So-Satire is no more>I feel it die
No Gazetteer more innocent than I
And let, a God's-name, ev'ry Fool and Knave

85 Be grac'd thro' Life, and flatter'd in his Grave.

F. Why so ? if Satire knows its Time and Place, You still may lash the greatest-in Disgrace: For Merit will by turns forsake them all; Would you know when? exactly when they fall. 90 But let all Satire in all Changes spare Immortal S-k, and grave Dere! Silent and foft, as Saints remove to Heav'n, All Tyes diffolv'd, and ev'ry Sin forgiv'n, These may fome gentle ministerial Wing 95 Receive, and place for ever near a King ! There, where no Paffion, Pride, or Shame transport, Lulled with the sweet Nepenthe of a Court;

VER. 92. Immortal S-k, and grave De-re!] A title given Ebat Lord by King James II. He was of the Bedchamber to King William; he was so to King George 1. he was so to King George II. This Lord was very skilful in all the forms of the House, in which he discharged himself with great gravity.

VER. 97. There, where no Paffion, etc.] The excellent writer De l’Esprit des Loix gives the following character of the Spirit of Courts, and the Principle of Monarchies : “ Qu'on “ lise ce que les Historiens de tous les tems ont dit sur la Cour “ des Monarques; qu'on se rapelle les conversations des hommes .66. de tous les Païs sur le miserable caractère des COURTISANS;

ce ne sont point des choses de speculation, mais d'une triste « expérience. L'ambition dans l'oisiveté, la bassefle dans “ l'orgueil, lo defir de s'enrichir sans travail, l'averfion pour la « verité ; la flaterie, la trahison, la perfidie, l'abandon de tous “ ses engagemens, le mepris des devoirs du Citoyen, la crainte

101

There, where no Father's, Brother's, Friend's disgrace
Once break their rest, or stir them from their Place:
But past the Sense of human Miseries,
All Tears are wip'd for ever from all eyes;
No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,
Save when they lose a Question, or a Job.
P. Good Heav'n forbid, that I should blast their
glory,

105
Who know how like Whig Ministers to Tory,
And when three Sov'reigns dy'd, could scarce be vext,
Consid'ring what a gracious Prince was next.
Have I in filent wonder, seen such things
As Pride in Slaves, and Avarice in Kings;
And at a Peer, or Peeress, shall I fret,
Who starves a Sifter, or forswears a Debt?

110

VARIATIONS, Ver. 112. in some editions,

Who Itarves a Mother,

“ de la vertu du Prince, l'esperance de ses foiblesses, et plus,

que tout cela, LE RIDICULE PERPETUEL JETTE SUR LA

VERTU, font, je crois, le Caractére de la plupart des “ Courtisans marqué dans tous les lieux et dans tous les tems. “ Or il est très mal-aisé que les Principaux d'un Etat soient “ malhonnêtes-gens, & que les inferieurs foient gens-de-bien,

que ceux-la foyent trompeurs, & que ceux-fi consentent à “ n'être que dupes. Que si dans le Peuple il se trouve quelque “ malheureux honnête-homme, le Cardinal de Richelieu dans son “ Teftament politique insinue, qu’un Monarque doit fe garder de “ s'en fervir. Tant-il est vrai que la Vertu n'est pas le ressort

de ce Gouvernment."

VER. 108. gracious Prince] The style of Addresses on an aeceflion,

Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the Dignity of Vice be lost?
Ye Gods! shall Cibber's Son, without rebuke, 115
Swear like a Lord, or Rich out-whore a Duke?
A Fav’rite's Porter with his Master vie,
Be brib'd as often, and as often lie?
Shall Ward draw Contracts with a Statesman's skill ?
Or Japhet pocket, like his Grace, a Will ?
Is it for Bond, or Peter, (paltry things)
To pay their Debts, or keep their Faith, like Kings?
If Blount dispatch'd himself, he play'd the man,
And so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran!
But shall a Printer, weary of his life,
Learn, from their Books, to hang himself and Wife?

120

125

VER. 113. Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;] A satirical ambiguity- either that those farve who bave it, or that those who boast of it, bave it not: and both together (he insinuates) make up the present state of modern virtue.

Ver. 115. Cibber's Son, -Ricb] Two Players : look for them in the Dunciad.

Ver. 123. If Blount.] Author of an impious and foolish book called the Oracles of Reason, who being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a ftab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died.

Ver. 124. Passeran!) Author of another book of the fame stamp, called A pbilosopbical discourse on death, being a defence of suicide. He was a nobleman of Piedmont, banished from his country for his impieties, and lived in the utmost misery, yet feared to practise his own precepts.-This unhappy man at last died a penitent.

Ver. 125. But fall a Printer, etc.) A Fact that happened in London a few years past. The unhappy man left behind him

This, this, my friend, I cannot, must not bear;
Vice thus abus'd, demands a Nation's care :
This calls the Church to deprecate our Sin,
And hurls the Thunder of the Laws on Gin. 130

Let modeft Foster, if he will, excell
Ten Metropolitans in preaching well;
A simple Quaker, or a Quaker's Wife,
Out-do Landaffe in Doctrine,-yea in Life:
Let humble ALLEN, with an aukward Shame, 135
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it Famc.

a paper justifying his action by the reasonings of some of thefe authors.

VER. 129. This calls the Church to deprecate our Sin, ] Alluding to the forms of prayer, composed in the times of public calamity; where the fault is generally laid upon the People.

VER. 130. Gin.] A fpiritunus liquor, the exorbitant use of which had almost destroyed the lowest rank of the People till it was restrained by an act of Parliament in 1936.

VER. 134. Landaffe.) A poor Bishoprick in Wales, as poorly supplied.

VER. 135. Let bumble ALLIN with an aukward Sbame, -Do good by Aealtb, and blush to find it Fame.] We are so absolutely governed by custom, that to act contrary to it, creates even in virtuous men,

who are ever inodeft, a kind of diffidence, which is the parent of Sbame. But when, to this, there is joined a consciousness that, in forfaking caftom, you follow truth and reason, the indignation arising from such a conscious virtue, mixing with Sbame, produces that amiable aukwardness, in going out of the fathion, which the Poet, here, celebrates :

and blush to find it Fame, i. e. He blushed at the degeneracy of his times, which, at best, gave his goodness its due commendation (the thing he never aimed at) inftead of following and imitating his example, which

Virtue may choose the high or low Degree,
'Tis juft alike to Virtue, and to me;
Dwell in a Monk, or light upon a King,
She's still the same, belov'd, contented thing, 140
Vice is undone, if she forgets her Birth,
And stoops from Angels to the Dregs of Earth:
But 'tis the Fall degrades her to a Whore;
Let Greatness own her, and she's mean no more, 145
Her Birth, her Beauty, Crowds and Courts confefs,
Chafte Matrons praise her, and grave Bishops bless ;
In golden Chains the willing World the draws,
And hers the Gospel is, and hers the Laws,
Mounts the Tribunal, lifts her scarlet head,
And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead. 150
Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal Car,
Old England's Genius, rough with many a Scar,
Dragg’d in the dust! his arms hang idly round,
His Flag inverted trails along the ground!
Our Youth, all liv'ry'd o'er with foreign Gold, 155
Before her dance: behind her, crawl the Old !

was the reason why some acts of it were not done by stealtb, but more openly.

Ver. 138. 'Tis juft alike to Virtue, and to me;] He gives the season for it, in the line that presently follows,

She's still the same, below'd, contented thing. So that the sense of the text is this, “ It is all one to Virtue on “ whom her influence falls, whether on high or low, because « it fill produces the same effect, their content; and it is all one "' to me, because it ftill produces the same effect, my love,"