o's strains.
Lo! what from cellars rise, what rush from high,
Where speculation roosted near the sky;
Letters, essays, sock, buskin, satire, song,
And all the garret thunders on the throng!
O Pope! I burst; nor can, nor will, refrain;
I'll write; let others, in their turn, complain:
Truce, truce, ye Vandals! my tormented ear
Less dreads a pillory than a pamphleteer;
I've heard myself to death; and, plagu'd each hour,
Shan't I return the vengeance in my power?
For who can write the true absurd like me?----
Thy pardon, Codrus! who, I mean, but thee?
Pope! if like mine, or Codrus', were thy style,
The blood of vipers had not stain'd thy file;
Merit less solid, less despite had bred;
They had not bit, and then they had not bled.
Fame is a public mistress, none enjoys,
But, more or less, his rival's peace destroys;
With fame, in just proportion, envy grows;
The man that makes a character, makes foes:
Slight, peevish insects round a genius rise,
As a bright day awakes the world of flies;
With hearty malice, but with feeble wing,
(To show they live) they flutter, and they sting:
But as by depredations wasps proclaim
The fairest fruit, so these the fairest fame.
Shall we not censure all the motley train,
Whether with ale irriguous, or champaign?
Whether they tread the vale of prose, or climb,
And whet their appetites on cliffs of rhyme;
The college sloven, or embroider'd spark;
The purple prelate, or the parish clerk;
The quiet quidnunc, or demanding prig;
The plaintiff tory, or defendant whig;
Rich, poor, male, female, young, old, gay, or sad;
Whether extremely witty, or quite mad;
Profoundly dull, or shallowly polite;
Men that read well, or men that only write;
Whether peers, porters, tailors, tune the reeds,
And measuring words to measuring shapes succeeds;
For bankrupts write, when ruin'd shops are shut,
As maggots crawl from out a perish'd nut.
His hammer this, and that his trowel quits,
And, wanting sense for tradesmen, serve for wits.
By thriving men subsists each other trade;
Of every broken craft a writer's made:
Thus his material, paper, takes its birth
From tatter'd rags of all the stuff on earth.
Hail, fruitful isle! to thee alone belong
Millions of wits, and brokers in old song:
Thee well a land of liberty we name,
Where all are free to scandal and to shame;
Thy sons, by print, may set t