iii, 1,000.
Here abbreviated by Swift as a cant term for a pawn
shop.—W. E. B.]
The life of man to represent,
And turn it all to ridicule,
Wit did a puppet-show invent,
Where the chief actor is a fool.
The gods of old were logs of wood,
And worship was to puppets paid;
In antic dress the idol stood,
And priest and people bow’d the
head.
No wonder then, if art began
The simple votaries to frame,
To shape in timber foolish man,
And consecrate the block to fame.
From hence poetic fancy learn’d
That trees might rise from human forms;
The body to a trunk be turn’d,
And branches issue from the arms.
Thus Daedalus and Ovid too,
That man’s a blockhead, have confest:
Powel and Stretch[1] the hint pursue;
Life is a farce, the world a jest.
The same great truth South Sea has proved
On that famed theatre, the alley;
Where thousands, by directors moved
Are now sad monuments of folly.
What Momus was of old to Jove,
The same a Harlequin is now;
The former was buffoon above,
The latter is a Punch below.
This fleeting scene is but a stage,
Where various images appear;
In different parts of youth and age,
Alike the prince and peasant share.
Some draw our eyes by being great,
False pomp conceals mere wood within;
And legislators ranged in state
Are oft but wisdom in machine.
A stock may chance to wear a crown,
And timber as a lord take place;
A statue may put on a frown,
And cheat us with a thinking face.
Others are blindly led away,
And made to act for ends unknown;
By the mere spring of wires they play,
And speak in language not their own.
Too oft, alas! a scolding wife
Usurps a jolly fellow’s throne;
And many drink the cup of life,
Mix’d and embitter’d by a
Joan.
In short, whatever men pursue,
Of pleasure, folly, war, or love:
This mimic race brings all to view:
Alike they dress, they talk, they move.
Go on, great Stretch, with artful hand,
Mortals to please and to deride;
And, when death breaks thy vital band,
Thou shalt put on a puppet’s pride.
Thou shalt in puny wood be shown,
Thy image shall preserve thy fame;
Ages to come thy worth shall own,
Point at thy limbs, and tell thy name.
Tell Tom,[2] he draws a farce in vain,
Before he looks in nature’s glass;
Puns cannot form a witty scene,
Nor pedantry for humour pass.
To make men act as senseless wood,
And chatter in a mystic strain,
Is a mere force on flesh and blood,
And shows some error in the brain.
He that would thus refine on thee,
And turn thy stage into a school,
The jest of Punch will ever be,
And stand confest the greater fool.
[Footnote 1: Two famous puppet-show men.]
[Footnote 2: Sheridan.]
IN A LETTER TO A PERSON OF QUALITY. 1728
SIR, ’twas a most unfriendly part
In you, who ought to know my heart,
Are well acquainted with my zeal
For all the female commonweal—
How could it come into your mind
To pitch on me, of all mankind,
Against the sex to write a satire,
And brand me for a woman-hater?
On me, who think them all so fair,
They rival Venus to a hair;
Their virtues never ceased to sing,
Since first I learn’d to tune a string?
Methinks I hear the ladies cry,
Will he his character belie?
Must never our misfortunes end?
And have we lost our only friend?
Ah, lovely nymphs! remove your fears,
No more let fall those precious tears.
Sooner shall, etc.
[Here several verses are omitted.]
The hound be hunted by the hare,
Than I turn rebel to the fair.
’Twas you engaged me first to write,
Then gave the subject out of spite:
The journal of a modern dame,
Is, by my promise, what you claim.
My word is past, I must submit;
And yet perhaps you may be bit.
I but transcribe; for not a line
Of all the satire shall be mine.
Compell’d by you to tag in rhymes
The common slanders of the times,
Of modern times, the guilt is yours,
And me my innocence secures.
Unwilling Muse, begin thy lay,
The annals of a female day.
By nature turn’d to play the rake
well,
(As we shall show you in the sequel,)
The modern dame is waked by noon,
(Some authors say not quite so soon,)
Because, though sore against her will,
She sat all night up at quadrille.
She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes,
And asks if it be time to rise;
Of headache and the spleen complains;
And then, to cool her heated brains,
Her night-gown and her slippers brought her,
Takes a large dram of citron water.
Then to her glass; and, “Betty, pray,
Don’t I look frightfully to-day?
But was it not confounded hard?
Well, if I ever touch a card!
Four matadores, and lose codille!
Depend upon’t, I never will.
But run to Tom, and bid him fix
The ladies here to-night by six.”
“Madam, the goldsmith waits below;
He says, his business is to know
If you’ll redeem the silver cup
He keeps in pawn?”—“Why, show
him up.”
“Your dressing-plate he’ll be content
To take, for interest cent. per cent.
And, madam, there’s my Lady Spade
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove, with great precision,
With definition and division,
Homo est ratione praeditum;
But for my soul I cannot credit ’em,
And must, in spite of them, maintain,
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature;
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason, boasting mortals’ pride;
And that brute beasts are far before ’em.
Deus est anima brutorum.
Whoever knew an honest brute
At law his neighbour prosecute,
Bring action for assault or battery,
Or friend beguile with lies and flattery?
O’er plains they ramble unconfined,
No politics disturb their mind;
They eat their meals, and take their sport
Nor know who’s in or out at court.
They never to the levee go
To treat, as dearest friend, a foe:
They never importune his grace,
Nor ever cringe to men in place:
Nor undertake a dirty job,
Nor draw the quill to write for Bob.[1]
Fraught with invective, they ne’er go
To folks at Paternoster Row.
No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
No pickpockets, or poetasters,
Are known to honest quadrupeds;
No single brute his fellow leads.
Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
Nor cut each other’s throats for pay.
Of beasts, it is confess’d, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape;
Like man, he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his lurking passion:
But, both in malice and grimaces,
A courtier any ape surpasses.
Behold him, humbly cringing, wait
Upon the minister of state;
View him soon after to inferiors
Aping the conduct of superiors;
He promises with equal air,
And to perform takes equal care.
He in his turn finds imitators,
At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters,
Their masters’ manner still contract,
And footmen, lords and dukes can act.
Thus, at the court, both great and small
Behave alike, for all ape all.
[Footnote 1: Sir Robert Walpole, and his employment of party-writers.—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN MANY YEARS SINCE;
AND TAKEN FROM COKE’S FOURTH INSTITUTE
THE HIGH COURT OF PARLIAMENT, CAP. I
Sir E. Coke says: “Every member of the house being a counsellor should have three properties of the elephant; first that he hath no gall; secondly, that he is inflexible and cannot bow; thirdly, that he is of a most ripe and perfect memory ... first, to be without gall, that is, without malice, rancor, heat, and envy: ... secondly, that he be constant, inflexible, and not be bowed, or turned from the right either for fear, reward, or favour, nor in judgement respect any person: ... thirdly, of a ripe memory, that they remembering perils past, might prevent dangers to come.”—W. E. B.
Ere bribes convince you whom to choose,
The precepts of Lord Coke peruse.
Observe an elephant, says he,
And let him like your member be:
First take a man that’s free from Gaul,
For elephants have none at all;
In flocks or parties he must keep;
For elephants live just like sheep.
Stubborn in honour he must be;
For elephants ne’er bend the knee.
Last, let his memory be sound,
In which your elephant’s profound;
That old examples from the wise
May prompt him in his noes and ayes.
Thus the Lord Coke hath gravely writ,
In all the form of lawyer’s wit:
And then, with Latin and all that,
Shows the comparison is pat.
Yet in some points my lord is wrong,
One’s teeth are sold, and t’other’s
tongue:
Now, men of parliament, God knows,
Are more like elephants of shows;
Whose docile memory and sense
Are turn’d to trick, to gather pence;
To get their master half-a-crown,
They spread the flag, or lay it down:
Those who bore bulwarks on their backs,
And guarded nations from attacks,
Now practise every pliant gesture,
Opening their trunk for every tester.
Siam, for elephants so famed,
Is not with England to be named:
Their elephants by men are sold;
Ours sell themselves, and take the gold.
BY MR. LINDSAY[1]
Dublin, Sept. 7, 1728.
“A SLAVE to crowds, scorch’d with the
summer’s heats,
In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats;
While smiling Nature, in her best attire,
Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire.
Can he, who knows that real good should please,
Barter for gold his liberty and ease?”—
This Paulus preach’d:—When, entering
at the door,
Upon his board the client pours the ore:
He grasps the shining gift, pores o’er the cause,
Forgets the sun, and dozes on the laws.
[Footnote 1: A polite and elegant scholar; at that time an eminent pleader at the bar in Dublin, and afterwards advanced to be one of the Justices of the Common Pleas.—H.]
Lindsay mistakes the matter quite,
And honest Paulus judges right.
Then, why these quarrels to the sun,
Without whose aid you’re all undone?
Did Paulus e’er complain of sweat?
Did Paulus e’er the sun forget;
The influence of whose golden beams
Soon licks up all unsavoury steams?
The sun, you say, his face has kiss’d:
It has; but then it greased his fist.
True lawyers, for the wisest ends,
Have always been Apollo’s friends.
Not for his superficial powers
Of ripening fruits, and gilding flowers;
Not for inspiring poets’ brains
With penniless and starveling strains;
Not for his boasted healing art;
Not for his skill to shoot the dart;
[Footnote 1: The Goddess of Justice, the last of the celestials to leave the earth. “Ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit,” Ovid, “Met.,” i, 150.—W. E .B.]
[Footnote 2: Highwaymen of that time were so called.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Richard Tighe, Esq. He was a member of the Irish Parliament, and held by Dean Swift in utter abomination. He is several times mentioned in the Journal to Stella: how he used to beat his wife, and how she deserved it. “Prose Works,” vol. ii, pp. 229, 242, etc.—W. E. B.]
BETWEEN AN EMINENT LAWYER[1] AND DR. JONATHAN
SWIFT, D.S.P.D. IN ALLUSION TO HORACE,
BOOK II, SATIRE I
“Sunt quibus in Satira,” etc.
DR. SWIFT
Since there are persons who complain
There’s too much satire in my vein;
That I am often found exceeding
The rules of raillery and breeding;
With too much freedom treat my betters,
Not sparing even men of letters:
You, who are skill’d in lawyers’ lore,
What’s your advice? Shall I give o’er?
Nor ever fools or knaves expose,
Either in verse or humorous prose:
And to avoid all future ill,
In my scrutoire lock up my quill?
Since you are pleased to condescend
To ask the judgment of a friend,
Your case consider’d, I must think
You should withdraw from pen and ink,
Forbear your poetry and jokes,
And live like other Christian folks;
Or if the Muses must inspire
Your fancy with their pleasing fire,
Take subjects safer for your wit
Than those on which you lately writ.
Commend the times, your thoughts correct,
And follow the prevailing sect;
Assert that Hyde,[2] in writing story,
Shows all the malice of a Tory;
While Burnet,[3] in his deathless page,
Discovers freedom without rage.
To Woolston[4] recommend our youth,
For learning, probity, and truth;
That noble genius, who unbinds
The chains which fetter freeborn minds;
Redeems us from the slavish fears
Which lasted near two thousand years;
He can alone the priesthood humble,
Make gilded spires and altars tumble.
DR. SWIFT
Must I commend against my conscience,
Such stupid blasphemy and nonsense;
To such a subject tune my lyre,
And sing like one of Milton’s choir,
Where devils to a vale retreat,
And call the laws of Wisdom, Fate;
Lament upon their hapless fall,
That Force free Virtue should enthrall?
Or shall the charms of Wealth and Power
Make me pollute the Muses’ bower?
As from the tripod of Apollo,
Hear from my desk the words that follow:
“Some, by philosophers misled,
Must honour you alive and dead;
And such as know what Greece has writ,
Must taste your irony and wit;
While most that are, or would be great,
Must dread your pen, your person hate;
And you on Drapier’s hill[5] must lie,
And there without a mitre die.”
[Footnote 1: Mr. Lindsay.—F.]
[Footnote 2: See Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion.”]
[Footnote 3: In his “History of his own Time,” and “History of the Reformation.”]
[Footnote 4: An enthusiast and a freethinker. For a full account of him, see “Dictionary of National Biography.” His later works on the Miracles caused him to be prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned. He died in 1733.—W.E.B.]
[Footnote 5: In the county of Armagh.—F.]
1729
An ass’s hoof alone can hold
That poisonous juice, which kills by cold.
Methought, when I this poem read,
No vessel but an ass’s head
Such frigid fustian could contain;
I mean, the head without the brain.
The cold conceits, the chilling thoughts,
Went down like stupifying draughts;
I found my head begin to swim,
A numbness crept through every limb.
In haste, with imprecations dire,
I threw the volume in the fire;
When, (who could think?) though cold as ice,
It burnt to ashes in a trice.
How could I more enhance its fame?
Though born in snow, it died in flame.
AN EXCELLENT NEW BALLAD OR, THE TRUE ENGLISH DEAN[1] TO BE HANGED FOR A RAPE. 1730
Our brethren of England, who love us so dear,
And in all they do for us so kindly do
mean,
(A blessing upon them!) have sent us this year,
For the good of our church, a true English
dean.
A holier priest ne’er was wrapt up in crape,
The worst you can say, he committed a rape.
In his journey to Dublin, he lighted at Chester,
And there he grew fond of another man’s
wife;
Burst into her chamber and would have caress’d
her;
But she valued her honour much more than
her life.
She bustled, and struggled, and made her escape
To a room full of guests, for fear of a rape.
The dean he pursued, to recover his game;
And now to attack her again he prepares:
But the company stood in defence of the dame,
They cudgell’d, and cuff’d
him, and kick’d him down stairs.
His deanship was now in a damnable scrape,
And this was no time for committing a rape.
To Dublin he comes, to the bagnio he goes,
And orders the landlord to bring him a
whore;
No scruple came on him his gown to expose,
’Twas what all his life he had practised
before.
He made himself drunk with the juice of the grape,
And got a good clap, but committed no rape.
The dean, and his landlord, a jolly comrade,
Resolved for a fortnight to swim in delight;
For why, they had both been brought up to the trade
Of drinking all day, and of whoring all
night.
His landlord was ready his deanship to ape
In every debauch but committing a rape.
This Protestant zealot, this English divine,
In church and in state was of principles
sound;
Was truer than Steele to the Hanover line,
And grieved that a Tory should live above
ground.
Shall a subject so loyal be hang’d by the nape,
For no other crime but committing a rape?
By old Popish canons, as wise men have penn’d
’em,
Each priest had a concubine jure ecclesiae;
Who’d be Dean of Fernes without a commendam?
And precedents we can produce, if it please
ye:
Then why should the dean, when whores are so cheap,
Be put to the peril and toil of a rape?
If fortune should please but to take such a crotchet,
(To thee I apply, great Smedley’s
successor,)
To give thee lawn sleeves, a mitre, and rochet,
Whom wouldst thou resemble? I leave
thee a guesser.
But I only behold thee in Atherton’s[2] shape,
For sodomy hang’d; as thou for a rape.
Ah! dost thou not envy the brave Colonel Chartres,
Condemn’d for thy crime at threescore
and ten?
To hang him, all England would lend him their garters,
Yet he lives, and is ready to ravish again.[3]
Then throttle thyself with an ell of strong tape,
For thou hast not a groat to atone for a rape.
The dean he was vex’d that his whores were so
willing;
He long’d for a girl that would
struggle and squall;
He ravish’d her fairly, and saved a good shilling;
But here was to pay the devil and all.
His troubles and sorrows now come in a heap,
And hang’d he must be for committing a rape.
If maidens are ravish’d, it is their own choice:
Why are they so wilful to struggle with
men?
If they would but lie quiet, and stifle their voice,
No devil nor dean could ravish them then.
Nor would there be need of a strong hempen cape
Tied round the dean’s neck for committing a
rape.
Our church and our state dear England maintains,
For which all true Protestant hearts should
be glad:
She sends us our bishops, our judges, and deans,
And better would give us, if better she
had.
But, lord! how the rabble will stare and will gape,
When the good English dean is hang’d up for
a rape!
[Footnote 1: “DUBLIN, June 6. The Rev. Dean Sawbridge, having surrendered himself on his indictment for a rape, was arraigned at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench, and is to be tried next Monday.”—London Evening Post, June 16, 1730. “DUBLIN, June 13. The Rev. Thomas Sawbridge, Dean of Fernes, who was indicted for ravishing Susanna Runkard, and whose trial was put off for some time past, on motion of the king’s counsel on behalf of the said Susanna, was yesterday tried in the Court of King’s Bench, and acquitted. It is reported, that the Dean intends to indict her for perjury, he being in the county of Wexford when she swore the rape was committed against her in the city of Dublin.”—Daily Post-Boy, June 23, 1730.—Nichols.]
[Footnote 2: A Bishop of Waterford, sent from England a hundred years ago, was hanged at Arbor-hill, near Dublin.—See “The penitent death of a woful sinner, or the penitent death of John Atherton, executed at Dublin the 5th of December, 1640. With some annotations upon several passages in it”. As also the sermon, with some further enlargements, preached at his burial. By Nicholas Barnard, Dean of Ardagh, in Ireland.
“Quis in seculo peccavit enormius Paulo? Quis in religione gravius Petro? illi tamen poenitentiam assequuti sunt non solum ministerium sed magisterium sanctitatis. Nolite ergo ante tempus judicare, quia fortasse quos vos laudatis, Deus reprehendit, et quos vos reprehenditis, ille laudabit, priminovissimi, et novissimi primi. Petr. Chrysolog. Dublin, Printed by the Society of Stationers, 1641.”]
[Footnote 3: This trial took place in 1723; but being only found guilty of an assault, with intent to commit the crime, the worthy colonel was fined L300 to the private party prosecuting. See a full account of Chartres in the notes to Pope’s “Moral Essays,” Epistle III, and the Satirical Epitaph by Arbuthnot. Carruthers’ Edition.—W. E. B.]
ON STEPHEN DUCK THE THRESHER, AND FAVOURITE POET
A QUIBBLING EPIGRAM. 1730
The thresher Duck[1] could o’er the queen prevail,
The proverb says, “no fence against a flail.”
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains;
For which her majesty allows him grains:
Though ’tis confest, that those, who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw!
Thrice happy Duck, employ’d in threshing
stubble,
Thy toil is lessen’d, and thy profits double.
[Footnote 1: Who was appointed by Queen Caroline
librarian to a small
collection of books in a building called Merlin’s
Cave, in the Royal
Gardens of Richmond.
“How shall we fill a library with
wit,
When Merlin’s cave is half unfurnish’d
yet?”
POPE, Imitations of Horace, ii, Ep. 1.—W.
E. B.]
Five hours (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Array’d in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void,
And Betty otherwise employ’d,
Stole in, and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay:
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And, first, a dirty smock appear’d,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmear’d;
Strephon, the rogue, display’d it wide,
And turn’d it round on ev’ry side:
On such a point, few words are best,
And Strephon bids us guess the rest;
But swears, how damnably the men lie
In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.
Now listen, while he next produces
The various combs for various uses;
Fill’d up with dirt so closely fixt,
No brush could force a way betwixt;
A paste of composition rare,
Sweat, dandriff, powder, lead, and hair:
A fore-head cloth with oil upon’t,
To smooth the wrinkles on her front:
Here alum-flour, to stop the steams
Exhaled from sour unsavoury streams:
There night-gloves made of Tripsey’s hide,
[1]Bequeath’d by Tripsey when she died;
With puppy-water, beauty’s help,
Distil’d from Tripsey’s darling whelp.
Here gallipots and vials placed,
Some fill’d with washes, some with paste;
Some with pomatums, paints, and slops,
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy bason stands,
Foul’d with the scouring of her hands:
The bason takes whatever comes,
The scrapings from her teeth and gums,
[Footnote 1: Var. “The bitch bequeath’d her when she died.”—1732.]
[Footnote 2: Var. “marks of stinking toes.”—1732.]
[Footnote 3: Milton, “Paradise Lost,”
ii, 890-1:
“Before their eyes in sudden view
appear
The secrets of the hoary deep.”—W.
E. B.]
If neither brass nor marble can withstand
The mortal force of Time’s destructive hand;
If mountains sink to vales, if cities die,
And lessening rivers mourn their fountains dry;
When my old cassock (said a Welsh divine)
Is out at elbows, why should I repine?
A TRAGICAL ELEGY
1731
Two college sophs of Cambridge growth,
Both special wits and lovers both,
Conferring, as they used to meet,
On love, and books, in rapture sweet;
(Muse, find me names to fit my metre,
Cassinus this, and t’other Peter.)
Friend Peter to Cassinus goes,
To chat a while, and warm his nose:
But such a sight was never seen,
The lad lay swallow’d up in spleen.
He seem’d as just crept out of bed;
One greasy stocking round his head,
The other he sat down to darn,
With threads of different colour’d yarn;
His breeches torn, exposing wide
A ragged shirt and tawny hide.
Scorch’d were his shins, his legs were bare,
But well embrown’d with dirt and hair
A rug was o’er his shoulders thrown,
(A rug, for nightgown he had none,)
His jordan stood in manner fitting
Between his legs, to spew or spit in;
His ancient pipe, in sable dyed,
And half unsmoked, lay by his side.
Him thus accoutred Peter found,
With eyes in smoke and weeping drown’d;
The leavings of his last night’s pot
On embers placed, to drink it hot.
[Footnote 1: From “Macbeth,” in
Act III, Sc. iv:
“Thou canst not say, I did it:”
etc.
“Avaunt, and quit my sight.”]
WRITTEN FOR THE HONOUR OF THE FAIR SEX. 1731
Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent-Garden boast
So bright a batter’d strolling toast!
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour,
Four stories climbing to her bower;
Then, seated on a three-legg’d chair,
Takes off her artificial hair;
Now picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eyebrows from a mouse’s hide
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.
Now dext’rously her plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her hollow jaws,
Untwists a wire, and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes;
Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs, and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribb’d bodice,
Which, by the operator’s skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill.
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips;
With gentlest touch she next explores
Her chancres, issues, running sores;
Effects of many a sad disaster,
And then to each applies a plaster:
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the daubs of white and red,
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon’t.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or, if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell[1] and the Compter[1] dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica[2] seems transported
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-ditch’s[3] oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables, and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But never from religious clubs;
Whose favour she is sure to find,
[Footnote 1: See Cunningham’s “Handbook of London.” Bridewell was the Prison to which harlots were sent, and were made to beat hemp and pick oakum and were whipped if they did not perform their tasks. See the Plate in Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress.” The Prison has, happily, been cleared away. The hall, court room, etc., remain at 14, New Bridge Street. The Compter, a similar Prison, was also abolished. For details of these abominations, see “London Past and Present,” by Wheatley.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Jamaica seems to have been regarded as a place of exile. See “A quiet life and a good name,” ante, p. 152.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: See ante, p. 78, “Descripton of a City Shower.”—W. E. B.]
Of Chloe all the town has rung,
By ev’ry size of poets sung:
So beautiful a nymph appears
But once in twenty thousand years;
By Nature form’d with nicest care,
And faultless to a single hair.
Her graceful mien, her shape, and face,
Confess’d her of no mortal race:
And then so nice, and so genteel;
Such cleanliness from head to heel;
No humours gross, or frouzy steams,
No noisome whiffs, or sweaty streams,
Before, behind, above, below,
Could from her taintless body flow:
Would so discreetly things dispose,
None ever saw her pluck a rose.[1]
Her dearest comrades never caught her
Squat on her hams to make maid’s water:
You’d swear that so divine a creature
Felt no necessities of nature.
In summer had she walk’d the town,
Her armpits would not stain her gown:
At country dances, not a nose
Could in the dog-days smell her toes.
Her milk-white hands, both palms and backs,
Like ivory dry, and soft as wax.
Her hands, the softest ever felt,
[2] Though cold would burn, though dry would melt.
Dear Venus, hide this wond’rous
maid,
Nor let her loose to spoil your trade.
While she engrosses ev’ry swain,
You but o’er half the world can reign.
Think what a case all men are now in,
What ogling, sighing, toasting, vowing!
[Footnote 1: A delicate way of speaking of a lady retiring behind a bush in a garden.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2:
“Though deep, yet clear, though
gentle, yet not dull
Strong without rage, without o’erflowing,
full.”
DENHAM, Cooper’s Hill.]
[Footnote 3: A veil with which the Roman brides covered themselves when going to be married.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Marriage song, sung at weddings.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Diana.]
[Footnote 6: Who married Thetis, the Nereid, by whom he became the father of Achilles.—Ovid, “Metamorph.,” lib. xi, 221, seq.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: See Ovid, “Metamorph.,” lib. iii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 8: A precept of Pythagoras. Hence, in French argot, beans, as causing wind, are called musiciens.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 9: Provocative of perspiration and urine.]
[Footnote 1: “Mingere cum bombis res est saluberrima lumbis.” A precept to be found in the “Regimen Sanitatis,” or “Schola Salernitana,” a work in rhyming Latin verse composed at Salerno, the earliest school in Christian Europe where medicine was professed, taught, and practised. The original text, if anywhere, is in the edition published and commented upon by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, about 1480. Subsequently above one hundred and sixty editions of the “Schola Salernitana” were published, with many additions. A reprint of the first edition, edited by Sir Alexander Croke, with woodcuts from the editions of 1559, 1568, and 1573, was published at Oxford in 1830.—W. E. B.]
APOLLO; OR, A PROBLEM SOLVED 1731
Apollo, god of light and wit,
Could verse inspire, but seldom writ,
Refined all metals with his looks,
As well as chemists by their books;
As handsome as my lady’s page;
Sweet five-and-twenty was his age.
His wig was made of sunny rays,
He crown’d his youthful head with bays;
Not all the court of Heaven could show
So nice and so complete a beau.
No heir upon his first appearance,
With twenty thousand pounds a-year rents,
E’er drove, before he sold his land,
So fine a coach along the Strand;
The spokes, we are by Ovid told,
Were silver, and the axle gold:
I own, ’twas but a coach-and-four,
For Jupiter allows no more.
Yet, with his beauty, wealth, and parts,
Enough to win ten thousand hearts,
No vulgar deity above
Was so unfortunate in love.
Three weighty causes were assign’d,
That moved the nymphs to be unkind.
Nine Muses always waiting round him,
He left them virgins as he found them.
His singing was another fault;
For he could reach to B in alt:
And, by the sentiments of Pliny,[1]
Such singers are like Nicolini.
At last, the point was fully clear’d;
In short, Apollo had no beard.
[Footnote 1: “Bubus tantum feminis vox gravior, in alio omni genere exilior quam maribus, in homine etiam castratis.”—“Hist. Nat.,” xi, 51. “A condicione castrati seminis quae spadonia appellant Belgae,” ib. xv.—W. E. B.]
All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there’s a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damn’d—I’ll
tell you my mind.
Wherever the damn’d do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damn’d poets, damn’d critics, damn’d
blockheads, damn’d knaves,
Damn’d senators bribed, damn’d prostitute
slaves;
Damn’d lawyers and judges, damn’d lords
and damn’d squires;
Damn’d spies and informers, damn’d friends
and damn’d liars;
Damn’d villains, corrupted in every station;
Damn’d time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I’ll readily give you
Damn’d ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flamm’d,
For we know by these marks the place of the damn’d:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!
With a whirl of thought oppress’d,
I sunk from reverie to rest.
An horrid vision seized my head;
I saw the graves give up their dead!
Jove, arm’d with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies!
Amaz’d, confus’d, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne!
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
“Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp’d aside;
And you, who never fell—through pride:
You who in different sects were shamm’d,
And come to see each other damn’d;
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove’s designs than you;)
—The world’s mad business now is
o’er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
—I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools!—Go, go, you’re
bit.”
[Footnote 1: This Poem was sent in a letter from Lord Chesterfield to Voltaire, dated 27th August, 1752, in which he says: “Je vous envoie ci-jointe une piece par le feu Docteur Swift, laquelle je crois ne vous deplaira pas. Elle n’a jamais ete imprimee, vous en devinerez bien la raison, roais elle est authentique. J’en ai l’original, ecrit de sa propre main.”—W. E. B.]
By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies.
The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;
Which though his conscience forced him to restore,
(And parsons tell us, no man can do more,)
Yet, through despair, of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang’d or burst.
Those former ages differ’d much from this;
Judas betray’d his master with a kiss:
But some have kiss’d the gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury’s the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two inch-board,
Yet keep their bishoprics, and ’scape the cord:
Like hemp, which, by a skilful spinster drawn
To slender threads, may sometimes pass for lawn.
As ancient Judas by transgression fell,
And burst asunder ere he went to hell;
So could we see a set of new Iscariots
Come headlong tumbling from their mitred chariots;
Each modern Judas perish like the first,
Drop from the tree with all his bowels burst;
Who could forbear, that view’d each guilty face,
To cry, “Lo! Judas gone to his own place,
His habitation let all men forsake,
And let his bishopric another take!”
How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse’s train,
To serve a tasteless court twelve years in vain![2]
Fain would I think our female friend [3] sincere,
Till Bob,[4] the poet’s foe, possess’d
her ear.
Did female virtue e’er so high ascend,
To lose an inch of favour for a friend?
Say, had the court no better place to
choose
For triee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?
How cheaply had thy liberty been sold,
To squire a royal girl of two years old:
In leading strings her infant steps to guide,
Or with her go-cart amble side by side![5]
But princely Douglas,[6] and his glorious
dame,
Advanced thy fortune, and preserved thy fame.
Nor will your nobler gifts be misapplied,
When o’er your patron’s treasure you preside:
The world shall own, his choice was wise and just,
For sons of Phoebus never break their trust.
Not love of beauty less the heart inflames
Of guardian eunuchs to the sultan’s dames,
Their passions not more impotent and cold,
Than those of poets to the lust of gold.
With Paean’s purest fire his favourites glow,
The dregs will serve to ripen ore below:
His meanest work: for, had he thought it fit
That wealth should be the appanage of wit,
The god of light could ne’er have been so blind
To deal it to the worst of human kind.
But let me now, for I can do it well,
Your conduct in this new employ foretell.
And first: to make my observation
right,
I place a statesman full before my sight,
A bloated minister in all his gear,
With shameless visage and perfidious leer:
Two rows of teeth arm each devouring jaw,
And ostrich-like his all-digesting maw.
My fancy drags this monster to my view,
To shew the world his chief reverse in you.
Of loud unmeaning sounds, a rapid flood
Rolls from his mouth in plenteous streams of mud;
With these the court and senate-house he plies,
Made up of noise, and impudence, and lies.
Now let me show how Bob and you agree:
You serve a potent prince,[7] as well as he.
The ducal coffers trusted to your charge,
Your honest care may fill, perhaps enlarge:
His vassals easy, and the owner blest;
They pay a trifle, and enjoy the rest.
Not so a nation’s revenues are paid;
The servant’s faults are on the master laid.
The people with a sigh their taxes bring,
And, cursing Bob, forget to bless the king.
Next hearken, Gay, to what thy charge
requires,
With servants, tenants, and the neighbouring squires,
Let all domestics feel your gentle sway;
Nor bribe, insult, nor flatter, nor betray.
Let due reward to merit be allow’d;
Nor with your kindred half the palace crowd;
Nor think yourself secure in doing wrong,
By telling noses [8] with a party strong.
Be rich; but of your wealth make no parade;
At least, before your master’s debts are paid;
Nor in a palace, built with charge immense,
[Footnote 1: The Dean having been told by an intimate friend that the Duke of Queensberry had employed Mr. Gay to inspect the accounts and management of his grace’s receivers and stewards (which, however, proved to be a mistake), wrote this Epistle to his friend.—H. Through the whole piece, under the pretext of instructing Gay in his duty as the duke’s auditor of accounts, he satirizes the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, then Prime Minister.—Scott.]
[Footnote 2: See the “Libel on Dr. Delany and Lord Carteret,” post.]
[Footnote 3: The Countess of Suffolk.—H.]
[Footnote 4: Sir Robert Walpole.—Faulkner.]
[Footnote 5: The post of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa was offered to Gay, which he and his friends considered as a great indignity, her royal highness being a mere infant.—Scott.]
[Footnote 6: The Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.]
[Footnote 7: A title given to every duke by the heralds.—Faulkner.]
[Footnote 8: Counting the numbers of a division. A horse dealer’s term.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 9: Alluding to the magnificence of
Houghton, the seat of Sir
Robert Walpole, by which he greatly impaired his fortune.
“What brought Sir Visto’s
ill-got wealth to waste?
Some Demon whispered, ‘Visto! have
a Taste.’”
POPE, Moral Essays, Epist. iv.—W.
E. B.]
[Footnote 10: These lines are thought to allude to some story concerning a vast quantity of mahogany declared rotten, and then applied by somebody to wainscots, stairs, door-cases, etc.—Dublin edition.]
[Footnote 11: He hath practised this trade for
many years, and still continues it with success; and
after he hath ruined one lord, is earnestly solicited
to take another.—Dublin edition.
Properly Walter, a dexterous and unscrupulous attorney.
“Wise Peter sees the world’s
respect for gold,
And therefore hopes this nation may be
sold.”
POPE, Moral Essays, Epist. iii. And see
his character fully displayed in Sir Chas. Hanbury
Williams’ poem, “Peter and my Lord Quidam,”
Works, with notes, edit. 1822. Peter was the
original of Peter Pounce in Fielding’s “Joseph
Andrews.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 12: Sir Robert Walpole, who was called Sir Robert Brass.]
[Footnote 13: King George I, who died on the 12th June, 1727.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 14: Sir Spencer Compton, Speaker of the House of Commons, afterwards created Earl of Wilmington. George II, on his accession to the throne, intended that Compton should be Prime Minister, but Walpole, through the influence of the queen, retained his place, Compton having confessed “his incapacity to undertake so arduous a task.” As Lord Wilmington, he is constantly ridiculed by Sir Chas. Hanbury Williams. See his Works, with notes by Horace Walpole, edit. 1822.—W. E. B.]
TO A LADY
WHO DESIRED THE AUTHOR TO WRITE SOME VERSES UPON HER
IN THE HEROIC STYLE
After venting all my spite,
Tell me, what have I to write?
Every error I could find
Through the mazes of your mind,
Have my busy Muse employ’d,
Till the company was cloy’d.
Are you positive and fretful,
Heedless, ignorant, forgetful?
Those, and twenty follies more,
I have often told before.
Hearken what my lady says:
Have I nothing then to praise?
Ill it fits you to be witty,
Where a fault should move your pity.
If you think me too conceited,
Or to passion quickly heated;
If my wandering head be less
Set on reading than on dress;
If I always seem too dull t’ye;
I can solve the diffi—culty.
You would teach me to be wise:
Truth and honour how to prize;
How to shine in conversation,
And with credit fill my station;
How to relish notions high;
How to live, and how to die.
But it was decreed by Fate—
Mr. Dean, you come too late.
Well I know, you can discern,
I am now too old to learn:
Follies, from my youth instill’d,
Have my soul entirely fill’d;
In my head and heart they centre,
Nor will let your lessons enter.
Bred a fondling and an heiress;
Drest like any lady mayoress:
Cocker’d by the servants round,
Was too good to touch the ground;
Thought the life of every lady
[Footnote 1:
“Beside, he was a shrewd Philosopher,
And had read ev’ry Text and Gloss
over.”
Hudibras.]
[Footnote 2: Democritus, the Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the atomic theory.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: Caleb d’Anvers was the name assumed by Nicholas Amhurst, the ostensible editor of the celebrated journal, entitled “The Craftsman,” written by Bolingbroke and Pulteney. See “Prose Works,” vii, p. 219.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: One of the three Furies—Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, the avenging deities.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: The famous thief, who, while on his trial at the Old Bailey, stabbed Jonathan Wild. See Fielding’s “Life of Jonathan Wild,” Book iv, ch. i.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6:
“Ridiculum acri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat
res.”—Sat. I, x, 14.]
“Sic siti laetantur docti.”
With honour thus by Carolina placed,
How are these venerable bustoes graced!
O queen, with more than regal title crown’d,
For love of arts and piety renown’d!
How do the friends of virtue joy to see
Her darling sons exalted thus by thee!
Nought to their fame can now be added more,
Revered by her whom all mankind adore.[2]
[Footnote 1: Newton, Locke, Clarke, and Woolaston.]
[Footnote 2: Queen Caroline’s regard for
learned men was chiefly directed
to those who had signalized themselves by philosophical
research. Horace
Walpole alludes to this her peculiar taste, in his
fable called the
“Funeral of the Lioness,” where the royal
shade is made to say:
“... where Elysian waters glide,
With Clarke and Newton by my side,
Purrs o’er the metaphysic page,
Or ponders the prophetic rage
Of Merlin, who mysterious sings
Of men and lions, beasts and kings.”
Lord Orford’s Works, iv, 379.—W.
E. B.]
Louis the living learned fed,
And raised the scientific head;
Our frugal queen, to save her meat,
Exalts the heads that cannot eat.
DRAWN FROM THE ABOVE EPIGRAMS, AND SENT TO THE DRAPIER
Since Anna, whose bounty thy merits had fed,
Ere her own was laid low, had exalted thy head:
And since our good queen to the wise is so just,
To raise heads for such as are humbled in dust,
I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;
Prithee go, and be dead, and be doubly exalted.
Her majesty never shall be my exalter;
And yet she would raise me, I know, by a halter!
WITH A PRESENT OF A PAPER-BOOK, FINELY BOUND,
ON HIS BIRTH-DAY, NOV. 30, 1732.[1]
BY JOHN, EARL OF ORRERY
To thee, dear Swift, these spotless leaves I send;
Small is the present, but sincere the friend.
Think not so poor a book below thy care;
Who knows the price that thou canst make it bear?
Tho’ tawdry now, and, like Tyrilla’s face,
The specious front shines out with borrow’d
grace;
Tho’ pasteboards, glitt’ring like a tinsell’d
coat,
A rasa tabula within denote:
Yet, if a venal and corrupted age,
And modern vices should provoke thy rage;
If, warn’d once more by their impending fate,
A sinking country and an injur’d state,
Thy great assistance should again demand,
And call forth reason to defend the land;
Then shall we view these sheets with glad surprise,
Inspir’d with thought, and speaking to our eyes;
Each vacant space shall then, enrich’d, dispense
True force of eloquence, and nervous sense;
Inform the judgment, animate the heart,
And sacred rules of policy impart.
The spangled cov’ring, bright with splendid
ore,
Shall cheat the sight with empty show no more;
But lead us inward to those golden mines,
Where all thy soul in native lustre shines.
So when the eye surveys some lovely fair,
With bloom of beauty graced, with shape and air;
How is the rapture heighten’d, when we find
Her form excell’d by her celestial mind!
[Footnote 1: It was occasioned by an annual custom, which I found pursued among his friends, of making him a present on his birth-day. Orrery’s “Remarks,” p. 202.—W. E. B.]
VERSES LEFT WITH A SILVER STANDISH ON THE DEAN OF
ST. PATRICK’S DESK,
ON HIS BIRTH-DAY.
BY DR. DELANY
Hither from Mexico I came,
To serve a proud Iernian dame:
Was long submitted to her will;
At length she lost me at quadrille.
Through various shapes I often pass’d,
Still hoping to have rest at last;
And still ambitious to obtain
Admittance to the patriot Dean;
And sometimes got within his door,
But soon turn’d out to serve the poor:[1]
Not strolling Idleness to aid,
But honest Industry decay’d.
At length an artist purchased me,
And wrought me to the shape you see.
This done, to Hermes I applied:
“O Hermes! gratify my pride;
Be it my fate to serve a sage,
The greatest genius of his age;
That matchless pen let me supply,
Whose living lines will never die!”
“I grant your suit,” the God
replied,
And here he left me to reside.
[Footnote 1: Alluding to sums lent by the Dean, without interest, to assist poor tradesmen.—W. E. B.]
A paper book is sent by Boyle,
Too neatly gilt for me to soil.
Delany sends a silver standish,
When I no more a pen can brandish.
Let both around my tomb be placed:
As trophies of a Muse deceased;
And let the friendly lines they writ,
In praise of long-departed wit,
Be graved on either side in columns,
More to my praise than all my volumes,
To burst with envy, spite, and rage,
The Vandals of the present age.
VERSES
SENT TO THE DEAN WITH AN EAGLE QUILL,
ON HEARING OF THE PRESENTS BY THE EARL OF ORRERY AND
DR. DELANY.
BY MRS. PILKINGTON
Shall then my kindred all my glory claim,
And boldly rob me of eternal fame?
To every art my gen’rous aid I lend,
To music, painting, poetry, a friend.
’Tis I celestial harmony inspire,
When fix’d to strike the sweetly warbling wire.[1]
I to the faithful canvas have consign’d
Each bright idea of the painter’s mind;
Behold from Raphael’s sky-dipt pencils rise
Such heavenly scenes as charm the gazer’s eyes.
O let me now aspire to higher praise!
Ambitious to transcribe your deathless lays:
Nor thou, immortal bard, my aid refuse,
Accept me as the servant of your Muse;
Then shall the world my wondrous worth declare,
And all mankind your matchless pen revere.
[Footnote 1: Quills of the harpsichord.]
Mighty Thomas, a solemn senatus[1] I call,
To consult for Sapphira;[2] so come one and all;
Quit books, and quit business, your cure and your
care,
For a long winding walk, and a short bill of fare.
I’ve mutton for you, sir; and as for the ladies,
As friend Virgil has it, I’ve aliud mercedis;
For Letty,[3] one filbert, whereon to regale;
And a peach for pale Constance,[4] to make a full
meal;
And for your cruel part, who take pleasure in blood,
I have that of the grape, which is ten times as good:
Flow wit to her honour, flow wine to her health:
High raised be her worth above titles or wealth.[5]
[Footnote 1: To correct Mrs. Barber’s poems; which were published at London, in 4to, by subscription.]
[Footnote 2: The name by which Mrs, Barber was distinguished by her friends.—N.]
[Footnote 2: Mrs. Pilkington.—N.]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Constantia Grierson, a very learned young lady, who died in 1733, at the age of 27.—N.]
[Footnote 4: Mrs. Van Lewen, Mrs. Pilkington’s mother. Swift had ultimately good reason to regret his intimacy with the Pilkingtons, and the favours he showed them. See accounts of them in the “Dictionary of National Biography.”—. W. E. B.]
THE BEASTS’ CONFESSION TO THE PRIEST, ON OBSERVING HOW MOST MEN MISTAKE THEIR OWN TALENTS. 1732
I have been long of opinion, that there is not a more general and greater mistake, or of worse consequences through the commerce of mankind, than the wrong judgments they are apt to entertain of their own talents. I knew a stuttering alderman in London, a great frequenter of coffeehouses, who, when a fresh newspaper was brought in, constantly seized it first, and read it aloud to his brother citizens; but in a manner as little
The poem is grounded upon the universal folly in mankind of mistaking their talents; by which the author does a great honour to his own species, almost equalling them with certain brutes; wherein, indeed, he is too partial, as he freely confesses: and yet he has gone as low as he well could, by specifying four animals; the wolf, the ass, the swine, and the ape; all equally mischievous, except the last, who outdoes them in the article of cunning: so great is the pride of man!
When beasts could speak, (the learned say
They still can do so every day,)
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen’d, when a plague broke out,
(Which therefore made them more devout,)
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By proclamation gave command,
[Footnote 1: Wigs with long black tails, at that time very much in fashion. It was very common also to call the wearers of them by the same name.—F.]
[Footnote 2: The priest, his confessor.—F.]
[Footnote 3: A bill was brought into the House of Commons of England, in March, 1733, for laying an excise on wines and tobacco, but so violent was the outcry against the measure, that when it came on for the second reading, 11th April, Walpole moved that it be postponed for two months, and thus it was dropped.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: See Gulliver’s Travels; voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms, “Prose Works,” vol. viii.—W. E. B.]
That you, friend Marcus, like a stoic,
Can wish to die in strains heroic,
No real fortitude implies:
Yet, all must own, thy wish is wise.
Thy curate’s place, thy fruitful wife,
Thy busy, drudging scene of life,
Thy insolent, illiterate vicar,
Thy want of all-consoling liquor,
Thy threadbare gown, thy cassock rent,
Thy credit sunk, thy money spent,
Thy week made up of fasting-days,
Thy grate unconscious of a blaze,
And to complete thy other curses,
The quarterly demands of nurses,
Are ills you wisely wish to leave,
And fly for refuge to the grave;
And, O, what virtue you express,
In wishing such afflictions less!
But, now, should Fortune shift the scene,
And make thy curateship a dean:
Or some rich benefice provide,
To pamper luxury and pride;
With labour small, and income great;
With chariot less for use than state;
With swelling scarf, and glossy gown,
And license to reside in town:
To shine where all the gay resort,
At concerts, coffee-house, or court:
And weekly persecute his grace
With visits, or to beg a place:
With underlings thy flock to teach,
With no desire to pray or preach;
With haughty spouse in vesture fine,
With plenteous meals and generous wine;
Wouldst thou not wish, in so much ease,
Thy years as numerous as thy days?
THE HARDSHIP UPON THE LADIES 1733
Poor ladies! though their business be to play,
’Tis hard they must be busy night and day:
Why should they want the privilege of men,
Nor take some small diversions now and then?
Had women been the makers of our laws,
(And why they were not, I can see no cause,)
The men should slave at cards from morn to night
And female pleasures be to read and write.
Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o’er my heart:
I a slave in thy dominions;
Nature must give way to art.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming
Nightly nodding o’er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming
All beneath yon flowery rocks.
Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping
Mourn’d Adonis, darling youth;
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, string the lyre;
Sooth my ever-waking slumbers:
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Arm’d in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mournful cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia’s brows,
Morpheus, hovering o’er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy smooth Meander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander,
With thy flowery chaplets crown’d.
Thus when Philomela drooping
Softly seeks her silent mate,
See the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
MINERVA’S PETITION
Pallas, a goddess chaste and wise
Descending lately from the skies,
To Neptune went, and begg’d in form
He’d give his orders for a storm;
A storm, to drown that rascal Hort,[1]
And she would kindly thank him for’t:
A wretch! whom English rogues, to spite her,
Had lately honour’d with a mitre.
The god, who favour’d her request,
Assured her he would do his best:
But Venus had been there before,
Pleaded the bishop loved a whore,
And had enlarged her empire wide;
He own’d no deity beside.
At sea or land, if e’er you found him
Without a mistress, hang or drown him.
Since Burnet’s death, the bishops’ bench,
Till Hort arrived, ne’er kept a wench;
If Hort must sink, she grieves to tell it,
She’ll not have left one single prelate:
For, to say truth, she did intend him,
Elect of Cyprus in commendam.
And, since her birth the ocean gave her,
She could not doubt her uncle’s favour.
Then Proteus urged the same request,
But half in earnest, half in jest;
Said he—“Great sovereign of the main,
To drown him all attempts are vain.
Hort can assume more forms than I,
A rake, a bully, pimp, or spy;
Can creep, or run, or fly, or swim;
All motions are alike to him:
Turn him adrift, and you shall find
He knows to sail with every wind;
Or, throw him overboard, he’ll ride
As well against as with the tide.
But, Pallas, you’ve applied too late;
For, ’tis decreed by Jove and Fate,
That Ireland must be soon destroy’d,
And who but Hort can be employ’d?
You need not then have been so pert,
In sending Bolton[2] to Clonfert.
I found you did it, by your grinning;
Your business is to mind your spinning.
But how you came to interpose
In making bishops, no one knows;
Or who regarded your report;
For never were you seen at court.
And if you must have your petition,
There’s Berkeley[3] in the same condition;
Look, there he stands, and ’tis but just,
If one must drown, the other must;
But, if you’ll leave us Bishop Judas,
We’ll give you Berkeley for Bermudas.[4]
Now, if ’twill gratify your spight,
To put him in a plaguy fright,
Although ’tis hardly worth the cost,
You soon shall see him soundly tost.
You’ll find him swear, blaspheme, and damn
(And every moment take a dram)
His ghastly visage with an air
Of reprobation and despair;
Or else some hiding-hole he seeks,
For fear the rest should say he squeaks;
Or, as Fitzpatrick[5] did before,
[Footnote 1: Josiah Hort was born about 1674, and educated in London as a Nonconformist Minister; but he soon conformed to the Church of England, and held in succession several benefices. In 1709 he went to Ireland as chaplain to Lord Wharton, when Lord Lieutenant; and afterwards became, in 1721, Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, and ultimately Archbishop of Tuam. He died in 1751.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Theophilus Bolton, afterwards Archbishop of Cashell.—F.]
[Footnote 3: Dr. George Berkeley, a senior fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who became Dean of Derry, and afterwards Bishop of Cloyne.]
[Footnote 4: The Bishop had a project of a college at Bermuda for the propagation of the Gospel in 1722. See his Works, ut supra.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Brigadier Fitzpatrick was drowned in one of the packet-boats in the Bay of Dublin, in a great storm.—F.]
O, heavenly born! in deepest dells
If fairest science ever dwells
Beneath the mossy cave;
Indulge the verdure of the woods,
With azure beauty gild the floods,
And flowery carpets lave.
For, Melancholy ever reigns
Delighted in the sylvan scenes
With scientific light;
While Dian, huntress of the vales,
Seeks lulling sounds and fanning gales,
Though wrapt from mortal sight.
Yet, goddess, yet the way explore
With magic rites and heathen lore
Obstructed and depress’d;
Till Wisdom give the sacred Nine,
Untaught, not uninspired, to shine,
By Reason’s power redress’d.
When Solon and Lycurgus taught
To moralize the human thought
Of mad opinion’s maze,
To erring zeal they gave new laws,
Thy charms, O Liberty, the cause
That blends congenial rays.
Bid bright Astraea gild the morn,
Or bid a hundred suns be born,
To hecatomb the year;
Without thy aid, in vain the poles,
In vain the zodiac system rolls,
In vain the lunar sphere.
Come, fairest princess of the throng,
Bring sweet philosophy along,
In metaphysic dreams;
While raptured bards no more behold
A vernal age of purer gold,
In Heliconian streams.
Drive Thraldom with malignant hand,
To curse some other destined land,
By Folly led astray:
Ierne bear on azure wing;
Energic let her soar, and sing
Thy universal sway.
So when Amphion[1] bade the lyre
To more majestic sound aspire,
Behold the madding throng,
In wonder and oblivion drown’d,
To sculpture turn’d by magic sound
And petrifying song.
[Footnote 1: King of Thebes, and husband of Niobe; famous for his magical power with the lyre by which the stones were collected for the building of the city.—Hor., “De Arte Poetica,” 394.—W. E. B.]
A YOUNG LADY’S COMPLAINT[1] FOR THE STAY OF THE DEAN IN ENGLAND
Blow, ye zephyrs, gentle gales;
Gently fill the swelling sails.
Neptune, with thy trident long,
Trident three-fork’d, trident strong:
And ye Nereids fair and gay,
Fairer than the rose in May,
Nereids living in deep caves,
Gently wash’d with gentle waves;
Nereids, Neptune, lull asleep
Ruffling storms, and ruffled deep;
All around, in pompous state,
On this richer Argo wait:
Argo, bring my golden fleece,
Argo, bring him to his Greece.
Will Cadenus longer stay?
Come, Cadenus, come away;
Come with all the haste of love,
Come unto thy turtle-dove.
The ripen’d cherry on the tree
Hangs, and only hangs for thee,
Luscious peaches, mellow pears,
Ceres, with her yellow ears,
And the grape, both red and white,
Grape inspiring just delight;
All are ripe, and courting sue,
To be pluck’d and press’d by you.
Pinks have lost their blooming red,
Mourning hang their drooping head,
Every flower languid seems,
Wants the colour of thy beams,
Beams of wondrous force and power,
Beams reviving every flower.
Come, Cadenus, bless once more,
Bless again thy native shore,
Bless again this drooping isle,
Make its weeping beauties smile,
Beauties that thine absence mourn,
Beauties wishing thy return:
Come, Cadenus, come with haste,
Come before the winter’s blast;
Swifter than the lightning fly,
Or I, like Vanessa, die.
[Footnote 1: These verses, like the “Love Song in the Modern Taste” and the preceding one, seem designed to ridicule the commonplaces of poetry.—W. E. B.]
WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1731 [1]
Occasioned by reading the following maxim in Rochefoucauld, “Dans l’adversite de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose, qui ne nous deplait pas.”
This maxim was No. 99 in the edition of 1665, and was one of those suppressed by the author in his later editions. In the edition published by Didot Freres, 1864, it is No. 15 in the first supplement. See it commented upon by Lord Chesterfield in a letter to his son, Sept. 5, 1748, where he takes a similar view to that expressed by Swift.—W. E. B.
AS Rochefoucauld his maxims drew
From nature, I believe ’em true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.
This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast:
“In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.”
If this perhaps your patience move,
Let reason and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equal raised above our size.
Who would not at a crowded show
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you:
[2]But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post:
[3]Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in battle you should find
One whom you love of all mankind,
Had some heroic action done,
A champion kill’d, or trophy won;
Rather than thus be overtopt,
Would you not wish his laurels cropt?
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies rackt with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
What poet would not grieve to see
His breth’ren write as well as he?
But rather than they should excel,
He’d wish his rivals all in hell.
Her end when Emulation misses,
She turns to Envy, stings and hisses:
The strongest friendship yields to pride,
Unless the odds be on our side.
Vain human kind! fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide.
Give others riches, power, and station,
’Tis all on me an usurpation.
I have no title to aspire;
Yet, when you sink, I seem the higher.
In Pope I cannot read a line,
But with a sigh I wish it mine;
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six;
It gives me such a jealous fit,
I cry, “Pox take him and his wit!”
[4]I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own hum’rous biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce,
Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use.
St. John, as well as Pultney, knows
That I had some repute for prose;
And, till they drove me out of date
Could maul a minister of state.
If they have mortify’d my pride,
And made me throw my pen aside;
If with such talents Heav’n has blest ’em,
Have I not reason to detest ’em?
To all my foes, dear Fortune, send
Thy gifts; but never to my friend:
I tamely can endure the first;
But this with envy makes me burst.
Thus much may serve by way of proem:
Proceed we therefore to our poem.
The time is not remote, when I
Must by the course of nature die;
When, I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
Tho’ it is hardly understood
Which way my death can do them good,
[Footnote 1: This poem was first written about 1731 but was not then intended to be published; and having been shown by Swift to all his “common acquaintance indifferently,” some “friend,” probably Pilkington, remembered enough of it to concoct the poem called “The Life and Character of Dr. Swift, written by himself,” which was published in London in 1733, and reprinted in Dublin. In a letter to Pope, dated 1 May, that year, the Dean complained seriously about the imposture, saying, “it shall not provoke me to print the true one, which indeed is not proper to be seen till I can be seen no more.” See Swift to Pope, in Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, vii, 307. The poem was subsequently published by Faulkner with the Dean’s permission. It is now printed from a copy of the original edition, with corrections in Swift’s hand, which I found in the Forster collection.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Var. “But would not have him stop my view.”]
[Footnote 3: Var. “I ask but for an inch at most.”]
[Footnote 4: Var. “Why must I be outdone by Gay.”]
[Footnote 5: The author supposes that the scribblers of the prevailing party, which he always opposed, will libel him after his death; but that others will remember the service he had done to Ireland, under the name of M. B. Drapier, by utterly defeating the destructive project of Wood’s halfpence, in five letters to the people of Ireland, at that time read universally, and convincing every reader.]
[Footnote 6: The Dean supposeth himself to die in Ireland.]
[Footnote 7: Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, then of the bedchamber to the queen, professed much favour for the Dean. The queen, then princess, sent a dozen times to the Dean (then in London), with her commands to attend her; which at last he did, by advice of all his friends. She often sent for him afterwards, and always treated him very graciously. He taxed her with a present worth L10, which she promised before he should return to Ireland; but on his taking leave the medals were not ready.
A letter from Swift to Lady Suffolk, 21st November, 1730, bears out this note.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 8: The medals were to be sent to the Dean in four months; but she forgot or thought them too dear. The Dean, being in Ireland, sent Mrs. Howard a piece of plaid made in that kingdom, which the queen seeing took it from her and wore it herself and sent to the Dean for as much as would clothe herself and children, desiring he would send the charge of it; he did the former, it cost L35, but he said he would have nothing except the medals; he went next summer to England, and was treated as usual, and she being then queen, the Dean was promised a settlement in England, but returned as he went, and instead of receiving of her intended favours or the medals, hath been ever since under Her Majesty’s displeasure.]
[Footnote 9: Chartres is a most infamous vile scoundrel, grown from a footboy, or worse, to a prodigious fortune, both in England and Scotland. He had a way of insinuating himself into all ministers, under every change, either as pimp, flatterer, or informer. He was tried at seventy for a rape, and came off by sacrificing a great part of his fortune. He is since dead; but this poem still preserves the scene and time it was writ in.—Dublin Edition, and see ante, p. 191.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 10: Sir Robert Walpole, chief minister of state, treated the Dean in 1726 with great distinction; invited him to dinner at Chelsea, with the Dean’s friends chosen on purpose: appointed an hour to talk with him of Ireland, to which kingdom and people the Dean found him no great friend; for he defended Wood’s project of halfpence, etc. The Dean would see him no more; and upon his next year’s return to England, Sir Robert, on an accidental meeting, only made a civil compliment, and never invited him again.]
[Footnote 11: Mr. William Pultney, from being Sir Robert’s intimate friend, detesting his administration, became his mortal enemy and joined with my Lord Bolingbroke, to expose him in an excellent paper called the Craftsman, which is still continued.]
[Footnote 12: Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State to Queen Anne, of blessed memory. He is reckoned the most universal genius in Europe. Walpole, dreading his abilities, treated him most injuriously working with King George I, who forgot his promise of restoring the said lord, upon the restless importunity of Sir Robert Walpole.]
[Footnote 13: Curll hath been the most infamous bookseller of any age or country. His character, in part, may be found in Mr. Pope’s “Dunciad.” He published three volumes, all charged on the Dean, who never writ three pages of them. He hath used many of the Dean’s friends in almost as vile a manner.]
[Footnote 14: Three stupid verse-writers in London; the last, to the shame of the court, and the highest disgrace to wit and learning, was made laureate. Moore, commonly called Jemmy Moore, son of Arthur Moore, whose father was jailor of Monaghan, in Ireland. See the character of Jemmy Moore, and Tibbalds [Theobald], in the “Dunciad.”]
[Footnote 15: Curll is notoriously infamous for publishing the lives, letters, and last wills and testaments of the nobility and ministers of state, as well as of all the rogues who are hanged at Tyburn. He hath been in custody of the House of Lords, for publishing or forging the letters of many peers, which made the Lords enter a resolution in their journal-book, that no life or writings of any lord should be published, without the consent of the next heir-at-law or license from their House.]
[Footnote 16: The play by which the dealer may win or lose all the tricks. See Hoyle on “Quadrille.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 17: See post, p. 267.]
[Footnote 18: A place in London, where old books are sold.]
[Footnote 19: See ante “On Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet,” p. 192.]
[Footnote 20: Walpole hath a set of party scribblers, who do nothing but write in his defence.]
[Footnote 21: Henley is a clergyman, who, wanting both merit and luck to get preferment, or even to keep his curacy in the established church, formed a new conventicle, which he called an Oratory. There, at set times, he delivereth strange speeches, compiled by himself and his associates, who share the profit with him. Every hearer payeth a shilling each day for admittance. He is an absolute dunce, but generally reported crazy.]
[Footnote 22: See ante, p. 188.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 23: See ante, p. 188. There is some confusion here betwixt Woolston and Wollaston, whose book, the “Religion of Nature delineated,” was much talked of and fashionable. See a letter from Pope to Bethell in Pope’s correspondence, Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, ix, p. 149.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 24: Denham’s elegy on Cowley:
“To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own.”]
[Footnote 25: See ante, pp. 192 and 252.]
[Footnote 26: In the year 1713, the late queen was prevailed with, by an address of the House of Lords in England, to publish a proclamation, promising L300 to whatever person would discover the author of a pamphlet called “The Public Spirit of the Whigs”; and in Ireland, in the year 1724, Lord Carteret, at his first coming into the government, was prevailed on to issue a proclamation for promising the like reward of L300 to any person who would discover the author of a pamphlet, called “The Drapier’s Fourth Letter,” etc., writ against that destructive project of coining halfpence for Ireland; but in neither kingdom was the Dean discovered.]
[Footnote 27: Queen Anne’s ministry fell to variance from the first year after their ministry began; Harcourt, the chancellor, and Lord Bolingbroke, the secretary, were discontented with the treasurer Oxford, for his too much mildness to the Whig party; this quarrel grew higher every day till the queen’s death. The Dean, who was the only person that endeavoured to reconcile them, found it impossible, and thereupon retired to the country about ten weeks before that event: upon which he returned to his deanery in Dublin, where for many years he was worryed by the new people in power, and had hundreds of libels writ against him in England.]
[Footnote 28: In the height of the quarrel between the ministers, the queen died.]
[Footnote 29: Upon Queen Anne’s death, the Whig faction was restored to power, which they exercised with the utmost rage and revenge; impeached and banished the chief leaders of the Church party, and stripped all their adherents of what employments they had; after which England was never known to make so mean a figure in Europe. The greatest preferments in the Church, in both kingdoms, were given to the most ignorant men. Fanaticks were publickly caressed, Ireland utterly ruined and enslaved, only great ministers heaping up millions; and so affairs continue, and are likely to remain so.]
[Footnote 30: Upon the queen’s death, the Dean returned to live in Dublin at his Deanery House. Numberless libels were written against him in England as a Jacobite; he was insulted in the street, and at night he was forced to be attended by his servants armed.]
[Footnote 31: Ireland.]
[Footnote 32: One Wood, a hardware-man from England, had a patent for coining copper halfpence in Ireland, to the sum of L108,000, which, in the consequence, must leave that kingdom without gold or silver. See The Drapier’s Letters, “Prose Works,” vol. vi.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 33: Whitshed was then chief justice. He had some years before prosecuted a printer for a pamphlet writ by the Dean, to persuade the people of Ireland to wear their own manufactures. Whitshed sent the jury down eleven times, and kept them nine hours, until they were forced to bring in a special verdict. He sat afterwards on the trial of the printer of the Drapier’s Fourth Letter; but the jury, against all he could say or swear, threw out the bill. All the kingdom took the Drapier’s part, except the courtiers, or those who expected places. The Drapier was celebrated in many poems and pamphlets. His sign was set up in most streets of Dublin (where many of them still continue) and in several country towns. This note was written in 1734.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 34: Scroggs was chief justice under King Charles II. His judgement always varied in state trials according to directions from Court. Tresilian was a wicked judge hanged above three hundred years ago.]
[Footnote 35: In Ireland, which he had reason to call a place of exile; to which country nothing could have driven him but the queen’s death, who had determined to fix him in England, in spite of the Duchess of Somerset.]
[Footnote 36: In Ireland the Dean was not acquainted with one single lord, spiritual or temporal. He only conversed with private gentlemen of the clergy or laity, and but a small number of either.]
[Footnote 37: The peers of Ireland lost their jurisdiction by one single act, and tamely submitted to this infamous mark of slavery without the least resentment or remonstrance.]
[Footnote 38: The Parliament, as they call it in Ireland, meet but once in two years, and after having given five times more than they can afford, return home to reimburse themselves by country jobs and oppressions of which some few are mentioned.]
[Footnote 39: The highwaymen in Ireland are, since the late wars there, usually called Rapparees, which was a name given to those Irish soldiers who, in small parties, used at that time to plunder Protestants.]
[Footnote 40: The army in Ireland are lodged in barracks, the building and repairing whereof and other charges, have cost a prodigious sum to that unhappy kingdom.]
All human race would fain be wits,
And millions miss for one that hits.
Young’s universal passion, pride,[1]
Was never known to spread so wide.
Say, Britain, could you ever boast
Three poets in an age at most?
Our chilling climate hardly bears
A sprig of bays in fifty years;
While every fool his claim alleges,
As if it grew in common hedges.
What reason can there be assign’d
For this perverseness in the mind?
Brutes find out where their talents lie:
A bear will not attempt to fly;
A founder’d horse will oft debate,
Before he tries a five-barr’d gate;
A dog by instinct turns aside,
Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.
But man we find the only creature
Who, led by Folly, combats Nature;
Who, when she loudly cries, Forbear,
With obstinacy fixes there;
And, where his genius least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole designs.
Not empire to the rising sun
By valour, conduct, fortune won;
Not highest wisdom in debates,
For framing laws to govern states;
Not skill in sciences profound
So large to grasp the circle round,
Such heavenly influence require,
As how to strike the Muse’s lyre.
Not beggar’s brat on bulk begot;
Not bastard of a pedler Scot;
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of Bridewell[2] or the stews;
Not infants dropp’d, the spurious pledges
Of gipsies litter’d under hedges;
Are so disqualified by fate
To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Has blasted with poetic fire.
What hope of custom in the fair,
While not a soul demands your ware?
Where you have nothing to produce
For private life, or public use?
Court, city, country, want you not;
You cannot bribe, betray, or plot.
For poets, law makes no provision;
The wealthy have you in derision:
Of state affairs you cannot smatter;
Are awkward when you try to flatter;
Your portion, taking Britain round,
Was just one annual hundred pound;
Now not so much as in remainder,
Since Cibber[3] brought in an attainder;
For ever fix’d by right divine
(A monarch’s right) on Grub Street line.
Poor starv’ling bard, how small
thy gains!
How unproportion’d to thy pains!
And here a simile comes pat in:
Though chickens take a month to fatten,
The guests in less than half an hour
Will more than half a score devour.
So, after toiling twenty days
[Footnote 1: See Young’s “Satires,” and “Life” by Johnson.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The prison or house of correction to which harlots were often consigned. See Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress,” and “A beautiful young Nymph,” ante, p. 201.—W. R. B.]
[Footnote 3: Colley Cibber, born in 1671, died in 1757; famous as a comedian and dramatist, and immortalized by Pope as the hero of the “Dunciad”; appointed Laureate in December, 1730, in succession to Eusden, who died in September that year. See Cibber’s “Apology for his Life”; Disraeli’s “Quarrels of Authors,” edit. 1859.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Barnaby Bernard Lintot, publisher and bookseller, noted for adorning his shop with titles in red letters. In the Prologue to the “Satires” Pope says: “What though my name stood rubric on the walls”; and in the “Dunciad,” book i, “Lintot’s rubric post.” He made a handsome fortune, and died High Sheriff of Sussex in 1736, aged sixty-one.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: The coffee-house most frequented by the wits and poets of that time.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: See ante, p. 192, “On Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: Allusion to the large sums paid by Walpole to scribblers in support of his party.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 8:
“Sunt geminae Somni portae:
quarum altera fertur
Cornea; qua veris facilis datur exitus
Vmbris:
Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto;
Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia Manes.”
VIRG.,
Aen., vi.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 9: See the “South Sea Project,” ante, p. 120.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 10: Thomas Rymer, archaeologist and critic. The allusion is to his “Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age,” on which see Johnson’s “Life of Dryden” and Spence’s “Anecdotes,” p. 173. Rymer is best known by his work entitled “Foedera,” consisting of leagues, treaties, etc., made between England and other kingdoms.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 11: John Dennis, born 1657, died 1734. He is best remembered as “The Critic.” See Swift’s “Thoughts on various subjects,” “Prose Works,” i, 284; Disraeli, “Calamities of Authors: Influence of a bad Temper in Criticism”; Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, passim.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 12: Highly esteemed as a French critic by Dryden and Pope.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 13: By Leonard Welsted, who, in 1712, published the work of “Longinus on the Sublime,” stated to be “translated from the Greek.” He is better known through his quarrel with Pope. See the “Prologue to the Satires.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 14: Dryden, whose armed chair at Will’s was in the winter placed by the fire, and in the summer in the balcony. Malone’s “Life of Dryden,” p. 485. Why Battus? Battus was a herdsman who, because he Betrayed Mercury’s theft of some cattle, was changed by the god into a Stone Index. Ovid, “Metam.,” ii, 685.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 15: The ancient name of London, also called Troynovant. See Journal to Stella, “Prose Works,” ii, 249; and Cunningham’s “Handbook of London,” introduction.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 16: The two bad Roman poets, hateful and inimical to Virgil and Horace: Virg., “Ecl.” iii, 90; Horat., “Epod.” x. The names have been well applied in our time by Gifford in his satire entitled “The Baviad and Maeviad.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 17: A musician, also a censurer of Horace. See “Satirae,” lib. 1. iii, 4.—_—W. E. B._]
[Footnote 18: In consequence of “Polly,” the supplement to the “Beggar’s Opera,” but which obtained him the friendship of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 19: The grant of two hundred a year, which he obtained from the Crown, and retained till his death in 1765.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 20: See “Leviathan,” Part I, chap, xiii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 21: Richard Flecknoe, poet and dramatist, died 1678, of whom it has been written that “whatever may become of his own pieces, his name will continue, whilst Dryden’s satire, called ‘Mac Flecknoe,’ shall remain in vogue.” Dryden’s Poetical Works, edit. Warton, ii, 169.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 22: Hon. Edward Howard, author of some indifferent plays and poems. See “Dict. Nat. Biog.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 23: Richard Blackmore, physician and very voluminous writer in prose and verse. In 1697 he was appointed physician to William III, when he was knighted. See Pope, “Imitations of Horace,” book ii, epist. 1, 387.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 24: Lord Grimston, born 1683, died 1756. He is best known by his play, written in 1705, “The Lawyer’s Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree,” which the author withdrew from circulation; but, by some person’s malice, it was reprinted in 1736. See “Dict. Nat. Biog.,” Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, iii, p. 314.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 25: Matthew Concanen, born in Ireland, 1701, a writer of miscellaneous works, dramatic and poetical. See the “Dunciad,” ii, 299, 304, ut supra.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 26: James Moore Smythe, chiefly remarkable for his consummate assurance as a plagiarist. See the “Dunciad,” ii, 50, and notes thereto, Pope’s Works, edit. Elwin and Courthope, iv, 132.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 27:
“Fertur Prometheus, addere principi
Limo coactus particulam undique
Desectam, et insani
leonis
Vim
stomacho apposuisse nostro.”
HORAT.,
Carm. I, xvi.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 28:
“—— super et Garamantas
et Indos,
Proferet imperium; ——
—— jam nunc et Caspia
regna
Responsis horrent divom.”
Virg.,
Aen., vi.]
[Footnote 29:
“—— genibus minor.”]
[Footnote 30: Son of Aeneas, here representing Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 31:
“Unus qui nobis cunctando restituis
rem.”
Virg.,
Aen., vi, 847.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 32: “Divisum imperium cum Jove Caesar habet.”]
VERSES SENT TO THE DEAN
ON HIS BIRTH-DAY, WITH PINE’S HORACE, FINELY
BOUND.
BY DR. J. SICAN[1]
You’ve read, sir, in poetic strain,
How Varus and the Mantuan swain
Have on my birth-day been invited,
(But I was forced in verse to write it,)
Upon a plain repast to dine,
And taste my old Campanian wine;
But I, who all punctilios hate,
Though long familiar with the great,
Nor glory in my reputation,
Am come without an invitation;
And, though I’m used to right Falernian,
I’ll deign for once to taste Iernian;
But fearing that you might dispute
(Had I put on my common suit)
My breeding and my politesse,
I visit in my birth-day dress:
My coat of purest Turkey red,
With gold embroidery richly spread;
To which I’ve sure as good pretensions,
As Irish lords who starve on pensions.
What though proud ministers of state
Did at your antichamber wait;
What though your Oxfords and your St. Johns,
Have at your levee paid attendance,
And Peterborough and great Ormond,
With many chiefs who now are dormant,
Have laid aside the general’s staff,
And public cares, with you to laugh;
Yet I some friends as good can name,
Nor less the darling sons of fame;
For sure my Pollio and Maecenas
Were as good statesmen, Mr. Dean, as
Either your Bolingbroke or Harley,
Though they made Lewis beg a parley;
And as for Mordaunt,[2] your loved hero,
I’ll match him with my Drusus Nero.
You’ll boast, perhaps, your favourite Pope;
But Virgil is as good, I hope.
I own indeed I can’t get any
To equal Helsham and Delany;
Since Athens brought forth Socrates,
A Grecian isle, Hippocrates;
Since Tully lived before my time,
And Galen bless’d another clime.
You’ll plead, perhaps, at my request,
To be admitted as a guest,
“Your hearing’s bad!”—But
why such fears?
I speak to eyes, and not to ears;
And for that reason wisely took
The form you see me in, a book.
Attack’d by slow devouring moths,
[Footnote 1: This ingenious young gentleman was unfortunately murdered in Italy.—Scott.]
[Footnote 2: See verses to the Earl of Peterborough, ante, p. 48.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: The translator and editor of Lucretius and Horace.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Who put forth, in 1710, the “Satyrs
and Epistles of Horace, done into English,”
of which a second edition was published in 1717, with
the addition of the “Art of Poetry.”
His versions were well satirized by the wits of the
time, one of whom, Dr. T. Francklin, wrote:
“O’er Tibur’s swan the
Muses wept in vain,
And mourned their bard by cruel Dunster
slain.”
Dict. Nat. Biog.—W. E.
B.]
EPIGRAM BY MR. BOWYER INTENDED TO BE PLACED UNDER THE HEAD OF GULLIVER. 1733
“Here learn from moral truth and wit refined,
How vice and folly have debased mankind;
Strong sense and humour arm in virtue’s cause;
Thus her great votary vindicates her laws:
While bold and free the glowing colours strike;
Blame not the picture, if the picture’s like.”
At two afternoon for our Psyche inquire,
Her tea-kettle’s on, and her smock at the fire:
So loitering, so active; so busy, so idle;
Which has she most need of, a spur or a bridle?
Thus a greyhound outruns the whole pack in a race,
Yet would rather be hang’d than he’d leave
a warm place.
She gives you such plenty, it puts you in pain;
But ever with prudence takes care of the main.
To please you, she knows how to choose a nice bit;
For her taste is almost as refined as her wit.
To oblige a good friend, she will trace every market,
It would do your heart good, to see how she will cark
it.
Yet beware of her arts; for, it plainly appears,
She saves half her victuals, by feeding your ears.
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Sican, a very ingenious lady, mother to the author of the “Verses” with Pine’s Horace; and a favourite with Swift and Stella.—W. E. B.]
James Brydges[1]and the Dean had long been friends;
James is beduked; of course their friendship ends:
But sure the Dean deserves a sharp rebuke,
For knowing James, to boast he knows the duke.
Yet, since just Heaven the duke’s ambition mocks,
Since all he got by fraud is lost by stocks,[2]
His wings are clipp’d: he tries no more
in vain
With bands of fiddlers to extend his train.
Since he no more can build, and plant, and revel,
The duke and dean seem near upon a level.
O! wert thou not a duke, my good Duke Humphry,
From bailiffs claws thou scarce couldst keep thy bum
free.
A duke to know a dean! go, smooth thy crown:
Thy brother[3](far thy better) wore a gown.
Well, but a duke thou art; so please the king:
O! would his majesty but add a string!
[Footnote 1: James Brydges, who was created Duke of Chandos in 1719, and built the magnificent house at Canons near Edgware, celebrated by Pope in his “Moral Essays,” Epistles iii and iv. For a description of the building, see De Foe’s “Tour through Great Britain,” cited in Carruthers’ edition of Pope, vol. i, p. 482. At the sale of the house by the second Duke in 1747, Lord Chesterfield purchased the hall pillars for the house he was then building in May Fair, where they still adorn the entrance hall of Chesterfield House. He used to call them his Canonical pillars.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: In allusion to the Duke’s difficulties caused by the failure of his speculative investments.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: The Hon. Henry Brydges, Archdeacon of Rochester.—N.]
Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus amicis;
Non campana sonans, tonitru non ab Jove missum,
Quod mage mirandum, saltem si credere fas est,
Non clamosa meas mulier jam percutit aures.
DOCTOR. Deaf, giddy, helpless, left alone.
ANSWER. Except the first, the fault’s your
own.
DOCTOR. To all my friends a burden grown.
ANSWER. Because to few you will be shewn.
Give
them good wine, and meat to stuff,
You
may have company enough.
DOCTOR. No more I hear my church’s bell,
Than
if it rang out for my knell.
ANSWER. Then write and read, ’twill do
as well.
DOCTOR. At thunder now no more I start,
Than
at the rumbling of a cart.
ANSWER. Think then of thunder when you f—t.
DOCTOR. Nay, what’s incredible, alack!
No
more I hear a woman’s clack.
ANSWER. A woman’s clack, if I have skill,
Sounds
somewhat like a throwster’s mill;
But
louder than a bell, or thunder:
That
does, I own, increase my wonder.
On rainy days alone I dine
Upon a chick and pint of wine.
On rainy days I dine alone,
And pick my chicken to the bone;
But this my servants much enrages,
No scraps remain to save board-wages.
In weather fine I nothing spend,
But often spunge upon a friend;
Yet, where he’s not so rich as I,
I pay my club, and so good b’ye.
“IN SYLLABAM LONGAM IN VOCE VERTIGINOSUS A. D. SWIFT CORREPTAM”
Musarum antistes, Phoebi numerosus alumnus,
Vix omnes numeros Vertiginosus habet.
Intentat charo capiti vertigo ruinam:
Oh! servet cerebro nata Minerva caput.
Vertigo nimium longa est, divina poeta;
Dent tibi Pierides, donet Apollo, brevem.
APPLES
Come buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples, and pears.
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husband a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthing will gain them,
And I must maintain them.
Ripe ’sparagrass
Fit for lad or lass,
To make their water pass:
O, ’tis pretty picking
With a tender chicken!
ONIONS
Come, follow me by the smell,
Here are delicate onions to
sell;
I promise to use you well.
They make the blood warmer,
You’ll feed like a farmer;
For this is every cook’s opinion,
No savoury dish without an onion;
But, lest your kissing should be spoil’d,
Your onions must be thoroughly boil’d:
Or else you may spare
Your mistress a share,
The secret will never be known:
She cannot discover
The breath of her lover,
But think it as sweet as her own.
Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They’ll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They’ll please to the
life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She’ll be fruitful, never fear her.
HERRINGS
Be not sparing,
Leave off swearing.
Buy my herring
Fresh from Malahide,[1]
Better never was tried. Come, eat them with
pure fresh butter and mustard, Their bellies are soft,
and as white as a custard. Come, sixpence a-dozen,
to get me some bread, Or, like my own herrings, I
soon shall be dead.
[Footnote 1: Malahide, a village five miles from Dublin, famous for oysters.—F.]
Come buy my fine oranges, sauce for your veal,
And charming, when squeezed in a pot of brown ale;
Well roasted, with sugar and wine in a cup,
They’ll make a sweet bishop when gentlefolks
sup.
INSTRUCTIONS TO A PAINTER[1]
Happiest of the spaniel race,
Painter, with thy colours grace:
Draw his forehead large and high,
Draw his blue and humid eye;
Draw his neck so smooth and round,
Little neck with ribbons bound!
And the muscly swelling breast,
Where the Loves and Graces rest;
And the spreading even back,
Soft, and sleek, and glossy black;
And the tail that gently twines,
Like the tendrils of the vines;
And the silky twisted hair,
Shadowing thick the velvet ear;
Velvet ears, which, hanging low,
O’er the veiny temples flow.
With a proper light and shade,
Let the winding hoop be laid;
And within that arching bower,
(Secret circle, mystic power,)
In a downy slumber place
Happiest of the spaniel race;
While the soft respiring dame,
Glowing with the softest flame,
On the ravish’d favourite pours
Balmy dews, ambrosial showers.
With thy utmost skill express
Nature in her richest dress,
Limpid rivers smoothly flowing,
Orchards by those rivers blowing;
Curling woodbine, myrtle shade,
And the gay enamell’d mead;
Where the linnets sit and sing,
Little sportlings of the spring;
Where the breathing field and grove
Soothe the heart and kindle love.
Here for me, and for the Muse,
Colours of resemblance choose,
Make of lineaments divine,
Daply female spaniels shine,
Pretty fondlings of the fair,
Gentle damsels’ gentle care;
But to one alone impart
All the flattery of thy art.
Crowd each feature, crowd each grace,
Which complete the desperate face;
Let the spotted wanton dame
Feel a new resistless flame!
Let the happiest of his race
Win the fair to his embrace.
But in shade the rest conceal,
Nor to sight their joys reveal,
Lest the pencil and the Muse
Loose desires and thoughts infuse.
[Footnote 1: A parody of Ambrose Phillips’s poem on Miss Carteret, daughter of the Lord Lieutenant. Phillips stood high in Archbishop Boulter’s regard. Hence the parody. “Does not,” says Pope, “still to one Bishop Phillips seem a wit?” It is to the infantine style of some of Phillips’ verse that we owe the term, Namby Pamby.—W. E. B.]
SEVERAL OF THEM WRITTEN IN 1726
We fly from luxury and wealth,
To hardships, in pursuit of health;
From generous wines, and costly fare,
And dozing in an easy-chair;
Pursue the goddess Health in vain,
To find her in a country scene,
And every where her footsteps trace,
And see her marks in every face;
And still her favourites we meet,
Crowding the roads with naked feet.
But, oh! so faintly we pursue,
We ne’er can have her full in view.
The glass, by lovers’ nonsense blurr’d,
Dims and obscures our sight;
So, when our passions Love has stirr’d,
It darkens Reason’s light.
III. ON A WINDOW AT THE FOUR CROSSES IN THE WATLING-STREET ROAD, WARWICKSHIRE
Fool, to put up four crosses at your door,
Put up your wife, she’s CROSSER than all four.
The church and clergy here, no doubt,
Are very near a-kin;
Both weather-beaten are without,
And empty both within.
My landlord is civil,
But dear as the d—l:
Your pockets grow empty
With nothing to tempt ye;
The wine is so sour,
’Twill give you a scour,
The beer and the ale
Are mingled with stale.
The veal is such carrion,
A dog would be weary on.
All this I have felt,
For I live on a smelt.
The walls of this town
Are full of renown,
And strangers delight to walk round ’em:
But as for the dwellers,
Both buyers and sellers,
For me, you may hang ’em, or drown ’em.
VII. ANOTHER WRITTEN UPON A WINDOW WHERE THERE WAS NO WRITING BEFORE
Thanks to my stars, I once can see
A window here from scribbling free!
Here no conceited coxcombs pass,
To scratch their paltry drabs on glass;
Nor party fool is calling names,
Or dealing crowns to George and James.
The sage, who said he should be proud
Of windows in his breast,[1]
Because he ne’er a thought allow’d
That might not be confest;
His window scrawl’d by every rake,
His breast again would cover,
And fairly bid the devil take
The diamond and the lover.
[Footnote 1: See on this “Notes and Queries,” 10th S., xii, 497.—W. E. B.]
By Satan taught, all conjurors know
Your mistress in a glass to show,
And you can do as much:
In this the devil and you agree;
None e’er made verses worse than he,
And thine, I swear, are such.
That love is the devil, I’ll prove when required;
Those rhymers abundantly show it:
They swear that they all by love are inspired,
And the devil’s a damnable poet.
O Neptune! Neptune! must I still
Be here detain’d against my will?
Is this your justice, when I’m come
Above two hundred miles from home;
O’er mountains steep, o’er dusty plains,
Half choked with dust, half drown’d with rains,
Only your godship to implore,
To let me kiss your other shore?
A boon so small! but I may weep,
While you’re like Baal, fast asleep.
[Footnote 1: These verses were no doubt written during the Dean’s enforced stay at Holyhead while waiting for fair weather. See Swift’s Journal of 1727, in Craik’s “Life of Swift,” vol. ii, and “Prose Works,” vol. xi.—W. E. B.]
Two-faced Janus,[1] god of Time!
Be my Phoebus while I rhyme;
To oblige your crony Swift,
Bring our dame a new year’s gift;
She has got but half a face;
Janus, since thou hast a brace,
To my lady once be kind;
Give her half thy face behind.
God of Time, if you be wise,
Look not with your future eyes;
What imports thy forward sight?
Well, if you could lose it quite.
Can you take delight in viewing
This poor Isle’s[2] approaching ruin,
When thy retrospection vast
Sees the glorious ages past?
Happy nation, were we blind,
Or had only eyes behind!
Drown your morals, madam cries,
I’ll have none but forward eyes;
Prudes decay’d about may tack,
Strain their necks with looking back.
Give me time when coming on;
Who regards him when he’s gone?
By the Dean though gravely told,
New-years help to make me old;
Yet I find a new-year’s lace
Burnishes an old-year’s face.
Give me velvet and quadrille,
I’ll have youth and beauty still.
[Footnote 1: “Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis Unde homines operum primos vitaeque labores Instituunt.”—HOR., Sat., ii, vi, 20.]
[Footnote 2: Ireland.—H.]
WOOLLEN-DRAPER IN DUBLIN, WHOSE SIGN WAS THE GOLDEN FLEECE
Jason, the valiant prince of Greece,
From Colchis brought the Golden Fleece;
We comb the wool, refine the stuff,
For modern Jasons, that’s enough.
Oh! could we tame yon watchful dragon,[1]
Old Jason would have less to brag on.
[Footnote 1: England.—H.]
TO A FRIEND WHO HAD BEEN MUCH ABUSED IN MANY INVETERATE LIBELS
The greatest monarch may be stabb’d by night
And fortune help the murderer in his flight;
The vilest ruffian may commit a rape,
Yet safe from injured innocence escape;
And calumny, by working under ground,
Can, unrevenged, the greatest merit wound.
What’s to be done? Shall wit
and learning choose
To live obscure, and have no fame to lose?
By Censure[1] frighted out of Honour’s road,
Nor dare to use the gifts by Heaven bestow’d?
Or fearless enter in through Virtue’s gate,
And buy distinction at the dearest rate.
[Footnote 1: See ante, p. 160, the poem entitled “On Censure.”—W. E. B..]
Lesbia for ever on me rails,
To talk of me she never fails.
Now, hang me, but for all her art,
I find that I have gain’d her heart.
My proof is this: I plainly see,
The case is just the same with me;
I curse her every hour sincerely,
Yet, hang me but I love her dearly.
[Footnote 1: “Lesbia mi dicit semper mala
nec tacet unquam
De me: Lesbia me dispeream nisi amat.
Quo signo? quia sunt totidem mea: deprecor illam
Assidue; verum dispeream nisi amo.”
Catulli Carmina, xcii.—W.
E. B.]
I marched three miles through scorching sand,
With zeal in heart, and notes in hand;
I rode four more to Great St. Mary,
Using four legs, when two were weary:
To three fair virgins I did tie men,
In the close bands of pleasing Hymen;
I dipp’d two babes in holy water,
And purified their mother after.
Within an hour and eke a half,
I preach’d three congregations deaf;
Where, thundering out, with lungs long-winded,
I chopp’d so fast, that few there minded.
My emblem, the laborious sun,
Saw all these mighty labours done
Before one race of his was run.
All this perform’d by Robert Hewit:
What mortal else could e’er go through it!
Queen of wit and beauty, Betty,
Never may the Muse forget ye,
How thy face charms every shepherd,
Spotted over like a leopard!
And thy freckled neck, display’d,
Envy breeds in every maid;
Like a fly-blown cake of tallow,
Or on parchment ink turn’d yellow;
Or a tawny speckled pippin,
Shrivell’d with a winter’s keeping.
And, thy beauty thus dispatch’d,
Let me praise thy wit unmatch’d.
Sets of phrases, cut and dry,
Evermore thy tongue supply;
And thy memory is loaded
With old scraps from plays exploded;
Stock’d with repartees and jokes,
Suited to all Christian folks:
Shreds of wit, and senseless rhymes,
Blunder’d out a thousand times;
Nor wilt thou of gifts be sparing,
Which can ne’er be worse for wearing.
Who can believe with common sense,
A bacon slice gives God offence;
Or, how a herring has a charm
Almighty vengeance to disarm?
Wrapp’d up in majesty divine,
Does he regard on what we dine?
[Footnote 1: A French gentleman dining with some
company on a fast-day,
called for some bacon and eggs. The rest were
very angry, and reproved
him for so heinous a sin; whereupon he wrote the following
lines, which
are translated above:
“Peut-on croire avec bon sens
Qu’un lardon le mil
en colere,
Ou, que manger un hareng,
C’est un secret pour
lui plaire?
En sa gloire envelope,
Songe-t-il bien de nos soupes?”—H.]
As Thomas was cudgell’d one day by his wife,
He took to the street, and fled for his life:
Tom’s three dearest friends came by in the squabble,
And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble;
Then ventured to give him some sober advice—
But Tom is a person of honour so nice,
Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning,
That he sent to all three a challenge next morning.
Three duels he fought, thrice ventur’d his life;
Went home, and was cudgell’d again by his wife.
[Footnote 1: Collated with copy transcribed by Stella.—Forster.]
When Margery chastises Ned,
She calls it combing of his head;
A kinder wife was never born:
She combs his head, and finds him horn.
[Footnote 1: From Stella’s copy in the Duke of Bedford’s volume.—Forster.]
Joan cudgels Ned, yet Ned’s a bully;
Will cudgels Bess, yet Will’s a cully.
Die Ned and Bess; give Will to Joan,
She dares not say her life’s her own.
Die Joan and Will; give Bess to Ned,
And every day she combs his head.
Behold, those monarch oaks, that rise
With lofty branches to the skies,
Have large proportion’d roots that grow
With equal longitude below:
Two bards that now in fashion reign,
Most aptly this device explain:
If this to clouds and stars will venture,
That creeps as far to reach the centre;
Or, more to show the thing I mean,
Have you not o’er a saw-pit seen
A skill’d mechanic, that has stood
High on a length of prostrate wood,
Who hired a subterraneous friend
To take his iron by the end;
But which excell’d was never found,
The man above or under ground.
The moral is so plain to hit,
That, had I been the god of wit,
Then, in a saw-pit and wet weather,
Should Young and Philips drudge together.
Under this stone lies Dick and Dolly.
Doll dying first, Dick grew melancholy;
For Dick without Doll thought living a folly.
Dick lost in Doll a wife tender and dear:
But Dick lost by Doll twelve hundred a-year;
A loss that Dick thought no mortal could bear.
Dick sigh’d for his Doll, and his mournful arms
cross’d;
Thought much of his Doll, and the jointure he lost;
The first vex’d him much, the other vex’d
most.
Thus loaded with grief, Dick sigh’d and he cried:
To live without both full three days he tried;
But liked neither loss, and so quietly died.
Dick left a pattern few will copy after:
Then, reader, pray shed some tears of salt water;
For so sad a tale is no subject of laughter.
Meath smiles for the jointure, though gotten so late;
The son laughs, that got the hard-gotten estate;
And Cuffe[3] grins, for getting the Alicant plate.
Here quiet they lie, in hopes to rise one day,
Both solemnly put in this hole on a Sunday,
And here rest——sic transit gloria
mundi!
[Footnote 1: Of Kilbrue, in the county of Meath.—F.]
[Footnote 2: Dorothy, dowager of Edward, Earl
of Meath. She was married to the general in 1716,
and died 10th April, 1728. Her husband survived
her but two days.—F.
The Dolly of this epitaph is the same
lady whom Swift satirized in
his “Conference between Sir Harry Pierce’s
Chariot and Mrs. Dorothy Stopford’s Chair.”
See ante, p.85.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: John Cuffe, of Desart, Esq., married the general’s eldest daughter.—F.]
My latest tribute here I send,
With this let your collection end.
Thus I consign you down to fame
A character to praise or blame:
And if the whole may pass for true,
Contented rest, you have your due.
Give future time the satisfaction,
To leave one handle for detraction.
Grave Dean of St. Patrick’s, how comes it to
pass,
That you, who know music no more than an ass,
That you who so lately were writing of drapiers,
Should lend your cathedral to players and scrapers?
To act such an opera once in a year,
So offensive to every true Protestant ear,
With trumpets, and fiddles, and organs, and singing,
Will sure the Pretender and Popery bring in,
No Protestant Prelate, his lordship or grace,
Durst there show his right, or most reverend face:
How would it pollute their crosiers and rochets,
To listen to minims, and quavers, and crochets!
[The rest is wanting.]
The furniture that best doth please
St. Patrick’s Dean, good Sir, are these:
The knife and fork with which I eat;
And next the pot that boils the meat;
The next to be preferr’d, I think,
Is the glass in which I drink;
The shelves on which my books I keep
And the bed on which I sleep;
An antique elbow-chair between,
Big enough to hold the Dean;
And the stove that gives delight
In the cold bleak wintry night:
To these we add a thing below,
More for use reserved than show:
These are what the Dean do please;
All superfluous are but these.
EPITAPH INSCRIBED ON A MARBLE TABLET, IN BERKELEY CHURCH, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
H. S. E.
[text centered]
CAROLUS Comes de BERKELEY, Vicecomes DURSLEY,
Baro BERKELEY, de Berkeley Cast., MOWBRAY, SEGRAVE,
Et BRUCE, e nobilissimo Ordine Balnei Eques,
Vir ad genus quod spectat et proavos usquequaque nobilis
Et longo si quis alius procerum stemmate editus;
Muniis etiam tarn illustri stirpi dignis insignitus.
Siquidem a GULIELMO III ad ordines foederati Belgii
Ablegatus et Plenipotentiarius Extraordinarius
Rebus, non Britanniae tantum, sed totius fere Europae
(Tunc temporis praesertim arduis) per annos V. incubuit,
Quam felici diligentia, fide quam intemerata,
Ex illo discas, Lector, quod, superstite patre,
In magnatum ordinem adscisci meruerit.
Fuit a sanctioribus consiliis et Regi GULIEL. et ANNAE
Reginae
E proregibus Hiberniae secundus,
Comitatum civitatumque Glocest. et Brist. Dominus
Locumtenens,
Surriae et Glocest. Gustos Rot., Urbis Glocest.
magnus
Senescallus, Arcis sancti de Briavell Castellanus,
Guardianus
Forestae de Dean.
Denique ad Turcarum primum, deinde ad Romam Imperatorem
Cum Legatus Extraordinarius designatus esset,
Quo minus has etiam ornaret provincias
Obstitit adversa corporis valetudo.
Sed restat adhuc, prae quo sordescunt caetera,
Honos verus, stabilis, et vel morti cedere nescius
Quod veritatem evangelicam serio amplexus;
Erga Deum pius, erga pauperes munificus,
Adversus omnes aequus et benevolus,
In Christo jam placide obdormit
Cum eodem olim regnaturus una.
Natus VIII April. MDCXLIX. denatus
XXIV Septem. MDCCX. aetat. suae LXII.
ON FREDERICK, DUKE OF SCHOMBERG[1]
[text centered]
Hic infra situm est corpus
FREDERICI DUCIS DE SCHOMBERG.
ad BUDINDAM occisi, A.D. 1690.
DECANUS et CAPITULUM maximopere etiam
atque etiam petierunt,
UT HAEREDES DUCIS monumentum
In memoriam PARENTIS erigendum curarent:
Sed postquam per epistolas, per amicos,
diu ac saepe orando nil profecere;
Hunc demum lapidem ipsi statuerunt,
Saltem[2] ut scias, hospes,
Ubinam terrarum SCONBERGENSIS cineres
delitescunt
“Plus potuit fama virtutis apud alienos,
Quam sanguinis proximitas apud suos.”
A.D. 1731.
[Footnote 1: The Duke was unhappily killed in crossing the River Boyne, July, 1690, and was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where the dean and chapter erected a small monument to his honour, at their own expense.—N.]
[Footnote 2: The words with which Dr. Swift first concluded the epitaph were, “Saltem ut sciat viator indignabundus, quali in cellula tanti ductoris cineres delitescunt.”—N.]
As Lord Carteret’s residence in Ireland as Viceroy was a series of cabals against the authority of the Prime Minister, he failed not, as well from his love of literature as from his hatred to Walpole, to attach to himself as much as possible the distinguished author of the Drapier Letters. By the interest which Swift soon gained with the Lord-Lieutenant, he was enabled to recommend several friends, whose High Church or Tory principles had hitherto obstructed their preferment. The task of forwarding the views of Delany, in particular, led to several of Swift’s liveliest poetical effusions, while, on the other hand, he was equally active in galling, by his satire, Smedley, and other Whig beaux esprits, who, during this amphibious administration, sought the favour of a literary Lord-Lieutenant, by literary offerings and poetical adulation. These pieces, with one or two connected with the same subject, are here thrown together, as they seem to reflect light upon each other.—Scott.
A lady, wise as well as fair,
Whose conscience always was her care,
Thoughtful upon a point of moment,
Would have the text as well as comment:
So hearing of a grave divine,
She sent to bid him come to dine.
But, you must know he was not quite
So grave as to be unpolite:
Thought human learning would not lessen
The dignity of his profession:
And if you’d heard the man discourse,
Or preach, you’d like him scarce the worse.
He long had bid the court farewell,
Retreating silent to his cell;
Suspected for the love he bore
To one who sway’d some time before;
[Footnote 1: The gentleman who brought the message.—Scott.]
INSCRIBED TO LORD CARTERET[1]
1724
Gratior et pulcro veniens in corpore virtus.—VIRG., Aen., v, 344.
Once on a time, a righteous sage,
Grieved with the vices of the age,
Applied to Jove with fervent prayer—
“O Jove, if Virtue be so fair
As it was deem’d in former days,
By Plato and by Socrates,
Whose beauties mortal eyes escape,
Only for want of outward shape;
Make then its real excellence,
For once the theme of human sense;
So shall the eye, by form confined,
Direct and fix the wandering mind,
And long-deluded mortals see,
With rapture, what they used to flee!”
Jove grants the prayer, gives Virtue birth,
And bids him bless and mend the earth.
Behold him blooming fresh and fair,
Now made—ye gods—a son and heir;
An heir: and, stranger yet to hear,
An heir, an orphan of a peer;[2]
But prodigies are wrought to prove
Nothing impossible to Jove.
Virtue was for this sex design’d,
In mild reproof to womankind;
In manly form to let them see
The loveliness of modesty,
The thousand decencies that shone
With lessen’d lustre in their own;
Which few had learn’d enough to prize,
And some thought modish to despise.
To make his merit more discern’d,
He goes to school—he reads—is
learn’d;
Raised high above his birth, by knowledge,
He shines distinguish’d in a college;
Resolved nor honour, nor estate,
Himself alone should make him great.
Here soon for every art renown’d,
His influence is diffused around;
The inferior youth to learning led,
Less to be famed than to be fed,
Behold the glory he has won,
And blush to see themselves outdone;
And now, inflamed with rival rage,
In scientific strife engage,
Engage; and, in the glorious strife
The arts new kindle into life.
Here would our hero ever dwell,
Fix’d in a lonely learned cell:
Contented to be truly great,
In Virtue’s best beloved retreat;
Contented he—but Fate ordains,
He now shall shine in nobler scenes,
Raised high, like some celestial fire,
To shine the more, still rising higher;
Completely form’d in every part,
To win the soul, and glad the heart.
The powerful voice, the graceful mien,
Lovely alike, or heard, or seen;
The outward form and inward vie,
His soul bright beaming from his eye,
Ennobling every act and air,
With just, and generous, and sincere.
Accomplish’d thus, his next resort
Is to the council and the court,
Where Virtue is in least repute,
And interest the one pursuit;
Where right and wrong are bought and sold,
Barter’d for beauty, and for gold;
Here Manly Virtue, even here,
Pleased in the person of a peer,
A peer; a scarcely bearded youth,
Who talk’d of justice and of truth,
[Footnote 1: See Swift’s “Vindication of Lord Carteret,” “Prose Works,” vii, 227; and his character as Lord Granville in my “Wit and Wisdom of Lord Chesterfield.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: George, the first Lord Carteret, father of the Lord Lieutenant, died when his son was between four and five years of age.—Scott.]
[Footnote 3: Lord Carteret had the honour of mediating peace for Sweden, with Denmark, and with the Czar.—H.]
As a thorn bush, or oaken bough,
Stuck in an Irish cabin’s brow,
Above the door, at country fair,
Betokens entertainment there;
So bays on poets’ brows have been
Set, for a sign of wit within.
And as ill neighbours in the night
Pull down an alehouse bush for spite;
The laurel so, by poets worn,
Is by the teeth of Envy torn;
Envy, a canker-worm, which tears
Those sacred leaves that lightning spares.
And now, t’exemplify this moral:
Tom having earn’d a twig of laurel,
(Which, measured on his head, was found
Not long enough to reach half round,
But, like a girl’s cockade, was tied,
A trophy, on his temple-side,)
Paddy repined to see him wear
This badge of honour in his hair;
And, thinking this cockade of wit
Would his own temples better fit,
Forming his Muse by Smedley’s model,
Lets drive at Tom’s devoted noddle,
Pelts him by turns with verse and prose
Hums like a hornet at his nose.
At length presumes to vent his satire on
The Dean, Tom’s honour’d friend and patron.
The eagle in the tale, ye know,
Teazed by a buzzing wasp below,
Took wing to Jove, and hoped to rest
Securely in the thunderer’s breast:
In vain; even there, to spoil his nod,
The spiteful insect stung the god.
[Footnote 1: For particulars of this publication, the work of two only, Swift and Sheridan, see “Prose Works,” vol. ix, p. 311. The satire seems To have provoked retaliation from Tighe, Prendergast, Smedley, and even from Delany. Hence this poem.—W. E. B.]
AN EPISTLE TO HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN, LORD CARTERET BY DR. DELANY. 1729[1]
Credis ob haec me, Pastor, opes fortasse
rogare,
Propter quae vulgus crassaque turba rogat.
MART., Epig., lib. ix, 22.
Thou wise and learned ruler of our isle,
Whose guardian care can all her griefs beguile;
When next your generous soul shall condescend
T’ instruct or entertain your humble friend;
Whether, retiring from your weighty charge,
On some high theme you learnedly enlarge;
Of all the ways of wisdom reason well,
How Richelieu rose, and how Sejanus fell:
Or, when your brow less thoughtfully unbends,
Circled with Swift and some delighted friends;
When, mixing mirth and wisdom with your wine,
Like that your wit shall flow, your genius shine:
Nor with less praise the conversation guide,
Than in the public councils you decide:
Or when the Dean, long privileged to rail,
Asserts his friend with more impetuous zeal;
You hear (whilst I sit by abash’d and mute)
With soft concessions shortening the dispute;
[Footnote 1: Delany, by the patronage of Carteret, and probably through the intercession of Swift, had obtained a small living in the north of Ireland, worth about one hundred pounds a-year, with the chancellorship of Christ-Church, and a prebend’s stall in St. Patrick’s, neither of which exceeded the same annual amount. Yet a clamour was raised among the Whigs, on account of the multiplication of his preferments; and a charge was founded against the Lord-Lieutenant of extravagant favour to a Tory divine, which Swift judged worthy of an admirable ironical confutation in his “Vindication of Lord Carteret.” It appears, from the following verses, that Delany was far from being of the same opinion with those who thought he was too amply provided for.—Scott. See the “Vindication,” “Prose Works,” vii, p. 244.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Which, according to Swift’s calculation, in his “Vindication of Lord Carteret,” amounted only to L300 a year. “Prose Works,” vol. vii, p. 245.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: A free school at Inniskillen, founded by Erasmus Smith, Esq.—Scott.]
[Footnote 4: Sir Ralph Gore, who had a villa in the lake of Erin.—F.]
[Footnote 5: Symmachus, Bishop of Rome, 499, made a decree, that no man should solicit for ecclesiastical preferment before the death of the incumbent.—H.]
FROM A CERTAIN DOCTOR TO A CERTAIN GREAT LORD.
BEING A CHRISTMAS-BOX FOR DR. DELANY
As Jove will not attend on less,
When things of more importance press:
You can’t, grave sir, believe it hard,
That you, a low Hibernian bard,
Should cool your heels a while, and wait
Unanswer’d at your patron’s gate;
And would my lord vouchsafe to grant
This one poor humble boon I want,
Free leave to play his secretary,
As Falstaff acted old king Harry;[1]
I’d tell of yours in rhyme and print,
Folks shrug, and cry, “There’s nothing
in’t.”
And, after several readings over,
It shines most in the marble cover.
How could so fine a taste dispense
With mean degrees of wit and sense?
Nor will my lord so far beguile
The wise and learned of our isle;
[Footnote 1: “King Henry the Fourth,” Part I, Act ii, Scene 4.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Adapted from Hor., “Epist. ad Pisones,” 140.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: See the “Petition to the Duke of Grafton,” post, p. 345.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Alluding to Dr. Delany’s ambitious choice of fixing in the island of the Lake of Erin, where Sir Ralph Gore had a villa.—Scott.]
[Footnote 5: When residing at Chester, he obliged eight of his tributary princes to row him in a barge upon the Dee. Hume’s “History of England,” vol. i, p. 106.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: Which had suddenly dried up. See post, vol. ii, “Verses on the sudden drying up of St. Patrick’s Well, near Trinity College, Dublin.”—W.E.B.]
[Footnote 7: Hor., “Epist.,” lib.
I, xvii, 50.
“Sed tacitus pasci si corvus posset,
haberet
Plus dapis, et rixae multo minus invidiaeque.”
I append the original, for the sake of Swift’s
very free
rendering.—W. E. B.]
A LIBEL
ON THE REVEREND DR. DELANY, AND HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN,
LORD CARTERET
1729
Deluded mortals, whom the great
Choose for companions tete-a-tete;
Who at their dinners, en famille,
Get leave to sit whene’er you will;
Then boasting tell us where you dined,
And how his lordship was so kind;
How many pleasant things he spoke;
And how you laugh’d at every joke:
Swear he’s a most facetious man;
That you and he are cup and can;
You travel with a heavy load,
[Footnote 1: Earl of Halifax; see Johnson’s “Life of Montague.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: The whole of this paragraph is unjust both to Halifax and Congreve; for immediately after the production of Congreve’s first play, “The Old Bachelor,” Halifax gave him a place in the Pipe Office, and another in the Customs, of L600 a year. Ultimately he had at least four sinecure appointments which together afforded him some L1,200 a year. See Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” edit. Cunningham.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: William, Duke of Cumberland, son to George II, “The Butcher.”]
[Footnote 4: See ante, p. 215, note.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: See Johnson’s “Life of Addison.”—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: See “Prologue to the Satires,” 390 to the end.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 7: “So when an angel by divine command,” etc. ADDISON’S Campaign.]
TO DR. DELANY ON THE LIBELS WRITTEN AGAINST HIM. 1729
—Tanti tibi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi quodque in mare volvitur aurum.—Juv.
iii, 54.
As some raw youth in country bred,
To arms by thirst of honour led,
When at a skirmish first he hears
The bullets whistling round his ears,
Will duck his head aside, will start,
And feel a trembling at his heart,
Till ’scaping oft without a wound
Lessens the terror of the sound;
Fly bullets now as thick as hops,
He runs into a cannon’s chops.
An author thus, who pants for fame,
Begins the world with fear and shame;
When first in print you see him dread
[Footnote 1: The Irish Parliament met at the Blue-Boys Hospital, while the new Parliament-house was building.—Swift.]
[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Walpole.]
[Footnote 3: Pallas.]
To form a just and finish’d piece,
Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece,
Whose godships are in chief request,
And fit your present subject best;
And, should it be your hero’s case,
To have both male and female race,
Your business must be to provide
A score of goddesses beside.
Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn,
For which they bring a modern pattern;
Because they might have heard of one,[1]
Who often long’d to eat his son;
But this I think will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint him son of Jove,
Who met his mother in a grove;
To this we freely shall consent,
Well knowing what the poets meant;
And in their sense, ’twixt me and you,
It may be literally true.[2]
Next, as the laws of verse require,
He must be greater than his sire;
For Jove, as every schoolboy knows,
Was able Saturn to depose;
And sure no Christian poet breathing
Would be more scrupulous than a Heathen;
Or, if to blasphemy it tends.
That’s but a trifle among friends.
Your hero now another Mars is,
Makes mighty armies turn their a—s:
Behold his glittering falchion mow
Whole squadrons at a single blow;
While Victory, with wings outspread,
Flies, like an eagle, o’er his head;
His milk-white steed upon its haunches,
Or pawing into dead men’s paunches;
As Overton has drawn his sire,
Still seen o’er many an alehouse fire.
Then from his arm hoarse thunder rolls,
As loud as fifty mustard bowls;
For thunder still his arm supplies,
And lightning always in his eyes.
They both are cheap enough in conscience,
And serve to echo rattling nonsense.
The rumbling words march fierce along,
Made trebly dreadful in your song.
Sweet poet, hired for birth-day rhymes,
To sing of wars, choose peaceful times.
What though, for fifteen years and more,
Janus has lock’d his temple-door;
Though not a coffeehouse we read in
Has mention’d arms on this side Sweden;
Nor London Journals, nor the Postmen,
Though fond of warlike lies as most men;
Thou still with battles stuff thy head full:
For, must thy hero not be dreadful?
Dismissing Mars, it next must follow
Your conqueror is become Apollo:
That he’s Apollo is as plain as
That Robin Walpole is Maecenas;
But that he struts, and that he squints,
You’d know him by Apollo’s prints.
Old Phoebus is but half as bright,
For yours can shine both day and night.
The first, perhaps, may once an age
Inspire you with poetic rage;
Your Phoebus Royal, every day,
[Footnote 1: Alluding to the disputes between George I, and his son, while the latter was Prince of Wales.—Scott.]
[Footnote 2: The Electress Sophia, mother of George II, was supposed to have had an intrigue with Count Konigsmark.—Scott.]
[Footnote 3: The name of the goat with whose milk Jupiter was fed, and one of whose horns was placed among the stars as the Cornu Amaltheae, or Cornu Copiae. Ovid, “Fasti,” lib. v.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: The ancient city in Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: A famous Low Church divine, a favourite with Queen Caroline, distinguished as a man of science and a scholar. He became Rector of St. James’, Piccadilly, but his sermons and his theological writings were not considered quite orthodox. See note in Carruthers’ edition of Pope, “Moral Essays,” Epist. iv.—W. E. B.]
THE PHEASANT AND THE LARK
A FABLE BY DR. DELANY
1730
—quis iniquae Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se?—_-Juv._ i, 30.
In ancient times, as bards indite,
(If clerks have conn’d the records right.)
A peacock reign’d, whose glorious sway
His subjects with delight obey:
His tail was beauteous to behold,
Replete with goodly eyes and gold;
Fair emblem of that monarch’s guise,
Whose train at once is rich and wise;
And princely ruled he many regions,
And statesmen wise, and valiant legions.
A pheasant lord,[1] above the rest,
With every grace and talent blest,
Was sent to sway, with all his skill,
The sceptre of a neighbouring hill.[2]
No science was to him unknown,
For all the arts were all his own:
In all the living learned read,
Though more delighted with the dead:
For birds, if ancient tales say true,
Had then their Popes and Homers too;
Could read and write in prose and verse,
And speak like ***, and build like Pearce.[3]
He knew their voices, and their wings,
Who smoothest soars, who sweetest sings;
Who toils with ill-fledged pens to climb,
And who attain’d the true sublime.
Their merits he could well descry,
He had so exquisite an eye;
And when that fail’d to show them clear,
He had as exquisite an ear;
It chanced as on a day he stray’d
Beneath an academic shade,
He liked, amidst a thousand throats,
The wildness of a Woodlark’s[4] notes,
And search’d, and spied, and seized his game,
And took him home, and made him tame;
Found him on trial true and able,
So cheer’d and fed him at his table.
Here some shrewd critic finds I’m
caught,
And cries out, “Better fed than taught”—Then
jests on game and tame, and reads,
And jests, and so my tale proceeds.
Long had he studied in the wood,
Conversing with the wise and good:
His soul with harmony inspired,
With love of truth and virtue fired:
His brethren’s good and Maker’s praise
Were all the study of his lays;
Were all his study in retreat,
And now employ’d him with the great.
His friendship was the sure resort
Of all the wretched at the court;
But chiefly merit in distress
His greatest blessing was to bless.—
This fix’d him in his patron’s
breast,
But fired with envy all the rest:
I mean that noisy, craving crew,
Who round the court incessant flew,
And prey’d like rooks, by pairs and dozens,
[Footnote 1: Lord Carteret, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.—F.]
[Footnote 2: Ireland.—F]
[Footnote 3: A famous modern architect, who built the Parliament-house in Dublin.—F.]
[Footnote 4: Dr. Delany.—F.]
[Footnote 5: Dr. T——r.—F.]
[Footnote 6: Right Hon. Rich. Tighe.—F.]
[Footnote 7: Dr. Sheridan.—F.]
[Footnote 8: Dean Swift.—F.]
ANSWER TO DR. DELANY’S FABLE OF THE PHEASANT AND LARK. 1730
In ancient times, the wise were able
In proper terms to write a fable:
Their tales would always justly suit
The characters of every brute.
The ass was dull, the lion brave,
The stag was swift, the fox a knave;
The daw a thief, the ape a droll,
The hound would scent, the wolf would prowl:
A pigeon would, if shown by AEsop,
Fly from the hawk, or pick his pease up.
Far otherwise a great divine
Has learnt his fables to refine;
He jumbles men and birds together,
As if they all were of a feather:
You see him first the Peacock bring,
Against all rules, to be a king;
That in his tail he wore his eyes,
By which he grew both rich and wise.
Now, pray, observe the doctor’s choice,
A Peacock chose for flight and voice;
Did ever mortal see a peacock
Attempt a flight above a haycock?
And for his singing, doctor, you know
Himself complain’d of it to Juno.
He squalls in such a hellish noise,
He frightens all the village boys.
This Peacock kept a standing force,
In regiments of foot and horse:
Had statesmen too of every kind,
Who waited on his eyes behind;
And this was thought the highest post;
For, rule the rump, you rule the roast.
The doctor names but one at present,
And he of all birds was a Pheasant.
This Pheasant was a man of wit,
Could read all books were ever writ;
And, when among companions privy,
Could quote you Cicero and Livy.
[Footnote 1: Lord Allen, the same who is meant by Traulus.—F.]
[Footnote 2: A Dublin gazetteer.—F.]
[Footnote 3: See A New Song on a Seditious Pamphlet.—F.]
Non domus et fundus, non aeris acervus et auri.—HOR. Epist., I, ii, 47.
It was, my lord, the dexterous shift
Of t’other Jonathan, viz. Swift,
But now St. Patrick’s saucy dean,
With silver verge, and surplice clean,
Of Oxford, or of Ormond’s grace,
In looser rhyme to beg a place.
A place he got, yclept a stall,
And eke a thousand pounds withal;
And were he less a witty writer,
He might as well have got a mitre.
Thus I, the Jonathan of Clogher,
In humble lays my thanks to offer,
Approach your grace with grateful heart,
My thanks and verse both void of art,
Content with what your bounty gave,
No larger income do I crave:
Rejoicing that, in better times,
Grafton requires my loyal lines.
Proud! while my patron is polite,
I likewise to the patriot write!
Proud! that at once I can commend
King George’s and the Muses’ friend!
Endear’d to Britain; and to thee
(Disjoin’d, Hibernia, by the sea)
Endear’d by twice three anxious years,
Employ’d in guardian toils and cares;
By love, by wisdom, and by skill;
For he has saved thee ’gainst thy will.
But where shall Smedley make his nest,
And lay his wandering head to rest?
Where shall he find a decent house,
To treat his friends and cheer his spouse?
O! tack, my lord, some pretty cure,
In wholesome soil, and ether pure;
The garden stored with artless flowers,
In either angle shady bowers.
No gay parterre, with costly green,
Within the ambient hedge be seen:
Let Nature freely take her course,
Nor fear from me ungrateful force;
No shears shall check her sprouting vigour,
Nor shape the yews to antic figure:
A limpid brook shall trout supply,
In May, to take the mimic fly;
Round a small orchard may it run,
Whose apples redden to the sun.
Let all be snug, and warm, and neat;
For fifty turn’d a safe retreat,
A little Euston[2] may it be,
Euston I’ll carve on every tree.
But then, to keep it in repair,
My lord—twice fifty pounds a-year
Will barely do; but if your grace
Could make them hundreds—charming place!
Thou then wouldst show another face.
Clogher! far north, my lord, it lies,
’Midst snowy hills, inclement skies:
One shivers with the arctic wind,
One hears the polar axis grind.
Good John[3] indeed, with beef and claret,
Makes the place warm, that one may bear it.
He has a purse to keep a table,
And eke a soul as hospitable.
My heart is good; but assets fail,
To fight with storms of snow and hail.
Besides, the country’s thin of people,
Who seldom meet but at the steeple:
The strapping dean, that’s gone to Down,
Ne’er named the thing without a frown,
When, much fatigued with sermon study,
He felt his brain grow dull and muddy;
No fit companion could be found,
To push the lazy bottle round:
[Footnote 1: This piece is repeatedly and always satirically alluded to in the preceding poems.—Scott.]
[Footnote 2: The name of the Duke’s seat in Suffolk.—N.]
[Footnote 3: Bishop Sterne.—H.]
[Footnote 4: The bishopric of Connor is united to that of Down; but there are two deans.—Scott.]
THE DUKE’S ANSWER BY DR. SWIFT
Dear Smed, I read thy brilliant lines,
Where wit in all its glory shines;
Where compliments, with all their pride,
Are by their numbers dignified:
I hope to make you yet as clean
As that same Viz, St. Patrick’s dean.
I’ll give thee surplice, verge, and stall,
And may be something else withal;
And, were you not so good a writer,
I should present you with a mitre.
Write worse, then, if you can—be wise-
Believe me, ’tis the way to rise.
Talk not of making of thy nest:
Ah! never lay thy head to rest!
That head so well with wisdom fraught,
That writes without the toil of thought!
While others rack their busy brains,
You are not in the least at pains.
Down to your dean’ry now repair,
And build a castle in the air.
I’m sure a man of your fine sense
Can do it with a small expense.
There your dear spouse and you together
May breathe your bellies full of ether,
When Lady Luna[1] is your neighbour,
She’ll help your wife when she’s in labour,
Well skill’d in midwife artifices,
For she herself oft falls in pieces.
There you shall see a raree show
Will make you scorn this world below,
When you behold the milky-way,
As white as snow, as bright as day;
The glittering constellations roll
About the grinding arctic pole;
The lovely tingling in your ears,
[Footnote 1: Diana, also called Lucina, for the reason given in the text.—W. E. B.]
PARODY ON A CHARACTER OF DEAN SMEDLEY, WRITTEN IN LATIN BY HIMSELF[1]
The very reverend Dean Smedley,
Of dulness, pride, conceit, a medley,
Was equally allow’d to shine
As poet, scholar, and divine;
With godliness could well dispense,
Would be a rake, but wanted sense;
Would strictly after Truth inquire,
Because he dreaded to come nigh her.
For Liberty no champion bolder,
He hated bailiffs at his shoulder.
To half the world a standing jest,
A perfect nuisance to the rest;
From many (and we may believe him)
Had the best wishes they could give him.
To all mankind a constant friend,
Provided they had cash to lend.
One thing he did before he went hence,
He left us a laconic sentence,
By cutting of his phrase, and trimming
To prove that bishops were old women.
Poor Envy durst not show her phiz,
She was so terrified at his.
He waded, without any shame,
Through thick and thin to get a name,
Tried every sharping trick for bread,
And after all he seldom sped.
When Fortune favour’d, he was nice;
He never once would cog the dice;
But, if she turn’d against his play,
He knew to stop a quatre trois.
Now sound in mind, and sound in corpus,
(Says he) though swell’d like any porpoise,
He hies from hence at forty-four
(But by his leave he sinks a score)
To the East Indies, there to cheat,
Till he can purchase an estate;
Where, after he has fill’d his chest,
He’ll mount his tub, and preach his best,
And plainly prove, by dint of text,
This world is his, and theirs the next.
Lest that the reader should not know
The bank where last he set his toe,
’Twas Greenwich. There he took a ship,
And gave his creditors the slip.
But lest chronology should vary,
Upon the ides of February,
In seventeen hundred eight-and-twenty,
To Fort St. George, a pedler went he.
Ye Fates, when all he gets is spent,
RETURN HIM BEGGAR AS HE WENT!
[Footnote 1: INSCRIPTION, BY DEAN SMEDLEY, 1729.
[text centered]
Reverendus Decanus, JONATHAN SMEDLEY,
Theologia instructus, in Poesi exercitatus,
Politioribus excultus literis;
Parce pius, impius minime;
Veritatis Indagator, Libertatis Assertor;
Subsannatus multis, fastiditus quibusdam,
Exoptatus plurimis, omnibus amicus,
Auctor hujus sententiae, PATRES SUNT VETULAE.
Per laudem et vituperium, per famam atque infamiam;
Utramque fortunam, variosque expertus casus,
Mente Sana, sano corpore, volens, laetusque,
Lustris plus quam XI numeratis,
Ad rem familiarem restaurandam augendamque,
Et ad Evangelium Indos inter Orientales praedicandum,
_Grevae_, idibus Februarii, navem ascendens,
Arcemque _Sancti_ petens _Georgii_, vernale per aequinoxium,
Anno Aerae Christianae MDCCXXVIII,
Transfretavit.
Fata vocant—revocentque precamur.]