Deals him out money from the public chest ; Well-manag'd, shall have earn'd its worthy price. 800 805 From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, 810 Ambition, avarice, penury incurr'd By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, dispatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town. 815 London ingulphs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he Who, with bare-headed and obsequious bows, Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail 820 And groat per diem, if his patron frown, The levee swarms, as if, in golden pomp, Were character'd on every statesman's door, "BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED HERE." These are the charms that sully and eclipse 825 The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe That lean, hard-handed poverty, inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, 830 Unpeople all our counties of such herds Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast Oh thou resort and mart of all the earth, Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more than I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, 835 That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh 840 845 ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK. The post comes in.-The news-paper is read.The world contemplated at a distance.-Address to Winter. The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.Address to evening.—A brown study.-Fall of snow in the evening.-The waggoner.-A poor family-piece. The rural thief.-Public houses. -The multitude of them censured. The farmer's daughter: what she was—what she is.The simplicity of country manners almost lost. -Causes of the change.-Desertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magistrates. -The militia principally in fault.-The new recruit and his transformation.-Reflection on bodies corporate.The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished. BOOK IV. THE WINTER EVENING. HA ARK! 'tis the twanging horn! o'er yonder bridge, That, with its wearisome but needful length, Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks; True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind, And, having dropp'd the expected bag, pass on. 10 15 His horse and him, unconscious of them all. With such heart-shaking music, who can say 25 30 |