TO THE MARINE SOCIETY.

I T has been (all examples show it)
The privilege of every poet,
From ancient down through modern time,
To bid dead matter live in Rhyme;
With wit enliven senseless rocks,
Draw repartee from wooden blocks;
Make buzzards senators of note,
And rooks harangue that geese may vote.
 These moral fictions, first design'd
To mend and mortify mankind,
Old Æsop, as our children know,
Taught twice ten hundred years ago.
His Fly upon the chariot-wheel
Could all a statesman's merit feel,
And, to its own importance just,
Exclaim, with Bufo, ‘What a dust!’
His Horse-dung, when the flood ran high,
In Colon's air and accent cry,
While tumbling down the turbid stream,
 ‘Lord love us, how we apples swim!’
 But farther instances to cite
Would tire the hearer's patience quite.
No; what their numbers and their worth,
How these admire while those hold forth,
From Hyde-Park on to Clerkenwell,
Let clubs, let coffee-houses tell,
Where England, through the world renown'd,
In all its wisdom may be found;
While I, for ornament and use,
An orator of wood produce.
 Why should the gentle reader stare?
Are wooden orators so rare?
Saint Stephen's Chapel, Rufus' Hall,
That hears them in the pleader bawl,
That hears them in the patriot thunder,
Can tell if such things are a wonder:
So can St. Dunstan's in the West,
When good Romaine harangues his best,
And tells his staring congregation
That sober sense is sure damnation;
That Newton's guilt was worse than treason
For using, what God gave him, reason.
 ‘A pox of all this prefacing!’
Smart Balbus cries; ‘come, name the thing;
That such there are we all agree:
What is this wood?’ Why—Tyburn-tree.
 Hear then this reverend oak harangue,
Who makes men do so ere they hang.

Patibulum loquitur.

 ‘Each thing whatever, when aggriev'd,
Of right complains to be reliev'd:
When rogues so rais'd the price of wheat
That few folks could afford to eat,
(Just as when doctors' fees run high
Few patients can afford to die)
The poor durst into murmurs break,
For losers must have leave to speak,
Then from reproaching fell to mauling
Each neighbour-rogue they found forestalling.
As these again, their knaves and setters,
Durst vent complaints against their betters,
Whose only crime was in defeating
Their schemes of growing rich by cheating;
So shall not I my wrongs relate,
An injur'd minister of state?
The finisher of care and pain
May sure with better grace complain,
For reasons no less strong and true,
Marine Society! of you;
Of you, as every carman knows,
My latest and most fatal foes.
 ‘My property you basely steal,
Which ev'n a British Oak can feel;
Feel and resent; what wonder then
It should be felt by British men,
When France, insulting, durst invade
Their clearest property of trade?
For which both nations at the bar
Of that supreme tribunal War,
To show their reasons have agreed,
And lawyers by ten thousands fee'd,
Who now for legal quirks and puns
Plead with the rhetoric of great guns,
And each his client's cause maintains
By knocking out the' opponents's brains,
While Europe all—But we adjourn
This wise digression, and return.
 ‘Your rules and statutes have undone me;
My surest cards begin to shun me:
My native subjects dare rebel,
Those who were born for me and hell;
And but for you the scoundrel line
Had every mother's son died mine:
A race unnumber'd as unknown,
Whom town or suburb calls her own;
Of vagrant love the various spawn,
From rags and filth, from lace and lawn;
Sons of Fleet-Ditch, of bulks, of benches,
Where peer and porter meet their wenches,
For neither health nor shame can wean us
From mixing with the midnight Venus.
 ‘Nor let my cits be here forgot;
They know to sin as well as sot.
When Night demure walks forth, array'd
In her thin negligée of shade,
Late-risen from their long regale
Of beef and beer, and bawdy tale,
Abroad the Common-council sally,
To poach for game in lane or alley;
This gets a son, whose first essay
Will filch his father's till away;
A daughter that, who may retire,
Some few years hence, with her own sire;
And while his hand is on her locket
The filial virtue picks his pocket.
'Change-Alley, too, is grown so nice,
A broker dares refine on vice;
With lord-like scorn of marriage-vows,
In her own arms he cuckolds spouse;
For young and fresh while he would wish her,
His loose thought glows with Kitty Fisher;
Or after nobler quarry running,
Profanely paints her out a Gunning.
 ‘Now these, of each degree and sort,
At Wapping dropp'd, perhaps at Court,
Bred up for me, to swear and lie,
To laugh at hell, and Heav'n defy;
These, Tyburn's regimented train,
Who risk their necks to spread my reign,
From age to age, by right divine,
Hereditary rogues, were mine;
And cach, by discipline severe,
Improv'd beyond all shame and fear,
From guilt to guilt advancing daily,
My constant friend the good Old Bailey
To me made over, late or soon,
I think, at latest, once a moon;
But by your interloping care
Not one in ten shall be my share.
 ‘Ere 'tis too late your error see,
You foes to Britain and to me!
To me, agreed—but to the nation?—
I prove it thus by demonstration.
 ‘First, that there is much good in ill
My great apostle Mandeville
Has made most clear. Read, if you please,
His moral Fable of “The Bees.”
Our reverend clergy next will own,
Were all men good their trade were gone;
That were it not for useful vice
Their learned pains would bear no price;
Nay, we should quickly bid defiance
To their demonstrated alliance.
 ‘Next, kingdoms are compos'd, we know,
Of individuals, Jack and Joe:
Now these, our sovereign lords the rabble,
For ever prone to growl and squabble,
The monstrous many headed beast,
Whom we must not offend, but feast,
Like Cerberus, should have their sup;
And what is that but trussing up?
How-happy were their hearts, and gay,
At each return of hanging-day!
To see Page swinging they admire,
Beyond ev'n Madox on his wire!
No baiting of a bull or bear
To Perry dangling in the air!
And then the being drunk a week
For joy some Sheppard would not squeak!
But now that those good times are o'er,
How will they mutiny and roar!
Your scheme absurd of sober rules
Will sink the race of men to mules;
For ever drudging, sweating, broiling,
For ever for the public toiling:
Hard masters! who, just when they need 'em,
With a few thistles deign to feed 'em.
 ‘Yet more—for it is seldom known
That fault or folly stands alone—
You next debauch their infant-mind
With fumes of honourable wind,
Which must beget, in heads untried,
That worst of human vices, pride.
All who my humble paths forsake
Will reckon each to be a Blake!
There on the deck, with arms a-kimbo,
Already struts the future Bembow!
By you bred up to take delight in
No earthly thing but oaths and fighting
These sturdy sons of blood and blows,
By pulling Monsieur by the nose,
By making kicks and cuffs the fashion,
Will put all Europe in a passion.
The grand alliance, now quadrupie,
Will pay us home, jusqu' au centuple;
So the French king was heard to cry—
And can a king of Frenchmen lie?
 ‘These and more mischiefs I foresee
From fondling brats of base degree.
As mushrooms that on dunghills rise
The kindred-weeds beneath despise,
So these their fellows will contemn,
Who in revenge will rage at them;
For through each rank what more offends
Than to behold the rise of friends?
Still when our equals grow too great
We may applaud, but we must hate;
Then will it be endur'd when John
Has put my hempen ribbon on,
To see his ancient mess-mate Cloud,
By you made turbulent and proud,
And early taught my tree to bilk,
Pass in another—all of silk?
 ‘Yet, one more mournful case to put;
A hundred mouths at once you shut!
Half Grub-Street, silenc'd in an hour,
Must curse you interposing pow'r.
If my lost sons no longer steal,
What son of her's can earn a meal?
You ruin many a gentle bard,
Who liv'd by heroes that die hard!
Their brother-hawkers too, that sung
How great from world to world they swung,
And by sad sonnets. quaver'd loud,
Drew tears and halfpence from the crowd!
 ‘Blind Fielding too—a mischief on him!
I wish my sons would meet and stone him!
Sends his black squadrons up and down,
Who drive my best boys back to Town,
They find that travelling now abroad,
To case rich rascals on the road,
Is grown a calling much unsafe,
That there are surer ways by half,
To which they have their equal claim
Of earning daily food and fame;
So down at home they sit and think
How best to rob with pen and ink.
 ‘Hence red-hot letters and essays
By the John Lilburn of these days,
Who guards his want of shame and sense
With shield of sev'nfold impudence;
Hence cards on Pelham, cards on Pitt,
With much abuse and little wit;
Hence libels against Hardwicke penn'd,
That only hurt when they commend;
Hence oft ascrib'd to Fox, at least
All that defames his namesake beast;
Hence Cloacina hourly views
Unnumber'd labours of the Muse,
That sink where myriads went before,
And sleep within the chaos hoar,
While her brown daughters, under ground,
Are fed with politics profound:
Each eager hand a fragment snaps,
More excrement than what it wraps,
 ‘These, singly, contributions raise,
Of casual pudding and of praise:
Others again, who form a gang,
Yet take due measures not to hang,
In Magazines their forces join,
By legal methods to purlom;
Whose weekly or whose monthly feat is
First to decry, then steal your treatise:
So rogues in France perform their job,
Assassinating ere they rob.
 ‘But, this long narrative to close;
They who would grievances expose,
In all good policy no less
Should show the methods to redress.
If commerce, sinking in one scale,
By fraud or hazard comes to fail,
The task is next, all statesmen know it,
To find another where to throw it,
That, rising there in due degree,
The public may no loser be.
Thus having heard how you invade,
And in one way destroy my trade,
That we at last may part good friends,
Hear how you still may make amends.
 ‘O search this sinful Town with care;
What numbers duly mine are there!
The full-fed herd of money-jobbers,
Jews, Christians, rogues alike, and robbers!
Who riot on the poor man's toils,
And fatten by a nation's spoils!
The crowd of little knaves in place,
Our age's envy and disgrace.
Secret and sung, by daily stealth
The busy vermin pick up wealth,
Then without birth control the great,
Then without talents rule the state!
 ‘Some ladies too—for some there are
With shame and decency at war,
Who on a ground of pale threescore
Still spread the rose of twenty-four,
And bid a nut-brown bosom glow
With purer white than lilies know;
Who into vice intrepid rush,
Put modest whoring to the blush,
And with more front engage a trooper
Than Jenny Jones or Lucy Cooper.
 ‘Send me each mischief-making nibbler,
'Tis equal senator or scribbler,
Who on the self-same spot of ground,
The self-same hearers staring round,
Abjure and join with, praise and blame,
Both men and measures still the same;
Or serve our foes with all their might,
By proving Britons dare not fight:
Slim, flimsy, fiddling, futile elves,
They paint the nation from themselves;
Less aiming to be wise than witty,
And mighty pert, and mighty pretty.
 ‘Send me each string—save green and blue—
These, Brother Towerhill, wart for you.
But, Lollius, be not in the spleen;
'Tis only Arthur's Knights I mean—
Not those of old renown'd in fable,
Nor of the Round, but gaming, table,
Who every night, the waiters say,
Break every law they make by day;
Plunge deep our youth in all the vice
Attendant upon drink and dice,
And, mixing in nocturnal battles,
Devour each others' goods and chattles;
While from the mouth of magic box,
With curses dire and dreadful knocks,
They fling whole tenements away,
Fling time, health, fame—yet call it Play!
Till, by advice of special friends,
The titled dupe a sharper ends;
Or if some drop of noble blood
Remains, not quite defil'd to mud,
The wretch, unpitied and alone,
Leaps headlong to the world unknown!’