ALL folks, who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defin'd
The place of the damn'd-I'll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damn'd do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damn'd poets, damn'd critics, damn'd blockheads,
damn'd knaves,
Damn'd senators brib'd, damn'd prostitute slaves; Damn'd lawyers and judges, damn'd lords, and damn'd squires ;
Damn'd spies and informers, damn'd friends, and damn'd liars;
Damn'd villains, corrupted in every station;
Damn'd time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I'll readily give you
Damn'd ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flamm'd,
For we know by these marks the place of the damn'd:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!
WITH a whirl of thought oppress'd,
I sunk from reverie to rest.
A horrid vision seiz'd my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead!
Jove, arm'd with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies!
Amaz'd, confus'd, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne!
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
"Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp'd aside;
And you, who never fell from pride:
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd:
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you)
-The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
-I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools !-Go, go, you're bit."
*This Poem was first printed (from the Dean's MS.) in a letter from Lord Chesterfield addressed to Mr Voltaire, dated Aug. 27, 1752.-N.
[This seems to have been written when the majority of the Irish bishops were meditating what Swift considered as encroachments upon the rights of their clergy.]
By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies.
The Jews engag'd him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a tribe;
Which though his conscience forc'd him to restore,
(And, parsons tell us, no man can do more)
Yet, through despair of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang'd or burst.
Those former ages differ'd much from this;
Judas betray'd his master with a kiss:
But some have kiss'd the Gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury's the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two inch-board,
Yet keep their bishoprics, and 'scape the cord:
Like hemp, which, by a skilful spinster drawn
To slender threads, may sometimes pass for lawn.
As ancient Judas by transgression fell,
And burst asunder ere he went to Hell;
So could we see a set of new Iscariots
Come headlong tumbling from their mitred chariots ;
Each modern Judas perish like the first,
Drop from the tree, with all his bowels burst ;
Who could forbear, that view'd each guilty face, "Lo! Judas gone to his own place,
His habitation let all men forsake,
And let his bishopric another take!"
How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse's train,
To serve a tasteless court twelve years in vain! †
Fain would I think our female friend sincere,
I
Till Bob, § the poet's foe, possess'd her ear.
* The dean having been told by an intimate friend, that the Duke of Queensberry had employed Mr Gay to inspect the accounts and management of his grace's receivers and stewards (which however proved to be a mistake) wrote this Epistle to his friend.-H. Through the whole piece, under the pretext of instructing Gay in his duty as the duke's auditor of accounts, he satirizes the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, then prime minister. See the libel on Dr Delany and Lord Carteret.-H. The Countess of Suffolk.-H.
Sir Robert Walpole.-FAULKner.
We have had repeated occasion to remark, that, in courting Mrs Howard, Pope, Swift, and Gay, never perceived that they were offering incense at the shrine of an inefficient, rather than an unpropitious deity; and that George II., entirely guided by the councils of Queen Caroline, disregarded all advances made to him through the channel of Mrs Howard. It was the queen, not the favourite, over whom Sir Robert Walpole, here termed the poet's foe, "obtained an ascendancy, through which he not only preserved, but even augmented, during the reign of George II., the influence he had possessed under George I."
Did female virtue e'er so high ascend,
To lose an inch of favour for a friend?
Say, had the court no better place to choose
For thee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?
How cheaply had thy liberty been sold,
To squire a royal girl of two years old:
In leading strings her infant steps to guide,
Or with her go-cart amble side by side! *
But princely Douglas, † and his glorious dame,
Advanc'd thy fortune, and preserv'd thy fame.
Nor will your nobler gifts be misapplied,
When o'er your patron's treasure you preside:
The world shall own, his choice was wise and just,
For sons of Phoebus never break their trust.
Not love of beauty less the heart inflames
Of guardian eunuchs to the sultan's dames,
Their passions not more impotent and cold,
Than those of poets to the lust of gold.
With Pean's purest fire his favourites glow,
The dregs will serve to ripen ore below;
His meanest work: for, had he thought it fit,
That wealth should be the appanage of wit,
The god of light could ne'er have been so blind
To deal it to the worst of human kind.:
But let me now, for I can do it well,
Your conduct in this new employ foretel.
And first to make my observation right,
I place a statesman full before my sight,
A bloated minister in all his gear,
With shameless visage and perfidious leer;
* The post of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa was offered to Gay, which he and his friends considered as a great in dignity, her Royal Highness being a mere infant.
+ The Duke of Queensberry.-FAULENER.
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