NIGHT.*

Contrarius evehor orbi.-OVID. Met. lib. ii.

WHEN foes insult, and prudent friends dispense,
In pity's strains, the worst of insolence,
Oft with thee, Lloyd, I steal an hour from grief,
And in thy social converse find relief.
The mind, of solitude impatient grown,
Loves any sorrows rather than her own.

5

Let slaves to business, bodies without soul,
Important blanks in Nature's mighty roll,
Solemnize nonsense in the day's broad glare,
We Night prefer, which heals or hides our care.
Rogues justified, and by success made bold,
Dull fools and coxcombs sanctified by gold,
Freely may bask in fortune's partial ray,
And spread their feathers opening to the day;
But threadbare Merit dares not show the head 15
Till vain Prosperity retires to bed.

Misfortunes, like the owl, avoid the light;
The sons of Care are always sons of Night.

*"This Night, like many others at this time of the year, is very cold, long, dark, and dirty, which will not induce many to walk out in it."-CRITICAL REVIEW, Dec. 1761.

The wretch bred up in method's drowsy school, Whose only merit is to err by rule,

20

Who ne'er through heat of blood was tripping caught,

Nor guilty deem'd of one eccentric thought;
Whose soul directed to no use is seen,

Unless to move the body's dull machine,
Which, clock-work like, with the same equal pace,
Still travels on through life's insipid space,

26

Turns up his eyes to think that there should be,
Among God's creatures, two such things as we;
Then for his nightcap calls, and thanks the powers
Which kindly gave him grace to keep good hours.
Good hours-fine words-but was it ever seen
That all men could agree in what they mean?
Florio, who many years a course hath run
In downright opposition to the sun,
Expatiates on good hours, their cause defends 35
With as much vigour as our prudent friends.
The uncertain term no settled notion brings,
But still in different mouths means different things;
Each takes the phrase in his own private view';
With Prudence it is ten, with Florio two.

Go on, ye fools, who talk for talking sake,
Without distinguishing, distinctions make;

18 What have we with day to do!

Sons of Care, 'twas made for you.

40

This is the more popular doctrine, and we believe most commonly governs the distribution of the four-and-twenty hours.

Shine forth in native folly, native pride,
Make yourselves rules to all the world beside;
Reason, collected in herself, disdains

The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains ;
Steady and true, each circumstance she weighs,
Nor to bare words inglorious tribute pays.
Men of sense live exempt from vulgar awe,
And Reason to herself alone is law:
That freedom she enjoys with liberal mind,
Which she as freely grants to all mankind.
No idol-titled name her reverence stirs,
No hour she blindly to the rest prefers;
All are alike, if they're alike employ'd,
And all are good if virtuously enjoy'd.

46

50

55

Let the sage Doctor (think him one we know) With scraps of ancient learning overflow,

In all the dignity of wig declare

The fatal consequence of midnight air,

How damps and vapours, as it were by stealth,
Undermine life, and sap the walls of health:
For me let Galen moulder on the shelf,
I'll live, and be physician to myself.

Whilst soul is join'd to body, whether fate
Allot a longer or a shorter date,

60

65

I'll make them live, as brother should with brother, And keep them in good humour with each other.

The surest road to health, say what they will,

Is never to suppose we shall be ill.

Most of those evils we poor mortals know,
From doctors and imagination flow.

70

Hence to old women with your boasted rules,
Stale traps, and only sacred now to fools;
As well may sons of physic hope to find
One medicine, as one hour, for all mankind.

If Rupert after ten is out of bed,
The fool next morning can't hold up his head;
What reason this which me to bed must call,
Whose head, thank Heaven, never aches at all?
In different courses different tempers run;

He hates the moon, I sicken at the sun.

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Wound up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right,
Mine better goes, wound up at twelve at night.

Then in oblivion's grateful cup I drown
The galling sneer, the supercilious frown,
The strange reserve, the proud affected state
Of upstart knaves grown rich, and fools grown

great.

No more that abject wretch disturbs my rest,

85

99 The poet and his friend were not fortunate in the attachments they formed at Westminster school, and poor Lloyd had, on more occasions than one, to lament the defection of pretended friends; even Thornton, to whom he had addressed his Actor, and with whom he once lived upon terms of the most cordial intimacy, abandoned him in his distress, and treated him with the most cutting neglect. Lloyd, whilst in the Fleet prison, where he was supplied by Churchill with a guinea a week and a servant to attend him, thus gently alludes to Thornton's conduct, in a letter to Wilkes, on the death of his benefactor. "My own affairs I forbear to mention; Thornton is what you believed him; I have many acquaintance, but now no friend here." The Rev. William Sellon, minister of St. James's Clerkenwell, and lecturer of St. Andrew's Holborn, and the Magdalen, the person imme

96

101

Who meanly overlooks a friend distrest. Purblind to poverty the worldling goes, And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose, But from a crowd can single out his grace, And cringe and creep to fools who strut in lace. Whether those classic regions are survey'd Where we in earliest youth together stray'd, Where hand in hand we trod the flowery shore, Though now thy happier genius runs before, When we conspired a thankless wretch to raise, And taught a stump to shoot with pilfer'd praise, Who once for reverend merit famous grown, Gratefully strove to kick his maker down; Or if more general arguments engage, The court or camp, the pulpit, bar, or stage; If half-bred surgeons, whom men doctors call, 105 And lawyers, who were never bred at all, Those mighty letter'd monsters of the earth, diately alluded to in these lines, is again characterized in the Ghost, under the name of Plausible. By the assistance of his more able contemporaries at Westminster school, Churchill, Lloyd, and Thornton, he contrived to acquire more reputation there, than his native dullness would warrant; but on his quitting that seminary, he forgot the obligation, and treated his open unsuspecting friends with a degree of illiberality, duplicity, and ingratitude, which their misconduct did not occasion, nor if it did, could justify. This ungracious conduct of course totally dissolved their friendship, a few years after he became a famous preacher, "From Holborn e'en to Clerkenwell," Ghost, B. iii. 1. 741. He afterwards studied the theory and practice of brewing to better purpose than the theory and practice of Christianity; the only fruit of which on his part was a crude abridgment of Scripture history, published at eighteen pence, and dear at that or any price.