There needs no magic to divine your scope, Mark'd, as you are, a flagrant misanthrope: Sworn foe to good and bad, to great and small, Thy rankling pen produces nought but gall: Let virtue struggle, or let glory shine, Thy verse affords not one approving line. 100
Hail, sacred themes! the Muse's chief delight! Oh, bring the darling objects to my sight! My breast with elevated thought shall glow, My fancy brighten, and my numbers flow! The Aonian grove with rapture would I tread, To crop unfading wreaths for William's head, But that my strain, unheard amidst the throng, Must yield to Lockman's ode, and Hambury's song. Nor would the enamour'd Muse neglect to pay To Stanhope's[3] worth the tributary lay, 110 The soul unstain'd, the sense sublime to paint, A people's patron, pride, and ornament, Did not his virtues eternised remain The boasted theme of Pope's immortal strain. Not e'en the pleasing task is left to raise A grateful monument to Barnard's praise, Else should the venerable patriot stand The unshaken pillar of a sinking land. The gladdening prospect let me still pursue, And bring fair Virtue's triumph to the view; 120 Alike to me, by fortune blest or not, From soaring Cobham to the melting Scot.[4] But, lo! a swarm of harpies intervene, To ravage, mangle, and pollute the scene! Gorged with our plunder, yet still gaunt for spoil, Rapacious Gideon fastens on our isle; Insatiate Lascelles, and the fiend Vaneck, Rise on our ruins, and enjoy the wreck; While griping Jasper glories in his prize, Wrung from the widow's tears and orphan's cries. 130
Relapsed again! strange tendency to rail! I fear'd this meekness would not long prevail.
You deem it rancour, then? Look round and see What vices flourish still unpruned by me: Corruption, roll'd in a triumphant car, Displays his burnish'd front and glittering star, Nor heeds the public scorn, or transient curse, Unknown alike to honour and remorse. Behold the leering belle, caress'd by all, Adorn each private feast and public ball, 140 Where peers attentive listen and adore, And not one matron shuns the titled whore. At Peter's obsequies[5] I sung no dirge; Nor has my satire yet supplied a scourge For the vile tribes of usurers and bites, Who sneak at Jonathan's, and swear at White's. Each low pursuit, and slighter folly, bred Within the selfish heart and hollow head, Thrives uncontroll'd, and blossoms o'er the land, Nor feels the rigour of my chastening hand. 150 While Codrus shivers o'er his bags of gold, By famine wither'd, and benumb'd by cold, I mark his haggard eyes with frenzy roll, And feast upon the terrors of his soul; The wrecks of war, the perils of the deep, That curse with hideous dreams the caitiff's sleep; Insolvent debtors, thieves, and civil strife, Which daily persecute his wretched life, With all the horrors of prophetic dread, That rack his bosom while the mail is read. 160 Safe from the road, untainted by the school, A judge by birth, by destiny a fool, While the young lordling struts in native pride, His party-colour'd tutor by his side, Pleased, let me own the pious mother's care, Who to the brawny sire commits her heir. Fraught with the spirit of a Gothic monk, Let Rich, with dulness and devotion drunk, Enjoy the peal so barbarous and loud, While his brain spews new monsters to the crowd; 170 I see with joy the vaticide deplore A hell-denouncing priest and ... whore; Let every polish'd dame and genial lord, Employ the social chair and venal board; Debauch'd from sense, let doubtful meanings run, The vague conundrum, and the prurient pun, While the vain fop, with apish grin, regards The giggling minx half-choked behind her cards: These, and a thousand idle pranks, I deem The motley spawn of Ignorance and Whim. 180 Let Pride conceive, and Folly propagate, The fashion still adopts the spurious brat: Nothing so strange that fashion cannot tame; By this, dishonour ceases to be shame: This weans from blushes lewd Tyrawley's face, Gives Hawley[6] praise, and Ingoldsby disgrace, From Mead to Thomson shifts the palm at once, A meddling, prating, blundering, busy dunce! And may, should taste a little more decline, Transform the nation to a herd of swine. 190