Those are A-s Jack and Bob,
First in every wicked job,
Son and brother to a queer
Brainsick brute, they call a peer.
We must give them better quarter,
For their ancestor trod mortar,
And at Hoath, to boast his fame,
On a chimney cut his name.

There sit Clements, D-ks, and Harrison :
How they swagger from their garrison!
Such a triplet could you tell

Where to find on this side Hell?

Harrison, and D-ks, and Clements,
Keeper, see they have their payments,
Every mischief's in their hearts;
If they fail, 'tis want of parts.

Bless us, Morgan, art thou there, man!
Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman !
Chairman to your damn'd committee !
Yet I look on thee with pity.
Dreadful sight! what learned Morgan
Metamorphos'd to a Gorgon!

For thy horrid looks, I own,

Half convert me to a stone.

Hast thou been so long at school,

Now to turn a factious tool?

Alma Mater was thy mother,

Every young divine thy brother.
Thou, a disobedient varlet,
Treat thy mother like a harlot !
Thou ungrateful to thy teachers,

Who are all grown reverend preachers!
Morgan, would it not surprise one!
Turn thy nourishment to poison!

When you walk among your books,
They reproach you with their looks;
Bind them fast, or from their shelves
They will come and right themselves :
Homer, Plutarch, Virgil, Flaccus
All in arms, prepare to back us:
Soon repent, or put to slaughter
Every Greek and Roman author.
Will you, in faction's phrase,
Send the clergy all to graze;
And to make your project pass,
Leave them not a blade of grass?

your

How I want thee, humorous Hogarth !*
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art.
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every Monster should be painted :
You should try your graving tools
On this odious group of Fools;
Draw the beasts as I describe them;
Form their features while I gibe them;
Draw them like; for, I assure you,
You will need no car'catura;
Draw them so, that we may trace
All the soul in every face.

Keeper, I must now retire,

You have done what I desire:
But I feel my spirits spent

With the noise, the sight, the scent.
"Pray be patient; you shall find
Half the best are still behind!
You have hardly seen a score;
I can show two hundred more."

* See Hogarth's works, 4to. vol. 1. p. 93.

Keeper

Keeper, I have seen enough.

Taking then a pinch of snuff,

I concluded, looking round them,

66

May their god, the devil, confound them!"*

ON A PRINTER'S† BEING SENT TO

NEWGATE.

BETTER we all were in our graves,

Than live in slavery to slaves;

Worse than the anarchy at sea,

Where fishes on each other prey;

Where every trout can make as high rants
O'er his inferiors, as our tyrants;
And swagger while the coast is clear:
But, should a lordly pike appear,

* Whilst Swift was writing these satires on the Irish parliament, he was seized with one of those fits, the effect of which was so dreadful, that he left the poem unfinished; and, after that period, very rarely attempted a composition, either in verse or prose, that required a course of thinking, or perhaps more than one or two sittings to finish. One of these was "The Beasts' Confession." From this time his memory was perceived gradually to decline; and his melancholy increased by the strength of his ima gination brooding over the unhappy scene of misery which he foresaw was his lot, when he must become, as he said, a perfect slabberer. He was often heard to offer up his prayers to Almighty God, "to take him away from this evil to come." The prospect of this calamity, which he was daily lamenting, contributed very much, as his passions were violent, to pervert his understanding, to which many other particulars seem also to have concurred. D. S.

† Mr. Faulkner. F.

Away

Away you see the varlet scud,
Or hide his coward snout in mud.
Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach,
He dare not venture to approach;
Yet still has impudence to rise,
And, like Domitian, leap at flies.

A VINDICATION OF THE LIBEL:

OR, A NEW BALLAD,

WRITTEN BY A SHOE-BOY, ON AN ATTORNEY WHO WAS FORMERLY A SHOE-BOY.

"Qui color ater erat, nunc est contrarius atro."

WITH singing of ballads, and crying of news,
With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes,
Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless,
And moneyless too, but not very dirtless;
Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all;
One bought him a brush, and one a black ball;
For clouts at a loss he could not be much,
The clothes on his back as being but such;
Thus vamp'd and accoutred, with clouts, ball, and
brush,

He gallantly ventur'd his fortune to push :
Vespasian thus, being bespatter'd with dirt,
Was omen'd to be Rome's emperor for't.
But as a wise fiddler is noted, you know,
To have a good couple of strings to one bow;

• See the next poem. F.

So

So Hartley judiciously thought it too little,
To live by the sweat of his hands and his spittle:
He finds out another profession as fit,

And straight he becomes a retailer of wit.

One day he cried-" Murders, and songs, and great news!"

Another as loudly-" Here blacken your shoes!" At Domvile's full often he fed upon bits,

For winding of jacks up, and turning of spits; Lick'd all the plates round, had many a grubbing And now and then got from the cook-maid a drub

bing;

Such bastings effect upon him could have none :
The dog will be patient that's struck with a bone.
Sir Thomas, observing this Hartley withal
So expert and so active at brushes and ball,
Was mov'd with compassion, and thought it a pity
A youth should be lost, that had been so witty:
Without more ado, he vamps up my spark,
And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk!
Suppose him an adept in all the degrees
Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees;
Suppose him a miser, attorney per bill,

Suppose him a courtier-suppose what you will-
Yet would you believe, though I swore by the

Bible,

That he took up two news-boys for crying the libel?

* Sir T. Domvile, patentee of the Hanaper office. F.

A FRIENDLY