Are others angry? I excuse them too: Well may they rage; I gave them but their due. Each man's true merit 'tis not hard to find; But each man's secret standard in his mind, That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness, This who can gratify? for who can guess? The wretch, whom pilfer'd pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale* for half-a-crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hardbound brains six lines a year: In sense still wanting, tho' he lives on theft, Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left. Johnson,† who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad, It is not poetry but prose run mad.‡ Should modest Satire bid all these translate, And own that nine such poets make a Tate;

How would they fume, and stamp, and roar, and

chafe!

How would they swear, not CONGREVE'S § self was safe!

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires Apollo kindled, and fair Fame inspires:

Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful, yet with fearful eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;

* Ambrose Philips translated a book called "Persian Tales ;" a book full of fancy and imagination.-POPE.

+ Author of the Victim, and Cobbler of Preston.-H.

Verse of Dr. Ev.-H.

Thus it originally stood in the "Miscellanies," though the name was afterwards altered to "Addison;" a circumstance, says Mr Nicol, not noticed by the learned commentators upon Pope.-N.

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend:
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Who, if two wits on rival themes contest,
Approves of each, but likes the worst the best;
Like Cato, gives his little senate laws,
And sits attentive to his own applause;
While wits and Templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise,
What pity, Heaven! if such a man there be;
Who would not weep, if ADDISON* were he!

* The quarrel between Pope and Addison, which gave rise to these memorable lines, does not belong to the works of Swift. Yet it is curious to trace the same similies applied to the same person, in a prose letter of Pope to Mr Craggs, 15th July 1725. "We have, it seems, a great Turk in poetry, who can never bear a brother on the throne; and he has his mutes too, a set of nodders, winkers, and whisperers, whose business is to strangle all other offsprings of wit in their birth."

MACER.

FIRST PRINTED IN 1727.

[There is some dispute for whom this character was intended. Dr Warton thought James Moore Smith was designed, but Mr Bowles inclines, with more apparent reason, to suppose that Philips was attacked under the title of Macer.]

WHEN Simple Macer, now of high renown,
First sought a poet's fortune in the town;
'Twas all th' ambition his great soul could feel,
To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventur'd on the town,
And in a borrow'd play out-did poor Crown.
There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little;
Like stunted hidebound trees, that just have got
Sufficient sap at once to bear and rot.

Now he begs verse,* and what he gets commends,
Not of the wits his foes, but fools his friends.

So some coarse country wench, almost decay'd, Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid: Awkward and supple each devoir to pay, She flatters her good lady twice a-day; Thought wond'rous honest, tho' of mean degree, And strangely lik'd for her simplicity:

*He requested, by public advertisements, the aid of the inge nious, to make up a Miscellany, in 1713.-H.

In a translated suit then tries the town,

With borrow'd pins, and patches not her own;
But just endur'd the winter she began,

And in four months a batter'd harridan.

Now nothing's left; but wither'd, pale, and shrunk, To bawd for others, and go shares with punk.

SYLVIA, A FRAGMENT.

SYLVIA, my heart in wondrous wise alarm'd,
Aw'd without sense, and without beauty charm'd:
But some odd graces and some flights she had,
Was just not ugly, and was just not mad:
Her tongue still ran on credit from her eyes,
More pert than witty, more a wit than wise:
Good-nature, she declar'd it, was her scorn,
Tho' 'twas by that alone she could be borne:
Affronting all, yet fond of a good name;
A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame:
Now coy, and studious in no point to fall,
Now all agog for Dy at a ball:

Now deep in Taylor, and the Book of Martyrs,
Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres.
Men, some to bus'ness, some to pleasure take;
But ev'ry woman's in her soul a rake.

Frail, fev'rish sex; their fit now chills, now burns:
Atheism and superstition rule by turns;
And a mere heathen in the carnal part,
Is still a sad good Christian at her heart.*

* I have been informed, on good authority, that this character was designed for the then Duchess of Hamilton.-Dr WARTON. Swift describes this lady as handsome, airy and violent-tempered, with abundance of wit and spirit. See Vol. III. p. 118.

IMPROMPTU.

TO LADY WINCHELSEA.

OCCASIONED BY FOUR SATIRICAL VERSES ON WOMEN
WITS, IN THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

IN vain

you boast poetic names of yore, And cite those Sapphoes we admire no more: Fate doom'd the fall of every female wit; But doom'd it then, when first Ardelia writ. Of all examples by the world confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her mistress on Britannia's throne, Fights and subdues in quarrels not her own. To write their praise you but in vain essay; Ev'n while you write, you take that praise away: Light to the stars the sun does thus restore, But shines himself till they are seen no more.

EPIGRAM.

A BISHOP by his neighbours hated
Has cause to wish himself translated;
But why should Hough desire translation,
Lov'd and esteemed by all the nation?
Yet, if it be the old man's case,

I'll lay my life I know the place:
'Tis where God sent some that adore him,
And whither Enoch went before him.