rt, and chill'd their blood
To every thought of common good,
Confining every hope and care,
To their own low, contracted sphere."
These ran him down with ceaseless cry,
But found it hard to tell you why,
Till his own worth and wit supplied
Sufficient matter to deride:
"'Tis envy's safest, surest rule,
To hide her rage in ridicule:
The vulgar eye she best beguiles,
When all her snakes are deck'd with smiles:
Sardonic smiles, by rancour raised!
Tormented most when seeming pleased!"
Their spite had more than half expired,
Had he not wrote what all admired;
What morsels had their malice wanted,
But that he built, and plann'd, and planted!
How had his sense and learning grieved them,
But that his charity relieved them!
"At highest worth dull malice reaches,
As slugs pollute the fairest peaches:
Envy defames, as harpies vile
Devour the food they first defile."
Now ask the fruit of all his favour--
"He was not hitherto a saver."--
What then could make their rage run mad?
"Why, what he hoped, not what he had."
"What tyrant e'er invented ropes,
Or racks, or rods, to punish hopes?
Th' inheritance of hope and fame
Is seldom Earthly Wisdom's aim;
Or, if it were, is not so small,
But there is room enough for all."
If he but chance to breathe a song,
(He seldom sang, and never long,)
The noisy, rude, malignant crowd,
Where it was high, pronounced it loud:
Plain Truth was Pride; and, what was sillier,
Easy and Friendly was Familiar.
Or, if he tuned his lofty lays,
With solemn air to Virtue's praise,
Alike abusive and erroneous,
They call'd it hoarse and inharmonious.
Yet so it was to souls like theirs,
Tuneless as Abel to the bears!
A Rook[5] with harsh malignant caw
Began, was follow'd by a Daw;[6]
(Though some, who would be thought to know,
Are positive it was a crow:)
Jack Daw was seconded by Tit,
Tom Tit[7] could write, and so he writ;
A tribe of tuneless praters follow,
The Jay, the Magpie, and the Swallow;
And twenty more their throats let loose,
Down to the witless, waddling Goose.
Some peck'd at him, some flew, some flutter'd,
Some hiss'd, some scream'd, and others mutter'd:
The Crow, on carrion wont to feast,
The Carrion Crow, condemn'd his taste:
The Rook, in earnest too, not joking,
Swore all his singing was but croaking.
Some thought they meant to show their wit,
Might think so still--"but that they writ"--
Could it be spite or envy?--"No--
Who did no ill could have no foe."--
So