The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings
Page 25
See Libels, Satires – here you have it – read.
150 P. Libels and satires! lawless things indeed!
But grave epistles, bringing vice to light,
Such as a king might read, a bishop write,
Such as Sir Robert would approve – Fr.
Indeed! The case is altered – you may then proceed.
In such a cause the plaintiff will be hissed,
My lords the judges laugh, and you’re dismissed.
Satire, II, ii
To Mr Bethel
What, and how great, the virtue and the art
To live on little with a cheerful heart
(A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine),
Let’s talk, my friends, but talk before we dine;
Not when a gilt buffet’s reflected pride
Turns you from sound philosophy aside;
Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll,
And the brain dances to the mantling bowl.
Hear Bethel’s sermon, one not versed in schools,
10 But strong in sense, and wise without the rules.
‘Go work, hunt, exercise! (he thus began)
Then scorn a homely dinner if you can.
Your wine locked up, your butler strolled abroad,
Or fish denied (the river yet unthawed);
If then plain bread and milk will do the feat,
The pleasure lies in you, and not the meat.’
Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men
Will choose a pheasant still before a hen;
Yet hens of Guinea full as good I hold,
20 Except you eat the feathers, green and gold.
Of carps and mullets why prefer the great
(Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat),
Yet for small turbots such esteem profess?
Because God made these large, the other less.
Oldfield, with more than harpy throat endued,
Cries, ‘Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued!’
O blast it, south winds! till a stench exhale,
Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit’s tail.
By what criterion do you eat, d’ye think,
30 If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?
When the tired glutton labours through a treat,
He finds no relish in the sweetest meat;
He calls for something bitter, something sour,
And the rich feast concludes extremely poor.
Cheap eggs, and herbs, and olives still we see;
Thus much is left of old simplicity!
The robin-redbreast till of late had rest,
And children sacred held a martin’s nest,
Till beccaficos sold so dev’lish dear
40 To one that was, or would have been, a peer.
Let me extol a cat on oysters fed,
I’ll have a party at the Bedford Head;
Or ev’n to crack live crawfish recommend;
I’d never doubt at court to make a friend!
’Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother
About one vice, and fall into the other:
Between excess and famine lies a mean;
Plain, but not sordid, though not splendid, clean.
Avidien or his wife (no matter which,
50 For him you’ll call a dog, and her a bitch)
Sell their presented partridges and fruits,
And humbly live on rabbits and on roots;
One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine,
And is at once their vinegar and wine.
But on some lucky day (as when they found
A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned)
At such a feast, old vinegar to spare
Is what two souls so generous cannot bear:
Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart,
60 But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart.
He knows to live, who keeps the middle state,
And neither leans on this side, nor on that;
Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler’s pay,
Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away;
Nor lets, like Naevius, ev’ry error pass,
The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.
Now hear what blessings temperance can bring
(Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing):
First health: the stomach (crammed from ev’ry dish,
70 A tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish,
Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar,
And all the man is one intestine war)
Remembers oft the schoolboy’s simple fare,
The temp’rate sleeps, and spirits light as air.
How pale, each worshipful and rev’rend guest
Rise from a clergy, or a City feast!
What life in all that ample body, say?
What heav’nly particle inspires the clay?
The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines
80 To seem but mortal, ev’n in sound divines.
On morning wings, how active springs the mind
That leaves the load of yesterday behind!
How easy ev’ry labour it pursues!
How coming to the poet ev’ry Muse!
Not but we may exceed, some holy time,
Or tired in search of truth, or search of rhyme;
Ill health some just indulgence may engage,
And more, the sickness of long life, old age:
For fainting age what cordial drop remains,
90 If our intemp’rate youth the vessel drains?
Our fathers praised rank venison. You suppose,
Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose?
Not so: a buck was then a week’s repast,
And ’twas their point, I ween, to make it last,
More pleased to keep it till their friends could come,
Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home.
Why had not I in those good times my birth,
Ere coxcomb-pies or coxcombs were on earth?
Unworthy he, the voice of fame to hear,
100 That sweetest music to an honest ear
(For ’faith, Lord Fanny! you are in the wrong,
The world’s good word is better than a song),
Who has not learned fresh sturgeon and ham-pie
Are no rewards for want, and infamy!
When luxury has licked up all thy pelf,
Cursed by thy neighbours, thy trustees, thyself,
To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame,
Think how posterity will treat thy name;
And buy a rope, that future times may tell
110 Thou hast at least bestowed one penny well.
‘Right,’ cries his Lordship, ‘for a rogue in need
To have a taste, is insolence indeed:
In me ’tis noble, suits my birth and state,
My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.’
Then, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray,
And shine that superfluity away.
Oh impudence of wealth! with all thy store,
How dar’st thou let one worthy man be poor?
Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall?
120 Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall;
Or to thy country let that heap be lent,
As Marlborough’s was, but not at five per cent.
Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind
Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.
And who stands safest? tell me, is it he
That spreads and swells in puffed prosperity,
Or blessed with little, whose preventing care
In peace provides fit arms against a war?
Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought,
130 And always thinks the very thing he ought.
His equal mind I copy what I can,
And as I love, would imitate the man.
The lord of thousands, than if now excised;
In forest planted by a father’s hand,
Than in five acres now of rented land.
Content with little, I can piddle here
On broccoli and mutton, round the year;
But ancient friends (though poor, or out of play)
140 That touch my bell, I cannot turn away.
’Tis true, no turbots dignify my boards,
But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords;
To Hounslow Heath I point, and Bansted Down,
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own;
From yon old walnut tree a show’r shall fall,
And grapes, long ling’ring on my only wall,
And figs from standard and espalier join;
The devil is in you if you cannot dine.
Then cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place),
150 And, what’s more rare, a poet shall say grace.
Fortune not much of humbling me can boast
Though double taxed, how little have I lost!
My life’s amusements have been just the same,
Before, and after standing armies came.
My lands are sold, my father’s house is gone;
I’ll hire another’s; is not that my own,
And yours, my friends? through whose free opening gate
None comes too early, none departs too late
(For I, who hold sage Homer’s rule the best,
160 Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.)
‘Pray heav’n it last!’ cries Swift, ‘as you go on;
I wish to God this house had been your own.
Pity! to build, without a son or wife:
Why, you’ll enjoy it only all your life.’
Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one
Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon?
What’s property? dear Swift! you see it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter;
Or in a mortgage prove a lawyer’s share,
170 Or in a jointure vanish from the heir;
Or in pure equity (the case not clear)
The Chanc’ry takes your rents for twenty year:
At best, it falls to some ungracious son,
Who cries, ‘My father’s damned, and all’s my own.’
Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford,
Become the portion of a booby lord;
And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham’s delight,
Slides to a scriv’ner or a City knight.
Let lands and houses have what lords they will,
180 Let us be fixed, and our own masters still.
Epistle, I, i
To Lord Bolingbroke
St John, whose love indulged my labours past,
Matures my present, and shall bound my last!
Why will you break the sabbath of my days?
Now sick alike of envy and of praise.
Public too long, ah let me hide my age!
See modest Cibber now has left the stage:
Our gen’rals now, retired to their estates,
Hang their old trophies o’er the garden gates,
In life’s cool evening satiate of applause,
10 Nor fond of bleeding ev’n in Brunswick’s cause.
A voice there is, that whispers in my ear
(’Tis reason’s voice, which sometimes one can hear),
‘Friend Pope! be prudent, let your Muse take breath,
And never gallop Pegasus to death;
Lest stiff and stately, void of fire or force,
You limp, like Blackmore, on a Lord Mayor’s horse.’
Farewell then verse, and love, and ev’ry toy,
The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;
What right, what true, what fit, we justly call,
20 Let this be all my care – for this is all;
To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste
What ev’ry day will want, and most, the last.
But ask not, to what doctors I apply;
Sworn to no master, of no sect am I:
As drives the storm, at any door I knock,
And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.
Sometimes a Patriot, active in debate,
Mix with the world, and battle for the state;
Free as young Lyttelton, her cause pursue,
30 Still true to virtue, and as warm as true;
Sometimes with Aristippus, or St Paul,
Indulge my candour, and grow all to all:
Back to my native moderation slide,
And win my way by yielding to the tide.
Long, as to him who works for debt, the day;
Long as the night to her whose love’s away;
Long as the year’s dull circle seems to run
When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one;
So slow th’ unprofitable moments roll
40 That lock up all the functions of my soul,
That keep me from myself, and still delay
Life’s instant business to a future day:
That task which, as we follow, or despise,
The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise;
Which done, the poorest can no wants endure,
And which not done, the richest must be poor.
Late as it is, I put myself to school,
And feel some comfort not to be a fool.
Weak though I am of limb, and short of sight,
50 Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite,
I’ll do what Mead and Cheselden advise
To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes.
Not to go back, is somewhat to advance,
And men must walk at least before they dance.
Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move
With wretched av’rice, or as wretched love?
Know, there are words, and spells, which can control,
Between the fits, this fever of the soul;
Know, there are rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied,
60 Will cure the arrant’st puppy of his pride.
Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk,
Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk,
A Switz, a High Dutch, or a Low Dutch bear;
All that we ask is but a patient ear.
’Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor,
And the first wisdom, to be fool no more,
But to the world no bugbear is so great
As want of figure, and a small estate.
To either India see the merchant fly,
70 Scared at the spectre of pale poverty!
See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul,
Burn through the tropic, freeze beneath the pole!
Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end,
Nothing to make philosophy thy friend?
To stop thy foolish views, thy long desires,
And ease thy heart of all that it admires?
Here, Wisdom calls: ‘Seek virtue first, be bold!
As gold to silver, virtue is to gold.’
There, London’s voice: ‘Get money, money still!
80 And then let virtue follow, if she will.’
This, this the saving doctrine preached to all,
From low St James’s up to high St Paul;
From him whose quills stand quivered at his ear,
To him who notches sticks at Westminster.
Barnard in spirit, sense, and truth abounds;
‘Pray then, what wants he?’ Fourscore thousand pounds,
A pension, or such harness for a slave
As Bug now has, and Dorimant would have.
Barnard, thou art a cit, with all thy worth;
90 But wretched Bug, his Honour, and so forth.
Yet every child another song will sing,
‘Virtue, brave boys! ’tis virtue makes a king.’
True, conscious honour is to feel no sin;
He’s armed without that’s innocent within:
Be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass;
Compared to this, a minister’s an ass.
And say, to which shall our applause belong,
This new court jargon, or the good old song?
The modern language of corrupted peers,
100 Or what was spoke at Cressy and Poitiers?
Who counsels best? who whispers, ‘Be but great,
With praise or infamy, leave that to fate;
Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace;
If not, by any means get wealth and place.’
For what? to have a box where eunuchs sing,
And foremost in the circle eye a king.
Or he, who bids thee face with steady view
Proud fortune, and look shallow greatness through,
And, while he bids thee, sets th’ example too?
110 If such a doctrine, in St James’s air,
Should chance to make the well-dressed rabble stare;
If honest Schutz take scandal at a spark
That less admires the palace than the park;
Faith, I shall give the answer Reynard gave:
‘I cannot like, dread sir! your royal cave;
Because I see, by all the tracks about,
Full many a beast goes in, but none comes out.’
Adieu to Virtue if you’re once a slave:
Send her to Court, you send her to her grave.
120 Well, if a king’s a lion, at the least
The people are a many-headed beast;
Can they direct what measures to pursue
Who know themselves so little what to do?
Alike in nothing but one lust of gold,
Just half the land would buy, and half be sold:
Their country’s wealth our mightier misers drain,
Or cross, to plunder provinces, the main;
The rest, some farm the poor-box, some the pews;
Some keep assemblies, and would keep the stews;
130 Some with fat bucks on childless dotards fawn;
Some win rich widows by their chine and brawn;
While with the silent growth of ten per cent
In dirt and darkness hundreds stink content.
Of all these ways, if each pursues his own,
Satire, be kind, and let the wretch alone;
But show me one who has it in his pow’r