His cause ne'er fails; for whatsoe'er he spends,
There's still God's plenty for himself and friends.
Should men be rated by poętic rules,
Lord! what a poll would there be rais'd from fools!
Mean time poor wit prohibited must lie,
As if 'twere made some French commodity.
Fools you will have, and rais'd at vast expence ;
And yet, as foon as seen, they give offence.
Time was, when none would cry, That oaf was me;
But now you ftrive about your pedigree.
Bauble and cap no fooner are thrown down,
But there's a muss of more than half the town.
Each one will challenge a child's part at least;
A fign the family is well increast.
Of foreign cattle there's no longer need,
When we're fupply'd so fast with English breed.
Well! flourish, countrymen, drink, swear, and roar;
Let ev'ry free-born subject keep his whore,
And wand'ring in the wilderness about,
At end of forty years not wear her out.
But when you fsee these pictures, let none dare
To own beyond a limb or single share :
For where the punk is common, he's a fot,
Who needs will father what the parith got.
H'unhappy man, who once has trail'd a pen,
Lives not to please himself, but other men;
Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood,
Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.
What praise soe'er the poetry deserve,
Yet ev'ry fool can bid the poet starve.
That fumbling letcher to revenge is bent,
Because he thinks himself or whore is meant:
Name but a cuckold, all the city swarms;
From Leadenhall to Ludgate is in arms:
Were there no fear of Antichrist or France,
In the blest time poor poets live by chance.
Either you come not here, or, as you grace
Some old acquaintance, drop into the place,
Careless and qualmish with a yawning face :
You fleep o'er wit, and by my troth you may;
Most of your talents lie another way.
You love to hear of some prodigious tale,
The bell that toll'd alone, or Irish whale.
News is your food, and you enough provide,
Both for yourselves, and all the world befide.
One theatre there is of vast refort,
Which whilome of Requests was called the Court;
But now the great Exchange of News 'tis hight,
And full of hum and buz from noon 'till night.
Up stairs and down you run, as for a race,
And each man wears three nations in his face.
So big you look, tho claret you retrench,
That, arm'd with bottled ale, you huff the French.
But all your entertainment still is fed
By villains in your own dull ifsland bred.
Would you return to us, we dare engage
To shew you better rogues upon the stage.
You know no poison but plain ratsbane here;
Death's more refin'd, and better bred elsewhere.
They have a civil way in Italy
By smelling a perfume to make you die;
A trick would make you lay your snuff-box by.
Murder's a trade, so known and practis'd there,
That 'tis infallible as is the chair.
But, mark their feast, you shall behold such pranks;
The pope says grace, but 'tis the devil gives thanks.
HESPIS, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes, sung ballads from a cart.
To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
Dicitur & plauftris vexisse Poemata Thespis.
But Eschylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank that trod the stage :
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
Of toffing poets in a tennis-court.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation :
And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
And ev'ry prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
For difoelieving of a Popish-plot :
Your poets shall be us'd like infidels,
And worst the author of the Oxford bells :
Nor should we 'scape the sentence, to depart,
E'en in our first original, a cart.
No zealous brother there would want a stone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt pope Joan :
Religion, learning, wit, would be fuppreft,
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast :
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
As chief supporters of the triple crown;
And Ariftotle's for destruction ripe ;
Some fay, he call'd the foul an organ-pipe,
Which, by fome little help of derivation,
Shall then be prov'd a pipe of inspiration.
F yet there be a few that take delight
In that which reasonable men should write;
To them alone we dedicate this night.
The rest may fatisfy their curious itch
With city-gazettes, or some factious speech,
Or whate'er libel, for the public good,
Stirs up the shrove-tide crew to fire and blood.
Remove your benches, you apoftate pit,
And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;
Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,
Or see what's worse, the devil and the pope.
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