Yet foft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit :
This dreaded Sat'rift Dennis will confefs
Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:
So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,

Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhym'd for Moor.
Full ten years flander'd, did he once reply?

370

Three thousand funs went down on Welfted's lie. 375
To please a Mistress one aspers'd his life;
He lafh'd him not, but let her be his wife :
Let Budgell charge low Grubstreet on his quill,
And write whate'er he pleas'd, except his Will;
Let the two Curlls of town and Court, abuse
His father, mother, body, foul, and muse.
Yet why? that Father held it for a rule,
It was a fin to call our neighbour fool:

380

That harmless Mother thought no wife a whore :
Hear this, and fpare his family, James Moore!
Unfpotted names, and memorable long!

385

If there be force in Virtue, or in Song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in Honour's cause, While yet in Britain Honour had applaufe)

VARIATION.

Each

Ver. 368. in the MS.

Once, and but once, his heedlefs youth was bit,
And lik'd that dangerous thing, a female wit;
Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid;
He writ no Libels, but my Lady did :
Great odds in amorous or poetic game,

Where Woman's is the fin, and Man's the shame.

Each parent fprung-A. What fortune, pray?-P.
Their own,

And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no Pride, inheriting no Strife,

Nor marrying Discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,

390

The good man walk'd innoxious through his age. 395
No Courts he faw, no fuits would ever try,
Nor dar'd an Oath, nor hazarded a Lie.
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's fubtile art,

No language, but the language of the heart.
By Nature honeft, by Experience wife,

Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;

His life, though long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was inftant, and without a groan.

O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!

Who fprung from Kings shall know lefs joy than I.
O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!

Be no unpleafing Melancholy mine:

Me, let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of repofing Age,

With lenient arts extend a Mother's breath,

400

Make Languor smile, and smooth the bed of Death,

VARIATION.

After ver. 405. in the MS.

410

Explore

And of myself, too, fomething muft I say?
Take then this verfe, the trifle of a day.
And if it live, it lives but to commend
The man whofe heart has ne'er forgot a friend,
Or head, an Author; Critic, yet polite,
And friend to Learning, yet too wife to write.

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to blefs thofe days, preferve my friend,
Preferve him focial, chearful, and ferene,

And just as rich as when he ferv'd a Queen.
A. Whether that bleffing be deny'd or given,
Thus far was right, the reft belongs to Heaven.

SATIRES

SATIRES

AND

EPISTLES

OF

HORACE

IMITATE D.

T

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HE occafion of publishing thefe Imitations was

the Clamour raised on fome of my Epistles. An Anfwer from Horace was both more full, and of more Dignity, than any I could have made in my own perfon; and the Example of much greater Freedom in fo eminent a Divine as Dr. Donne, feemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Chriftian may treat Vice or Folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a Station. Both thefe Authors were acceptable to the Princes and Minifters under whom they lived. The Satires of Dr. Donne I verfified, at the defire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury, who had been Secretary of State: neither of whom looked upon a Satire on Vicious Courts as any Reflection on those they served in. And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which Fools are fo apt to fall into, and Knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a Satirist for a Libeller; whereas to a true Satirift nothing is fo odious as a Libeller, for the fame reafon as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a Hypocrite.

"Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis."

WHOEVER