SATIRE UPON GAMING. What fool would trouble Fortune more, when she has been too kind before; to have the charge of man, combin'd (not as, in cities, to b'excus'd, and, with a curs'd half-witted fate, as his, that ventures goods and chattels and, like an alderman of Gotham, embarketh in so vile a bottom; engages blind and senseless hap 'gainst high, and low, and slur, and knap, (as Tartars with a mạn of straw encounter lions hand to paw) with those that never venture more than they 'ad safely', ensur'd before who, when they knock the box, and shake, do, like the Indian rattlesnake, but strive to ruin and destroy those that mistake it for fair play; can tell the oddses of all games, and when to answer to their names; and, when he conjures them t' appear, like imps are ready ev'ry where; when to play foul, and when run fair (out of design) upon the square, and let the greedy cully win, only to draw him further in; while those with which he idly plays, have no regard to what he says, although he jernie and blaspheme, when they miscarry, heav'n and them, and damn his soul, and swear, and curse and crucify his Saviour worse than those Jew-troopers that threw out, when they were raffling for his coat; denounce revenge, as if they heard, and rightly understood and fear'd, and wou'd take heed another time how to commit to bold a crime; when the poor bones are innocent of all he did, or said, or meant, and have as little sense, almost, as he that damns them when he 'as lost; as if he had rely'd upon their judgment rather than his own ; SATIRE UPON DRUNKENNESS. 'Tis pity wine, which Nature meant his weary'd mind and body too, that for a little vain excess runs out of all its happiness, and makes the friend of Truth and Love their greatest adversary prove; t' abuse a blessing she bestow'd so truly essentially to his good, to countervail his pensive cares, and slavish drudgery of affairs; to teach him judgment, wit, and sense, and more than all these, confidence; to pass his times of recreation in choice and noble conversation, catch truth and reason unawares, as men do health in wholesome airs; (while fools their conversants possess as unawares with sottishness) to gain access a private way to man's best sense, by its own key, which painful judgers strive in vain by any other course t' obtain; make short days long, and long nights short, and mirth, the only antidote against diseases e'er they're got to save health harmless from th' access both of the med'cine and disease; or make it help itself, secure against the desperat'st fit, the cure, All these sublime prerogatives of happiness to human lives, he vainly throws away, and slights for madness, noise, and bloody fights; when nothing can decide, but swords and pots, the right or wrong of words, like princes' titles; and he's outed the justice of his cause that's routed. No sooner has a charge been founded With-Son of a whore, and Damn'd confounded, and the bold signal giv'n, the lie, but instantly the bottles fly, where cups and glasses are small shot, and cannon-ball a pewter-pot: that blood, that's hardly in the vein, is now remanded back again; though sprung from wine of the same piece. on its own natural relations; and those twin-spirits, so kind-hearted, |