well they weigh
How much it costs the wretch to be so base;
Nor can the greatest powers enough disgrace,
Enough chastise, such prostitute applause,
If well they weigh how much it stains their cause.
But are our writers ever in the wrong?
Does virtue ne'er seduce the venal tongue?
Yes; if well brib'd, for virtue's self they fight;
Still in the wrong, tho' champions for the right:
Whoe'er their crimes for interest only quit,
Sin on in virtue, and good deeds commit.
Nought but inconstancy Britannia meets,
And broken faith in their abandon'd sheets;
From the same hand how various is the page!
What civil war their brother pamphlets wage!
Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare;
Say, is this lunacy?--I wish it were.
If such our writers, startled at the sight,
Felons may bless their stars they cannot write!
How justly Proteus' transmigrations fit
The monstrous changes of a modern wit!
Now, such a gentle stream of eloquence
As seldom rises to the verge of sense;
Now, by mad rage, transform'd into a flame,
Which yet fit engines, well applied, can tame;
Now, on immodest trash, the swine obscene,
Invites the town to sup at Drury Lane;
A dreadful lion, now he roars at power,
Which sends him to his brothers at the Tower;
He's now a serpent, and his double tongue
Salutes, nay licks, the feet of those he stung;
What knot can bind him, his evasion such?
One knot he well deserves, which might do much.
The flood, flame, swine, the lion, and the snake,
Those fivefold monsters, modern authors make:
The snake reigns most; snakes, Pliny says, are bred
When the brain's perish'd in a human head.
Ye grov'ling, trodden, whipt, stript, turncoat things,
Made up of venom, volumes, stains, and stings!
Thrown from the tree of knowledge, like you, curst
To scribble in the dust, was snake the first.
What if the figure should in fact prove true!
It did in Elkenah, why not in you?
Poor Elkenah, all other changes past,
For bread in Smithfield dragons hist at last,
Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape,
And found his manners suited to his shape:
Such is the fate of talents misapplied;
So liv'd your prototype; and so he died.
Th' abandon'd manners of our writing train
May tempt mankind to think religion vain;
But in their fate, their habit, and their mien,
That gods there are is eminently seen:
Heaven stands