With nice distinctions glossing o'er the text, Obscure with meaning, and in words perplex'd, With subtleties on subtleties refined, Meant to divide and subdivide the mind, 760 Keeping the forwardness of youth in awe, The scowling Blackstone[296] bears the train of law. Divinity, enrobed in college fur, In her right hand a new Court Calendar, Bound like a book of prayer, thy coming waits With all her pack, to hymn thee in the gates. Loyalty, fix'd on Isis' alter'd shore, A stranger long, but stranger now no more, Shall pitch her tabernacle, and, with eyes Brimful of rapture, view her new allies; 770 Shall, with much pleasure and more wonder, view Men great at court, and great at Oxford too. O sacred Loyalty! accursed be those Who, seeming friends, turn out thy deadliest foes, Who prostitute to kings thy honour'd name, And soothe their passions to betray their fame; Nor praised be those, to whose proud nature clings Contempt of government, and hate of kings, Who, willing to be free, not knowing how, A strange intemperance of zeal avow, 780 And start at Loyalty, as at a word Which without danger Freedom never heard. Vain errors of vain men--wild both extremes, And to the state not wholesome, like the dreams, Children of night, of Indigestion bred, Which, Reason clouded, seize and turn the head; Loyalty without Freedom is a chain Which men of liberal notice can't sustain; And Freedom without Loyalty, a name Which nothing means, or means licentious shame. 790 Thine be the art, my Sandwich, thine the toil, In Oxford's stubborn and untoward soil To rear this plant of union, till at length, Rooted by time, and foster'd into strength, Shooting aloft, all danger it defies, And proudly lifts its branches to the skies; Whilst, Wisdom's happy son but not her slave, Gay with the gay, and with the grave ones grave, Free from the dull impertinence of thought, Beneath that shade, which thy own labours wrought 800 And fashion'd into strength, shalt thou repose, Secure of liberal praise, since Isis flows, True to her Tame, as duty hath decreed, Nor longer, like a harlot, lust for Tweed, And those old wreaths, which Oxford once dared twine To grace a Stuart brow, she plants on thine. * * * * * Footnotes: [276] 'Garrick abroad:' Garrick, in September 1763, in order to make his value more appreciated after his return, resolved to visit the continent. [277] 'Langhorne:' John Langhorne, D.D., the translator of Plutarch. [278] 'France:' Wilkes had fled to France to escape the prosecutions entered against him. [279] 'Sneaking peer:' John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, was the author of severe 'Observations on the Life of Swift.' [280] 'Bishop:' Bishop Warburton. [281] 'Hayter:' Dr Thomas Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, and next of London, died prematurely.