Though England, once so dear to Fame,
Sinks in Great Britain's dearer name.

Here could we mention chiefs of old,
In plain and rugged honour bold,
To Virtue kind, to Vice severe,
Strangers to bribery and fear,
Who kept no wretched clans in awe,
Who never broke or warp'd the law;
Patriots, whom, in her better days,

Old Rome might have been proud to raise;
Who, steady to their country's claim,
Boldly stood up in Freedom's name,
E'en to the teeth of Tyrant-Pride,
And when they could no more, THEY DIED.
There (striking contrast!) might we place
A servile, mean, degen'rate race,
Hirelings, who valued nought but gold,
By the best bidder bought and sold;
Truants from Honour's sacred laws,
Betrayers of their country's cause;
The dupes of party, tools of pow'r,
Slaves to the minion of an hour;
Lacquies, who watch'd a favourite's nod,
And took a puppet for their god.

Sincere and honest in our rhymes,
How might we praise these happier times!
How might the Muse exalt her lays,
And wanton in a monarch's praise!
Tell of a prince in England born,
Whose virtues England's crown adorn ;
In youth a pattern unto age,
So chaste, so pious, and so sage;
Who true to all those sacred bands
Which private happiness demands,
Yet never lets them rise above
The stronger ties of public love.

With conscious pride see England stand,
Our holy charter in her hand,

She waves it round, and o'er the isle
See Liberty and Courage smile.

No more she mourns her treasures hurl'd

In subsidies to all the world;

No more by foreign threats dismay'd,

No more deceiv'd with foreign aid,

She deals out sums to petty states,

Whom Honour scorns, and Reason hates;
But, wiser by experience grown,
Finds safety in herself alone.

"Whilst thus," she cries, 66
my children stand,
An honest, valiant, native band,
A train'd militia, brave and free,
True to their king, and true to me,
No foreign hirelings shall be known,
Nor need we hirelings of our own.
Under a just and pious reign
The statesman's sophistry is vain;
Vain is each vile corrupt pretence,
These are my natural defence;

Their faith I know, and they shall prove
The bulwark of the king they love."

These, and a thousand things beside,
Did we consult a poet's pride,
Some gay, some serious, might be said,
But ten to one they 'd not be read;
Or were they by some curious few,
Not even those would think them true,
For, from the time that Jubal first
Sweet ditties to the harp rehears'd,
Poets have always been suspected
Of having truth in rhyme neglected,

That bard except, who from his youth
Equally fam'd for faith and truth,
By prudence taught, in courtly chime
To courtly ears brought truth in rhyme.
But though to poets we allow,
No matter when acquir'd or how,
From truth unbounded deviation,
Which custom calls imagination,
Yet can't they be suppos'd to lie
One-half so fast as Fame can fly.
Therefore (to solve this Gordian knot,
A point we almost had forgot)

To courteous readers be it known,
That fond of verse and falsehood grown,
Whilst we in sweet digression sung,

Pame check'd her flight, and held her tongue,
And now pursues with double force
And double speed her destin'd course;
Nor stops, till she the place arrives,
Where Genius starves, and Dullness thrives;
Where riches virtue are esteem'd,
And craft is truest wisdom deeni'd;

Where Commerce proudly rears her throne
In state to other lands unknown;
Where to be cheated, and to cheat,
Strangers from ev'ry quarter meet;

Where Christians, Jews, and Turks shake hands,
United in commercial bands,

All of one faith, and that, to own
No god but Interest alone.

When gods and goddesses come down
To look about them here in town,
(For change of air is understood
By sons of Physic to be good,
In due proportions now and then
For these same gods as well as men)
By custom rul'd, and not a poet
So very dull, but he must know it,
In order to remain incog.
They always travel in a fog.
For if we majesty expose

To vulgar eyes, too cheap it grows;
The force is lost, and free from awe,
We spy and censure ev'ry flaw,
But well preserv'd from public view,
It always breaks forth fresh and new;
Fierce as the Sun in all his pride,
It shines, and not a spot's descried.
Was Jove to lay his thunder by,
And with his brethren of the sky
Descend to Earth, and frisk about,
Like chattering N-, from rout to rout,
He would be found, with all his host,
A nine days wonder at the most.
Would we in trim our honours wear,
We must preserve them from the air:
What is familiar, men neglect,
However worthy of respect.
Did they not find a certain friend
In novelty to recommend,
(Such we by sad experience find
The wretched folly of mankind)
Venus might unattractive shine,
And H- fix no eyes but mine.
But Fame, who never car'd a jot
Whether she was admir'd or not,
And never blush'd to show her face
At any time in any place,

-

In her own shape, without disguise, And visible to mortal eyes,

Which after all the cost and rout
It had been better much withou)
Briefly (for breakfast, you must know,
Was waiting all the while below)
Related, bowing to the ground,
The cause of that uncommon sound;
Related too, that at the door,
Pomposo, Plausible, and Moore 3,
Begg'd that Fame might not be allow'd
Their shame to publish to the crowd;
That some new laws he would provide,
(If old could not be misapplied,
With as much ease and safety there,
As they are misapplied elsewhere)
By chich it might be construed treason
In man to exercise his reason;
Which might ingeniously devise
One punishment for truth and lies;
And fairly prove, when they had done,
That truth and falsehood were but one;
Which juries must indeed retain,
But their effect should render vain,
Making all real power to rest
In on corrupted rotten breast,
By whose false gloss the very Bible
Might be interpreted a libel.

Moore (who, his rev'rence to save,
Pleaded the fool to skreen the knave,
Though all, who witness'd on his part,
Swore for his head against his heart}
Had taken down, from first to last,
A just account of all that past;
But, since the gracious will of Fate,

Who mark'd the child for wealth and state
E'en in the cradle, had decreed
The mighty Dullman ue'er should read,
That office of disgrace to bear
The smooth-lipp'd Plausible was there.
From H- e'en to Clerkenwell
Who knows not smooth-Upp'd Plausible?
A preacher deem'd of greatest note,
For preaching that which others wrote.
Had Dullman now (and foo's we see
Seldom want curiosity)

Consented (but the mourning shado
Of Gascoyne 4 hasten'd to his aid,
And in his hand, what could he more?
Triumphant Canning's picture bore)
That our three heroes should advance,
And read their comical romance,
How rich a feast, what royal fare
We for our readers might prepare!
So rich, and yet so safe a feast,
That no one foreign blatant beast,
Within the parlieus of the lace
Should dare thereon to lay his paw,
And, groeling, cry, with surly tone,
"Keep off-this feast is all my own

Bending to earth the downcast eye,
Or planting it against the sky,
As one immers'd in deepest thought,
Or with some holy vision caught,
His hands, to aid the traitor's art,

Devoutly folded o'er his heart,

Here Moore, in fraud well skill'd, should go, All saint, with solemn step and slow.

O that Religion's sacred name,
Meant to inspire the purest flame,
A prostitute should ever be
To that arch fend Hypocrisy,
Where we find ev'ry other vice
Crown'd with damn'd sneaking cour lice!
Boli sin reclaim'd is often seen;
Past hope that man, who dares be mean.

There full of fesh, and full of grace,
With that fine round unmeaning face
Which Nature gives to sons of Earth
Whom she designs for ease and mirth,
Should the prim Plausible be scen,
Observe his stiff affected mien;
'Gainst Nature, arm'd by Gravity,
His features too in buckle see;
See with what sanctity he reads,
With what devotion tells his beads!
Now prophet, show ine, by thine art,
What's the religion of his heart;
Show there, if truth thou can'st unfold,
Religion center'd all in gold;
Show him, nor fear Correction's rod,
As false to frien !s'up, as to God.
Horrid, unwieldy, without form,
Savage, as Ocean in a storm.
Of size prodigious, in the rear,
That post of honour, should appear
Poiposo; Fame around should tell
How he a slave to int'rest fell;
How, for integrity renown'd,

Which booksellers have often found,

He for subscribers baits his hook,

And takes their cash-but where's the book?

No matter where-Wise fear, we know,
Forbids the robbing of a fue;

But what, to serve our private ends,
Forbids the cheating of our friends?
No man alive, who would not swear
All 's safe, and therefore honest there.
For, spite of all the learned say,
If we to truth attention pay,
The word dishonesty is meant
For nothing else but punishme !.

Fame too should tell, nor heed the threat
Of rogues, who brother rogues abet,
Nor tremble at the terrours hung
Aloft, to make her holl her tongue,
How to all principles untrue,
Not fix'd to old friends, nor to new,
He damns the pension which he takes,
And loves the Stuart he forsakes.
Nature (who justly regular

Is very seldom known to err,
But now and then in sportive mood,
As some rude wits have understood,
Or through much work requir'd in his!?,
Is with a random stroke d'sgrac'd)
Pomposo, form'd on doubtful plan,
Not quite a beast, nor quite a mar,
Like God knows what-for never yet
Could the most subtle human wit
Find out a monster, which might be
The shadow of a simile.

THESE THREE, THESE GREAT THESE MIGHTY TIRES, Nor can the poel's truth agree,

Howe'er report hath done hin wrong,

in the Cock Lane ghost imposition.

+ Sir Crisp Gascoyne.

Amongst the refuse of their race,

The sons of Infamy, to placę

Ne'er backward turn dull pages o'er
To recollect what went before;
Deeply impress'd, and ever new,
Each image past should start to view,
And we to Dullman now come in,
As if we ne'er had absent been.

Have you not seen, when danger's near
The coward cheek turn white with fear?
Have you not seen, when danger's fled,
The self-same cheek with joy turn red?
These are low symptoms which we find
Fit only for a vulgar mind,
Where honest features, void of art,
Betray the feelings of the heart:
Our Dullman with a face was bless'd
Where no one passion was express'd;
His eye, in a fine stupor caught,
Imply'd a plenteous lack of thought;
Nor was one line that whole face seen in,
Which could be justly charg'd with meaning.
To Avarice by birth ally'd,
Debauch'd by marriage into pride,
In age grown fond of youthful sports,
Of pomps, of vanities, and courts,
And by success too mighty made
To love his country or his trade,
Stiff in opinion (no rare case
With blockheads in or out of place)
Too weak, and insolent of soul,
To suffer Reason's just control,
But bending, of his own accord,
To that trim transient toy, My Lord;
The dupe of Scots (a fatal race,
Whom God in wrath contriv'd to place,
To scourge our crimes, and gall our pride,
A constant thorn in England's side;
Whom first, our greatness to oppose,
He in his vengeance mark'd for foes;
Then, more to serve his wrathful ends
And more to curse us, mark'd for friends)
Deep in the state, if we give credit
To him, for no one else e'er said it;
Sworn friend of great ones not a few,
Though he their titles only kuew,
And those (which envious of his breeding
Book-worms have charg'd to want of reading)
Merely to show himself polite,

He never would pronounce aright;
An orator with whom a host

Of those which Rome and Athens boast,
In all their pride might not contend;
Who, with no pow'rs to recommend,
Whilst Jackey Hume, and Billy Whiteheads
And Dickey Glover sat delighted,
Could speak whole days in Nature's spite,
Just as those able verse-men write,
Great Dullmau from his bed arose-
Thrice did he spit-thrice wip'd his nose-
Thrice strove to smile-thrice strove to frown-
And thrice look'd up-and thrice look'd down-
Then silence broke-" Crape, who am I?"
Crape bow'd, and smil'd an arch reply.
"Am I not, Crape-I am, you know,
Above all those who are below.
Have I not knowledge? and for wit,
Money will always purchase it;
Nor, if it needful should be found,
Will I grudge ten or twenty pound,

For which the whole stock may be bought
Of scoundrel wits not worth a groat.

But lest I should proceed too far,

I'll feel my friend the minister,

(Great men, Crape, must not be neglected) How he in this point is affected;

For, as I stand a magistrate,

To serve him first, and next the state,
Perhaps he may not think it fit
To let his magistrates have wit.

"Boast I not, at this very hour,
Those large effects which troop with pow'r?
Am I not mighty in the land?
Do not I sit, whilst others stand?
Am I not with rich garments grac'd,
In seat of honour always plac'd?
And do not cits of chief degree,
Though proud to others, bend to me?
"Have I not, as a justice ought,
The laws such wholesome rigour taught,
That Fornication, in disgrace,

Is now afraid to show her face,

And not one whore these walls approaches,
Unless they ride in our own coaches?
And shall this Fame, an old poor strumpet,
Without our licence sound her trumpet
And, envious of our city's quiet,

In broad day-light blow up a riot?
If insolence like this we bear,

Where is our state? our office where?
Farewell all honours of our reign,

Farewell the neck-ennobling chain,

Freedom's known badge o'er all the globe,

Farewell the solemn-spreading robe,

Farewell the sword-farewell the mace,
Farewell all title, pomp, and place.
Remov'd from men of high degree,

(A loss to them, Crape, not to me)
Banish'd to Chippenham, or to Frome,
Dullman once more shall ply the loom."

Crape, lifting up his hands and eyes, "Dullman-the Loom-at Chippenham"-cries, "If there be pow'rs which greatness love, Which rule below, but dwell above,

Those pow'rs united all shall join
To contradict the rash design.

"Sooner shall stubborn Will lay down
His opposition with his gown,
Sooner shall Temple leave the road
Which leads to Virtue's mean abode,
Sooner shall Scots this country quit,
And England's foes be friends to Pitt,
Than Dullman, from his grandeur thrown,
Shall wander out-cast, and unknown.
Sure as that cane" (a cane there stood,
Near to a table, made of wood,
Of dry fine wood a table made,
By some rare artist in the trade,
Who had enjoy'd immortal praise
If he had li'd in Homer's days)
"Sure as that cane, which once was seen,
In pride of life all fresh and green,
The banks of Indus to adorn;
Then, of its leafy honours shorn,
According to exactest rule,

Was fashion'd by the workman's too!,

And which at present we behold
Curiously polish'd, crown'd with gold,
With gold well-wrought; sure as that cane

Shall never on its native plain
Strike root afresh, shall never more
Flourish in tawny India's shore,