If, either void of princely care,
Remiss he holds the slacken'd rein;
If rising heats or mad career,
Unskill'd, he knows not to restrain;
Or if, perhaps, he gives a loose,
In wanton pride to show his skill,
How easily he can reduce
And curb the people's rage at will;
In wild uproar they hurry on;
The great, the good, the just, the wise.. (Law and religion overthrown,)
Are first mark'd out for sacrifice.
When, to a height their fury grown,
Finding, too late, he can't retire,
He proves the real Phaeton,
And truly sets the world on fire.
A TALE OF A NETTLE.
A MAN with expense and infinite toil,
By digging and dunging, ennobled his soil;
There fruits of the best your taste did invite,
And uniform order still courted the sight.
No degenerate weeds the rich ground did produce,
But all things afforded both beauty and use:
Till from dunghill transplanted, while yet but a seed,
A nettle rear'd up his inglorious head.
The gard'ner would wisely have rooted him up,
To stop the increase of a barbarous crop;
But the master forbid him, and after the fashion
Of foolish good nature, and blind moderation,
Forbore him through pity, and chose as much rather,
To ask him some questions first, how he came thither.
Kind sir, quoth the nettle, a stranger I come,
For conscience compell'd to relinquish my home,
'Cause I wouldn't subscribe to a mystery dark,
That the prince of all trees is the Jesuit's bark,1
An erroneous tenet I know, sir, that you,
No more than myself, will allow to be true.
To you I for refuge and sanctuary sue,
There's none so renown'd for compassion as you;
And, though in some things I may differ from these,
The rest of your fruitful and beautiful trees;
Though your digging and dunging, my nature much harms, And I cannot comply with your garden in forms:
Yet I and my family, after our fashion,
Will peaceably stick to our own education.
'In allusion to the supremacy of Rome.
Be pleased to allow them a place for to rest 'em,
For the rest of your trees we will never molest 'em;
A kind shelter to us and protection afford,
We'll do you no harm, sir, I'll give you my word.
The good man was soon won by this plausible tale,
So fraud on good-nature doth often prevail.
He welcomes his guest, gives him free toleration
In the midst of his garden to take up his station,
And into his breast doth his enemy bring,
He little suspected the nettle could sting.
Till flush'd with success, and of strength to be fear'd,
Around him a numerous offspring he rear'd.
Then the master grew sensible what he had done.
And fain he would have his new guest to be gone;
But now 'twas too late to bid him turn out,
A well-rooted possession already was got.
The old trees decay'd, and in their room grew
A stubborn, pestilent, poisonous crew.
The master, who first the young brood had admitted
They stung like ingrates and left him unpitied.
No help from manuring or planting was found,
The ill weeds had eat out the heart of the ground.
All weeds they let in, and none they refuse
That would join to oppose the good man of the house.
Thus one nettle uncropp'd, increased to such store,
That 'twas nothing but weeds what was garden before.
AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG.
ON A SEDITIOUS PAMPHLET. 1720.
To the tune of "Packington's Pound."
THIS ballad alludes to the dean's "Proposal for the use of Irish Manufactures,* for which Waters the printer was prosecuted with great violence.
BROCADES and damasks, and tabbies, and gauzes
Are, by Robert Ballantine, lately brought over,
With forty things more: now hear what the law says,
Whoe'er will not wear them is not the king's lover.
Though a printer and dean
Seditiously mean
Our true Irish hearts from old England to wean.
We'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
In England the dead in woollen are clad,
The dean and his printer then let us cry fie on;
To be clothed like a carcase would make a Teague mad,
Since a living dog better is than a dead lion.
Our wives they grow sullen
And all we poor shopkeepers must our horns pull in.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
Whoever our trading with England would hinder.
To inflame both the nations do plainly conspire,
Because Irish linen will soon turn to tinder,
And wool it is greasy and quickly takes fire.
Therefore I assure ye,
When they saw the dean's book they were in a great fury,
They would buy English silks for their wives and their daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
This wicked rogue Waters, who always is sinning,
And before coram nobis so oft has been call'd,
Henceforward shall print neither pamphlets nor linen,
And if swearing can do 't shall be swingingly maul'd;
And as for the dean,
If the printer will peach him, he'll scarce come off clean.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
THE RUN UPON THE BANKERS. 1720.
THE bold encroachers on the deep,
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune with one general sweep
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas,
Which, breaking bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays.
'Make pinions for themselves to fly;"
They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.
No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero now is theirs,
Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er the bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.
Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.
So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.
Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.
As when a conjuror takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall; They have his soul, who have his bonds; 'Tis like the writing on the wall.
How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make!
For in that universal call
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"
When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight,
Produced with all their bills and gold,
'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
DISCOVERED BY HARLEQUIN, THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER'S FRENCH DOG
In a dialogue between a Whig and a Tory, 1723.
I ASK'D a Whig the other night,
How came this wicked plot to light?
He answer'd, that a dog of late
Inform'd a minister of state.
Said I, From thence I nothing know;
A villain who his friend betrays,
We style him by no other phrase;
And so a perjured dog denotes
Porter, and Pendergast, and Oates,
And forty others I could name.
WHIG. But you must know this dog was lame.
TORY. A weighty argument indeed!
Your evidence was lame:-proceed:
Come, help your lame dog o'er the stile.
WHIG. Sir, you mistake me all this while:
I mean a dog (without a joke)
Can howl, and bark, but never spoke.
TORY. I'm still to seek which dog you mean: Whether cur Plunkett, or whelp Skean,1
An English or an Irish hound:
Or t'other puppy, that was drown'd;
Or Mason, that abandon'd bitch:
Then pray be free, and tell me which:
For every stander-by was marking
That all the noise they made was barking.
You pay them well, the dogs have got
Their dog's-head in a porridge-pot:
And 'twas but just; for wise men say
That every dog must have his day.
Dog Walpole laid a quart of nog on't,
He'd either make a hog or dog on't:
And look'd, since he had got his wish,
As if he had thrown down a dish;
Yet this I dare fortell you from it,
He'll soon return to his own vomit.
WHIG. Besides, this horrid plot was found
By Neynoe, after he was drown'd.
TORY. Why then the proverb is not right, Since you can teach dead dogs to bite.
WHIG. I proved my proposition full:
But Jacobites are strangely dull.
Now, let me tell you plainly, sir,
Our witness is a real cur,
A dog of spirit for his years;
Has twice two legs, two hanging ears;
His name is Harlequin, I wot,
And that's a name in every plot:
Resolved to save the British nation,
Though French by birth and education;
His correspondence plainly dated,
Was all decipher'd and translated:
His answers were exceedingly pretty,
Before the secret wise committee;
Confess'd as plain as he could bark:
Then with his fore-foot set his mark.
TORY. Then all this while have I been bubbled,
I thought it was a dog in doublet:
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