210

Sail in the ladies : how each pirate eyes
So weak a vessel, and so rich a prize!
Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim,
He boarding her, she striking sail to him :
“Dear Countess ! you have charms all hearts to hit!”
And “Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!”
Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought,
For both the beauty and the wit are bought.
"Twould burst e'en Heraclitus with the spleen,'
To see those antics, Fopling and Courtine :
The presence seems, with things so richly odd,
The mosque of Mahound, or some queer pagod.
See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules,
Of all beau-kind the best proportioned fools !
Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw
Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw;
But oh! what terrors must distract the soul,
Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole;
Or should one pound of powder less bespread
Those monkey-tails that wag behind their head.
Thus finished, and corrected to a hair,
They march, to prate their hour before the fair.
So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes,
With band of lily, and with cheek of rose,'
Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim,
Neatness itself impertinent in him.
Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest :
Prodigious ! how the things protest, protest :
Peace, fools ! or Gonson will for Papists seize you,'
If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!

i Pope seems here to confuse Heraclitus with Democritus, “the laughing philosopher.” Donne says with propriety, “ Would not Heraclitus laugh ?" but there would be nothing extraordinary in Heraclitus bursting with spleen.

· Albert Durer thought that the

true proportions of beauty could be measured by mechanical rules.

3 In the same manner Boileau, Lutrin, i. 19: Les Chanoines vermeils, et brillans do santé.

4 Sir John Gonson, the famous police magistrate, was as celebrated

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265

270

Nature made every fop to plague his brother,
Just as one beauty mortifies another.
But here's the captain that will plague them both,
Whose air cries, Arm! whose very look's an oath :
The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough,
Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff.
He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before,
Like battering rams, beats open every door :
And with a face as red, and as awry,
As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry,'
Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse,
Has yet a strange ambition to look worse :
Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe;
Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law.

Frighted, I quit the room ; but leave it so
As men from jails to execution go ;
For, hung with deadly sins I see the wall,'
And lined with giants deadlier than 'em all ;
Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss
For quoits, both Temple-Bar and Charing-Cross.
Scared at the grizly forms, I sweat, I fly,
And shake all o'er, like a discovered spy.

Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine :
Charge them with Heaven's artillery, bold divine !
From such alone the great rebuke endure,
Whose satire's sacred, and whose rage secure :
'Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs
To deluge sin, and drown a court in tears.
Howe'er, what's now Apocrypha, my wit,
In time to come, may pass for Holy Writ.

275

280

285

1

in his day, in the annals of justice, as one of his successors in office, Sir John Fielding, has been since. His portrait is introduced in Hogarth's Harlot's Progress. - BOWLES.

Pope has introduced him again in ver. 54.

Compare Essay on Criticisme,
Part iii. ver. 28.
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.

? The room hung with old tapestry representing the Seven Deadly Sins. — POPE.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

IN TWO DIALOGUES.

WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.