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And doubly pleased we find it on our own. [day
Through a false medium things are shewn by
Pomp, wealth, and titles, judgment lead astray.
How many from appearance borrow state,
Whom Night disdains to number with the great!
Must not we laugh to see yon lordling proud
Snuff up vile incense from a fawning crowd?
Whilst in his beam surrounding clients play, 145
Like insects in the sun's enlivening ray,
Whilst, Jehu like, he drives at furious rate,
And seems the only charioteer of state,
Talking himself into a little god,
And ruling empires with a single nod;
Who would not think, to hear him law dispense,
That he had interest, and that they had sense?
Injurious thought! beneath Night's honest shade,
When pomp is buried, and false colours fade,
Plainly we see, at that impartial hour,
Them dupes to pride, and him the tool of power.
God help the man, condemn'd by cruel fate
To court the seeming, or the real great!
Much sorrow shall he feel, and suffer more
Than any slave who labours at the oar:
By slavish methods must he learn to please,
By smooth-tongued flattery, that cursed court-
disease;

Supple to every wayward mood strike sail,
And shift with shifting humour's peevish gale.
To nature dead he must adopt vile art,
And wear a smile, with anguish in his heart.

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A sense of honour would destroy his schemes,
And Conscience ne'er must speak unless in dreams
When he hath tamely borne, for many years,
Cold looks, forbidding frowns, contemptuous sneers,
When he at last expects, good easy man!
To reap the profits of his labour'd plan,
Some cringing lackey, or rapacious whore,
To favours of the great the surest door,
Some catamite, or pimp, in credit grown,
Who tempts another's wife, or sells his own,
Steps cross his hopes, the promised boon denies,
And for some minion's minion claims the prize.
Foe to restraint, unpractised in deceit,
Too resolute, from nature's active heat
To brook affronts, and tamely pass them by,
Too proud to flatter, too sincere to lie.
Too plain to please, too honest to be great,
Give me, kind Heaven, an humbler, happier state;
Far from the place where men with pride deceive,
Where rascals promise, and where fools believe;
Far from the walk of folly, vice, and strife,
Calm, independent, let me steal through life,
Nor one vain wish my steady thoughts beguile
To fear his lordship's frown, or court his smile.
Unfit for greatness, I her snares defy,
And look on riches with untainted
eye:
To others let the glittering baubles fall,
Content shall place us far above them all.
Spectators only on this bustling stage,

We see what vain designs mankind engage:

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19

Vice after vice with ardour they pursue,

And one old folly brings forth twenty new
Perplex'd with trifles through the vale of life,
Man strives 'gainst man, without a cause for strife
Armies embattled meet, and thousands bleed
For some vile spot, where fifty cannot feed.
Squirrels for nuts contend, and, wrong or right,
For the world's empire kings ambitious fight.
What odds?-to us 'tis all the self-same thing,
A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.

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Britons, like Roman spirits famed of old, Are cast by nature in a patriot mould; No private joy, no private grief, they know, Their souls engross'd by public weal or woe; Inglorious ease, like ours, they greatly scorn; Let care with nobler wreaths their brows adorn: Gladly they toil beneath the statesman's pains, Give them but credit for a statesman's brains. All would be deem'd, e'en from the cradle, fit 215 To rule in politics as well as wit.

The grave, the gay, the fopling, and the dunce,
Start up (God bless us!) statesmen all at once.
His mighty charge of souls the priest forgets,
The court-bred lord his promises and debts;
Soldiers their fame, misers forget their pelf,
The rake his mistress, and the fop himself,

22 The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot,
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.

HAMLET.

220

Whilst thoughts of higher moment claim their care,
And their wise heads the weight of kingdoms bear
Females themselves the glorious ardour feel, 225
And boast an equal or a greater zeal;

From nymph to nymph the state-infection flies,
Swells in her breast, and sparkles in her eyes.
O'erwhelm'd by politics lie malice, pride,
Envy, and twenty other faults beside.

No more their little fluttering hearts confess
A passion for applause, or rage for dress;
No more they pant for public raree-shows,
Or lose one thought on monkeys or on beaus:
Coquettes no more pursue the jilting plan,
And lustful prudes forget to rail at man:
The darling theme Cecilia's self will choose,
Nor thinks of scandal whilst she talks of news.

The cit, a Common-Councilman by place,
Ten thousand mighty nothings in his face,
By situation as by nature great,

With nice precision parcels out the state; Proves and disproves, affirms and then denies,

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225 The nation was at that time wound up to a temporary pitch of enthusiasm in favour of Frederic of Prussia; all ranks united in his praise, and the appellation of the Protestant hero was religiously bestowed upon an avowed atheist; his gratitude to this country for its blind partiality lasted no longer than its subsidies were regularly remitted. He hated England, because, like all tyrants, he dreaded the effect of public opinion in the only country where it can be decidedly ex pressed. He preferred a petty complimentary intercourse with the cringing witlings of Paris, whose servile flattery could only be equalled by the insatiable arrogance and vanity of their heroic patron, to the more lasting and solid approbation

Objects himself, and to himself replies;
Wielding aloft the politician rod,

Makes Pitt by turns a devil and a god;

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Maintains, e'en to the very teeth of power,
The same thing right and wrong in half an hour
Now all is well, now he suspects a plot,
And plainly proves, whatever is, is not:
Fearfully wise, he shakes his empty head,
And deals out empires as he deals out thread;
His useless scales are in a corner flung,
And Europe's balance hangs upon his tongue.

Peace to such triflers, be our happier plan
To pass through life as easy as we can.
Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen.

Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show:
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master-wire.
What is't to us, if taxes rise or fall?

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of a free and unbiassed people. Of Frederic's consummate excellence in the theory and practice of the military art there can be but one opinion: but his literary productions, whether in prose or poetry, will never rank him above mediocrity in the opinion of any one who has endured a perusal of them. The following instance of liberality, extracted from a news. paper of March, 1758, may have called forth the poet's censure on female political enthusiasm:-"Miss Bab. Wyndham of Salisbury, sister of Henry Wyndham, Esq. of that city, a maiden lady of ample fortune, ordered her banker to prepare the sum of £1000 to be immediately remitted in her own name as a present to the King of Prussia."