To nurse with tender care the thriving arts,
Watch every beam Philosophy imparts;
To give Religion her unbridled scope,
Nor judge by statute a believer's hope;
With close fidelity and love unfeigned,
To keep the matrimonial bond unstained;
Covetous only of a virtuous praise;
His life a lesson to the land he says;

To touch the sword with conscientious awe,
Nor draw it but when duty bids him draw;
To sheath it in the peace-restoring close,
With joy beyond what victory bestows:-
Blest country, where these kingly glories shine!
Blest England, if this happiness be thine!

4. Guard what you say; the patriotic tribe Will sneer and charge you with a bribe.-B. A bribe : The worth of his three kingdoms I defy,

To lure me to the baseness of a lie:

And, of all lies (be that one poet's boast)

The lie that flatters I abhor the most.

Those arts be theirs, who hate his gentle reign;
But he that loves him has no need to feign.

A. Your smooth eulogium to one crown addressed, Seems to imply a censure on the rest.

B. Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale,
Asked, when in hell, to see the royal jail,
Approved their method in all other things;
But where, good sir, do you confine your kings?
There-said his guide-the groupe is full in view.
Indeed!-replied the don-there are but few.
His black interpreter the charge disdained—
Few, fellow?-there are all that ever reigned.
Wit, undistinguishing, is apt to strike
The guilty and not guilty both alike.
I grant the sarcasm is too severe,
And we can readily refute it here;

While Alfred's name, the father of his age,
And the Sixth Edward's grace th' historic page.
A. Kings then, at last, have but the lot of all
By their own conduct they must stand or fall.

;

B. True. While they live, the courtly laureat pays
His quit-rent ode, his peppercorn of praise;
And many a dunce, whose fingers itch to write,
Adds, as he can, his tributary mite.

A subject's faults a subject may proclaim,
A monarch's errors are forbidden game!
Thus, free from censure, overawed by fear,
And praised for virtues, that they scorn to wear,
The fleeting forms of majesty engage

Respect, while stalking o'er life's narrow stage;
Then leave their crimes for history to scan,
And ask, with busy scorn, Was this the man ?
I pity kings, whom Worship waits upon,
Obsequious, from the cradle to the throne;
Before whose infant eyes the flatterer bows,
And binds a wreath about their baby brows;
Whom Education stiffens into state,

And Death awakens from that dream too late.
Oh! if Servility, with supple knees,
Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please;
If smooth Dissimulation, skilled to grace
A devil's purpose with an angel's face;
If smiling peeresses, and simpering peers,
Encompassing his throne a few short years;
If the gilt carriage and the pampered steed,
That wants no driving, and disdains the lead;
If guards mechanically formed in ranks,
Playing, at beat of drum, their martial pranks,
Should ring, and standing as if struck to stone,
While condescending majesty looks on !—
If monarchy consists in such base things,
Sighing, I say again, I pity kings!

To be suspected, thwarted, and withstood,
Even when he labours for his country's good;
To see a band, called patriot for no cause,
But that they catch at popular applause,
Careless of all th' anxiety he feels,
Hook disappointment on the public wheels;
With all their flippant fluency of tongue,
Most confident, when palpably most wrong;-

If this be kingly, then farewell for me
All kingship; and may I be poor and free
To be the Table Talk of clubs up stairs,
To which th' unwashed artificer repairs,
T' indulge his genius after long fatigue,
By diving into cabinet intrigue

(For what kings deem a toil, as well they may,
To him is relaxation and mere play);

To win no praise when well-wrought plans prevail,
But to be rudely censured when they fail;

To doubt the love his fav'rites may pretend,
And in reality to find no friend;

If he indulge a cultivated taste,

His galleries with the works of art well graced,
To hear it called extravagance and waste:
If these attendants, and if such as these,
Must follow royalty, then welcome ease:
However humble and confined the sphere,
Happy the state that has not these to fear.

A. Thus men, whose thoughts contemplative have dwelt

On situations that they never felt,

Start up sagacious, covered with the dust
Of dreaming study and pedantic rust,

And prate and preach about what others prove,
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Leave kingly backs to cope with kingly cares;
They have their weight to carry, subjects theirs ;
Poets, of all men, ever least regret
Increasing taxes and the nation's debt.
Could you contrive the payment, and rehearse
The mighty plan, oracular, in verse,

To bard, howe'er majestic, old or new,
Should claim my fixed attention more than you.
B. Not Brindley nor Bridgewater would essay
To turn the course of Helicon that way;
Nor would the Nine consent the sacred tide
Should purl amidst the traffic of Cheapside,
Or tinkle in 'Change Alley, to amuse
The leathern ears of stockjobbers and Jews.

A. Vouchsafe, at least, to pitch the key of rhyme To themes more pertinent, if less sublime. When ministers and ministerial arts; Patriots, who love good places at their hearts; When admirals, extolled for standing still, Or doing nothing with a deal of skill;

Generals, who will not conquer when they may,
Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, and good pay;
When Freedom, wounded almost to despair,
Though Discontent alone can find out where ;
When themes like these employ the poet's tongue,
I hear as mute as if a syren sung.

Or tell me, if you can, what power maintains
A Briton's scorn of arbitrary chains:

That were a theme might animate the dead,
And move the lips of poets cast in lead.

B. The cause, tho' worth the search, may yet elude
Conjecture and remark, however shrewd.
They take, perhaps, a well-directed aim,
Who seek it in his climate and his frame.
Liberal in all things else, yet Nature here
With stern severity deals out the year.
Winter invades the spring, and, often pours
A chilling flood on summer's drooping flowers
Unwelcome vapours quench autumnal beams,
Ungenial blasts attending curl the streams :
The peasants urge their harvest, ply the fork
With double toil, and shiver at their work-
Thus with a rigour, for his good designed,
She rears her fav'rite man of all mankind.
His form robust and of elastic tone,

Proportioned well, half muscle and half bone,
Supplies with warm activity and force

A mind well-lodged, and masculine of course.
Hence, Liberty, sweet Liberty inspires,
And keeps alive his fierce but noble fires.
Patient of constitutional control,

He bears it with meek manliness of soul:
But, if Authority grow wanton, woe

To him that treads upon his free-born toe;

One step beyond the boundary of the laws
Fires him at once in Freedom's glorious cause.
Thus proud Prerogative, not much revered,
Is seldom felt, though sometimes seen and heard;
And in his cage, like parrot fine and gay,
Is kept to strut, look big, and talk away.

Born in a climate softer far than ours,
Not formed, like us, with such Herculean powers,
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk,
Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk,
Is always happy, reign whoever may,
And laughs the sense of misery far away.
He drinks his simple beverage with a gust;
And, feasting on an onion and a crust,
We never feel th' alacrity and joy,

With which he shouts and carols Vive le Roi!
Filled with as much true merriment and glee,
As if he heard his king say-Slave, be free.

Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Vigilant over all that he has made,
Kind Providence attends with gracious aid;
Bids equity throughout his works prevail,
And weighs the nations in an even scale;
He can encourage Slavery to a smile,
And fill with discontent a British isle.

A. Freeman and slave then, if the case be such,
Stand on a level; and you prove too much :
If all men indiscriminately share

His fostering power and tutelary care,

As well be yoked by Despotism's hand,

As dwell at large in Britain's chartered land.

B. No. Freedom has a thousand charms to shov, That slaves, howe'er contented, never know. The mind attains, beneath her happy reign, The growth that Nature meant she should attain; The varied fields of science, ever new, Opening and wider opening on her view, She ventures onward with a prosperous force, While no base fear impedes her in her course.