Above the stars exalt your style,
You still are low ten thousand mile.
On Lewis all his bards bestow'd
Of incense many a thousand load;
But Europe mortified his pride,
And swore the fawning rascals lied.
Yet what the world refused to Lewis,
Applied to George, exactly true is.
Exactly true! invidious poet!
'Tis fifty thousand times below it.
Translate me now some lines, if you can,
From Virgil, Martial, Ovid, Lucan.
They could all power in Heaven divide,
And do no wrong on either side;
They teach you how to split a hair,
Give George and Jove an equal share.[32]
Yet why should we be laced so strait?
I'll give my monarch butter-weight.
And reason good; for many a year
Jove never intermeddled here:
Nor, though his priests be duly paid,
Did ever we desire his aid:
We now can better do without him,
Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him.
_Caetera desiderantur_.
[Footnote 1: See Young's "Satires," and "Life" by
Johnson.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 2: The prison or house of correction to which harlots were
often consigned. See Hogarth's "Harlot's Progress," and "A beautiful
young Nymph," _ante_, p. 201.--_W. R. B._]
[Footnote 3: Colley Cibber, born in 1671, died in 1757; famous as a
comedian and dramatist, and immortalized by Pope as the hero of the
"Dunciad"; appointed Laureate in December, 1730, in succession to Eusden,
who died in September that year.
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