spire;
Till he the step of power ascend,
And courtiers to their idol bend.
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With every grace, with every charm,
My daughter's perfect features arm.
If heaven approve, a father's bless'd.'
Jove smiles, and grants his full request.
The first, a miser at the heart,
Studious of every griping art,
Heaps hoards on hoards with anxious pain;
And all his life devotes to gain.
He feels no joy, his cares increase,
He neither wakes nor sleeps in peace;
_30
In fancied want (a wretch complete)
He starves, and yet he dares not eat.
The next to sudden honours grew:
The thriving art of Courts he knew:
He reached the height of power and place;
Then fell, the victim of disgrace.
Beauty with early bloom supplies
His daughter's cheek, and points her eyes.
The vain coquette each suit disdains,
And glories in her lover's pains.
_40
With age she fades, each lover flies;
Contemned, forlorn, she pines and dies.
When Jove the father's grief surveyed,
And heard him Heaven and Fate upbraid,
Thus spoke the god: 'By outward show,
Men judge of happiness and woe:
Shall ignorance of good and ill
Dare to direct the eternal will?
Seek virtue; and, of that possess'd,
To Providence resign the rest'
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* * * * *

FABLE XL.

THE TWO MONKEYS.

The learned, full of inward pride,
The Fops of outward show deride:
The Fop, with learning at defiance,
Scoffs at the pedant, and the science:
The Don, a formal, solemn strutter,
Despises Monsieur's airs and flutter;
While Monsieur mocks the formal fool,
Who looks, and speaks, and walks by rule.
Britain, a medley of the twain,
As pert as France, as grave as Spain;
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In fancy wiser than the rest,
Laughs at them both, of both the jest.
Is not the poet's chiming close
Censured by all the sons of prose?
While bards of quick imagination
Despise the sleepy prose narration.
Men laugh at apes, they men contemn;
For what are we, but apes to them?
Two monkeys went to Southwark fair,
No critics had a sourer air:
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They forced their way through draggled folks,
Who gaped to catch jack-pudding's jokes;
Then took their tickets for the show,
And got by chance the foremost row.
To see their grave, observing face,
Provoked a laugh throughout the place.
'Brother,' says Pug, and turned his head,
'The rabble's monstrously ill