us days,
And satirize with nothing--but their praise?
Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train,
Nor hears that virtue, which he loves, complain?
Donne, Dorset, Dryden, Rochester, are dead,
And guilt's chief foe, in Addison, is fled;
Congreve, who, crown'd with laurels, fairly won,
Sits smiling at the goal, while others run,
He will not write; and (more provoking still!)
Ye gods! he will not write, and Maevius will.
Doubly distrest, what author shall we find
Discreetly daring, and severely kind,
The courtly(6) Roman's shining path to tread,
And sharply smile prevailing folly dead?
Will no superior genius snatch the quill,
And save me, on the brink, from writing ill?
Tho' vain the strife, I'll strive my voice to raise,
What will not men attempt for sacred praise?
The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art,
Reigns, more or less, and glows, in ev'ry heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure.
O'er globes, and sceptres, now on thrones it swells;
Now, trims the midnight lamp in college cells:
'Tis tory, whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads,
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades.
Here, to Steele's humour makes a bold pretence
There, bolder, aims at Pulteney's eloquence.
It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead;
Nor ends with life; but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs.
What is not proud? The pimp is proud to see
So many like himself in high degree:
The whore is proud her beauties are the dread
Of peevish virtue, and the marriage-bed;
And the brib'd cuckold, like crown'd victims born
To slaughter, glories in his gilded horn.
Some go to church, proud humbly to repent,
And come back much more guilty than they went:
One way they look, another way they steer,
Pray to the gods, but would have mortals hear;
And when their sins they set sincerely down,
They'll find that their religion has been one.
Others with wishful eyes on glory look,
When they have got their picture tow'rds a book;
Or pompous title, like a gaudy sign,
Meant to betray dull sots to wretched wine.
If at his title T---- had dropt his quill,
T---- might have pass'd for a great genius still.
But T----, alas! (excuse him, if you can)
Is now a scribbler, who was once a man.
Imperious some a cl