DR GIBBS. And thus, confiding, Lord, in thee, Thy heavy hand restrain; (3) With mercy, Lord, correct: Do not (4) (as if in high disdain) My helpless soul reject. For how shall I sustain (5) Those ills which now I bear? My vitals are consum'd with pain, (6) My soul oppressed with care! Lord, I have pray'd in (7) vain, So long, so much opprest; These do my sight impair, And flowing eyes decay; While to my enemies I fear Thus (9) to become a prey. If I've not spared him, though he's grown Then let my life and fortune (2) crown But, Lord, thy kind assistance (3) lend; According to thy laws (4) contend That all the nations that oppose DR SWIFT. (1) And yet, to show I tell no fibs, Thou hast left me in thrall To Hopkins eke, and doctor Gibbs, The vilest rogue of all. (2) Ay, and open foes too; or his repose would not be very calm. (3) Thy heavy hand restrain ; Have mercy, Dr Gibbs : Do not, I pray thee, paper stain With rhymes retail'd in dribbs. (4) That bit is a most glorious botch. (5) The squeaking of a hoggrel. (6) To listen to thy doggrel. (7) The doctor must mean himself; for, I hope, David never thought so. (8) Then he is a dunce for crying. (9) That is, he is afraid of becoming a prey to his enemies while his eyes are sore. (1) If he be grown his causeless enemy, he is no longer guiltless. (2) He gives a thing before he has it, and gives it to him that has it already; for Saul is the person meant. (3) But why lend? Does he design to return it back when he has done with it? (4) Profane rascal! he makes it a struggle and contention between God and the wicked. DR GIBBS. For equal judgment, Lord, to thee The nations (1) all submit ; Be therefore (2) merciful to me, And my just soul acquit (3). DR SWIFT. (1) Yet, in the very verse before, he talks of nations that oppose. (2) Because all nations submit to God, therefore God must be merciful to Dr Gibbs. (3) Of what? Poor David never could acquit A criminal like thee, Against his Psalms who could commit Such wicked poetry. (4) Observe the connex Thus, by God's gracious providence (4), ion. All men he does with justice view, With direful vengeance can pursue, Lo! now th' inflictions (7) they design'd (5) That's right, doctor; but there will be no contending, as you desired a while ago. 'Tis wonderful that Providence Should save thee from the halter, Who hast in numbers with out sense Burlesqu'd the holy Psal ter. (6) That is no great mark of viewing them with justice. God has wiser ends for passing by his vengeance on the wicked, you profane dunce! (7) Ay, but what sort of things are these inflictions? (8) If the mischiefs be in Even all the mischiefs (8) in their mind, their mind, what need they Do on themselves return. O'er all the birds that mount the air, And fish that in the floods appear (9). Confounded at the sight of thee, My foes are put to flight (1). Thus thou, great God of equity, Dost still assert my right (2). But God eternally remains, (3) Fixt in his throne on high, And to the world from thence ordains (4) Impartial equity. return on themselves? are they not there already? (9) Those, I think, are not very many they are good fish when they are caught, but till then we have no great sway over them. (1) The doctor is mistaken; for, when people are confounded, they cannot fly. (2) Against Sternhold and Hopkins. (3) That is false and prophane: God is not fixed any where. (4) Did any body ever hear of partial equity? DR GIBBS. b And thus consider still, O Lord, DR SWIFT. (1) Nothing is restored but what has been taken away; so that he has been often raised from the dead, if this be true. And from the barbarous (2) paths they (2) The author should tread, No acts of Providence Can e'er oblige them to recede, Or stop (3) their bold offence. And on their impious heads will pour (6) But they were all perverted grown, first have premised what sort of paths were properly barbarous. I suppose they must be very deep or dirty, or very rugged and stony; both which I myself have heard travellers call barbarous roads. Are they so stupid (8) then, said (9) God, (3) O, that his aid we now might have, (3) Which is the way to stop an offence? Would you have it stopt like a bottle, or a thief? (4) A shower of snares on a man's head would do wonderful execution. How ever, I grant it is a scurvy thing enough to swallow them. (5) To taste the doctor's poetry. (6) But they were all perverted grown, In spite of Dr Gibbs' blood: Of all his impious strains not one Was either just or good. (7) For a man, it seems, may be good, and not just. (8) The fault was not, that they devoured saints, but that they were stupid. Q. Whether stupidity makes men devour saints, or de vouring saints makes a man stupid? I believe the latter, because they may be apt to lie heavy on one's stomach. (9) Clod. (1) Strains. (2) Chimes. (3) And O that every parish clerk, Who hums what Brady cribs From Hopkins, would attend this work, And glad the heart with At the end of the MS. is the following note: "The above was written from the manuscript mentioned in the first page, now in the hands of Nicholas Coyne, Esq., being the only copy in the kingdom of Ireland; he having purchased the original, and afterward generously given it to his friend Dr Dunkin, finding the doctor extremely uneasy at the disappointment the earl of Chesterfield was like to meet with, as he had promised the earl to attend the auction, and procure it for him at any price; and is now transcribed by Neale Molloy, Esq., of Dublin, by the favour of the said Nicholas Coyne, his brother-in-law, and sent by him to his kinsman and dear friend Charles Molloy, of London, esquire. Dublin, May 26, 1748." |