O, blast it, south winds! till a stench exhale
Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit's tail.

By what criterion do ye eat, d'ye think,
If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink? 30
When the tired glutton labors through a treat,
He finds no relish in the sweetest meat;
He calls for something bitter, something sour;
And the rich feast concludes extremely poor.
Cheap eggs, and herbs, and olives still we see; 35
Thus much is left of old simplicity!
The robin-redbreast till of late had rest,
And children sacred held a martin's nest,
Till becaficos sold so devilish dear

To one that was, or would have been, a peer. 40
Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed,

I'll have a party at the Bedford-head;
Or ev'n to crack live crawfish recommend;
I'd never doubt at court to make a friend.

''Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother 45 About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean.

'Avidien, or his wife, (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges and fruits, And humbly live on rabbits and on roots: One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine,

50

And is at once their vinegar and wine:

But on some lucky day, (as when they found 55 A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drown'd)

At such a feast, old vinegar to spare,
Is what two souls so generous cannot bear :

42 Bedford-head. A famous eating-house.

Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart,
But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart. 60
He knows to live, who keeps the middle state,
And neither leans on this side nor on that;
Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler's pay;
Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away;
Nor lets, like Nævius, every error pass,
The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.

65

Now hear what blessings temperance can bring:'

(Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing) 'First, health: the stomach, cramm'd from every

dish;

A tomb of boil'd and roast, and flesh and fish; 70
Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar;
And all the man is one intestine war;
Remembers oft the school-boy's simple fare,
The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

76

How pale each worshipful and reverend guest Rise from a clergy or a city feast! What life in all that ample body, say? What heavenly particle inspires the clay? The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines To seem but mortal, ev'n in sound divines.

80

76 Rise from a clergy. Warton gives from Cranmer an old dieterie of the dignified clergy:-' An archbishop was allowed to have two swans, or two capons in a dish; a bishop, two capons; an archbishop, six blackbirds at once; a bishop, five; a dean, four; an archdeacon, two. If a dean had four dishes in the first course, he was not afterwards to have custards or fritters,' &c. To such triflings were men's minds turned by the old formalities of the monkish church: even the Reformation was tardy in shaking them off. Sumptuary laws, whether for dress or food, have in all ages been the frivolities of legislation.

6

On morning wings how active springs the mind

That leaves the load of yesterday behind!

How easy every labor it pursues !

How coming to the poet every Muse!

Not but we may exceed, some holy time,
Or tired in search of truth, or search of rhyme:
Ill health some just indulgence may engage,
And more the sickness of long life, old age:
For fainting age what cordial drop remains,
If our intemperate youth the vessel drains?

85

90

Our fathers praised rank venison: you sup

pose,

Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose.
Not so: a buck was then a week's repast;
And 'twas their point, I ween, to make it last;
More pleased to keep it till their friends could

come,

Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home.
Why had not I in those good times my birth,
Ere coxcomb-pies or coxcombs were on earth ?
Unworthy he the voice of fame to hear,

95

100

105

That sweetest music to an honest ear,
(For 'faith, lord Fanny! you are in the wrong;
The world's good word is better than a song)
Who has not learn'd, fresh sturgeon and ham-pie
Are no rewards for want and infamy!
When luxury has lick'd up all thy pelf,
Cursed by thy neighbors, thy trustees, thyself,
To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame,
Think how posterity will treat thy name;
And buy a rope, that future times may tell
Thou hast at least bestow'd one penny well.

110

"Right,' cries his lordship; 'for a rogue in
need

To have a taste, is insolence indeed :
In me 'tis noble; suits my birth and state;
My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.'
Then, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray, 115
And shine that superfluity away.

O, impudence of wealth! with all thy store,
How darest thou let one worthy man be poor?
Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall?
Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall :
Or to thy country let that heap be lent,
As M * * * o's was, but not at five per cent.
Who thinks that fortune cannot change her
mind,

121

Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.
And who stands safest? tell me, is it he 125
That spreads and swells in puff'd prosperity;
Or bless'd with little, whose preventing care
In peace provides fit arms against a war?"

122 At five per cent. Bowles, from Coxe, quotes a letter of the duke of Marlborough to sir Robert Walpole, saying that he had £100,000 to dispose of, and requesting Walpole to lay it out for him. Yet it must be observed, in justice to the memory of so great a man, that this story adds but little to the customary stigma of his love for money. That a man of Marlborough's high employments and services should have £100,000 to dispose of in his retirement, can be no imputation on his character; that he should have written on the subject to the prime minister, at least shows that he was neither ashamed nor afraid of its coming to the public knowlege; and if he desired to make but five per cent of it, as the text seems to imply, while usury would have produced him ten, it is equally evident that he did not stoop to the common modes of 'making the most of his money.'

Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his

thought,

And always thinks the very thing he ought: 130 His equal mind I copy what I can,

And as I love would imitate the man:

In South-sea days not happier, when surmised
The lord of thousands, than if now excised;

In forest planted by a father's hand,

135

Than in five acres now of rented land.

133 In South-sea days. Pope had South-sea stock, valued, in the day of national madness, at between £20,000 and £30,000. He kept it until it vanished into air.

134 Than if now excised. A fragment of Pulteney's speech against the excise, is a model for popular panic. There is,' exclaimed this far-sighted orator, 'another thing impending, a monstrous project; such a project, as has struck terror into the minds of most gentlemen of this house, and into the minds of all men without doors, who have any regard to the happiness or the constitution of their country: -I mean that monster, the excise, that plan of arbitrary power, which is expected to be laid before the house in the present parliament.' The clamor succeeded; the people saw nothing in the excise but national chains; the cabinet was rooted up and what was the result of all? The nation lost the best finance minister of the age, and Pulteney gained a peerage, and disgrace. The dreaded excise itself came in with flying colors, a few years after; and the nation, neither revolutionised, insolvent, nor enslaved, in the process, found it to be one of the most productive and powerful sources of revenue.

136 Than in five acres. Pope's villa at Twickenham was rented from a Mrs. Vernon. In his letter to Bethel, March, 1743, he says, My landlady, Mrs. Vernon, being dead, this garden and house are offered to me in sale; and I believe, together with the cottages on each side of my grass-plot next the Thames, will come to about a thousand pounds. If I thought any very particular friend would be pleased to live in it after my death, I would purchase it, and more particularly, could I hope two things; that the friend who should like it, was so much younger and healthier than myself, as to have a prospect of its continuing his some years longer than I can have of its