yesterday:
You then may boldly go in quest
To find the Grub Street poet's nest;
What spunging-house, in dread of jail,
Receives them, while they wait for bail;
What alley are they nestled in,
To flourish o'er a cup of gin;
Find the last garret where they lay,
Or cellar where they starve to-day.
Suppose you have them all trepann'd,
With each a libel in his hand,
What punishment would you inflict?
Or call them rogues, or get them kickt?
These they have often tried before;
You but oblige them so much more:
Themselves would be the first to tell,
To make their trash the better sell.
You have been libell'd--Let us know,
What fool officious told you so?
Will you regard the hawker's cries,
Who in his titles always lies?
Whate'er the noisy scoundrel says,
It might be something in your praise;
And praise bestow'd in Grub Street rhymes,
Would vex one more a thousand times.
Till critics blame, and judges praise,
The poet cannot claim his bays.
On me when dunces are satiric,
I take it for a panegyric.
Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.

[Footnote 1: The Irish Parliament met at the Blue-Boys Hospital, while
the new Parliament-house was building.--_Swift_.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Walpole.]

[Footnote 3: Pallas.]

DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A BIRTH-DAY SONG. 1729

To form a just and finish'd piece,
Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece,
Whose godships are in chief request,
And fit your present subject best;
And, should it be your hero's case,
To have both male and female race,
Your business must be to provide
A score of goddesses beside.
Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn,
For which they bring a modern pattern;
Because they might have heard of one,[1]
Who often long'd to eat his son;
But this I think will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint him son of Jove,
Who met his mother in a grove;
To this we freely shall consent,
Well knowing what the poets meant;
And in their sense, 'twixt me and you,
It may be literally true.[2]
Next, as the laws of verse require,
He must be greater than his sire;
For Jove, as every schoolboy knows,
Was able Saturn to depose;
And sure no Christian poet breathing
Would be more scrupulous than a Heathen;
Or, if to blasphemy it tends.
That's but a trifle among friends.
Your hero now another Mars is,
Makes mighty armies turn their a--s:
Behold his glittering falchion mow
Whole squadrons at a single b