The wretch bred up in method's drowsy school, Whose only merit is to err by rule, 20 Who ne'er through heat of blood was tripping caught, Nor guilty deem'd of one eccentric thought; 26 Unless to move the body's dull machine, Go on, ye fools, who talk for talking sake, 18 What have we with day to do! Sons of Care, 'twas made for you. 40 This is the more popular doctrine, and we believe most commonly governs the distribution of the four-and-twenty hours. Shine forth in native folly, native pride, Make yourselves rules to all the world beside; 50 55 Let the sage Doctor (think him one we know) With scraps of ancient learning overflow, In all the dignity of wig declare The fatal consequence of midnight air, How damps and vapours, as it were by stealth, 60 65 I'll make them live, as brother should with brother, And keep them in good humour with each other. The surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill. Most of those evils we poor mortals know, From doctors and imagination flow. Hence to old women with your boasted rules, He hates the moon, I sicken at the sun. 85 Wound up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right, great. No more that abject wretch disturbs my rest, 99 The poet and his friend were not fortunate in the attachments they formed at Westminster school, and poor Lloyd had, on more occasions than one, to lament the defection of pretended friends; even Thornton, to whom he had addressed his Actor, and with whom he once lived upon terms of the most cordial intimacy, abandoned him in his distress, and treated him with the most cutting neglect. Lloyd, whilst in the Fleet prison, where he was supplied by Churchill with a guinea a week and a servant to attend him, thus gently alludes to Thornton's conduct, in a letter to Wilkes, on the death of his benefactor. "My own affairs I forbear to mention; Thornton is what you believed him; I have many acquaintance, but now no friend here." The Rev. William Sellon, minister of St. James's Clerkenwell, and lecturer of St. Andrew's Holborn, and the Magdalen, the person imme 90 95 101 Who meanly overlooks a friend distrest. Purblind to poverty the worldling goes, And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose, But from a crowd can single out his grace, And cringe and creep to fools who strut in lace. Whether those classic regions are survey'd Where we in earliest youth together stray'd, Where hand in hand we trod the flowery shore, Though now thy happier genius runs before, When we conspired a thankless wretch to raise, And taught a stump to shoot with pilfer'd praise, Who once for reverend merit famous grown, Gratefully strove to kick his maker down; Or if more general arguments engage, The court or camp, the pulpit, bar, or stage; If half-bred surgeons, whom men doctors call, 105 And lawyers, who were never bred at all, Those mighty letter'd monsters of the earth, diately alluded to in these lines, is again characterized in the Ghost, under the name of Plausible. By the assistance of his more able contemporaries at Westminster school, Churchill, Lloyd, and Thornton, he contrived to acquire more reputation there, than his native dullness would warrant; but on his quitting that seminary, he forgot the obligation, and treated his open unsuspecting friends with a degree of illiberality, duplicity, and ingratitude, which their misconduct did not occasion, nor if it did, could justify. This ungracious conduct of course totally dissolved their friendship, a few years after he became a famous preacher, "From Holborn e'en to Clerkenwell," Ghost, B. iii. 1. 741. He afterwards studied the theory and practice of brewing to better purpose than the theory and practice of Christianity; the only fruit of which on his part was a crude abridgment of Scripture history Published at eighteen pence, and dear at that or any price. Our pity move, or exercise our mirth; Our rambling thoughts with easy freedom stray, 111 Whilst peaceful slumbers bless the homely bed Where virtue, self-approved, reclines her head, Whilst vice beneath imagined horrors mourns, 115 And conscience plants the villain's couch with Impatient of restraint, the active mind, [thorns, No more by servile prejudice confined, 120 Leaps from her seat, as waken'd from a trance, And darts through Nature at a single glance; Then we our friends, our foes, ourselves, survey, And see by Night what fools we are by day. 125 Stripp'd of her gaudy plumes and vain disguise, See where ambition mean and loathsome lies; Reflection with relentless hand pulls down The tyrant's bloody wreath and ravish'd crown. In vain he tells of battles bravely won, Of nations conquer'd, and of worlds undone; Triumphs like these but ill with manhood suit, And sink the conqueror beneath the brute. But if, in searching round the world, we find Some generous youth, the friend of all mankind, Whose anger, like the bolt of Jove, is sped In terrors only at the guilty head, 130 Whose mercies, like heaven's dew, refreshing fall In general love and charity to all, Pleased we behold such worth on any throne, 136 |