Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.
Honour and shame from no Condition rife;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in Men has fome small diff'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobler apron'd, and the parfon gown'd,
The frier hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
"What differ more (you cry) than crown and cow!?"
I'll tell you, friend! a wife man and a Fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with strings,
That thou may'st be by Kings, or whores of kings, Boaft the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece:
VER. 207. Boaft the pure blood, &c.] in the MS. thus,
The richest blood, right-honourably old,
Down from Lucretia to Lucretia roll'd,
May swell thy heart and gallop in thy breast,
Without one dash of usher or of priest:
Thy pride as much despise all other pride
As Christ-Church once all colleges beside.
But by your father's worth if your's you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great. 210
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scroundels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble fots, or flaves, or cowards? 215
Alas! not all the blood of all the HoWARDS.
Look next on Greatness; say where Greatness lies? "Where, but among the Heroes and the Wife?" Heroes are much the fame, the point's agreed, From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
VER. 219. Heroes are force; and deserved the
much the fame, &c.] This poet's care.
character might have been
drawn with much more | ing.
supplies what is here want
They err who count it glorious to fubdue
By conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large Countries, and in field great Battles win,
Great Cities by affault. What do these worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, flaughter, and enslave
Peaceable Nations, neighb'ring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving Freedom more
Than those their Conqu'rors; who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wherefoe'er they rove,
And all the flourishing works of peace deftroy?
Then fwell with pride, and must be titled Gods;
Till Conqu'ror Death discovers them scarce Men,
Rolling in brutish Vices, and deform'd,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make, an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.
No less alike the Politic and Wife;
All fly flow things, with circumspective eyes :
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wife, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat;
'Tis phrafe absurd to call a Villain Great:
Who wickedly is wife, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, fmiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that Man is great indeed.
What's Fame? a fancy'd life in others breath,
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.
Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown
The fame (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all befide as much an empty shade
An Eugene living, as a Cæfar dead;
Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine, 245
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A Wit's a feather, and a Chief a rod;
An honest Man's the noble work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As Justice tears his body from the grave;
When what t'oblivion better were resign'd,
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true defert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One felf-approving hour whole years out-weighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels,
Than Cæfar with a fenate at his heels.
In Parts fuperior what advantage lies?
Tell (for You can) what is it to be wife?
'Tis but to know how little can be known;
To fee all others faults, and feel our own:
Condemn'd in bus'ness or in arts to drudge,
Without a fecond, or without a judge:
Truths would you teach, or fave a finking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand. Painful preheminence! yourself to view
Above life's weakness, and its comforts too.
Bring then these blessings to a strict account; Make fair deductions; see to what they mount:
How much of other each is fure to cost;
How each for other oft is wholly loft ;
How inconsistent greater goods with these;
How sometimes life is risqu'd, and always ease :
Think, and if still the things thy envy call,
Say, would'st thou be the Man to whom they fall?
To figh for ribbands if thou art fo filly,
Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy:
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?
Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife:
If Parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind :
Or rayish'd with the whistling of a Name,
See Cromwell, damn'd to everlasting fame !
VER. 281, 283. If Parts | bribery and corruption in the administration of Justice, while he prefided in the supreme Court of Equity, he en
allure thee, Or ravish'd with the whistling of a Name,] These two instances are chosen with great judg- | deavoured to repair his ruin
ment; the world, perhaps, doth not afford two other such. Bacon discovered and laid down those principles, by the affsistance of which Newton was enabled to unfold the whole law of Nature. He was no less eminent for the creative power of his imagination, the brightness of his thoughts, and the force of his expression: Yet being convicted and punished for
ed fortunes by the most profligate flattery to the Court : Which, from his very first entrance into it, he had accustomed himself to practise with a prostitution that difgraceth the very profession of letters.
Cromwell feemeth to be diftinguished in the most eminent manner, with regard to his abilities, from all other great and wicked
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