O, what indignity and shame,
To prostitute the Muses' name!
By flattering kings, whom Heaven design'd
The plagues and scourges of mankind;
Bred up in ignorance and sloth,
And every vice that nurses both.
Perhaps you say, Augustus shines,
Immortal made in Virgil's lines,
And Horace brought the tuneful quire,
To sing his virtues on the lyre;
Without reproach for flattery, true,
Because their praises were his due.
For in those ages kings, we find,
Were animals of human kind.
But now, go search all _Europe_ round
Among the _savage monsters_ ----
With vice polluting every _throne_,
(I mean all thrones except our own;)
In vain you make the strictest view
To find a ---- in all the crew,
With whom a footman out of place
Would not conceive a high disgrace,
A burning shame, a crying sin,
To take his morning's cup of gin.
Thus all are destined to obey
Some beast of burthen or of prey.
'Tis sung, Prometheus,[27] forming man,
Through all the brutal species ran,
Each proper quality to find
Adapted to a human mind;
A mingled mass of good and bad,
The best and worst that could be had;
Then from a clay of mixture base
He shaped a ---- to rule the race,
Endow'd with gifts from every brute
That best the * * nature suit.
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