Now Pride and Cruelty are flown,
And Mercy here exalts her throne:
For such is good example's power,
It does its office every hour,
Where governors are good and wise;
Or else the truest maxim lies:
For so we find all ancient sages
Decrée, that, ad exemplum regis,
Through all the realm his virtues run,
Ripening and kindling like the sun.
If this be true, then how much more
When you have nam'd at least a score
Of courtiers, each in their degree,
If possible, as good as he!

Or take it in a different view.
I ask (if what you say be true)
If you affirm the present age
Deserves your satire's keenest rage;
If that same universal passion
With every vice has fill'd the nation:
If virtue dares not venture down
A single step beneath the crown:
If clergymen, to show their wit,
Praise classics more than holy writ:
If bankrupts, when they are undone,
Into the senate house can run,
And sell their votes at such a rate,
As will retrieve a lost estate :

If law be such a partial whore,

To spare the rich, and plague the poor:
If these be of all crimes the worst,
What land was ever half so curst?

THE DOG AND THIEF. 1726.

QUOTH the thief to the dog, let me into your door, And I'll give you these delicate bits.

Quoth the dog, I shall then be more villain than you're,

And besides must be out of

my wits.

Your delicate bits will not serve me a meal,

But my master each day gives me bread;

You'll fly, when you get what you came here to steal,

And I must be hang'd in your stead,

The stockjobber thus from 'Change alley goes down.

And tips you the freeman a wink;

Let me have but your vote to serve for the town, And here is a guinea to drink.

Says the freeman, your guinea to night would be spent!

Your offers of bribery cease:

I'll vote for my landlord to whom I pay rent,
Or else I may forfeit my lease.

From London they come, silly people to chouse,
Their lands and their faces unknown:

Who'd vote a rogue into the parliament house,
That would turn a man out of his own?

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MAD MULLI

NIX AND TIMOTHY.

1728.

[This is a severe satire upon Richard Tighe, Esq. whom the Dean regarded as the officious informer against Sheridan, in the matter of the choice of a text for the accession of George I." See Vol. VII. p 490. Swift had faithfully promised to revenge the cause of his friend, Vol. XVII p. 37. and has certainly fully redeemed his pledge, in this and the following pasquinades, Mad Mullinix, or Molyneux, was a sort of crazy beggar, a Tory politician in his madness, who haunted the streets of Dublin about this time. In a paper subscribed Dr Anthony, apparently a mountebank of somewhat the same description, the Doctor is made to vindicate his loyalty and regard for the present constitution in church and state, by declaring that he always acted contrary to the politics of Captain John Molyneux. The immediate occasion for publication is assigned in the Intelligencer, in which paper the dialogue first appeared.

Having lately had an account, that a certain person of some dis tinction swore in a public coffee-house, that party should never die while he lived (although it has been the endeavour of the best and wisest among us, to abolish the ridiculous appellations of Whig and Tory, and entirely to turn our thoughts to the good of our prince and constitution in church and state,) I hope those who are well-wishers to our country, will think my labour not ill-bestowed, in giving this gentleman's principles the proper embellishments which they deserve; and since Mad Mullinix is the only Tory now remaining, who dares own himself to be so, I hope I may not be censured by those of his party, for making him hold a dialogue with one of less conse. quence on the other side. I shall not venture so far as to give the Christian nick-name of the person chiefly concerned, lest I should give offence, for which reason I shall call him Timothy, and leave the rest to the conjecture of the world.”—Intelligencer, No.ViIL]

M. I own, 'tis not my bread and butter, But prithee, Tim, why all this clutter?

Why ever in these raging fits,
Damning to hell the jacobites?

When if you search the kingdom round,
There's hardly twenty to be found;
No, not among the priests and friars-

T. 'Twixt you and me, G-d d―n the liars!
M. The Tories are gone every man over
To our illustrious house of Hanover;

From all their conduct this is plain;
And then-

T. G-d d-n the liars again!
Did not an earl but lately vote,
To bring in (I could cut his throat)
Our whole accounts of public debts?

M. Lord how this frothy coxcomb frets! [aside.
T. Did not an able statesman bishop
This dangerous horrid motion dish up
As popish craft? did he not rail on't?
Show fire and faggot in the tail on't!
Proving the earl a grand offender;
And in a plot for the pretender;
Whose fleet, 'tis all our friends' opinion,
Was then embarking at Avignon?

M. These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory, Are stale and worn as Troy-town story: The wrong, 'tis certain, you were both in, And now you find you fought for nothing. Your faction, when their game was new, Might want such noisy fools as you; But you, when all the show is past, Resolve to stand it out the last; Like Martin Mar-all, gaping on, Not minding when the song is done.

* A character in one of Dryden's comedies.—H.

When all the bees are gone to settle
You clatter still your brazen kettle.
The leaders whom you listed under,
Have dropt their arms, and seiz'd the plunder;
And when the war is past you come
To rattle in their ears your drum:
And as that hateful hideous Grecian,
Thersites (he was your relation,)
Was more abhorr'd and scorn'd by those
With whom he served, than by his foes;
So thou art grown the detestation
Of all thy party through the nation:
Thy peevish and perpetual teasing
With plots, and jacobites, and treason,
Thy busy never-meaning face,

Thy screw'd up front, thy state grimace
Thy formal nods, important sneers,
Thy whisperings foisted in all ears,
(Which are, whatever you may think,
But nonsense wrapt up in a stink)
Have made thy presence, in a true sense,
To thy own side, so d-n'd a nuisance,
That, when they have you in their eye,
As if the Devil drove, they fly.

T. My good friend Mullinix, forbear;
I vow to G-, you're too severe:
If it could ever yet be known

I took advice, except my own,
It should be yours; but d-n my blood!
I must pursue the public good:
The faction (is it not notorious?)
Keck at the memory of Glorious:*

King William III.-H.