GREAT famous wit! whose rich and easy vein,
Free, and unused to drudgery and pain,
Has all Apollo's treasure at command,
And, how good verse is coined, dost understand;
In all wit's combats, master of defence,
Tell me, how dost thou pass on rhyme and sense?
'Tis said they apply to thee, and in thy verse
Do freely range themselves as volunteers;
And without pain, or pumping for a word,
Place themselves fitly of their own accord.
I, whom a lewd caprich, for some great crime
I have committed, has condemned to rhyme,
With slavish obstinacy vex my brain
To reconcile 'em, but, alas! in vain.
Sometimes I set my wits upon the rack,
And, when I would say white, the verse says black;
When I would draw a brave man to the life,
It names some slave, that pimps to his own wife,
Or base poltroon, that would have sold his daughter,
If he had met with any to have bought her;
When I would praise an author, the untoward
Damned sense, says Virgil, but the rhyme;†
In fine, whate'er I strive to bring about,
The contrary, spite of my heart, comes out.
Sometimes, enraged for time and pains misspent,
I give it over, tired and discontent;
And, damning the dull fiend a thousand times,
By whom I was possessed, forswear all rhymes;
But having cursed the muses, they appear,
To be revenged for't, ere I am aware.
Spite of myself, I straight take fire again,
Fall to my task with paper, ink, and pen,
* The editor of the last edition of Thyer observes that this satire is
a close imitation of Boileau's Second Satire, addressed to Molière.
No doubt, the blank should be filled up with the name of Ned Howard. See post, p. 144, note *.
And breaking all the oaths I made, in vain
From verse to verse, expect their aid again.
But if my muse or I were so discreet,
T'endure, for rhyme's sake, one dull epithet,
I might, like others, easily command
Words without study, ready and at hand.
In praising Chloris, moons, and stars, and skies,
Are quickly made to match her face and eyes;
And gold, and rubies, with as little care,
To fit the colour of her lips and hair;
And mixing suns, and flowers, and pearl, and stones,
Make 'em serve all complexions at once.
With these fine fancies, at hap-hazard writ,
I could make verses without art or wit,
And, shifting forty times the verb and noun,
With stolen impertinence patch up mine own.
But in the choice of words, my scrupulous wit
Is fearful to pass one that is unfit;
Nor can endure to fill up a void place,
At a line's end, with one insipid phrase;
And, therefore, when I scribble twenty times,
When I have written four, I blot two rhymes.
May he be damned, who first found out that curse,
T' imprison, and confine his thoughts in verse;
To hang so dull a clog upon his wit,
And make his reason to his rhyme submit.*
Without this plague, I freely might have spent
My happy days with leisure and content;
Had nothing in the world to do, or think,
Like a fat priest, but whore, and eat, and drink,
Had past my time as pleasantly away,
Slept all the night, and loitered all the day.
My soul, that's free from care, and fear, and hope,
Knows how to make her own ambition stoop,
* Maudit soit le premier, dont la verve insensée
Dans les bornes d'un vers renferma la pensée,
Et donnant à ses mots une étroite prison,
Voulut avec la rime enchaîner la raison.-BOILEAU.
T'avoid uneasy greatness and resort,
Or for preferment following the court.
How happy had I been, if, for a curse,
The fates had never sentenced me to verse!
But, ever since this peremptory vein
With restless frenzy first possessed my brain,
And that the devil tempted me, in spite
Of my own happiness, to judge and write,
Shut up against my will, I waste my age
In mending this, and blotting out that page;
And grow so weary of the slavish trade,
envy their condition that write bad. O happy Scudery! whose easy quill
Can, once a month, a mighty volume fill;*
For, though thy works are written in despite
Of all good sense, impertinent, and slight,
They never have been known to stand in need
Of stationer to sell, or sot to read;
For so the rhyme be at the verse's end,
No matter whither all the rest does tend.
Unhappy is that man, who, spite of 's heart,
Is forced to be tied up to rules of art.
A fop that scribbles, does it with delight,
Takes no pains to consider what to write,
But, fond of all the nonsense he brings forth,
Is ravished with his own great wit and worth;
While brave and noble writers vainly strive
To such a height of glory to arrive;
*Scudery, and his sister, the author of the well-known romances, were both voluminous writers, especially Madame Scudery. The allusion is to the former, who died in 1667. The passage is translated from Boileau:
Bienheureux Scudéri, dont la fertile plume
Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume.
Tes ecrits, il est vrai, sans art et languissans,
Semblent être formés en dépit de bon sens :
Mais il trouve pourtant, quoi qu'on en puisse dire,
Un marchand pour les vendre, et des sots pour les lire.
But still, with all they do unsatisfied,
Ne'er please themselves, though all the world beside;
And those whom all mankind admire for wit,
Wish, for their own sakes, they had never writ.
Thou then, that seest how ill I spend my time,
Teach me, for pity, how to make a rhyme;
And, if th' instructions chance to prove in vain,
Teach
how ne'er to write again.
SURE marriages were never so well fitted,
As when to matrimony men were committed,
Like thieves, by justices, and to a wife
Bound, like to good behaviour, during life:
For then 'twas but a civil contract made,
Between two partners, that set up a trade;
And if both failed, there was no conscience,
Nor faith invaded, in the strictest sense;
No canon of the church, nor vow, was broke
When men did free their galled necks from the yoke ;*
But when they tired, like other hornèd beasts,
Might have it taken off, and take their rests,
Without being bound in duty to show cause,
Or reckon with divine, or human laws.
For since, what use of matrimony has been,
But to make gallantry a greater sin?
As if there were no appetite, nor gust,
Below adultery, in modish lust;
Or no debauchery were exquisite,
Until it has attained its perfect height.
For men do now take wives to nobler ends,
Not to bear children, but to bear 'em friends,
In this passage Butler conveys an allusion to the abolition of the
Office of Matrimony by the Sectaries.
Whom nothing can oblige at such a rate,
As these endearing offices of late.
For men are now grown wise, and understand
How to improve their crimes, as well as land;
And if they've issue, make the infants pay
Down for their own begetting on the day,
The charges of the gossiping disburse,
pay beforehand, ere they're born, the nurse; As he that got a monster on a cow,
Out of design of setting up a show.
For why should not the brats for all account,
As well as for the christening at the fount,
When those that stand for them, lay down the rate
O' th' banquet and the priest, in spoons and plate?
The ancient Romans made the state allow,
For getting all men's children above two:
Then married men to propagate the breed,
Had great rewards for what they never did,
Were privileged, and highly honoured too,
For owning what their friends were fain to do;
For, so they 'ad children, they regarded not
By whom, good men! or how they were begot.
To borrow wives, like money, or to lend,
Was then the civil office of a friend,
And he that made a scruple in the case,
Was held a miserable wretch, and base;
For when they 'ad children by 'em, th' honest men
Returned 'em to their husbands back again.
Then for th' encouragement and propagation
Of such a great concernment to the nation,
All people were so full of complacence,
And civil duty to the public sense,
They had no name t' express a cuckold then,
But that which signified all married men;
Nor was the thing accounted a disgrace,
Unless among the dirty populace;
And no man understands on what account
Less civil nations after hit upon't:
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