They teach you how to split a hair,
Give George and Jove an equal share.
Yet why should we be laced so strait?
I'll give my monarch butter-weight:
And reason good; for many a year
Jove never intermeddled here:
Nor, though his priests be duly paid,'
Did ever we desire his aid:

We now can better do without him,
Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him,
Cætera desiderantur.

ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT.'

Written in November, 1731.

Occasioned by reading the following MAXIM in ROCHEFOUCAULT: "Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplait pas."

"In the adversity of our best friends we always find something that does not displease us."

As Rochefoucault his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true:
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.

This maxim more than all the rest
Is thought too base for human breast:
"In all distresses of our friends
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us."
If this perhaps your patience move,
Let reason and experience prove.
We all behold with envious eyes
Our equals raised above our size.
Who would not at a crowded show
Stand high himself, keep others low?
I love my friend as well as you:
But why should he obstruct my view?
Then let me have the higher post:
Suppose it but an inch at most.
If in a battle you should find
One whom you love of all mankind
Had some heroic action done,

A champion kill'd, or trophy won;

Rather than thus be overtopp'd,

Would you not wish his laurels cropp'd?

"The verses on his death, and the Rhapsody on Poetry, are the best of Swift's

Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies rack'd with pain and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he?
But rather than they should excel,
Would wish his rivals all in hell?

Her end when Emulation misses,
She turns to Envy, stings and hisses;
The strongest friendship yields to pride,
Unless the odds be on our side.
Vain humankind! fantastic race!
Thy various follies who can trace?
Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,
Their empire in our hearts divide,
Give others riches, power, and station,
'Tis all on me a usurpation.

I have no title to aspire;

Yet, when you sink, I seem the higher.
In Pope I cannot read a line,
But with a sigh I wish it mine;
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six;
It gives me such a jealous fit,
I cry, "Pox take him and his wit!"
I grieve to be outdone by Gay
In my own humorous biting way.
Arbuthnot is no more my friend,
Who dares to irony pretend,
Which I was born to introduce,
Refined it first, and show'd its use.
St. John, as well as Pulteney, knows
That I had some repute for prose;
And, till they drove me out of date,
Could maul a minister of state.
If they have mortified my pride,
And made me throw my pen aside;

If with such talents Heaven has bless'd 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em?

To all my foes, dear Fortune, send Thy gifts! but never to my friend:

I tamely can endure the first;

But this with envy makes me burst.
Thus much may serve by way of proem;
Proceed we therefore to our poem.
The time is not remote when I
Must by the course of nature die;
When I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
And, though 'tis hardly understood

Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:
"See, how the dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him till he's dead.
Besides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he says;
He cannot call his friends to mind:
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er;
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy we can sit
To hear his out-of-fashion wit?

But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found.

"For poetry he's past his prime;
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decay'd,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen;-
But there's no talking to some men!"
And then their tenderness appears
By adding largely to my years;
"He's older than he would be reckon'd,
And well remembers Charles the Second.
He hardly drinks a pint of wine;

And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
His stomach too begins to fail:

Last year we thought him strong and hale;
But now he's quite another thing:

he may hold out till spring!"

g themselves, and reason thus:
ot yet so bad with us!"
ch a case they talk in tropes,
their fears express their hopes.
great misfortune to portend,
emy can match a friend.

all the kindness they profess,
merit of a lucky guess

hen daily how-d'yes come of course, servants answer, "Worse and worse!")

ease them better than to tell

be praised, the dean is well." o prophesied the best

is foresight to the rest:
I always fear'd the worst,

He'd rather choose that I should die
Than his prediction prove a lie.
Not one foretells I shall recover;
But all agree to give me over.

Yet, should some neighbor feel a pain
Just in the parts where I complain,
How many a message would he send!
What hearty prayers that I should mend!
Inquire what regimen I kept;

What gave me ease, and how I slept?
And more lament when I was dead
Than all the snivellers round my bed.
My good companions, never fear;
For, though you may mistake a year,
Though your prognostics run too fast,
They must be verified at last.

Behold the fatal day arrive!

"How is the dean?" "He's just alive."
Now the departing prayer is read;

66

Ile hardly breathes." "The dean is dead."
Before the passing bell begun,

The news through half the town is run.
"O! may we all for death prepare!
What has he left? and who's his heir?"
"I know no more than what the news is;
'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.".
"To public uses! there's a whim!
What had the public done for him?
Mere envy, avarice, and pride:
He gave it all-but first he died.
And had the dean, in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!"

Now Grub-street wits are all employ'd;
With elegies the town is cloy'd:
Some paragraph in every paper
To curse the dean or bless the drapier.
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wisely on me lay all the blame:
"We must confess his case was nice;
But he would never take advice.
Had he been ruled, for aught appears,
He might have lived these twenty years.
For when we open'd him we found
That all his vital parts were sound."

From Dublin soon to London spread,
'Tis told at court" the dean is dead."
And lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
Runs laughing up to tell the queen.

The dean supposed himself to die in Ireland, where he was born.

The queen, so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries, "Is he gone! 'tis time he should.
He's dead, you say; then let him rot:
I'm glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I own; but when?
I only was the princess then ;
But now, as consort of the king,
You know 'tis quite another thing."
Now Chartres,2 at sir Robert's levee,
Tells with a sneer the tidings heavy:
Why, if he died without his shoes,"
Cries Bob, "I'm sorry for the news:
O, were the wretch but living still,
And in his place my good friend Will!
Or had a mitre on his head,

66

3

8

Provided Bolingbroke 5 were dead!"
Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains:
Three genuine tomes of Swift's remains!
And then, to make them pass the glibber,
Revised by Tibbalds, Moore, and Cibber.7
He'll treat me as he does my betters,
Publish my will, my life, my letters:
Revive the libels born to die;
Which Pope must bear as well as I.
Here shift the scene, to represent
How those I love my death lament.
Poor Pope would grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.

St. John himself will scarce forbear
To bite his pen and drop a tear.
The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
but we all must die!"

"I'm sorry

Indifference, clad in Wisdom's guise,
All fortitude of mind supplies:

For how can stony bowels melt

In those who never pity felt?

1 The medals were to be sent to the dean in four months; but * * * * * 'Chartres, an infamous scoundrel, grown from a footboy to a prodigious fortune, both in England and Scotland.

Sir Robert Walpole, chief minister of state, treated the dean in 1726 with great distinction; invited him to dinner at Chelsea, with the dean's friends chosen on purpose; appointed an hour to talk with him on Ireland, to which kingdom and people the dean found him no great friend.

Mr. William Pultney, from being sir Robert's intimate friend, detesting his administration, opposed his measures, and joined with my lord Bolingbroke.

Henry St. John, lord viscount Bolingbroke, secretary of state to queen Anne, of blessed memory.

6

Curll hath been the most infamous bookseller of any age or country.

'Three stupid verse-writers in London; the last, to the shame of the court and the disgrace to wit and learning, was made laureat.

Curll, notoriously infamous for publishing the lives, letters, and last wills and testaments of the nobility and ministers of state, as well as of all the rogues who are hanged at Tyburn.