FROM A CERTAIN DOCTOR TO A CERTAIN GREAT LORD.
BEING A CHRISTMAS-BOX FOR DR. DELANY
As Jove will not attend on less,
When things of more importance press:
You can't, grave sir, believe it hard,
That you, a low Hibernian bard,
Should cool your heels a while, and wait
Unanswer'd at your patron's gate;
And would my lord vouchsafe to grant
This one poor humble boon I want,
Free leave to play his secretary,
As Falstaff acted old king Harry;[1]
I'd tell of yours in rhyme and print,
Folks shrug, and cry, "There's nothing in't."
And, after several readings over,
It shines most in the marble cover.
How could so fine a taste dispense
With mean degrees of wit and sense?
Nor will my lord so far beguile
The wise and learned of our isle;
To make it pass upon the nation,
By dint of his sole approbation.
The task is arduous, patrons find,
To warp the sense of all mankind:
Who think your Muse must first aspire,
Ere he advance the doctor higher.
You've cause to say he meant you well:
That you are thankful, who can tell?
For still you're short (which grieves your spirit)
Of his intent: you mean your merit.
Ah! _quanto rectius, tu adepte,
Qui nil moliris tarn inepte_?[2]
Smedley,[3] thou Jonathan of Clogher,
"When thou thy humble lay dost offer
To Grafton's grace, with grateful heart,
Thy thanks and verse devoid of art:
Content with what his bounty gave,
No larger income dost thou crave."
But you must have cascades, and all
Iërne's lake, for your canal,
Your vistoes, barges, and (a pox on
All pride!) our speaker for your coxon:[4]
It's pity that he can't bestow you
Twelve commoners in caps to row you.
Thus Edgar proud, in days of yore,[5]
Held monarchs labouring at the oar;
And, as he pass'd, so swell'd the Dee,
Enraged, as Ern would do at thee.
How different is this from Smedley!
(His name is up, he may in bed lie)
"Who only asks some pretty cure,
In wholesome soil and ether pure:
The garden stored with artless flowers,
In either angle shady bowers:
No gay parterre with costly green
Must in the ambient hedge be seen;
But Nature freely takes her course,
Nor fears from him ungrateful force:
No shears to check her sprouting vigour,
Or shape the yews to antic figure."
But you, forsooth, your all must squander
On that poor spot, call'd Dell-ville, yonder;
And when you've been at vast expenses
In whims, parterres, canals, and fences,
Your assets fail, and cash is wanting;
Nor farther buildings, farther planting:
No wonder, when you raise and level,
Think this wall low, and that wall bevel.
Here a convenient box you found,
Which you demolish'd to the ground:
Then built, then took up with your arbour,
And set the house to Rupert Barber.
You sprang an arch which, in a scurvy
Humour, you tumbled topsy-turvy.
You change a circle to a square,
Then to a circle as you were:
Who can imagine whence the fund is,
That you _quadrata_ change _rotundis_?
To Fame a temple you erect,
A Flora does the dome protect;
Mounts, walks, on high; and in a hollow
You place the Muses and Apollo;
There shining 'midst his train, to grace
Your whimsical poetic place.
These stories were of old design'd
As fables: but you have refined
The poets mythologic dreams,
To real Muses, gods, and streams.
Who would not swear, when you contrive thus,
That you're Don Quixote redivivus?
Beneath, a dry canal there lies,
Which only Winter's rain supplies.
O! couldst thou, by some magic spell,
Hither convey St. Patrick's well![6]
Here may it reassume its stream,
And take a greater Patrick's name!
If your expenses rise so high;
What income can your wants supply?
Yet still you fancy you inherit
A fund of such superior merit,
That you can't fail of more provision,
All by my lady's kind decision.
For, the more livings you can fish up,
You think you'll sooner be a bishop:
That could not be my lord's intent,
Nor can it answer the event.
Most think what has been heap'd on you
To other sort of folk was due:
Rewards too great for your flim-flams,
Epistles, riddles, epigrams.
Though now your depth must not be sounded,
The time was, when you'd have compounded
For less than Charley Grattan's school!
Five hundred pound a-year's no fool!
Take this advice then from your friend,
To your ambition put an end,
Be frugal, Pat: pay what you owe,
Before you build and you bestow.
Be modest, nor address your betters
With begging, vain, familiar letters.
A passage may be found,[7] I've heard,
In some old Greek or Latian bard,
Which says, "Would crows in silence eat
Their offals, or their better meat,
Their generous feeders not provoking
By loud and inharmonious croaking,
They might, unhurt by Envy's claws,
Live on, and stuff to boot their maws."
[Footnote 1: "King Henry the Fourth," Part I, Act ii,
Scene 4.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 2: Adapted from Hor., "Epist. ad Pisones," 140.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 3: See the "Petition to the Duke of Grafton," _post_,
p. 345.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: Alluding to Dr. Delany's ambitious choice of fixing in the
island of the Lake of Erin, where Sir Ralph Gore had a villa.--_Scott_.]
[Footnote 5: When residing at Chester, he obliged eight of his tributary
princes to row him in a barge upon the Dee. Hume's "History of England,"
vol. i, p. 106.--_W. E. B_.]
[Footnote 6: Which had suddenly dried up. See _post_, vol. ii, "Verses on
the sudden drying up of St. Patrick's Well, near Trinity College,
Dublin."--_W.E.B._]
[Footnote 7: Hor., "Epist.," lib. I, xvii, 50.
"Sed tacitus pasci si corvus posset, haberet
Plus dapis, et rixae multo minus invidiaeque."
I append the original, for the sake of Swift's very free
rendering.--_W. E. B._]
A LIBEL
ON THE REVEREND DR. DELANY, AND HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN, LORD CARTERET
1729
Deluded mortals, whom the great
Choose for companions _tête-à-tête_;
Who at their dinners, _en famille_,
Get leave to sit whene'er you will;
Then boasting tell us where you dined,
And how his lordship was so kind;
How many pleasant things he spoke;
And how you laugh'd at every joke:
Swear he's a most facetious man;
That you and he are cup and can;
You travel with a heavy load,
And quite mistake preferment's road.
Suppose my lord and you alone;
Hint the least interest of your own,
His visage drops, he knits his brow,
He cannot talk of business now:
Or, mention but a vacant post,
He'll turn it off with "Name your toast:"
Nor could the nicest artist paint
A countenance with more constraint.
For, as their appetites to quench,
Lords keep a pimp to bring a wench;
So men of wit are but a kind
Of panders to a vicious mind
Who proper objects must provide
To gratify their lust of pride,
When, wearied with intrigues of state,
They find an idle hour to prate.
Then, shall you dare to ask a place,
You forfeit all your patron's grace,
And disappoint the sole design,
For which he summon'd you to dine.
Thus Congreve spent in writing plays,
And one poor office, half his days:
While Montague,[1] who claim'd the station
To be Mæcenas of the nation,
For poets open table kept,
But ne'er consider'd where they slept:
Himself as rich as fifty Jews,
Was easy, though they wanted shoes;
And crazy Congreve scarce could spare
A shilling to discharge his chair:
Till prudence taught him to appeal
From Pæan's fire to party zeal;
Not owing to his happy vein
The fortunes of his later scene,
Took proper principles to thrive:
And so might every dunce alive.[2]
Thus Steele, who own'd what others writ,
And flourish'd by imputed wit,
From perils of a hundred jails,
Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales.
Thus Gay, the hare with many friends,
Twice seven long years the court attends:
Who, under tales conveying truth,
To virtue form'd a princely youth:[3]
Who paid his courtship with the crowd,
As far as modest pride allow'd;
Rejects a servile usher's place,
And leaves St. James's in disgrace.[4]
Thus Addison, by lords carest,
Was left in foreign lands distrest;
Forgot at home, became for hire
A travelling tutor to a squire:
But wisely left the Muses' hill,
To business shaped the poet's quill,
Let all his barren laurels fade,
Took up himself the courtier's trade,
And, grown a minister of state,
Saw poets at his levee wait.[5]
Hail, happy Pope! whose generous mind
Detesting all the statesman kind,
Contemning courts, at courts unseen,
Refused the visits of a queen.
A soul with every virtue fraught,
By sages, priests, or poets taught;
Whose filial piety excels
Whatever Grecian story tells;[6]
A genius for all stations fit,
Whose meanest talent is his wit:
His heart too great, though fortune little,
To lick a rascal statesman's spittle:
Appealing to the nation's taste,
Above the reach of want is placed:
By Homer dead was taught to thrive,
Which Homer never could alive;
And sits aloft on Pindus' head,
Despising slaves that cringe for bread.
True politicians only pay
For solid work, but not for play:
Nor ever choose to work with tools
Forged up in colleges and schools,
Consider how much more is due
To all their journeymen than you:
At table you can Horace quote;
They at a pinch can bribe a vote:
You show your skill in Grecian story;
But they can manage Whig and Tory;
You, as a critic, are so curious
To find a verse in Virgil spurious;
But they can smoke the deep designs,
When Bolingbroke with Pulteney dines.
Besides, your patron may upbraid ye,
That you have got a place already;
An office for your talents fit,
To flatter, carve, and show your wit;
To snuff the lights and stir the fire,
And get a dinner for your hire.
What claim have you to place or pension?
He overpays in condescension.
But, reverend doctor, you we know
Could never condescend so low;
The viceroy, whom you now attend,
Would, if he durst, be more your friend;
Nor will in you those gifts despise,
By which himself was taught to rise:
When he has virtue to retire,
He'll grieve he did not raise you higher,
And place you in a better station,
Although it might have pleased the nation.
This may be true--submitting still
To Walpole's more than royal will;
And what condition can be worse?
He comes to drain a beggar's purse;
He comes to tie our chains on faster,
And show us England is our master:
Caressing knaves, and dunces wooing,
To make them work their own undoing.
What has he else to bait his traps,
Or bring his vermin in, but scraps?
The offals of a church distrest;
A hungry vicarage at best;
Or some remote inferior post,
With forty pounds a-year at most?
But here again you interpose--
Your favourite lord is none of those
Who owe their virtues to their stations,
And characters to dedications:
For, keep him in, or turn him out,
His learning none will call in doubt;
His learning, though a poet said it
Before a play, would lose no credit;
Nor Pope would dare deny him wit,
Although to praise it Philips writ.
I own he hates an action base,
His virtues battling with his place:
Nor wants a nice discerning spirit
Betwixt a true and spurious merit;
Can sometimes drop a voter's claim,
And give up party to his fame.
I do the most that friendship can;
I hate the viceroy, love the man.
But you, who, till your fortune's made,
Must be a sweetener by your trade,
Should swear he never meant us ill;
We suffer sore against his will;
That, if we could but see his heart,
He would have chose a milder part:
We rather should lament his case,
Who must obey, or lose his place.
Since this reflection slipt your pen,
Insert it when you write again;
And, to illustrate it, produce
This simile for his excuse:
"So, to destroy a guilty land
An [7]angel sent by Heaven's command,
While he obeys Almighty will,
Perhaps may feel compassion still;
And wish the task had been assign'd
To spirits of less gentle kind."
But I, in politics grown old,
Whose thoughts are of a different mould,
Who from my soul sincerely hate
Both kings and ministers of state;
Who look on courts with stricter eyes
To see the seeds of vice arise;
Can lend you an allusion fitter,
Though flattering knaves may call it bitter;
Which, if you durst but give it place,
Would show you many a statesman's face:
Fresh from the tripod of Apollo,
I had it in the words that follow:
Take notice to avoid offence,
I here except his excellence:
"So, to effect his monarch's ends,
From hell a viceroy devil ascends;
His budget with corruptions cramm'd,
The contributions of the damn'd;
Which with unsparing hand he strews
Through courts and senates as he goes;
And then at Beelzebub's black hall,
Complains his budget was too small."
Your simile may better shine
In verse, but there is truth in mine.
For no imaginable things
Can differ more than gods and kings:
And statesmen, by ten thousand odds,
Are angels just as kings are gods.
[Footnote 1: Earl of Halifax; see Johnson's "Life of
Montague."--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 2: The whole of this paragraph is unjust both to Halifax and
Congreve; for immediately after the production of Congreve's first play,
"The Old Bachelor," Halifax gave him a place in the Pipe Office, and
another in the Customs, of £600 a year. Ultimately he had at least four
sinecure appointments which together afforded him some £1,200 a year. See
Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," edit. Cunningham.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 3: William, Duke of Cumberland, son to George II, "The
Butcher."]
[Footnote 4: See _ante_, p. 215, note.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 5: See Johnson's "Life of Addison."--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 6: See "Prologue to the Satires," 390 to the end.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 7: "So when an angel by divine command," etc.
ADDISON'S _Campaign_.]
TO DR. DELANY
ON THE LIBELS WRITTEN AGAINST HIM. 1729
--Tanti tibi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi quodque in mare volvitur aurum.--_Juv._ iii, 54.
As some raw youth in country bred,
To arms by thirst of honour led,
When at a skirmish first he hears
The bullets whistling round his ears,
Will duck his head aside, will start,
And feel a trembling at his heart,
Till 'scaping oft without a wound
Lessens the terror of the sound;
Fly bullets now as thick as hops,
He runs into a cannon's chops.
An author thus, who pants for fame,
Begins the world with fear and shame;
When first in print you see him dread
Each pop-gun levell'd at his head:
The lead yon critic's quill contains,
Is destined to beat out his brains:
As if he heard loud thunders roll,
Cries, Lord have mercy on his soul!
Concluding that another shot
Will strike him dead upon the spot.
But, when with squibbing, flashing, popping,
He cannot see one creature dropping;
That, missing fire, or missing aim,
His life is safe, I mean his fame;
The danger past, takes heart of grace,
And looks a critic in the face.
Though splendour gives the fairest mark
To poison'd arrows in the dark,
Yet, in yourself when smooth and round,
They glance aside without a wound.
'Tis said, the gods tried all their art,
How pain they might from pleasure part:
But little could their strength avail;
Both still are fasten'd by the tail;
Thus fame and censure with a tether
By fate are always link'd together.
Why will you aim to be preferr'd
In wit before the common herd;
And yet grow mortified and vex'd,
To pay the penalty annex'd?
'Tis eminence makes envy rise;
As fairest fruits attract the flies.
Should stupid libels grieve your mind,
You soon a remedy may find;
Lie down obscure like other folks
Below the lash of snarlers' jokes.
Their faction is five hundred odds,
For every coxcomb lends them rods,
And sneers as learnedly as they,
Like females o'er their morning tea.
You say the Muse will not contain
And write you must, or break a vein.
Then, if you find the terms too hard,
No longer my advice regard:
But raise your fancy on the wing;
The Irish senate's praises sing;
How jealous of the nation's freedom,
And for corruptions how they weed 'em;
How each the public good pursues,
How far their hearts from private views;
Make all true patriots, up to shoe-boys,
Huzza their brethren at the Blue-boys;[1]
Thus grown a member of the club,
No longer dread the rage of Grub.
How oft am I for rhyme to seek!
To dress a thought I toil a week:
And then how thankful to the town,
If all my pains will earn a crown!
While every critic can devour
My work and me in half an hour.
Would men of genius cease to write,
The rogues must die for want and spite;
Must die for want of food and raiment,
If scandal did not find them payment.
How cheerfully the hawkers cry
A satire, and the gentry buy!
While my hard-labour'd poem pines
Unsold upon the printer's lines.
A genius in the reverend gown
Must ever keep its owner down;
'Tis an unnatural conjunction,
And spoils the credit of the function.
Round all your brethren cast your eyes,
Point out the surest men to rise;
That club of candidates in black,
The least deserving of the pack,
Aspiring, factious, fierce, and loud,
With grace and learning unendow'd,
Can turn their hands to every job,
The fittest tools to work for Bob;[2]
Will sooner coin a thousand lies,
Than suffer men of parts to rise;
They crowd about preferment's gate,
And press you down with all their weight;
For as of old mathematicians
Were by the vulgar thought magicians;
So academic dull ale-drinkers
Pronounce all men of wit free-thinkers.
Wit, as the chief of virtue's friends,
Disdains to serve ignoble ends.
Observe what loads of stupid rhymes
Oppress us in corrupted times;
What pamphlets in a court's defence
Show reason, grammar, truth, or sense?
For though the Muse delights in fiction,
She ne'er inspires against conviction.
Then keep your virtue still unmixt,
And let not faction come betwixt:
By party-steps no grandeur climb at,
Though it would make you England's primate;
First learn the science to be dull,
You then may soon your conscience lull;
If not, however seated high,
Your genius in your face will fly.
When Jove was from his teeming head
Of Wit's fair goddess[3] brought to bed,
There follow'd at his lying-in
For after-birth a sooterkin;
Which, as the nurse pursued to kill,
Attain'd by flight the Muses' hill,
There in the soil began to root,
And litter'd at Parnassus' foot.
From hence the critic vermin sprung,
With harpy claws and poisonous tongue:
Who fatten on poetic scraps,
Too cunning to be caught in traps.
Dame Nature, as the learned show,
Provides each animal its foe:
Hounds hunt the hare, the wily fox
Devours your geese, the wolf your flocks
Thus Envy pleads a natural claim
To persecute the Muse's fame;
On poets in all times abusive,
From Homer down to Pope inclusive.
Yet what avails it to complain?
You try to take revenge in vain.
A rat your utmost rage defies,
That safe behind the wainscot lies.
Say, did you ever know by sight
In cheese an individual mite!
Show me the same numeric flea,
That bit your neck but yesterday:
You then may boldly go in quest
To find the Grub Street poet's nest;
What spunging-house, in dread of jail,
Receives them, while they wait for bail;
What alley are they nestled in,
To flourish o'er a cup of gin;
Find the last garret where they lay,
Or cellar where they starve to-day.
Suppose you have them all trepann'd,
With each a libel in his hand,
What punishment would you inflict?
Or call them rogues, or get them kickt?
These they have often tried before;
You but oblige them so much more:
Themselves would be the first to tell,
To make their trash the better sell.
You have been libell'd--Let us know,
What fool officious told you so?
Will you regard the hawker's cries,
Who in his titles always lies?
Whate'er the noisy scoundrel says,
It might be something in your praise;
And praise bestow'd in Grub Street rhymes,
Would vex one more a thousand times.
Till critics blame, and judges praise,
The poet cannot claim his bays.
On me when dunces are satiric,
I take it for a panegyric.
Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.
[Footnote 1: The Irish Parliament met at the Blue-Boys Hospital, while
the new Parliament-house was building.--_Swift_.]
[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Walpole.]
[Footnote 3: Pallas.]