[Footnote 1: A polite and elegant scholar; at that time an eminent
pleader at the bar in Dublin, and afterwards advanced to be one of the
Justices of the Common Pleas.--_H._]
THE ANSWER. BY DR. SWIFT
Lindsay mistakes the matter quite,
And honest Paulus judges right.
Then, why these quarrels to the sun,
Without whose aid you're all undone?
Did Paulus e'er complain of sweat?
Did Paulus e'er the sun forget;
The influence of whose golden beams
Soon licks up all unsavoury steams?
The sun, you say, his face has kiss'd:
It has; but then it greased his fist.
True lawyers, for the wisest ends,
Have always been Apollo's friends.
Not for his superficial powers
Of ripening fruits, and gilding flowers;
Not for inspiring poets' brains
With penniless and starveling strains;
Not for his boasted healing art;
Not for his skill to shoot the dart;
Nor yet because he sweetly fiddles;
Nor for his prophecies in riddles:
But for a more substantial cause--
Apollo's patron of the laws;
Whom Paulus ever must adore,
As parent of the golden ore,
By Phoebus, an incestuous birth,
Begot upon his grandam Earth;
By Phoebus first produced to light;
By Vulcan form'd so round and bright:
Then offer'd at the shrine of Justice,
By clients to her priests and trustees.
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