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| IN 1 two large columns on thy motley page, | |
| Where Roman wit is strip’d with English rage; | |
| Where ribaldry to satire makes pretence; | |
| And modern scandal rolls with ancient sense: | |
| Whilst on one side we see how Horace thought; | 5 |
| And on the other how he never wrote: | |
| Who can believe, who view the bad and good, | |
| That the dull copyist better understood | |
| That Spirit, he pretends to imitate, | |
| Than heretofore that Greek he did translate? | 10 |
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| Thine is just such an image of his pen, | |
| As thou thyself art of the sons of men: | |
| Where our own species in burlesque we trace, | |
| A sign-post likeness of the human race, | |
| That is at once resemblance and disgrace. | 15 |
| If he has thorns, they all on roses grow; | |
| Thine like rude thistles, and mean brambles show, | |
| With this exception, that tho’ rank the soil, | |
| Weeds as they are they seem produc’d by toil. | |
| Satire should, like a polish’d razor keen, | 20 |
| Wound with a touch, that ’s scarcely felt or seen. | |
| Thine is an oyster-knife that hacks and hews; | |
| The rage but not the talent to abuse; | |
| And is in hate, what love is in the stews. | |
| ’Tis the gross lust of hate, that still annoys, | 25 |
| Without distinction, as gross love enjoys: | |
| Neither to folly, nor to vice confin’d; | |
| The object of thy spleen is human kind: | |
| It preys on all, who yield or who resist; | |
| To thee ’tis provocation to exist…. | 30 |
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| If none do yet return th’ intended blow, | |
| You all your safety to your dullness owe: | |
| But whilst that armour thy poor corps defends, | |
| ’Twill make thy readers few, as are thy friends; | |
| Those, who thy nature loath’d, yet lov’d thy art, | 35 |
| Who lik’d thy head, and yet abhorr’d thy heart; | |
| Chose thee, to read, but never to converse, | |
| And scorn’d in prose, him whom they priz’d in verse; | |
| Even they shall now their partial error see, | |
| Shall shun thy writings, like thy company, | 40 |
| And to thy books shall ope their eyes no more, | |
| Than to thy person they wou’d do their door. | |
