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Dryden alone escaped this judging eye :
But still the great have kindness in reserve,

He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.

May some choice patron bless each grey goose-quill! May every Bavius 1 have his Bufo still!

1

So, when a statesman wants a day's defence,
Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense,
Or simple pride for flattery makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Blest be the great, for those they take away,
And those they left me; for they left me Gay;
Left me to see neglected genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:

Of all thy blameless life the sole return

250

My Verse, and Queensberry 2 weeping o'er thy urn! 260 Oh, let me live my own, and die so too!

(To live and die is all I have to do :)

Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,

And see what friends, and read what books I please;
Above a patron, though I condescend

Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

I was not born for courts or great affairs;

I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;
Can sleep without a poem in my head;

3

Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.

Why am I asked what next shall see the light? Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write? Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)

Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?

'I found him close with Swift '-' Indeed? no doubt,' (Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.' 'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.

2 See p. 131.

1 Proverb for a bad poet. Virg. Ed. iii. 90.
A famous critic of the day, often attacked by Pope.

270

'No, such a genius never can lie still '; And then for mine obligingly mistakes

The first lampoon Sir Will.' or Bubo 2 makes.
Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,
When every coxcomb knows me by my style?
Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,
Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame:
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray:

Who to the dean, and silver bell can swear,3
And sees at canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Makes satire a lampoon, and fiction lie.

A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

280

290

300

1 Sir William Yonge, who was noted for his fluency of speech. 2 Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, noted as the favourite of Frederick Prince of Wales, and a patron of minor poets and authors.

' Pope had been accused of ridiculing the ostentation of the Duke of Chandos in his Epistle on Taste, which was afterwards incorporated with Epistle IV of the Moral Essays. The reference is to lines 141-50 of the Epistle.

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) was born in Dublin and educated at King's College. As a young man he entered the household of Sir William Temple, and for some time acted as his amanuensis. It was here that he first met Esther Johnson, the 'Stella' whom he is said to have married secretly, and for whom he later wrote his Journal. He was ordained in 1694. In the same year he wrote the Battle of the Books, in which he defended Temple in his controversy with the supporters of modern, as opposed to ancient, learning. It remained in manuscript till 1704, when it and the Tale of a Tub (written between 1694 and 1697) were published together. Swift began his political career by defending the Whig lords who were impeached in 1701, and his Discourse on the Dissentions in Athens and Rome was at one time taken for the work of Somers himself. The Whigs, however, were too closely allied with the Nonconformists for Swift to remain attached to their party. He quarrelled with them over the question of extending Queen Anne's Bounty to the clergy of Ireland, and in 1710 formed a close friendship with Harley and Bolingbroke, the Tory leaders. He had been given the livings of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and constantly passed backwards and forwards between Ireland and England. In 1710-11 he edited the Examiner, the chief organ of the Tories, and published the Conduct of the Allies, an attack on the war. In 1713 he was made Dean of St. Patrick's. The death of the queen caused Swift to retire from political life for some time. In 1720 he published a proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures, and in 1724 appeared the famous Drapier Letters, a vehement protest against the debasing of the Irish coinage. A reward was offered for the discovery of the author of the fourth, and most violent, of these letters. Gulliver's Travels had been begun about 1720, and was published in 1726. In 1728 Stella' died, and Swift never afterwards left Ireland. He continued to write pamphlets and essays from time to time, and was also the author of several satires and other 'occasional' verses. Towards the end of his life his health, which had always been poor, gave way completely. I shall be like a tree: I shall die at the top,' he was once heard to say, and in 1741 guardians had to be appointed for him. He was buried near 'Stella' in the Cathedral of St. Patrick.

A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT

(From Gulliver's Travels)

ALTHOUGH I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet, in the meantime, I am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees; for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards, till you come to the smallest, which to my sight were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly: and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to the reader's imagination.

There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention relates to informers. All crimes against the state are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the per

son accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city.

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning; and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit; where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the king for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order, and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for I confess, I was heartily ashamed.

In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human understanding is fitted

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