Poems on several occasions

Permit me thus accounts in part to clear
With Jones, the hospitable brigadier.
Such paymasters are rhymers mostly found,
Receiving substance and returning sound:
Though well you know, where nought is to be seen
The king must lose a debt,—nay, more, the queen.
Though fond of verse, all falsehood I defy,
Convinced that truth is truest poesy.
Old, musty whimsies are disdain'd by me,
Parnassus and Apollo's trumpery!
Let Pagans or let school-boys trifle thus:
I like Scot's horse far more than Pegasus;
And Bletchington to me more pleasure yields
Than Virgil's prospect of Elysian fields,—
Dreams of the ivory gate:—That's right, say I,
He fairly tells us that he tells a lie.
Wherefore sincere my thanks you may suppose:
My verse is quite as hearty as my prose.
All fiction utterly renounced you see,
And incense of poetic flattery:
And as for truth, why should I spend an hour
Merely to tell you what you knew before?
Your meals how plenteous, and how good your wine,
How sound the beer was, and the rack how fine;

639

How fair the garden smiled, not large, but neat;
The turf how verdant, and the bean how sweet!
Books too I found by your indulgent care:
The wild, diverting story of Voltaire;
Whose match in writing we but seldom find,
In life the vilest scoundrel of mankind!
With better title far may Berkeley please:
His writings and his life are of a piece;
Secure in truth, though Mandeville should rise,
Bold to defend the usefulness of vice;
Or impious Gordon show unpriestly wrath,
Of reason “independent” as of faith.

Nor yet must Anglesea unmention'd go,
Though my plain lines are uncorrect and low.
I own, acknowledgments are justly due;
But leave all speeches, brigadier, to you:
To you, who with address are fitly stored
To please the courtly and uncourtly lord.
Improper I: his herds I went not near;
I shunn'd his horses, but admired his deer.
As for his converse,—hold; I'll not entreat
You'll bear in memory what you can't forget,

640

O how I grieve the gout his limbs has laid,
Unnerved, inglorious, in a rustic shade!
While meaner peers their house and rank defile:—
The courtier's friend and bishop's foe, Argyle;
Isla, who plies for every purpose there;
While he, infirm, desists from public care,
When the loud tempest wants the pilot's art,
And much requires his head, but more his heart.

Happy who, far from court, and far from crime,
And safe from statesmen, can enjoy their time!
Long may you, sir, enjoy your sweet recess,
In ease and health retain your happiness!
I 'm sure you need not envy British kings,
While Walpole serves them, and while Cibber sings,
Truth dwells not near their thrones, nor can there be
In all St. James's found one Anglesea.
Your friend is better, and the world declares
Your poet is at least as good as theirs.

TO THE CONCEALED AUTHOR OF ------, 1708–9.

Such is the fate of modern writers still,
That those that least are able take the quill;
To fame by books they awkwardly aspire,
And doom them to the press and not the fire:

641

While you, by too much modesty confined,
Only in secret to yourself have shined;
(Like lamps of urns with subterranean light,
Your fire as lasting, and your flame as bright;)
Till, by some accident at length reveal'd,
You show the glories you had long conceal'd.
But, ah! as soon as to the public shown,
Let not the lustre be for ever gone.
Write! write again! your youthful Muse display;
Nor let there be a dawn without a day.

Valour has in your verse his journey run,
Bright as the' inspiring god of wit,—the sun.
Our heroine in noble lines we see,
And Boadicea turns Penthesile.
Poetic Greece and warlike Rome conspire
To raise the English hero's glory higher.
You scorn to tell us in a vulgar strain
The naked actions of a great campaign.
Your artful Muse in never-dying lays
Finds means to praise him in another's praise.
So Virgil, in an age like ours refined,
A prince's praise judiciously design'd:
No truths unveil'd throughout the whole appear,
No Actian navy or Philippic war:
Starting from Troy he to Hesperia tends;
Begins at Venus, and at Cæsar ends.

642

THE EMBLEM.

See where they've set Sacheverell up,—
Betwixt the devil and the pope.
They call'd him “cruel and uncivil”
For dooming Low-Church to the devil;
“Uncharitable,” when he said
Peter and Jack a league had made:
And yet their wise retaliation
Returns the railing accusation.
They've dress'd him up in fireworks, too;
As moderate Nero used to do
With Christians that, like him, were true:
And while their emblem would condemn
The picture he has drawn of them,
Their moderation's known to be,
Not calmness, but hypocrisy.

643

Then let this picture hang in view,
To prove the doctor's sermon true:
Only with this small alteration,—
“This picture a rebuke to passion,
Design'd and drawn by moderation!”

University of Virginia Library

TO THE HON. BRIGADIER-GENERAL JONES, AT BLETCHINGTON.

TO THE CONCEALED AUTHOR OF ------, 1708–9.

THE EMBLEM.