With show of love, at least with hopeful proof 560 570 Soon follows, and the curb of conscience snapt, The laity run wild. But do they now? Note their extravagance, and be convinced. As nations ignorant of God, contrive A wooden one, so we, no longer taught 575 By monitors that mother church supplies, Now make our own. Posterity will ask (If e'er posterity see verse of mine,) Some fifty or an hundred lustrums hence, What was a monitor in George's days? 580 My very gentle reader, yet unborn, Of whom I needs must augur better things, Since Heaven would sure grow weary of a world Productive only of a race like us, A monitor is wood. Plank shaven thin. 585 We wear it at our backs. There closely braced And neatly fitted, it compresses hard 24 Flaunts and goes down an unregarded thing. Pope. Moral Essuys, ii. 252. The prominent and most unsightly bones, 590 605 Variety's the very spice of life That gives it all its flavour. We have run Through every change that fancy at the loom Exhausted, has had genius to supply, And studious of mutation still, discard A real elegance a little used For monstrous novelty and strange disguise. We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean. Puts out our fires, 615 And introduces hunger, frost, and woe, Where peace and hospitality might reign. . What man that lives and that knows how to live, Would fail to exhibit at the public shows 610 A form as splendid as the proudest there, 620 Though appetite raise outcries at the cost ? A man of the town dines late, but soon enough With reasonable forecast and dispatch, To insure a side-box station at half price. You think perhaps, so delicate his dress, 625 His daily fare as delicate. Alas! He picks clean teeth, and busy as he seems With an old tavern quill, is hungry yet. The rout is folly's circle which she draws With magic wand. So potent is the spell, 630 That none decoy'd into that fatal ring, Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape. There we grow early grey, but never wise ; There form connexions, and acquire no friend; Solicit pleasure hopeless of success; 635 Waste youth in occupations only fit For second childhood, and devote old age To sports which only childhood could excuse 25. There they are happiest who dissemble best Their weariness; and they the most polite 640 Who squander time and treasure with a smile, Though at their own destruction. She that asks Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all, And hates their coming. They, what can they less ? 25 At last to follies youth could scarce defend, It grows their age's prudence to pretend; Pope. Moral Essays. Epist. ii. 235. Make just reprisals, and with cringe and shrug 645 650 655 Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their wives, On Fortune's velvet altar offering up Their last poor pittance ;—Fortune most severe Of goddesses yet known, and costlier far Than all that held their routs in heathen heaven.So fare we in this prison-house the world: 661 And 'tis a fearful spectacle to see So many maniacs dancing in their chains. They gaze upon the links that hold them fast With eyes of anguish, execrate their lot, 665 Then shake them in despair, and dance again. Now basket up the family of plagues That waste our vitals. Peculation, sale Of honour, perjury, corruption, frauds By forgery, by subterfuge of law, 670 By tricks and lies as numerous and as keen As the necessities their authors feel ; 26 What though the dome be wanting, whose proud gate Each morning vomits out the sneaking crowd Thomson. Autumn, 1243. 675 680 685 Then cast them closely bundled, every brat In colleges and halls, in ancient days, 690 695 700 |