But guiltless blood to ground must never fall;
There's Antichrist behind to pay for all.
The punk of Babylon in pomp appears,
A lewd old gentleman of seventy years,
Whose age in vain our mercy would implore,
For few take pity on an old cast whore.
The devil, who brought him to the shame, takes part,
Sits cheek by jowl, in black, to cheer his heart,
Like thief and parson in a Tyburn-cart.
The word is given, and, with a loud huzza,
The mitred puppet from his chair they draw:
On the slain corpse contending nations fall:
Alas! what's one poor Pope among them all!
He burns; now all true hearts your triumphs ring;
And next (for fashion) cry, 'God save the King.'
A needful cry in midst of such alarms,
When forty thousand men are up in arms.
But after he's once saved, to make amends,
In each succeeding health they damn his friends:
So God begins, but still the Devil ends.
What, if some one, inspired with zeal, should call,
'Come, let's go cry God save him, at Whitehall?
His best friends would not like this over-care,
Or think him e'er the safer for this prayer.
Five praying saints are by an act allow'd;
But not the whole church-militant in crowd.
Yet, should Heaven all the true petitions drain
Of Presbyterians, who would kings maintain,
Of forty thousand five would scarce remain.
OUR play's a parallel: the holy league
Begot our covenant: Guisards got the Whig:
Whate'er our hot-brain'd sheriffs did advance
Was, like our fashions, first produced in France;
And when worn out, well scourged, and banish'd
Sent over, like their godly beggars, here. [there,
Could the same trick, twice play'd, our nation gull?
It looks as if the devil were grown dull,
Or served us up in scorn, his broken meat,
And thought we were not worth a better cheat.
The fulsome covenant, one would think, in reason,
Had given us all our bellies full of treason:
And yet, the name but changed, our nasty nation
Chaws its own excrement, the' association.
"Tis true, we have not learn'd their poisoning way,
For that's a mode but newly come in play:
Besides, your drug's uncertain to prevail;
But your true protestant can never fail,
With that compendious instrument—a flail.
Go on and bite, e'en though the hook is bare;
Twice in one age expel the lawful heir:
Once more decide religion by the sword;
And purchase for us a new tyrant lord.
Pray for your king; but yet your purses spare;
Make him not two-pence richer by your prayer.
To show you love him much, chastise him more;
And make him very great, and very poor.
Push him to wars, but still no pence advance;
Let him lose England, to recover France.
Cry Freedom up, with popular noisy votes;
And get enough to cut each other's throats.
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
Lop all the rights that fence your monarch's throne; For fear of too much power, pray leave him none. A noise was made of arbitrary sway;
But, in revenge, you Whigs have found a way,
An arbitrary duty now to pay.
Let his own servants turn, to save their stake;
Glean from his plenty, and his wants forsake;
But let some Judas near his person stay,
To swallow the last sop, and then betray.
Make London independent of the crown:
A realm apart; the kingdom of the town.
Let ignoramus juries find no traitors;
And ignoramus poets scribble satires.
And, that your meaning none may fail to scan,
Do, what in coffee-houses you began,
Pull down the master, and set up the man.
SPOKEN BY MR. HART, AT THE ACTING OF THE SILENT WOMAN.
WHAT Greece, when learning flourish'd, only knew,
Athenian judges! you this day renew.
Here, too, are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes lost or won.
Methinks I see you, crown'd with olives, sit,
And strike a sacred horror from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where e'en the best are but by mercy free:
A day which none but Jonson durst have wish'd
Here they, who long have known the useful stage, Come to be taught themselves, to teach the age.
As your commissioners, our poets go
To cultivate the virtue which you sow;
In your Lycæum first themselves refined,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
The' illiterate writer, empiric like, applies
To minds diseased, unsafe, chance remedies:
The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the' anatomy of man ;
Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause,
And fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by some chance,
They call that Nature which is Ignorance.
To such a fame let mere Town-wits aspire,
And their gay nonsense their own Cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the senate's hands;
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Muses' feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, resigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
DISCORD and plots, which have undone our age, With the same ruin have o'erwhelm'd the stage. Our House has suffer'd in the common woe, We have been troubled with Scotch rebels too. Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed, And, of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted, To Edinborough gone, or coach'd, or carted. With bonny Bluecap there they act all night For Scotch half-crown, in English threepence hight. One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, There with a single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty door-keepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute; And that which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express the care Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare: Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing; It might, perhaps, a new rebellion bring; The Scot who wore it would be chosen king. But why should I these renegades describe, When you yourselves have seen a lewder tribe ? Teague has been here, and to this learned pit, With Irish action slander'd English wit; You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear, As merited a second massacre;
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