A. Your smooth eulogium to one crown ad dressed, Seems to imply a censure on the rest. B. Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale, Asked, when in hell, to see the royal jail; I grant the sarcasm is too severe, And we can readily refute it here; While Alfred's name, the father of his age, And the Sixth Edward's grace the historic page. A. Kings then at last have but the lot of all, By their own conduct they must stand or fall. B. True. While they live, the courtly laureat pays His quit-rent ode, his pepper-corn of praise; And many a dunce whose fingers itch to write, Adds, as he can, his tributary mite; A subject's faults a subject may proclaim, A monarch's errors are forbidden game! Thus free from censure, oyer-awed by fear, Respect, while stalking over life's narrow stage; I pity kings, whom worship waits upon And death awakens from that dream too late. Oh! if servility with supple knees, Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please; If smooth dissimulation, skilled to grace A devil's purpose with an angel's face; Playing, at beat of drum, their martial pranks, If monarchy consist in such base things, To be suspected, thwarted, and withstood, Hook disappointment on the public wheels; With all their flippant fluency of tongue, Most confident, when palpably most wrong; If this be kingly, then farewell for me, To which the unwashed artificer repairs, To indulge his genius after long fatigue, (For what kings deem a toil, as well they may, To him is relaxation and mere play) To win no praise when well-wrought plans pre vail, But to be rudely censured when they fail; To doubt the love his favourites may pretend, And in reality to find no friend; If he indulge a cultivated taste, His galleries with the works of art well graced, A. Thus men, whose thoughts contemplative have dwelt On situations, that they never felt, Start up sagacious, covered with the dust And prate and preach about what others prove, Increasing taxes and the nation's debt. Could you contrive the payment, and rehearse The mighty plan, oracular, in verse, No bard, however majestic, old or new, Should claim my fixt attention more than you. B. Not Brindley nor Bridgewater would es say To turn the course of Helicon that way; |