And change it, to fulfil the curse
Of Adam's fall, for new, though worse:
To make their breeches fall and rise
From middle legs to middle thighs,
The tropics between which the hose
Move always as the fashion goes:
Sometimes wear hats like pyramids,
And sometimes flat like pipkins' lids;
With broad brims sometimes like umbrellas,
And sometimes narrow as Punchinello's:
In coldest weather go unbraced,

And close in hot, as if th' were laced:
Sometimes with sleeves and bodies wide,
And sometimes straiter than a hide:
Wear peruques, and with false gray hairs
Disguise the true ones, and their years;
That, when they're modish, with the young
The old may seem so in the throng:
And as some pupils have been known,
In time to put their tutors down ;
So ours are often found t' have got
More tricks, than ever they were taught:
With sly intrigues and artifices

Usurp their poxes and their vices;

With garnitures upon their shoes,
Make good their claim to gouty toes;

By sudden starts, and shrugs, and groans,
Pretend to achès in their bones,

To scabs and botches, and lay trains
Το prove their running of the reins;
And, lest they should seem destitute
Of any mange that's in repute,
And be behind hand with the mode,
Will swear to crystalline and node;

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And, that they may not lose their right,
Make it appear how they came by 't :
Disdain the country where th' were born,
As bastards their own mothers scorn;

And that which brought them forth contemn,
As it deserves, for bearing them :
Admire whate'er they find abroad,
But nothing here, though e'er so good:
Be natives wheresoe'er they come,
And only foreigners at home;

To which they 'ppear so far estranged,
As if they'd been i' th' cradle changed;
Or from beyond the seas convey'd
By witches-not born here, but laid;
Or by outlandish fathers were
Begotten on their mothers here;
And therefore justly slight that nation,
Where they've so mongrel a relation;
And seek out other climates, where
They may degen'rate less than here;

As woodcocks, when their plumes are grown,

Borne on the wind's wings and their own,

Forsake the countries where they're hatch'd,

And seek out others, to be catch'd.

So they more natʼrally may please
And humour their own geniuses,
Apply to all things, which they see
With their own fancies best agree;
No matter how ridiculous,
'Tis all one, if it be in use;
For nothing can be bad or good,
But as 'tis in or out of mode;
And as the nations are that use it,
All ought to practise or refuse it:

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T'observe their postures, move, and stand, 85
As they give out the word o' command;

To learn the dullest of their whims,
And how to wear their very limbs ;
To turn and manage every part,
Like puppets, by their rules of art ;
To shrug discreetly, act, and tread,
And politicly shake the head,
Until the ignorant (that guess
At all things by th' appearances)
To see how Art and Nature strive,
Believe them really alive;

And that they're very men, not things
That move by puppet-work and springs;
When truly all their feats have been
As well perform'd by motion-men,
And the worst drolls of Punchinellos
Were much th' ingeniouser fellows;
For, when they're perfect in their lesson,
Th' hypothesis grows out of season,
And, all their labour lost, they're fain
To learn new, and begin again:
To talk eternally and loud,
And altogether in a crowd,

No matter what; for in the noise
No man minds what another says:
To assume a confidence beyond
Mankind, for solid and profound;
And still the less and less they know,
The greater dose of that allow :
Decry all things; for to be wise
Is not to know, but to despise;
And deep judicious confidence
Has still the odds of wit and sense,

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And can pretend a title to

Far greater things than they can do:
T'adorn their English with French scraps,
And give their very language claps ;
To jernie rightly, and renounce

I' th' pure and most approved of tones,
And, while they idly think t' enrich,
Adulterate their native speech;

For though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetoric

Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
To smatter French is meritorious;
And to forget their mother-tongue,
Or purposely to speak it wrong,
A hopeful sign of parts and wit,
And that they improve and benefit ;
As those that have been taught amiss
In liberal arts and sciences,

Must all they 'ad learnt before in vain
Forget quite, and begin again.

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TO THE HONOURABLE EDWARD

HOWARD, ESQ.1

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UPON HIS INCOMPARABLE POEM ON THE BRITISH PRINCES."

SIR,-You've obliged the British nation more
Than all their bards could ever do before,

Edward Howard, Esq.:' most of the celebrated wits in Charles the Second's reign addressed this gentleman, in a bantering way, upon his poem called The British Princes,' and, among the rest, Butler.

And at your own charge, monuments more hard
Than brass or marble, to their fame have rear'd:
For as all warlike nations take delight
To hear how brave their ancestors could fight,
You have advanced to wonder their renown,
And no less virtuously improved your own.
For 'twill be doubted whether you do write,
Or they have acted, at a nobler height.
You of their ancient Princes have retrieved
More than the ages knew in which they lived;
Described their customs, and their rites anew,
Better than all their Druids ever knew ;
Unriddled their dark oracles, as well

As those themselves that made them could foretell.
For as the Britons long have hoped in vain,
Arthur would come to govern them again;
You have fulfill'd that prophecy alone,
And in this poem placed him on his throne.
Such magic pow'r has your prodigious pen
To raise the dead, and give new life to men.
Make rival princes meet in arms and love,
Whom distant ages did so far remove :
For as eternity has neither past,

Nor future (authors say), nor first, nor last,
But is all instant; your eternal Muse
All ages can to any one reduce.

Then why should you, whose miracle of art
Can life at pleasure to the dead impart,
Trouble in vain your better-busied head

T'observe what time they lived in, or were dead?
For since you have such arbitrary power,
It were defect in judgment to go lower,
Or stoop to things so pitifully lewd,
As use to take the vulgar latitude.

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