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That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:
Who to the dean and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Cannons what was never there;
Who reads but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction lie;

A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let sporus tremble--A. What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,

In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes; or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile Antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that, acting either part,
The trifling head! or the corrupted heart!
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,..
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord..
Eve's tempter thus, the Rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways:
That flattery, ev'n to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same;
That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to Truth, and moraliz'd his song:
That not for fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale reviv'd, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape,
The libel'd person and the pictur'd shape;
Abuse, on all he lov'd, or lov'd him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father dead;

The whisper, that, to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear—
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome ev'n the last!

PROLOGUE TO MR. ADDISON'S TRAGEDY OF CATO.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to Virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying Love, we but our weakness show,

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Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?

Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
Ev'n when proud Cæsar 'midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,

Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image past,
The pomp was darken'd and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceas'd, tears gush'd from ev'ry eye;
The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by;
Her last good man dejected Rome ador'd,
And honour'd Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approv'd,
And show you have the virtue to be mov'd.
With honest scorn the first fam'd Cato view'd

Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued; Your scene precariously subsists too long

On French translation, and Italian song.

Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,

Be justly warm'd with your own native rage;

Such plays alone should win a British ear,

As Cato's self had not disdain'd to hear.

JOHN GAY, descended from an old but decayed family, was born in Devonshire, in 1688. He was educated at the Free-school in Barnstaple, and afterwards placed apprentice with a silk-mercer in London; from whom he soon procured, for a small consideration, a surrender of his indentures, that he might undertake the more pleasant duties of Secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth. In the leisure of this office he found time to cultivate his literary tastes; and, in 1713, published a poem on "Rural Sports," which he dedicated to Alexander Pope. His friendship was immediately sought by that great writer and his party, and Gay was enrolled among the brilliant societies of the day as a wit and a party man. His life took its colour accordingly. He continued to publish verses-he wrote for the stage-he was caressed by Bolingbroke and Swift-taken into the service of the Tories as Secretary to Lord Clarendon's Embassy-and when their fortunes declined with the life of Anne, he fell into disfavour also. Soon after this, however, one of his dramatic pieces won so much Court popularity, that it was hoped its author might be admitted to share it; and Gay, alive to the easy excitement and the quick depression of a fond and playful temper, suffered bitter disappointment in finding this expectation false :

"Places he found were daily given away,

And yet no friendly Gazette mentioned Gay!"

From this time to the year 1727, no permanent change occurred in his fortunes, though they witnessed all the extremes of plenty and want. But now, on a hint from Swift, he commenced the Beggar's Opera. On its completion neither Pope nor Swift thought it would succeed. "We were all at the first night of it," says Pope, "in very great uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged, by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, 'It will do-it must do I see it in the eyes of them! This was a good while before the first act was over.' Its success was extraordinary indeed. The manager made his fortune-the actress of Polly won the favour of the town and the hand of the Duke of BoltonItalian Opera was driven out of England-and Gay himself never complained more of pecuniary want. Other complaints, nevertheless, remained. His sound and masterly satire had given mortal offence to the Court; and from this period to the time of his death he was subjected to continual annoyances. These had their alleviation in the love of Pope, and in the affectionate services of the Duke and Duchess of Queensbury, who resented the indignities put upon him, resigned their respective employments at Court, and took him into their family. Here, on the 4th of December, 1732, Gay died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Duke and Duchess of Queensbury raised a monument to his memory, and Pope wrote his epitaph. "Of all thy blameless life the sole return,

My verse, and Queensb'ry weeping o'er thy urn!"

Gay's poetry has several high characteristics. Habitual gaiety and good sense distinguished it-the structure of his verse was always admirable for its elegance and facility-his fables prove the richness of his invention as well as the strength of his moral perceptions-while in his ballads, and more especially in the songs of his Beggar's Opera, are to be found a happy negligence, yet exquisite harmony of rythm; a luxurious richness with a fond simplicity and romantic çast of sentiment; a voluptuous yet most tender delicacy; and, above all, an ever-running under-current of grave and excellent purpose. Gay was a first-rate wit, and a man of real genius. When Swift praised the Beggar's Opera for the excellence of its morality, as a piece, that "by a turn of humour, entirely new, placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious light," he appreciated truly the meaning and the force of that immortal satire. As a view of human life in a certain subtle and abstracted sense, under cover of which the most fatal sophistries are exploded, nothing has ever been produced superior to this master-piece of Gay, by ancient or modern satirists.

In conclusion, it is to be remarked of this fine writer, that where his works are. sullied by passages of grossness, an excuse suggests itself which Prior has no claim to,-for Gay's admirers are glad to acknowledge that his inferiority to Prior on this

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Dut an the graterur country breathes dengit,
Here blooming Health exerts her gentle reign,
And strings the sinews of th' industrious swain.
Soon as the morning lark salutes the day,
Through dewy fields I take my frequent way,
Where I behold the farmer's early care
In the revolving labours of the year.

When the fresh Spring in all her state is crown'd,
And high luxuriant grass o'erspreads the ground,
The labourer with a bending scythe is seen,
Shaving the surface of the waving green;
Of all her native pride disrobes the land,

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