In short, the men began to bow,
To soothe, to ogle, whine, and vow;
To haunt the solitary shade,
And whisper to the village maid.
The village maid, who knew not yet
The breeding of a sly coquette;
And could not, with an artful sigh,
Like modern ladies, smile and lie;
Indulgent heard her lover's flame,
Frankly confest she felt the same,
And ere the rosy-finger'd Morn
Dried up the pearls upon the thorn,
Went with him, midst her virgin train,
In flow'rets drest, to Hymen's fane.

This mild divinity, so sung
By half the poets old and young,
The patron of connubial truth,
Was now in all the bloom of youth.
Roses fresh gather'd from the bush,
Sweet emblems of the female blush,
Wove in a wreath supremely fair,
Sat graceful on his auburn hair:
One hand sustain'd a torch on fire,
Significant of soft desire;
The other held in mystic shew
A broider'd veil of saffron hue:
Majestic flow'd his azure vest,
And rubies bled upon his breast.

The meek-ey'd god an age or so
Succeeded, and had much to do;
In crowds his eager vot'ries caine,
His altars never ceas'd to flame:
Besides an off'ring, frank and free,
First paid him as the marriage fee,
Some pretty toys of shells and corals,
With sprigs of ever-blooming laurels,
And bowls of consecrated wine,
Were yearly plac'd upon his shrine,
The gifts of many a grateful pair
Made happy by his guardian care.

It chane'd three demons, fiends, or witches, Ambition, Vanity, and Riches,

Walk'd out one evening bright and fair,
To breathe a little country air;
And, as old Nick would have it, found
This soul-enchanting spot of ground,
Where happy husbands, happy wives,
Enjoy'd the most delicious lives;
And resolv'd to buy, or hire,
A vacant cottage of the 'squire.

They came, they settled; sooth'd, carest, Politely treated every guest,

And, with a world of pains and labours,
Lectur'd their simple-minded neighbours.

And send your age, for want of vittle,
To a poor alms-house, or the spittle.
Be wise, and, when you mean to wed,.
Scorn the fair forms of white and red;
And court the nymph whose genial charms,
Rich as the fruits upon her farms,
Will pour upon your daily toil
Abundant floods of wine and oil."
He said-Ambition then began
About the dignity of man;

He rallied all their groves and springs,
And finely talk'd of queens and kings:
It was, he thought, a want of grace
To mingle with the vulgar race;
For souls made up of heav'nly fire
Are form'd by Nature to aspire.
He told them that a well-born wife
Ennobled every joy of life,
Without a patent gave her dear
Th' importance of a British peer;
Perhaps might to a prince ally him,
And make him cousin to old Priam.

While thus the fiends, with wily art,
Adroitly stole upon the heart,
And with their complaisance, and tales,
Had ruin'd more than half the males,
Gay Vanity, with smiles and kisses,
Was busy mongst the maids and misses.

My dears!" says she, "those pretty faces
Speak you the sisters of the Graces:
Immortal Venus wou'd be vain

To have you in her court and train.
But sure, methinks, it something odd is,
That beauties who can match a goddess
Shou'd give their more than mortal chaims
To a dull rustic's joyless arms,

A mere unanimated clod,

As much a lover as a god.

O let those eyes, which far outshines
The brightest sapphires of the mine,
Their precious orbs no longer roll
On fellows without wealth or soul:
But fly, my charmers! fly the wretches,
Dame Nature's first mis-shapen sketches,
Fly to the world where lords and 'squires
Are warm'd with more ethereal fires;
Where pleasure each gay moment wings,
Where the divine Mingotti sings:
So shall each all-commanding fair
Have her two pages, and a chair,
Fine Indian tissues, Mechlin laces,
Rich essences in China vases,
And rise on life's exalted scene
With all the splendour of a queen."

She spoke, and in a trice possest
The empire of the female breast:
And now the visionary maids

Disdain'd their shepherds and their shades;
In every dream with rapture saw
Three footmen, and a gilt landau;
Assum'd a fine majestic air,

And learnt to ogle, swim, and stare.
No longer beam'd the modest eye,
No longer heav'd the melting sigh.
Neglected Love, whose blunted dart
Searce once a year could wound a heart,
Hung up his quiver on a yew,

And, sighing, from the world withdrew,
However, as the wheel of life
Subsisted still in man and wife,

Th' aforesaid fiends, for reasons good,
Coupled the sexes as they cou'd.
For instance-Women made for thrones
Were match'd with ideots, sots, and drones ;
And wits were every day disgrac'd
By honeys without sense or taste:
Gay libertines of sixty-five,
With scarce a single limb alive,

Had young coquettes just in their teens,
As wanton as Circassia's queens;

And youths, whose years were scarce a score,
Were pair'd with nymphs of sixty-four.
Matters, in short, were so contriv'd,
The men were most divinely wiv'd;
The women too, to grace their houses,
Were blest with most accomplish'd spouses.

In two short months, perhaps in one,
Both sexes found themselves undone,
And came in crowds, with each an halter,
To hang poor Hymen on his altar.

The god, though arm'd but with his torch,
Intrepid met them in the porch;
And, while they hector, brawl, and bully,
Harangu'd them with the ease of Tully.
"Good folks!" says he, it gives me pain
To hear you murmur and complain,
When every barber in the town
Knows that the fault is all your own.
Seduc'd by show, misled by wealth,
Regardless of your peace and health,
Panting for feather, whims, and fashions,
You left plain Nature's genuine passions,
And gave up all your real joys,
As Indians sell their gold for toys.
You, madam! who was pleas'd to fix
Your wishes on a coach and six,
Obtain'd your end, and now you find
Your husband ought to ride behind;
You might have had, without offence,
A man of spirit, soul, and sense,
Wou'd you have stoop'd to take the air
In a plain chariot and pair.
You too, my venerable sage!
Had you reflected on your age,
Wou'd scarce have took, to be undone,
A sprightly girl of twenty-one.
Your ladyship disdain'd to hear
Of any husband but a peer ;
Was pleas'd your angel-form to barter
For a blue ribbon and a garter:
And now, magnificently great,
You feel the wretchedness of state;
Neglected, injur'd, spurn'd, and poor,
The victim of an opera whore.

Your neighbour there, the wealthy cit,
Like you is miserably bit:

Too proud to drag the nuptial chain
With the grave nymphs of Foster-lane,
He married, such his fatal aim was,
A lady Charlotte, from St. James's ;
And now supports, by scores, and dozens,
His very honourable cousins,
And entertains, with wine and cards,
Half the gay colonels of the guards.
Away, ye triflers! bear, endure
Afflictions which ye cannot cure;
At least with decency conceal
The pangs your follies make you feel,
In hopes that some obliging fever
Will ease you of your dears for ever."

The crowd dismiss'd-the god began To muse upon a better plan:

He saw that things grew worse and worse, That marriage was become a curse;

And therefore thought it just and wise was To rectify this fatal bias,

And in a tasteless world excite

Due rev'rence for his holy rite.

Full of his scheme he went one day

To a lone cottage in a shaw,

Where dwelt a nymph of strong and shrewd sense,

Known by the name of Gammer Prudence,

Whom Hymen, with a bow and buss,
Address'd most eloquently thus.

Goody! I've order'd Love to go
This evening to the world below;
He travels in a coach and sparrows,
With a new set of bows and arrows:
But yet the rogue's so much a child,
So very whimsical, and wild,

His head has such strange fancies in it,
I cannot trust him half a minute.
Were to let the little wanton
Rove as he lists through every canton,
Without a check, without a rein,
The world would be undone again-
We soon shou'd see the lawns and groves
Quite fill'd with zephyrs, sighs, and doves,
With am'rous ditties, fairy dances,
Such as we read of in romances;
Where princes haunt the lonely rocks,
And dutchesses are feeding flocks.
Go then, my venerable dame!
And qualify his idle flame;
Instruct those hearts his arrows hit,
To pause, and have a little wit:
Bid them reflect, amidst their heat,
'Tis necessary Love should eat;
That in his most ecstatic billing
He possibly may want a shilling.
Persuade them, ere they first engage,
To study temper, rank, and age,
To march beneath my holy banners,
Congenial in their tastes and manners,
Completing just as Heav'n design'd,
An union both of sex and mind."

He said-he press'd-the matron maid,
Benevolent of heart, obey'd;
Forsook her solitary grove,

And, waiting in the train of Love,
Watch'd with the sober eye of Truth
The workings of misguided youth:
And when the heart began to sigh,
To melt, to heave, to bleed, to die,
She whisper'd many a wise remark
With all the dignity of Clark—

She hop'd the ladies, in their choice,
Would listen to her awful voice:
She begg'd the men, while yet their lives
Were free from fevers, plagues, and wives,
Ere yet the chariot was bespoke,
To pause before they took the yoke.--
In short, when Cupid's lucky darts
Had piere'd a pair of kindred hearts,
And Goody Prudence lik'd the houses,
Estates, and minds, of both the spouses,
And found, exact to form and law,
The settlement without a flaw,
She frankly gave them leave to wed,
And sanctified the nuptial bed.

Th' event was such, the god became Successful in his trade and fame; For both the parties, on their marriage, Improv'd in temper, sense, and carriage; Fair friendship ray'd on either breast The sunshine of content and rest. Studious each other's will to please, And bless'd with affluence and ease, Without vexation, words, or strife, They calmly walk'd the road of life; And, happy in their fondest joys, Left a fine group of girls and boys, Reflecting, lively, cool, and sage, To shine upon a future age.

THE

VANITY OF HUMAN ENJOYMENTS:

AN ETHIC EPISTLE

TO THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE LYTTELTON, ESQ. AFTERWARDS LORD LYTTELTON, ONE OF THE LORDS OF HIS

MAJESTY'S TREAsury, 1749.

I GRANT it, Lyttelton! that ease, or joy,
Forms ev'ry wish that glows beneath the sky;
That when, mid Nature's elemental strife,
Th' Almighty spoke the Chaos into life,
He meant that man, of ev'ry good possest,
Shou'd, like his seraphs, live but to be blest.

Yet, spite of Heav'n, and Heav'n's supreme decree,
We fondly wander, Truth! from bliss and thee;
Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please,
For thought too active, and too mad for ease;
Of feeling exquisite, alive all o'er,
With ev'ry passion wing'd at ev'ry pore;
To each soft breeze or vig'rous blast resign'd,
That sweeps the ocean of the human mind,
We slip our anchors, spread the impatient sail,
Ply all our oars, and drive before the gale.

Hence, as opinion wakes our hopes or fears,
As pride inspirits, or as anger tears,
These on the wings of moonstruck madness fly
To catch the meteors of ambition's sky;
Those, in pale Wisdom's humbler garb array'd,
Court the soft genius of the myrtle shade;
While others, as the plastic atoms pour
More brilliant visions on each killing hour,
From scepter'd life and all its pomps retire,
Or set, like Phaeton, the world on fire.

Oft the same man, in one revolving Sun,
Is all he aims at, all he longs to shun;
Each gay delusion shares his breast by turns,
With av'rice chills him, or with grandeur burns:
To day the gilded shrines of honour move,
To morrow yields his ev'ry pulse to love;
Now mad for wisdom, now for wit and sport,'
This hour at Oxford, and the next at court :
Then, all for purity, he bids adieu

To each loose goddess of the midnight stew,
Enraptur'd hangs o'er Sherlock's labour'd page,
Drinks all his sense, and glows with all his rage,
Till some enormous crimes, unknown before,
From Rome imported, or the Caspian shore,
Nurs'd by thy hand, great Heidegger! attend,
And sink him to a Mohock, or a fiend.
In one short space thus wanton, sober, grave,
A friend to virtue, yet to vice a slave,

From wish to wish in life's mad vortex tost,
For ever struggling, yet for ever lost,
The fickle wand'rer lives in ev'ry scene,
A Clark, a Chartres, or an Aretine.

There are, 'tis true, plebeian souls array'd
In one thick crust of apathy and shade,
Whose dull sensoriums feel not once an age
A spirit brighten, or a passion rage.
As the swift arrow skims the viewless wind,
No path indented, and no mark behind,
So these, without or infamy or praise,
Tread the dull circle of a length of days,
To some poor sepulchre in silence glide,
And scarcely tell us that they liv'd or died.
Peace to all such-but he whose warm desires
Or genius kindles, or ambition fires;
Who, like a comet, sweeps th' aerial void
Of wit and fame, too fine to be enjoy'd ;
For him the Muse shall wake her ev'ry art,
Exhibit truth, and open all the heart,
Display th' unnumber'd ills that hourly wait.
The cells of wisdom, or the rooms of state:
Then, as o'er life's unfolding scenes we fly,
Bid all his wishes pant but for the sky.

Heroic Glory in the martial scene,

From Rome's first Cæsar to the great Eugene,
Has long engross'd the poet's heav'n-born flame,
And pour'd her triumphs through the trump of Fame:
She mounts the neighing steed, th' imperial car,
Grasps the pale spear, and rushes to the war;
Beneath her steps Earth's trembling orb recedes,
A Poitiers thunders, and a Cressy bleeds:
The battle raves-- -around her sabre flow
Terrific pleasures, and a pomp of woe;
Pomps ever lost in peace, and but ador'd
When half a nation smokes upon her sword.
Fly then, ye genii! from the tumult fly,
To all that opens in a rural sky:
There, as the vale, the grove, the zephyrs pour
Each purer rapture on the guiltless hour,
From ev'ry shrub content's soft foliage glean,
And rise the Platos of the vernal scene.

And is it so? Does Science then possess
Alone the godlike privilege to bless?
Will Fame her wreaths to moral wisdom yield,
And give the pen to blaze above the shield?
Say, does fair Bliss delight in Maudlin's grove,
In Stanhope's villa, or in Young's alcove?
Deigns she on Secker's modest page to shine?
Or beams the goddess, Lyttelton! on thine?

[pir'd,

Ask at yon tomb, where Cudworth's mighty name Weeps o'er the ruins of his wit and fame; Cudworth, whose spirit flew, with sails unfurl'd, Through each vast empire of th' ideal world, Piere'd through the mystic shades o'erNature thrown, And made the soul's immensity his own. Yet though his system Wit and Science fir'd, Though Wilmot trembled, and though Hobbes exMistaken Zeal, mad Bigotry conspire, All Turner's dullness, and all Oxford's fire, All Envy's poisons, all a nation's rage, And all Heil's imps to blast th' unfinish'd page. Much-injurd shade, to Truth, to Virtue dear,Be calm, ye witlings! and, ye zealots! hear: And, while this bright intelligence pervades Th' ideal world, and rises o'er the shades, His mines of wisdom, if you can, explore, Then shut the volume, and be vain no more. Genius and Taste, alas! too often prove The worst of mischiefs to the wretch they love;

Born but to vex, to torture, to destroy,
Too wild for use, too exquisite for joy;

By some mysterious curse ordain'd to know
Each wit a rival, and each fool a foe.
For 'tis a crime too great to be forgiv'n,
A giant sin that bars the gate of Heav'n.
If these meridian suns but dare to shine
In the same orb with Cibber's Muse and mine.
Yet, spite of Envy, Science might be great,
Could Science but allow her sons to eat:
Could he, whose name along the stream of time
Expanded flies, and lives in ev'ry clime,
Exalt his spirits with some nobler fare
Than the thin breezes of St. James's air.

Immortal Halley! thy unwearied soul
On Wisdom's pinion flew from pole to pole,
Th' uncertain compass to its task restor❜d,
Each ocean fathom'd, and each wind explor'd,
Commanded trade with ev'ry breeze to fly,
And gave to Britain half the Zemblian sky.

And see, he comes, distinguish'd, lov'd, carest,
Mark'd by each eye, and hugg'd to ev'ry breast;
His godlike labours wit and science fire,
All factions court him, and all sects admire:
While Britain, with a gratitude unknown
To ev'ry age but Nero's and our own,
A gratitude that will for ever shame
The Spartan glory, and th' Athenian name-
Tell it, ye winds! that all the world may hear-
Blest his old age with-ninety pounds a year.
Are these our triumphs? these the sums we give
To ripen genius, and to bid it live?
Cau Britain in her fits of madness pour
One half her Indies on a Roman whore,
And still permit the weeping Muse to tell
How poor neglected Desaguliers fell?

How he, who taught two gracious kings to view
All Boyle ennobled, and all Bacon knew,
Died in a cell, without a friend to save,
Without a guinea, and without a grave?

Posterity, perhaps, may pay the debt
That senates cancel, and that courts forget:
Yet, ah! what boots it when our bards expire
That Earth's last ages hang upon the lyre?
Can Middleton the dust of Tully raise?
Does Pompey listen in his urn to praise?
Tell me if Philip's son enjoy to day
Th' applauding paan, or the loud huzza,
That shook pale Asia through her ev'ry shore
When Porus fell, and Freedom was no more?
Yet though Content's fantastic image flies
From the bright mirrors of the learn'd and wise,
Perhaps the fair, too partial to the great,
Lives but amidst the luxuries of state:
Fond to instruct Ambition how to please,
She joins the pomps of majesty with ease,
Forsakes the cottage to adorn the court,
Alike at Rome, Vienna, or the Porte.

Tell me, O visier! if th' imperial robe
That gives a slave to nod o'er half the globe,
Say, if yon crescent, by each Turk ador'd,

The plume's proud sables, and the hallow'd sword,
Expand the heart, the gleams of bliss refine,
And make the virtues of the bosom thine?
Ill-fated wretch! to ev'ry storm a slave
That caprice wings, or madness bids to rave;
For ever jealous of a woman's pow'r,
For ever trembling at the midnight hour,
Through life's wild eddies toss'd by hope and fear,
Rais'd by a smile, and murder'd by a tear!

At length, each wish destroy'd, each vision fled,
The black seraglio steals upon his bed:
And he, whose glories mingled with the skies,
Adores the bow string, licks the dust, and dies.

O! could a king in Heav'n's bright pomps ap-
And make an angel as he makes a peer; [pear,
Could he command the heart to beam as far
As the soft radiance of the ducal star;
Forbid one sad anxiety to glow,

One pang to torture, and one tear to flow:
Fly then on all the whirlwind's rapid wing,
To steal a title, or to bribe a string;
In the full blaze of glory be display'd,
And leave Affliction to the vale and shade.
Yet, ere you go, ere proud Ambition call
Each yielding wish to Marli, or Whitehall,
O pause-lest virtue ev'ry guard resign,
And the sad fate of Ripperda be thine.

This glorious wretch, indulg'd at once to move
A nation's wonder, and a monarch's love,
Blest with each charm politer courts admire,
The grace to soften, and the soul to fire,
Forsook his native bogs with proud disdain,
And, though a Dutchman, rose the pride of Spain.
This hour the pageant waves th' imperial rod,
All Philip's empire trembling at his nod;
The next disgrac'd he flies to Britain's isle,
And courts the sunshine of a Walpole's smile:
Unheard, despis'd, to southern climes he steers,
And shines again at Sallé and Algiers,
Bids pale Morocco all his schemes adore,
And pours her thunder on th' Hesperian shore:
All Nature's ties, all Virtue's creeds belied,
Each church abandon'd, and each God denied,
Without a friend, a sepulchre to shield
His carcass from the vultures of the field,
He dies, of all Ambition's sons the worst,
By Afric hated, and by Europe curst.

war,

"He earns his fate who will for phantoms toil,"
Exclaims the goddess of the mirthful smile.
"From wild ambition, with her every care,
The scenes of grandeur, and the pomps of
From all a court's proud pageantry admires,
All science wishes, and all glory fires,
Fly to my arms, from fame, from anguish free,
And taste a luxury of bliss with me.

For me the genial spring, the vernal show'r,
Wake the bright verdure, and th' unfolding flow'r;
Arabia's sweets in all my moments fly,
The zephyr's plumage, and the wing of joy,
Each richer viand that the air provides,
That earth unbosoms, or that ocean hides,
All that can Nature's finer organs move,
The pow'rs of music, and the folds of love,
To my keen senses are indulgent giv'n,

In one wild ecstasy of life and Heav'n.

Yet, yet, dear youth! the fair enchantress shun,

To yield a moment is to be undone :

All Etua's poisons mingle with her breath,
The seeds of sickness, and the gales of death,
She aims to ruin, lives but to beguile,

And all Hell's horrors brood beneath her smile."
Tis thus, my Ly telton! that men pursue
Each varied mode of pleasure but the true;
To ev'ry vice, each luxury a prey,

That murders bliss, and hurries life away,
Their headstrong passions after phantoms run,
And still mistake a meteor for a sun.

Yet hear, ye wand'rers! hear, while we impart A light that sheds fair peace on ev'ry heart;

Which, Aristides! beam'd on thy exile,
And made a Regulus mid tortures smile.

Virtue, immortal Virtue! born to please,
The child of Heaven, and the source of ease,
Bids ev'ry bliss on human life attend,
To ev'ry rank a kind, a faithful friend;
Inspirits Nature midst the scenes of toil,
Smoothes Languor's cheek, and bids fell Want re-
coil;

Shines from the mitre with unsullied rays,

Glares on the crest, and gives the star its blaze;
Supports Distinction, spreads Ambition's wings,
Forms saints of queens, and demigods of kings;
O'er grief, oppression, envy, scorn prevails,
And makes a cottage greater than Versailles.

WIT AND LEARNING:

AN ALLEGORY.

SPOKEN AT THE ANNIVERSARY, 1757.

WHOEVER looks on life will see
How strangely mortals disagree:
This reprobates what that approves,
And Tom dislikes what Harry loves;
The soldier 's witty on the sailor,
The barber drolls upon the tailor;
And he who makes the nation's wills,
Laughs at the doctor and his pills.

Yet this antipathy we find
Not to the sons of Earth confin'd;
Each schoolboy sees, with half an eye,
The quarrels of the Pagan sky:
For all the poets fairly tell us,

That gods themselves are proud and jealous;
And will, like mortals, swear and hector,
When mellow'd with a cup of nectar.

But waving these, and such like fancies,
We meet with in the Greek romances,
Say, shall th' historic Muse retail
A little allegoric tale?

Nor stole from Plato's mystic tome, nor
Translated from the verse of Homer,
But copied, in a modern age,
From Nature, and her fairest page.
Olympian Jove, whose idle trade is
Employ'd too much among the ladies,
Though not of manners mighty chaste,
Was certainly a god of taste;
Would often to his feasts admit
A deity, whose name was Wit;
And, to amuse the more discerning,
Would ask the company of Learning.

Learning was born, as all agree,
Of Truth's half sister, Memory;
A nymph who rounded in her shape was
By that great artist Esculapius.

Euphrosine, the younger grace,
Matchless in feature, mien, and face,
Who, like the beauties of these late days,
Was fond of operas and cantatas,
Would often to a grot retire

To listen to Apollo's lyre;

And thence became, so Ovid writ,

A mother to the god of wit.

Wit was a strange unlucky child,

Exceeding sly, and very wild;

Too volatile for truth or law,
He minded but his top or taw;
And, ere he reach'd the age of six,
Had play'd a thousand waggish tricks.→→
He drill'd a hole in Vulcan's kettles,
He strew'd Minerva's bed with nettles,
Climb'd up the solar car to ride in 't,
Broke off a proug from Neptune's trident,
Stole Amphitrite's fav'rite sea-knot,
And urin'd in Astrea's tea-pot.

Learning, a lad of sober mien,
And half a pedant at fifteen,
Had early thrown away his corals,
To study Nature, and her morals;
Was always, let who would oppose it,
Fast by Minerva in her closet;

And while gay Wit, as black as soot all,
Was kicking up and down a foot-ball,
Learning, with philosophic eye,
Rang'd ev'ry corner of the sky;
Spent many a play-day to uuriddle
The music of Apollo's fiddle;
And, if he ever chanc'd to meet
His uncle Merc'ry in the street,
Or on his flight, th' audacious brat
Stopp'd him to ask of this or that:
As how the Moon was evanescent,
Was now an orb, and now a crescent?
Why of the Graces each undrest was?
Why Pallas never wore a cestus?
Why Ceres reign'd o'er corn and sallads?
And why the Muses dealt in ballads?

With these discordant tastes and manners,
And listed under diff'rent banners,
Learning and Wit, as says the fable,
Appear'd at Jove's imperial table,
And threw out all their force and fire,
Obedient to th' ethereal sire.

Wit, with his sly satiric vein,
Was always sure to entertain:
He rallied with a tongue as keen
As Rab'lais, or the Irish dean;
And told his tale with such a grace,
With such an eye, and such a face,
As made the nectar flow each cup o'er,
And set the synod in an uproar.

Learning had not the skill to hit
The comic cast, and life of Wit:
With look morose, and awkward air,
He sat ungraceful in his chair;
With diffidence and blushes spoke,
And had no relish for a joke;
So that the little urchin Cupid
Thought him insensible and stupid;
And Hebe, though a well-bred lass,
Would scarcely offer him his glass.

However, when the sprightly bowl
Had thaw'd the ice about his soul,
He then, with majesty, began
To talk of letters, and of man;
Correct, sententious, cool, severe,
He gain'd upon the attentive ear,
Charm'd all the gods, but Wit and Comus,
And that abusive cynic, Momus.

In length of time, as oft the case is
In many sublunary places,
These demigods with jealous eye
Began to look a little shy;

And oft, to wound each other's breast,

Let off a keen sarcastic jest.