Care if a liveried lord or smile or frown?
Who cannot flatter, and detest who can,
Tremble before a noble serving man?
O my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee
For huffing, braggart, puft nobility?
Thou who, since yesterday, hast roll'd o'er all
The busy idle blockheads of the ball,
Hast thou, oh sun! beheld an emptier sort
Than such as swell this bladder of a court?
Now pox on those who show a court in wax !6
It ought to bring all courtiers on their backs;
Such painted puppets! such a varnish'd race
Of hollow gewgaws, only dress and face!
Such waxen noses, stately staring things—
No wonder some folks bow, and think them kings.
See! where the British youth, engag'd no more
At Fig's, at White's,7 with felons, or a whore,'
Pay their last duty to the court, and come
All fresh and fragrant to the drawing room;
In hues as gay, and odours as divine,
As the fair fields they sold to look so fine.
'That's velvet for a king!' the flatterer swears;
'Tis true, for ten days hence 'twill be king Lear's.
Our court may justly to our stage give rules,
That helps it both to fools' coats and to fools
And why not players strut in courtiers' clothes?
For these are actors too as well as those.

6 A show of the Court of France in wax-work.

4

7 Fig's was a prize-fighter's academy, White's, a gaminghouse.

Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest, And all is splendid poverty at best.

Painted for sight, and essenc'd for the smell, Like frigates fraught with spice and cochineal, Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes So weak a vessel and so rich a prize! Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim : He boarding her, she striking sail to him. 'Dear countess ! you have charms all hearts to hit !' And, 'Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!' Such wits and beauties are not prais'd for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought. 'Twould burst e'en Heraclitus with the spleen To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: The presence seems, with things so richly odd, The mosque of Mahound, or some queer pagod. See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules, Of all beau-kind the best proportion'd fools! Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw: But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole;

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-glov'd chaplain goes, With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in him.

Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest: Prodigious! how the things protest, protest. Peace, fools! or Gonson 8 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.

But here's the captain that will plague them both;
Whose air cries, arm! whose very look's an oath.
The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough,
Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits foreright; his haughty chest before,
Like battering rams, beats open every
door;
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 licens'd fool, commands like law.
Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so
As men from jails to execution go;
For hung with deadly sins I see the wall,
And lin❜d with giants deadlier than them all:
Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss,
For quoits, both Temple-bar and Charing-cross.
Scar'd at the grisly forms, I sweat, I fly,

And shake all o'er, like a discover'd spy.

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.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN 1738.

DIALOGUE I.

Fr. Not 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;'
And taught his Romans, in much better metre,
'To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter.'
But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice;
Bubo1 observes, he lash'd no sort of vice:
Horace would say, Sir Billy serv'd the crown,

2

'Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.

2 Sir William Young, who was frequently employed to make long speeches in the House till the minister's friends were gathered together.

Blunt3 could do business, Higgins knew the town; In Sappho touch the failings of the sex,

In reverend bishops note some small neglects, And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing,5 Who cropt our ears, and sent them to the king. His sly, polite, insinuating style

Could please at court, and make Augustus smile :
An artful manager, that crept between

His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen.
But, 'faith, your very friends will soon be sore;
Patriots there are who wish you'd jest no more—
And where's the glory? 'twill be only thought
The great man never offer'd you a groat.
Go see Sir Robert 6—

P. See Sir Robert!-hum

And never laugh-for all my life to come;
Seen him I have; but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchang❜d for power;
Seen him, uncumber'd with a venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
Would he oblige me? let me only find

He does not think me what he thinks mankind.
Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt;
The only difference is—I dare laugh out.

Gaoler of the Fleet prison, enriched himself by exactions, for which he was tried and dismissed from his office.

5 The captain of a Spanish ship is said to have cut off the ears of the captain of an English ship, named Jenkins, bidding him carry them home to the king his master,

• Sir Robert Walpole.