For a plump cook and plumper reck'nings known::
Raised high, the fair inviting bird you see,
In all his milky plumes, and feather'd lechery;
In whose soft down immortal Jove was drest,
When the fair nymph the wily god possest;
Still in which shape he stands to mortal view,
Patron of whoring, and of toping too.
Here gravely meet the worthy sons of zeal,
To wet their pious clay, and decently to rail :
Immortal courage from the claret springs,
To censure heroes, and the acts of kings:
Young doctors of the gown here shrewdly shew
How grace divine can ebb, and spleen can flow;
The pious red-coat most devoutly swears,
Drinks to the Church, but ticks on his arrears;
The gentle beau, too, joins in wise debate,
Adjusts his cravat, and reforms the state.
As when the sun, on a returning flood,
Warms into life the animated mud;
Strange wondrous insects on the shore remain,
And a new race of vermin fills the plain :
So from the excrement of zeal we find,
A slimy race, but of the modish kind,
Crawl from the filth, and kindled into man,
Make up the members of the
sage divan.
Of these the famed Borachio is the chief,
A son of pudding and eternal beef.
The jovial god, with all-inspiring grace,
Sits on the scarlet honours of his face;
His happy face, from rigid wisdom free,
Securely smiles in thoughtless majesty ;
His own tithe-geese not half so plump as he.
Wild notions flow from his immoderate head,
And statutes quoted,-moderately read;
Whole floods of words his moderate wit reveal,
Yet the good man's immoderate in zeal.
How can his fluent tongue and thought keep touch,
Who thinks too little, but who talks too much?
When peaceful tars with Gallic navies meet,
And lose their honour to preserve the fleet,
This wondrous man alone shall conquest boast,
And win the battles which the heroes lost.
When just esteem he would of William raise,
He damns the glories which he means to praise ;
The poor encomium, so thinly spread,
Lampoons the injured ashes of the dead;
Though for the orator, 'tis said withal,
He meant to praise him, if he meant at all.
Egregious Magpye charms the listening throng,*
While inoffensive satire tips his tongue;
Grey politics adorn the beardless chit,
Of foreign manners, but of native wit;
Scarce wean'd from diddy of his Alma Mater,
The cocking thing steps forth the church's Erra
Pater;
High-flying thoughts his moderate size supply,
And wing the towering puppet to the sky;
On brazen wings beat out from native stock,
He mounts, and rides upon the weather-cock;
From whence the dull Hibernian isle he views;
The dull Hibernian isle he sees, and spews;
He mourns the talent of his wisdom, lost
On such a dry inhospitable coast.
Thus daws, when perch'd upon a steeple's top,
With Oxford strut and pride superior hop;
And, whilst on earth their haughty glances throw,
Take humble curates but for daws below.
Firedrake, a senator of awkward grace,t But famed for matchless modesty and face,
With Christian clamour fills the deafen'd room,
And prophecies of wondrous ills to come.
Heaven in a hurry seems to have form'd his paste,
Fill'd up his spleen, but left his head-piece waste:
He thinks, he argues, nay, he prays in haste.
When in soil'd sheets the dirty wight is spread,
And high-flown schemes for curtains grace the bed,
Wild freakish fancy, with her airy train,
Whirls through the empty region of his brain;
Shews him the church just tott'ring on his head,
And all her mangled sons around her spread;
Paints out himself, of all his hopes beguiled,
And his domestic Sicorax defiled:
Then, kindling at the sight, he flies about,
And puts dissenting squadrons to the rout;
Brim-full of wrath he plunges into strife,
And thumps the passive carcase of his wife ;
He routs the flying foe, he scours the plain,
And boldly fights the visionary scene.
The Apollo of the cause, old Grimbeard,* stands,
And all the inferior fry of wit commands;
Nursed up in faction, and a foe to peace,
He robs his bones of necessary ease;
Drunk with inveterate spleen, he scorns his age,
And Nature's lowest ebb supplies with sprightly rage.
Cold drivelling Time has all his nerves unstrung,
But left untouch'd his lechery of tongue;
His lechery of tongue, which still remains,
And adds a friendly aid to want of brains :
He blames the dulness of his party's sloth,
And chides the fears of their inactive youth;
Tells them the time, the happy time, is come,
When moderation shall behold its doom;
When snivelling mercy shall no more beguile,
But Christian force and pious rage shall smile;
Warns them against those dangers to provide,
Those dangers which his spectacles have spied,
Dark and unknown to all the world beside!
Hail, venerable man, design'd by fate
The saving genius of a sinking state!
Lo, prostrate at thy feet we trembling fall,
Thou great twin-idol of the thund'ring Baal!
How shall thy votaries thy wrath assuage,
Unbend thy frowns, and deprecate thy rage ?
Millions of victims shall thy altars soil;
Heroes shall bleed, and treasurers shall broil;
Thy peerless worth shall in our lays be sung:
O, bend thy stubborn rage, and sheath thy dreadful
tongue!
Nutbrain,* a daggle-gown of large renown,
For weak support to needy client known,
With painted dangers keeps his mob in awe,
And shrewdly construes faction into law.
When Albion's Senate waved its fatal wand,
And with their hungry locusts curst the land,
Our fruitful Egypt, with the load opprest,
Beheld with grief its happy fields laid waste;
With watery eyes, and with a mother's pain,
She heard the nation groan, but heard in vain ;
Till, gorged with prey, they took the favouring
wind,
And left this straggling vermin here behind:
Too well he liked our fruitful Egypt's plain,
To trot to hungry Westminster again.
Say, blind Hibernia, from what charms unknown
Ye adopt a man, whom ye should blush to own :
Beggar'd and spoil'd of all your wealthy store,
Yet hug the viper, whom ye cursed before.
Is this the pious champion of your cause,
Who robs your offspring to protect your laws;
Slily distils his venom to the root,
And blasts the tree from whence he plucks the fruit?
Who sees your ruin, which he smiles to see;
Whose gain's his heaven, and whose god's a fee?
In the first rank famed Sooterkin* is seen,
Of happy visage, and enchanting mien,
A lazy modish son of melancholy spleen:
Whose every feature flourishes in print,
And early pride first taught the youth to squint.
What niggard father would begrudge his brass,
When travell'd son doth homebred boy surpass-
Went out a fopling, and return'd an ass?
Of thought so dark, that no erroneous hit
E'er shew'd the lucid beauties of his wit.
When scanty fee expects a healing pill,
With careless yawn he nods upon the bill,
Secure to hit-who never fails to kill.
When costive punk, in penitential case,
Sits squeezing out her soul in vile grimace,
To ease his patient, he prescribes his face!
Well may the wretch a Providence disown,
Who thinks no wisdom brighter than his own:
Long since he left religion in the lurch,
Who yet would raise the glories of the church,
And stickles for its rights, who ne'er comes near the
porch.
Immortal Crabt stands firmly to the truth,
And with sage nod commands the list'ning youth; In whom rank spleen has all its vigour shown, And blended all its curses into one;
* Dr. Worth, a physician.
† Explained, in the Lanesborough Manuscript, to be Archdeacon Neele, but averred by another authority to mean a Mr. Hedge Young, or Hogg Young, the late lord-chancellor's pursebearer."
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