Disclaim for ever all pretence

To common honesty and sense;
And join'd in friendship with a strict tye,
To M-1, C-y, and Dick Tighe.*

A DIALOGUE,

BETWEEN AN EMINENT LAWYER, AND
DR. JONATHAN SWIFT, D. S. P. D.

IN ALLUSION TO HORACE, BOOK II. SATIRE 1.

"Sunt quibus in Satirâ," &c.

WRITTEN BY MR. LINDSAY, IN 1729.

DR. SWIFT.

SINCE there are persons who complain
There's too much satire in my vein;
That I am often found exceeding
The rules of raillery and breeding;
With too much freedom treat my betters,
Not sparing even men of letters:
You, who are skill'd in lawyers' lore,
What's your advice? Shall I give o'er?
Nor ever fools or knaves expose
Either in verse or humourous prose;
And to avoid all future ill,

In my scrutoire lock up my quill?

LAWYER.

Since you are pleas'd to condescend

To ask the judgment of a friend,

Richard Tighe, esq. a privy counsellor, and member of the Irish parliament. He incurred the displeasure of the Dean, who took several opportunities to censure him. N.

+ Mr. Lindsay. F.

Your

Your case consider'd, I must think

You should withdraw from pen and ink,
Forbear your poetry and jokes,

And live like other Christian folks;
Or, if the Muses must inspire
Your fancy with their pleasing fire,
Take subjects safer for your wit
Than those on which you lately writ.
Commend the times, your thoughts correct,
And follow the prevailing sect;
Assert that Hyde, in writing story,
Shows all the malice of a tory;
While Burnet, in his deathless page,
Discovers freedom without rage.
To Woolston recommend our youth,
For learning, probity, and truth;
That noble genius, who unbinds

The chains which fetter freeborn minds;
Redeems us from the slavish fears
Which lasted near two thousand years;
He can alone the priesthood humble,
Make gilded spires and altars tumble.

DR. SWIFT.

Must I commend against my conscience
Such stupid blasphemy and nonsense;
To such a subject tune my lyre,

And sing like one of Milton's choir,
Where devils to a vale retreat,
And call the laws of Wisdom Fate,
Lament upon their hapless fall,

That Force free Virtue should enthrall?
Or shall the charms of Wealth and Power
Make me pollute the Muses' bower?

LAWYER.

LAWYER.

As from the tripod of Apollo,

Hear from my desk the words that follow: "Some, by philosophers misled,

Must honour you alive and dead;

And such as know what Greece has writ,
Must taste your irony and wit;

While most that are, or would be great,
Must dread your pen, your person haté ;
And you on Drapier's hill must lié,
And there without a mitre die."

1

ON BURNING A DULL POEM. 1729.

AN ass's hoof alone can hold

That poisonous juice, which kills by cold.
Methought, when I this poem read,

No vessel but an ass's head

Such frigid fustian could contain ;
I mean, the head without the brain.
The cold conceits, the chilling thoughts,
Went down like stupifying draughts:
I found my head began to swim,
A numbness crept through every limb.
In haste, with imprecations dire,

I threw the volume in the fire:

When (who could think?) though cold as ice,
It burnt to ashes in a trice.

How could I more enhance its fame?
Though born in snow, it dy'd in flame.

ON

ON PADDY'S CHARACTER OF THE

INTELLIGENCER.*

1729.

As a thorn bush, or oaken bough,
Stuck in an Irish cabin's brow,
Above the door, on country fair,
Betokens entertainment there;
So bays on poets' brows have been
Set, for a sign of wit within.

And, as ill neighbours in the night
Pull down an alehouse bush for spite;
The laurel so, by poets worn,
Is by the teeth of Envy torn;
Envy, a canker-worm, which tears
Those sacred leaves that lightning spares.
And now t'exemplify this moral :
Tom having earn'd a twig of laurel,
(Which, measur'd on his head, was found
Not long enough to reach half round,
But, like a girl's cockade, was ty'd,
A trophy, on his temple-side)
Paddy repin'd to see him wear
This badge of honour in his hair;
And, thinking this cockade of wit
Would his own temples better fit,

* Dr. Sheridan was publisher of the "Intelligencer," a weekly paper, written principally by himself; but Dr. Swift occasionally supplied him with a letter. Dr. Delany, piqued at the approbation those papers received, attacked them violently both in conversation and in print; but unfortunately stumbled on some of the numbers which the Dean had written, and all the world admired; which gave rise to these verses. H,

Forming

Forming his Muse by Smedley's* model,
Lets drive at Tom's devoted noddle,
Pelts him by turns with verse and prose,
Hums like a hornet at his nose.

At length presumes to vent his satire on
The Dean, Tom's honour'd friend and patron.
The eagle in the tale, ye know,
Teas'd by a buzzing wasp below,
Took wing to Jove, and hop'd to rest
Securely in the thunderer's breast:
In vain; even there, to spoil his nod,
The spiteful insect stung the god.

AN EPISTLE TO HIS EXCELLENCY
JOHN LORD CARTERET.

BY DR. DELANY, 1729.

"Credis ob hoc, me, Pastor, opes fortasse rogare,
Propter quod, vulgus, crassaque turba rogat."

MART. Epig. lib. ix.

THOU wise and learned ruler of our isle,

Whose guardian care can all her griefs beguile;
When next your generous soul shall condescend
T'instruct or entertain your humble friend;
Whether, retiring from your weighty charge,
On some high theme you learnedly enlarge;
Of all the ways of wisdom reason well,
How Richlieu rose and how Sejanus fell:

*See p. 38. N.

Or,