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Unown'd, unhonour'd as my friend ?
No : by my deity. I swear,
Nor Mall the vow be lost in air;
While

you, and millions such as you, Are funk for ever from my view, And loft in:kindred-darkness lye,

This good old man Mall never die : No matter where I place his name, His love of learning lhall be fame.

TYBURNE

T Y' BURN:

TO

Τ Η Ε

M A RIN E SOCIETY.

A D V E R T I SE M E N T.

THE design of the Marine Society is in itself fo laudable, and has been pursued fo successfully for the public good, that I thought it merited a public ack nowledgment. But, to take off from the fatness of a direct compliment, I have through the whole poem loaded their institution with such reproaches as will show, I hope, in the most striking manner, its real utility.

By authentic accounts, it appears, that from the first rise of this Society to the present year 1762, they have colle&ted, clothed, and fitted out for the sea-service, 5452 grown men, 4511 boys; in all 9963 persons: whom they have thus not only saved, in all probability, from perdition and infamy, but rendered them ufeful members of the community; at a time too when their country stood most in need of their affistance.

I

T has been, all examples show it,

The privilege of every poet,
From ancient down through modern time,
To bid dead matter live in rhyme;

With wit enliven senseless rocks;
Draw repartee from wooden blocks;
Make buzzards senators of note,
And rooks harangue, that geefe may vote.

These moral fictions, first design'd
To mend and mortify mankind,
Old Æfop, as our children know,
Taught twice ten hundred years ago.
His fly, upon the chariot-wheel,
Could all a statelman's merit feel;
And, to its own importance jut,
Exclaim, with Bufo, What a dust!
His horse-dung, when the flood ran high,
In Colon's air and accent cry,
While tumbling down the turbid stream,
Lord love us, how we apples fwim!

But farther initances to cite,
Would tire the hearers patience qnite,
No : what their numbers and their worth,
How these admire, while those hold forth,
From Hide-Park on to Clerkenwell,
Let clubs, let coffee-houses tell;
Where England, through the world renown'd,
In all its wisdom may be found:
While I, for ornament and use,
An orator of wood produce.

Why should the gentle reader stare ?
Are wooden orators fo rare
Saint Stephen's Chapel, Rufus' Hall,
That hears them in the pleader bawl,

That

That hears them in the patriot thunder,
Can tell if such things are a wonder.
So can Saint Dunstan's in the West,
When good Romaine" harangues his beft,
And tells his staring congregation,
That sober sense is sure damnation ;
That Newton's guilt was worse than treason,
For using, what God gave him, reason.

A pox of all this prefacing!
Smart Balbus cries : come, name the things

That such there are we all agree :
What is this wood? Why-Tyburn-tree.

Hear then this reverend oak harangue;
Who makes men do fo, ere they hang.

Patibulum loquitur.
« Each thing whatever, when aggriev'd,
YOf right complains, to be reliev'd.
When rogues so rais'd the price of wheat,

That few folks could afford to eat,
(Just as, when doctors' fees run high,
Few patients can afford to die)
The poor durft into murmurs break;
For losers must have leave to speak :
Then, from reproaching, fell to mawling
Each neighbour-rogue they found foreftalling.
As these again, their knaves and setters,
Durst vent complaints against their betters;
Whose only crime was in defeating
Their schemes of growing rich by cheating

So,

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So, shall not I my wrongs relate,
An injur'd Minister of state ?
The finisher of care and pain
May, fure, with better grace complain,
For reasons no less strong and true,
Marine Society, of you!
Of you, as every carman knows,
My latest and most fatal foes.

My property you bafely steal,
Which ev’n a British oak can feel;
Feel and resent! what wonder then
It should be felt by British men,
When France, insulting, durft invade
Their clearest property of trade ?
For which both nations, at the bar
Of that supreme tribunal, war,
To show their reafons have agreed,
And lawyers, by ten thousands, fee'd ;
Who now, for legal quirks and puns,
Plead with the rhetoric of great guns ;
And each his client's cause maintains,
By knocking out th’ opponent's brains :
While Europe all-but we adjourn
This wise digression, and return.

Your rules and statutes have undone me :
My surelt cards begin to fhun me.
My native subjects dare rebel,
Those who were born for me and hell:
And, but for you, the scoundrel-line
Had, every mother's son, died mine.

X

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