In due proportion to their end, 80 And every passage aptly join To bring about the one design. Our friends themselves cannot admit This rambling, wild, digressive wit; No--not those very friends, who found Their credit on the self-same ground. Peace, my good grumbling sir--for once, Sunk in the solemn, formal dunce, This coxcomb shall your fears beguile-- We will be dull--that you may smile. 90 Come, Method, come in all thy pride, Dulness and Whitehead by thy side; Dulness and Method still are one, And Whitehead is their darling son: Not he[215], whose pen, above control, Struck terror to the guilty soul, Made Folly tremble through her state, And villains blush at being great; Whilst he himself, with steady face, Disdaining modesty and grace, 100 Could blunder on through thick and thin, Through every mean and servile sin, Yet swear by Philip and by Paul, He nobly scorn'd to blush at all; But he who in the Laureate[216] chair, By grace, not merit, planted there, In awkward pomp is seen to sit, And by his patent proves his wit; For favours of the great, we know, Can wit as well as rank bestow; 110 And they who, without one pretension, Can get for fools a place or pension, Must able be supposed, of course, (If reason is allow'd due force) To give such qualities and grace As may equip them for the place. But he--who measures as he goes A mongrel kind of tinkling prose, And is too frugal to dispense, At once, both poetry and sense; 120 Who, from amidst his slumbering guards, Deals out a charge to subject bards, Where couplets after couplets creep Propitious to the reign of sleep; Yet every word imprints an awe, And all his dictates pass for law With beaux, who simper all around, And belles, who die ill every sound: For in all things of this relation, Men mostly judge from situation, 130 Nor in a thousand find we one Who really weighs what's said or done; They deal out censure, or give credit, Merely from him who did or said it. But he--who, happily serene, Means nothing, yet would seem to mean; Who rules and cautions can dispense With all that humble insolence Which Impudence in vain would teach, And none but modest men can reach; 140 Who adds to sentiments the grace Of always being out of place, And drawls out morals with an air A gentleman would blush to wear; Who, on the chastest, simplest plan, As chaste, as simple, as the man Without or character, or plot, Nature unknown, and Art forgot, Can, with much raking of the brains, And years consumed in letter'd pains, 150 A heap of words together lay, And, smirking, call the thing a play;[217] Who, champion sworn in Virtue's cause, 'Gainst Vice his tiny bodkin draws, But to no part of prudence stranger,