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Or should one pound of powder less bespread Those monkey-tails that wag behind their head! Thus finish'd, and corrected to a hair,

They march to prate their hour before the fair. So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes, With band of lily and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in him.

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Let but the ladies smile, and they are bless'd: Prodigious! how the things protest, protest.' Peace, fools! or Gonson will for papists seize

you,

If once he catch you at your 'Jesu! Jesu !' Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another.

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But here's the captain that will plague them both, Whose air cries Arm!' whose very look's an

oath :

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The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough,
Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before,
Like battering-rams, beats open every door; 265
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hang-dogs in old tapestry;
Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse,
Has yet a strange ambition to look worse;
Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe,
Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so

As men from jails to execution go;

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256 Or Gonson. A well-known police magistrate, the sir John Fielding of his day.

Go through the great chamber (why is it hung
With the seven deadly sins?) being among
Those Askaparts,* men big enough to throw
Charing-cross for a bar; men that do know
No token of worth, but queen's man, and fine
Living; barrels of beef, flaggons of wine.
I shook like a spied spie. Preachers which are
Seas of wit and arts, you can, then dare,
Drown the sins of this place; but as for me,
Which am but a scant brook, enough shall be
To wash the stains away: although I yet,
With Maccabees modesty, the known merit
Of my work lessen, yet some wise men shall,
I hope, esteem my writs canonical.

* A giant famous in romances.

For hung with deadly sins I see the wall,

And lined with giants deadlier than them all: 275
Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scared at the grisly forms, I sweat, I fly;
And shake all o'er, like a discover'd spy.

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Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine: Charge them with heaven's artillery, bold divine! From such alone the great rebukes endure, Whose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure : 'Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs To deluge sin, and drown a court in tears. Howe'er what's now Apocrypha, my wit, In time to come, may pass for holy writ.

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THE first part of this poem was named from the year in which it was published-One thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight: a dialogue something like Horace: printed for Cooper.' The second part was printed in the same year, for Dodsley, Pall Mall.

The Epilogue is one of the most powerful productions which Pope ever gave to the world: it is, throughout, a vivid and rapid declamation on the degeneracy of England, which he pronounces to be rushing to her ruin. The picture is overcharged; but some grounds were discoverable for the fear, in the violent factions, the court intrigues, the popular tumults, and the growing irreligion of the time. The jacobite principles still fermented through the country; and, though Pope's religious and political feelings were alike enlisted for the Stuarts; yet, even in the poet himself, strong natural alarm must have been excited by the direct prospect of a collision between the restored despotism and the newlyasserted liberty, the religion of Rome and the Reformation.

Warton speaks of this poem as exercising more than Pope's habitual care: I have often heard Dodsley say, that he was employed by the author to copy both the Dia

logues fairly: every line was then written twice, over; a clear transcript was delivered to Pope; and when he afterwards sent it to Dodsley to be printed, he found that every line had been written twice over a second time!' The name of Epilogue to the Satires was given probably in contrast to the Epistle to Arbuthnot, named the Prologue. The first part was published on the same morning with Johnson's celebrated London: Pope gave high praise to the anonymous work, and predicted that its author would soon be déterré;-a prediction, which, however, was not accomplished for thirty unhappy years.

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DIALOGUE I.

F. Nor twice a twelvemonth you appear in print;
And when it comes, the court see nothing in 't.
You grow correct that once with rapture writ;
And are, besides, too moral for a wit.
Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel :-
Why now, this moment, don't I see you steal?
'Tis all from Horace; Horace, long before ye,
Said, Tories call'd him whig, and whigs a tory;'

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You don't, I hope, pretend to quit the trade,
Because you think your reputation made;
Like good sir Paul, of whom so much was said,
That when his name was up, he lay abed.
Come, come, refresh us with a livelier song;
Or, like sir Paul, you 'll lie abed too long.
P. Sir, what I write, should be correctly writ.
F. Correct! 'tis what no genius can admit.
Besides, you grow too moral for a wit.

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