"Vice, if it e'er can be abash'd,
Must be or ridiculed or lash'd.
If you resent it, who's to blame?
He neither knew you nor your name.
Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,
Because its owner is a duke?
"He knew an hundred pleasant stories,
With all the turns of Whigs and Tories:
Was cheerful to his dying day;
And friends would let him have his way.
"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."
And, since you dread no farther lashes
Methinks you may forgive his ashes.
[Footnote 1: This poem was first written about 1731 but was not then
intended to be published; and having been shown by Swift to all his
"common acquaintance indifferently," some "friend," probably
Pilkington, remembered enough of it to concoct the poem called "The Life
and Character of Dr. Swift, written by himself," which was published in
London in 1733, and reprinted in Dublin. In a letter to Pope, dated 1
May, that year, the Dean complained seriously about the imposture,
saying, "it shall not provoke me to print the true one, which indeed is
not proper to be seen till I can be seen no more.
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