When up a dangerous faction starts,
With wrath and vengeance in their hearts;
By solemn league and covenant bound,
To ruin, slaughter, and confound;
To turn religion to a fable,
And make the government a Babel;
Pervert the laws, disgrace the gown,
Corrupt the senate, rob the crown;
To sacrifice Old England's glory,
And make her infamous in story :
When such a tempest shook the land,
How could unguarded Virtue stand!
With horror, grief, despair, the Dean
Beheld the dire destructive scene:
His friends in exile, or the Tower,
Himself within the frown of power;
Pursu'd by base envenom'd pens,
Far to the land of saints and fens;
A servile race in folly nurs'd,
Who truckle most, when treated worst.
By innocence and resolution,
He bore continual persecution;
While numbers to preferment rose,
Whose merits were, to be his foes;
When even his own familiar friends,
Intent upon their private ends,
* On the queen's demise," the whigs were restored to power, which they exercised with the utmost rage and revenge; impeached and banished the chief leaders of the church party, and stripped all their adherents of what employments they had.-H.
+ Upon the queen's death, the Dean returned to Dublin: yet numberless libels were written against him in England; he was insulted in the street, and at night was forced to be attended by his servants armed.-H.
Like renegadoes now he feels,
Against him lifting up their heels.
"The Dean did, by his pen, defeat
An infamous destructive cheat;
Taught fools their interest how to know,
And gave them arms to ward the blow.
Envy has own'd it was his doing,
To save that hapless land from ruin;
While they who at the steerage stood,
And reap'd the profit, sought his blood.
"To save them from their evil fate,
In him was held a crime of state.
A wicked monster on the bench, †
Whose fury blood could never quench;
* Wood, a hardware-man from England, had a patent for coining copper halfpence for Ireland, to the sum of 108,0001. which, in the consequence, must have left that kingdom without gold or silver.-H.
+ Whitshed was then chief justice. He had some years before prosecuted a printer for a pamphlet written by the Dean, to persuade the people of Ireland to wear their own manufactures. Whitshed sent the jury down eleven times, and kept them 'nine hours, until they were forced to bring in a special verdict. He sat afterward on the trial of the printer of the Drapier's fourth letter; but the jury, against all he could say or swear, threw out the bill. All the kingdom took the Drapier's part, except the courtiers, or those who expected places. Whitshed died August 26, 1727, (having a few months before exchanged his place in the king's bench, which he had held ten or twelve years, for the same office in the common pleas): and Archbishop Boulter says, his uneasiness upon some affronts he met with helped to shorten his days. These affronts were certainly the satires of the Dean and his friends.-H.
As vile and profligate a villain,
As modern Scroggs, or old Tresilian;
Who long all justice has discarded,
Nor fear'd he God, nor man regarded;
Vow'd on the Dean his rage to vent,
And make him of his zeal repent:
But Heaven his innocence defends,
The grateful people stand his friends
Not strains of law, nor judge's frown,
Nor topics brought to please the crown,
Nor witness hir'd, nor jury pick'd,
Prevail to bring him in convict.
"In exile, † with a steady heart,
He spent his life's declining part;
Where folly, pride, and faction sway,
Remote from St John, Pope, and Gay.
His friendships there, to few confin'd,
Were always of the middling kind;
No fools of rank, a mongrel breed,
Who fain would pass for lords indeed:
Where titles give no right, or power, §
And peerage is a wither'd flower;
* Sir William Scroggs, chief justice of the King's Bench in the reign of King Charles II., and Sir Robert Tresilian, chief justice of England in the time of Richard II., both infamous for encroachments on the liberties and property of the people of England.
+ In Ireland, which he had reason to call a place of exile: to which country nothing could have driven him but the queen's death, who had determined to fix him in England, in spite of the Duchess of Somerset, &c.-H.
In Ireland the Dean was not acquainted with one single lord, spiritual or temporal. He only conversed with private gentlemen of the clergy or laity, and but a small number of either.Dubl. ed.
§ The peers of Ireland lost great part of their jurisdiction by one single act, -Ibid.
He would have held it a disgrace,
If such a wretch had known his face.
On rural squires, that kingdom's bane,
He vented oft' his wrath in vain :
******* squires to market brought;
Who sell their souls and **** for nought.
The ******* go joyful back,
To *** the church their tenants rack,
Go snacks with *******
And keep the peace, to pick up fees;
In every job to have a share,
A gaol or turnpike to repair;
And turn the tax for public roads,
Commodious to their own abodes.
"Perhaps I may allow the Dean
Had too much satire in his vein;
And seem'd determin'd not to starve it,
Because no age could more deserve it.
Yet malice never was his aim ;
He lash'd the vice, but spar'd the name:
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant ;
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorr'd that senseless tribe
Who call it humour when they gibe:
He spar'd a hump, or crooked nose,
Whose owners set not up for beaux.
True genuine dulness mov'd his pity,
Unless it offer'd to be witty.
Those who their ignorance confest,
He ne'er offended with a jest ;
But laugh'd to hear an idiot quote
A verse from Horace learn'd by rote.
"He knew a hundred pleasing stories,
With all the turns of whigs and tories:
Was cheerful to his dying day;
And friends would let him have his
"He gave the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad;
And show'd by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
I wish it soon may have a better."
VERSES SENT TO THE DEAN ON HIS BIRTH-DAY,
WITH PINE'S HORACE, FINELY BOUND.
You've read, sir, in poetic strain,
How Varus and the Mantuan swain
Have on my birth-day been invited,
(But I was forc'd in verse to write it)
Upon a plain repast to dine,
And taste my old Campanian wine;
But I, who all punctilios hate,
Though long familiar with the great,
*This ingenious young gentleman was unfortunately murdered in Italy.
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