“He raised the Nation’s apprehensions, With Court-corruption, Places, Pensions: Words which, when well dissected, mean, That _I_ am _out_ and you are _in_; And which, when properly repeated, In every Question that’s debated, Can ope a thousand mouths at once, And make a hero of a dunce. Your IF is good at making peace: Rodondo went to war with these. * * * * * The Nation knows My maxim ever was _Oppose_; And be the Minister who will, My maxim is--Oppose him still. For though to Britain necessary, ’Tis good for me that all miscarry, Excepting _one_--I need not name him,-- Envy herself would blush to blame him.” The Common Destiny of Statesmen is lively and imaginative, but too long to be inserted here. The following lines are also of more than common merit:-- “O Disappointment! but for thee, What were this land of liberty? Were’t not for thee on English ground No trace of Patriot could be found. Thou comest indeed with rueful face To fruitless hunters after place, Blasting their hopes, but in exchange, Presenting prospects of revenge. Just so an egg when overdrest Becomes confounded hard to digest; And in the place of wholesome _chyle_, Produces copious floods of bile.”--E. [83] This satire was published in 1703, in small 4to. (66 pages) with this title, “Patriotism; a mock heroic, in five cantos.” “Behold thy Gods O Israel.” (1 Kings.) Cumberland says of this poem that “it is one of the keenest and wittiest satires extant in our language. Lord Temple, Wilkes, and others of the party were attacked with unsparing asperity, and much critical acumen. Churchill, the Dryden of the age, and indisputably a man of first-rate genius, was too candid not to acknowledge the merit of the poem; and when he declined taking up the gauntlet so pointedly thrown down to him, it was not because he held his challenger in contempt.” (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 212.) True as this may partially be, the poem has great defects. The poverty and incompleteness of the allegory are alone fatal to its interest; Pride, Faction, Folly and Ambition are made to perambulate the town, to carouse together, and reciprocate declamatory speeches without any adequate result,--these speeches indeed being the only object for which they are introduced. The total absence of incident is sought to be redeemed by descriptions, some of which are lively enough. Abuse of popular licence and eulogies of the King and his Ministers form the staple of the poem. It opens with an account of the visit of Pride to the Mansion House, and the hospitality of Beckford is rather ungratefully returned by the following (among other) spirited lines on his followers.