University of Virginia Library

The Down-Cast, 1705.

A way with your Ballads, be gon with old Simon,
What a Rope can you find so delightful to rhime on?
What signify Hundreds, and Thirties, and Fours,
When the Bill they have brooded is cast out of doors?
I cannot indeed disown their Good Nature,
I know they design'd well, but that makes no matter.
Had the Bill been japan'd into one that gives Mony,
Then the Queen had receiv'd some Gall with her Hony.
The Tax must be rais'd with squeezing the Conscience
(Some thought this was neither Injustice nor Nonsense)
But now I am gravel'd in all my Devices,
My Policy's foundred, my Scheme's all in pieces.
The Archbishop of Paris, my great Cater-Cousin,
Will scarce keep his Fiddle in Tune without Rosin.
You know when my Forces make Enemies flee 'em,
The Choire and the Cardinal roar a Te Deum.
Nay tho I am trounc'd and made to disgorge,
Or make a Draw-game on't (as I did with Sir George)
Yet all these Defeats I can prudently gild
With the Name of a Triumph on the Sea, or the Field.
When my Gains are the shortest, my Songs are the longest,
The Gazette and Bishop will call it a Conquest.
But here's a Miscarriage above all Disguise,
To prove this Good News needs a Bushel of Lies.
The Crime of Dissenting I strive to inhance,
To damn the Indulgence with the Edict of Nants;
To bring down the Whigs, and the Men of the Low-Church,
I retain'd all the Papists, and the Atheists of No-Church;
They that were most famous for swearing and storming,
Sustain'd the Dispute against Partial Conforming:
The Reasons they for the Bill's Piety bring,
Are such as prove me the most Christian King;
For this is most easy, when Men set their desire on't,
To make a Virtue of Rage, and a Saint of a Tyrant.
Don't say that a Church-Persecution looks odly,
I've a hundred Divines that say this is godly.
It's stuff for to preach up Accord and Allyance
With Low-Church and Round-heads, hold 'em all at Defiance.
Hang out bloody Flags for the Men that do ever-ill,
Live up to the Doctrine of Pious Sacheveril.
The Church is a falling, and these Men must prop her,
By fixing a Crime on each Interloper.
The Commons took care of their Bill, like good Nurses
(Tho in that House 'twas plagu'd with Reasons and Curses)
But when it went up for their Lordships Concurrence,
They read it, and then kick'd it out with Abhorrence.
Its Advancement was only like that of those Fellows,
Who rise up the Ladder, to hang on the Gallows.
It's true, I'ad my Champions in that upper House,
Who ventur'd their Credit this Cause to espouse,
And had rather be laugh'd at than smother their Fury
(These Worthies look fine in my Books I'll assure ye)
Great W---sea bully'd the Lords with a huff,
And N---m spoke more Rhetorical stuff;
My Lord's Grace of Y--- shook his Head with the Hair on't,
And said, the Religion of this Bill's apparent,
(And he was i'th' right on't, for no Church e'er stood
More firmly than ours that's cemented with Blood)
But the Politick Issues are things that he leaves
To such of the Peers as wear no Lawn-Sleeves.
My good Lord of L---n, in very odd Fashion,
Stood up for to mumble a pithy Oration,
But (whether the Duns and the Bailiffs had scar'd him)
He mutter'd so low that scarce any one heard him,
Tho had he been audible, few would regard him.
In the heat of these Arguments learned and able,
The Bill was stretch'd out on its Death-bed, the Table.
For alas, all these Topicks of Flattery and Error,
Were banter'd and martyr'd to my very great Horror.
That this brave Contrivance again should miscarry-a,
Comes heavily after the Stroak at Bavaria;
My Veteran Troops at Hochstet were routed,
My Veteran Agents in England are flouted.
There's Sommers and Wharton, with others in vogue,
And Orford who puts me in mind of La Hogue,
With Peterborough, Hallifax, Sarum, and Mohun,
In all to the Number of Seventy one;
As some of the Commons would have tack'd it, so they
First read it, than rack'd it, and packt it away.
The Bill was Asthmatick quite thro the Debate,
And bloated with Venom, lay waiting its Fate.
Sometimes it wou'd redden, and my Agents wou'd smile on't,
Till the Vollies of Reason made it faint, and then silent.
But the worst of all came when the Question was stated,
Then it fetch'd a long Gasp and humbly departed.
What I took for a Champion's no more than a Martyr,
By pushing it forwards I've but caught a Tartar.