How it cramps our Ambition, and deadens our Hearts; Continually plagues us with Lectures from Heaven, And robs us the Year round of one Day in seven; Denies to the Passions the Flowers in their Road, And carps at the varying Designs of the Mode! It teaches few Fashions but such as, we find, 290 Have been hiss’d from good Company, Time out of Mind; Affords us no rule for the Cut of a Coat, Nor winks at the Science of cutting a Throat; A tenth of each Man’s Cultivation commands, And threatens us all in Return for our Lands; Still presses the More like a Dun for Neglect, And is never contented with civil Respect; Intrudes in the Dance, and grows grave in the Song, And conjures up Conscience with all her dull Throng. “And Virtue—what’s Virtue? an obstinate Cur, 300 Who clings to a Rock and refuses to stir; Whose Lectures on Life are a plague beyond bearing; So he snaps at your Heels, till you’re quite out of hearing. But hearken to him, and he’ll tell you the Fancies Which please the poor School-Boy in Tales and Romances: How he and his Friends have defeated the Crimes Of voluptuous Aspirers in horrible Times; By Patience and Prating done wonderfull Things To Women consumptive, and Death-alarm’d Kings. But tell me when Virtue got any Man Pension’d, 310 Or procur’d him a Title that’s fit to be mention’d, Or taught him to talk for the Praise of the Nation, Or dictated Themes for a publick Oration? Did it ever a Brilliant Assembly advance, Or import sound Politeness and Claret from France? Not this; but it hobbles in Gait and in speech And, laught at by all, is still aiming to teach; From the gentle ‘_in modo_’ will angrily flee, But sternly adhere to the hatefull ‘_in re_.’ “And what is a properer Object of Satire 320 Than that most ridiculous Failing, Good-nature? Do you know a Man laugh’d at by all his Acquaintance, Despis’d and disdain’d by the People he maintains; Too grave for a Wit, and too mean for a Beau; A Clown who does nothing as other Men do; An Awkwardly-generous, blundering Thing, Who stoops to a Beggar and stares on a King; A Creature who makes no Distinction at all } ’Twixt a Speech in the Vestry and one in the Hall— } Leoni who warbles, or Porters who bawl; 330} His Heart without Judgment, his Head without Rule And, merely for want of Discretion, a Fool; Whose Mind with a pitiful Tale is possess’d; Who is every one’s Friend, yet is every one’s Jest; Who blunders thro’ Life without forming a Plan, Is that poor stupid Mortal—a good-natur’d Man. “But of all the vile Things which torment or molest us Wit a thousand times worse than the worst of the rest is: The Poison [that’s] banish’d from every Table, } As far as the People of Fashion are able, 340} To the Bookworms in Schools, and the Grooms of the Stable. } A Man who has Wit is more proud than the Devil;