Thou, a disobedient varlet,
Treat thy mother like a harlot !
Thou ungrateful to thy teachers,
Who are all grown reverend preachers!
Morgan, would it not surprise one!
Turn thy nourishment to poison!
When you walk among your books,
They reproach you with their looks;
Bind them fast, or from their shelves
They will come and right themselves:
Homer, Plutarch, Virgil, Flaccus,
All in arms, prepare to back us:
Soon repent, or put to slaughter
Every Greek and Roman author.
Will you, in your faction's phrase,
Send the clergy all to graze;
And to make your project pass,
Leave them not a blade of grass ?
How I want thee, humorous Hogarth !1
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art.
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted:
You should try your graving tools
On this odious group of fools;
Draw the beasts as I describe them:
Form their features while I gibe them;
Draw them like; for I assure you,
You will need no car'catura ;
See Hogarth's Works, 4to. vol. i. p. 93.---Scott.
Draw them so that we may trace
All the soul in every face.
Keeper, I must now retire,
You have done what I desire:
But I feel my spirits spent
With the noise, the sight, the scent.
"Pray, be patient; you shall find
Half the best are still behind!
You have hardly seen a score;
I can show two hundred more."
Keeper, I have seen enough.
Taking then a pinch of snuff,
I concluded, looking round them,
May their god, the devil, confound them!"
BETTER We all were in our graves,
Than live in slavery to slaves;
Worse than the anarchy at sea,
Where fishes on each other prey;
Where every trout can make as high rants
O'er his inferiors, as our tyrants;
And swagger while the coast is clear:
But should a lordly pike appear,
1 Mr. Faulkner, for printing the Proposal for the better Regulation of Quadrille.---Scott.
Away you see the varlet scud,
Or hide his coward snout in mud.
Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach,
He dares not venture to approach;
Yet still has impudence to rise,
And, like Domitian, leap at flies.
A VINDICATION OF THE LIBEL; OR, A NEW BALLAD, WRITTEN BY A SHOE-BOY, ON AN ATTORNEY WHO WAS FORMERLY
'Qui color ater erat, nunc est contrarius atro."
WITH singing of ballads, and crying of news,
With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes,
Did Hartley1 set out, both shoeless and shirtless,
And moneyless too, but not very dirtless;
Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all;
One bought him a brush, and one a black ball;
For clouts at a loss he could not be much,
The clothes on his back as being but such;
Thus vamp'd and accoutred, with clouts, ball, and
brush,
He gallantly ventured his fortune to push :
Vespasian thus, being bespatter'd with dirt,
Was omen'd to be Rome's emperor for't.
But as a wise fiddler is noted, you know,
To have a good couple of strings to one bow;
So Hartley judiciously thought it too little,
To live by the sweat of his hands and his spittle :
He finds out another profession as fit,
And straight he becomes a retailer of wit.
One day he cried-" Murders, and
Another as loudly-"Here blacken your shoes!"
At Domvile's' full often he fed upon bits,
For winding of jacks up, and turning of spits;
Lick'd all the plates round, had many a grubbing,
And now and then got from the cook-maid a drub-
Such bastings effect upon him could have none:
The dog will be patient that's struck with a bone.
Sir Thomas, observing this Hartley withal
So expert and so active at brushes and ball,
Was moved with compassion, and thought it a pity
A youth should be lost, that had been so witty:
Without more ado, he vamps up my spark,
And now we'll suppose him an eminent clerk!
Suppose him an adept in all the degrees
Of scribbling cum dasho, and hooking of fees;
Suppose him a miser, attorney per bill,
Suppose him a courtier-suppose what you will-
Yet, would you believe, though I swore by the Bible,
That he took up two news-boys for crying the libel??
1 Sir T. Domvile, patentee of the Hanaper office.---F. 2 The proposal for regulation of quadrille.---Scott.
FOR A CERTAIN JUSTICE OF PEACE.
BY WAY OF DEFENCE OF HARTLEY HUTCHINSON,
BY JAMES BLACK-WELL, OPERATOR
But he by bawling news about,
And aptly using brush and clout,
A justice of the peace became,
To punish rogues who do the same.-HUDIE.
I SING the man of courage tried,
O'errun with ignorance and pride,
Who boldly hunted out disgrace
With canker'd mind, and hideous face;
The first who made (let none deny it)
The libel-vending rogues be quiet.
The fact was glorious, we must own,
For Hartley was before unknown,
Contemn'd I mean;-for who would choose
So vile a subject for the Muse?
'Twas once the noblest of his wishes
To fill his paunch with scraps from dishes,
For which he'd parch before the grate,
Or wind the jack's slow-rising weight,
(Such toils as best his talents fit,)
Or polish shoes, or turn the spit;
But, unexpectedly grown rich in
Squire Domvile's family and kitchen,
He pants to eternize his name,
And takes the dirty road to fame;
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