Your secret kept, your poem sunk, And sent in quires to line a trunk, If still you be disposed to rhyme, Go try your hand a second time. Again you fail: yet safe's the word; Take courage, and attempt a third. But just with care employ your thoughts, Where critics marked your former faults; The trivial turns, the borrowed wit, The similes that nothing fit; The cant which every fool repeats, Town jests and coffee-house conceits; Descriptions tedious, flat, and dry, And introduced the Lord knows why: Or where we find your fury set Against the harmless alphabet; On A's and B's your malice vent, While readers wonder what you meant: A public or a private robber, A statesman, or a South-Sea jobber; A prelate who no God believes; A parliament, or den of thieves; A pick-purse at the bar or bench; A duchess, or a suburb wench: Or oft, when epithets you link In gaping lines to fill a chink; Like stepping-stones to save a stride, In streets where kennels are too wide; Or like a heel-piece, to support A cripple with one foot too short; Or like a bridge, that joins a marish To moorland of a different parish; So have I seen ill-coupled hounds Drag different ways in miry grounds; So geographers in Afric maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants, for want of towns. But though you miss your third essay, You need not throw your pen away. Lay now aside all thoughts of fame, To spring more profitable game. From party-merit seek support-- The vilest verse thrives best at court. And may you ever have the luck, To rhyme almost as ill as Duck; And though you never learnt to scan verse, Come out with some lampoon on D'Anvers. A pamphlet in Sir Bob's defence Will never fail to bring in pence: Nor be concerned about the sale-- He pays his workmen on the nail. Display the blessings of the nation, And praise the whole administration: Extol the bench of Bishops round; Who at them rail, bid----confound: To Bishop-haters answer thus, (The only logic used by us,) 'What though they don't believe in----, Deny them Protestants,--thou liest.'