y keep, at Stains, the Old Blue Boar,
Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore.

[Footnote 1: A tradesman's phrase.--_Swift_.]

HORACE, BOOK IV, ODE IX
ADDRESSED TO ARCHBISHOP KING,[1] 1718

Virtue conceal'd within our breast
Is inactivity at best:
But never shall the Muse endure
To let your virtues lie obscure;
Or suffer Envy to conceal
Your labours for the public weal.
Within your breast all wisdom lies,
Either to govern or advise;
Your steady soul preserves her frame,
In good and evil times, the same.
Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud,
Stand in your sacred presence awed;
Your hand alone from gold abstains,
Which drags the slavish world in chains.
Him for a happy man I own,
Whose fortune is not overgrown;[2]
And happy he who wisely knows
To use the gifts that Heaven bestows;
Or, if it please the powers divine,
Can suffer want and not repine.
The man who infamy to shun
Into the arms of death would run;
That man is ready to defend,
With life, his country or his friend.

[Footnote 1: With whom Swift was in constant correspondence, more or less
friendly. See Journal to Stella, "Prose Works," vol. ii, _passim_; and
an account of King, vol. iii, p. 241, note.--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 2:
"Non possidentem multa vocaveris
recte beatum: rectius occupat
nomen beati, qui deorum
muneribus sapienter uti
duramque callet pauperiem pati,
pejusque leto flagitium timet."]

TO MR. DELANY,[1]

OCT. 10, 1718 NINE IN THE MORNING

To you whose virtues, I must own
With shame, I have too lately known;
To you, by art and nature taught
To be the man I long have sought,
Had not ill Fate, perverse and blind,
Placed you in life too far behind:
Or, what I should repine at more,
Placed me in life too far before:
To you the Muse this verse bestows,
Which might as well have been in prose;
No thought, no fancy, no sublime,
But simple topics told in rhyme.
Three gifts for conversation fit
Are humour, raillery, and wit:
The last, as boundless as the wind,
Is well conceived, though not defined;
For, sure by wit is only meant
Applying what we first invent.
What humour is, not all the tribe
Of logic-mongers can describe;
Here only nature acts her part,
Unhelp'd by practice, books, or art:
For wit and humour differ quite;
That gives surprise, and this delight,
Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild,
Only by affectation spoil'd;
'Tis never by invention got,
Men have it when they know it not.
Our