or smaller things:
Poor Chremes can't conduct his own estate,
And thence has undertaken Europe's fate.
Gehenno leaves the realm to Chremes' skill,
And boldly claims a province higher still:
To raise a name, th' ambitious boy has got,
At once, a Bible, and a shoulder-knot;
Deep in the secret, he looks thro' the whole,
And pities the dull rogue that saves his soul;
To talk with rev'rence you must take good heed,
Nor shock his tender reason with the creed:
Howe'er well bred, in public he complies,
Obliging friends alone with blasphemies.
Peerage is poison, good estates are bad
For this disease; poor rogues run seldom mad.
Have not attainders brought unhop'd relief,
And falling stocks quite cur'd an unbelief?
While the sun shines, Blunt talks with wondrous force;
But thunder mars small beer, and weak discourse.
Such useful instruments the weather show,
Just as their mercury is high or low:
Health chiefly keeps an atheist in the dark;
A fever argues better than a Clarke:
Let but the logic in his pulse decay,
The Grecian he'll renounce, and learn to pray,
While C---- mourns, with an unfeign'd zeal,
Th' apostate youth, who reason'd once so well.
C----, who makes so merry with the creed;
He almost thinks he disbelieves indeed;
But only thinks so; to give both their due,
Satan, and he, believe, and tremble too.
Of some for glory such the boundless rage,
That they're the blackest scandal of their age.
Narcissus the Tartarian club disclaims;
Nay, a free-mason, with some terror, names;
Omits no duty; nor can envy say,
He miss'd, these many years, the church, or play:
He makes no noise in parliament, 'tis true;
But pays his debts, and visit, when 'tis due;
His character and gloves are ever clean,
And then, he can out-bow the bowing dean;
A smile eternal on his lip he wears,
Which equally the wise and worthless shares.
In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief,
Patient of idleness beyond belief,
Most charitably lends the town his face,
For ornament, in ev'ry public place;
As sure as cards, he to th' assembly comes,
And is the furniture of drawing-rooms:
When ombre calls, his hand and heart are free,
And, join'd to two, he fails not--to make three:
Narcissus is the glory of his race;
For who does nothing with a better grace?
To deck my list, by nature were design'd
Such shining expletives of human kin