Cursed be the wretch that's bought and sold,
And barters liberty for gold;
For when election is not free,
In vain we boast of liberty:
And he who sells his single right,
Would sell his country, if he might.
When liberty is put to sale
For wine, for money, or for ale,
The sellers must be abject slaves,
The buyers vile designing knaves;
A proverb it has been of old,
The devil's bought but to be sold.
This maxim in the statesman's school
Is always taught, _divide and rule_.
All parties are to him a joke:
While zealots foam, he fits the yoke.
Let men their reason once resume;
'Tis then the statesman's turn to fume.
Learn, learn, ye Britons, to unite;
Leave off the old exploded bite;
Henceforth let Whig and Tory cease,
And turn all party rage to peace;
Rouse and revive your ancient glory;
Unite, and drive the world before you.
To the ballad of "Sally in our Alley" Carey has prefixed an argument
so full of nature, that the song may hereafter derive an additional
interest from its simple origin. The author assures the reader that
the popular notion that the subject of his ballad had been the noted
Sally Salisbury, is perfectly erroneous, he being a stranger to her
name at the time the song was composed.
"As innocence and virtue were ever the boundaries of his Muse, so in
this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of
a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human
life. The real occasion was this: A shoemaker's 'prentice, making
holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the
puppet-shows, the flying-chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields;
from whence, proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a
collation of buns, cheesecakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and
bottled ale; through all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed
with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this
little sketch of Nature; but, being then young and obscure, he was
very much ridiculed for this performance; which, nevertheless, made
its way into the polite world, and amply recompensed him by the
applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to
mention it with approbation."
In "The Poet's Resentment" poor Carey had once forsworn "the harlot
Muse:"--
Far, far away then chase the harlot Muse,
Nor let her thus thy noon of life abuse;
Mix with the common crowd, unheard, unseen,
And if again thou tempt'st the vulgar praise,
Mayst thou be crown'd with birch instead of bays!
Poets make such oaths in sincerity, and break them in rapture.
At the time that this poet could neither walk the streets nor be
seated at the convivial board, without listening to his own songs and
his own music--for, in truth, the whole nation was echoing his verse,
and crowded theatres were applauding his wit and humour--while this
very man himself, urged by his strong humanity, founded a "Fund for
decayed Musicians"--he was so broken-hearted, and his own common
comforts so utterly neglected, that in despair, not waiting for nature
to relieve him from the burden of existence, he laid violent hands on
himself; and when found dead, had only a halfpenny in his pocket! Such
was the fate of the author of some of the most popular pieces in our
language. He left a son, who inherited his misery, and a gleam of his
genius.