By Truth inspired, we numbers see Of each profession and degree, Gentle and simple, lord and cit, Wit without wealth, wealth without wit, 240 When Punch and Sheridan have done, To Fanny's[206] ghostly lectures run. By Truth and Fanny now inspired, I feel my glowing bosom fired; Desire beats high in every vein To sing the spirit of Cock-lane; To tell (just as the measure flows In halting rhyme, half verse, half prose) With more than mortal arts endued, How she united force withstood, 250 And proudly gave a brave defiance To Wit and Dulness in alliance. This apparition (with relation To ancient modes of derivation, This we may properly so call, Although it ne'er appears at all, As by the way of inuendo, _Lucus_ is made _à non lucendo_) Superior to the vulgar mode, Nobly disdains that servile road 260 Which coward ghosts, as it appears, Have walk'd in full five thousand years, And, for restraint too mighty grown, Strikes out a method of her own. Others may meanly start away, Awed by the herald of the day; With faculties too weak to bear The freshness of the morning air, May vanish with the melting gloom, And glide in silence to the tomb; 270 She dares the sun's most piercing light, And knocks by day as well as night. Others, with mean and partial view, Their visits pay to one or two; She, in great reputation grown, Keeps the best company in town. Our active enterprising ghost As large and splendid routs can boast As those which, raised by Pride's command[207], Block up the passage through the Strand. 280 Great adepts in the fighting trade, Who served their time on the parade; She-saints, who, true to Pleasure's plan, Talk about God, and lust for man; Wits, who believe nor God, nor ghost, And fools who worship every post; Cowards, whose lips with war are hung; Men truly brave, who hold their tongue; Courtiers, who laugh they know not why, And cits, who for the same cause cry; 290 The canting tabernacle-brother, (For one rogue still suspects another); Ladies, who to a spirit fly, Rather than with their husbands lie; Lords, who as chastely pass their lives With other women as their wives; Proud of their intellects and clothes, Physicians, lawyers, parsons, beaux, And, truant from their desks and shops, Spruce Temple clerks and 'prentice fops, 300 To Fanny come, with the same view, To find her false, or find her true. Hark! something creeps about the house! Is it a spirit, or a mouse? Hark! something scratches round the room! A cat, a rat, a stubb'd birch-broom. Hark! on the wainscot now it knocks! 'If thou 'rt a ghost,' cried Orthodox, With that affected solemn air Which hypocrites delight to wear, 310 And all those forms of consequence Which fools adopt instead of sense; 'If thou 'rt a ghost, who from the tomb