ew the vulgarity of vice_; or that the same violations of
integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their
want of principle, are common to the great and powerful, with the
meanest and most contemptible of the species. What can be more
convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians, to
shew that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up
to many of their betters? The exclamation of _Mrs. Peachum_, when her
daughter marries _Macheath_, "Hussy, hussy, you will be as ill used, and
as much neglected, as if you had married a lord," is worth all Miss
Hannah More's laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of high
life!

I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on Sir Richard
Blackmore, which may serve at once as a specimen of his own manner, and
as a character of a voluminous contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr.
Locke, and knighted by King William III.

"See who ne'er was nor will be half-read,
Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred;
Praised great Eliza in God's anger,
Till all true Englishmen cried, 'Hang her!'--
Maul'd human wit in one thick satire;
Next in three books spoil'd human nature:
Undid Creation at a jerk,
And of Redemption made damn'd work.
Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her
Full in the middle of the Scripture.
What wonders there the man, grown old, did?
Sternhold himself he out Sternholded.
Made David seem so mad and freakish,
All thought him just what thought King Achish.
No mortal read his Solomon
But judg'd Re'boam his own son.
Moses he serv'd as Moses Pharaoh,
And Deborah as she Siserah,
Made Jeremy full sore to cry,
And Job himself curse God and die.
What punishment all this must follow?
Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo?
Shall David as Uriah slay him?
Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him?
No!--none of these! Heaven spare his life!
But send him, honest Job, thy wife!"

Gay's Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant as walking
the streets must have been at the time when it was written. His ballad
of Black Eyed Susan is one of the most delightful that can be imagined;
nor do I see that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll's parody on it.

Swift's reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by the
greater splendour, by the natural fo