_P_. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; 310 Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys; So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad! Half-froth, half-venom, spits himself abroad, 320 In puns or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that, acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd, 330 A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest, Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool, Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool, Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise, That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways: That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, And thought a lie in verse or prose the same. That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long, 340 But stoop'd to Truth, and moralised his song: That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end, He stood the furious foe, the timid friend, The damning critic, half-approving wit, The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit; Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had, The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad; The distant threats of vengeance on his head, The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed; The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,[108] 350 Th' imputed trash,[109] and dulness not his own; The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape, The libell'd person, and the pictured shape; Abuse,[110] on all he loved, or loved him, spread, A friend in exile, or a father dead; The whisper that, to greatness still too near, Perhaps yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear-- Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past: For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last! _A_. But why insult the poor, affront the great? 360 _P_. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state: Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail, Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail, A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire; If on a pillory, or near a throne, He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.