Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;Blessed with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause;While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise:--Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
What though my name stood rubric on the walls, Or plaistered posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load, On wings of winds came flying all abroad?
I sought no homage from the race that write;I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long)
No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.
I ne'er with wits or witlings passed my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise;Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side;But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.
Proud as Apollo on his fork-ed hill, Sat full-blown Bufo puffed by every quill;Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
His library (where busts of poets dead And a true Pindar stood without a head)Received of wits an undistinguished race, Who first his judgment asked, and then a place:
Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat, And flattered every day, and some days eat:
Till grown more frugal in his riper days, He paid some bards with port, and some with praise;To some a dry rehearsal was assigned, And others (harder still) he paid in kind.
Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:
But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.
May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill!
May every Bavius have his Bufo still!
So, when a statesman wants a day's defence, Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense, Or simple pride for flattery makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blessed be the great! for those they take away, And those they left me; for they left me gay;Left me to see neglected genius bloom, Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:
Of all thy blameless life the soul return My verse, and Queensbury weeping o'er thy urn!
Oh let me live my own, and die so too!
(To live and die is all I have to do:)
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please;Above a patron, though I condescend Sometimes to call a minister my friend.
I was not born for courts or great affairs;I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;Can sleep without a poem in my head;
Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.
Why am I asked what next shall see the light?
Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write?
Has life no joys for me! or (to be grave)Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?
"I found him close with Swift."--'Indeed? no doubt,'
(Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.'
'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.
'No, such a genius never can lie still;'
And then for mine obligingly mistakes The first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes.
Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile When every coxcomb knows me by my style?
Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress, Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about, Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
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, injured, 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 Canons 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.
