and, if your friends are sore,
So much the better, you may laugh the more.
To vice and folly to confine the jest,
Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest;
Did not the sneer of more impartial men
At sense and virtue, balance all again.
Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule,
And charitably comfort knave and fool.
_P_. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth:
Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth!
Come, harmless characters, that no one hit;
Come, Henley's oratory, Osborne's wit!
The honey dropping from Favonio's tongue,
The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Yonge!
The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,
And all the well-whipped cream of courtly sense,
That first was H----vy's, F----'s next, and then
The S----te's and then H----vy's once again.[208]
O come, that easy Ciceronian style,
So Latin, yet so English all the while,
As, though the pride of Middleton[209] and Bland,
All boys may read, and girls may understand!
Then might I sing, without the least offence,
And all I sung shall be the nation's sense;
Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn,
Hang the sad verse on Carolina's[210] urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest,
All parts performed, and all her children blest!
So--satire is no more--I feel it die--
No gazetteer more innocent than I--
And let, a' God's name, every fool and knave
Be graced through life, and flattered in his grave.
_F_. Why so? if satire knows its time and place,
You still may lash the greatest--in disgrace:
For merit will by turns forsake them all;
Would you know when? exactly when they fall.
But let all satire in all changes spare
Immortal Selkirk[211], and grave De----re.
Silent and soft, as saints remove to heaven,
All ties dissolved and every sin forgiven,
These may some gentle ministerial wing
Receive, and place for ever near a king!
There, where no passion, pride, or shame transport,
Lulled with the sweet nepenthe of a court;
There, where no father's, brother's, friend's disgrace
Once break their rest, or stir them from their place:
But passed the sense of human miseries,
All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes;
No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb,
Save when they lose a question, or a job.
_P_. Good heaven forbid, that I should blast their glory,
Who know how like Whig ministers to Tory,
And, when three sovereigns died, could scarce b